Not sure I’d agree with this statement. If your house is many miles from your nearest neighbor and well off the beaten path (as specified by the OP), you would have no idea what the intentions of the stranger might be. I would be very suspicious of anybody approaching my house.
Wasn’t there a tradition of “hello[ing] the house” to suggest that your intentions were honorable and you’d prefer it if they didn’t sic their dog (or firearms) on you?
Or was that just for people already known to the homedwellers?
I realized later I didn’t say that as well as I should have.
You’re right I don’t mean to suggest every rural person is a prickly antisocial gun nut. Far from it. Some are, and it depends some on which state we’re talking about. But most are not.
I was responding to a different poster who implied all city / suburban people are paranoid shooters and all rural people are welcoming. IMO / IME that opinion is both exaggerated and backwards.
Yes; I was going to come back to say that while caution with a stranger would have been warranted, before radio, television, and routine frequent rural mail delivery that stranger on the road was very likely your only source of news. Or for that matter of stories and/or music you hadn’t already heard so often you’d memorized them.
In the Little House books, IIRC, Laura’s mother feeds several Indians who stop by. She’s a bit nervous about it, but they just eat and go on their way.
And that makes this one of the ultimate “it depends” question. The “frontier” moved inward from the Atlantic coastline, the border with Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean. Three separate regions with three timelines, three separate groups of originating migrants, three separate sets of conditions, and three million individual circumstances, which changed rapidly in their own lifetimes.
The only answer to “Do you view them as someone you can help out? A potential source of news? A potential threat?” is “all of the above” and many more. Maybe a specialist historian could talk about a specific place and time with some generalities. I doubt they could say anything meaningful. Even then, individuals were individuals just as much as now and the answer for any two houses at any two times could differ wildly.
Many such articles emphasize a perceived need to help each other, as one did not know when they might be in need of assistance. And there is lengthy European lore - including the Bible, urging hospitality towards strangers.
I read a lengthy Reddit post by a professor who reported that Jewish traders in remote areas would often trade goods for housing, explaining that tho some feared such “foreigners”, most realized that this was a necessary aspect for folk living too far to get to town. Somewhat related, I recall reading often of frontier townspeople sharing responsibility for housing the local teacher.
While some articles discussed the constant fear some frontier folk perceived, I was surprised at how little such material I turned up. And I saw no reports of theft/murder/mayhem committed by strangers. Conversely, one article discussed a lengthy history in European folklore of homeowners killing travelers after inviting them into their homes.
I would guess that a very large amount of people where armed at home where I used to live 6 months ago. No sheriff at night, so no help. Not that that really matters I suppose. That knowledge must be known by people with criminal intent.
We did start locking our doors, but that was for bears. The guns where also good to have for that. I kept 4 guns (I want to start target shooting again, and my cousin wants me to teach her), gave the rest to my friend that still lives up there.
There are a couple of stories in the book “Death in the Great Smoky Mountains” that mention strangers in the early 20th century being fed and offered lodging for the night by families they encountered on long treks through wild country.
“The house of the (Ownby) patriarch always welcomed guests who brought a fresh face to the table, and perhaps fresh news to the ears of the family.
Allowing travelers to spend the night was a well-established part of the tradition of hospitality in the mountains.”
*both of the travellers in these two stories later wound up dead, but through accidents in the woods, not at the hands of their hosts.
Oh, she’s terrified. The tension in the house when the men show up is such that the girls, Laura and Mary, consider unchaining the bulldog, Jack, against their father’s orders. Ma does feed the visitors but not because she wants to; with her husband away, she’s afraid of what will happen if she refuses.
The series sets up Ma (and Mary, and Jack) as “Indian haters,” while Laura and Pa are slightly more nuanced in their views of the Native Americans. (Slightly.)
I’m sure that large portion of the reaction is based on the appearance of the visitor. Ulf touched on the perception (at least in fiction, though I doubt the reality was much different) of Native American visitors, but I also suspect any large group of only men would be suspected more than a moving wagon full of an extended family. And of course, I suspect various missionaries/preachers would get a lot more tolerance.
In fact, this question reminded me of the Johnny Appleseed column from the Cecil Columns of 2023.
Which should fit the time frame and settlement period as suggested by @Dinsdale. Perhaps a slightly more established section of the expansionist era - but the refocus on his preaching work establishes a different class of traveler’s and the expected security risks. In a different vein, I also suspect travelling tinkers and merchants that could do critical repairs and staples that might be otherwise out of reach would be very welcome and given much hospitality.
Using this as a jumping off point, on some level, people may have come to a realization. You can stockpile all you want, but at the end of the day, eventually, you have to sleep. If someone is willing to do you harm, they can help themselves to your home, your property, and your life easily enough by waiting for nightfall. You don’t really have a way to stop them unless and until you’re willing to use deadly force, and I doubt most settlers would have been willing to shoot all passersby on sight. The ones that were probably didn’t last long, as they would quickly have been identified as outlaws.
So in the alternative, the best option really may have been to spare a little something if you can, within reason, and take the opportunity to get to know the stranger just a little while meeting them head on. Might help to let you ascertain their intentions (and decide whether you need to stay alert for a few days).
I can imagine settlers to the frontier hid and buried as much as they could.
I know live stock were often hidden in the woods, part of the year. Hogs, especially.
They had some recourse to thievery.
I don’t know how they determined who was friend on foe.
Who was carrying an infection or who was up to no good. Like kidnapping and/or rape. Or murder.
The frontier was sparsely populated for awhile with white people. Indians had a bad taste in their mouths about settlers and grievances with America.(rightly so).
A frontiersperson had to be prepared to make difficult choices and be extremely lucky.
Reminds me of a visit to one of those historic reenactment towns around the Stroudsburg, PA area we took our kids to (similar to Old Sturbridge Village, MA or Colonial Williamsburg, VA but smaller). I don’t know if it’s true, but the backstory the reenactors laid out for us IIRC was that the gentlemen was a Hessian mercenary who found himself unemployed after the American Revolutionary War. So he acquired a pair of sheers and made a living as a traveling tailor (they traveled because towns back then didn’t have an economic need for full time tailors). He came across what would be his future wife’s home because their family set a candle to welcome travelers to their home as a waystation. He hit it off with the family, made frequent excuses to come by that way and yada yada yada eventually they were married.
So if based on actual customs at the time, it would seem that people tended to travel around a lot of foot or horseback and didn’t automatically murder and/or rob everyone they encountered.
For some reason, we modern people seem less trusting of outsiders and that seems to have gotten worse within my lifetime, ironically, as crime has gone down. I suppose people back in the day didn’t have a steady diet of clickbait news stories, given it took an entire day to print a few pages.
I’ve always been a bit fascinated about how people actually lived in the olden days before all our technology. Just dealing with basic stuff like what happens to your home if you go away for three month trip to Boston or wherever? Or like how frequently would you actually encounter someone on the road?
A frontierspersons didn’t necessarily have bars of gold or excess cash laying around. If they had any valuables I’m sure they would take them on the trip.
If a traveller came by while they were on a trip he/she could just stay there awhile til time to move on. No loss for anyone. Maybe a little less firewood.
Not exactly Rock Stars renting the place just to trash it up.
When it is socially and economically commonplace to be an itinerant [whatever] tradesperson, the folks doing it aren’t outliers. In the modern era, folks trying to eke a living that way are definitely marginalized people. And as such, worthy of more side eye before deciding to trust them.
I recall as kid back in 1960s suburbia that there were still lots of local “guy in a truck” services that plied the streets looking to sharpen your scissors, fix your shoes, etc. These folks weren’t itinerant, but they also didn’t have a storefront. Their truck was their business and their business was their truck. IMO that was sort of a halfway house between the itinerants of the frontier and small villages era, vs the “almost every business has a storefront” era that prevailed just pre-WWW.