University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

The romantic and thrilling story of the
southward and westward migration of successive
waves of transplanted European peoples
throughout the entire course of the eighteenth
century is the history of the growth and evolution
of American democracy. Upon the
American continent was wrought out, through
almost superhuman daring, incredible hardship,
and surpassing endurance, the formation
of a new society. The European rudely confronted
with the pitiless conditions of the wilderness
soon discovered that his maintenance,
indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his
individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in
adapting himself to his environment. The
very history of the human race, from the age
of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened
civilization, is traversed in the Old

Southwest throughout the course of half a
century.

A series of dissolving views thrown upon
the screen, picturing the successive episodes in
the history of a single family as it wended its
way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely
repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians,
toiled painfully up the granite slopes
of the Appalachians, and pitched down into
the transmontane wilderness upon the western
waters, would give to the spectator a vivid conception,
in miniature, of the westward movement.
But certain basic elements in the grand
procession, revealed to the sociologist and the
economist, would perhaps escape his scrutiny.
Back of the individual, back of the family,
even, lurk the creative and formative impulses
of colonization, expansion, and government.
In the recognition of these social and economic
tendencies the individual merges into the
group; the group into the community; the
community into a new society. In this clear
perspective of historic development the spectacular
hero at first sight seems to diminish;

but the mass, the movement, the social force
which he epitomizes and interprets, gain in impressiveness
and dignity.[1]

As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples
swept ever southward and westward, seeking
room for expansion and economic independence,
a series of frontiers was gradually thrust
out toward the wilderness in successive waves
of irregular indentation. The true leader in
this westward advance, to whom less than his
deserts has been accorded by the historian, is
the drab and mercenary trader with the Indians.
The story of his enterprise and of his
adventures begins with the planting of European
civilization upon American soil. In the
mind of the aborigines he created the passion
for the fruits, both good and evil, of the white
man's civilization, and he was welcomed by the
Indian because he also brought the means for
repelling the further advance of that civilization.
The trader was of incalculable service
to the pioneer in first spying out the land and
charting the trackless wilderness. The trail
rudely marked by the buffalo became in time

the Indian path and the trader's "trace"; and
the pioneers upon the westward march, following
the line of least resistance, cut out their
roads along these very routes. It is not too
much to say that had it not been for the trader
—brave, hardy, and adventurous however
often crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral—the
expansionist movement upon the American
continent would have been greatly retarded.

So scattered and ramified were the enterprises
and expeditions of the traders with the
Indians that the frontier which they established
was at best both shifting and unstable. Following
far in the wake of these advance agents
of the civilization which they so often disgraced,
came the cattle-herder or rancher, who
took advantage of the extensive pastures and
ranges along the uplands and foot-hills to raise
immense herds of cattle. Thus was formed
what might be called a rancher's frontier,
thrust out in advance of the ordinary farming
settlements and serving as the first serious barrier
against the Indian invasion. The westward
movement of population is in this respect

a direct advance from the coast. Years before
the influx into the Old Southwest of the tides
of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurous
struck straight westward in the
wake of the fur-trader, and here and there
erected the cattle-ranges beyond the farming
frontier of the piedmont region. The wild
horses and cattle which roamed at will through
the upland barrens and pea-vine pastures were
herded in and driven for sale to the city markets
of the East.

The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau
constituted the real backbone of western
settlement. The pioneering farmers, with the
adventurous instincts of the hunter and the
explorer, plunged deeper and ever deeper into
the wilderness, lured on by the prospect of
free and still richer lands in the dim interior.
Settlements quickly sprang up in the neighborhood
of military posts or rude forts established
to serve as safeguards against hostile attack;
and trade soon flourished between these settlements
and the eastern centers, following the
trails of the trader and the more beaten paths

of emigration. The bolder settlers who ventured
farthest to the westward were held in
communication with the East through their
dependence upon salt and other necessities of
life; and the search for salt-springs in the
virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence
of the desire of the pioneer to shake
off his dependence upon the coast.

The prime determinative principle of the
progressive American civilization of the eighteenth
century was the passion for the acquisition
of land. The struggle for economic independence
developed the germ of American
liberty and became the differentiating principle
of American character. Here was a vast unappropriated
region in the interior of the continent
to be had for the seeking, which served
as lure and inspiration to the man daring
enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It
was in accordance with human nature and the
principles of political economy that this unknown
extent of uninhabited transmontane
land, widely renowned for beauty, richness,
and fertility, should excite grandiose dreams

in the minds of English and Colonials alike.
England was said to be "New Land mad and
everybody there has his eye fixed on this country."[2]
Groups of wealthy or well-to-do individuals
organized themselves into land companies
for the colonization and exploitation of
the West. The pioneer promoter was a powerful
creative force in westward expansion;
and the activities of the early land companies
were decisive factors in the colonization of the
wilderness. Whether acting under the authority
of a crown grant or proceeding on their
own authority, the land companies tended to
give stability and permanence to settlements
otherwise hazardous and insecure.

The second determinative impulse of the
pioneer civilization was wanderlust—the passionately
inquisitive instinct of the hunter, the
traveler, and the explorer. This restless class
of nomadic wanderers was responsible in part
for the royal proclamation of 1763, a secondary
object of which, according to Edmund
Burke, was the limitation of the colonies on
the West, as "the charters of many of our old

colonies give them, with few exceptions, no
bounds to the westward but the South Sea."
The Long Hunters, taking their lives in their
hands, fared boldly forth to a fabled hunter's
paradise in the far-away wilderness, because
they were driven by the irresistible desire of a
Ponce de Leon or a De Soto to find out the
truth about the unknown lands beyond.

But the hunter was not only thrilled with
the passion of the chase and of discovery; he
was intent also upon collecting the furs and
skins of wild animals for lucrative barter and
sale in the centers of trade. He was quick
to make "tomahawk claims" and to assert
"corn rights" as he spied out the rich virgin
land for future location and cultivation. Free
land and no taxes appealed to the backwoodsman,
tired of paying quit-rents to the agents
of wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the
settler speedily followed in the hunter's wake.
In his wake also went many rude and lawless
characters of the border, horse thieves and
criminals of different sorts, who sought to hide
their delinquencies in the merciful liberality

of the wilderness. For the most part, however,
it was the salutary instinct of the homebuilder—the
man with the ax, who made a
little clearing in the forest and built there a
rude cabin that he bravely defended at all risks
against continued assaults—which, in defiance
of every restraint, irresistibly thrust westward
the thin and jagged line of the frontier. The
ax and the surveyor's chain, along with the
rifle and the hunting-knife, constituted the
armorial bearings of the pioneer. With individual
as with corporation, with explorer as
with landlord, land-hunger was the master
impulse of the era.

The various desires which stimulated and
promoted westward expansion were, to be sure,
often found in complete conjunction. The
trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own
advantage, selling him whisky, trinkets, and
firearms in return for rich furs and costly peltries;
yet he was often a hunter himself and
collected great stores of peltries as the result
of his solitary and protracted hunting-expeditions.
The rancher and the herder sought to

exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and
upland, the cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet
the constantly recurring need for fresh pasturage
made him a pioneer also, drove him
ever nearer to the mountains, and furnished
the economic motive for his westward advance.
The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the
new region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the
open prairies, for the cultivation of his crops
and the grazing of his cattle; yet in the intervals
between the tasks of farm life he scoured
the wilderness in search of game and spied
out new lands for future settlement.

This restless and nomadic race, says the
keenly observant Francis Baily, "delight much
to live on the frontiers, where they can enjoy
undisturbed, and free from the control of any
laws, the blessings which nature has bestowed
upon them."[3] Independence of spirit, impatience
of restraint, the inquisitive nature,
and the nomadic temperament—these are the
strains in the American character of the
eighteenth century which ultimately blended
to create a typical democracy. The rolling

of wave after wave of settlement westward
across the American continent, with a reversion
to primitive conditions along the line of
the farthest frontier, and a marked rise in
the scale of civilization at each successive
stage of settlement, from the western limit
to the eastern coast, exemplifies from one
aspect the history of the American people
during two centuries.[4] This era, constituting
the first stage in our national existence,
and productive of a buoyant national character
shaped in democracy upon a free soil,
closed only yesterday with the exhaustion
of cultivable free land, the disappearance of
the last frontier, and the recent death of
"Buffalo Bill." The splendid inauguration of
the period, in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia,
Tennessee, and Kentucky, during the
second half of the eighteenth century, is the
theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old
Southwest.