When the bands of hardy pioneers pushed into the wilderness and prepared a way into Kentucky they brought with them only the trusty rifle, the ax, the tomahawk, and the "long knife" for protecting themselves from the wily savages and securing food from the game that roamed the woods.

When their families came, a few more articles were brought along; but their outfits were necessarily meager. When they stopped to prepare their food, a flat stone was used for cooking the "journey cake," while bark served for dishes.

As soon as the destination was reached, a log cabin of rough unhewn timbers was built, containing a long pen of split logs placed in a row, which, filled with fresh boughs, was a welcome resting place for those who were wearied from traveling. Later the feathers of wild pigeons, ducks, and geese were made into feather beds.

Usually several people settled at the same place and built a fort of cabins, stockades, and blockhouses, arranged in a hollow square. The blockhouses were two stories high, the upper story projecting over the lower one for eighteen or more inches. The places of entrance to the fort were closed by large folding gates of thick slabs, and the entire outer wall made bullet proof, all without a single nail or piece of iron. Some of the cabins had puncheon floors while others had only the bare earth.

There were very few metal utensils; tin cups, iron forks, and spoons were very rare. Nearly all their tools were fashioned of wood, by their own hands.

There were no mills, but each family had a hominy block or wooden bowl with pestle, in which the Indian corn was pounded, or a rough homemade grater on which it was grated. Their brooms were made of hickory saplings split at one end into fine splinters for several inches; these were bound together at the top with a green withe, while the other end of the pole served as a handle.

Their lye was all made at home by pouring water several times through a hopper of ashes until it became a reddish-brown; bear's grease was added to this and the mixture boiled until it became a soft mass called soap. We of to-day would dislike very much to use it in bathing.

Their salt was precious, for eight hundred gallons of salt water boiled down made only one bushel; if that amount was bought, it cost twenty dollars.

In the spring they bored holes in the maple trees, from which flowed a sap or sweet water that when boiled down made maple sirup and maple sugar.

In those days of danger the men built the cabins, garrisoned the forts, hunted the game, felled the trees, mauled the rails, grubbed the roots and bushes, and tilled the soil.

The women did the household duties, brought the water, gathered the wild nettles, and from the silky fibers in the leaves spun and wove the flax from which they made their clothing. They tanned the deerskins by means of hardwood ashes and from them made moccasins and shoepacks, for there was no place to buy shoes; they made for the men the historical hunting shirt of deerskin, linsey-woolsey, or coarse, home-woven linen. This garment served various purposes; the bosom was so designed as to form a wallet in which to carry bread, jerk, parched corn, or tow for cleaning guns. This shirt was held together by a belt which was tied behind; in the front of this belt they carried their bullet bags and mittens, while on one side hung the scalping knife in its leather sheath, and on the other, the tomahawk. Breeches, leggins, and moccasins of deerskin and hats or caps of fur, often adorned with the animal's tail, completed the costume of the men. The women wore dresses of linsey-woolsey and coarse flax.

So the rude pioneer home, with its lack of conveniences and space and its few rude, imperfect tools, was the factory where were prepared not only the clothing and food, but also the furniture and the medicine.