Today, we are a very money-oriented people. We commonly think of wealth in terms of accumulated money, and of investments returning a favorable rate of money gains. I noticed this afternoon a TV commercial touting reverse mortgages. One of the talking points was that the equity you own in your home is like a cache of money sitting there doing nothing. So, a reverse mortgage is a means of converting your equity into cash for paying bills, or buying stuff you want. The ad encouraged the thought that having the money in hand makes you feel more wealthy and secure than owning that equity in your home. The same advertiser at one time used to make the statement that you retain full ownership of your home. That always seemed misleading to me, since with a reverse mortgage you are selling your equity back to the mortgage company to get cash; so you really don't retain "full" ownership of your home.

Somehow, I think old-timers like myself would want to look long and hard at alternatives before we start selling back the equity in our home. Old-timers, I think, are more acquainted with thinking of wealth in terms of more substantial things, and not just in terms of available cash flows. Today, the finance companies seem to encourage people to feel well off as long as they have a ready cash flow, even if it means carrying a mountain of credit card debt, or drifting backward on the ownership of their houses.

Before our white settlers began arriving in our Pea Ridge area in the 1830s, the native American tribes in our area were mostly hunting/gathering societies. They tended not to have permanent homes, but roamed wide areas, hunting game, harvesting the berries and fruits they found on the land. Eastern tribes had moved more toward settled agriculture, and tribes such as the Cherokees often cultivated productive farms in the Carolinas and Georgia. For both the hunting/gathering tribes and the settled agriculture tribes, the land was wealth and sustenance. I think our ancestor settlers also had some of this same sense that the land itself is wealth, and not just in its monetary value.

Many, if not most, of our ancestor settlers came to this part of the world for land, land to own, land to farm, land to make a living on. The homesteading legislation of the time meant that land could be obtained by living on it, building on it and making a living using it. The land signified wealth to our ancestors, and not just in money.

For one thing, the land meant potential food production for the family. Most of our ancestors cultivated gardens and truck patches, devoted to producing and storing up food for their families. Even the early grocery stores or general stores had produce for sale because they obtained it from the local growers. There was none of shipping in food from California or Florida or Wisconsin, such as we have today. Local production was the norm. Even grain for bread came from local farms and was milled in local mills on local creeks and streams. A few of the old mill sites are still preserved today. War Eagle Mill comes to mind. But in earlier days, streams such as Big Sugar Creek along the state line between Missouri and Arkansas had numerous water-powered mills providing flour and corn meal for local homes.

Our ancestors also used to see their wealth in terms of the livestock on the land, the beef cattle, milking herds, flocks of chickens and hogs in their pens. My own grandparents moved to Pea Ridge because they were having a hard time making a living in the orchard business which their parents and grandparents had followed. My grandpa bought the farm north of Pea Ridge because he thought he could pay for it by raising and selling hogs. He succeeded to a certain extent, but the 1930s were tough years for any business, and hogs in those years were often beset by cholera and other major problems. Grandpa also kept milk cows, and my Dad decided he would go for the dairy business as he sought to make a living on the farm in the 1940s and 1950s.

Sometimes our ancestors were also hunter/gatherers, as well as being farmers engaged in settled agriculture. They hunted deer for meat and hides, trapped mink and otters, caught fish, and hunted rabbits and squirrels and coons and 'possums as well as dealing with cattle, hogs, chickens, turkeys and guineas on the farm. The wild game was seen as part of the wealth of the land, and was sometimes a significant part of feeding the family.

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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.