3.2 SETTLEMENT
Due to their origin, the population was very diverse here, which played an important role in the formation of the specificity of the folk culture in this area. This group was created as a result of a long-term settlement action in the areas of the Sandomierz Forest.
The process of settling the forest dates back to prehistoric times. This is evidenced by numerous archaeological finds confirming the presence of man in these areas as early as the 9th millennium BCE. People living in this era were wandering hunters. Discoveries related to the later period - the Neolithic (40,000 - 17,000 BCE) already prove the beginnings of the formation of settlements, animal breeding and even weaving, as evidenced by excavated spiders. The beginnings of settlement in the Forest were associated with the edges of the river valleys and the ranges of hills that were located in their immediate vicinity. These were the most favorable areas for the then settlers. We are talking about the main, large rivers of the Forest: the Vistula and the San, as well as their tributaries. It is near their shores that settlements began to develop from ancient times. On the other hand, entire vast tracts of forests, except for the strips of land near these rivers, remained a settlement emptiness for centuries.
This state of affairs lasted until modern times, the 12th and 13th centuries, when the individual names of the places mentioned began to appear in various written sources, did not bring about any significant changes in the distribution of settlements in the Forest. In the following centuries, there was an increase in interest in the forest as an ideal settlement site and its slow settlement. New settlements under Polish and German law began to be located in unfavorable places, which is why German settlers began to arrive here.
During the intensified wars waged by the Polish Commonwealth in the 17th century, POW settlement was popular here. It should be noted that the newcomers to previously unknown wild areas were characterized by national or ethnic affiliation. Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Tatars, Swedes and with time also the Jewish population came and settled there. Moreover, the inhabitants of overpopulated central Poland, mainly from Mazovia, migrated here. Despite the full cultural community with the Lasowiaks, they do not consider themselves to be them.
Inhospitable and difficult to travel, the Forest was also a place where fugitives, people who came into conflict with the law, found refuge. They fled to the Forest, which gave them the opportunity to find a shelter, escape from the law enforcement officers pursuing them, and at the same time offered the opportunity to start a new life, although in extremely difficult conditions, but in freedom. And it was indeed extremely heavy. You had to cut down a place to build a house yourself, build it, tear out a place for cultivating fields from the Forest, and what was most difficult: learn to live in the Forest and use its innumerable and inexhaustible riches. Only the most persistent, the most stubborn, those who were not deterred by very hard work and difficult living conditions, succeeded in it. Over the years of coexistence with each other in an inaccessible, secluded area, often in extremely difficult conditions, a peculiar conglomerate has formed by the people living there, called by its inhabitants "Lasowiaki" - the people of the forest. Their everyday life, accompanying rituals and customs, which are a conglomerate of spiritual traces of the newcomers' cultures, created an extremely colorful culture of forest people - Lesiak's.
SOURCE:
J.Dragan, , Podleżajska wieś w świetle badań etnograficznych, [in:] M. Kula, Nasze trwanie na tle sześćsetletniej historii podleżajskiej wsi, Giedlarowa 2010, pp. 119-120,
Fudyna J., Lasowiacy. Wiejski dom mieszkalny w widłach Wisły i Sanu. Forma i Funkcja, Mielec 2014
