especially, was markedly different from the practices of other colonies
in the settlement of their back lands. For during most of the period New
England did not use her wild lands, or public domain, as a source of
revenue by sale to individuals or to companies, with the reservation of
quit-rents; nor attract individual settlers by "head rights," or
fifty-acre grants, after the Virginia type; nor did the colonies of the
New England group often make extensive grants to individuals, on the
ground of special services, or because of influence with the government,
or on the theory that the grantee would introduce settlers on his grant.
They donated their lands to groups of men who became town proprietors
for the purpose of establishing communities. These proprietors were
supposed to hold the lands in trust, to be assigned to inhabitants under
restraints to ensure the persistence of Puritan ideals.
During most of the seventeenth century the proprietors awarded lands to
the new-comers in accordance with this theory. But as density of
settlement increased, and lands grew scarce in the older towns, the
proprietors began to assert their legal right to the unoccupied lands
and to refuse to share them with inhabitants who were not of the body of
proprietors. The distinction resulted in class conflicts in the towns,
especially in the eighteenth century,[75:1] over the ownership and
disposal of the common lands.
The new settlements, by a process of natural selection, would afford
opportunity to the least contented, whether because of grievances, or
ambitions, to establish themselves. This tended to produce a Western
flavor in the towns on the frontier. But it was not until the original
ideals of the land system began to change, that the opportunity to make
new settlements for such reasons became common. As the economic and
political ideal replaced the religious and social ideal, in the
conditions under which new towns could be established, this became more
possible.
Such a change was in progress in the latter part of the seventeenth
century and during the eighteenth. In 1713, 1715, and 1727,
Massachusetts determined upon a policy of locating towns in advance of
settlement, to protect her boundary claims. In 1736 she laid out five
towns near the New Hampshire border, and a year earlier opened four
contiguous towns to connect her Housatonic and Connecticut Valley
settlements.[76:1] Grants in non-adjacent regions were sometimes made to
old towns, the proprietors of which sold them to those who wished to
move.
The history of the town of Litchfield illustrates the increasing
importance of the economic factor. At a time when Connecticut feared
that Andros might dispose of the public lands to the disadvantage of the
colony, the legislature granted a large part of Western Connecticut to
the towns of Hartford and Windsor, _pro forma_, as a means of
withdrawing the lands from his hands. But these towns refused to give up
the lands after the danger had passed, and proceeded to sell part of
them.[76:2] Riots occurred when the colonial authorities attempted to
assert possession, and the matter was at length compromised in 1719 by
allowing Litchfield to be settled in accordance with the town grants,
while the colony reserved the larger part of northwestern Connecticut.
In 1737 the colony disposed of its last unlocated lands by sale in lots.
In 1762 Massachusetts sold a group of entire townships in the Berkshires
to the highest bidders.[77:1]
But the most striking illustration of the tendency, is afforded by the
"New Hampshire grants" of Governor Wentworth, who, chiefly in the years
about 1760, made grants of a hundred and thirty towns west of the
Connecticut, in what is now the State of Vermont, but which was then in
dispute between New Hampshire and New York. These grants, while in form
much like other town grants, were disposed of for cash, chiefly to
speculators who hastened to sell their rights to the throngs of
land-seekers who, after the peace, began to pour into the Green Mountain
region.
It is needless to point out how this would affect the movement of
Western settlement in respect to individualistic speculation in public
lands; how it would open a career to the land jobbers, as well as to the
natural leaders in the competitive movement for acquiring the best
lands, for laying out town sites and building up new communities under
"boom" conditions. The migratory tendency of New Englanders was
increased by this gradual change in its land policy; the attachment to a
locality was diminished. The later years showed increasing emphasis by
New England upon individual success, greater respect for the self-made
man who, in the midst of opportunities under competitive conditions,
achieved superiority. The old dominance of town settlement, village
moral police, and traditional class control gave way slowly. Settlement
in communities and rooted Puritan habits and ideals had enduring
influences in the regions settled by New Englanders; but it was in this
Old West, in the years just before the Revolution, that individualism
began to play an important role, along with the traditional habit of
expanding in organized communities.
The opening of the Vermont towns revealed more fully than before, the
capability of New Englanders to become democratic pioneers, under
characteristic frontier conditions. Their economic life was simple and
self-sufficing. They readily adopted lynch law (the use of the "birch
seal" is familiar to readers of Vermont history) to protect their land
titles in the troubled times when these "Green Mountain Boys" resisted
New York's assertion of authority. They later became an independent
Revolutionary state with frontier directness, and in very many respects
their history in the Revolutionary epoch is similar to that of settlers
in Kentucky and Tennessee, both in assertion of the right to independent
self government and in a frontier separatism.[78:1] Vermont may be
regarded as the culmination of the frontier movement which I have been
describing in New England.
By this time two distinct New Englands existed--the one coastal, and
dominated by commercial interests and the established congregational
churches; the other a primitive agricultural area, democratic in
principle, and with various sects increasingly indifferent to the fear
of "innovation" which the dominant classes of the old communities felt.
Already speculative land companies had begun New England settlements in
the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, as well as on the lower Mississippi;
and New England missions among the Indians, such as that at Stockbridge,
were beginning the noteworthy religious and educational expansion of the
section to the west.
That this movement of expansion had been chiefly from south to north,
along the river valleys, should not conceal from us the fact that it was
in essential characteristics a Western movement, especially in the
social traits that were developing. Even the men who lived in the long
line of settlements on the Maine coast, under frontier conditions, and
remote from the older centers of New England, developed traits and a
democratic spirit that relate them closely to the Westerners, in spite
of the fact that Maine is "down east" by preeminence.[79:1]
The frontier of the Middle region in this period of the formation of the
Old West, was divided into two parts, which happen to coincide with the
colonies of New York and Pennsylvania. In the latter colony the trend of
settlement was into the Great Valley, and so on to the Southern uplands;
while the advance of settlement in New York was like that of New
England, chiefly northward, following the line of Hudson River.
The Hudson and the Mohawk constituted the area of the Old West in this
part of the eighteenth century. With them were associated the Wallkill,
tributary to the Hudson, and Cherry Valley near the Mohawk, along the
sources of the Susquehanna. The Berkshires walled the Hudson in to the
east; the Adirondacks and the Catskills to the west. Where the Mohawk
Valley penetrated between the mountainous areas, the Iroquois Indians
were too formidable for advance on such a slender line. Nothing but
dense settlement along the narrow strip of the Hudson, if even that,
could have furnished the necessary momentum for overcoming the Indian
barrier; and this pressure was lacking, for the population was
comparatively sparse in contrast with the task to be performed. What
most needs discussion in the case of New York, therefore, is not the
history of expansion as in other sections, but the absence of expansive
power.
The fur-trade had led the way up the Hudson, and made beginnings of
settlements at strategic points near the confluence of the Mohawk. But
the fur-trader was not followed by a tide of pioneers. One of the most
important factors in restraining density of population in New York, in
retarding the settlement of its frontier, and in determining the
conditions there, was the land system of that colony.
From the time of the patroon grants along the lower Hudson, great
estates had been the common form of land tenure. Rensselaerswyck reached
at one time over seven hundred thousand acres. These great patroon
estates were confirmed by the English governors, who in their turn
followed a similar policy. By 1732 two and one-half million acres were
engrossed in manorial grants.[80:1] In 1764, Governor Colden wrote[80:2]
that three of the extravagant grants contain,
as the proprietors claim, above a million acres each, several
others above 200,000. * * * Although these grants contain a
great part of the province, they are made in trifling
acknowledgements. The far greater part of them still remain
uncultivated, without any benefit to the community, and are
likewise a discouragement to the settling and improving the
lands in the neighborhood of them, for from the uncertainty of
their boundaries, the patentees of these great tracts are
daily enlarging their pretensions, and by tedious and most
expensive law suits, distress and ruin poor families who have
taken out grants near them.
He adds that "the proprietors of the great tracts are not only freed
from the quit-rents, which the other landholders in the province pay,
but by their influence in the assembly are freed from every other public
tax on their lands."
In 1769 it was estimated that at least five-sixths of the inhabitants of
Westchester County lived within the bounds of the great manors
there.[81:1] In Albany County the Livingston manor spread over seven
modern townships, and the great Van Rensselaer manor stretched
twenty-four by twenty-eight miles along the Hudson; while still farther,
on the Mohawk, were the vast possessions of Sir William Johnson.[81:2]
It was not simply that the grants were extensive, but that the policy
of the proprietors favored the leasing rather than the sale of the
lands--frequently also of the stock, and taking payment in shares. It
followed that settlers preferred to go to frontiers where a more liberal
land policy prevailed. At one time it seemed possible that the tide of
German settlement, which finally sought Pennsylvania and the up-country
of the South, might flow into New York. In 1710, Governor Hunter
purchased a tract in Livingston's manor and located nearly fifteen
hundred Palatines on it to produce naval stores.[82:1] But the attempt
soon failed; the Germans applied to the Indians on Schoharie Creek, a
branch of the Mohawk, for a grant of land and migrated there, only to
find that the governor had already granted the land. Again were the
villages broken up, some remaining and some moving farther up the
Mohawk, where they and accessions to their number established the
frontier settlements about Palatine Bridge, in the region where, in the
Revolution, Herkimer led these German frontiersmen to stem the British
attack in the battle of Oriskany. They constituted the most effective
military defense of Mohawk Valley. Still another portion took their way
across to the waters of the Susquehanna, and at Tulpehockon Creek began
an important center of German settlement in the Great Valley of
Pennsylvania.[82:2]
The most important aspect of the history of the movement into the
frontier of New York at this period, therefore, was the evidence which
it afforded that in the competition for settlement between colonies
possessing a vast area of vacant land, those which imposed feudal
tenures and undemocratic restraints, and which exploited settlers, were
certain to lose.
The manorial practice gave a bad name to New York as a region for
settlement, which not even the actual opportunities in certain parts of
the colony could counteract. The diplomacy of New York governors during
this period of the Old West, in securing a protectorate over the Six
Nations and a consequent claim to their territory, and in holding them
aloof from France, constituted the most effective contribution of that
colony to the movement of American expansion. When lands of these tribes
were obtained after Sullivan's expedition in the Revolution (in which
New England soldiers played a prominent part), it was by the New England
inundation into this interior that they were colonized. And it was under
conditions like those prevailing in the later years of the expansion of
settlements in New England itself, that this settlement of interior and
western New York was effected.
The result was, that New York became divided into two distinct peoples:
the dwellers along Hudson Valley, and the Yankee pioneers of the
interior. But the settlement of central and western New York, like the
settlement of Vermont, is a story that belongs to the era in which the
trans-Alleghany West was occupied.
We can best consider the settlement of the share of the Old West which
is located in Pennsylvania as a part of the migration which occupied the
Southern Uplands, and before entering upon this it will be advantageous
to survey that part of the movement toward the interior which proceeded
westward from the coast. First let us observe the conditions at the
eastern edge of these uplands, along the fall line in Virginia, in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, in order that the process and
the significance of the movement may be better understood.
About the time of Bacon's Rebellion, in Virginia, strenuous efforts
were made to protect the frontier line which ran along the falls of the
river, against the attacks of Indians. This "fall line," as the
geographers call it, marking the head of navigation, and thus the
boundary of the maritime or lowland South, runs from the site of
Washington, through Richmond, and on to Raleigh, North Carolina, and
Columbia, South Carolina. Virginia having earliest advanced thus far to
the interior, found it necessary in the closing years of the seventeenth
century to draw a military frontier along this line. As early as 1675 a
statute was enacted,[84:1] providing that paid troops of five hundred
men should be drawn from the midland and most secure parts of the
country and placed on the "heads of the rivers" and other places
fronting upon the Indians. What was meant by the "heads of the rivers,"
is shown by the fact that several of these forts were located either at
the falls of the rivers or just above tidewater, as follows: one on the
lower Potomac in Stafford County; one near the falls of the
Rappahannock; one on the Mattapony; one on the Pamunky; one at the falls
of the James (near the site of Richmond); one near the falls of the
Appomattox, and others on the Blackwater, the Nansemond, and the Accomac
peninsula, all in the eastern part of Virginia.
Again, in 1679, similar provision was made,[84:2] and an especially
interesting act was passed, making _quasi_ manorial grants to Major
Lawrence Smith and Captain William Byrd, "to seate certain lands at the
head [falls] of Rappahannock and James river" respectively. This scheme
failed for lack of approval by the authorities in England.[84:3] But
Byrd at the falls of the James near the present site of Richmond,
Robert Beverley on the Rappahannock, and other frontier commanders on
the York and Potomac, continued to undertake colonial defense. The
system of mounted rangers was established in 1691, by which a
lieutenant, eleven soldiers, and two Indians at the "heads" or falls of
each great river were to scout for enemy,[85:1] and the Indian boundary
line was strictly defined.
By the opening years of the eighteenth century (1701), the assembly of
Virginia had reached the conclusion that settlement would be the best
means of protecting the frontiers, and that the best way of "settling in
co-habitations upon the said land frontiers within this government will
be by encouragements to induce societies of men to undertake the
same."[85:2] It was declared to be inexpedient to have less than twenty
fighting men in each "society," and provision was made for a land grant
to be given to these societies (or towns) not less than 10,000 nor more
than 30,000 acres upon any of the frontiers, to be held in common by the
society. The power of ordering and managing these lands, and the
settling and planting of them, was to remain in the society. Virginia
was to pay the cost of survey, also quit-rents for the first twenty
years for the two-hundred-acre tract as the site of the "co-habitation."
Within this two hundred acres each member was to have a half-acre lot
for living upon, and a right to two hundred acres next adjacent, until
the thirty thousand acres were taken up. The members of the society
were exempt from taxes for twenty years, and from the requirements of
military duty except such as they imposed upon themselves. The
resemblance to the New England town is obvious.
"Provided alwayes," ran the quaint statute, "and it is the true intent
and meaning of this act that for every five hundred acres of land to be
granted in pursuance of this act there shall be and shall be continually
kept upon the said land one christian man between sixteen and sixty
years of age perfect of limb, able and fitt for service who shall alsoe
be continually provided with a well fixed musquett or fuzee, a good
pistoll, sharp simeter, tomahawk and five pounds of good clean pistoll
powder and twenty pounds of sizable leaden bulletts or swan or goose
shott to be kept within the fort directed by this act besides the powder
and shott for his necessary or useful shooting at game. Provided also
that the said warlike christian man shall have his dwelling and
continual abode within the space of two hundred acres of land to be laid
out in a geometricall square or as near that figure as conveniency will
admit," etc. Within two years the society was required to cause a half
acre in the middle of the "co-habitation" to be palisaded "with good
sound pallisadoes at least thirteen foot long and six inches diameter in
the middle of the length thereof, and set double and at least three foot
within the ground."
Such in 1701 was the idea of the Virginia tidewater assembly of a
frontiersman, and of the frontier towns by which the Old Dominion should
spread her population into the upland South. But the "warlike Christian
man" who actually came to furnish the firing line for Virginia, was
destined to be the Scotch-Irishman and the German with long rifle in
place of "fuzee" and "simeter," and altogether too restless to have his
continual abode within the space of two hundred acres. Nevertheless
there are points of resemblance between this idea of societies settled
about a fortified town and the later "stations" of Kentucky.[87:1]
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the engrossing of the lands
of lowland Virginia had progressed so far, the practice of holding large
tracts of wasteland for reserves in the great plantations had become so
common, that the authorities of Virginia reported to the home government
that the best lands were all taken up,[87:2] and settlers were passing
into North Carolina seeking cheap lands near navigable rivers. Attention
was directed also to the Piedmont portions of Virginia, for by this time
the Indians were conquered in this region. It was now possible to
acquire land by purchase[87:3] at five shillings sterling for fifty
acres, as well as by head-rights for importation or settlement, and land
speculation soon turned to the new area.
Already the Piedmont had been somewhat explored.[87:4] Even by the
middle of the seventeenth century, fur-traders had followed the trail
southwest from the James more than four hundred miles to the Catawbas
and later to the Cherokees. Col. William Byrd had, as we have seen, not
only been absorbing good lands in the lowlands, and defending his post
at the falls of the James, like a Count of the Border, but he also
engaged in this fur-trade and sent his pack trains along this trail
through the Piedmont of the Carolinas,[87:5] and took note of the rich
savannas of that region. Charleston traders engaged in rivalry for this
trade.
It was not long before cattle raisers from the older settlements,
learning from the traders of the fertile plains and peavine pastures of
this land, followed the fur-traders and erected scattered "cow-pens" or
ranches beyond the line of plantations in the Piedmont. Even at the
close of the seventeenth century, herds of wild horses and cattle ranged
at the outskirts of the Virginia settlements, and were hunted by the
planters, driven into pens, and branded somewhat after the manner of the
later ranching on the Great Plains.[88:1] Now the cow-drovers and the
cow-pens[88:2] began to enter the uplands. The Indians had by this time
been reduced to submission in most of the Virginia Piedmont--as Governor
Spotswood[88:3] reported in 1712, living "quietly on our frontiers,
trafficking with the Inhabitants."
After the defeat of the Tuscaroras and Yemassees about this time in the
Carolinas, similar opportunities for expansion existed there. The cattle
drovers sometimes took their herds from range to range; sometimes they
were gathered permanently near the pens, finding the range sufficient
throughout the year. They were driven to Charleston, or later sometimes
even to Philadelphia and Baltimore markets. By the middle of the
century, disease worked havoc with them in South Carolina[89:1] and
destroyed seven-eighths of those in North Carolina; Virginia made
regulations governing the driving of cattle through her frontier
counties to avoid the disease, just as in our own time the northern
cattlemen attempted to protect their herds against the Texas fever.
Thus cattle raisers from the coast followed the fur-traders toward the
uplands, and already pioneer farmers were straggling into the same
region, soon to be outnumbered by the tide of settlement that flowed
into the region from Pennsylvania.
The descriptions of the uplands by contemporaneous writers are in
glowing terms. Makemie, in his "Plain and Friendly Persuasion" (1705),
declared "The best, richest, and most healthy part of your Country is
yet to be inhabited, above the falls of every River, to the Mountains."
Jones, in his "Present State of Virginia" (1724), comments on the
convenience of tidewater transportation, etc., but declares that section
"not nearly so healthy as the uplands and Barrens which serve for Ranges
for Stock," although he speaks less enthusiastically of the savannas and
marshes which lay in the midst of the forest areas. In fact, the
Piedmont was by no means the unbroken forest that might have been
imagined, for in addition to natural meadows, the Indians had burned
over large tracts.[89:2] It was a rare combination of woodland and
pasture, with clear running streams and mild climate.[89:3]