House-raisings and weddings
often became orgies marked by quarreling and fighting and
terminating in brutal and bloody brawls. Foreign visitors to the
back country were led to comment frequently on the number of men
who had lost an eye or an ear, or had been otherwise maimed in
these rough-and-tumble contests.
The great majority of the frontiersmen, however, were sober,
industrious, and law-abiding folk; and they were by no means
beyond the pale of religion. On account of the numbers of Scotch-
Irish, Presbyterianism was in earlier days the principal creed.
although there were many Catholics and adherents of the Reformed
Dutch and German churches, and even a few Episcopalians. About
the beginning of the nineteenth century sectarian ascendancy
passed to the Methodists and Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly
recruited by means of one of the most curious and characteristic
of backwoods institutions, the camp-meeting "revival." The years
1799 and 1800 brought the first of the several great waves of
religious excitement by which the West--especially Ohio, Indiana,
Kentucky, and Tennessee was periodically swept until within the
memory of men still living.
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