The ~Christian Country Farm~

A DAY ON THE TRAIL...Part 2

12:45 AM, Aug. 13, 2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A BREAKFAST OF "SLAMJOHNS AND SOWBELLY"???

If you've had pancakes and bacon, you have. The pioneers liked to start the day with a hearty breakfast. They usually had some combination of bacon and cornmeal cakes, pancakes, or hardtack {hards bread}; sometimes with beans, fried meat, and gravy. Everyone, including children, drank coffee because plain water often tasted so bad that even animals would not drink it. Some families drove their cattle along with them, so they had fresh milk to drink.

Lunch meant cold leftovers, and the evening meal brought more of the same if the men had bad luck hunting. Fresh meat, fish, and wild berries were favorite trail meals.

BUFFALO CHIPS WERE A TRAIL TREAT.

Pioneers liked these chips, but not as snacks! Buffalo chips were dried buffalo droppings. Because they burned well the chips were handy for lighting cooking fires on the treeless plains. Children found other uses for the chips as well, such as throwing them at one another or seeing who could make them sail the farthest. How would you like to toss that kind of Frisbee? LOL

WHY WERE WAGONS CALLED "PRAIRIE SCHOONERS"?

Because they had tall white canvas tops that looked like ships' sails. When wagons traveled across the Great Plains {the wide open prairies, or grasslands, of the American Midwest}, tall prairie grasses hid the wagons' wheels from view and made the wagons look, from a distance, like a fleet of ships in an ocean of grass. So wagons were nicknamed "prairie schooners" or "ships of the plains."

The best prairie schooners were strong, yt lightweight. To help make them waterproof, pioneers covered the wooden bottom with tar and the white canvas top with oil. The top, which was stretched over five or six U-shapped bows, could be closed in the back using a drawstring if the weather was bad. Hooks on the inside and outside of the wagon held milk cans, tools, and women's bonnets. Spare wagon parts were stored underneath the flooring.

The following articles ..."Packing the Wagons" and "A Day on the Trail" were borrowed from "The Pioneers" by Kenneth C. Davis.

Kelly KJV
Deuteronomy 6:5-9*Proverbs 31:28*Titus 2:5*
Psalm 19:14*Joshua 24:15*I Corinthians 15:58