The Frontier in American History | Page 8

where
the traders were wont to rest as they took their way to the Indians, left
his Pennsylvania home with his father, and passed down the Great
Valley road to that stream. Learning from a trader of the game and rich
pastures of Kentucky, he pioneered the way for the farmers to that
region. Thence he passed to the frontier of Missouri, where his
settlement was long a landmark on the frontier. Here again he helped to
open the way for civilization, finding salt licks, and trails, and land. His
son was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Rocky
Mountains, and his party are said to have been the first to camp on the

present site of Denver. His grandson, Col. A. J. Boone, of Colorado,
was a power among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, and was
appointed an agent by the government. Kit Carson's mother was a
Boone.[19:1] Thus this family epitomizes the backwoodsman's advance
across the continent.
The farmer's advance came in a distinct series of waves. In Peck's New
Guide to the West, published in Boston in 1837, occurs this suggestive
passage:
Generally, in all the western settlements, three classes, like the waves
of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First comes the pioneer,
who depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly upon the natural
growth of vegetation, called the "range," and the proceeds of hunting.
His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and
his efforts directed mainly to a crop of corn and a "truck patch." The
last is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears,
cucumbers, and potatoes. A log cabin, and, occasionally, a stable and
corn-crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or
"deadened," and fenced, are enough for his occupancy. It is quite
immaterial whether he ever becomes the owner of the soil. He is the
occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as
the "lord of the manor." With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of
swine, he strikes into the woods with his family, and becomes the
founder of a new county, or perhaps state. He builds his cabin, gathers
around him a few other families of similar tastes and habits, and
occupies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little
precarious, or, which is more frequently the case, till the neighbors
crowd around, roads, bridges, and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow
room. The preëmption law enables him to dispose of his cabin and
cornfield to the next class of emigrants; and, to employ his own figures,
he "breaks for the high timber," "clears out for the New Purchase," or
migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same process over.
The next class of emigrants purchase the lands, add field to field, clear
out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put up hewn log
houses with glass windows and brick or stone chimneys, occasionally

plant orchards, build mills, school-houses, court-houses, etc., and
exhibit the picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life.
Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enterprise come. The
settler is ready to sell out and take the advantage of the rise in property,
push farther into the interior and become, himself, a man of capital and
enterprise in turn. The small village rises to a spacious town or city;
substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens,
colleges, and churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks, leghorns, crapes,
and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions
are in vogue. Thus wave after wave is rolling westward; the real
Eldorado is still farther on.
A portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst the general
movement, improve their habits and condition, and rise in the scale of
society.
The writer has traveled much amongst the first class, the real pioneers.
He has lived many years in connection with the second grade; and now
the third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana, Illinois, and
Missouri. Migration has become almost a habit in the West. Hundreds
of men can be found, not over 50 years of age, who have settled for the
fourth, fifth, or sixth time on a new spot. To sell out and remove only a
few hundred miles makes up a portion of the variety of backwoods life
and manners.[21:1]
Omitting those of the pioneer farmers who move from the love of
adventure, the advance of the more steady farmer is easy to understand.
Obviously the immigrant was attracted by the cheap lands of the
frontier, and even the native farmer felt their influence strongly. Year
by year the farmers who lived on soil whose returns were diminished
by unrotated crops were