Friction with the Backwoodsmen.

Though the relations of the officers of the regular troops with the gentry were so pleasant there was always much friction between them and the ordinary frontiersmen; a friction which continued to exist as long as the frontier itself, and which survives to this day in the wilder parts of the country.  The regular army officer and the frontiersman are trained in fashions so diametrically opposite that, though the two men be brothers, they must yet necessarily in all their thoughts and instincts and ways of looking at life, be as alien as if they belonged to two different races of mankind.  The borderer, rude, suspicious, and impatient of discipline, looks with distrust and with a mixture of sneering envy and of hostility upon the officer; while the latter, with his rigid training and his fixed ideals, feels little sympathy for the other’s good points, and is contemptuously aware of his numerous failings.  The only link between the two is the scout, the man who, though one of the frontiersmen, is accustomed to act and fight in company with the soldiers.  In Kentucky, at the close of the Revolution, this link was generally lacking; and there was no tie of habitual, even though half-hostile, intercourse to unite the two parties.  In consequence the ill-will often showed itself by acts of violence.  The backwoods bullies were prone to browbeat and insult the officers if they found them alone, trying to provoke them to rough-and-tumble fighting; and in such a combat, carried on with the revolting brutality necessarily attendant upon a contest where gouging and biting were considered legitimate, the officers, who were accustomed only to use their fists, generally had the worst of it; so that at last they made a practice of carrying their side-arms—­which secured them from molestation.

    Pursuits of the Settlers.

Besides raising more than enough flour and beef to keep themselves in plenty, the settlers turned their attention to many other forms of produce.  Indian corn was still the leading crop; but melons, pumpkins, and the like were grown, and there were many thriving orchards; while tobacco cultivation was becoming of much importance.  Great droves of hogs and flocks of sheep flourished in every locality whence the bears and wolves had been driven; the hogs running free in the woods with the branded cattle and horses.  Except in the most densely settled parts much of the beef was still obtained from buffaloes, and much of the bacon from bears.  Venison was a staple commodity.  The fur trade, largely carried on by French trappers, was still of great importance in Kentucky and Tennessee.  North of the Ohio it was the attraction which tempted white men into the wilderness.  Its profitable nature was the chief reason why the British persistently clung to the posts on the Lakes, and stirred up the Indians to keep the American settlers out of all lands that were tributary to the British fur merchants.  From Kentucky and the Cumberland country the peltries were sometimes sent east by packtrain, and sometimes up the Ohio in bateaus or canoes.