Pioneer settlers lived in grinding poverty without basic comforts or proper clothing.

Evidence

Work, work, work, is their day and their life. They are thoroughly ungenial, and have that air of suspicion in speaking of every one which is not unusual in the land of their ancestors. Thomas Chalmers is the man’s ecclesiastical hero, in spite of his own severe Puritanism. Their live stock consists of two wretched horses, a fairly good bronco mare, a mule, four badly-bred cows, four gaunt and famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly active habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied on with twine; one side of the bridle is a worn-out strap and the other a rope. They wear boots, but never two of one pair, and never blacked, of course, but no stockings. They think it quite effeminate to sleep under a roof, except during the severest months of the year. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 67

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Consumption-stricken settlers were restored to health by frontier life — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 64; British settlers endured a comfortless, unornamented frontier existence that other peoples improved upon — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 71; People from impoverished conditions do not always recognize their poverty. — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 21 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• British settlers endured frontier discomfort that foreigners improved with elegance. #corroborates (0.95) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 155
• British settlers endured a comfortless, unornamented frontier existence that other peoples improved upon #corroborates (0.92) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 71
• People from impoverished conditions do not always recognize their poverty. #qualifies (0.78) — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 21
• Famine-era Irish immigrants were poorer and entered as unskilled laborers. #complicates (0.75) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 142
• Industrial Revolution life was marked by extraordinary poverty #corroborates (0.74)