Some of the same traits appear in the treatment commonly adopted in the backwoods to meet the case--of painfully frequent occurrence in the times of Indian wars--where a man taken prisoner by the savages, and supposed to be murdered, returned after two or three years' captivity, only to find his wife married again.

In the wilderness a husband was almost a necessity to a woman; her surroundings made the loss of the protector and provider an appalling calamity; and the widow, no matter how sincere her sorrow, soon remarried--for there were many suitors where women were not over-plenty.

If in such a case the one thought dead returned, the neighbors and the parties interested seem frequently to have held a sort of informal court, and to have decided that the woman should choose either of the two men she wished to be her husband, the other being pledged to submit to the decision and leave the settlement.

Evidently no one had the least idea that there was any legal irregularity in such proceedings.[53] The McAfees themselves and the escaped convict servant whom they captured typify the two prominent classes of the backwoods people.

The frontier, in spite of the outward uniformity of means and manners, is preeminently the place of sharp contrasts.