PART IV THE MAKING OF THE SECOND WEST The West is the most American part of America... What Europe is to Asia, what England is to the rest of Europe, what America is to England, that the western States and Territories are to the eastern States. -JAMES BRYCE. CHAPTER XXV. BIRTH IN THE REVOLUTION 292. THE land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi passed from France to England in 1763 (§ 182). Some six thousand French settlers remained in the district, in three nearly equal groups: (1) about Detroit; (2) near Vincennes ; (3) at the "Mississippi towns," Kaskaskia and Cahokia (map after page 242). For several years more these were the only White settlers; and in 1774 parliament annexed the territory, as far south as the Ohio, to the old French province of Quebec (§ 248, note). The whole district had been included in old grants to the seaboard colonies; but as soon as England got control, a Royal Proclamation forbade English-speaking colonists to settle west of the mountains, and instructed colonial governors to make no land-grants there. The government dreaded Indian wars sure to follow the advance of the frontiersman and it was influenced by commercial companies that wished to keep the vast Mississippi Valley as a fur-trade preserve. 293. Even had England remained in control, the attempt to shut out English-speaking settlers was doomed to certain failure. THE "DARK AND BLOODY GROUND" § 294] 245 How the Scotch-Irish and Germans made a first "West" in the long valleys of the Appalachians soon after 1700 has been told (§ 180). A half century or so later their Americanized sons and grandsons were ready to make a greater and truer West in the eastern half of the valley of the Mississippi. Those restless border farmers had begun to feel crowded in their narrow homes. For some years, stray hunters,1 who had ventured as far west as the great river, stirred the Appalachian frontier with romantic stories of the wonders and riches of the vast central basin, and just before the Revolution a few hardy families pushed the line of American settlement across the mountains. : 294. This movement into the second "West" grew all through the Revolution. It is natural for us to think of the years 1775–1783 as given wholly to patriotic war for political independence. But during just those years thousands of earnest Americans turned away from that contest to win industrial independence for themselves and their children beyond the mountains. While the old Atlantic sections were fighting England, a new section sprang into being, fighting Indians and the wilderness. Until the Peace of 1783, settlement penetrated only into the "dark and bloody ground" between the Ohio and its southern branches. This district had long been a famous hunting ground, where Indians of the north and of the south slew the bison and one another. Frequent war parties flitted along its trails, but no tribe claimed it for actual occupation. So here lay the "line of least resistance" to the on-pushing wave of settlement. The next chapter will give the story of this Southwest down to 1789. American settlement did not begin in the land north of the Ohio until after the Revolution. The story of the Northwest will be given in the second chapter following. 1 All boys will delight in Roosevelt's story of "Boone and the Long Hunters" in No-man's Land (Winning of the West, I, ch. vi). CHAPTER XXVI THE SOUTHWEST: SELF-DEVELOPED 295. In 1769, a few Virginia frontiersmen moved their families into the valley of the Watauga, one of the headwaters of the Tennessee. They thought themselves still in Virginia, and in the spring of 1771 they were joined by fugitive Regulators from North Carolina (§ 231). The same summer, however, a surveyor "ran out" the southern boundary of Virginia and found that Watauga lay in territory claimed by North Carolina. That colony was in no condition to care for so distant and inaccessible a section,1 nor would the Watauga settlers submit 1 Communication with Virginia, though difficult enough, was possible, because the long valleys trending to the northeast ran near together as they § 297] WATAUGA 247 to more Carolina injustice. Instead they set up for themselves. In 1772 they adopted a written constitution and became an independent, self-governing community. 296. Two leaders stand forth in this westward movement into Tennessee, James Robertson and John Sevier. Robertson was a mighty hunter who had spied out the land to find a better home for his family. A backwoodsman born, he had learned "letters and to spell" after marriage, from his wife; but he was a natural leader, with splendid qualities of heart and head. Sevier was a "gentleman" of old Huguenot family and of some culture. He was the most dashing figure of the early frontier, a daring Indian fighter and an idolized statesman among his rough companions. 297. The essential thing about Watauga, however, was not its leaders, but the individuality and democracy of the whole population. Immigrants came in little groups of families, those from Carolina by a long detour through Virginia. No wagon roads pointed west; and it was a generation more before the white, canvas-covered wagon (afterward familiar as the "prairie schooner ") became the token of the immigrant. At best, the early Southwest had only dim and rugged trails through the forests ("traces" blazed by the hatchet on trees). Along such trails, men, rifle always in hand, led pack horses loaded with young children and a few necessary supplies; while the women and older children drove the few lean cattle. By 1772 the settlers were grouped about thirteen "stations." A "station" was a stockaded fort of considerable size. One side was formed usually by a close row of log huts, facing in. The remaining sides, with a log "blockhouse" at each corner, were a close fence of hewn "pickets," considerably higher than a man's head, driven firmly into the ground and bound entered that State. But a hundred miles of forest-clad mountains, without a trail fit even for a pack horse, divided Watauga from the nearest settlements in North Carolina. Watauga itself lay with mountains to the west, as well as to the east; but its water communication with the Mississippi justifies us in regarding it as part of the land "west of the mountains." together. Within were supply sheds for a short siege, and sometimes a central and larger blockhouse, a sort of inner "keep." Stockade and blockhouses were loopholed at convenient intervals for rifles, and, except for surprise or fire, such a fort was impreg BOONSBORO (see § 301) IN WINTER. From a print, based upon contemporary accounts. The structure was 250 feet long and 125 feet wide, with heavy gates at the middle of the long sides. nable against any attack without cannon. The fort, however, was only for times of extraordinary danger. Ordinarily, the families lived apart, each in its log cabin upon its own farm. The holdings were usually of from four hundred to a thousand acres; but for many years they remained forest-covered, except for a small stump-dotted clearing," about each cabin. The clearings nearest one another were often separated by miles of dense primitive forest. At an alarm of Indians, all families of a "station" abandoned these scattered homes and sought refuge within the stockade. In more peaceful times, "neighbors," from many miles around, gathered to a "house-raising" for a newcomer or for some one whose old home had been destroyed by fire. The two qualities that especially characterized this new West, says Theodore Roosevelt, were "capacity for self-help and capacity for combination." 298. In the spring of 1772 the men of the thirteen forts gathered at Robertson's station in mass meeting, to organize a government. This meeting adopted Articles of Association,"a written constitution, the first ever adopted west of the mountains, or by a community of American-born freemen." Manhood 1 The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (§ 126) had been formed, of course, by English-nurtured men. |