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[Separate No. i 39J 
 
 The History of the West and the Pioneers 
 
 By Benjamin Franklin Shambaugh, Ph. D. 
 
 [From the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1910^ 
 
 pages 133-145] 
 
 Madison 
 Published by the Society 
 
 1911 
 
Benjamin Franklin Siiambaugii, Ph. D. 
 Superintendent of the Historical Society of Iowa 
 
[Separate No. 139] 
 
 The History of the West and the Pioneers 
 By Benjamin Franklin Shambaugh, Ph. D. 
 
 [From the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 191 o, 
 
 pages 133-145] 
 
 Madison 
 
 Published by the Society 
 
 1911 
 
si The History of the West and 
 
 the Pioneers 
 
 By Benjamin Franklin Shambaugh, Ph. D. 
 
 Although the subject of my address is both old and familiar, I 
 have no apology to offer for its exploitation on this occasion. 
 Indeed, what could be more fitting and appropriate at this an- 
 nual meeting than a discussion of that which has been central in 
 the life and accomplishments of the State Historical Society of 
 Wisconsin. From its reorganization under its famous founder 
 and collector, this Society has always been something more than a 
 provincial institution. As a pioneer in the collection of western 
 Americana, Lyman Copeland Draper, coming into the Mississippi 
 Valley in 1852, staked out for the State Historical Society of 
 Wisconsin a claim which extended from the Alleghanies on the 
 east to the Rockies on the west, and from the Great Lakes on the 
 north to the Gulf of Mexico on the south. For more than a half 
 century this vast claim has been assiduously cultivated by this 
 Society; and the harvests, gathered year after year, have finally 
 been sLored in this magnificent granary of Western history. 
 
 Draper knew no state boundaries. To him Wisconsin was the 
 West. And so the State Historical Society of Wisconsin early 
 became in fact, if not in name, the Historical Society of the West. 
 Moreover, there is ground for the suspicion that Dr. Draper's 
 illustrious successor, Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, has always en- 
 tertained the modest ambition of making this institution pre- 
 eminently the Historical Society of America. And such, indeed, 
 it is : for the West is America, and America is the West. 
 
 By the West I do not mean the Pacific Slope ; nor the coun- 
 try westward of the Father of Waters. There is a larger West 
 
 [133 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 than tlie Mississippi Valley. I would not even stop, as many do, 
 at the foot of the Alleghanies. I would include the original thir- 
 teen States — pausing not until I had reached Plymouth Rock. 
 Thus conceived, the history of the West becomes in fact nothing 
 less (it may be more) than the history of America. Such, how- 
 ever, is only a geographical definition of my theme. 
 
 Permit me to enlarge upon this view of the West by suggest- 
 ing that it is something more than a geographical area — some- 
 thing apart from mountains and rivers and prairies and plains. 
 My thought has been aptly expressed by a recent writer,- who 
 declares that ' ' the West has no fixed geographical limits like the 
 South and New England. It is something more than a geograph- 
 ical term. Like Boston, it is a state of mind. There are moun- 
 tains and rivers and oceans within the limits of which this state 
 of mind is preeminently to be found, but it is to be recognized 
 in other regions as well. You can tell a Westerner as you can tell 
 a Southerner, sometimes by his speech, always by his attitude to- 
 ward life." 
 
 The best definition of this greater West which I am now at- 
 tempting to suggest, is briefly this : ' ' The West is where a man 
 is; the East is where he or his father came from." The West is 
 the frontier; it stands for the latest epoch, the most recent stage 
 in the progressive history of mankind. The West is vitality, 
 progress, "creation personified." Thus the history of the West 
 becomes the story of evolving, developing, progressive mankind — 
 the story of the pioneers, to which America has contributed the 
 latest chapter. "As a locality the West may be shifting, but as 
 a state of mind it is America in the making." 
 
 I am now prepared to say, without fear of being misunder- 
 stood, that Columbus was the first of the pioneers in American 
 history — the first great Westerner. His attitude toward life, his 
 loyalty to a vision, his determination, his persistence, his daring, 
 venturesome spirit are all characteristic of the frontiersman. 
 He led the way to a new world — a western hemisphere. He was 
 followed by a multitude of pioneers in navigation, discovery, and 
 exploration. The Cabots, Vasco de Gama, Cartier, Hudson, De 
 Soto, Gilbert, Magellan, Cortez, Nicolet, Father Marquette, La 
 Salle, George Rogers Clark, and Lewis and Clark were all men 
 who turned their faces westward. 
 
 1 The World Today, vii. No. 2, p. 117. 
 
 [1341 
 
The West and the Pioneers 
 
 The Pilgrims in Massachusetts and the founders of Jamestown 
 in Virginia were frontiersmen. Roger "Williams in the wilder- 
 ness and William Penn in Pennsylvania were no less men of the 
 West. The Jesuit fathers in New France were typical pioneers. 
 Moreover, Thomas Jefferson penning the statute of religious lib- 
 erty is the' very picture of the liberal, progressive frontiersman. 
 Likewise the rank and file of the humbler men and w^omen by 
 whom the colonies were settled in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries were typical Westerners. Indeed, the history of Amer- 
 ica prior to the middle of the eighteenth century may be char- 
 acterized as the period of the planting of a race of pioneers on' 
 the world 's western frontier. 
 
 Then came the Revolution, with its call for pioneers in politi- 
 cal philosophy. And the response followed in language, now 
 classical in the Avorld's political literature, "that all men are 
 created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
 tain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and 
 the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Govern- 
 ments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Gov- 
 ernment becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the 
 people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government 
 laying its foundations on sucli principles and organizing powers 
 in such form as to tliem shall seem most likely to effect their 
 safety and happiness." 
 
 And so these children of the world's political frontier courage- 
 ously declared their independence, formulated their rights, re- 
 formed their state governments, and established a new nation 
 among men. And when presently the other nations looked up, 
 they saw that the West had given birth to a new philosophy of 
 political equality and social democracy. 
 
 The remarkable thing, however, about this pioneering in Amer- 
 ica, is not the success of its early conquests, but the persistence 
 of its spirit and enthusiasm. Independence did not die ^\^th the 
 reading of the Declaration of 1776; courage did not disappear 
 with the victory at Yorktown ; political reform survived the re- 
 formation of state governments. The desire for a more adequate 
 and efficient constitution still lives in the demand for a "New 
 Nationalism." No sooner had peace and domestic order been es- 
 tablished with the close of the Revolution than the passion for 
 
 [135] 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 the frontier turned men's faces westward once more. Natural 
 barriers were in their way and travel was slow and painful ; but 
 faltering not for a moment the new army of Westerners climbed 
 the Alleghanies. Out through the defiles and gaps of the moun- 
 tains they poured. Out into the Northwest and Southwest they 
 went. Down the winding waterways of westward flowing rivers 
 they floated. Out over the hills, across the prairies, and through 
 the forest they made their way with white-top wagons. Armed 
 with axes and plows, this army of pioneers pushed forward in 
 the conquest of the new-found West. They settled in Kentucky 
 and Tennessee; in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. For a 
 moment they paused on the banks of the Mississippi, challenged 
 by the Indians who had been promised undisturbed possession of 
 the lands beyond. Before them lay rich prairies of Iowa. 
 The temptation was too great to be resisted. The Indians were 
 dispossessed, and the trans-Mississippi lands were occupied with 
 unparalleled rapidity. The plains were crossed ; the Roclry Moun- 
 tains scaled; and ere long the farthest West M^as blooming like 
 a garden. Like children pursuing the rainbow, these pioneers 
 for over a century eagerly pursued the ever-receding frontier 
 until at last they dipped their outstretched hands in the waters 
 of the great Pacific. 
 
 Some day when our national epic is written, its theme will be 
 "The Pioneer." Some day when the artist paints America, his 
 canvas will be christened ''Westward." Some day when the 
 marvelous story of our history is dramatized the stage will be 
 filled not with the kings and princes of the older eastern drama, 
 not even with our own great barons of industry : the leading ac- 
 tors in the play will be recognized as the stalwart American men 
 of the frontier. 
 
 Who then were these pioneers — these Western men and women 
 who have given character to American history? It is well known 
 that their ancestors were Aryans — the peoples of western civili- 
 zation. The first comers to this western world of ours were 
 mostly English and Dutch, with here and there a sprinkling of 
 French and Spanish. Later Irish, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish, Ger- 
 mans, and Scandinavians appear in numbers. The colonies were 
 settled for the most part by Anglo-Saxon stock, and it was by 
 their descendants that our Middle West, the West of the Missis- 
 sippi Valley, was largely opened up. Here during the last cen- 
 
 [136] 
 
The West and the Pioneers 
 
 tury they took possession of the fields and forests and plains and 
 founded a new empire — appropriately called the Empire of the 
 Pioneei-s. To know these men — the pioneers, the pathfinders of 
 the West — is to know American history and to understand the 
 real meaning and purpose of American life. 
 
 Characterizations of frontiersmen are always interesting and 
 sometimes highly amusing. In the Annals of Congress the de- 
 bates on the public lands, frontier protection, the Indians, in- 
 ternal improvements, and territorial government bristle with 
 eulogy and denunciation. Declared John Randolph in 1824: 
 "Sir, our brethren of the West have suffered, as our brethren 
 thoughout the United States, from the same cause, although with 
 them the cause exists in an aggravated degree * * * by a 
 departure from the industry, the simplicity, the economy and the 
 frugality of our ancestors. They have suffered from a greediness 
 of gain, that has grasped at the shadow while it has lost the sub- 
 stance — from habits of indolence, of profusion, of extravagance 
 * * * from a miserable attempt at the shabby genteel, which 
 only serves to make our poverty more conspicuous." 
 
 The Western counti-y, he said,^ is a land ''where any man 
 may get beastly drunk for three pence sterling * * * where 
 every man can get as much meat and bread as he can consume, 
 and yet spend the best part of his days and nights too, perhaps, 
 on tavern benches, or loitering at the cross-roads asking the news 
 
 * * * a country with countless millions of wild land and 
 wild animals besides. ' ' On another occasion the Virginia states- 
 man declared that he "had as lief be a tythe-proctor in Ireland, 
 and met on a dark night in a narrow road by a dozen white-boys 
 or peep-of-day boys, or hearts of oak, or hearts of steel, as an ex- 
 ciseman in the Alleghany mountains, met, in a lonely road, or by- 
 place, by a backwoodsman, with a rifle in his hand." And he 
 ridiculed the people of the West as "men in hunting shirts, with 
 deer-skin leggings and moccasins on their feet * * * men 
 with rifles on their shoulders, and long knives in their belts, seek- 
 ing in the forest to lay in their next winter's supply of bear- 
 meat." 
 
 In reply to this unfriendly characterization of the pioneers. 
 Representative Letcher of Kentucky informed the House ' that 
 
 2 Annals of Congress, 18th Cong. 1st sess. (1824) pp. 1298, 2364. 
 siMd., p. 2522. 
 
 [ 137 ] 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 John Randolph was "most grossly and inexcusably ignorant of 
 the character, the feelings, the intelligence, and the habits, of the 
 "Western people. Sir, with the utmost frankness, I admit, their ex- 
 ternal appearance is not the most fashionable and elegant kind ; 
 they are not decoratd in all the style, the gaiety, and the taste, of 
 a dandy of the first water. Their means are too limited and their 
 discretion is too great, 1 trust, for the indulgence of such foppery 
 and extravagance * * * but I beg of you to do justice to 
 their private virtues, to allow them, at least, a character for in- 
 tegrity of motive, for benevolence of heart * * * . Their 
 hospitality is without ostentation, without parade, without hy- 
 pocrisy. ' ' 
 
 John C. Calhoun once stated on the floor of Congress that he 
 had been informed that the "Western country had been seized 
 upon by a lawless body of armed men. Clay had received in- 
 formation of the same nature. Llurry of Maryland referred to 
 the frontiersmen as semi-savages "who press forward into the 
 deeper wilderness, by the new waves of advancing population and 
 live the life of savages without their virtues." While Senator 
 Ewing (from Ohio) declared that he would not object to giving 
 each rascal who crossed the Mississippi one thousand dollars in 
 order to get rid of him. 
 
 Nor were the views expressed by these members of Congress 
 uncommon in that day. They represent the attitude of a very- 
 considerable number of men throughout the East and South, who 
 looked upon the pioneers in general as a "lawless rabble" on the 
 outskirts of civilization. To them the first settlers, or squatters, 
 were "lawless intruders" and "idle and profligate characters." 
 
 On the other hand, many glowing eulogies have been pro- 
 nounced upon the people of the West. Indeed, we are fully as- 
 sured by those who frequented the frontier and were personally 
 acquainted with the pioneers that as a class they were neither 
 idle, nor ignorant, nor vicious. They were representative pio- 
 neers than whom, Benton declared, "there was not a better popu- 
 lation on the face of the earth." They were of the best blood 
 and ranked as the best sons of the whole country. They were 
 young, strong, and energetic men — hardy, courageous, and ad- 
 venturous. Caring little for the dangers of the frontier, they 
 extended civilization, reclaimed for the industry of th-e world 
 vast prairies and forests and deserts, and defended the settled 
 country against the Indians. 
 
 [ 138 ] 
 
The West and the Pioneers 
 
 The pioneers were religious but not ecclesiastical. They lived 
 in the open and looked upon the relations of man to nature with 
 an open mind. To be sure their thoughts were more on "getting 
 along" in this world than upon the "immortal crown of the Puri- 
 tan." But in their recollections we are told that in the silent 
 forest, in the broad prairie, in the deep blue sky, in the sentinels 
 of the night, in the sunshine and in the storm, in the rosy dawn, 
 in the golden western sunset, and in the daily trials and battles 
 of frontier life they too saw and felt the Infinite. 
 
 Nor is it a matter of surprise that the pioneers of the West 
 should possess fundamental elements of character. In the first 
 place only strong and independent souls ventured to the frontier, 
 A weaker class could not have hoped to endure the toils, the la- 
 bors, the pains, and the loneliness of pioneer life ; for the 
 hardest and at the same time most significant battles of the nine- 
 teenth century were fought in the winning of the West. The 
 frontier called for men with large capacity for adaptation — men 
 with flexible, dynamic natures. Especially did it require 
 men who could break with the past, forget traditions, and easily 
 discard inherited political and social ideas. The key to the char- 
 acter of the pioneer is the law of the adaptation of life to environ- 
 ment. The pioneers were what they were, largely because the 
 conditions of frontier life made them such. They were sincere 
 because their environment called for an honest attitude. Having 
 left the comforts of their old homes, travelled hundreds and 
 thousands of miles, entered the wdlderness, and endured the 
 privations of the frontier, they were serious-minded. They came 
 for a purpose, and therefore were always doing something. 
 Even to this day, their ideals of thrift and frugality pervade our 
 Western commonwealths. 
 
 And so the strong external factors of the West brought into 
 American civilization elements distinctively American — liberal 
 ideas and democratic ideals. The broad rich prairies of Iowa 
 and Illinois somehow seem to have broadened men's views and 
 fertilized their ideas. Said Stephen A. Douglas: "I found my 
 mind liberalized and my opinions enlarged when I got out on 
 these broad prairies, with only the heavens to bound my vision, 
 instead of having them circumscribed by the narrow ridges that 
 surrounded the valley [in Vermont] Avhere I was born." 
 
 Speaking to an Iowa audience. Governor Kirkwood once said- 
 
 [10] [ 139 ] 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 "We are rearing the typical Americans, the Western Yankee 
 if you choose to call him so, the man of grit, the man of nerve, the 
 man of energy, the man who will some day dominate this empire 
 of ours." 
 
 Nowhere did the West exert a more marked influence than in 
 the domain of politics. It freed men from traditions. It gave 
 them a new and more progressive view of political life. Hence- 
 forth they turned with impatience from historical arguments and 
 legal theories to a philosophy of expediency. Government, they 
 concluded, was after all a relative affair. 
 
 "Claim rights" were more important to the pioneer of the 
 West than "state rights." The nation was endeared to him ; and 
 he freely gave his first allegiance to the government that sold him 
 land for $1.25 per acre. He was always for the Union, so that 
 in after years men said of one of the commonwealths he founded : 
 "Her affections, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an insep- 
 arable Union." 
 
 But above all the frontier was a great leveler. The conditions 
 of life there were such as to make men plain, common, unpreten- 
 tious, genuine — "An empire of wheat and corn and hogs and 
 cattle does not suggest late dinners and late rising. * * * 
 Pioneers may not always he fraternal, but they still call each 
 other by their Christian names. They are still too close ta 
 nature and still too possessed of the enthusiasm which belongs 
 to men who have conquered in a hand to hand battle with nature 
 to bother with social distinctions. * * * [On the fron- 
 tier] it is expected that every man will work. The unemployed, 
 whether rich or poor, migrated."* The frontier fostered the 
 sympathetic attitude. It made men really democratic — "Not 
 the Democracy of the doctrinaire who worships the Declaration 
 of Independence and keeps 'servants,' but that democracy of 
 practice which sees a partner in every man and woman who is 
 accomplishing something. ' ' 
 
 In matters political, the frontier fostered the three-fold ideal 
 of equality, which constitutes the essence of American democracy 
 in the nineteenth century, namely: 
 
 Equality before the Law, 
 
 Equality in the Law, 
 
 Equality in making the Law. 
 
 4 The World Today, vii, No. 2, p. 118. 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 
The West and the Pioneers 
 
 The pioneers of the Middle West may not have originated these 
 ideals. The first, equality before the law, is claimed emphatic- 
 ally as the contribution of the Puritan. But the vitalizing of 
 these ideals — this came from the frontier as the great contribu- 
 tion of our Mississippi Valley pioneers. 
 
 Now the courageous pioneers who in the nineteenth century 
 crossed half a continent to make homes in the Mississippi Val- 
 ley must, it seems to me, have realized, as they blazed their names 
 on primeval oaks or drove their stakes deep into the prairie land, 
 that their lives were, indeed, part of a great movement which 
 would in time become truly historic. They must have felt that 
 their experience on the frontier would some day form the open- 
 ing chapter in the political history of great Western common- 
 wealths. 
 
 There was certainly some ground for this feeling. For many 
 rare and inspiring experiences were in store for those who ven- 
 tured to the border line of civilization. The beauties of nature 
 untouched were theirs; and theirs, too, was the freedom of op- 
 portunity. During the lifetime of a single generation they often 
 beheld the evolution of a community of men and women from a 
 few simple families to a complex society ; and as participants in 
 that social and political transformation they successfully estab- 
 lished and maintained law and order on the frontier. These 
 early settlers founded social and political institutions. They 
 participated in the organization and administration of terri- 
 torial government. Earnestly they mingled their labors with the 
 virgin soil of the richest prairies of all America. Beneath their 
 eyes a thousand hills were stripped of forests, and millions of 
 acres of prairie land were turned into grain fields. But the hard- 
 ships and privations which the men and women of the frontier 
 endured remain largely untold. 
 
 With their axes and plows they had bravely fought the battles 
 of the frontier; and when they had begun to enjoy the fruits of 
 victory, they loved to tell the story of "the early days." And 
 the oft-repeated tale crystallized into local tradition. At the 
 fireside they lived over again the history of their lives. The hard- 
 ships and privations through which they had passed, but in the 
 midst of which many of their comrades had fallen, were now en- 
 deared to them. They were proud of the great commonwealths 
 they had founded. And as they reviewed the past, the marvel- 
 
 . [ 141 ] . 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 lous transformations which they had witnessed stirred their imag- 
 inations. They felt that somehow their own humble, modest 
 lives had really been a part of history — the history of a commun- 
 ity, the history of a commonwealth, the history of a nation, the 
 history of human progress. And so they resolved to preserve 
 "the memory of the early pioneers," by establishing state and 
 local historical societies. ^ 
 
 Thrice fathers — fathers of the frontier, fathers of the terri- 
 tory, fathers of the state — the unschooled pioneers of our west- 
 ern common Vi^ealths became the fathers of our local provincial 
 history. Or, to change the figure a bit. in the organization of 
 historical societies, state and local, the pioneers sowed the seeds 
 of a local history which have grown and matured into ripened 
 grain. To gather the harvest and withal to sift the grain is the 
 duty of the present hour. 
 
 And behold, in our very midst the scholarly work of grain sift- 
 ing is already under way. To be sure the beginnings are small, 
 and the efforts are sometimes feeble. But "let us not be so fool- 
 ish as to despise [the day of beginnings], the day of what is 
 called small things. As well might we hold in contempt [the 
 springtime and] the humble office of putting seed into the 
 ground." 
 
 The establishment of state and local historical societies and 
 the promotion of the interests of state and local history constitute 
 in themselves a pioneer movement. Time was when little if any 
 attention was given to state and local affairs. Nearly every sub- 
 ject was viewed from the national standpoint, the history of our 
 states and local communities not lieing regarded of any special 
 importance. This has been the attitude of most of our American 
 historians. They have been ambitious to discover the origin, note 
 the progress, and declare the results of the marvellous growth of 
 the New World. At the same time it is strangely true that the 
 real meaning of this interesting drama has scarcely anywhere 
 been more than suggested. A closer view reveals the fact that 
 all of the documents themselves have not yet been edited, nor the 
 narrative fully told. At present there is not a chapter of our his- 
 tory which is wholly written, though the manuscript of the au- 
 thors is already worn with erasures. 
 
 To be sure, Bancroft has written exhaustively of the colonies ; 
 Fiske has illuminated the Revolution; Frothingham has narrated 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
The West and the Pioneers 
 
 the rise of the republic ; Parkman has vividly pictured events in 
 the Northwest; McMaster has described the life of the people; 
 Von Hoist has emphasized the importance of slavery; Thwaites 
 has edited the Jesuit Relations; and a host of others have added 
 paragraphs, chapters, monographs, and volumes to the fascinat- 
 ing story of the birth and development of a democratic nation. 
 But where, let me ask, are the classics of our local history ? Who 
 are the historians of the towns, the counties, and the common- 
 wealths ? 
 
 These questions at once reveal great gaps in our historical lit- 
 erature on the side of the local communities. James Bryce has 
 likened the history of our states to " a primeval forest, where the 
 vegetation is rank and through which scarcely a trail has been 
 cut." And yet before the real import of American democracy 
 can be divined, this forest of state and local history must be ex- 
 plored and the underbrush cleared away. 
 
 Now I trust that I am not misunderstood in these observations 
 upon the importance of local history. I am not making a plea 
 for narrow localism. On the contrary I am endeavoring to sug- 
 gest a broader view of our national life by pointing to the very 
 source and inspiration of our social and political ideals. For in 
 my opinion nothing is more misleading than the inference, w^hich 
 is so commonly drawn from works on American history, that the 
 life of our nation is siunmed up in census reports, journals of 
 Congress, and in the archives of the departments at Washington. 
 
 The real life of the American nation spreads throughout forty- 
 eight commonwealths. It is lived in the very commonplaces of 
 the shop, the factory, the store, the office, in the mine, and on the 
 farm. Through the commonwealths the life and spirit of the na- 
 tion are best expressed. And every local community, how^ever 
 humble, participates in the formation and expression of that life 
 and spirit. 
 
 An appreciation of these facts has within recent times given to 
 the study of American history a new perspective; and we are 
 beginning to study our history from the bottom up instead of 
 from the top down. The family, the clan, the tribe, the nation — 
 this is the order of social evolution. Why not follow it in his- 
 torical research? To begin with the nation is to study history 
 backwards. And so the time has come for our historians to face 
 about, and take seriously the study of state and local history. 
 
 [143] 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 To do this will be to give us a more generous appreciation of the 
 worth of our commonwealths and inspire us with a firmer faith 
 in our own provincial character. It will deepen our local pa- 
 triotism and give us a better perspective of the life of the great 
 nation of which we are a part. 
 
 To trace the beginning of our Western commonwealths is to re- 
 call the frontier, arouse the spirit of the West, and kindle anew 
 the passion for pioneering. 
 
 But why? Has not the epoch of pioneering passed? The 
 West has vanished. Twenty years ago it was officially declared 
 that the frontier had disappeared. There are surely no more 
 hemispheres to discover, explore, and settle. The globe has been 
 circumnavigated. The North Pole has been reached. Standing 
 armies are disbanded. All the constitutions have been written. 
 Our natural, unalienable, indefeasible rights have been declared. 
 The national government is surely able to stand alone. The 
 slaves have been freed. And the Spaniards have been driven 
 from Cuba. Inlying machines have made successful flights 
 "Out West" is all but obsolete, for there is no more land to be 
 claimed. The border line between the East and West seems to 
 have been obliterated. 
 
 Here in the Mississippi Valley the buffaloes have all been killed. 
 Top carriages and automobiles have taken the place of cover*^.! 
 wagons. Land can no longer be bought for $1.25 an acre. The 
 sod of the prairie has all been turned, and the forests have beea 
 cleared. There are no more rails to split; no more log cabins to 
 huild. No more snakes. No more prairie fires. Social and po- 
 litical institutions have everywhere been founded. The oppor- 
 tunities of moving on and being tJie first are no more. The wolves 
 and the bears, they too have gone, the turkeys, prairie chickeDs, 
 and quails have given place to cotton-tails. 
 
 There will never be another Columbus or another Magellan 
 There will never be another George JRogers Clark, or another 
 Daniel Boone. The romance of Sacajawea will never be re- 
 peated. There will never be any more Jeffersons, Jacksons, Bt-n- 
 tons, and Lincolns. For the West in history is gone, and the 
 frontier is a place no more. 
 
 Gone! Did I say gone? No! For the West is neither an 
 area, nor the frontier a geographical line. The West is a st ite 
 of mind; the frontier, a condition; pioneering, an attitude toward 
 
 [1441 
 
The West and the Pioneers 
 
 life. Behold the new-bom West — the West of social and polit- 
 ical progress and reformation. Never were the opportunities of 
 the West more alluring; never was the frontier more inviting. 
 Never was the call for pioneers more urgent than to this field of 
 civic righteousness. And never was there greater need for the 
 bold and daring enterprise, the rugged honesty and courageous 
 frankness, the serious minded integrity of the pioneer than at 
 this very hour. 
 
 Then as children of this new-found West, let us cherish the 
 memory of our pioneer fathers and forefathers of the old-time 
 West. Let us rejoice in this rebirth of American democracy. 
 Let us face the problems and fight the battles of the frontier of 
 civic righteousness with the manly courage and integrity of the 
 pioneers. They pointed the way. Let us keep the faith. 
 
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