Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1903-10-10
QUEER RAMAPO
M0uNTA|NEERS.
Pure American Stock Which JnowS
Absolutely No Change in
Years
PEOPLE "SOT" IN THEIR WAYS.
Ienaciously Stick to Old Traditions
And Refuse to Adopt New
Tangled Notions.
specIaI Correspondence.

Special Correspondence
Sndern. n. y. Oct 5,--There be those
fond Of charging on the virtues of
the pure old American stock OF TINS
country who lamont the advent upon
our sacred shores of ever Increasing
hordes of foreigners.
Wen. | have been spending some
weeks in the Eamepo mountain region.
There folk of the same blood, pure
American, have married and intermar-
rled and lived and made love and sick
ened and died for centuries. In the
old graveyards ubon level mountain
aide spots are ancient tombstones whose
names. nearly obIlterated by Time are
The Same az those borne today by
Ramapo men, women ANA babies AZ
night in the southeastern sky the cleo
tric lights from Now York city cast a
pinkIsh orange glow uEon the roofs and
pides OF these peoples homes, yet IN
themselves is not so much electric life
as was IN their ancestors VINO fought IN
the Revolution. I am saro those ReVo-
mtionary ancestors We're not nearly SC
"sot In their ways as these ther de-
scendants
An American type OF physique has
been evolved among them, and 1t IS
gaunt, long lmbed and tawny. The
women seem superior To the men, They
step off with a long. free, noble stride
and get over the ground rapidly under
londe that Il would atagger a well fed
city broker to lit. All mountain folk
walk well and kimberly. one old girl !
saw is eighty-threo years old. She has
little farm and lives upon it alone.
She Keeps COW and grows garden
truck more than enough for her own
wants. She also raises poultry and
finds time besides TO tend beds ana
oiumps Of beautiful old fashioned how
ers, Her face Is tawny and as wrin-
lSled as a cold roast potato yet she 10
straight as an arrow and the eyes look
ing out from under her SuhDonnel are
bright and resoluie.
The women work harder than the
men. This is partly because there Is
not much for the men to do. az least
they think there is not, Thirty years
ago the Hill folk were busy at paying
Industries. There were two trades es-
pecially hand basket making and file
manufacturing The mountain streams
furnished unriValed water power, and
dotted along them were mills where
steel was made into files by hundreds
OF men who got thus good living
Then again women, boys and girls
and frequently men, too, peeled great
ribbons from the wood OF mountain
trees and wove them together with
def fingers into splint baskets of ox-
cellent durability. Slightly and artistic
baskets they were, too, stained with
the colored juices Of mountain plants
These useful and pretty baskets were
made by the thousands and carried IN
great punches that looked like huge
bouquets upon the backs Of their artih-
GERS TO be sold. Everybody Willing to
work could get work, and those We're
the palmy days of the Ramapos.
Seeing what good thing the basket
making industry was, great capitalists
came and bought the ash and hickory
wood and peeled It into slips and wovo
II into baskets by machines that turn-
ed out more finished product In day
than n whole family of mountaineers
could do In a year, Their occupation
was taken from them. A few old wo-
men still make baskets occasionally
and stain and sell them, but they dc
this more from habit than because OF
profit to themselves. Now and then
you still see an aged woman peddline
baskets.
The like thing overlook the file max