The sports were characteristic of the frontier mode of life. Running, jumping, and wrestling were the pastimes of the boys as well as of the men. Throwing the tomahawk was common, and gave skill in the arts of war. When the stock of ammunition would permit, the men preferred the more warlike exercise of the rifle, with which the diameter of a cent upon a target was pierced at the distance of fifty steps at every shot by half the men present, and some could lodge two successive balls in the same place. The best marksman always took the prize, for which all were zealous competitors.

After the settlements had become more dense on the Monongahela and on the Ohio, a new class of men sprung up, whose life was unique in the West. This was the class of

11. Boatmen. These were a hardy, fearless set of men, who always kept just in advance of civilization and luxury. They were athletic, persevering, and patient of privations. They traversed in their pirogues, barges, or keels, the longest rivers, penetrated the most remote wilderness upon their watery routes, and kept up a trade and intercourse between the most distant points. Accustomed to every species of exposure and privation, they despised ease and luxury. Clothed in the costume of the wilderness, and armed in western style, they were always ready to exchange the labors of the oar for offensive or defensive war. Exposed to the double force of the direct and reflected rays of the sun upon the water, their complexion was swarthy, and often but little fairer than the Indians. Often, from an exposure of their bodies without shirts, their complexion, from the head to the waist, was the same.

Steam had not exerted its magic influence on the western. waters, and the rich cargoes which ascended the Mississippi in keel-boats and barges were propelled by human labor for nearly two thousand miles, slowly advancing against the strong current of these rivers. The boatmen, with their bodies naked to the waist, spent the long and tedious days traversing the "running board," and pushing with their whole force against their strong setting-poles firmly fixed against the shoulder. Thus, with their heads suspended nearly to the track on the running-board, they propelled their freighted barge up the long and tedious route of the river. After a hard day's toil, at night they took their "fillee," or ration of whisky, swallowed their homely supper of meat half burned and bread half

baked, and retiring to sleep, they stretched themselves upon the deck, without covering, under the open canopy of heaven, or probably enveloped in a blanket, until the steersman's horn called them to their morning " fillee" and their toil.

Hard and fatiguing was the life of a boatman; yet it was rare that any of them ever changed his vocation. There was a charm in the excesses, in the frolicks, and in the fightings which they anticipated at the end of the voyage, which cheered them on. Of weariness none would complain; but rising from his hard bed by the first dawn of day, and reanimated by his morning draught, he was prepared to hear and obey the wonted order," Stand to your poles and set off!". The boatmen were masters of the winding-horn and the fiddle, and as the boat moved off from her moorings, some, to cheer their labors, or to "scare off the devil and secure good luck," would wind the animating blast of the horn, which, mingling with the sweet music of the fiddle, and reverberating along the sounding shores, greeted the solitary dwellers on the banks with news from New Orleans.

Their athletic labors gave strength incredible to their muscles, which they were vain to exhibit, and fist-fighting was their pastime. He who could boast that he had never been whipped was bound to fight whoever disputed his manhood. Keel-boatmen and barge-men looked upon rafts-men and flatboatmen as their natural enemies, and a meeting was the prelude to a "battle-royal." They were great sticklers for "fair play," and whoever was worsted in battle must abide the issue without assistance.

Their arrival in port was a general jubilee, where hundreds often met together for diversion and frolick. Their assemblages were often riotous and lawless to extremes, when the civil authorities were defied for days together. Had their numbers increased with the population of the West, they would have endangered the peace of the country; but the first steam-boat that ascended the Ohio sounded their death-knell, and they have been buried in the tide, never more to rise.

12. National Character.-Here we design to sketch in the western people the perceptible, but slight peculiarities which are the results of the peculiar circumstances and conditions of western pioneer life, and the influx of eastern and foreign immigration.

[A.D. 1795-1810.] The people of the Mississippi Valley are constituted from all nations, characters, languages, and conditions of men. Not a nation of Europe, not a class in all those nations, except royalty, which has not its full representation. here; not a state in the Union which has not sent out its colonies to people more western regions; not a sect or denomination of Christians who have not their churches and their ministers here. The subjects of despotic monarchies, and the citizens of the freest republics in the world, all commingle here, and unite to form one people, unique in feeling, character, and genius. The Puritan of the North, the planter of the South, the German and the Iberian, the Briton and the Gaul, and even the sable sons of Africa and the northern Swede, all are here, each bringing with him his peculiar prejudices, local attachments, and predilections, and side by side they have set down. together, and have gradually become assimilated in language, feelings, manners, and usages. Mutual prejudices have been effaced by contact and intimate connection, and the people, thus released from the narrow prejudices of birth and education, become more liberal, enlarged in feeling, more affectionate and agreeable, and, of course, more unprejudiced than a people who have long been unique in birth, education, and national character.

The rough, sturdy, and simple habits of the western people, living in a new and wilderness country, amid that abundance which God and Nature provide, and requiring only their own industry and exertion, give to them that fearless independence of thought and action which constitutes a characteristic trait. in the American pioneers. Accustomed to the fascinating, but faithless intercourse of refined society and of great cities, men acquire habits of thought and feeling, and are subject to those restraints which give them a different mental development from the fearless, unrestrained freedom of feeling which characterizes the native of the great Valley of the Mississippi. Here candor, truth, sincerity, independence, and equality predominate over the more degenerate traits of character inculcated in old and densely-populated countries. Inhabiting a country of immense extent, with boundless prairies and forests, and traversed by the most magnificent rivers of the globe, their ideas travel, and distance is correspondingly enlarged. Free to roam at will through the whole extent, with facilities unheard of in the

Old World, with them the field of ordinary travel is one which, in Europe, would embrace many nations and languages. Accustomed to the independent control of property and their own actions, the western people become habitually more ardent, more energetic, and more enterprising than the serfs and minions of arbitrary power. The constant toils and active life, prompted by interest and a hope of personal gain, in a salubrious and fertile country, give energy of action and a patient endurance unknown to human nature chained in its efforts and limited in its aspirations.*

13. The Religious Character.-The experiment is being made in this vast region of future empires upon a broad scale, which will test the question whether religion, as a national trait, can be maintained without legislative aid, or a union with the civil power. Men are here left free to adopt such religious views and tenets as they choose, and the laws protect every man alike in his religious opinions. Ministers of the Gospel and priests, being presumed as devoted to humanity, charity, and general benevolence, are precluded by many of the state constitutions from any active participation in the legislative authority, and their compensation depends upon the voluntary aid of those among whom they labor in charity and love. In a wide country, with large districts as yet sparsely populated, there are comparatively few stationary ministers; yet there are thousands, embracing all denominations, who traverse the whole country, forming an itinerant corps, who visit in rotation, within their respective bounds, every settlement, town, and village. Unsustained by the rigid precepts of law in any privileges, perquisites, fixed revenue, prescribed reverence or authority, except such as is voluntarily acknowledged, the clergy find that success depends upon the due cultivation of popular talents. Zeal for the great cause, mixed, perhaps, with a spice of earthly ambition, the innate sense of emulation, and laudable pride, a desire of distinction among their cotemporaries and brethren, prompt them to seek popularity, and to study all the arts and means of winning the popular favor. Traveling from month to month through dark forests, with such ample time for deep thought as they amble slowly along the lonesome horse-path or unfrequented road, they naturally acquire a pensive and romantic turn of thought and expression, which is often favorable to el

*Flint's Geography, p. 140-145.

oquence. Hence this preaching is of a highly popular cast, its first aim being to excite the feelings and mold them to their own: hence, too, excitements, or, in religious parlance, "awakenings," or "revivals," are common in all this region. Living remote from each other, and spending much of their time in domestic solitude in vast forests or wide-spreading prairies, the "appointment" for preaching is often looked upon as a gala day or a pleasing change, which brings together the auditors from remote points, and gratifies a feeling of curiosity, which prompts them to associate and interchange cordial congratulations.

Religious excitements sometimes pervade a town or settlement, or even an extensive section of country, simultaneously. People in every direction are fired with a desire to be present at the appointed time and place of meeting. They assemble as to an imposing spectacle; they pour in from their woods and remote seclusions to witness the assemblage, and to hear the new preacher, whose eloquence and fame have preceded him. The preaching has a scenic effect; it is a theme of earnest discussion, with apt illustrations, forcible arguments, and undaunted zeal. The people are naturally more sensitive and enthusiastic than in older countries. A man of rude, boisterous, but native eloquence rises among these children of the forest, and of simple nature, with his voice pitched to the highest tones, and his utterance thrilling with that awful theme to which each string of the human heart responds, and while the woods echo his vehement declamations, his audience is alternately dissolved in tears, awed to profound ecstasy of feeling, or, falling convulsed by spasms, attest the power of western pulpit eloquence.

In no instance are these effects more striking than at a regular" camp meeting." No one who has not seen and observed for himself can imagine how profoundly the preachers have understood what produces effect among the western people, and how well they have practiced upon it. Suppose the scene to be in one of those regions where religious excitements have been frequent and extensive, in one of the beautiful, fertile, and finely watered valleys of Tennessee, surrounded by grand and towering mountains. The notice has been circulated for sev eral weeks or months, and all are eager to attend the long-expected occasion. The country, perhaps, for fifty miles around,