Person:Adeline Bryant (1)

". . . when she was well into her eighties, Adeline was interviewed by a reporter for The Carthage Press, and she gave an account of her early life in Carthage: "The country was full of game in those days and the ground being new, produced all kinds of crops abundantly. People were sociable, anxious to do right and to extend a helping hand to their neighbors, and despite the fact that people worked hard in that early day, I believe that they were much happier than people are at present. My brother and I used to trap quail and prairie chicken, of which there was a great number. We made slatted traps, something like a chicken coop, placed corn inside and then would get long straps and round up quail. The birds would run from us and we would herd them toward the trap and eventually a number of them would be enticed in by the corn. Then we had them. Prairie chickens were also often caught in our traps, but these were enticed in by the corn; we could not drive them like we could the quail...Deer was plentiful and venison, prepared just like we prepare beef these days, was common. Vension was very good but personally I always thought that beef was a more platable meat. My brother, John A. Bryant, who was also quite small, was fond of hunting and soon after we came, managed to trade for an old heavy-barrelled, flint lock rufle. There really was not much more than the barrell and lock to the gun when he got it as the stock was all worn out and broken. Carthage had not been founded yet and he took the gun to Sarcoxie and gave someone there a dried venison ham to fit a new stock to it. Soon after he came back with his new gun, he killed a deer and then he was extremely proud. Deer skins brought a fair price even then but later it became much better...Everybody had bees in those days and honey was on almost every table every meal. There were many wild bees, but people soon began to capture the wild swarms and they quickly became tame. The ordinary form of bee gum was a hollow tree sawed into short sections. These sections were set on end and the bees took to them readily which was not surprising inasmuch as these resembled the natural bee trees that they would have chosen. In getting out the honey, we blew smoke in top of the section of hollow log. This forced the bees to go down and we would dig the top of the honey. Then we forced in more smoke and made the bees go still lower, then we dug out another section, and so on...On two occasions, Indians came to our house. The first time, about a dozen Osages--all men--camped on Jenkins Creek a short distance north of our house and all came down to the dwelling frightening all of us children, and I expect my mother also, very much. If they had guns or bows and arrows, they left them at the camp before they came to see us, but all of them had beg knives which they displayed freely. My father had a grindstone just outside the door and all of them sharpened their knives on this. They came in the house and looked around curiously, but hardly said a word. Finally they went away without having bothered us at all other than giving us a scare. They were, of course, friendly Indians and were acting only in the natural Indian manner. Another band called on us later, but we knew how to take them and they did not worry us.""