| Preface | [iii] | |
| Introduction | [v] | |
| I. | Fair Play Territory: Geography and Topography | [1] |
| II. | The Fair Play Settlers: Demographic Factors | [16] |
| III. | The Politics of Fair Play | [30] |
| IV. | The Farmers' Frontier | [47] |
| V. | Fair Play Society | [58] |
| VI. | Leadership and the Problems of the Frontier | [76] |
| VII. | Democracy on the Pennsylvania Frontier | [89] |
| VIII. | Frontier Ethnography and the Turner Thesis | [100] |
| Bibliography | [113] | |
| Index | [119] |
CHAPTER ONE
Fair Play Territory: Geography and Topography
The Colonial period of American history has been of primary concern to the historian because of its fundamental importance in the development of American civilization. What the American pioneers encountered, particularly in the interior settlements, was, basically, a frontier experience. An ethnographic analysis of one part of the Provincial frontier of Pennsylvania indicates the significance of that colonial influence. The "primitive agricultural democracy" of this frontier illustrates the "style of life" which provided the basis for a distinctly "American" culture which emerged from the colonial experience.[1]
While this writer's approach is dominantly Turnerian, this study does not necessarily contend that this Pennsylvania frontier was typical of the general colonial experience, nor that this ethnographic analysis presents in microcosm the development of the American ethos. However, on this farmer's frontier there was adequate evidence of the composite nationality, the self-reliance, the independence, and the nationalistic and rationalistic traits which Turner characterized as American.