Post by richardlpangburn on Feb 13, 2006 10:05:03 GMT -5
Thanks to everyone who has recommended books in recent threads here.
Seems to me that there is a lack of good books written about the free men on the Ohio River frontier. And by free men, I do not mean the tribalists nor the military men who killed "in the name of freedom." There were some hunter/trappers who simply lived freely in the woods, men like James Sherlock and Adam O'Bryan, but it seems like authors never choose them to write about.
There are some excellent books about the free hunter/trappers who lived later in the Rocky Mountains and on the plains, but there is no eastern frontier equivalent to, say, Vardis Fisher's THE MOUNTAIN MAN, upon which Robert Redford's JEREMIAH JOHNSON was based. A few others spring to mind, all later and west of the Mississippi.
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter on Ohio Valley trapper Adam O'Bryan:
"When asked how he came to seek the wilderness and encounter the perils of sufferings of frontier life, he answered that he liked it and did not mind it a bit and in further explanation said that he was a poor man and had got behind hand and when that's the case, there is no staying in the settlements for those varmints, the sheriffs and constables, who were worse than Indians..."
"That after the King's Proclamation for all the settlers and surveyors to remove east of the big ridge from off the western waters, there was no white people on the west side except those who had run away from justice, and they were as free as the biggest buck a-going, and after the peace of sixty-three, it was all quiet in the backwoods..."
"He said that they lived quite happy before the Revolution, for then there was no law, no courts, and no sheriffs, and they all agreed pretty well, but after a while the people began to come and make settlements; and then there was a need for law; and then came the lawyers and next the preachers and from that time they never had any peace any more, that the lawyers persuaded them to sue when they were not paid, and the preachers converted one half, and they began to quarrel with the other half because they would not take care of their own souls, and from that time they never had any peace for body or soul, and that the sheriffs were worse than the wildcats and painters and would take the last coverlet from your wife's straw bed or turn you out in a storm, and I tell you, mister, I would rather take my chances and live among savages than live among justices and lawyers and sheriffs who, with all their civility, for no natural feeling in them..."
There were others, free white hunters like Benjamin Sutton as well as some Indians or half-breeds who chose to live away from the villages and tribal politics. And experience true freedom.
But we rarely read of them. Someone ought to do a book....
Seems to me that there is a lack of good books written about the free men on the Ohio River frontier. And by free men, I do not mean the tribalists nor the military men who killed "in the name of freedom." There were some hunter/trappers who simply lived freely in the woods, men like James Sherlock and Adam O'Bryan, but it seems like authors never choose them to write about.
There are some excellent books about the free hunter/trappers who lived later in the Rocky Mountains and on the plains, but there is no eastern frontier equivalent to, say, Vardis Fisher's THE MOUNTAIN MAN, upon which Robert Redford's JEREMIAH JOHNSON was based. A few others spring to mind, all later and west of the Mississippi.
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter on Ohio Valley trapper Adam O'Bryan:
"When asked how he came to seek the wilderness and encounter the perils of sufferings of frontier life, he answered that he liked it and did not mind it a bit and in further explanation said that he was a poor man and had got behind hand and when that's the case, there is no staying in the settlements for those varmints, the sheriffs and constables, who were worse than Indians..."
"That after the King's Proclamation for all the settlers and surveyors to remove east of the big ridge from off the western waters, there was no white people on the west side except those who had run away from justice, and they were as free as the biggest buck a-going, and after the peace of sixty-three, it was all quiet in the backwoods..."
"He said that they lived quite happy before the Revolution, for then there was no law, no courts, and no sheriffs, and they all agreed pretty well, but after a while the people began to come and make settlements; and then there was a need for law; and then came the lawyers and next the preachers and from that time they never had any peace any more, that the lawyers persuaded them to sue when they were not paid, and the preachers converted one half, and they began to quarrel with the other half because they would not take care of their own souls, and from that time they never had any peace for body or soul, and that the sheriffs were worse than the wildcats and painters and would take the last coverlet from your wife's straw bed or turn you out in a storm, and I tell you, mister, I would rather take my chances and live among savages than live among justices and lawyers and sheriffs who, with all their civility, for no natural feeling in them..."
There were others, free white hunters like Benjamin Sutton as well as some Indians or half-breeds who chose to live away from the villages and tribal politics. And experience true freedom.
But we rarely read of them. Someone ought to do a book....