The Conquest of the Old Southwest Part 1

The Conquest of the Old Southwest.

by Archibald Henderson.

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 hards.h.i.+p, and surpa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s, the movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets, gain in impressiveness and dignity.

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 pa.s.sion 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 r.e.t.a.r.ded.

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 s.h.i.+fting 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 const.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sion 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." 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 wanderl.u.s.t--the pa.s.sionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter, the traveler, and the explorer. This restless cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sert "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 a.s.saults--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, const.i.tuted 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." 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. This era, const.i.tuting 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.

THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST

CHAPTER I. The Migration of the Peoples

Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania and other parts of America, who are over-stocked with people and Mike directly from Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards the West, and have got near the mountains.--Gabriel Johnston, Governor of North Carolina, to the Secretary of the Board of Trade, February 15, 1751.

At the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of population had swept inland to the "fall line", the westward boundary of the established settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced by the more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the Blue Ridge. So rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in the interval 1717-32 the population quadrupled in numbers. A map of the colonial settlements in 1725 reveals a narrow strip of populated land along the Atlantic coast, of irregular indentation, with occasional isolated nuclei of settlements further in the interior. The civilization thus established continued to maintain a close and unbroken communication with England and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economic reasons, clung to the coast, they reacted but slowly to the transforming influences of the frontier.. Within a triangle of continental alt.i.tude with its apex in New England, bounded on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Appalachian range, lay the settlements, divided into two zones--tidewater and piedmont. As no break occurred in the great mountain system south of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the difficulties of cutting a pa.s.sage through the towering wall of living green long proved an effective obstacle to the crossing of the grim mountain barrier.

In the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward from the coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking form around such natural centers of attraction as areas of fertile soil, frontier posts, mines, salt-springs, and stretches of upland favorable for grazing. After a time a second advance of settlement was begun in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, running in a southwesterly direction along the broad terraces to the east of the Appalachian Range, which in North Carolina lies as far as two hundred and fifty miles from the sea. The Blue Ridge in Virginia and a belt of pine barrens in North Carolina were hindrances to this advance, but did not entirely check it.

This second streaming of the population thrust into the long, narrow wedge of the piedmont zone a cla.s.s of people differing in spirit and in tendency from their more aristocratic and complacent neighbors to the east.

These settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolina piedmont region--English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and a few French--were the first pioneers of the Old Southwest. From the joint efforts of two strata of population, geographically, socially, and economically distinct--tidewater and piedmont, Old South and New South--originated and flowered the third and greatest movement of westward expansion, opening with the surmounting of the mountain barrier and ending in the occupation and a.s.sumption of the vast medial valley of the continent.

Synchronous with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, significantly enough, was the first planting of Ulster with the English and Scotch. Emigrants from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimes as many as four thousand a year (1625), continued throughout the century to pour into Ulster. "Those of the North of Ireland...,"

as pungently described in 1679 by the Secretary of State, Leoline Jenkins, to the Duke of Ormond, "are most Scotch and Scotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians and phanatiques, l.u.s.ty, able bodied, hardy and stout men, where one may see three or four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday, and all the North of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the popular place of all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and greedy after land." During the quarter of a century after the English Revolution of 1688 and the Jacobite uprising in Ireland, which ended in 1691 with the complete submission of Ireland to William and Mary, not less than fifty thousand Scotch, according to Archbishop Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century there was no considerable emigration to America; and it was first set up as a consequence of English interference with trade and religion. Repressive measures pa.s.sed by the English parliament (1665 1699), prohibiting the exportation from Ire land to England and Scotland of cattle, beef, pork, dairy products, etc., and to any country whatever of manufactured wool, had aroused deep resentment among the Scotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce. This discontent was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having to pay t.i.thes for the support of the established church, were excluded from all civil and military office (1704), while their ministers were made liable to penalties for celebrating marriages.

This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in an exodus to the New World. The princ.i.p.al ports by which the Ulsterites entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware), Philadelphia and Boston. The streams of immigration steadily flowed up the Delaware Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began to arrive in Bucks County. So rapid was the rate of increase in immigration that the number of arrivals soon mounted from a few hundred to upward of six thousand, in a single year (1729); and within a few years this number was doubled. According to the meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a very small element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one fourth of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350,000) in 1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of the Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the disputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers, saying as their excuse when challenged for t.i.tles, that we had solicited for colonists and they had come accordingly." The spirit of these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed in their statement to Logan that it "was against the laws of G.o.d and nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians wanted it to work on and to raise their bread."

The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from ten pounds and two s.h.i.+llings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719 to fifteen pounds ten s.h.i.+llings per hundred acres with a quit-rent of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes of the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward.

In Maryland in 1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterling per hundred acres. Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia free grants of a thousand acres per family were being made. In the North Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord Granville, through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands to settlers at the rate of three s.h.i.+llings proclamation money for six hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and was also making large free grants on the condition of seating a certain proportion of settlers. "Lord Carteret's land in Carolina," says North Carolina's first American historian, "where the soil was cheap, presented a tempting residence to people of every denomination. Emigrants from the north of Ireland, by the way of Pennsylvania, flocked to that country; and a considerable part of North Carolina ... is inhabited by those people or their descendants." From 1740 onward, attracted by the rich lure of cheap and even free lands in Virginia and North Carolina, a tide of immigration swept ceaselessly into the valleys of the Shenandoah, the Yadkin, and the Catawba. The immensity of this mobile, drifting ma.s.s, which sometimes brought "more than 400 families with horse waggons and cattle" into North Carolina in a single year (1752-3), is attested by the fact that from 1732 to 1754, mainly as the result of the Scotch-Irish inundation, the population of North Carolina more than doubled.

The second important racial stream of population in the settlement of the same region was composed of Germans, attracted to this country from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly colored stories of the commercial agents for promoting immigration--the "newlanders," who were thoroughly unscrupulous in their methods and extravagant in their representations--a migration from Germany began in the second decade of the eighteenth century and quickly a.s.sumed alarming proportions.

Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great number were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who in order to pay for their transportation were compelled to pledge themselves to several years of servitude. This economic condition caused the German immigrant, wherever he went, to become a settler of the back country, necessity compelling him to pa.s.s by the more expensive lands near the coast.

For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of various sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen hundred a year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed, Pennsylvania, one third of whose population at the beginning of the Revolution was German, early became the great distributing center for the Germans as well as for the Scotch-Irish. Certainly by 1727 Adam Miller and his fellow Germans had established the first permanent white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. By 1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen families, came from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon River, in the neighborhood of the present Winchester. There is no longer any doubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley sloping to the north was almost entirely settled by Germans."

It was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of the Old Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty Pennsylvania Germans (who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch"

from the incorrect translation of Pennsylvanische Deutsche), began to pour into the piedmont region of North Carolina. In the autumn, after the harvest was in, these ambitious Pennsylvania pioneers would pack up their belongings in wagons and on beasts of burden and head for the southwest, trekking down in the manner of the Boers of South Africa. This movement into the fertile valley lands of the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabated throughout the entire third quarter of the century. Owing to their unfamiliarity with the English language and the solidarity of their instincts, the German settlers at first had little share in government. But they devotedly played their part in the defense of the exposed settlements and often bore the brunt of Indian attack.

The bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionaries sent out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of Count Zinzendorf (1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), are mirrored in the numerous diaries, written in German, happily preserved to posterity in religious archives of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. These simple, earnest crusaders, animated by pure and unselfish motives, would visit on a single tour of a thousand miles the princ.i.p.al German settlements in Maryland and Virginia (including the present West Virginia). Sometimes they would make an extended circuit through North Carolina, South Carolina, and even Georgia, everywhere bearing witness to the truth of the gospel and seeking to carry the most elemental forms of the Christian religion, preaching and prayer, to the primitive frontiersmen marooned along the outer fringe of white settlements. These arduous journeys in the cause of piety place this type of pioneer of the Old Southwest in alleviating contrast to the often relentless and bloodthirsty figure of the rude borderer.

Noteworthy among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journey of Brothers Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmuller (October 12 to December 12, 1749). At the last outpost of civilization, the scattered settlements in Bath and Alleghany counties, these courageous missionaries--feasting the while solely on bear meat, for there was no bread--encountered conditions of almost primitive savagery, of which they give this graphic picture: "Then we came to a house, where we had to lie on bear skins around the fire like the rest.... The clothes of the people consist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes, deer and bear meat. A kind of white people are found here, who live like savages. Hunting is their chief occupation." Into the valley of the Yadkin in December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg and a party of Moravians, accompanied by a surveyor and two guides, for the purpose of locating the one hundred thousand acres of land which had been offered them on easy terms the preceding year by Lord Granville. This journey was remarkable as an ill.u.s.tration of sacrifices willingly made and extreme hards.h.i.+ps uncomplainingly endured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood. In the back country of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found the whole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting. A beautiful site for the projected settlement met their delighted gaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that it had already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's future father-in-law, Morgan Bryan.

On October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by the Rev. Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to trek down to the new-found haven in the Carolina hinterland--"a corner which the Lord has reserved for the Brethren"--in Anson County. Following for the most part the great highway extending from Philadelphia to the Yadkin, over which pa.s.sed the great throng sweeping into the back country of North Carolina--through the Valley of Virginia and past Robert Luhny's mill on the James River--they encountered many hards.h.i.+ps along the way. Because of their "long wagon," they had much difficulty in crossing one steep mountain; and of this experience Brother Grube, with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had told us that this hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcely be able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel this way, had to take the wheels off his wagon and carry it piecemeal to the top, and had been three months on the journey from the Shanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin [Yadkin]."

These men were the highest type of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, inspired with the instinct of homemakers in a land where, if idle rumor were to be credited, "the people lived like wild men never hearing of G.o.d or His Word." In one hand they bore the implement of agriculture, in the other the book of the gospel of Jesus Christ. True faith s.h.i.+nes forth in the simply eloquent words: "We thanked our Saviour that he had so graciously led us. .h.i.ther, and had helped us through all the hard places, for no matter how dangerous it looked, nor how little we saw how we could win through, everything always went better than seemed possible." The promise of a new day--the dawn of the heroic age--rings out in the pious carol of camaraderie at their journey's end:

We hold arrival Lovefeast here, In Carolina land, A company of Brethren true, A little Pilgrim-Band, Called by the Lord to be of those Who through the whole world go, To bear Him witness everywhere, And nought but Jesus know.

CHAPTER II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion

In the year 1746 I was up in the country that is now Anson, Orange and Rowan Counties, there was not then above one hundred fighting men there is now at least three thousand for the most part Irish Protestants and Germans and dailey increasing.--Matthew Rowan, President of the North Carolina Council, to the Board of Trade, June 28, 1753.

The conquest of the West is usually attributed to the ready initiative, the stern self-reliance, and the libertarian instinct of the expert backwoodsmen. These bold, nomadic spirits were animated by an unquenchable desire to plunge into the wilderness in search of an El Dorado at the outer verge of civilization, free of taxation, quit-rents, and the law's restraint. They longed to build homes for themselves and their descendants in a limitless, free domain; or else to fare deeper and deeper into the trackless forests in search of adventure. Yet one must not overlook the fact that behind Boone and pioneers of his stamp were men of conspicuous civil and military genius, constructive in purpose and creative in imagination, who devoted their best gifts to actual conquest and colonization. These men of large intellectual mold-themselves surveyors, hunters, and pioneers--were inspired with the larger vision of the expansionist. Whether colonizers, soldiers, or speculators on the grand scale, they sought to open at one great stroke the vast trans-Alleghany regions as a peaceful abode for mankind.

Two distinct cla.s.ses of society were gradually drawing apart from each other in North Carolina and later in Virginia--the pioneer democracy of the back country and the upland, and the planter aristocracy of the lowland and the tide-water region. From the frontier came the pioneer explorers whose individual enterprise and initiative were such potent factors in the exploitation of the wilderness. From the border counties still in contact with the East came a number of leaders. Thus in the heart of the Old Southwest the two determinative principles already referred to, the inquisitive and the acquisitive instincts, found a fortunate conjunction. The exploratory pa.s.sion of the pioneer, directed in the interest of commercial enterprise, prepared the way for the great westward migration. The warlike disposition of the hardy backwoodsman, controlled by the exercise of military strategy, accomplished the conquest of the trans-Alleghany country.

Fleeing from the traditional bonds of caste and aristocracy in England and Europe, from economic boycott and civil oppression, from religious persecution and favoritism, many worthy members of society in the first quarter of the eighteenth century sought a haven of refuge in the "Quackerthal" of William Penn, with its trustworthy guarantees of free tolerance in religious faith and the benefits of representative self-government. From East Devons.h.i.+re in England came George Boone, the grandfather of the great pioneer, and from Wales came Edward Morgan, whose daughter Sarah became the wife of Squire Boone, Daniel's father. These were conspicuous representatives of the Society of Friends, drawn thither by the roseate representations of the great Quaker, William Penn, and by his advanced views on popular government and religious toleration. Hither, too, from Ireland, whither he had gone from Denmark, came Morgan Bryan, settling in Chester County, prior to 1719; and his children, William, Joseph, James, and Morgan, who more than half a century later gave the name to Bryan's Station in Kentucky, were destined to play important roles in the drama of westward migration. In September, 1734, Michael Finley from County Armagh, Ireland, presumably accompanied by his brother Archibald Finley, settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. According to the best authorities, Archibald Finley was the father of John Finley, or Findlay as he signed himself, Boone's guide and companion in his exploration of Kentucky in 1769-71. To Pennsylvania also came Mordecai Lincoln, great grandson of Samuel Lincoln, who had emigrated from England to Hingham, Ma.s.sachusetts, as early as 1637. This Mordecai Lincoln, who in 1720 settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln, was the father of Sarah Lincoln, who was wedded to William Boone, and of Abraham Lincoln, who married Anne Boone, William's first cousin. Early settlers in Pennsylvania were members of the Hanks family, one of whom was the maternal grandfather of President Lincoln.

No one race or breed of men can lay claim to exclusive credit for leaders.h.i.+p in the hinterland movement and the conquest of the West. Yet one particular stock of people, the Ulster Scots, exhibited with most completeness and picturesqueness a group of conspicuous qualities and att.i.tudes which we now recognize to be typical of the American character as molded by the conditions of frontier life. Cautious, wary, and reserved, these Scots concealed beneath a cool and calculating manner a relentlessness in reasoning power and an intensity of conviction which glowed and burned with almost fanatical ardor. Strict in religious observance and deep in spiritual fervor, they never lost sight of the main chance, combining a shrewd practicality with a wealth of devotion. It has been happily said of them that they kept the Sabbath and everything else they could lay their hands on. In the polity of these men religion and education went hand in hand; and they habitually settled together in communities in order that they might have teachers and preachers of their own choice and persuasion.

In little-known letters and diaries of travelers and itinerant ministers may be found many quaint descriptions and faithful characterizations of the frontier settlers in their habits of life and of the scenes amidst which they labored. In a letter to Edmund Fanning, the cultured Robin Jones, agent of Lord Granville and Attorney-General of North Carolina, summons to view a piquant image of the western border and borderers: "The inhabitants are hospitable in their way, live in plenty and dirt, are stout, of great prowess in manly athletics; and, in private conversation, bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after the Indian manner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and fruitful of strategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid as the ancient Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiors even in their own way of fighting.... [The land] may be truly called the land of the mountains, for they are so numerous that when you have reached the summit of one of them, you may see thousands of every shape that the imagination can suggest, seeming to vie with each other which should raise his lofty head to touch the clouds.... It seems to me that nature has been wanton in bestowing her blessings on that country."

An excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditions in the backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlers in the middle of the century, exhibits in all their barren cheerlessness the hards.h.i.+ps and limitations of life in the wilderness. The father of William Few, the narrator, had trekked down from Maryland and settled in Orange County, some miles east of the little hamlet of Hillsborough. "In that country at that time there were no schools, no churches or parsons, or doctors or lawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns, nor do I recollect during the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical, civil or military, except a justice of the peace, a constable and two or three itinerant preachers.... These people had few wants, and fewer temptations to vice than those who lived in more refined society, though ignorant. They were more virtuous and more happy....

A schoolmaster appeared and offered his services to teach the children of the neighborhood for twenty s.h.i.+llings each per year.... In that simple state of society money was but little known; the schoolmaster was the welcome guest of his pupil, fed at the bountiful table and clothed from the domestic loom....

In that country at that time there was great scarcity of books."

The journals of itinerant ministers through the Valley of Virginia and the Carolina piedmont zone yield precious mementoes of the people, their longing after the things of the spirit, and their pitiful isolation from the regular preaching of the gospel.

These missionaries were true pioneers in this Old Southwest, ardent, dauntless, and heroic--carrying the word into remote places and preaching the gospel beneath the trees of the forest.

In his journal (1755-6), the Rev. Hugh McAden, born in Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, a graduate of Na.s.sau Hall (1753), makes the unconsciously humorous observation that wherever he found Presbyterians he found people who "seemed highly pleased, and very desirous to hear the word"; whilst elsewhere he found either dissension and defection to Baptist principles, or "no appearance of the life of religion." In the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlements in what is now Mecklenburg County, the cradle of American liberty, he found "pretty serious, judicious people" of the stamp of Moses, William, and James Alexander. While traveling in the upper country of South Carolina, he relates with gusto the story of "an old gentleman who said to the Governor of South Carolina, when he was in those parts, in treaty with the Cherokee Indians that 'he had never seen a s.h.i.+rt, been in a fair, heard a sermon, or seen a minister in all his life.' Upon which the governor promised to send him up a minister, that he might hear one sermon before he died." The minister came and preached; and this was all the preaching that had been heard in the upper part of South Carolina before Mr.

McAden's visit.

Such, then, were the rude and simple people in the back country of the Old Southwest--the deliberate and self-controlled English, the aggressive, landmongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh, the thrifty Germans, the debonair French, the impetuous Irish, and the calculating Scotch. The lives they led were marked by independence of spirit, democratic instincts, and a forthright simplicity. In describing the condition of the English settlers in the backwoods of Virginia, one of their number, Doddridge, says: "Most of the articles were of domestic manufacture. There might have been incidentally a few things brought to the country for sale in a primitive way, but there was no store for general supply. The table furniture usually consisted of wooden vessels, either turned or coopered. Iron forks, tin cups, etc., were articles of rare and delicate luxury. The food was of the most wholesome and primitive kind. The richest meat, the finest b.u.t.ter, and best meal that ever delighted man's palate were here eaten with a relish which health and labor only know. The hospitality of the people was profuse and proverbial."