s from the "truck patch,"
where squashes, melons, beans, and the like were grown, wild fruits,
bowls of milk, and apple pies, which were the acknowledged standard of
luxury. At the better houses there was metheglin or small beer, cider,
cheese, and biscuits.[34] Tea was so little known that many of the
backwoods people were not aware it was a beverage and at first attempted
to eat the leaves with salt or butter.[35]

The young men prided themselves on their bodily strength, and were
always eager to contend against one another in athletic games, such as
wrestling, racing, jumping, and lifting flour-barrels; and they also
sought distinction in vieing with one another at their work. Sometimes
they strove against one another singly, sometimes they divided into
parties, each bending all its energies to be first in shucking a given
heap of corn or cutting (with sickles) an allotted patch of wheat. Among
the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies also in the backwoods
fashions, wearing their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of
hunting-shirts embroidered with porcupine quills; they were loud,
boastful, and profane, given to coarsely bantering one another. Brutally
savage fights were frequent; the combatants, who were surrounded by
rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, biting, and gouging.
The fall of one of them did not stop the fight, for the man who was down
was maltreated without mercy until he called "enough." The victor always
bragged savagely of his prowess, often leaping on a stump, crowing and
flapping his arms. This last was a thoroughly American touch; but
otherwise one of these contests was less a boxing match than a kind of
backwoods _pankration,_ no less revolting than its ancient
prototype of Olympic fame. Yet, if the uncouth borderers were as brutal
as the highly polished Greeks, they were more manly; defeat was not
necessarily considered disgrace, a man often fighting when he was
certain to be beaten, while the onlookers neither hooted nor pelted the
conquered. We first hear of the noted scout and Indian fighter, Simon
Kenton, as leaving a rival for dead after one of these ferocious duels,
and fleeing from his home in terror of the punishment that might follow
the deed.[36] Such fights were specially frequent when the backwoodsmen
went into the little frontier towns to see horse races or fairs.

A wedding was always a time of festival. If there was a church anywhere
near, the bride