Blending Cultures

It took some years to blend the cultures in the Old Northwest and Ohio Valley region.  The Yankee scorned the Southerner and the Southerner scorned the Yankee.  The New Englanders, usually a people of education (their communities appointed a schoolmaster right away),  were pious, law-abiding and industrious.  This didn't blend well with their easy-going neighbors.  New Englanders were, however, shrewd businessmen who could drive a hard bargain with their backwoods neighbors.  "Yankee tricks" was a common term to refer to the business practices between New Englanders and Southerners, with suspicion always on the New Englanders.

In the first days of the westward migration the Cumberland Gap was the gateway to the West.  Situated at the southeastern corner of Kentucky, it was easy for the Virginians and Carolinians to pass to Cincinnati and Louisville.  A group of Virginians, Carolinians, and Kentuckians, known as the "Long Knives", were short on book learning and not known to be gentlemen.  They sought the Ohio Valley as an escape from the society that held their birth and lack of wealth at a disadvantage.  They were not pious, though religious, their houses were poorer, their villages cruder, their dress rougher.  These people, however, were brave, industrious, hospitable and generous to a fault.  They often clashed with the New Englanders.

Before the Erie Canal opened in 1825, there were just three main routes to the new western territory but they all led to the Ohio River. Some went by way of Lake Erie by boat and then land. Some took the Cumberland Gap and Wilderness Road..  And some took long, arduous journeys by land on the National Road.  They went on foot or by canvas-covered wagons (ancestors of the prairie schooners that would go West in the mid-1800s).  Heavy with possessions, these vehicles were drawn over rough, muddy roads by oxen, mules and maybe horses.  Like their later offspring, they found exposure, illness, Indian attacks and acute loneliness. 

As Morris Birkbeck who was passing on the National Road in 1817 wrote, "Old America seems to be breaking up and moving westward on this grand track toward Ohio." 

Next time...Down the Ohio
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 1, 1700, English pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of April Fool's Day by playing practical jokes on each other.  Although the day also called All Fool's Day, has been celebrated for centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.  

A Gift of Land

When the treaty was signed between the French and English in 1763, it gave vast lands in America to the British.  The British, however, hadn't the vaguest notion of the extent, appearance or resources they had gained.  Even though place names in the upper Ohio become household names during the war, little was actually known about them.

Translations from French writers about the regions were amazing misrepresentations of the actual lands.  The western lands were thought to be of little value as Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote, "only barren parts of the continent, the refuse of earlier adventures which the French had taken only as better than nothing."  It was a common belief held by such people as Franklin and Washington, that it would take centuries for the land to be settled and civilized.  No one believed that within 75 years the population of "these barren lands" would equal that of Great Britain herself!

The first order of business, nevertheless, was to provide government, solve the land tenure and trade issues, and conciliate the Indians.  The English were not pleased with vast quantities of wilderness swarming with "savages" as they referred to it.  Some folks believed the Indians were entitled to protection from the invading whites into their hunting grounds. Originally the new territories were to be left as one huge Indian reserve with no white settlements.

The King desired to keep the western lands separate as much as possible from the colonies and wanted to regulate both settlement and trade.  One way to do this was to limit white settlers to the seaboard colonies. 

In 1763 four new provinces were set up in the ceded territories...Quebec, East Florida, West Florida and Grenada.  The rectangle formed was bounded by the Alleghenies, the Mississippi, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.  The Mississippi Valley was not included in this territory. 

Next time...problems with settlement
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On January 21, 1855, gun designer John Browning is born.  Often referred to as the father of modern arms, Browning was born in Utah on this date.  Many of the guns manufactured by companies with names like Winchester, Colt and Remington were actually based on Browning's designs.