The Frontier in American History

by Frederick Jackson Turner

Such in 1701 was the idea of the Virginia tidewater assembly of a frontiersman, and of the frontier towns by which the Old Dominion should spread her population into the upland South. But the "warlike Christian man" who actually came to furnish the firing line for Virginia, was destined to be the Scotch-Irishman and the German with long rifle in place of "fuzee" and "simeter," and altogether too restless to have his continual abode within the space of two hundred acres. Nevertheless there are points of resemblance between this idea of societies settled about a fortified town and the later "stations" of Kentucky.[87:1]

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the engrossing of the lands of lowland Virginia had progressed so far, the practice of holding large tracts of wasteland for reserves in the great plantations had become so common, that the authorities of Virginia reported to the home government that the best lands were all taken up,[87:2] and settlers were passing into North Carolina seeking cheap lands near navigable rivers. Attention was directed also to the Piedmont portions of Virginia, for by this time the Indians were conquered in this region. It was now possible to acquire land by purchase[87:3] at five shillings sterling for fifty acres, as well as by head-rights for importation or settlement, and land speculation soon turned to the new area.

Already the Piedmont had been somewhat explored.[87:4] Even by the middle of the seventeenth century, fur-traders had followed the trail southwest from the James more than four hundred miles to the Catawbas and later to the Cherokees. Col. William Byrd had, as we have seen, not only been absorbing good lands in the lowlands, and defending his post at the falls of the James, like a Count of the Border, but he also engaged in this fur-trade and sent his pack trains along this trail through the Piedmont of the Carolinas,[87:5] and took note of the rich savannas of that region. Charleston traders engaged in rivalry for this trade.

It was not long before cattle raisers from the older settlements, learning from the traders of the fertile plains and peavine pastures of this land, followed the fur-traders and erected scattered "cow-pens" or ranches beyond the line of plantations in the Piedmont. Even at the close of the seventeenth century, herds of wild horses and cattle ranged at the outskirts of the Virginia settlements, and were hunted by the planters, driven into pens, and branded somewhat after the manner of the later ranching on the Great Plains.[88:1] Now the cow-drovers and the cow-pens[88:2] began to enter the uplands. The Indians had by this time been reduced to submission in most of the Virginia Piedmont—as Governor Spotswood[88:3] reported in 1712, living "quietly on our frontiers, trafficking with the Inhabitants."

After the defeat of the Tuscaroras and Yemassees about this time in the Carolinas, similar opportunities for expansion existed there. The cattle drovers sometimes took their herds from range to range; sometimes they were gathered permanently near the pens, finding the range sufficient throughout the year. They were driven to Charleston, or later sometimes even to Philadelphia and Baltimore markets. By the middle of the century, disease worked havoc with them in South Carolina[89:1] and destroyed seven-eighths of those in North Carolina; Virginia made regulations governing the driving of cattle through her frontier counties to avoid the disease, just as in our own time the northern cattlemen attempted to protect their herds against the Texas fever.

Thus cattle raisers from the coast followed the fur-traders toward the uplands, and already pioneer farmers were straggling into the same region, soon to be outnumbered by the tide of settlement that flowed into the region from Pennsylvania.

The descriptions of the uplands by contemporaneous writers are in glowing terms. Makemie, in his "Plain and Friendly Persuasion" (1705), declared "The best, richest, and most healthy part of your Country is yet to be inhabited, above the falls of every River, to the Mountains." Jones, in his "Present State of Virginia" (1724), comments on the convenience of tidewater transportation, etc., but declares that section "not nearly so healthy as the uplands and Barrens which serve for Ranges for Stock," although he speaks less enthusiastically of the savannas and marshes which lay in the midst of the forest areas. In fact, the Piedmont was by no means the unbroken forest that might have been imagined, for in addition to natural meadows, the Indians had burned over large tracts.[89:2] It was a rare combination of woodland and pasture, with clear running streams and mild climate.[89:3]

The occupation of the Virginia Piedmont received a special impetus from the interest which Governor Spotswood took in the frontier. In 1710 he proposed a plan for intercepting the French in their occupation of the interior, by inducing Virginia settlement to proceed along one side of James River only, until this column of advancing pioneers should strike the attenuated line of French posts in the center. In the same year he sent a body of horsemen to the top of the Blue Ridge, where they could overlook the Valley of Virginia.[90:1] By 1714 he became active as a colonizer himself. Thirty miles above the falls of the Rappahannock, on the Rapidan at Germanna,[90:2] he settled a little village of German redemptioners (who in return for having the passage paid agreed to serve without wages for a term of years), to engage in his iron works, also to act as rangers on the frontier. From here, in 1716, with two companies of rangers and four Indians, Governor Spotswood and a band of Virginia gentlemen made a summer picnic excursion of two weeks across the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. Sic juvat transcendere montes was the motto of these Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe, as the governor dubbed them. But they were not the "warlike christian men" destined to occupy the frontier.

Spotswood's interest in the advance along the Rappahannock, probably accounts for the fact that in 1720 Spotsylvania and Brunswick were organized as frontier counties of Virginia.[91:1] Five hundred dollars were contributed by the colony to the church, and a thousand dollars for arms and ammunition for the settlers in these counties. The fears of the French and Indians beyond the high mountains, were alleged as reasons for this advance. To attract settlers to these new counties, they were (1723) exempt from purchasing the lands under the system of head rights, and from payment of quit-rents for seven years after 1721. The free grants so obtained were not to exceed a thousand acres. This was soon extended to six thousand acres, but with provision requiring the settlement of a certain number of families upon the grant within a certain time. In 1729 Spotswood was ordered by the Council to produce "rights" and pay the quit-rents for the 59,786 acres which he claimed in this county.