A Land of Opportunity

"Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O Pioneers!"
Walt Whitman

By the middle of the Eighteenth Century, available land along the eastern seaboard had become scarce and expensive. As a result, settlers in search of cheap land moved steadily westward toward the Appalachian mountains. Led by traders and long hunters, families of German, Scotch, Irish and Scotch-Irish descent soon followed them into the Blue Ridge and then through it. They were a hardy and adventuresome breed.

Historian Ray Allen Billington said that "the Scotch-Irish were determined to keep the Sabbath and everything else that they could lay their hands on." This attitude, undoubtedly shared by other European ethnic groups, soon brought white settlers into conflict with Native Americans. In an effort to avoid trouble, the British government issued a proclamation in 1763 forbidding settlement west of the crest of the Appalachian mountains. Americans paid scant attention to the proclamation, and men like Daniel Boone led the way through the Blue Ridge into Kentucky. After the Revolutionary War, restrictions on westward movement were dropped, and white settlers soon overwhelmed the native population.