Contents ▼▲
Front Matter At Boonesborough Beginning of the Story Boone on the Yadkin Boone Moves his Family Ready for the Journey What we Wore Driving Cattle and Sheep Camping at Nightfall The Long Halt Jimmy Boone Goes to Clinch Murder of Jimmy Boone A Time of Mourning The Faint-hearted Return A New Home Making Moccasins Tanning Leather Governor Dunmore Our Home on the Clinch Household Duties Attacked by a Wildcat Fighting the Wildcat Boone and Father Return The Wilderness Road Building the Forts Boonesborough Gathering Salt Boonesborough Precautions Our Home in the Fort Ready for Cooking Furnishing the House The Hominy Block The Supply of Water Sports Inside the Fort Wrestling and Running Religion of the Indians Indian Babies Colonel Callaway Arives News from Eastern Colonies Venturing Outside the Fort Dividing the Land Who Owned Kentucky? Ready to Build a Home Billy's Hard Lot Preparing Flax Spinning and Soap Making Broom Making More Indian Murders Indian "Signs" Woodcraft and Hunting Pelts Used as Money Petition of the Settlers Making Sugar Building Fences Capture of the Girls My Willful Thoughts Finding the Trail The Pursuit The Story Told by Jemima Elizabeth's Heroism Rescuing the Girls Alarm Among the Settlers Indians on the Warpath The First Wedding The Wedding Festivities The Brides Home The Housewarming Attacks by the Indians Besieged by the Savages In the Midst of the Fight The Assault by the Indians Failure of the Assault Watchfulness of the Indians The Sortie My Father Wounded Our Wounded

Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis




What We Wore

Billy had a splendid hunting shirt of brown linen, which I had made for him; the bosom of it was double and sewed together to "form a pocket where he could carry tow for wiping the barrel of his gun, or even food. It was belted with a strip of soft-tanned deer hide, tied behind, with the ends hanging down. I had intended to ornament the ends with colored porcupine quills, like the belt worn by Mr. Boone; but Billy didn't kill a porcupine until two days before we started, and then it was too late. In the belt were a tomahawk and a scalping knife in a deerskin sheath, all exactly like father's. He had a coonskin cap, with the tail hanging down behind, and the stoutest moccasins mother could make.

I had made his leggings from a doeskin which father had tanned, and had fringed them on the out-side of each leg in a beautiful way; but he had been in the creek with them on so many times that no one would ever have been able to say what the color was.

[Illustration] from Hannah of Kentucky by James Otis

I wore shoepacks, and so did mother, because Mr. Boone was in such a hurry to get away that we hadn't time to make moccasins. We both had brand-new sunbonnets, and our linsey-woolseys were also much the same as new, not having been in use as dress-up clothes for more than a year.