My initial thought is the western frontier - from either the Little House books or westerns. But I suppose this could apply to folk crossing the Cumberland Gap in the late 1700s, or any other period of expansion. I’m thinking of someone who lives rather far from any neighbors, and quite a distance from any town. I specify the American frontier, because my understanding is that some non-American cultures perceive a duty to provide succor to passers-by. But if folk want to take the discussion in that direction, I guess that is fine.
If you are such a person and you see someone coming on horseback. Do you view them as someone you can help out? A potential source of news? A potential threat? I have a sense of a meme that travelers were invited in for a meal, conversation, and a place to sleep - but that certainly differs from my perception of how travelers would be treated these days. If my perception of how Americans today view unfamiliar passers-by is incorrect, I am happy to be corrected.
And when the pioneering homesteader left home for a long hunting trip or into town, did they take any steps to secure their belongings? Was theft a significant issue?
Does history record frequent instances of homesteaders falling victim to traveling thieves or murderers? Or - perhaps conversely, travelers falling victim to nefarious homesteaders?
I don’t know about centuries ago, but for 33 years I lived pretty remote. Could not see another house. Only person living full time on our road. And Ha ha, the Sheriffs office was completely closed from 11pm to 7am. So other than the State Patrol, we where on out own.
Yes, I kept ‘locked and loaded’.
I helped plenty of lost or stuck in the snow people. But my initial response to any person was caution. If it was dark out and a strange car pulled up my drive, it was very heightened caution.
“I helped plenty of lost or stuck in the snow people. But my initial response to any person was caution. If it was dark out and a strange car pulled up my drive, it was very heightened caution.”
From what I’ve read, I think this epitomizes how people living outside of cities behaved in those early days. Always use caution when being approached by a stranger, and never be too far away from a loaded weapon.
That makes sense. But on the flipside, ISTR reading several times of adventurers/explorers/folk in trouble counting on being (or HOPING to be) aided by folk they chance upon.
This is not exactly on-point for the OP’s culture & timeline, but IMO it’s relevant enough to the larger meta-picture.
Some years ago I read this book:
Which I can recommend as quite interesting.
One of his observations was that in tribal societies, whether nomadic or fixed, everybody in each tribe knows everybody else in that tribe and some folks from nearby tribes.
Walking down a trail and encountering a stranger coming the other way was a BIG deal. Both had reason to fear the other for their own safety, and that they might be an advance scout of an attacking force. Or at least that the stranger would learn the (current) location and disposition of the other’s home village and trouble might come later.
So they’d do an elaborate sorta ritual of trying to find common kinship or friendship. IOW, I’m from village A, and I know folks in B & C & D; do you know any of those folks? Back and forth until they established some line of common friendship / acquaintance / kinship, no matter how convoluted. At which point they were reassured the other wasn’t a threat, at least not to their whole village. If that line of commonality failed, things would get hostile or they’d each retreat the way they came and hope not to meet again.
Or so he said. Diamond’s reputation has varied between accurate science, and never letting facts get in the way of an entertaining story.
I think different attitudes in this respect are more to do with urban vs rural than attitudes changing over time.
Even in the times you are talking about a rural person was likely to treat a stranger coming onto their property as a welcome guest, whereas an urban person would immediately suspect criminal intent.
As society moved from a mainly rural one to a mainly urban one there was a huge cultural shift (and along with that the idea that rural people people are inherently more moral than urban people, though actually they are just less densely packed together)
The other side of the “rural people are more moral” trope is of course they may be moral and upstanding but they are also dumb rubes compared to canny street smart urban denizens
Given these guidelines, then ISTM that an approaching stranger would always be viewed with utmost caution. If the house wasn’t close to a road/trail/path, then the chances would not be great that the stranger was seeking food or shelter.
IME the rural folks are the suspicious paranoid types whose driveways are festooned with “no trespassing” and “trespassers will be shot first” signs. Those kind of signs are real rare in suburbia.
That would depend on how they approached the property. I’m sure someone approaching in daylight down the main pathway to the front of the property would be assumed to be friendly. Sneaking in the rear of the property at night, not so much
IME back in those days travelers were viewed warily with suspicion first, until it could be determined what they were up to. And homesteaders far away from any town (or help) had to fend for themselves in terms of security - meaning they were armed. If a wayward traveler was deemed no threat, they may have been invited to share some hospitality. When a homesteader had to leave for some reason, they either hid their valuables well, or took them along, leaving nothing precious behind, or just didn’t have much of value to care about.
Or even in the city. Poor people in the city beg, and are given things. Waking in NYC, i never feared that a homeowner might shoot me. Strangers in suburbia are assumed to be unknown neighbors. When I’m doing yard work, i often greet random passers-by and it’s not uncommon to have a friendly chat. When i go for a walk, no one is frightened of me. I’ve been invited to see the details of a shed a neighbor was building, or the rock wall they are working on.
This concern is why travelers would often travel with letters from prominent, or connected, people, so that the people they were traveling to see would know that they were legitimate.
Depends a whole lot on where you are. I don’t see any of that around here. People are likely to be armed, at least in the sense of having a gun somewhere in the house; but they don’t put out any signs more threatening than the occasional “no trespassing” which is often only about hunting season, and unless you’re actively threatening them they’re not going to start shooting. Some of them not then; the Mennonites are pacifists.
I’m the last place on a dead end road. Lost people show up here occasionally. I come out and give them directions. I don’t generally invite them in; but it’s not a frontier situation. They’re not likely to freeze to death if I don’t give them shelter.
I did once have a really uncomfortable looking woman show up who asked me where the nearest public bathroom was. (Depending on the time and day of week, at least six miles, maybe twelve, maybe twenty.) She said she’d come up the road looking for a place to piss behind a tree, but everything that didn’t involve hiking a distance over private property seemed too visible either from a house or the road. I considered pointing her to the nearest hedgerow, but she really didn’t have the shoes for it. I let her come in and use mine; waiting outside the bathroom for her to finish, and accompanying her back out to her car.
If I’m approaching a strange house for some reason (such reasons happen occasionally) I make sure to be obvious about it: approach via what looks like the usual route, call out and knock. I’ve never had anybody threaten me. It may of course help that I’m short, white, and female. But I’ve never heard of anybody shooting a random lost tourist around here, either.
On the Australian frontier there were people moving around all the time - itinerant labourers, workers returning home, occasional hawkers. The tradition was that they could be offered a dry place to sleep and some food whenever they passed a place on the road. In reading dozens of traveller accounts from the period I can’t say I recall any mention of that basic courtesy being refused. When people are genuinely remote, and the nearest neighbour may be a day’s horse-ride, then you do welcome company when it turns up on your doorstep, the news and gossip they bring and its seen as largely reciprocal because one day you’ll be on the road too.
I know I said I was fine with the discussion straying from my OP, but could we perhaps try to stick to at least our vague recollections of what we may have read/heard about the “frontier” situations I describe, before we get into our personal impressions of city vs rural folk.
I mentioned American, because I recalled a conversation I had with a young man from IIRC on of the -stans. In extolling the beauty of his country, he said in his country it was accepted that if a stranger shows up at your door, you are expected to provide food and a bed. But all I have to support that is a very vague recollection.
When I think about “frontier” situations, I realize how fleeting most frontiers were. Here west of Chicago, the first settlers moved in around 1830 - after the Blackhawk War. By 1850 or so, there were approximately 50 commuter trains running daily. And I recall from the Little House books, "Pa” repeatedly moved after he felt a place had become too crowded. When we see movies or read novels about the American West, that really lasted for well under 50 years. Personally, I’m not sure of what areas remained sparsely inhabited for longer periods - unless you are talking someplace WAY off the beaten path, where almost hermits were eking out a tough existence.
This would be my assumption as well. But not based on any specific sources.
I have heard similar stories myself, mainly from Middle Eastern countries, about people living in small villages between distant cities. Someone traveling on foot could depend on the kindness of strangers along the way for food and a place to sleep indoors. Having traveled in that part of the world myself, this sounds very plausible to me.
In The Woods by Conrad Richter, an 18th-century pioneer family moves from Pennsylvania into the deep wilderness of the Ohio Country. One night while the dad is away on a hunting trip, a Lenni Lenape Indian shows up at the door and asks to crash at their place for the night. So they let him in and put him up for the night, no questions asked. Next day he goes on his way. Made it sound quite ordinary for the time and place.
