They were illiterate and careless of the
comforts of a better reared, better educated, and more intelligent
people. They were unable to employ for each family a teacher, and the
population was too sparse to collect the children in a neighborhood
school. These ran wild, half naked, unwashed and uncombed, hatless and
bonnetless through the woods and grass, followed by packs of lean and
hungry curs, hallooing and yelling in pursuit of rabbits and opossums,
and were as wild as the Indians they had supplanted, and whose
pine-bark camps were yet here and there to be seen, where temporarily
stayed a few strolling, degraded families of Choctaws.
Some of these pioneers had been in the country many years, were
surrounded with descendants, men and women, the growth of the country,
rude, illiterate, and independent. Along the margins of the streams
they found small strips of land of better quality than the pine-forests
afforded. Here they grew sufficient corn for bread and a few of the
coarser vegetables, and in blissful ignorance enjoyed life after the
manner they loved. The country gave character to the people: both were
wild and poor; both were _sui generis_ in appearance and production,
and both seeming to fall away from the richer soil and better people of
the western portion of the State.
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