The Frontier in American History | Page 5

the United States
Army, and recruited by the daily immigrant ship, moves forward at a
swifter pace and in a different way than the frontier reached by the
birch canoe or the pack horse. The geologist traces patiently the shores
of ancient seas, maps their areas, and compares the older and the newer.
It would be a work worth the historian's labors to mark these various
frontiers and in detail compare one with another. Not only would there
result a more adequate conception of American development and
characteristics, but invaluable additions would be made to the history
of society.
Loria,[11:1] the Italian economist, has urged the study of colonial life
as an aid in understanding the stages of European development,

affirming that colonial settlement is for economic science what the
mountain is for geology, bringing to light primitive stratifications.
"America," he says, "has the key to the historical enigma which Europe
has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history
reveals luminously the course of universal history." There is much truth
in this. The United States lies like a huge page in the history of society.
Line by line as we read this continental page from West to East we find
the record of social evolution. It begins with the Indian and the hunter;
it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the
trader, the pathfinder of civilization; we read the annals of the pastoral
stage in ranch life; the exploitation of the soil by the raising of
unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming
communities; the intensive culture of the denser farm settlement; and
finally the manufacturing organization with city and factory
system.[11:2] This page is familiar to the student of census statistics,
but how little of it has been used by our historians. Particularly in
eastern States this page is a palimpsest. What is now a manufacturing
State was in an earlier decade an area of intensive farming. Earlier yet
it had been a wheat area, and still earlier the "range" had attracted the
cattle-herder. Thus Wisconsin, now developing manufacture, is a State
with varied agricultural interests. But earlier it was given over to almost
exclusive grain-raising, like North Dakota at the present time.
Each of these areas has had an influence in our economic and political
history; the evolution of each into a higher stage has worked political
transformations. But what constitutional historian has made any
adequate attempt to interpret political facts by the light of these social
areas and changes?[12:1]
The Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur-trader, miner,
cattle-raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisherman, each type of industry
was on the march toward the West, impelled by an irresistible attraction.
Each passed in successive waves across the continent. Stand at
Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching
single file--the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian,
the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer--and the
frontier has passed by. Stand at South Pass in the Rockies a century

later and see the same procession with wider intervals between. The
unequal rate of advance compels us to distinguish the frontier into the
trader's frontier, the rancher's frontier, or the miner's frontier, and the
farmer's frontier. When the mines and the cow pens were still near the
fall line the traders' pack trains were tinkling across the Alleghanies,
and the French on the Great Lakes were fortifying their posts, alarmed
by the British trader's birch canoe. When the trappers scaled the
Rockies, the farmer was still near the mouth of the Missouri.
Why was it that the Indian trader passed so rapidly across the continent?
What effects followed from the trader's frontier? The trade was coeval
with American discovery. The Norsemen, Vespuccius, Verrazani,
Hudson, John Smith, all trafficked for furs. The Plymouth pilgrims
settled in Indian cornfields, and their first return cargo was of beaver
and lumber. The records of the various New England colonies show
how steadily exploration was carried into the wilderness by this trade.
What is true for New England is, as would be expected, even plainer
for the rest of the colonies. All along the coast from Maine to Georgia
the Indian trade opened up the river courses. Steadily the trader passed
westward, utilizing the older lines of French trade. The Ohio, the Great
Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Platte, the lines of western
advance, were ascended by traders. They found the passes in the Rocky
Mountains and guided Lewis and Clark,[13:1] Frémont, and Bidwell.
The explanation of the rapidity of this advance is connected with the
effects of the trader on the Indian. The trading post left the unarmed
tribes at the mercy of those that had purchased fire-arms--a truth which
the Iroquois