 |
||
 |
||
 |
• HOME • GENERAL STORE • NATURAL HERITAGE • HISTORY, CULTURE & CRAFTSMANSHIP |
||||
|
History
• Weapons of the Ozarks |
|||||
| History Index • Into The Hills • Upper South • Native America • The Irish • The Germans • Civil War • Baldknobbers • Railroads • Ozark Bridges • Ozark Mills • Ozark Theaters • Historic Roads • Cemeteries • Ozark Barns • Springhouses Culture Index • Agriculture • Book Learning • Cooking • Craftsmanship • Faith in the Hills • History • Music • People of the Hills • Storytelling • Tourism |
|||
In times past, the Ozarks were a rough place and it just didn't pay to go around unarmed.
While the region has mellowed considerably in the past hundred years, a strong connection to self-reliance, the craftsmanship of weapons, and the right to bear arms remain.
Fred Morrow, M.D.,...buried the horse, and set up practice in and around Green Forest, in truly backhill Ozarks.
His first case was a gunshot wound, his second and third were knife wounds. Then came an influx of babies, followed by a virtual epidemic of gunshot wounds.
Among the latter were two members of a U.S. marshal's party who had ridden out into the lime-cave hills to haul in Old Illegal, alias Greene Wilson. Four law men rode out. Only two rode back.
The other two returned to the village face downward in a rented farm wagon. Both the wounded had been shot in the buttocks.
That looked very much like the antics of Old Illegal. My doctor uncle tweezered out the bullets; both were home-molded mini balls obviously fired from a muzzle-loader with low powder charges.
When the marshal asked what the young doctor made of it, my medical doctor uncle answered: "I've seen that mold of minie balls before. 'Pears to be where Greene Wilson customarily shoots the federal men.'"
— Pages 18, 19, Wilson, Charles Morrow, The Bodacious Ozarks: True Tales of the Backhills, Pelican Publishing Company, 1959.