It all begins peacefully enough on a mild October morning, with Squire Miller and Mistress Rebecca picking beans in the field outside the fort.

Little do they suspect that the fearsome Shawnee Two Hawks and his band are skulking up through the forest only yards away!

At just the right moment, when his intended victims have their backs to him, Two Hawks makes his move . . .

. . . and seizes Mistress Rebecca and drags the poor girl into the forest and secures her to a tree  . . .  Squire Miller instantly turns to pursue the pair, but at that moment the other Shawnees move in for the kill . . .

. . . and brave Squire Miller meets his fate.

Just as Two Hawks considers whether or not to take Squire Miller’s scalp, the Shawnee are surprised by the sudden appearance of a returning hunting party, led by Capt Tom Carson.

As his companions run for the shelter of the forest, Two Hawks kneels for a final shot . . . after which he scoots for cover himself.

Capt Carson and his men, meanwhile, press home the attack . . .

. . .  as Two Hawks and his warriors withdraw in good order, turning frequently to return fire as they melt back into the forest . . .

. . .  but Carson and his men, enraged at the death of Squire Miller and the loss of the girl, will not be gainsaid and press on all the harder . . .

 . . . until finally they realize the Shawnee are gone and that they are only shooting at shadows . . . 

Mistress Rebecca is gone as well, and Capt Carson knows it will take a well-planned expedition to rescue her.  He must consider whether to try and take her by force, or buy her back.  Either way, it will take strategy, guile, expert tracking, and no little amount of luck . . .

. . .  as for Squire Miller, however, his luck has run out . . .

Fall on the old Virginia frontier was, above all, a season of preparation against the coming Winter. The foundation of the cabin would be banked against the cold wind with a thick matting of cornstalks and pumpkin vines, or straw if they had it, or even banked with earth. And naturally a substantial stockpile of dried and split firewood, kept under cover and close to the cabin.

The other main necessity which had to be stockpiled was more problematic: namely food. If the Winter was severe, replenishing the food supply by hunting might be all-but-impossible for days or weeks at a time. Even during milder spells it might be difficult, if game were scarce for one reason or another. Therefore the prudent pioneer would lay up food in autumn in as great a quantity as possible.

Meat, whether fish, fowl or beast, and whether domestic or wild, had to be preserved in some manner. In the deep of Winter, freezing was an obvious solution. But if the meat were killed before Winter had set in — and much of it would have to be — then other methods than freezing were required. These ranged from jerking to smoking to salting, and occasionally even to pickling.

Traditionally, on the American farm, the first cold snap signalled hog-butchering time, which meant plenty of fresh juicy pork, cracklen bread, new lard, sausage, souse meat and a fresh supply of soap. On the old frontier, however, fat pen-fed hogs — which yield the tenderest pork — were all but unknown. The frontier pig — accustomed to fending for itself in the forest and subsisting on ‘mast’ — yielded meat which was far leaner, drier and less tender — its taste and consistency being much more in the nature of wild meat.

The frontier equivalent to the pen-fattened hog was probably the bear, the meat of which was widely favored by pioneer and Indian alike. The meat was rich and succulent and, as with a hog, every part of the animal had a useful purpose, not the least of which was the ample hide which, when properly tanned, resulted in a thickly-furred robe capable of turning the severest cold.

When it came to preserving fruit and vegetables, freezing was the problem, not the solution. Fruit or vegetables exposed to freezing would rot.

Potatoes and turnips could be kept from freezing by any of several methods: one of the simplest was to place them in pits in the earth, an effective method especially if they were also covered in sand or ashes, which helped to keep them from moisture. Nonetheless, many such buried root-crops would succumb to rot before Spring. Some settlers prolonged the life of potatoes by baking them lightly before burying them, a practice brought over from Ireland.

Pumpkins and squash would keep well into winter if kept dry and protected from freezing. Some settlers would store them in a shed or smokehouse, buried amid straw or cornshocks. Because pumpkins tended to rot sooner than squash, they were sometimes peeled, sliced and dried, instead of being stored whole.

Beans and corn, if not eaten during the season, were left to dry in the field until after frost, after which the corn was hung indoors from the rafters, and the dry beans shelled and stored in crocks or other containers.

Generally speaking, folks on the frontier looked forward to the Fall for one very good reason: Fall meant that the season of Indian attacks would soon be ending. Winters were harder then than now. The snows came earlier in the year and, once they had fallen, tended to last until Spring thaw. The climate was colder and, especially in deep forest, the snow accumulated and didn’t melt. With the forests impassable, the Indians stayed home until late Spring or early Summer when the trails were again open and dry. On the frontier, Fall meant a reprieve in the fighting was at hand, and folks could begin to breathe easy. Winter might be hard, and it certainly carried its own serious hazards, but it was also a time of peace.

Occasionally, there would be an “Indian Summer”. Today this is a term which carries only pleasant and nostalgic associations. On the frontier, however, Indian Summer was a thing to be dreaded. It referred to a period of unseasonable warming following the first tracking snow. It didn’t happen in every year but, when it did, it meant that, after everyone had let down their guard and assumed the season of fighting was over for another year, there might be a recurrence of attacks and blood-letting, followed by Winter in earnest. It was one more hardship added to a long list of trials and tribulations which made life on the frontier harder, lonlier and more desperate than we moderns can begin to imagine.

Busy days at Pricketts Fort ahead of the annual Fall Festival scheduled for this weekend. A mountain of newly-split hardwood has stacked inside the fort; corn shocks erected, brought in the from the field outside the palisade; pumpkins, squash, gourds, beans & corn hung up inside the storehouse, brass kettles scrubbed and set up over firepits, soon to be steaming with apple butter.

Among the re-enactors on their way to the fort for the weekend are Shawnee braves, tomahawk-throwers, apple-butter cooks, a soap-maker, candle-maker, tinsmith, blacksmith & a crotchety old farmer.

So come one, come all. The festival commences this Saturday, October 10 & 11, 2009, from 10 -4:30 on Saturday and 12 – 4:30 on Sunday. 

For more details about Fall Festival activities, see our earlier story, Fall Festival and Antiques Fair to return to Pricketts Fort.

We apologize for any inconvenience that misinformation may have caused, but Pricketts Fort will NOT be hosting a Fall Rendezvous this year. We encourage people to come out and participate in Fall Festival weekend October 10-11 and the Annual 18th century Christmas Market December 11-13. Feel free to contact us for further information at www.prickettsfort.org.

The Fall Festival and Antiques Fair will be returning to Pricketts Fort again this year, October 10 & 11, 2009, from 10 -4:30 on Saturday and 12 – 4:30 on Sunday.

Live music will be provide by Mountain William Strings, Jeff Fedan, Josh Wanstreet, Wha-ke-we-nn? & the Dulcimer Dames.

Daily activities will including apple butter making, candle and soap making, tinsmithing & blacksmithing, tomahawk throwing, Woodland Indian encampment and activities.

Also, an Antique Fair will feature the following vendors: Fairmont Avenue Antiques, Jacob’s Meadow & Sweet Memories Antique Mall.

Refreshments will be available on site.

Admission to the sale area is free, but a ticket is required to tour the historic areas. Tickets are $6 adults, $5 seniors, $3 children 6 – 12. Under 6 and members are free.

Call (304) 363-3030 for more information.

Prickett’s Fort State Park is located 2 miles off I-79 at exit 139.

Many will recognise the title as a phrase from Keats’ “To Autumn”, and so it has been here recently, with many of these early autumn mornings laden with mist and dew. The spiders must hate them, as the mist renders their webs temporarilly useless. The little tenants of these dew-soaked webs are all absent, each probably curled up inside a dry leaf, awaiting the sun, impatient for breakfast…

Inside the gunshop one morning several days ago, I heard a high-pitched repeated screeeeing which I knew was a hawk, so I ran outside and looked up. From the north, quite high, a bald eagle, unmistakable with white tail and head, was rapidly approaching. I called to Mary Rose in the Meeting House and to Michael, in his potter’s shed, and both stepped out to see what was going on.

Just as the eagle passed over the fort, a much smaller accipiter hawk from high above, wings folded, pitched down on it at a steep angle. An instant before impact, the eagle rolled over and thrust its talons upward to meet its assailant. The hawk veered slightly, plunging by the eagle in a narrow miss. The eagle, tumbling from its roll, recovered neatly and swept sharply to the right, heading swiftly upstream over Pricketts Creek, skimming the trees along the far bank, with the hawk still in pursuit.

This is not the first time a bald eagle has been spotted over Pricketts Creek, but it is certainly one of the more dramatic instances. And now that we are entering the migration season, we will be watching the skies more closely. Located on a rise overlooking the juncture of two waterways, in the midst of extensive woodland, Pricketts Fort is ideally situated for viewing migrating birds of all kinds, including raptors.

In addition to making pots and other vessels, using methods and materials as closely identical as possible to how pottery would have been produced on the Virginia frontier during the late eighteenth century, our potter here at Pricketts Fort, Michael Ray, is also involved in researching and re-creating pottery as it would have been made by Native Americans in this region during the same period.

Recently, using local (southern Pennsylvania) red clay — strengthed with a mixture of oyster shell, sopastone dust, lime and bits of previously-fired pots — Michael attempted to build and fire a native-style pot. Here he is shown in the early stages of the process. The bottom quarter or so is formed first, using the “pinch” method. Once the base is formed, the remainder of the pot is built up gradually, using a succession of finger-sized ropes of clay which are laid one on top of the other like stacked rings. They are “glued” into place with “slip”, which is simply a thick broth of dissolved clay in water which effectively binds the individual rings together.

The joined rings are then smoothed by hand, inside and out.

Michael narrows the pot in the upper half to form a kind of neck, then flares it out again at the top rim.

Once the building of the pot was completed, it needed to air dry thoroughly before it could be safely fired. Given the high humidity at the time Michael was building this pot, and which continued for several more days, the drying process was very slow.

When the pot was sufficiently dry to be fired, Michael attempted to fire it using a Native method, namely placing the pot beside a simple banked fire. The result? It fell completely apart.

Michael has years of skill using a variety of kilns, but using an open fire may be the most difficult method of all, involving a whole set of new factors and complications. Michael says he intends to give it another try in the near future.

Tired of replacing the rope handle on the fort’s “old oaken bucket”, which tended to fall back into the water when not being used and was thus prone to rotting, Blacksmith Bray recently smithed and mounted a splendid little iron handle for this lucky bucket. Never mind that liberal streams of water still pour from half a dozen rifts in the old moss-coated wood to roll down your leg and fill your moccasin as you carry water to the sheep. That is just a minor detail, and none but the most quarrelsome quibbler would be so uncharitable as to even mention it. The point is, this bucket now possesses a truly handsome, durable handle which will still be around a hundred years after the rest of the bucket has rotted to dust. So never mind that the bucket is still three-quarters empty by the time you get to the sheep-pen, it is nonetheless and indisputably the handsomest, proudest bucket on the Virginia frontier.

Dairy Day at the fort dawned particularly hot and muggy, and it never improved. Notwithstanding the heat, however, the proceedings were well-attended, with about a hundred visitors passing through during the day to observe the milking of the goat by its owner, Judy Wilson, and the making of cottage cheese and butter.

Once the milk had been obtained, Judy demonstrated the making of cottage cheese, first heating the milk over the heart to just shy of a boil, then tossing in a measure of apple cider vinegar which instantly caused the hot milk to separate into curds & whey. After these had cooled, the curds were scooped out and hung in a loose-weave muslin bag to drain, after which they were placed in bowl, flavored with chives, and were ready for serving.

Finally, Judy explained the process of making butter from cream by the process of vigorous agitation. She displayed two butter churns, one ceramic and one wooden, and described how they worked, and then had several children make a small amount of butter by shaking cream in glass jars.