Backcountry Child-rearing Ways: Building the Will

Backcountry families also had special ways of raising their young. Child-rearing customs in the southern highlands tended to be very different from those of New England Puritans, Pennsylvania Quakers and Virginia Anglicans—and yet similar to the folkways of the British borderlands.

This system of child rearing was also far removed from modern thinking on the subject. In cultural terms, one of its most important stages occurred before the baby was born. A world of extreme uncertainty required that the fates should be propitiated with the same care and attention that a suburban mother today studies the latest treatises on infant science. The entire community joined in these precautions, and the old grannies were consulted as urgently as a modern pediatrician:

What a plucking of herbs, what a consulting of signs and omens, both before and after the event! … The baby must wear a strong of corn-beads round its neck to facilitate teething, and later a bullet or coin to prevent nose-bleed. Its wee track must be printed in the first snow that falls, to ward off croup. The first woodtick that fastens itself to the little body is an omen, too; you must kill it on an axe or other tool if you wish baby to grow into a clever workman. If it be killed on a bell or banjo, or any clear-ringing substance, he will develop a voice for singing; if on a book, he will learn to speak “all kind o’ proper words,” all gifts highly esteemed in the mountains.¹

No self-respecting mother neglected this form of prenatal and postnatal care.

After the baby was born, parents began the process which the modern world calls socialization. For backcountry boys, the object was not will-breaking as among the Puritans, or will-bending as in Virginia. The rearing of male children in the back settlements was meant to be positively will-enhancing. Its primary purpose was to foster fierce pride, stubborn independence and a warrior’s courage in the young. An unintended effect was to create a society of autonomous individuals who were unable to endure external control and incapable of restraining their rage against anyone who stood in their way.

A case in point was the childhood of young Andrew Jackson, the future seventh President of the United States. Important parts of his socialization in this oral culture were the stories that his mother told him. They were old border tales that celebrated courage, pride and independence. The games of his youth were contests for dominion—wrestling, running and fighting. A childhood friend remembered, “I could throw him three times out of four, but he would never stay throwed.”²

As a small boy, Jackson was remembered as “wild, frolicsome, mischievous, daring and reckless.” His upbringing left him quick to take offense, and with a mighty rage that burst upon its objects with explosive violence. As a young militiaman, he was described as “bold, dashing, fearless and mad upon his enemies.” That style of behavior was widely admired in the backcountry, where small boys were routinely taught to conduct themselves in the same way.³

This system of child rearing began by being highly indulgent and permissive. In both the British borderlands and the American backcountry, parents doted upon male children, with an intensity of feeling that startled observers. An example of this attitude was recorded in North Britain in the eighteenth century:

Harry Potts has got a son of which he’s very fond. … He got it in his arms the morning it was born, which was yesterday and said, “Honey, thou’s my darling and shalt want for nothing as long as I am able to work for thee.”⁴

This custom was carried to the back settlements, where infants received the same indulgent attention from both sexes—more than at any other stage of life. This tendency was remarked upon as early as 1782 by the Marquis de Chastelleux, who found child rearing in the southern highlands to be very different from that in his own nation. “They are very fond of their little ones, and care much less for their children,” he wrote after a tour of the back settlements. The same pattern continued to be observed even into the twentieth century.⁵

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, travelers such as Charles Woodmason complained constantly about the forwardness and freedom of backcountry children. His remarks were repeated by many other observers in the southern highlands. One wrote, “for three centuries … parents often look on it as evidence of spirit and smartness to see their children rudely insulting the quiet and often humble citizens of the country.” Similar descriptions were also written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by travelers and by the southern highlanders themselves. A mountain woman wrote in 1905, “ … most of the children hereabout run free as the fawns and cubs that they often capture for playmates.”⁶

After a small boy “dropped slips” and put on his first pair of breeches, he toddled after his parents and was allowed great freedom on the farm. At an early age, male children were given their own miniature weapons—an axe, a knife, a bow, even a childish gun. Daniel Drake recalled that as a child he was given a hatchet to “hack down saplings,” while his father did the “heavy chopping.” More than fifty years later, Drake remembered the joy that he felt in annihilating his first tree. “I loved it in proportion to the facility with which I could destroy it,” he wrote.⁷

Corporal punishment of children was condemned in the abstract, but much practiced in an intermittent way. A backcountry church in Lunenburg County, Virginia, considered the question, “Is it lawful to beat or whip servants or children … before the method that Christ laid down in the 18th Matthew?” and decided the issue in the negative by majority vote. Another doctrine of St. Matthew was explicitly ratified by this congregation: “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.”⁸

But backcountry autobiographers also remembered terrific beatings received from frustrated fathers and mothers who found themselves equally incapable of controlling their children or restraining their own parental rage. These autobiographers also recalled their feelings of anger against what seemed to be parental tyranny. The result was a highly volatile process of child rearing: extremely permissive most of the time, but punctuated by acts of angry and illegitimate violence.

This problem of promiscuous violence in child rearing was compounded by alcohol. The diary of a school boy in Tennessee described the terror that the entire family felt whenever “papa was groggy.” All the members of the household conspired to dilute his whisky in hopes of diminishing the fury that caused “Papa” to beat and kick even his own infant children.⁹

Youngsters responded by running away, fighting back, or sometimes even trying to murder their parents. In 1805, when one North Carolina mother attempted to control her “large family of children,” they rose en masse and tried to kill her.¹⁰ From an early age, small boys were taught to think much of their own honor, and to be active in its defense. Honor in this society meant a pride of manhood in masculine courage, physical strength and warrior virtue. Male children were trained to defend their honor without a moment’s hesitation—lashing out instantly against their challengers with savage violence.

This method of child rearing was used mainly for boys. The daughters of the backcountry were raised in a different way. Mothers were expected to teach domestic virtues of industry, obedience, patience, sacrifice and devotion to others. Male children were taught to be self-asserting; female children were trained to be self-denying.

These backcountry child ways were not the product of slavery or the frontier. They were transplanted from the borders of North Britain, where they were yet another cultural adaptation to the endemic violence of that region. They were also similar to systems of socialization which have existed in warrior castes throughout the world.

This system of child rearing flourished in its new American environment. This backcountry held a different set of dangers, but they operated in the same way. Indians, bandits, regulators, weak governments and wars all combined to reinforce the warrior ethic of the backsettlers. That ethic in turn promoted a system of child rearing which was designed to make boys into warriors and girls into their consorts and helpmeets. The backcountry environment reinforced these border customs in relations between young people and their elders.