Part 1 (2/2)
THE PIONEER
The earliest settlers of the American wilderness had a struggle very different from our own, who live in the twentieth century. Their economic experience determined their character. They appear to us at this distance to have common characteristics, habits and reactions upon life; in which they differ from all who in easier times follow them.
They have more in common with one another than they have in common with us. They differ less from one another than they differ from the modern countryman. The pioneer life produced the pioneer type.
To this type all their ways of life correspond. They hunted, fought, dressed, traded, wors.h.i.+pped in their own way. Their houses, churches, stores and schools were built, not as they would prefer, but as the necessities of their life required. Their communities were pioneer communities: their religious habits were suitable to frontier experience. Modern men would find much to condemn in their ways: and they would find our typical reactions surprising, even wicked. But each conforms to type, and obeys economic necessity.
There have been four economic types in American agriculture. These have succeeded one another as the rural economy has gone through successive transformations. They have been the pioneer, the land farmer, the exploiter and the husbandman. Prof. J. B. Ross of Lafayette, Ind., has clearly stated[1] the periods by which these types are separated from one another. It remains for us to consider the communities and the churches which have taken form in accordance with these successive types.
Prof. Ross has spoken only of the Middle West. With a slight modification, the same might be said of the Eastern States, because the rural economy of the Middle West is inherited from the East. His statement made of this succession of economic types should be quoted in full:
”The agrarian occupation of the Middle West divides itself into three periods. The first, which extends from the beginnings of immigration to about the year 1835, is of significance chiefly because of the type of immigrants who preempted the soil and the nature of their occupancy. The second period, extending from 1835 to 1890, had as its chief objective the enrichment of the group life. It was the period in which large houses and commodious barns were erected, and in which the church and the school were the centers of social activity. The third period, which began about the year 1890, and which is not yet complete, is marked by a transition from the era of resident proprietors of the land to that of non-resident proprietors, and by the fact that the chief attention of the land owners is paid to the improvement of the soil by fertilization and drainage and to the increasing of facilities for communication and for the marketing of farm products.”
Each of these types created by the habits of the people in getting their living, had its own kind of a community, so that we have had pioneer, land farmer, exploiter and husbandman communities. Indeed all these types are now found contemporaneous with one another. We have also had successive churches built by the pioneer, by the land farmer, by the exploiter and by the husbandman. The present state of the country church and community is explained best by saying that it is an effect of transition from the pioneer and the land farmer types of church and community to the exploiter and husbandman types.
The pioneer lived alone. He placed his cabin without regard to social experience. In the woods his axe alone was heard and on the prairie the smoke from his sod house was sometimes answered by no other smoke in the whole horizon. He worked and fought and pondered alone.
Self-preservation was the struggle of his life, and personal salvation was his aspiration in prayer. His relations with his fellows were purely democratic and highly independent. The individual man with his family lived alone in the face of man and G.o.d. The following is a description by an eye witness of such a community which preserves in a mountain country the conditions of pioneer life[2].
”It is pitiful to see the lack of co-operation among them. It is most evident in business but makes itself known in the children, too. I regard it as one reason why they do not play; they have been so isolated that they do not allow the social instinct of their natures to express itself. This, of course, is all unconsciously done on their part.
However, one cannot live long among them without finding out that they are characterized by an intense individualism. It applies to all that they do, and to it may be attached the blame for all the things which they lack or do wrongfully. If a man has been wronged, he must personally right the wrong. If a man runs for office, people support him as a man and no questions are asked as to his platform. If a man conducts a store, people buy from him because he sells the goods, not because the goods commend themselves to them. And so by common consent and practise, the individual interests are first. Naturally this leads to many cases of lawlessness. The game of some of our people is to evade the law; of others, to ignore the law entirely.”
The pioneer had in his religion but one essential doctrine,--the salvation of the soul. His church had no other concern than to save individuals from the wrath to come. It had just one method, an annual revival of religion.
The loneliness of the pioneer's soul is an effect of his bodily loneliness. The vast outdoors of nature forest or prairie or mountain, made him silent and introspective even when in company. The variety of impacts of nature upon his bodily life made him resourceful and self-reliant; and upon his soul resulted in a reflective, melancholy egotism. His religion must therefore begin and end in personal salvation. It was a message, an emotion, a struggle, and a peace.
The second great characteristic of the pioneer was his emotional tension. His impulses were strong and changeable. The emotional instability of the pioneer grew out of his mixture of occupations. It was necessary for him to practise all the trades. In the original pioneer settlement this was literally true. In later periods of the settlement of the land the pioneer still had many occupations and representative sections of the country even until the present time exhibit a mixture of occupations among country people most unlike the ordered life of the Eastern States. Adam Smith in ”Wealth of Nations”
makes clear that the practise of many occupations induces emotional conditions. Between each two economic processes there is generated for the worker at varied trades a languor, which burdens and confuses the work of the man who practises many trades. This languor is the source of the emotional instability of the pioneer.
The pioneer's method of bridging the gap between his many occupations was simple. When he had been hunting he found it hard to go to plowing: and if plowing, on the same day to turn to tanning or to mending a roof.
When the pioneer had spent an hour in bartering with a neighbor he found it difficult to turn himself to the shoeing of a horse or the clearing of land. For this new effort his expedient was alcohol. He took a drink of rum as a means of forcing himself to the new occupation. The result is that alcoholic liquors occupy a large place in the economy of every such pioneer people.
In the mountain regions of the South, where the pioneer remains as an arrested type, the rum jug occupies the same place in the economy of the countryman as it occupied in the early settlements of the United States generally. These ”contemporary ancestors” of ours in the Appalachian region have all the marks of the pioneer. Their simple life, their varied occupations, and the relative independence of the community and household, sufficient unto themselves, present a picture of the earlier American conditions. It is obvious among them that the emotional condition of the pioneer grew out of his economy and extended itself into his church.
This emotional instability of the pioneer shows itself in his social life. The well known feuds of the mountain people exhibit this condition. Feeling is at once violent and impulsive. The very reserve of these unsmiling and serious people is an emotional state, for the meager diet and heavy continued strains of their economic life poorly supply and easily exhaust vitality.
The frontier church exhibited emotional variability. It expressed itself in the pioneer's one method; namely, an annual revival of religion. In the pioneer churches there were few or no Sunday schools or other societies. In those regions in which the pioneer has remained the type of economic life Sunday schools do not thrive. Societies for young people, for men, women and children do not there exist. The church is a place only for preaching. Religion consists of a message whose use is to excite emotion. Preaching is had as often as possible, but not necessarily once a week. Essential, however, to the pioneer's organization of his churches is a periodical if possible an annual, revival of religion. The means used at this time are the announcement of a gospel message and the arousing of emotion in response to this message. There is little application of religious imperative to the details of life. There is no recognition of social life, because the pioneer economy is lonely and individual. The whole process of religion consists in ”coming through”: in other words, the procuring of an individual and highly personal experience of emotion.
”Beneath the surface of life in these people so conservative, and so indifferent to change as it is, there runs a strain of intense emotionalism. When storms disturb the calm exterior, the mad waves lash and beat and roar. And in religion this is most apparent. With them emotionalism and religion are almost interchangeable quant.i.ties,--if they are not identical.[3]
”It is in the revival service that you see the heart of the stolid mountain man unmasked. The local mountain preachers know this fact well and use it with great effect. A word must be said about these men who work all through the week alongside of their fellows and preach to them on Sunday. In some places there is a custom of holding service on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday. These men have generally 'come through'--a term used to describe the process beginning with 'mourning' and continuing through repenting and being saved. And generally they are men of personality. They have a certain power with men, anyway, and they are keen to see the effect of things on their audiences. Some of them have learned to read the Bible after they have been converted. It is not so much what they say that counts. If people looked for that they would go away unfilled. But they have another thing in mind. They want to feel right. They go to church occasionally during revival drought, but always during revival plenty. They go to get 'revived up.' The preacher who has the best voice is the best preacher. He sways his audience. The more ignorant he is, the better, for then the Spirit of G.o.d is not hindered by the wisdom of man. The spirit comes upon him when he enters the pulpit. He speaks through him to the waiting congregation. Of course they do not know what he is saying for the man makes too much noise. But they begin to feel that this is indeed the place where religion can be found and where it is being distributed among the people.
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