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319 CHAPTER 14 Social Life and Diversions Most life in the Cumberland Country during pioneer days was somewhat like the river—unpredictable, often cruel, eternally changing , filled with upsets, surprises, disappointments, now and then an unexpected pleasure, yet loved as many loved the contrary river, and like the river always interesting and often diverting. The hardships and dangers of pioneer travel by boat can scarcely be over-exaggerated—fogs, hidden snags, rocks, sandbars, planters, sawyers, unexpected freshets, close and uncomfortable quarters for the lucky on a craft with some kind of shelter. All this for the boatmen overlaid with hard work or the uncertainty of traveling down when “our course was where the stream carried us.” Yet, many travelers wrote of the music on the Mississippi, the songs and dances of the boatmen, of card playing and shooting matches. Those who traveled the southern rivers belong as a group to a people who did not take “Work while you work and play while you play” for a maxim. Travel overland by any means was even worse. Constant danger first from Indians and then robbers; the eternal struggle with axle-deep mud or choking dust on roads so bad horses went lame, wagons broke down, and travelers walked. The ever-changing weather from sudden thunderstorms that made a dry creek belly deep on a horse to blizzardous snows were endured without shelter by all horseback travelers. Still, the Reverend Asbury and Andrew Jackson were among the very few who saw travel as we see it today—nothing but a means of reaching a given destination as quickly as possible. Travel for most was just another part of living. John Lipscomb, riding in 1784 through dangerous Indian country, was on a business trip to see about land in Middle Tennessee, but there was time on the way for hunting, horse swapping, helping fellow travelers, and writing down the words of a hunter’s song.1 Nothing to John Lipscomb was quite so important as living, not even business. 320| Chapter 14 The abilities that made the physical survival of a Daniel Boone or Michael Stoner possible when alone in the woods were almost always matched with equal abilities at mental and social survival. James Smith in the Middle Tennessee woods of 1766 did not merely sit and wait for his wounded foot to heal; he amused himself by reading the two books he had, singing songs, and composing one of his own. The forted life was in a sense but a waiting for better days; nobody expected to spend the whole of his life in a little cabin in the miserable crowding behind picketed walls. Certainly it was an uncomfortable, insecure , ugly life, but those who wrote of the old days were always, in accounts of the battles and historical events on which Mr. Draper had questioned them, straying off with their memories into the fun they had had—dances, jokes, exciting hunts, music, and other diversions. Few had before settling on the Cumberland ever known security and a life so patterned that certain things could be done at certain hours or even dates—the farm boy went to mill and waited for his grinding turn; families waited for bread until their corn crop was hard enough to grind, and the religious put off the funeral sermon until a minister visited the community.2 There are from earliest years mention of somewhat formalized and planned events—balls, wedding suppers, Christmas dances, and other occasions on which social life has ever revolved. There was, too, behind most of the well-to-do of English origin, a tradition of holidays, trips to watering places such as Bath, travel for pleasure, some spectator sports, especially horse racing, the theatre, parades of many kinds, and in general quite a variety of planned diversions and amusements. Most of these were planted in Tidewater that had during colonial days many amusements in contrast to New England that had almost none. The well-to-do of Middle Tennessee were in time to have much the same pattern, trips to watering places sometimes no further away than the Plateau or Red Boiling Springs, but often to the Blue Ridge, long a favorite with Tidewater planters, and much travel for pleasure that sometimes included Europe. There were in time most of the formal amusements known to the rest of the civilized world. First settlers had few of these diversions. Indian warfare knew no vacation , but it is doubtful if many pioneers...

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