This was written by James Upton, a brother of John Wesley and Joseph Upton, its interesting.

Among other things I have written from time to time is the following account furnished me by JM. "Jim Upton" a former resident of Northwest Arkansas who moved to the state of Oregon where he died in the town of Union in that state. A few months before his death, he wrote me a long letter that contained some interesting accounts of early times at Shawneetown in Marion County an otherplaces in northwest Arkansas.

Shawneetown, the Indian village, stood near the mail town of Yellville, the county seat of Marion now stands.

Mr Upton wrote in his letter the Indians passed thorough Marion county on their general move from Kentucky and Tennesse to the new reservation in the Indian territory. Some of them stopped at Shawneetown and camped there several days andthewhite people who lived there at the time were much interested in their character and abits which at that time were quite primitive. These Indians were principally Shawnees, originally a part of th Kickapoo tribes which had been driven south by the Iroquois.

The more important chiefs of the tribe had many wives and in some instances, slaves to wait upon them. They were a very long headed race, with hair like a horses mane and were savage and brutal in their treatment of each other.

I remember as a boy the striking manner in which the big fellows would stalk though the camp, contemptuously kicking over any women who happened to get in theway. They would wake their squaws to get up and make a fire in the morning by smashing them over the head or face with a billet of wood.

These were the noble red men that we used to read about in the books. Their next camp after leaving Shawneetown was in the Crooked.

Living there then were Jack and Lon Barker, old man Beller, Mendinghall and Loranzo Rush, who were living very much as he early Indians did, having little or no communications with the outside world.

In giving accounts of other matters in the early history of northwest Arkansas, Mr Upton went o to say that after leaving Shawneetown, the family he was living with went on West and stopped on Osage Creek in Carroll County. There we found Charley Sneed, James Fancher, Old an Kenner and two or three other pioneers doing well after the fashion of those days.

From there we went on to War Eagle, eight miles south of the present site of Huntsville in Madison County and found that quite a little community had sprung up there also, including Tom and Will Jackson, Henry McElhaney, Bill Henderson and John Martin. They were farming without fences. ThEy didn't need them much for there was only one cow, ox or horse to the family and they were at work most of the time. There were plenty of bear, deer, turkey, coon and possum. which we all feasted on plentifully.

Our corn at first was caried from Cane Hill, some forty miles on our backs, in sacks, to make what ittke bread we had and furnish seed for the future crop. To get it into meal, we would chop down a tree, build a fire on the stump and burn a large bowl. We then dressed it out by scraping out the charred wood and fixed over this a spring pole with a pestle on the end of it and beat our corn into meal quicker than you would think. In addition to this contrivance, we would peel a large elm tree leaving the bark in the shape of a bucket.

At one end a deer skin with small holes punched in it was stetched, and this made us an excellent sifter which held back a little of the coarser husks of our precious corn. The contast in the mode of travel and carried on in the early days and the present time is wonderful and no doubt improvements will be developed on th present way as time goes on.

Here is how it was done in the primitive days as told by Mr Upton.

As farming operations developed , we all had to have some sort of a vehicle. Some made sleds and others crude carts to haul their products in. Some drove a cow, others an ox and a few used horses, Their harness was chiefly made of hickory bark with collars and harness in a single piece out of maplewood.

As soon as we began to grow corn in any quantity, we built big rail pens for it and then we started corn shuckings. The whole neighborhood would turn out in the fall evenings and schuck corn, first for one man, then for another.

After the corn schucking, we would let all the furniture out of the house for a dance.
This was no small job, for the bed stead had but one leg, for the other three were fastened to the wall. The chairs were blocks swaed from a tree with the pegs stuck in them and the table was a cumbersome affair, frequently too big to get thorugh the door without being taken to pieces.

Some of the houses had dirt floors, but the aristocratic ones had puncheon. The puncheon floors were made from logs cut long enough to reach across the house, split open and hen hewed somewhat flat on top.

These floors were a little rough, but we danced just the same.

Then as night worn on and we mellowed to each other more, we would bring chairs for our girls and play one long play. Before starting home in the moonlight in this play we would join hands and sidle around singing that old good old song.
 

Ah sister Phoebe how merry are we.
As we all sit under the Juniper tree.
Put my hat on your head to keep you warm.
And take a sweet kiss, t'will do you no harm.

And then we took several to wind up the evening fun.

Going on with our letter, Mr Upton said that "Our clothes were all made of flax or tow in those days and were pure white until they got dirty.

Both boys and girls wore very long white shirts, the boys with the gores in the sides and the girls with drawstrings around the waist. The girls wore white tow bonnets, scooped shaped and the boys wore coonskin caps.

All were bare footed up to the age of fourteen years old. Our young people today would will it interesting to contrast their present condition and advantages with conditions seventy years ago."