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The Early Settlers in North America The NorthAmerican frontier changed some of the characteristics of thepioneers of the 1750s and intensified others. They were, as a group,semiliterate, proud,and stubborn, as dogged in their insistence on their ownway of life as pine roots cracking granite to grow. Perhaps their greatestresource was their capacity to endure. They outlasted recurrent plagues ofsmallpox and malaria and a steady progression of natural accidents. They were incredibly prolific. Squire Boones family of eight children was small byfrontier standards. James Roberson, an eventual neighbor of Boonesand the founder of Nashville, had eleven children. Twice married John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, fatheredeighteen; his longtime enemy, John Tipton, also twice married, producedseventeen. The entire assets of one of these huge families often amounted, inthe beginning, to little more than an axe, a hunting knife, an auger, a rifle,a horse or two, some cattle and a few pigs, a sack of corn seed and another ofsalt, perhaps a crosscut saw, and a loom. Those who moved first into a newregion lived for months at a time on wild meat, Indian maize, and native fruitsin season. Yet if they were poor at the beginning, they confidently expectedthat soon they would be rich. In a way almost impossible to define to urbandwellers, a slice of ground suitable for farming represented not justdollars and cents, but dignity. The obsession brought shiploads of yearners every week to Boston, New York, Philadelphia,Baltimore, Charles Towne, and Savannah. It sent them streaming westward intothe wilderness after their predecessors to raise still more children whowanted still more land. | 
