Pioneer Woman

Once upon a time America became the land of the free because it was already the home of the brave. How brave they were is reflected in this story of a Kentucky pioneer woman who took the dangers and privations of the wilderness with fortitude, and its beauties and riches with joy. Urbanites (sub, ex, and plain) should find it instructive as well as entertaining to read how this frontier wife, when six months with child, is kidnapped by two Indians, whom she outwits (one she has to kill, with considerable compunction but little hesitation) , then rides two nights and days without dismounting to regain the chimney and the doorstone of home.

A neurotic generation will say that the dauntless simplicity of Hannah Fowler is unrealistic, and indeed it seems probable that even the purest frontier settlement involved a strain of sophistication that Mrs. Giles omits. After all, Franklin and Jefferson, among others, could converse with either Kentuckians or Parisians. Henry Clay was forty-three years old when Daniel Boone died. The republic was not built by simpletons, and it was not built exclusively by simple folk. But it was not built by neurotics either. Courage and loyalty were the common denominator of the various pioneers. Today it seems to be widely felt that to be brave is at best quaint and at worst undemocratic. If that is really the national mood, then of course we shall soon think of freedom as a deviation, and avoid it as we do other extremes.

ME

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Medford Evans

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Once upon a time America became the land of the free because it was already the home of the brave. How brave they were is reflected in this story of a Kentucky pioneer woman who took the dangers and privations of the wilderness with fortitude, and its beauties and riches with joy. Urbanites (sub, ex, and plain) should find it instructive as well as entertaining to read how this frontier wife, when six months with child, is kidnapped by two Indians, whom she outwits (one she has to kill, with considerable compunction but little hesitation) , then rides two nights and days without dismounting to regain the chimney and the doorstone of home.

A neurotic generation will say that the dauntless simplicity of Hannah Fowler is unrealistic, and indeed it seems probable that even the purest frontier settlement involved a strain of sophistication that Mrs. Giles omits. After all, Franklin and Jefferson, among others, could converse with either Kentuckians or Parisians. Henry Clay was forty-three years old when Daniel Boone died. The republic was not built by simpletons, and it was not built exclusively by simple folk. But it was not built by neurotics either. Courage and loyalty were the common denominator of the various pioneers. Today it seems to be widely felt that to be brave is at best quaint and at worst undemocratic. If that is really the national mood, then of course we shall soon think of freedom as a deviation, and avoid it as we do other extremes.