Chapter 4

[5:3] Parkman, "Pontiac," ii; Griffis, "Sir William Johnson," p. 6; Simms's "Frontiersmen of New York."

[5:4] Monette, "Mississippi Valley," i, p. 311.

[5:5] Wis. Hist. Cols., xi, p. 50; Hinsdale, "Old Northwest," p. 121; Burke, "Oration on Conciliation," Works (1872 ed.), i, p. 473.

[5:6] Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," and citations there given; Cutler's "Life of Cutler."

[6:1] Scribner's Statistical Atlas, xxxviii, pl. 13; McMaster, "Hist. of People of U. S.," i, pp. 4, 60, 61; Imlay and Filson, "Western Territory of America" (London, 1793); Rochefoucault-Liancourt, "Travels Through the United States of North America" (London, 1799); Michaux's "Journal," in _Proceedings American Philosophical Society_, xxvi, No. 129; Forman, "Narrative of a Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1780-'90" (Cincinnati, 1888); Bartram, "Travels Through North Carolina," etc. (London, 1792); Pope, "Tour Through the Southern and Western Territories," etc. (Richmond, 1792); Weld, "Travels Through the States of North America" (London, 1799); Baily, "Journal of a Tour in the Unsettled States of North America, 1796-'97" (London, 1856); Pennsylvania Magazine of History, July, 1886; Winsor, "Narrative and Critical History of America," vii, pp. 491, 492, citations.

[6:2] Scribner's Statistical Atlas, xxxix.

[6:3] Turner, "Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin" (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series ix), pp. 61 ff.

[7:1] Monette, "History of the Mississippi Valley," ii; Flint, "Travels and Residence in Mississippi," Flint, "Geography and History of the Western States," "Abridgment of Debates of Congress," vii, pp. 397, 398, 404; Holmes, "Account of the U. S."; Kingdom, "America and the British Colonies" (London, 1820); Grund, "Americans," ii, chs. i, iii, vi (although writing in 1836, he treats of conditions that grew out of western advance from the era of 1820 to that time); Peck, "Guide for Emigrants" (Boston, 1831); Darby, "Emigrants' Guide to Western and Southwestern States and Territories"; Dana, "Geographical Sketches in the Western Country"; Kinzie, "Waubun"; Keating, "Narrative of Long's Expedition"; Schoolcraft, "Discovery of the Sources of the Mississippi River," "Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley," and "Lead Mines of the Missouri"; Andreas, "History of Illinois," i, 86-99; Hurlbut, "Chicago Antiquities"; McKenney, "Tour to the Lakes"; Thomas, "Travels Through the Western Country," etc. (Auburn, N. Y., 1819).

[7:2] Darby, "Emigrants' Guide," pp. 272 ff; Benton, "Abridgment of Debates," vii, p. 397.

[7:3] De Bow's _Review_, iv, p. 254; xvii, p. 428.

[7:4] Grund, "Americans," ii, p. 8.

[8:1] Peck, "New Guide to the West" (Cincinnati, 1848), ch. iv; Parkman, "Oregon Trail"; Hall, "The West" (Cincinnati, 1848); Pierce, "Incidents of Western Travel"; Murray, "Travels in North America"; Lloyd, "Steamboat Directory" (Cincinnati, 1856); "Forty Days in a Western Hotel" (Chicago), in _Putnam's Magazine_, December, 1894; Mackay, "The Western World," ii, ch. ii, iii; Meeker, "Life in the West"; Bogen, "German in America" (Boston, 1851); Olmstead, "Texas Journey"; Greeley, "Recollections of a Busy Life"; Schouler, "History of the United States," v, 261-267; Peyton, "Over the Alleghanies and Across the Prairies" (London, 1870); Loughborough, "The Pacific Telegraph and Railway" (St. Louis, 1849); Whitney, "Project for a Railroad to the Pacific" (New York, 1849); Peyton, "Suggestions on Railroad Communication with the Pacific, and the Trade of China and the Indian Islands"; Benton, "Highway to the Pacific" (a speech delivered in the U. S. Senate, December 16, 1850).

[8:2] A writer in _The Home Missionary_ (1850), p. 239, reporting Wisconsin conditions, exclaims: "Think of this, people of the enlightened East. What an example, to come from the very frontier of civilization!" But one of the missionaries writes: "In a few years Wisconsin will no longer be considered as the West, or as an outpost of civilization, any more than Western New York, or the Western Reserve."

[8:3] Bancroft (H. H.), "History of California," "History of Oregon," and "Popular Tribunals"; Shinn, "Mining Camps."

[10:1] See the suggestive paper by Prof. Jesse Macy, "The Institutional Beginnings of a Western State."

[10:2] Shinn, "Mining Camps."

[10:3] Compare Thorpe, in _Annals American Academy of Political and Social Science_, September, 1891; Bryce, "American Commonwealth" (1888), ii, p. 689.

[11:1] Loria, Analisi della Proprieta Capitalista, ii, p. 15.

[11:2] Compare "Observations on the North American Land Company," London, 1796, pp. xv, 144; Logan, "History of Upper South Carolina," i, pp. 149-151; Turner, "Character and Influence of Indian Trade in Wisconsin," p. 18; Peck, "New Guide for Emigrants" (Boston, 1837), ch. iv; "Compendium Eleventh Census," i, p. xl.

[12:1] See _post_, for illustrations of the political accompaniments of changed industrial conditions.

[13:1] But Lewis and Clark were the first to explore the route from the Missouri to the Columbia.

[14:1] "Narrative and Critical History of America," viii, p. 10; Sparks' "Washington Works," ix, pp. 303, 327; Logan, "History of Upper South Carolina," i; McDonald, "Life of Kenton," p. 72; Cong. Record, xxiii, p. 57.

[15:1] On the effect of the fur trade in opening the routes of migration, see the author's "Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin."

[16:1] Lodge, "English Colonies," p. 152 and citations; Logan, "Hist. of Upper South Carolina," i, p. 151.

[16:2] Flint, "Recollections," p. 9.

[16:3] See Monette, "Mississippi Valley," i, p. 344.

[17:1] Coues', "Lewis and Clark's Expedition," i, pp. 2, 253-259; Benton, in Cong. Record, xxiii, p. 57.

[17:2] Hehn, _Das Salz_ (Berlin, 1873).

[17:3] Col. Records of N. C., v, p. 3.

[17:4] Findley, "History of the Insurrection in the Four Western Counties of Pennsylvania in the Year 1794" (Philadelphia, 1796), p. 35.

[19:1] Hale, "Daniel Boone" (pamphlet).

[21:1] Compare Baily, "Tour in the Unsettled Parts of North America" (London, 1856), pp. 217-219, where a similar analysis is made for 1796. See also Collot, "Journey in North America" (Paris, 1826), p. 109; "Observations on the North American Land Company" (London, 1796), pp. xv, 144; Logan, "History of Upper South Carolina."

[22:1] "Spotswood Papers," in Collections of Virginia Historical Society, i, ii.

[23:1] [Burke], "European Settlements" (1765 ed.), ii, p. 200.

[23:2] Everest, in "Wisconsin Historical Collections," xii, pp. 7 ff.

[23:3] Weston, "Documents connected with History of South Carolina," p. 61.

[25:1] See, for example, the speech of Clay, in the House of Representatives, January 30, 1824.

[25:2] See the admirable monograph by Prof. H. B. Adams, "Maryland's Influence on the Land Cessions"; and also President Welling, in Papers American Historical Association, iii, p. 411.

[26:1] Adams' Memoirs, ix, pp. 247, 248.

[28:1] Author's article in _The Ægis_ (Madison, Wis.), November 4, 1892.

[29:1] Compare Roosevelt, "Thomas Benton," ch. i.

[30:1] _Political Science Quarterly_, ii, p. 457. Compare Sumner, "Alexander Hamilton," chs. ii-vii.

[31:1] Compare Wilson, "Division and Reunion," pp. 15, 24.

[32:1] On the relation of frontier conditions to Revolutionary taxation, see Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, ch. iii.

[32:2] I have refrained from dwelling on the lawless characteristics of the frontier, because they are sufficiently well known. The gambler and desperado, the regulators of the Carolinas and the vigilantes of California, are types of that line of scum that the waves of advancing civilization bore before them, and of the growth of spontaneous organs of authority where legal authority was absent. Compare Barrows, "United States of Yesterday and To-morrow"; Shinn, "Mining Camps"; and Bancroft, "Popular Tribunals." The humor, bravery, and rude strength, as well as the vices of the frontier in its worst aspect, have left traces on American character, language, and literature, not soon to be effaced.

[34:1] Debates in the Constitutional Convention, 1829-1830.

[34:2] [McCrady] Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas, i, p. 43; Calhoun's Works, i, pp. 401-406.

[35:1] Speech in the Senate, March 1, 1825; Register of Debates, i, 721.

[36:1] Plea for the West (Cincinnati, 1835), pp. 11 ff.

[37:1] Colonial travelers agree in remarking on the phlegmatic characteristics of the colonists. It has frequently been asked how such a people could have developed that strained nervous energy now characteristic of them. Compare Sumner, "Alexander Hamilton," p. 98, and Adams, "History of the United States," i, p. 60; ix, pp. 240, 241. The transition appears to become marked at the close of the War of 1812, a period when interest centered upon the development of the West, and the West was noted for restless energy. Grund, "Americans," ii, ch. i.

II

THE FIRST OFFICIAL FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY[39:1]

In the Significance of the "Frontier in American History," I took for my text the following announcement of the Superintendent of the Census of 1890:

Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, the westward movement, etc., it cannot therefore any longer have a place in the census reports.

Two centuries prior to this announcement, in 1690, a committee of the General Court of Massachusetts recommended the Court to order what shall be the frontier and to maintain a committee to settle garrisons on the frontier with forty soldiers to each frontier town as a main guard.[39:2] In the two hundred years between this official attempt to locate the Massachusetts frontier line, and the official announcement of the ending of the national frontier line, westward expansion was the most important single process in American history.

The designation "frontier town" was not, however, a new one. As early as 1645 inhabitants of Concord, Sudbury, and Dedham, "being inland townes & but thinly peopled," were forbidden to remove without authority;[40:1] in 1669, certain towns had been the subject of legislation as "frontier towns;"[40:2] and in the period of King Philip's War there were various enactments regarding frontier towns.[40:3] In the session of 1675-6 it had been proposed to build a fence of stockades or stone eight feet high from the Charles "where it is navigable" to the Concord at Billerica and thence to the Merrimac and down the river to the Bay, "by which meanes that whole tract will [be] environed, for the security & safty (vnder God) of the people, their houses, goods & cattel; from the rage & fury of the enimy."[40:4] This project, however, of a kind of Roman Wall did not appeal to the frontiersmen of the time. It was a part of the antiquated ideas of defense which had been illustrated by the impossible equipment of the heavily armored soldier of the early Puritan régime whose corslets and head pieces, pikes, matchlocks, fourquettes and bandoleers, went out of use about the period of King Philip's War. The fifty-seven postures provided in the approved manual of arms for loading and firing the matchlock proved too great a handicap in the chase of the nimble savage. In this era the frontier fighter adapted himself to a more open order, and lighter equipment suggested by the Indian warrior's practice.[40:5]

The settler on the outskirts of Puritan civilization took up the task of bearing the brunt of attack and pushing forward the line of advance which year after year carried American settlements into the wilderness. In American thought and speech the term "frontier" has come to mean the edge of settlement, rather than, as in Europe, the political boundary. By 1690 it was already evident that the frontier of settlement and the frontier of military defense were coinciding. As population advanced into the wilderness and thus successively brought new exposed areas between the settlements on the one side and the Indians with their European backers on the other, the military frontier ceased to be thought of as the Atlantic coast, but rather as a moving line bounding the un-won wilderness. It could not be a fortified boundary along the charter limits, for those limits extended to the South Sea, and conflicted with the bounds of sister colonies. The thing to be defended was the outer edge of this expanding society, a changing frontier, one that needed designation and re-statement with the changing location of the "West."

It will help to illustrate the significance of this new frontier when we see that Virginia at about the same time as Massachusetts underwent a similar change and attempted to establish frontier towns, or "co-habitations," at the "heads," that is the first falls, the vicinity of Richmond, Petersburg, etc., of her rivers.[41:1]

The Virginia system of "particular plantations" introduced along the James at the close of the London Company's activity had furnished a type for the New England town. In recompense, at this later day the New England town may have furnished a model for Virginia's efforts to create frontier settlements by legislation.

An act of March 12, 1694-5, by the General Court of Massachusetts enumerated the "Frontier Towns" which the inhabitants were forbidden to desert on pain of loss of their lands (if landholders) or of imprisonment (if not landholders), unless permission to remove were first obtained.[42:1] These eleven frontier towns included Wells, York, and Kittery on the eastern frontier, and Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough,[42:2] and Deerfield. In March, 1699-1700, the law was reënacted with the addition of Brookfield, Mendon, and Woodstock, together with seven others, Salisbury, Andover,[42:3] Billerica, Hatfield, Hadley, Westfield, and Northampton, which, "tho' they be not frontiers as those towns first named, yet lye more open than many others to an attack of an Enemy."[42:4]

In the spring of 1704 the General Court of Connecticut, following closely the act of Massachusetts, named as her frontier towns, not to be deserted, Symsbury, Waterbury, Danbury, Colchester, Windham, Mansfield, and Plainfield.

Thus about the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century there was an officially designated frontier line for New England. The line passing through these enumerated towns represents: (1) the outskirts of settlement along the eastern coast and up the Merrimac and its tributaries,--a region threatened from the Indian country by way of the Winnepesaukee Lake; (2) the end of the ribbon of settlement up the Connecticut Valley, menaced by the Canadian Indians by way of the Lake Champlain and Winooski River route to the Connecticut; (3) boundary towns which marked the edges of that inferior agricultural region, where the hard crystalline rocks furnished a later foundation for Shays' Rebellion, opposition to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the abandoned farm; and (4) the isolated intervale of Brookfield which lay intermediate between these frontiers.

Besides this New England frontier there was a belt of settlement in New York, ascending the Hudson to where Albany and Schenectady served as outposts against the Five Nations, who menaced the Mohawk, and against the French and the Canadian Indians, who threatened the Hudson by way of Lake Champlain and Lake George.[43:1] The sinister relations of leading citizens of Albany engaged in the fur trade with these Indians, even during time of war, tended to protect the Hudson River frontier at the expense of the frontier towns of New England.

The common sequence of frontier types (fur trader, cattle-raising pioneer, small primitive farmer, and the farmer engaged in intensive varied agriculture to produce a surplus for export) had appeared, though confusedly, in New England. The traders and their posts had prepared the way for the frontier towns,[44:1] and the cattle industry was most important to the early farmers.[44:2] But the stages succeeded rapidly and intermingled. After King Philip's War, while Albany was still in the fur-trading stage, the New England frontier towns were rather like mark colonies, military-agricultural outposts against the Indian enemy.

The story of the border warfare between Canada and the frontier towns furnishes ample material for studying frontier life and institutions; but I shall not attempt to deal with the narrative of the wars. The palisaded meeting-house square, the fortified isolated garrison houses, the massacres and captivities are familiar features of New England's history. The Indian was a very real influence upon the mind and morals as well as upon the institutions of frontier New England. The occasional instances of Puritans returning from captivity to visit the frontier towns, Catholic in religion, painted and garbed as Indians and speaking the Indian tongue,[44:3] and the half-breed children of captive Puritan mothers, tell a sensational part of the story; but in the normal, as well as in such exceptional relations of the frontier townsmen to the Indians, there are clear evidences of the transforming influence of the Indian frontier upon the Puritan type of English colonist.

In 1703-4, for example, the General Court of Massachusetts ordered five hundred pairs of snowshoes and an equal number of moccasins for use in specified counties "lying Frontier next to the Wilderness."[45:1] Connecticut in 1704 after referring to her frontier towns and garrisons ordered that "said company of English and Indians shall, from time to time at the discretion of their chief co[=m]ander, range the woods to indevour the discovery of an approaching enemy, and in especiall manner from Westfield to Ousatunnuck.[45:2] . . . And for the incouragement of our forces gone or going against the enemy, this Court will allow out of the publick treasurie the su[=m]e of five pounds for every mans scalp of the enemy killed in this Colonie."[45:3] Massachusetts offered bounties for scalps, varying in amount according to whether the scalp was of men, or women and youths, and whether it was taken by regular forces under pay, volunteers in service, or volunteers without pay.[45:4] One of the most striking phases of frontier adjustment, was the proposal of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton in the fall of 1703, urging the use of dogs "to hunt Indians as they do Bears." The argument was that the dogs would catch many an Indian who would be too light of foot for the townsmen, nor was it to be thought of as inhuman; for the Indians "act like wolves and are to be dealt with as wolves."[45:5] In fact Massachusetts passed an act in 1706 for the raising and increasing of dogs for the better security of the frontiers, and both Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1708 paid money from their treasury for the trailing of dogs.[46:1]

Thus we come to familiar ground: the Massachusetts frontiersman like his western successor hated the Indians; the "tawney serpents," of Cotton Mather's phrase, were to be hunted down and scalped in accord with law and, in at least one instance by the chaplain himself, a Harvard graduate, the hero of the Ballad of Pigwacket, who

many Indians slew, And some of them he scalp'd when bullets round him flew.[46:2]

Within the area bounded by the frontier line, were the broken fragments of Indians defeated in the era of King Philip's War, restrained within reservations, drunken and degenerate survivors, among whom the missionaries worked with small results, a vexation to the border towns,[46:3] as they were in the case of later frontiers. Although, as has been said, the frontier towns had scattered garrison houses, and palisaded enclosures similar to the neighborhood forts, or stations, of Kentucky in the Revolution, and of Indiana and Illinois in the War of 1812, one difference is particularly noteworthy. In the case of frontiersmen who came down from Pennsylvania into the Upland South along the eastern edge of the Alleghanies, as well as in the more obvious case of the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee, the frontier towns were too isolated from the main settled regions to allow much military protection by the older areas. On the New England frontier, because it was adjacent to the coast towns, this was not the case, and here, as in seventeenth century Virginia, great activity in protecting the frontier was evinced by the colonial authorities, and the frontier towns themselves called loudly for assistance. This phase of frontier defense needs a special study, but at present it is sufficient to recall that the colony sent garrisons to the frontier besides using the militia of the frontier towns; and that it employed rangers to patrol from garrison to garrison.[47:1]

These were prototypes of the regular army post, and of rangers, dragoons, cavalry and mounted police who have carried the remoter military frontier forward. It is possible to trace this military cordon from New England to the Carolinas early in the eighteenth century, still neighboring the coast; by 1840 it ran from Fort Snelling on the upper Mississippi through various posts to the Sabine boundary of Texas, and so it passed forward until to-day it lies at the edge of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.

A few examples of frontier appeals for garrison aid will help to an understanding of the early form of the military frontier. Wells asks, June 30, 1689:

1 That yo{r} Hon{rs} will please to send us speedily twenty Eight good brisk men that may be serviceable as a guard to us whilest we get in our Harvest of Hay & Corn, (we being unable to Defend ourselves & to Do our work), & also to Persue & destroy the Enemy as occasion may require

2 That these men may be compleatly furnished with Arms, Amunition & Provision, and that upon the Countrys account, it being a Generall War.[48:1]

Dunstable, "still weak and unable both to keep our Garrisons and to send out men to get hay for our Cattle; without doeing which wee cannot subsist," petitioned July 23, 1689, for twenty footmen for a month "to scout about the towne while wee get our hay." Otherwise, they say, they must be forced to leave.[48:2] Still more indicative of this temper is the petition of Lancaster, March 11, 1675-6, to the Governor and Council: "As God has made you father over us so you will have a father's pity to us." They asked a guard of men and aid, without which they must leave.[48:3] Deerfield pled in 1678 to the General Court, "unlest you will be pleased to take us (out of your fatherlike pitty) and Cherish us in yo{r} Bosomes we are like Suddainly to breathe out o{r} Last Breath."[48:4]

The perils of the time, the hardships of the frontier towns and readiness of this particular frontier to ask appropriations for losses and wounds,[48:5] are abundantly illustrated in similar petitions from other towns. One is tempted at times to attribute the very frank self-pity and dependent attitude to a minister's phrasing, and to the desire to secure remission of taxes, the latter a frontier trait more often associated with riot than with religion in other regions.

As an example of various petitions the following from Groton in 1704 is suggestive. Here the minister's hand is probably absent: