History Mystery

What did Ozark pioneer families do on
long, cold winter nights?

Dark came early to the mountain log cabins in the wintertime. It wasn't safe for kids to be outside, but what could they find to do inside on those long, cold winter nights?

The first chore would be just trying to keep warm. Even a blazing fire in a log cabin can leave you roasting on one side and freezing on the other, so the family spent a lot of the evening huddled around the fireplace. Mama always kept busy with some sort of handwork, and she might find some work to keep the kids busy, too.

Even a fairly young child could pick seeds out of the cotton that would become his summer shirt. More often than not, the whole family would be picking seeds to get the cotton ready for the next step. Older girls might be doing that next step of cleaning and carding the cotton or wool, or maybe learning to spin or sew. Older boys might be mending harnesses, learning to make shoes, or tending to the fire. They wouldn't be doing schoolwork, because the school session that started in late July was over before Christmas. Winter was the time to practice other skills you needed to make a homestead successful.

But, as the old saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Picking cotton seeds may occupy your hands, but it pretty much leaves your mind free. The chimney corner was a great place for stories. Pioneer kids couldn't go to a library, and there might not be books in their homes, but hearing and telling stories surely could take your mind off your tired fingers and cold feet for a while.

Daddy might scare everybody with his tales of the gowrow, a 20-foot-long monster that lived in caves and under rock ledges and ate deer, calves, sheep, and surely would enjoy a snack of some child who wandered too far away from the house! When Daddy got carried away, Mama might give him "the look," so he'd tone down the stories so the children wouldn't have bad dreams. But scary stories served their purpose, too, in keeping young'uns safe in a world full of dangers.

This drawing of a gowrow appeared in the Marshall Mountain Wave newspaper (Searcy County) in 1897, after county resident William Miller reported that he had killed one of the beasts. Marshall Mountain Wave, March 13, 1997

Music might be fun for the evening. If the family had a fiddle or banjo, or even homemade instruments, the children could learn the old tunes their ancestors had been playing and singing for generations. If they didn't have instruments, or nobody could play one, the human voice is one of the oldest music makers around. They could always sing to pass the hours until Mama sent them up the ladder to the loft and their corn shuck mattresses and heavy quilts. If they were lucky, come morning, they wouldn't wake up with snow sifted through the shake roof onto their quilts.

Songs could also teach children about running a household, especially when the song called for acting out the chore being sung:

Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, so early in the morning.
This is the way we wash our clothes...all on a Monday morning.
This is the way we iron our clothes...all on a Tuesday morning.
This is the way we scrub our floor...all on a Wednesday morning.
This is the way we mend our clothes...all on a Thursday morning.
This is the way we sweep our house...all on a Friday morning.
This is the way we bake our bread...all on a Saturday morning.
This is the way we go to church...all on a Sunday morning.

Since this was mostly "women's work," a houseful of boys might choose to sing about plowing fields, gathering wood, feeding hogs, and hunting game.

Modern families may be more likely to gather around a flickering television than a flickering fire, but trading the electronics for swapping yarns or singing songs or playing games beats reruns any day!

Check it out!
Games and Songs of American Children, collected by William Wells Newell, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1963. This collection was first published in 1883 and expanded for a 1903 version. It contains old versions of songs and games children still sing and play today.