• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1321 0

laid eyes on him. Jacob Ingledew with his brother Noah had come with two saddlebagged mules some six hundred miles from Warren County, Tennessee, their birthplace and rearing-place; on a hazardous journey into an unknown wilderness the two brothers had palliated their nervousness by virtually chain-smoking their pipes, with the result that their supply of tobacco had been exhausted for nearly a week before they stumbled upon the village—or camp—of Fanshaw. It was situated in a clearing on the banks of Swains Creek approximately where Doc Plowright’s spread would later be, in a narrow winding valley that snaked along through five mountains, each a thousand feet higher than the valley. At the first sight of it, Noah Ingledew retreated, refusing to go nearer. From the woods on the hillside, Jacob Ingledew watched the camp for three and one-half hours before Fanshaw emerged, stooping, from his house. Jacob decided that the village, which consisted of twelve other dwellings similar to the one in our illustration, must be deserted except for Fanshaw. A field to one side of the village was devoted to the cultivation of corn, squash, beans, and, Jacob had been pleased to see, tobacco. Although Jacob, like all Ingledew men, was uncommonly shy, so great was his desire for tobacco that, after bobbing his prominent Adam’s apple a couple of times, he began walking toward Fanshaw. Instantly Fanshaw saw him and kept his eyes fastened upon him the whole length of his approach. Jacob Ingledew walked slowly to signify he was friendly.

Fanshaw descried a man of his own height, tall, dressed in buckskin jacket and trousers, wearing a headpiece made from the skin and tail of a raccoon, thin, blue-eyed, brown-haired, long-nosed, and carrying not a rifle but a half-gallon jug with corncob stopper.

Jacob Ingledew saw a man of his own height, tall, dressed in buckskin moccasins and leggings that covered only the legs, the space between breeched with a breech clout, wearing a headpiece (actually just a bandeau) of beaver skin, eagle fathers in the roach of his hair, muscular, dark-eyed, bronze-skinned, long-nosed and naked from the waist up except for a necklace of several dozen bear claws.

Jacob Ingledew spoke, rather noisily from nervousness: “How! You habbum ’baccy? Me swappum firewater for ’baccy. Sabbe?”

“Quite,” said Fanshaw. Jacob Ingledew misinterpreted this as “Quiet,” and began looking around, wondering if the others were sleeping, although it was well into the afternoon. Actually, Fanshaw had spoken in the manner of his namesake, George W. Featherstonehaugh, a British geologist who had explored the Ozarks a few years previously and had been welcomed by Wah Ti An Kah, as he was known before his fellow tribesmen jokingly nicknamed him after their guest because he spent so much time in dialogue with the visitor, even to the point of taking pains to master the visitor’s language.

Fanshaw’s dwelling, like the others, was made of long slender poles cut, appropriately enough, from the bois d’arc tree, or Osageorange (I will discuss in due course the significance of the name bois d’arc, still today called “bodark,” which fits so perfectly with all the other thumping arks of our study). Both ends of these poles were sharpened and then the poles were bent like a bow and the ends stuck into the ground, forming a large arch which was actually a parabola—and most architectural historians agree that the parabolic is the most graceful, not to say strongest, of all arch forms. As may be seen in our illustration, these arched poles were interwoven as they crossed in the smoke-hole at the top; the result was literally a paraboloid, an inverted basketry paraboloid. Marvelous! Over this framework reeds, cattails and other thatch materials were interwoven; as a shelter it was weatherproof; a negligible amount of water poured through the smoke-hole during a heavy rainstorm but was absorbed by woven mats covering the earthen floor which were hung out to dry in the beautiful sunshine that often comes to the Ozarks.

Portable? Yes, “quite portable,” Fanshaw