646
HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
fered the land for sale. They had made additions to the first cabin or, perhaps, had built a more commodious and comfortable one; they had sunk a well, probably about twenty-five feet deep, to permanent and excellent water, and they had enclosed large well-cultivated fields with good staked-and-ridered rail fences. They had also provided better shelter for their stock and increased their herds, and many of them had planted fine orchards of fruit. The lives of both men and women were strenuous with toil and beset with many discomforts. Very few of them had a surplus dollar when they first came under the shelter of the original cabin, and had often struggled with the closest economy through the first winter. It was at once an urgent necessity to subdue the wild land, and fit the rich soil for cultivation, and it required a strong team to break the prairie sod. Neighbors could combine their forces and make a team of three or four yoke of oxen, and, with the strongest plow attainable, in turn do as much breaking for each other as they could. A few years later regular breaking teams, of four to seven yoke of cattle, with a plow made for this especial purpose, were organized, and did the larger part of this work for a whole neighborhood.
The breaking plow was, of course, heavy and strong in all its parts. By the attaching clevis it could be regulated to cut a sod from twenty to thirty or more inches wide, and two to four or five inches in thickness. Three inches was usually considered the best depth of furrow. It was equipped with a standing or a rolling coulter, the "land side" was high and thick and extended well back and the "point" projected far forward, perhaps one-third the length of the beam. The share was broad and long and laid wide and flat upon the bottom of the furrow. It was edged with tempered steel, by frequent hammering drawn thin and then filed keen and sharp. When in good order, one of these big plows would sever a grub or red root an inch or two in diameter with scarcely a perceptible shock. The boys would kill some worthless dog, tan his hide, and cut it into strips of suitable width, and then braid them into a firm lash ten or twelve feet in length. Pine young iron-woods grew along the clay banks of the creeks, and they would select one for a stock that was about an inch and a quarter to an inch and three-quarters thick at the butt and some ten feet long, straight and tapering evenly to the size of one's little finger and full of spring. These made a whip with which a stout boy, walking near the center of a seven-yoke team, could raise cruel welts and sometimes bloody stripes upon the backs of the leaders or of the beam oxen, and with which he often wickedly cut down many a luckless bird. They generally laid off the ground that was to be broken into "lands" either fourteen or twenty-one paces wide, and of course as long as the piece that was to be plowed, which was often a half mile or more. Sometimes they encircled the whole field. Around and around these "lands" or squares toiled the slow breaking-team, turning the broad furrows of grass and flower-covered sod. And toward the constantly diminishing area of grass and flower concealment converged the many reptiles and swarms of creeping, crawling, jumping creatures whose haunts were being destroyed, until the lessening space was fairly alive with the repulsive collection.
The driver was usually a sturdy barefoot boy, "in his teens," and back and forth in their midst he picked his wary footsteps, especially alert to avoid the dangerous "massasauga," that infested all the land. Right glad he was, when the narrowing "land" permitted him to walk in the smooth cool furrow on the opposite side from the team. And as these creatures fled from the narrow cover, he very often, almost severed the gliding snake, or scurrying gopher, with a stroke of that long terrible whip. The man at the plow had rather an easy time walking between the steady handles down the long furrows, for the plow would stand alone; but throwing it out at the ends, hammering and filing the share and dragging it to place and setting it up for the next furrow was heavy work. The chains were all unhooked at noon, and the cattle grazed upon the prairie, yoked, while the men went to dinner. At sunset they were driven to the yard, unyoked and turned out for the night.
In such a team there usually was at least one yoke which had the vicious habit of clashing away as they were being unyoked. The moment the driver began raising the bow of the near ox to remove the key, no matter how gently he proceeded, they were seized with a strange frenzy of excitement. When the key was removed and he quietly and soothingly began to withdraw the bow, as
