staying with Herr Kurz and his journal, another bit I want to share with you.
First, a little note he writes about the American horses he saw in Saint Louis early in his adventure:
''During the first 3 months of the year 1848 I painted a number of horses from life.
I saw them all day long, standing before my window. American horses are bred
from no particular stock but area product of much cross-breeding.
They are, on the whole, excellentfor riding but not strong enough for draft horses.
Indian ponies - dwarfed horses — resemble in many respects the spirited
but some-what delicate Breton trotters.''
Second, about the backwoods farmers, cattle and horses.. for their wives:
Meanwhile, I made my
first acquaintance with the American log cabin and the
backwoodsman. The fellow chewed tobacco incessantly, spitting his
brown juice right and left. The mother smoked a pipe as she swayed
back and forth in a rocking chair, a piece of furniture as
indispensable, it seems, as a bed. The log house is built usually with only
one room; the huge fireplace serves for kitchen. The entire family
and their guests sleep in that room,; its only vestige of
ornamentation was found in pieced-together bed coverings called quilts.
There is no trace of running water, vegetable gardens, flower
gardens, or orchards, and,as compared with ours, the same might be said of
their stables and granaries. The people themselves were most
friendly and seemed to be contented with their lot, because they
were easily satisfied.As to their appearance, they did not look
healthy. Even the native-born Americans are not exempt from fever. The
freshly broken forest land is by no means salutary for any one.
The backwoods-man, therefore, is wont to be a tall, gaunt man
with hollow chest and pale, almost ashen, complexion.
The food of these people consists, three times a
day, of black coffee with a bit of brown sugar, fried ham and
hominy (boiled maize), corn bread, and molasses. The children
are very fond of crumbling their corn bread in warm ham gravy.
Although they possessed cows and chickens, milk and eggs were
a rarity in winter.The backwoodsman seemed not to have the least
idea of stall feeding; it was far too much trouble for him to
arrange, particularly in the depths of the forest. Furthermore, he
cared too little about cattle to put himself to the inconvenience of
giving them the necessary attention; consequently, the poor beasts
presented, in winter,a sorry sight, shocking to a native of
Switzerland. At a zigzag fence that enclosed the house lot the cows had
to stand exposed to the wind, snow, and rain. With shoulders and
hoofs thrust forward and their gaunt backs covered with a crust of
snow, half-starved,benumbed with cold, their only possible comfort
the smell of corn nearby, they seemed to me the embodiment of
misery.[...]
As excuse for this negligence toward his poor cattle the
farmer declared that the
beasts were better adapted to the out-of-doors
than to stall feeding
and, accordingly, Nature had provided especially
for them; there
was forage enough under the snow. With regard to
wild cattle
that is, in a way, true, but not when it is a
question of domestic
annuals.
Every beast loses in instinct in proportion to
what it gains by
training. The farmer gave a peck of corn more to
a cow with a
young calf (also, to a sow with a litter of
pigs), so that the animals
would not stray too far. He accustomed the cow
to stay near the
house, where she longingly and with bovine
patience looked forward
to having the corn, that she constantly smelled
in the nearby corncrib,
at last between her teeth. If she preferred to
be independent and
wander around for food, not appearing again in
the evening, then
the farmer went after her and brought her back
with a whip and many
a "hulloa" and "damn." If
this treatment of cattle were confined
to the backwoodsman only, it might be explained,
for he cannot grow
hay in the forest and has to feed his cattle on
corn. But the same
thing is true in the West: one rarely sees even
a well-to-do farmer
there who cuts winter forage, and not even then
unless he lives near
cities or towns, where he can sell the hay at a
good price. ...
The horses were protected during severe weather for the
reason that the backwoodsman's wife was especially fond of horseback
riding. "Visiting" — that is, riding around to visit
the neighbors — is for the
farmer's wife what "shopping" is for
the city woman.
ps
paintings of George Caleb Bingham - from Wikipedia
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