about it, however, border fashion; the holiday
must be not given, but taken; it was not
to be had as a matter of course, but to be
fought for. On the Friday morning before
Christmas, the boys of a Tennessee frontier
school used to go down betimes and capture
the school building, light great fires inside,
and bar the master out. When he came
down he asserted his authority and attempted
to re-take his castle. Of course he failed,
and the insurgents refused to surrender
except on their own conditions —a school feast
and a week's holiday. The master got a
faction on his side, and from each party
ambassadors were sent with full powers to
treat. If the master played the Czar and
treated the young Turks too haughtily,
refusing to sign for them a fair treaty, they
took him prisoner and hauled him to the
spring, where he received a ducking.
Beyond that point he never carried his resistance.
Whenever he yielded, an express
messenger was despatched for apples and
cider, or perhaps for stronger drinks, and the
short holiday season so was inaugurated. On
the Monday after Christmas, the boys went
back to books; and however much they might
be drawn away from them by the commotions
proper to the settlement, so far as the school
itself was concerned they had, except the
week so conquered, no vacations.

Every man added to a frontier settlement
that had to fight for its ground, gave
additional security. For that reason every new
comer received cordial welcome. If he were
a single man, a home and occupation were at
once provided for him in the house of some
old pioneer. If he brought a wife and
children, other family men came to him
saying, "Camp with us till we put up a cabin
for you." He who became the host, then
went about the settlement and appointed a
day on which the whole able population met
to raise a hut for their new friends. The
cabin being raised, every neighbour came in
his turn, bringing something to its future
occupants which should assist in giving a
start to the beginners. One would bring
a pair of pigs, and one a pair of fowls,
and one a cow and calf. The beginners
once started would be expected, and did
always heartily desire, to afford help of the
same kind to others who came after them.
To say that a settler cared for nobody, or
that he had no neighbours, was to make
away completely with his moral character.
Not to ask a neighbour's help at clearing, or
at cabin raising, or not to ask his presence at
a frolic, would be to behave to him in a way
that would require to be accounted for at the
next muster of the population. In every
respect it was the pride of the backwoodsman
to be neighbourly. Families travelling through
the wilds on breaking up the night's camp,
covered over the remains of their fire so that
it might be re-kindled easily by the next
comer. In the settlement fellow-workers
bound the young community together safely
and firmly, by carrying out to the utmost the
same principle of mutual aid. If one of two
hunters in the forest lost butcher-knife or
ammunition, his comrade broke the blade of
his own knife in two, or cut his bar of lead,
or made division of his powder. If a
pioneer at home fell sick and could not work his
fields, days were appointed on which his
neighbours met, and, distributing his work
among themselves, ploughed and hoed for
him, or gathered his harvest, hauled his
wood, and saw that he had proper comfort
and attendance.

All this is very cheerful reading; yet the
public history of the Tennessee settlers is by
a great deal less enlivening. From some of
the records published by Dr. Ramsey I will
take three or four notes as a sample of their
character. On the twenty-second of July, in
the year seventeen hundred and ninety-three,
the main event on hand was, that John Morris, .
a Chickasaw warrior, being a guest of the
governor at Knoxville, was shot by some
person unknown. Governor Blount, to allay
irritation, had buried him with military ,
honours, and walked as chief mourner beside
the brother of the murdered man.

On the twenty-fifth of May, Thomas Gillam
and his son James were killed and scalped by
Indians, in the Raccoon Valley, eighteen
miles from Knoxville. Captain Beard set off
with forty mounted infantry in hot pursuit
On the thirteenth of June, came to
Governor Blount tidings of an atrocious and
most treacherous reprisal on the Indians by
the said Beard, in a letter from one Captain
Chisholm, who said that "on yesterday
morning, Captain John Beard, with a party
of forty men, attacked the Indians at the;
Hanging Maw's, and killed twelve or fifteen
on the spot, among whom were a number of
the principal chiefs, called there by the
express order of the President. Major Robert
King, Daniel Carmichael, Joseph Sevier, and
James Ore, were acting for the United States.
This will bring an inevitable war; the Indians
are making vigorous preparations for an
assault upon us. The frontier is in a most
lamentable situation. Pray, sir, let us have
your immediate presence, for our all depends
upon your exertion. The Hanging Maw is
wounded, his wife is killed, also Scantee, a
Chickasaw chief that was at the Maw's,
Kittigeskie's daughter" (there was no respect
for women evidently), "and other principal
Indians. Two hundred Indians were in arms
in thirty minutes. Beard and his party have
fled, leaving the frontier unprotected."

Beard ought to have been first thrashed,
and then hanged. The feeling of the pioneers,
however, was enlisted on his side. The
Governor's secretary wrote of him to the War
Department that "to my great pain, I find,
to punish Beard by law, just now, is out of
the question." To Hanging Maw and his
outraged companions he wrote at the same