GEORGE ROGERS CLARK Selected Papers From The 1987 And 1988 George Rogers Clark Trans-Appalachian Frontier History Conferences

In his New Guide to the West, John Mason Peck wrote of our first American archetype, the woodland pioneer or backwoodsman: "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 . . . A log cabin ... and field ..., the timber girdled or 'deadened,' and fenced, are enough for his occupance." [1]

Daniel Boone always has been the ideal personification of the backwoodsman. Even in his waning years he inspired praise: "He is 80 years old, very active, very poor, a hunter and recluse by choice . . . preferring to live meanly and rudely as a hardy hunter and squatter, wanting nothing but what nature gives him and his own hands get him." [2]

Peck defined the pioneer, but a closer examination allows us to distinguish additional features and considerable variety behind the stereotype. One admirer wrote, "They are hardy, active, industrious, and in the employment of the axe, wonderfully strong and dextrous." [3] "Dextrous with the ax," wrote George Flower, one of the founders of the early Illinois settlement on English Prairie, "they built all our first log cabins, and supplied us with venison." [4] The ax certainly stands as an enduring symbol of the woodland pioneer.

Reliance on the hunt, however, attracted much more attention and comment, both favorable and unfavorable. As Elias Fordham noted, "their rifle is their principal means of support." [5] "They get game from the woods," and "skins bring them in whiskey," said another writer. [6] A traveler reporting from Vincennes in 1818 comments, "Hunting seems the everlasting delight of this town." [7]

Such observations did not necessarily mean approval. The same traveler "stopped at a quarter-section farmer's, who," he tells us, "has never cleared nor inclosed any of his land, because sick or idle; being, however, well enough to hunt daily, a sport which, as he can live by it, he likes better than farming; 'and besides,' says he, 'we had at first so many wild beasts about us, that we could not keep pigs, poultry, sheep, nor any thing else.'" [8] The traveler witnessed a similar case: "Armstrong, a hunting farmer, this day shot four deer, while he is too idle to inclose his corn field, which is devoured by cattle and horses, save when a boy watches it to keep them off." [9]

Such notes from easterners may, of course, be off-set by local residents with a different feel for the backwoods situation. W. M. Cockrum, in Pioneer History of Indiana, recalled,

Hunting for game through the long days was the most laborious work that could be done. Often when the snow was melting and the creeks and branches overflowing, the hunter waded through the wet all day, at night returning to his humble home all worn out, many times however, with three to six turkeys tied to his back and again with two to four pairs of venison hams and the hides of the deer. While all were fond of the chase and of necessity had to follow it, yet no labor ever performed by man was more trying on the constitution. [10]

George Flower praised the pioneers' contributions of cabins and game, but also noted, "in a year or two, they moved into less-peopled regions." [11] Indeed, mobility seems to have been the most frequently remarked upon trait of the pioneers. This characteristic follows naturally from the dependence on hunting. "The formation of a settlement in his neighborhood is hurtful to his favourite pursuit," James Flint tells us, "and is the signal for his removing into more remote parts of the wilderness." [12] Such so-called restlessness helps explain the backwoodsman's apparent indifference to title to land. Peck thought that these frontiersmen relied on the various preemption laws to cash in on their "improvements" before moving on. [13] No doubt some of them did, but in 1808 the Register of the Land Office at Kaskaskia reported to the Secretary of the Treasury that almost 200 families in the Illinois country had not secured their right to remain on their claims under the preemption legislation. [14] Some years later an "Anonymous Protester" declared, "It is an undoubted fact that by far a majority of the inhabitants of the Territory are unlawful intruders on the public lands, and that all those living on the Ohio and Miss rivers below Kaskaskia, are with the Exceptions perhaps of 4 or 5 of this description, and that they amount to nearly half of the population of the Territory." [15]

Many of the squatters conformed to the semi-nomadic stereotype, but many others ventured into the wilderness in advance of the land surveys hoping to secure land under some form of preemption. William Faux spoke of squatters who claimed title "by long undisturbed possession." [16] Others felt no need to wait: "We consider ourselves in a truly deplorable [situation] and should an indian War take place (which may God forbid) we leave your honourable Body to Judge of our situation — Sixty miles from any settlement of consequence in the midst of Indian Country and the most exposed part thereof — Disappointed in getting lands on easy and equitable terms in hopes of which we adventured our lives and the lives of our families." [17]

John Mack Faragher observes that many "poor settlers squatted . . . hoping to accumulate the purchase price through their own labor, but, caught in the inflation of land values that accompanied development, many found themselves unable to raise the necessary cash." [17a] One of Faragher's cases, John Pulliam, left Kentucky after 20 years' residence for that reason and moved on to Illinois. But, Faragher concludes, "It is likely that John Pulliam spent his whole life farming without ever owning land." [18]

It seems likely that Faragher has used the word "farming" to embrace both the subsistence farmer and one farming for cash returns. Yet there was an important difference between the two life-styles. The subsistence settler, a stage above the hunter-gatherer, pursued a varied existence, cultivating and hunting while his family gathered the fruits, berries, and seeds of the forest. In the process, they competed with their swine and perhaps their cattle that also foraged in the woods. On the other hand, the would-be commercial farmer attended to the clearing of the forest from his claim and tried to raise a cash crop as soon as possible. These latter pioneers sometimes took wage employment during the winter season. Occasionally such settlers brought with them substantial entourages of family and retainers to launch fairly large-scale estates.

The common conditions upon which the hunter-gatherer and subsistence farmer depended were mobility, isolation, a wooded environment, and free or cheap land. These were the terms under which the backwoodsman could display the traits of freedom and independence that made him "the lord of the manor" and roused such mixed feelings of envy and resentment among his fellow countrymen in the more settled areas.

After the War of 1812, a number of nearly simultaneous developments led to the disappearance of these first archetypical Americans. Under the Treaty of Ghent and its sequels, the Rush-Bagot Agreement and the Convention of 1818, the British virtually abandoned any interest in the Old Northwest. Congressional action closing the border to British traders and confining the Indian trade to American citizens reinforced the British decision. Not the least of the consequences was the end of Indian resistance to further advance of settlement. The Treaty of Ghent obliged the United States to make peace with the Indians and to restore them to their pre-war status. The ink was scarcely dry on the post-war treaties before the notion of removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi and north of present-day Illinois began to take effect. The original proposals envisioned exchanges of land in the Old Northwest for territory west of the Mississippi River or in what is now Wisconsin. The penury of the government and the extended period required to effect the acculturation of the Indians argued in favor of such a policy. By 1825 what had been an ad hoc approach received formal expression by the president and in 1830 the Indian Removal Act became law. Completion of the removal process eliminated one of the major conditions that had defined the life of the old frontier.

In these same years the launching of the steamboat age and the canal era inaugurated the succession of Transportation Revolutions that changed, and continue to change, the face of the nation. These developments affected frontier life in two ways. In the first place, substitution of mechanical for muscle power accelerated the movement of goods and people and capital among the various parts of the country, hastening the evolution of the uncultivated, undeveloped wilderness. Secondly, new modes of transport — canals, turnpikes, plank roads, and the railroad — opened areas of the interior that previously had been inaccessible. Areas without navigable streams now could be incorporated into the economy of the larger region and the nation. Movers from neighboring states largely had populated earlier frontiers. Kentucky served as the staging ground for much of the migration of the Old Northwest. New York and New England contributed pioneers mostly to western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio — and the New Englanders often arrived after stopovers of some duration along the way. The Erie Canal and the emerging steamship service on the Great Lakes meant greater and more direct movement from New England and New York into the newer frontier regions. Both the isolation and the relatively slow tempo of change in the interior came to an end, and with them another aspect of the old frontier life.

The manifold uncertainties of the early nineteenth century seemed removed with the conclusion of the Treaty of Ghent and its sequels. There ensued a boom of western development. According to a report in the Western Spy of Cincinnati ". . . very many places have been purchased, by the practical farmer for agricultural purposes, at rates, which although the fact may astonish our tramontane brethren, and perhaps stagger their credulity, yet afford the most convincing evidence of the unexampled prosperity of this important section of the union." From $40 to $70 per acre repeatedly were paid for choice places, estimated for their intrinsic worth, calculated only for cultivation and bought by practical farmers. Most of these purchases, of course, were on credit, so that when the bubble burst both the debtor and his creditor, usually the federal government, were in deep trouble. The response wrought further changes in pioneering.

Cost had posed a major obstacle to acquiring land from the public domain from the inception of the land system. The Ordinance of 1785 provided for the sale of minimum tracts of townships alternately with townships sold by sections. From an original price of $1 per acre, the Land Act of 1796 doubled it to $2, although it allowed a year's credit with a down payment of half the purchase price. [19] In 1800 and 1804 new legislation provided credit purchases, another snare albeit of a different sort. The paralysis of development induced by the Panic of 1819 evoked measures of relief and reform from Congress. An assortment of relief acts helped credit buyers retain land for which they had paid. The Land Act of 1820 abolished the credit system, cut the per-acre price to $1.25 and reduced the minimum tract to 80 acres. The measure thus introduced the $100 farm to the advancing frontier. In 1832 additional concessions brought on the 40-acre-$50 farm. [20] Those developments brought government land within the reach of almost all aspirants to ownership and thus eliminated another of the conditions of woodland frontier life.

The effect of the foregoing changes opened the way for the disappearance of at least the would-be cash farmer from the ranks of the pioneers perpetually retreating before advancing settlement. The subsistence farmer-hunter and the hunter-gatherer likewise found their niches disappearing.

Coincidentally with the foregoing changes in the frontier economy, another occurred with sweeping effect. The frontier moved out onto the grasslands. The forest that had harbored the game of the hunter-gatherer and had sheltered the swine of the farmer-hunter now lay behind them. The groves and oak openings of the prairies deferred the end for some of the farmer-hunters, but opportunities for the hunter-gatherer disappeared. New types of frontiersmen exploited the new frontier.

A number of elements distinguished the new pioneers from the old. The changes inaugurated by the Transportation Revolutions brought foreign immigrants directly to the frontier, often as laborers on the canal and railroad projects. This, for instance, may explain the origin of rural St. Patrick's Parish, celebrating its sesquicentennial as well as Maguire Road and Irish Lane near my home in rural McHenry County, Illinois. At the same time, transportation facilities made it conceivable for immigrants from Germany — and Poland — to establish frontier colonies. Likewise, assorted utopian and religious groups began to resort to the back country, insulated by space and wilderness from the temptations of corrupt civilization. Settlers from New York and New England now came by boat to the ports of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

Unlike the early pioneers, none of these later groups had any experience in establishing a home and farm in the wilderness. This situation gave rise to a considerable outpouring of "how-to" books advising the tenderfoot on the many aspects of pioneering. [21] Another notable difference between the new prairie pioneer and the old woodland frontiersman appears in the much greater reliance on the money economy for transportation, for the purchase of land, for labor, for yokes of oxen and breaking plows to open the prairie sod, and for subsistence until the land could be brought into production. Coming directly from the organized societies of the East and abroad, the prairie pioneers demanded a more orderly and organized life on the frontier. For example, I have not found any mention of claims associations or "squatters clubs" before the War of 1812. The sources from those earlier days often mention intimidation of bidders at land auctions or of would-be claim jumpers, but these incidents appear to have been ad hoc. The motivation behind the claims associations of the prairie pioneer period proved much more diverse, as Robert Swierenga has shown. [22]

In sum, the changed technological, economic, social, and physical environment of the frontier after the War of 1812 eliminated the ecological niches that the hunter-gatherer and the farmer-hunter pioneer had occupied just long enough to have left us an enduring tradition.

REFERENCES

¹Quoted in Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," The Frontier in American History (1920, 1947): 19-20. See also Michael Williams, "Clearing the United States Forest: The Pivotal Years 1810-1860," Journal of Historical Geography 8, no. 1 (1982): 12: "The pioneer woodsman was the archetypal pioneer . . ." Robert W. McCluggage, "Pioneer Stereotypes," Selected Papers from the 1983 and 1984 George Rogers Clark Trans-Appalachian Frontier History Conferences, ed. Robert J. Holden (1985): 135-145.

²William Faux, "Memorable Days in America, Being a Journal...," in Early Western Travels, ed. R.G. Thwaites: 11; 221. Hereafter Faux will be cited W. Faux, "Journal", EWT 11 p.____. See also Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (1950): 55.

³"Evans' Pedestrious Tour," in EWT 8: 148.

⁴George Flower, "Flower's English Settlement," 67-72 quoted in Solon J. Buck, Illinois in 1818 (1917, 1967): 104.

⁵Elias Fordham, "Personal Narrative" ed. F.A. Ogg, 125, quoted in ibid., 103. See also W. M. Cockrum, Pioneer History of Indiana (1907), 183: "Their business was to hunt game to feed themselves and their families."

⁶Johann David Schoef, Travels in the Confederation 1783-1784 (1788), trans. and ed. A. J. Morrison (1911) quoted in Wayland F. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (1979), 194.

⁷William Faux, "Journal," EWT 11:120.

⁸Ibid., 203.

⁹Ibid., 237.

¹⁰W. M. Cockrum, Pioneer History of Indiana, 188.

¹¹George Flower, "Flower's English Settlement," quoted in Buck, Illinois in 1818, 104.

¹²James Flint, "Letters ...," in EWT 9: 232-3 and 235-6, in Buck, Illinois in 1818, 104-5.

¹³See ref. no. 1.

¹⁴Michael Jones, Register of the District Land Office, Kaskaskia, 25 May 1808, to Albert Gallatin, Secretary of Treasury, in Raymond Hammes, ed., "The Report of 1807, Including Cover Letter and Index," Illinois Libraries 59, no. 5 (May, 1977): 328-29.

¹⁵"Anonymous Protest Against Transition to Second Grade of Government," Territorial Papers of the United States 16: 209-210. Hereafter the Territorial Papers will be cited TPUS

¹⁶William Faux, "Journal," EWT 11: 100-101.

¹⁷"Petition to Congress from Inhabitants of the Scioto," TPUS 2: 638-40, dated 1 Feb. 1798. See also Ninian Edwards, Elvirade, 14 Mar. 1812, to Richard M. Johnson, ibid., 16: 201.

¹⁸John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek (1986), 4-5. See also Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt (1963), 27-28, where another footloose settler's wanderings are traced.

¹⁹B. H. Hibbard, History of Public Land Policies, 37-41, 56-69; R. M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage, 7-17; P.W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, 61-71.

²⁰B. H. Hibbard, History of Public Lands Policies, ch. v, passim; R. M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage, ch. ii, passim; and P. W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, ch. vii, passim.

²¹James W. Savage, Jr., "Do-It-Yourself Books for Illinois Immigrants," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 57 (Spring, 1964): 30-48.

²²Robert Swierenga, Pioneers and Profits: Land Speculation on the Iowa Frontier (1968), passim.