erests,--were divided by
bickering, gossiping jealousies; and at this time they were quarrelling
as to whether the Virginian cabin-rights or Henderson's land-grants
would prove valid. As usual, the zealous Baptist preacher found that the
women were the first to "get religion," as he phrased it. Sometimes
their husbands likewise came in with them; at other times they remained
indifferent. Often they savagely resented their wives and daughters
being converted, visiting on the head of the preacher an anger that did
not always find vent in mere words; for the backwoodsmen had strong,
simple natures, powerfully excited for good or evil, and those who were
not God-fearing usually became active and furious opponents of all
religion.

It is curious to compare the description of life in a frontier fort as
given by this undoubtedly prejudiced observer with the equally
prejudiced, but golden- instead of sombre-hued, reminiscences of
frontier life, over which the pioneers lovingly lingered in their old
age. To these old men the long-vanished stockades seemed to have held a
band of brothers, who were ever generous, hospitable, courteous, and
fearless, always ready to help one another, never envious, never
flinching from any foe.[7] Neither account is accurate; but the last is
quite as near the truth as the first. On the border, as elsewhere, but
with the different qualities in even bolder contrast, there was much
both of good and bad, of shiftless viciousness and resolute honesty.
Many of the hunters were mere restless wanderers, who soon surrendered
their clearings to small farming squatters, but a degree less shiftless
than themselves; the latter brought the ground a little more under
cultivation, and then likewise left it and wandered onwards, giving
place to the third set of frontiersmen, the steady men who had come to
stay. But often the first hunters themselves stayed and grew up as
farmers and landed proprietors.[8] Many of the earliest pioneers,
including most of their leaders, founded families, which took root in
the land and flourish to this day, the children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren of the old-time Indian fighters becoming Congressmen
and judges, and officers in the regular army and in the Federal and
Confederate forces during the civil war.[9] In fact the very first
comers to a wild and dangerous country are apt to be men with fine
qualities of heart and head; it is not until they have partly tamed the
la