HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
635
in preparation for impending needs; for winter is not far away, no neighbors are near, and upon themselves alone they must depend. If early enough to hope that any grain or garden plants will mature, some ground is broken and seeds planted upon the sod, and access to the water supply is made as convenient as possible. A "claim" is marked out, either by plowing a furrow or driving stakes and blazing trees around it, and its lines are laid as nearly as may be with the points of the compass, in order that they may conform to future Government surveys. Meanwhile, with more or less earnest discussion, they select the location of the cabin, having in mind the building, by and by, of a better and more permanent home. The women and children attend the growing crop, guarding it from the grazing stock, while the men cut and prepare logs for the house and poles for the cattle-sheds. The log houses were usually about fourteen by sixteen feet in size and eight logs high. The logs were cut to suitable lengths where felled in the timber, and the ends afterward properly notched to bind the corners, and perhaps flattened a little to make them fit closer. If the man had sufficient skill, he cut straight and square the ends of some of them at proper lengths to leave openings for the door, and one-or possibly two -small windows. When thus prepared, he hauled them to the selected site, and, with the assistance of the family only, or such other help as he could procure, the logs were put in place, making the four walls. Then he put up pole rafters and cross-ties, and upon these he placed in layers, like shingles, the oak or bass-wood shakes he had split and flattened with the handy axe. Across each course of shakes he placed a binding pole, reaching from end to end of the building, and fastened the whole roof securely at the gables with hickory withes and vines.
The family can now move in and be better protected from the heat and storms than in the wagon camp. In connection with other work, he can more leisurely carry up the gables, and build the fire-place and stick and mud chimney at one end. He makes the door and window-casings with the axe and a draw-shave-if he has brought one-and pegs them into place. Then he "chinks" the openings between the logs with mud and sticks, and lays the puncheon floor. He makes the window shutter and the door of bass-wood shakes, which he takes particular pains to shave straight and true, and hangs them on wooden hinges that he has made. He arranges a wooden button to fasten the shutter and fits a wooden latch to the door, through which, a little above the latch, he runs "the latch-string that is always out."
Now his attention is turned to providing shelter for the stock. He cuts posts about nine or ten feet long with crotches at the top, and sets them in the ground to a depth of a foot or two, in rows down the sides and across the ends; and, if the shed is to be wide, he places longer posts down the middle. In the crotches he lays good solid poles for plates, and reaching across the posts lays upon them poles for rafters. Then he sets stakes down the sides and ends, of course leaving an opening for an entrance, the tops resting against the plates, and the bottoms slanting out a little, standing upon the ground. Around these, and over the whole top, he places first small tree-tops and brush, and later stacks plenty of straw and slough hay, and the result is a very dry, warm shelter for the stabled stock and the poultry.
Before all this work is completed, whatever of crop he had planted is beginning to ripen, and the upland prairie grass, which made excellent hay, was ready for the scythe. Fortunately, crops growing upon new sod needed very little cultivation, and usually the women and children could care for them. Corn could be left upon the stalk indefinitely, but the other grain had to be harvested as it matured. The light crop of the first year, and the prairie hay, the farmer and his family harvested without help. The men cut and pitched both the grain and the hay, but the women and children assisted in the raking, binding and stacking. The grain was secured in round stacks generously topped with slough hay, and the hay was stacked in long ricks, so placed as to form wind-breaks for the stock. The cabin, sheds and stacks were in close proximity, so that they could be most easily protected from the awful prairie fires. Early in the fall the farmer "back-furrowed" a wide strip of plowed ground around them all; and, as soon as the grass was dry enough, when there came a still day with no wind, he "back-fired" and carefully burned a much wider girdle outside the plowing, to further protect against the late
