The Bark Covered House. William Nowlin
The woods were literally alive with them. No one can tell the wearisome sleepless hours they caused us at night. I have lain listening and waiting for them to light on my face or hands, and then trying to slap them by guess in the dark, sometimes killing them, and sometimes they would fly away, to come again in a few minutes. I could hear them as they came singing back. Frequently when I awoke I found them as wakeful as ever; they had been feasting while I slept. I would find bunches and blotches on me, wherever they had had a chance to light, which caused a disagreeable, burning and smarting sensation.
Frequently some one of us would get up and make a smudge in the room to quiet them; we did it by making a little fire of small chips and dirt, or by burning some sugar on coals, but this would only keep them still for a short time. These vexatious, gory-minded, musical-winged, bold denizens of the shady forest, were more eager to hold their carniverous feasts at twilight or in the night than any other time. In cloudy weather they were very troublesome as all the first settlers know. We had them many years, until the country was cleared and the land ditched; then, with the forest, they nearly disappeared.
As I have said our oxen were the first in our part of the town. Mr. Pardee had no team. Father sold him half of our oxen. They used them alternately, each one two weeks, during the summer. For some reason, Mr. Pardee failed to pay the forty dollars and when winter came father had to take the oxen back and winter them. The winter was very open, and much pleasanter than any we had ever seen. The cattle lived on what we called "French-bogs" which grew all through the woods on the low land and were green all winter.
We found wild animals and game very numerous. Sometimes the deer came where father had cut down trees, and browsed the tops. Occasionally, in the morning, after a little snow, their tracks would be as thick as sheep-tracks in a yard, almost up to the house. The wolves also, were very common; we could often hear them at night, first at one point, then answers from another and another direction, until the woods rang with their unearthly yells.
One morning I saw a place by a log where a deer had lain, and noticed a large quantity of hair all around on the snow; then I found tracks where two wolves came from the west, jumped over the log, and caught the deer in his bed. He got away, but he must have had bare spots on his back.
One evening a Mr. Bruin called at our house and stood erect at our north window. The children thought him one of us, as father, mother and I were away, and they ran out to meet us, but discovered instead a large black bear. When they ran out, Mr. Bruin, a little less dignified, dropped on all fours, and walked leisurely off about ten rods; then raised again, jumped over a brush fence, and disappeared in the woods.
Next morning we looked for his tracks and, sure enough, there were the tracks of a large bear within four feet of the window. He had apparently stood and looked into the house.
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The first Indian who troubled us was one by the name of John Williams. He was a large, powerful man, and certainly, very ugly. He used to pass our house and take our road to Dearbornville after fire-water, get a little drunk, and on his way back stop at John Blare's. Mr. Blare then lived at the end of our new road. Here the Indian would tell what great things he had done. One day when he stopped, Mrs. Blare and her brother-in-law, Asa, were there. He took a seat, took his knife from his belt, stuck it into the floor, then told Asa to pick it up and hand it to him; he repeated this action several times, and Asa obeyed him every time. He, seeing that the white man was afraid, said: "I have taken off the scalps of six damned Yankees with this knife and me take off one more."
When father heard this, with other things he had said, he thought he was the intended victim. We were all very much frightened. Whenever father was out mother was uneasy until his return, and he feared that the Indian, who always carried his rifle, might lay in ambush, and shoot him when he was at work.
One day he came along, as usual, from Dearbornville and passed our house. Father saw him, came in, took his rifle down from the hooks and told mother he believed he would shoot first. Mother would not hear a word to it and after living a year or two longer, in mortal fear of him, he died a natural death. We learned afterward that Joseph Pardee was the man he had intended to kill. He said, "Pardee had cut a bee-tree that belonged to Indian."
According to his previous calculation, on our arrival, father bought, in mother's name, eighty acres more, constituting the south-west quarter of section thirty-four, town two, south of range ten, east; bounded on the south by the south line of the town of Dearbon. A creek, we called the north branch of the River Ecorse, ran through it, going east. It was nearly parallel with, and forty-two rods from, the town line. When he entered it he took a duplicate; later his deed came, and it was signed by Andrew Jackson, a man whom father admired very much. Mother's deed came still later, signed by Martin Van Buren.
This land was very flat, and I thought, very beautiful. No waste land on it, all clay bottom, except about two acres, a sand ridge, resembling the side of a sugar loaf. This was near the centre of the place, and on it we finally built, as we found it very unpleasant living on clayey land in wet weather. This land was all heavy timbered—beech, hard maple, basswood, oak, hickory and some white-wood—on both sides of the creek; farther back, it was, mostly, ash and elm.
CHAPTER III.
HOW WE GOT OUR SWEET, AND THE HISTORY OF MY FIRST PIG.
We made troughs, tapped hard maples on each side of the creek; took our oxen, sled and two barrels (as the trees were scattered) to draw the sap to the place we had prepared for boiling it.
Now I had an employment entirely new to me: boiling down sap and making sugar, in the woods of Michigan. This was quite a help to us in getting along. We made our own "sweet" and vinegar, also some sugar and molasses to sell. Some springs, we made three or four hundred pounds of sugar. Sugar was not all the good things we had, for there was one added to my father's family, a little sister, who was none the less lovely, in my eye, because she was of Michigan, a native "Wolverine."
Now father's family, all told, consisted of mother and six children. The children grew to be men and women, and are all alive to this day, January 26, 1875.
After we came to Michigan mother's health constantly improved. She soon began to like her new home and became more cheerful and happy. I told her we had, what would be, a beautiful place; far better than the rocks and hills we left, I often renewed my promise that if she and I lived and I grew to be a man, we would go back, visit her friends and see again the land of her nativity.
To cheer her still more we received a letter from Mr. G. Purdy of York State, telling us that he was coming to Michigan in the fall, with his wife (mother's beloved sister, Abbie,) and her youngest sister, Sarah, was coming with them.
Asa Blare, the young man who picked up the Indian's knife, bought forty acres of government land joining us on the east, built him a house, went to Ohio, married and brought his wife back with him.
Now we had neighbors on the east of us, and Mr. Henry Travis (a brother-in-law of Mr. Pardee) came, bought land joining Mr. Pardee on the west, built and settled with a large family. About the same time many families from the East came and settled along the creek, for miles west of us.
Now we were on the border of civilization. Our next clearing of any importance was the little ridge. Father commenced around the edge, cut the brush and threw them from the ridge all around it to form a brush fence; then all the trees that would fall into the line of the fence were next felled, also, all that would fall over it, then those which would reach the fence were felled toward it. Then we trimmed them, cut the logs and piled the brush on the fence. I felt very much interested in clearing this piece. When father took his ax and started for work I took mine and was immediately at his side or a little behind him. In this manner we returned and we soon had the two acres cut off and surrounded by an immense log, tree-top and brush fence; at least, I thought it was a great fence. Now came the logging and burning, father worked with his oxen and handspike, I with my handspike. Some of the