migrate. The frontier towns of 1695 were hardly more than suburbs of
Boston. The frontier of a century later included New England's colonies
in Vermont, Western New York, the Wyoming Valley, the Connecticut
Reserve, and the Ohio Company's settlement in the Old Northwest
Territory. By the time of the Civil War the frontier towns of New
England had occupied the great prairie zone of the Middle West and were
even planted in Mormon Utah and in parts of the Pacific Coast. New
England's sons had become the organizers of a Greater New England in the
West, captains of industry, political leaders, founders of educational
systems, and prophets of religion, in a section that was to influence
the ideals and shape the destiny of the nation in ways to which the eyes
of men like Cotton Mather were sealed.[66:1]
FOOTNOTES:
[39:1] Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, April,
1914, xvii, 250-271. Reprinted with permission of the Society.
[39:2] Massachusetts Archives, xxxvi, p. 150.
[40:1] Massachusetts Colony Records, ii, p. 122.
[40:2] _Ibid._, vol. iv, pt. ii, p. 439; Massachusetts Archives, cvii,
pp. 160-161.
[40:3] See, for example, Massachusetts Colony Records, v, 79; Green,
"Groton During the Indian Wars," p. 39; L. K. Mathews, "Expansion of New
England," p. 58.
[40:4] Massachusetts Archives, lxviii, pp. 174-176.
[40:5] Osgood, "American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century," i, p.
501, and citations: cf. Publications of this Society, xii, pp. 38-39.
[41:1] Hening, "Statutes at Large," iii, p. 204: cf. 1 Massachusetts
Historical Collections, v, p. 129, for influence of the example of the
New England town. On Virginia frontier conditions see Alvord and
Bidgood, "First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region," pp. 23-34,
93-95. P. A. Bruce, "Institutional History of Virginia," ii, p. 97,
discusses frontier defense in the seventeenth century. [See chapter iii,
_post_.]
[42:1] Massachusetts Archives, lxx, 240; Massachusetts Province Laws, i,
pp. 194, 293.
[42:2] In a petition (read March 3, 1692-3) of settlers "in Sundry Farms
granted in those Remote Lands Scituate and Lyeing between Sudbury,
Concord, Marlbury, Natick and Sherburne & Westerly is the Wilderness,"
the petitioners ask easement of taxes and extension into the Natick
region in order to have means to provide for the worship of God, and
say:
"Wee are not Ignorant that by reason of the present Distressed Condition
of those that dwell in these Frontier Towns, divers are meditating to
remove themselves into such places where they have not hitherto been
conserned in the present Warr and desolation thereby made, as also that
thereby they may be freed from that great burthen of public taxes
necessarily accruing thereby, Some haveing already removed themselves.
Butt knowing for our parts that wee cannot run from the hand of a
Jealous God, doe account it our duty to take such Measures as may inable
us to the performance of that duty wee owe to God, the King, & our
Familyes" (Massachusetts Archives, cxiii, p. 1).
[42:3] In a petition of 1658 Andover speaks of itself as "a remote
upland plantation" (Massachusetts Archives, cxii, p. 99).
[42:4] Massachusetts Province Laws, i, p. 402.
[43:1] Convenient maps of settlement, 1660-1700, are in E. Channing,
"History of the United States," i, pp. 510-511, ii, end; Avery, "History
of the United States and its People," ii, p. 398. A useful
contemporaneous map for conditions at the close of King Philip's War is
Hubbard's map of New England in his "Narrative" published in Boston,
1677. See also L. K. Mathews, "Expansion of New England," pp. 56-57, 70.
[44:1] Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," pp. 90, 95,
129-132; F. J. Turner, "Indian Trade in Wisconsin," p. 13; McIlwain,
"Wraxall's Abridgement," introduction; the town histories abound in
evidence of the significance of the early Indian traders' posts,
transition to Indian land cessions, and then to town grants.
[44:2] Weeden, _loc. cit._, pp. 64-67; M. Egleston, "New England Land
System," pp. 31-32; Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, pp. 37, 206, 267-268;
Connecticut Colonial Records, vii, p. 111, illustrations of cattle
brands in 1727.
[44:3] Hutchinson, "History" (1795), ii, p. 129, note, relates such a
case of a Groton man; see also Parkman, "Half-Century," vol. i, ch. iv,
citing Maurault, "Histoire des Abenakis," p. 377.
[45:1] Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, pp. 4, 84, 85, 87, 88.
[45:2] Hoosatonic.
[45:3] Connecticut Records, iv, pp. 463, 464.
[45:4] Massachusetts Colony Records, v, p. 72; Massachusetts Province
Laws, i, pp. 176, 211, 292, 558, 594, 600; Massachusetts Archives, lxxi,
pp. 7, 89, 102. Cf. Publications of this Society, vii, 275-278.
[45:5] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 290.
[46:1] Judd, "Hadley," p. 272; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections,
ii, p. 235.
[46:2] Farmer and Moore, "Collections," iii, p. 64. The frontier woman
of the farther west found no more extreme representative than Hannah
Dustan of Haverhill, with her trophy of ten scalps, for which she
received a bounty of L50 (Parkman, "Frontenac," 1898, p. 407, note).
[46:3] For illustrations of resentment against those who protected the
Christian Indians, see F. W. Gookin, "Daniel Gookin," pp. 145-155.
[47:1] For example, Massachusetts Archives, lxx, p. 261; Bailey,
"Andover," p. 179; Metcalf, "Annals of Mendon," p. 63; Proceedings
Massachusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 504-519. Parkman,
"Frontenac" (Boston, 1898), p. 390, and "Half-Century of Conflict"
(Boston, 1898), i, p. 55, sketches the frontier defense.
[48:1] Massachusetts Archives, cvii, p. 155.
[48:2] _Ibid._, cvii, p. 230; cf. 230 a.
[48:3] Massachusetts Archives, lxviii, p. 156.
[48:4] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 189.
[48:5] Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, 46-48, 131, 134, 135 _et passim_.
[50:1] Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, p. 107: cf. Metcalf, "Mendon," p.
130; Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 288. The frontier of Virginia in 1755
and 1774 showed similar conditions: see, for example, the citations to
Washington's Writings in Thwaites, "France in America," pp. 193-195; and
frontier letters in Thwaites and Kellogg, "Dunmore's War," pp. 227, 228
_et passim_. The following petition to Governor Gooch of Virginia, dated
July 30, 1742, affords a basis for comparison with a Scotch-Irish
frontier:
We your pettionours humbly sheweth that we your Honours Loly and
Dutifull Subganckes hath ventred our Lives & all that we have In
settling ye back parts of Virginia which was a veri Great Hassirt &
Dengrous, for it is the Hathins [heathens] Road to ware, which has
proved hortfull to severil of ous that were ye first settlers of these
back woods & wee your Honibill pettionors some time a goo petitioned
your Honnour for to have Commisioned men amungst ous which we your
Honnours most Duttifull subjects thought properist men & men that had
Hart and Curidg to hed us yn time of [war] & to defend your Contray &
your poor Sogbacks Intrist from ye voilince of ye Haithen--But yet agine
we Humbly persume to poot your Honnour yn mind of our Great want of them
in hopes that your Honner will Grant a Captins' Commission to John
McDowell, with follring ofishers, and your Honnours' Complyence in this
will be Great settisfiction to your most Duttifull and Humbil
pettioners--and we as in Duty bond shall Ever pray . . . (Calendar of
Virginia State Papers, i, p. 235).
[51:1] But there is a note of deference in Southern frontier petitions
to the Continental Congress--to be discounted, however, by the
remoteness of that body. See F. J. Turner, "Western State-Making in the
Revolutionary Era" (_American Historical Review_, i, pp. 70, 251). The
demand for remission of taxes is a common feature of the petitions there
quoted.
[51:2] Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 506 ff.
[51:3] _Ibid._, xliii, p. 518.
[52:1] Connecticut Colonial Records, iv, p. 67.
[52:2] In a petition of February 22, 1693-4, Deerfield calls itself the
"most Utmost Frontere Town in the County of West Hampshire"
(Massachusetts Archives, cxiii, p. 57 a).
[52:3] Judd, "Hadley," p. 249.
[52:4] W. D. Schuyler-Lighthall, "Glorious Enterprise," p. 16.
[53:1] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 405.
[54:1] "I want to have your warriours come and see me," wrote Allen to
the Indians of Canada in 1775, "and help me fight the King's Regular
Troops. You know they stand all close together, rank and file, and my
men fight so as Indians do, and I want your warriours to join with me
and my warriours, like brothers, and ambush the Regulars: if you will, I
will give you money, blankets, tomahawks, knives, paint, and any thing
that there is in the army, just like brothers; and I will go with you
into the woods to scout; and my men and your men will sleep together,
and eat and drink together, and fight Regulars, because they first
killed our brothers" (American Archives, 4th Series, ii, p. 714).
[54:2] Compare A. McF. Davis, "The Shays Rebellion a Political
Aftermath" (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, xxi, pp. 58, 62,
75-79).
[55:1] "Land System of the New England Colonies," p. 30.
[55:2] Massachusetts Colony Records, i, p. 167.
[56:1] Compare Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," i,
pp. 270-271; Gookin, "Daniel Gookin," pp. 106-161; and the histories of
Worcester for illustrations of how the various factors noted could be
combined in a single town.
[56:2] F. Merrill, "Amesbury," pp. 5, 50.
[56:3] B. L. Mirick, "Haverhill," pp. 9, 10.
[57:1] Green, "Early Records of Groton," pp. 49, 70, 90.
[57:2] _Ibid._
[57:3] Worcester County History, i, pp. 2, 3.
[57:4] J. G. Metcalf, "Annals of Mendon," p. 85.
[58:1] P. 96. Compare the Kentucky petition of 1780 given in Roosevelt,
"Winning of the West," ii, p. 398, and the letter from that frontier
cited in Turner, "Western State-Making" (_American Historical Review_,
i, p. 262), attacking the Virginia "Nabobs," who hold absentee land
titles. "Let the _great men_," say they, "whom the land belongs to come
and defend it."
[59:1] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, pp. 188-189.
[59:2] These facts are stated on the authority of E. Washburn,
"Leicester," pp. 5-15: compare Major Stephen Sewall to Jeremiah Dummer,
1717, quoted in Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England,"
ii, p. 505, note 4.
[60:1] Compare the Virginia system, Bruce, "Economic History of Virginia
in the Seventeenth Century," ii, pp. 42, 43.
[60:2] For this item I am indebted to our associate, Mr. Andrew McF.
Davis: see his "Colonial Currency Reprints," i, pp. 335-349.
[60:3] Hutchinson, "History of Massachusetts" (1768), ii, pp. 331, 332,
has an instructive comment. A. C. Ford, "Colonial Precedents of Our
National Land System," p. 84; L. K. Mathews, "Expansion of New England,"
pp. 82 ff.
[60:4] J. G. Holland, "Western Massachusetts," p. 197.
[61:1] Jos. Schafer, "Origin of the System of Land Grants for
Education," pp. 25-33.
[62:1] H. D. Hurd (ed.), "History of Worcester County," i, p. 6. The
italics are mine.
[63:1] Egleston, "Land System of the New England Colonies," pp. 39-41.
[63:2] _Ibid._, p. 41.
[63:3] T. Dwight, "Travels" (1821), ii, pp. 459-463.
[66:1] [See F. J. Turner, "Greater New England in the Middle of the
Nineteenth Century," in American Antiquarian Society "Proceedings,"
1920.]
III
THE OLD WEST[67:1]
It is not the oldest West with which this chapter deals. The oldest West
was the Atlantic coast. Roughly speaking, it took a century of Indian
fighting and forest felling for the colonial settlements to expand into
the interior to a distance of about a hundred miles from the coast.
Indeed, some stretches were hardly touched in that period. This conquest
of the nearest wilderness in the course of the seventeenth century and
in the early years of the eighteenth, gave control of the maritime
section of the nation and made way for the new movement of westward
expansion which I propose to discuss.
In his "Winning of the West," Roosevelt dealt chiefly with the region
beyond the Alleghanies, and with the period of the later eighteenth
century, although he prefaced his account with an excellent chapter
describing the backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies and their social
conditions from 1769 to 1774. It is important to notice, however, that
he is concerned with a backwoods society already formed; that he ignores
the New England frontier and its part in the winning of the West, and
does not recognize that there was a West to be won between New England
and the Great Lakes. In short, he is interested in the winning of the
West beyond the Alleghanies by the southern half of the frontier folk.
There is, then, a western area intermediate between the coastal
colonial settlements of the seventeenth century and the trans-Alleghany
settlements of the latter portion of the eighteenth century. This
section I propose to isolate and discuss under the name of the Old West,
and in the period from about 1676 to 1763. It includes the back country
of New England, the Mohawk Valley, the Great Valley of Pennsylvania, the
Shenandoah Valley, and the Piedmont--that is, the interior or upland
portion of the South, lying between the Alleghanies and the head of
navigation of the Atlantic rivers marked by the "fall line."[68:1]
In this region, and in these years, are to be found the beginnings of
much that is characteristic in Western society, for the Atlantic coast
was in such close touch with Europe that its frontier experience was
soon counteracted, and it developed along other lines. It is unfortunate
that the colonial back country appealed so long to historians solely in
connection with the colonial wars, for the development of its society,
its institutions and mental attitude all need study. Its history has
been dealt with in separate fragments, by states, or towns, or in
discussions of special phases, such as German and Scotch-Irish
immigration. The Old West as a whole can be appreciated only by
obliterating the state boundaries which conceal its unity, by
correlating the special and fragmentary studies, and by filling the gaps
in the material for understanding the formation of its society. The
present paper is rather a reconnaissance than a conquest of the field, a
program for study of the Old West rather than an exposition of it.
The end of the period proposed may be placed about 1763, and the
beginning between 1676 and 1700. The termination of the period is marked
by the Peace of Paris in 1763, and the royal proclamation of that year
forbidding settlement beyond the Alleghanies. By this time the
settlement of the Old West was fairly accomplished, and new advances
were soon made into the "Western Waters" beyond the mountains and into
the interior of Vermont and New Hampshire. The isolation of the
transmontane settlements, and the special conditions and doctrines of
the Revolutionary era during which they were formed, make a natural
distinction between the period of which I am to speak and the later
extension of the West.
The beginning of the period is necessarily an indeterminate date, owing
to the different times of colonizing the coastal areas which served as
bases of operations in the westward advance. The most active movements
into the Old West occurred after 1730. But in 1676 New England, having
closed the exhausting struggle with the Indians, known as King Philip's
War, could regard her established settlements as secure, and go on to
complete her possession of the interior. This she did in the midst of
conflicts with the exterior Indian tribes which invaded her frontiers
from New York and Canada during the French and Indian wars from 1690 to
1760, and under frontier conditions different from the conditions of the
earlier Puritan colonization. In 1676, Virginia was passing through
Indian fighting--keenest along the fall line, where the frontier
lay--and also experiencing a social revolt which resulted in the defeat
of the democratic forces that sought to stay the progress of
aristocratic control in the colony.[70:1] The date marks the end of the
period when the Virginia tidewater could itself be regarded as a
frontier region, and consequently the beginning of a more special
interest in the interior.
Let us first examine the northern part of the movement into the back
country. The expansion of New England into the vacant spaces of its own
section, in the period we have chosen for discussion, resulted in the
formation of an interior society which contrasted in many ways with that
of the coast, and which has a special significance in Western history,
in that it was this interior New England people who settled the Greater
New England in central and western New York, the Wyoming Valley, the
Connecticut Reserve of Ohio, and much of the prairie areas of the Old
Northwest. It is important to realize that the Old West included
interior New England.
The situation in New England at the close of the seventeenth century is
indicated by the Massachusetts act of 1694 enumerating eleven towns,
then on the frontier and exposed to raids, none of which might be
voluntarily deserted without leave of the governor and council, on
penalty of loss of their freeholds by the landowners, or fine of other
inhabitants.[70:2]
Thus these frontier settlers were made substantially garrisons, or "mark
colonies." Crowded into the palisades of the town, and obliged in spite
of their poverty to bear the brunt of Indian attack, their hardships are
illustrated in the manly but pathetic letters of Deerfield's minister,
Mr. Williams,[70:3] in 1704. Parkman succinctly describes the general
conditions in these words:[70:4]
The exposed frontier of New England was between two and three
hundred miles long, and consisted of farms and hamlets loosely
scattered through an almost impervious forest. . . . Even in
so-called villages the houses were far apart, because, except
on the seashore, the people lived by farming. Such as were
able to do so fenced their dwellings with palisades, or built
them of solid timber, with loopholes, a projecting upper story
like a block house, and sometimes a flanker at one or more of
the corners. In the more considerable settlements the largest
of these fortified houses was occupied in time of danger by
armed men and served as a place of refuge for the neighbors.
Into these places, in days of alarm, were crowded the outlying settlers,
just as was the case in later times in the Kentucky "stations."
In spite of such frontier conditions, the outlying towns continued to
multiply. Between 1720 and the middle of the century, settlement crept
up the Housatonic and its lateral valley into the Berkshires. About 1720
Litchfield was established; in 1725, Sheffield; in 1730, Great
Barrington; and in 1735 a road was cut and towns soon established
between Westfield and these Housatonic settlements, thus uniting them
with the older extensions along the Connecticut and its tributaries.
In this period, scattered and sometimes unwelcome Scotch-Irish
settlements were established, such as that at Londonderry, New
Hampshire, and in the Berkshires, as well as in the region won in King
Philip's War from the Nipmucks, whither there came also Huguenots.[72:1]
In King George's War, the Connecticut River settlers found their
frontier protection in such rude stockades as those at the sites of
Keene, of Charlestown, New Hampshire (Number Four), Fort Shirley at the
head of Deerfield River (Heath), and Fort Pelham (Rowe); while Fort
Massachusetts (Adams) guarded the Hoosac gateway to the Hoosatonic
Valley. These frontier garrisons and the self-defense of the
backwoodsmen of New England are well portrayed in the pages of
Parkman.[72:2] At the close of the war, settlement again expanded into
the Berkshires, where Lennox, West Hoosac (Williamstown), and Pittsfield
were established in the middle of the century. Checked by the fighting
in the last French and Indian War, the frontier went forward after the
Peace of Paris (1763) at an exceptional rate, especially into Vermont
and interior New Hampshire. An anonymous writer gives a contemporary
view of the situation on the eve of the Revolution:[72:3]
The richest parts remaining to be granted are on the northern
branches of the Connecticut river, towards Crown Point where
are great districts of fertile soil still unsettled. The North
part of New Hampshire, the province of Maine, and the
territory of Sagadahock have but few settlements in them
compared with the tracts yet unsettled. . . .
I should further observe that these tracts have since the
peace [_i. e._, 1763], been settling pretty fast: farms on the
river Connecticut are every day extending beyond the old fort
Dummer, for near thirty miles; and will in a few years reach
to Kohasser which is nearly two hundred miles; not that such
an extent will be one-tenth settled, but the new-comers do not
fix near their neighbors, and go on regularly, but take spots
that please them best, though twenty or thirty miles beyond
any others. This to people of a sociable disposition in Europe
would appear very strange, but the Americans do not regard the
near neighborhood of other farmers; twenty or thirty miles by
water they esteem no distance in matters of this sort; besides
in a country that promises well the intermediate space is not
long in filling up. Between Connecticut river and Lake
Champlain upon Otter Creek, and all along Lake Sacrament
[George] and the rivers that fall into it, and the whole
length of Wood Creek, are numerous settlements made since the
peace.[73:1]
For nearly a hundred years, therefore, New England communities had been
pushed out to new frontiers in the intervals between the almost
continuous wars with the French and Indians. Probably the most
distinctive feature in this frontier was the importance of the community
type of settlement; in other words, of the towns, with their Puritan
ideals in education, morals, and religion. This has always been a matter
of pride to the statesmen and annalists of New England, as is
illustrated by these words of Holland in his "Western Massachusetts,"
commenting on the settlement of the Connecticut Valley in villages,
whereby in his judgment morality, education, and urbanity were
preserved:
The influence of this policy can only be fully appreciated
when standing by the side of the solitary settler's hut in the
West, where even an Eastern man has degenerated to a boor in
manners, where his children have grown up uneducated, and
where the Sabbath has become an unknown day, and religion and
its obligations have ceased to exercise control upon the heart
and life.
Whatever may be the real value of the community type of settlement, its
establishment in New England was intimately connected both with the
Congregational religious organization and with the land system of the
colonies of that section, under which the colonial governments made
grants--not in tracts to individuals, but in townships to groups of
proprietors who in turn assigned lands to the inhabitants without cost.
The typical form of establishing a town was as follows: On application
of an approved body of men, desiring to establish a new settlement, the
colonial General Court would appoint a committee to view the desired
land and report on its fitness; an order for the grant would then issue,
in varying areas, not far from the equivalent of six miles square. In
the eighteenth century especially, it was common to reserve certain lots
of the town for the support of schools and the ministry. This was the
origin of that very important feature of Western society, federal land
grants for schools and colleges.[74:1] The General Courts also made
regulations regarding the common lands, the terms for admitting
inhabitants, etc., and thus kept a firm hand upon the social structure
of the new settlements as they formed on the frontier.