The Frontier in American History | Page 6

Indians wrote in blood, and so the remote and unvisited
tribes gave eager welcome to the trader. "The savages," wrote La Salle,
"take better care of us French than of their own children; from us only
can they get guns and goods." This accounts for the trader's power and
the rapidity of his advance. Thus the disintegrating forces of
civilization entered the wilderness. Every river valley and Indian trail
became a fissure in Indian society, and so that society became
honeycombed. Long before the pioneer farmer appeared on the scene,
primitive Indian life had passed away. The farmers met Indians armed
with guns. The trading frontier, while steadily undermining Indian
power by making the tribes ultimately dependent on the whites, yet,

through its sale of guns, gave to the Indian increased power of
resistance to the farming frontier. French colonization was dominated
by its trading frontier; English colonization by its farming frontier.
There was an antagonism between the two frontiers as between the two
nations. Said Duquesne to the Iroquois, "Are you ignorant of the
difference between the king of England and the king of France? Go see
the forts that our king has established and you will see that you can still
hunt under their very walls. They have been placed for your advantage
in places which you frequent. The English, on the contrary, are no
sooner in possession of a place than the game is driven away. The
forest falls before them as they advance, and the soil is laid bare so that
you can scarce find the wherewithal to erect a shelter for the night."
And yet, in spite of this opposition of the interests of the trader and the
farmer, the Indian trade pioneered the way for civilization. The buffalo
trail became the Indian trail, and this became the trader's "trace;" the
trails widened into roads, and the roads into turnpikes, and these in turn
were transformed into railroads. The same origin can be shown for the
railroads of the South, the Far West, and the Dominion of Canada.[14:1]
The trading posts reached by these trails were on the sites of Indian
villages which had been placed in positions suggested by nature; and
these trading posts, situated so as to command the water systems of the
country, have grown into such cities as Albany, Pittsburgh, Detroit,
Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kansas City. Thus civilization
in America has followed the arteries made by geology, pouring an ever
richer tide through them, until at last the slender paths of aboriginal
intercourse have been broadened and interwoven into the complex
mazes of modern commercial lines; the wilderness has been
interpenetrated by lines of civilization growing ever more numerous. It
is like the steady growth of a complex nervous system for the originally
simple, inert continent. If one would understand why we are to-day one
nation, rather than a collection of isolated states, he must study this
economic and social consolidation of the country. In this progress from
savage conditions lie topics for the evolutionist.[15:1]
The effect of the Indian frontier as a consolidating agent in our history
is important. From the close of the seventeenth century various

intercolonial congresses have been called to treat with Indians and
establish common measures of defense. Particularism was strongest in
colonies with no Indian frontier. This frontier stretched along the
western border like a cord of union. The Indian was a common danger,
demanding united action. Most celebrated of these conferences was the
Albany congress of 1754, called to treat with the Six Nations, and to
consider plans of union. Even a cursory reading of the plan proposed by
the congress reveals the importance of the frontier. The powers of the
general council and the officers were, chiefly, the determination of
peace and war with the Indians, the regulation of Indian trade, the
purchase of Indian lands, and the creation and government of new
settlements as a security against the Indians. It is evident that the
unifying tendencies of the Revolutionary period were facilitated by the
previous coöperation in the regulation of the frontier. In this connection
may be mentioned the importance of the frontier, from that day to this,
as a military training school, keeping alive the power of resistance to
aggression, and developing the stalwart and rugged qualities of the
frontiersman.
It would not be possible in the limits of this paper to trace the other
frontiers across the continent. Travelers of the eighteenth century found
the "cowpens" among the canebrakes and peavine pastures of the South,
and the "cow drivers" took their droves to Charleston, Philadelphia, and
New York.[16:1] Travelers at the close of the War of 1812 met droves
of more than a thousand cattle and swine from the interior of Ohio
going to Pennsylvania to fatten for the