The furniture for the table, for several
years after the settlement of this country, consisted of a few pewter dishes,
plates and spoons; but mostly of wooden bowls, trenchers and noggins. If these last were scarce, gourds and hard
shelled squashes made up the deficiency. The iron pots, knives and forks, were brought
from the east side of the mountains along with the salt and iron on pack
horses. These articles of furniture
corresponded very well with the articles of diet on which they were employed. "Hog and hominy" were proverbial for
the dish of which they were the component parts. Johnny cake and pone were at the outset of the
settlements of the country the only forms of bread in use for breakfast and
dinner. At supper, milk and mush was the
standard dish. When milk was not plenty,
which was often the case, owing to the scarcity of cattle, or the want of
proper pasture for them, the substantial dish of hominy had to supply the place
of them; mush was frequently eaten with sweetened water, molasses, bear's oil,
or the gravy of fried meat.
Every family, besides a little garden
for the few vegetables which they cultivated, had another small enclosure
containing from half an acre to an acre, which they called a truck patch, in which they raised corn for
roasting ears, pumpkins, squashes, beans and potatoes. These, in the latter part of the summer and
fall, were cooked with their pork, venison and bear meat for dinner, and made
very wholesome and well tasted dishes. The
standard dinner dish for every log rolling, house raising and harvest day was a
pot pie, or what in other countries is called sea pie. This,
besides answering for dinner, served for a part of the supper also. The remainder of it from dinner, being eaten
with milk in the evening, after the conclusion of the labor of the day.
In our whole display of furniture, the
delft, china and silver were unknown. It
did not then as now require contributions from the four quarters of the globe to
furnish the breakfast table, viz: the silver from Mexico; the coffee from the
West Indies; the tea from China, and the delft and porcelain from Europe or
Asia. Yet our homely fare, and unsightly
cabins, and furniture, produced a hardy veteran race, who planted the first
footsteps of society and civilization in the immense regions of the west. Inured to hardihood, bravery and labor from
their early youth, they sustained with manly fortitude the fatigue of the
chase, the campaign and scout, and with strong arms "turned the
wilderness into fruitful fields" and have left to their descendants the
rich inheritance of an immense empire blessed with peace and wealth…
The introduction of delft ware was
considered by many of the backwoods people as a culpable innovation. It was too easily broken, and the plates of
that ware dulled their scalping and clasp knives; tea ware was too small for men;
they might do for women and children. Tea
and coffee were only slops, which in the adage of the day "did not stick
by the ribs." The idea was they
were designed only for people of quality, who do not labor, or the sick. A genuine backwoodsman would have thought
himself disgraced by showing a fondness for those slops. Indeed, many of them
have, to this day, very little respect for them. 1
It is interesting to note Doddridge’s remarks concerning
coffee and tea. In essence it would appear
as though the settlers primarily subsisted on only those things which they
produced themselves. From a re-enactor’s
perspective, this might lead me not to carry those things in my pack if I’m
portraying a backwoodsman from the areas to which Dr. Doddridge is referring. Certainly one would imagine that these items
must have been quite rare in the backcountry by the early days of the Revolution. Real men drink… milk? Who would’ve thought?
Christ, not man, is King!
Dale
1) Joseph Doddridge,
Notes On The Settlement And Indian Wars Of Virginia And Pennsylvania (Albany,
NY: Joel Munsell, 1876), p. 137-38, 140.
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