The Frontier in American History

Frontier of the Mas

History," I took for my text the following announ

broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discuss

mmittee to settle garrisons on the frontier with forty soldiers to each frontier town as a main guard.[39:2] In the two hundred years between this official attempt to locate the M

h from the Charles "where it is navigable" to the Concord at Billerica and thence to the Merrimac and down the river to the Bay, "by which meanes that whole tract will [be] environed, for the security & safty (vnder God) of the people, their houses, goods & cattel; from the rage & fury of the enimy."[40:4] This project, however, of a kind of Roman Wall did not appeal to the frontiersmen of the time. It was a part of the antiquated ideas of defense which had been illustrated by the impossible equipm

ady evident that the frontier of settlement and the frontier of military defense were coinciding. As population advanced into the wilderness and thus successively brought new exposed areas between the settlements on the one side and the Indians with their European backers on the other, the military frontier ceased to be thought of as the Atlantic coast, but rather as a mov

time as Massachusetts underwent a similar change and attempted to establish frontier towns, or "co-habitation

any's activity had furnished a type for the New England town. In recompense, at this later day the New Eng

obtained.[42:1] These eleven frontier towns included Wells, York, and Kittery on the eastern frontier, and Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough,[42:2] and Deerfield. In March, 1699-1700, the law was re?nacted with the addition of Bro

he act of Massachusetts, named as her frontier towns, not to be deserted, S

utaries,-a region threatened from the Indian country by way of the Winnepesaukee Lake; (2) the end of the ribbon of settlement up the Connecticut Valley, menaced by the Canadian Indians by way of the Lake Champlain and Winooski River route to the Connecticut; (3) boundary towns which marked the ed

menaced the Mohawk, and against the French and the Canadian Indians, who threatened the Hudson by way of Lake Champlain and Lake George.[43:1] The sinister relations of leading cit

nfusedly, in New England. The traders and their posts had prepared the way for the frontier towns,[44:1] and the cattle industry was most important to the early farmers.[44:2] But the stages succeeded rapidly a

atures of New England's history. The Indian was a very real influence upon the mind and morals as well as upon the institutions of frontier New England. The occasional instances of Puritans returning from captivity to visit the frontier towns, Catholic in religion, painted and garbed as Indians and speaking the Indian tongu

incouragement of our forces gone or going against the enemy, this Court will allow out of the publick treasurie the su[=m]e of five pounds for every mans scalp of the enemy killed in this Colonie."[45:3] Massachusetts offered bounties for scalps, varying in amount according to whether the scalp was of men, or women and youths, and whether it was taken by regular forces under pay, volunteers in service, or volunteers without pay.[45:4] One of the most striking phases of frontier adjustment, was the proposal of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of No

the "tawney serpents," of Cotton Mather's phrase, were to be hunted down and scalped in accord with law and,

ndians

scalp'd when bullets

the Revolution, and of Indiana and Illinois in the War of 1812, one difference is particularly noteworthy. In the case of frontiersmen who came down from Pennsylvania into the Upland South along the eastern edge of the Alleghanies, as well as in the more obvious case of the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee, the frontier towns were too isolated from the main settled regions to allow much military protection by the older areas. On the New England frontier, because it was adjacent to t

ible to trace this military cordon from New England to the Carolinas early in the eighteenth century, still neighboring the coast; by 1840 it ran from Fort Snelling on

d will help to an understanding of the early form

iceable as a guard to us whilest we get in our Harvest of Hay & Corn, (we being unable to Def

h Arms, Amunition & Provision, and that upon the

erwise, they say, they must be forced to leave.[48:2] Still more indicative of this temper is the petition of Lancaster, March 11, 1675-6, to the Governor and Council: "As God has made you father over us so you will have a father's pity to us." They asked a gu

bundantly illustrated in similar petitions from other towns. One is tempted at times to attribute the very frank self-pity and dependent attitude to a ministe

lowing from Groton in 1704 is suggestive.

by wofull experiants we haue falt both formarly and of late to our grat damidg & discoridgment and espashaly this last yere hauing lost so many parsons som killed som captauated and som remoued

haue got our brad with the parel of our liues & allso broght uery low by so grat a charg of bilding garisons & fortefycations by ordur of athorety & thar is saural of our Inhabitants ramoued out of town & others are prouiding to remoue, axcapt somthing be don for our Incoridgment for we are so few & so por that we canot pay two ministors nathar ar we wiling to liue without any we spand so much time in waching and warding that we can doe but litel els & truly we haue liued allmost 2 yers more like soulders then other wi

hip to contribute also to the taxes of the province while they helped to protect the exposed frontier. In addition there were grievan

rsmen,[51:1] and indeed not wholly warranted by the facts. Reading carefully, we find that, however prudently phrased, the petitions are in fact complaints against taxation; demands for expenditur

a little wilful. Inclined to doe when and how they please or not at all."[51:2] Saltonstall writes from Haverhill about the same time regarding his ill success in recruiting: "I will never plead for an Haverhill man more," and he begs th

River,[52:1] she showed a realization that the Deerfield people, who were "in a sense in the enemy's Mouth almost," as Pynchon wrote, constituted her own frontier[52:2] and that the facts of geography were more compelling than arbitrary colonial boundaries. Thereby she also took a step that helped to break down provincial antagonisms. When in 1689 Massachusetts and Connecticut sent agents to Albany to join with New York in ma

n frontier which skirted the Maine coast was of great importance, for it imparted a western tone to the life and characteristics of the Maine people which endures to this day, and it was one line of advance for New England toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence, leading again and again to diplomatic negotiations with the powers that held that river. The line of

t convenient Place on the Lands called the Equivilant Lands, & to post in it forty Able Men, English & Western Indians, to be employed in Scouting at a Good Distance up

not long before Fort Dummer replaced "the Block House

e advance of the frontier. Canada delenda est became the rallying cry in New England as well as in New York, and combined diplomatic pressure and military expeditions followed in the French and I

for political control by it? Were there evidences of antagonism between the frontier and the settled, property-holding classes of the coast? Restless democracy, resentfulness over taxation and control, and recriminations between the Western pio

ing new Puritan towns by free grants of land made in advance to approved settlers. This description does not completely fit the case. That there was an economic interest on the part of absentee proprietors, and that men of political influence with the government were often among the grantees seems also to be true. Melville Egleston s

ere the town limits were extensive, spreading out to the good lands of the outskirts, beyond easy access to the meeting-house, and then asking recognition as a separate town. In s

tlers finally to secure the assent of the Court. This could be facilitated by a grant to leading men having political influence with the magistrates. The complaints of absentee proprietors which find expression in the frontier petitions of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century seems to indica

a dozen proprietors including such men as Mr. Bradstreet and the younger Dudley, only two of whom actually lived and died in Salisbury.[56:2] Amesbury was set off from Salisbury by division, one half of the signers of the agreement signing by mark. Haverhill was first seated in 1641, following petitions from Mr. Ward, the Ipswich minister,

ist in paying the rate, and in 1679 the General Court had ordered non-residents having land at Groton to pay rates for their lands as residents did.[57:2] Lancaster (Nashaway) was granted to proprietors including various craftsmen in iron, indicating, perhaps, an expectation of iron works, and few of the original proprietors actually settled in the town.[57:3] The gr

ice of whose lands is much raysed by our carrying on public work & will be nothing worth if we are forced to quit the place) doo beare an equal share in Town charges with us. Those who are not yet come up to us are a great and far yet abler part of our Proprietors . . ."[57:4] In 1684 the selectmen inform the General Court that one half of the proprietors, two only excepted,

the location of the Natick Indian reservation. Dedham shares in the town often fell into the hands of speculators, and Sheldon, the careful historian

formerly found grievous & doe Judge for the future will be found intollerable if not altered. Or minister, Mr. Mather . . . & we ourselves are much discouraged as judging the Plantation will be spoiled if thes proprietors may not be begged, or will not be bought up on very easy terms outt of their Right . . . Bu

eir farms near the trading post about which the Indians still collected, were called the "go-ers," while the "stayers" were those who remained

including Jeremiah Dummer, Paul Dudley (Attorney-General), William Dudley (like Paul a son of the Governor, Joseph Dudley), Thomas Hutchinson (father of the later Governor), John Clark (the political leader), and Samuel Sewall (son of the Chief Justice). These were all men of influe

ly persons. The remedy for this, in his opinion, would be to induce servants to come over by offering them homes when the terms of indenture should expire.[60:1] He therefore advocates that townships should be laid out four or five miles square in which grants of

disputed tract, as well, no doubt, as pressure from financial interests, led the General Court between 1715 and 1762 to dispose of the remaining public domain of Massachusetts under conditions that made speculation and colonization by capitalists important factors.[60:3] W

ving lands within the granted townships for the support of an approved minister, and for schools, appear in the seventeenth century and become a common feature of the grants for frontier towns in the eighteenth.[61:1] This practice with respect to the New

hin the town by the commoners. The principle which in many, if not all, cases guided the proprietor

e (which is the rule of God) may be observed, we Covenant and Agree, That in a second Devition and so through all other Devitions of Land the mater shall be drawne as neere to equallitie according to mens estates

nged "partly to prevent the neglect of trades." This is a pregnant idea; it underlay much of the later opposition of New England as a manufacturing section to the free homestead or cheap land policy, demanded by the West and by the labor party, in the nati

sionally appear, significantly, in the frontier towns of Haverhill, Massachusetts, Simsbury, Connecticut, and in the towns of the Connecticut Valley.[63:1] Jonathan Edwards, in 1751, declared that there had been in Northampton for forty or fifty years "two parties somewhat like the court and country parties of England. . . . The first party embraced the great proprietors of land, and the parties concerned about land and other matters."[63:2] The tendency to divide up the common lands among the proprietors in individual possession did not become marked until the eighteenth century; but the exclusion of some from possession of the to

nt of westward advance. President Dwight in the era of the War of 1812 was very critical of the "foresters," but saw in such a m

, but his writings may partly reflect the attitude of Boston Bay toward New England's first Western frontier. Writing in 16

ies are like to Perish for Lack of Vision? They that have done so, heretofore, have to their Cost found, that they were got unto the Wrong side of the Hedge, in their doing so. Think, here Should this be done any more? We read of Balaam, in Num. 22, 23. He was to his Da

at has been upon us, those that have had Churches regularly formed in them, have generally been under a more sensible Protection of Heaven." "Sirs," he says, "a Church-State well form'd may fortify you wonderfully!" He recommends abstention from profane swearing, furious cursing, Sabbath breaking, unchastity, dishonesty, robbing of God by defrauding the ministers of their dues, dru

by the combined and sometimes antagonistic forces of eastern men of property (the absentee proprietors) and the democratic pioneers. The East attempted to regulate and control it. Individualistic and democratic tendencies were emphasized both by the wilderness conditions and, probably, by the prior contentions between the proprietors and non-proprietors of the towns from which settlers moved to the frontier. Removal away from the control of the customary usages of the ol

Ohio Company's settlement in the Old Northwest Territory. By the time of the Civil War the frontier towns of New England had occupied the great prairie zone of the Middle West and were even planted in Mormon Utah and in parts of the Pacific Coast. New England's sons had become the organizer

TNO

of Massachusetts, April, 1914, xvii, 250-2

setts Archives,

etts Colony Reco

ii, p. 439; Massachusetts A

s, v, 79; Green, "Groton During the Indian Wars," p.

tts Archives, lxv

teenth Century," i, p. 501, and citations: cf.

ew England town. On Virginia frontier conditions see Alvord and Bidgood, "First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region," pp. 23-34, 93-95

s, lxx, 240; Massachusetts P

yeing between Sudbury, Concord, Marlbury, Natick and Sherburne & Westerly is the Wilderness," the petitioners ask eas

the present Warr and desolation thereby made, as also that thereby they may be freed from that great burthen of public taxes necessarily accruing thereby, Some haveing already removed themselves. Butt knowing for our parts th

ks of itself as "a remote upland plantati

setts Province

ory of the United States and its People," ii, p. 398. A useful contemporaneous map for conditions at the close of King Philip's War is Hub

n Wisconsin," p. 13; McIlwain, "Wraxall's Abridgement," introduction; the town histories abound in evidence of

em," pp. 31-32; Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, pp. 37, 206, 267-268; Connectic

such a case of a Groton man; see also Parkman, "Half-Century,"

s Archives, lxxi, p

Hoosa

cut Records, iv

e Laws, i, pp. 176, 211, 292, 558, 594, 600; Massachusetts Archives,

n, "Deerfield

72; 4 Massachusetts Histori

found no more extreme representative than Hannah Dustan of Haverhill, with her trophy of te

t those who protected the Christian Indians,

ndon," p. 63; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 504-519. Parkman, "Frontenac" (Bost

usetts Archive

, cvii, p. 2

setts Archives,

n, "Deerfield

rchives, lxxi, 46-48,

nditions: see, for example, the citations to Washington's Writings in Thwaites, "France in America," pp. 193-195; and frontier letters in Thwaites and Kellogg, "Dunmore

your Honibill pettionors some time a goo petitioned your Honnour for to have Commisioned men amungst ous which we your Honnours most Duttifull subjects thought properist men & men that had Hart and Curidg to hed us yn time of [war] & to defend your Contray & your poor Sogbacks Intrist from ye voilince of ye Haithen-But yet agine we Humbly persume to p

owever, by the remoteness of that body. See F. J. Turner, "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era" (American Hi

achusetts Historical So

id., xlii

cut Colonial Re

lls itself the "most Utmost Frontere Town in the County o

d, "Hadley

r-Lighthall, "Glorio

n, "Deerfield

s do, and I want your warriours to join with me and my warriours, like brothers, and ambush the Regulars: if you will, I will give you money, blankets, tomahawks, knives, paint, and any thing that there is in the army, just like bro

ion a Political Aftermath" (Proceedings America

m of the New Engla

setts Colony Re

271; Gookin, "Daniel Gookin," pp. 106-161; and the histories of Worcester for il

rill, "Amesbu

irick, "Haverh

ly Records of Grot

2] I

r County Histor

calf, "Annals of

from that frontier cited in Turner, "Western State-Making" (American Historical Review, i, p. 262), attacking the Virgin

, "Deerfield,"

" pp. 5-15: compare Major Stephen Sewall to Jeremiah Dummer, 1717, quoted

ce, "Economic History of Virginia in th

ssociate, Mr. Andrew McF. Davis: see his "C

s an instructive comment. A. C. Ford, "Colonial Precedents of Our National

nd, "Western Massa

of the System of Land Grant

story of Worcester County,"

System of the New Engla

Ibid.

"Travels" (1821)

in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century," in Am