Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time
ISBN: 978-1-964830-04-9
by Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis
Publication Date: September 24, 2024
The Children's West
Children tread lightly through the pages of Old West
history. Pintsized Pioneers:
Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time gives
frontier children their due for all the work they did to assist
their families. Even at early ages, the youngsters helped families
make ends meet and handled chores that today seem unbelievable.
Written for today's young adults, Pintsized Pioneers offers
lessons on frontier history and on the value of work for
contemporary youth.
In 1850 adolescents 16 and under accounted for 46 percent of the
national population, making them an important labor force in
settling the country. Pintsized
Pioneers examines their tasks and toils starting
with the chores on the trail west. Children assisted in providing
fuel and water on the trail and at home when they settled down. In
their new locations the young ones helped grow food, make clothing
for the entire family and assist with the housekeeping in primitive
dwellings.
These pintsized pioneers took on farm and ranch chores as young as
six, some going on cattle drives at eight years of age. Even Old
West town tykes, who enjoyed more career possibilities, helped
their folks survive as well. In the end, many pintsized pioneers
pitched in to help their families make ends meet. Difficult as
their lives might have been, the lessons those children learned
handling chores helped them and their country in the years ahead.
Those pintsized lessons have contemporary applications to the youth
of today.
Targeted at young adults, Pintsized Pioneers is written at a ninth-grade reading level and includes a supplementary glossary. Even so, Pintsized Pioneers is an eye-opener for adult readers as well.
Rather than a Garden of Eden, many youngsters traveling west,
particularly to the Great Plains, soon realized their new home was
more a “garden of needin’!” They were always needing water
and combustibles for fire.
Though the journey for the boys and girls may have ended once they reached their destinations, their chores continued. Just as on the trail, no tasks were more important than providing fire and water, a job often assigned to the children.
Born in central Texas before moving to southeastern New Mexico Territory at the age of five, Lily Klasner later recalled those hardscrabble years. “Though the pioneers had their faults and weaknesses, few could shirk work or indulge in idleness. In a very literal sense, work was a life preserver and every member of a family had his tasks.”
“That was the way of the old-timer days, though. Kids got
to be men a heap quicker than they do nowadays.”—W.H.
Childers of Texas
“I walked every step of the way across the plains and drove a cow; and a large part of that way, I carried my brother on my back.”—Margaret McNeil of Utah
“I have plowed acre after acre from the time I was twelve years old.”—Percy Ebbut of Kansas
“What a job, that churn! The man who invented that instrument of torture must have been an ogre and hated children.”—David Siceloff of Oklahoma
“I hated to see Ma come in with a big batch of sewing, for I knew it meant many long hours sitting by her side sewing seams.… I could help the boys with the plowing or trapping, but they would never help me with the sewing.”—Susie Crocket of Oklahoma
“No one can tell the hardships I went through; carry water from the well; rub the clothes on a washboard; and keep the housework up…. They never thought a young girl ever got tired.”—Hattie Lee of Kansas
“It was instilled in us that work was necessary. Everybody worked; it was a part of life, for there was no life without it.”—Edna Matthews of Texas