Back Then

In the past people built wooden and stone houses. People made straw roofs. The buildings were not safe. Households had a single open room, where they lived, cooked and slept. They lit a room with pine torches candles and lanterns. People slept on a crude homemade bed.The first chairs were simple stools.

People made spoons and bowls from wood. They wove baskets from bark. They dried gourds as dippers or storage containers. Households often ornamented walls with red peppers and other dried vegetables and fruits, and wild turkey feathers.

People ate food, which was not medically proved. People ate wild game meat, fish and bread, corn bread and bacon, milk and butter, beans, cabbage, turnips, onions, greens, berries and fruits.
In winter, people ate dried fruits, which grew in the area: apples, plums, cherries, grapes, huckleberries, and blackberries, dried beans, dried pumpkin and turnips. People made flour in their mills all day. People grew cane as a sweetener. People made the food in the bamboo or clay pot. They burned the wood for cooking.

People bred a cow, a horse or work oxen, a few hogs and chickens, and enough sheep to provide wool for the family's clothes.

Farm tools were very primitive: whip saws, pole axes, broadaxes, hoes and rakes made of either wood or metal, spades, mattocks, and plows, reapers or scythes.

People caught fish in rivers.

Women sewed clothes by hand. Men wore flax clothes. They wore trousers and moccasins made from skins of deer and other animals. Women span yarn for all clothes.

Streets in the past were not big. They were slippery and dangerous. In the rainy season, people could not go anywhere because the streets were closed. People walked from one place to another by feet. They mostly rode on animals and could not travel for a long distance.

Children chose to study with their parents at home. They learned only how to farm, plant, or breed pets. Later girls and boys were taught differently because they had different social roles.

People had to do their laundry by hand. Women made soap and candles from animal fat.

Traders had no currency as means of exchange and they used barter trade where they exchanged goods for other goods.

There were no hospitals, which they could visit in case of any problems. They relied on medicine from trees. There were people who knew how to treat people using these herbals.

When is better back then or now?