The pioneer ideal of creative and competitive individualism, which Turner considered America's best contribution to history and to progress, was an essential of the frontier experience which became an integral part of the American mythology.[28] The "myth of the happy yeoman," as one historian called it, is still revered in American folklore and respected in American politics, whether it is outmoded or not.[29] The primitive nature of frontier life developed this characteristically American trait and the family, the basic organization of social control, promoted it. It was this promotion, with its antipathy to any outside control, which stimulated the Revolution, creating an American nation from an already existing American character.
The individualism of the West Branch frontier is also apparent in the administration of justice. The Fair Play system emphasized the personality of law, by its very title, rather than the organized machinery of justice.[30] Frontier law was personal and direct, resulting in the unchecked development of the individual, a circumstance which Turner considered the significant product of this frontier democracy.[31] Being personal, though, it had meaning for those affected by it, as an anecdote noted earlier indicated.[32]
Individualism has become somewhat of an anachronism in a mass society, but its obsolescence today is part of the current American tragedy. The buoyant self-confidence which it inspired has made much of the American dream a reality. Legislation, it is true, has taken the place of free lands as the means of preserving democracy, but it will be a hollow triumph if that legislation suppresses this essential trait of the American character, its individualism. No intelligent person today would recommend a return to the laissez-faire individualism of the Social Darwinists of the late nineteenth century, but it must be admitted that a society emphasizing the worth of the individual and dedicated to principles of justice and fair play, the banner under which the frontiersmen of the West Branch operated, has genuine merit.
Whether the historian is analyzing old frontiers or charting new ones, the timeless question remains: does man have the intelligence adequate to secure his own survival? The old frontiers, such as the Fair Play territory of the West Branch of the Susquehanna, were free lands of opportunity for a better life, and the history of the westward movement of the American people gives ample proof of their conquest. But the new frontiers are not so clearly marked or so easily conquered. Perhaps a re-examination of the history of the old frontiers can give increased meaning to the problems of the new. This investigation was attempted, in part, to serve such a purpose.
The intelligent solution to the problem of survival for the pioneers of the West Branch Valley was fair play. The ethnography of the Fair Play settlers is the record of the democratic development of an American community under the impact of the new experience of the frontier.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] P. 2.
[2] The Oxford Universal Dictionary (Oxford, 1955), p. 637.
[3] Solon and Elizabeth Buck, The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1939), pp. 431 and 451.
[4] See, for example, Dunaway, A History of Pennsylvania, p. 146, and The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, pp. 159-160; also, Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 306.