An English traveler gives the following minute picture of the dress and accoutrement of the Carolina backwoodsman.
"Their whole dress is very singular, and not very materially different from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt, somewhat resembling a waggoner's frock, ornamented with a great many fringes, tied round the middle with a broad belt, much decorated also, in which is fastened a tomahawk, an instrument that serves every purpose of defence and convenience; being a hammer at one side and a sharp hatchet at the other; the shot bag and powderhorn, carved with a variety of whimsical figures and devices, hang from their necks over one shoulder; and on their heads a flapped hat, of a reddish hue, proceeding from the intensely hot beams of the sun.
Sometimes they wear leather breeches, made of Indian dressed elk, or deer skins, but more frequently thin trowsers.
On their legs they have Indian boots, or leggings, made of coarse woollen cloth, that either are wrapped round loosely and tied with garters, or laced upon the outside, and always come better than half-way up the thigh.
On their feet they sometimes wear pumps of their own manufacture, but generally Indian moccossons, of their own construction also, which are made of strong elk's, or buck's skin, dressed soft as for gloves or breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over the toe, and lacing from thence round to the fore part of the middle of the ancle, without a seam in them, yet fitting close to the feet, and are indeed perfectly easy and pliant.
Their hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a variety of colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wear them quite white." No less unique and bizarre, though less picturesque, was the dress of the women of the region--in particular of Surry County, North Carolina, as described by General William Lenoir: "The women wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer.

Some had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some of them wore men's hats.

Their hair was commonly clubbed.

Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two women that had on long gowns.

One of these was laced genteelly, and the body of the other was open, and the tail thereof drawn up and tucked in her apron or coat-string." While Daniel Boone was quietly engaged in the pleasant pursuits of the chase, a vast world-struggle of which he little dreamed was rapidly approaching a crisis.