66 The Winning of the West 



troops raised among the Watauga Carolinians or 

 the Holston Virginians, and in her turn she had 

 sent needed supplies to the Cumberland. But when 

 the strain of the war was over the separatist spirit 

 asserted itself very strongly. The groups of West 

 ern settlements not only looked on the Union 

 itself very coldly, but they were also more or less 

 actively hostile to their parent States, and regarded 

 even one another as foreign communities; 13 they 

 considered the Confederation as being literally only 

 a lax league of friendship. 



Up to the close of the Revolutionary contest the 

 settlers who were building homes and States be 

 yond the Alleghanies formed a homogeneous back 

 woods population. The wood-choppers, game hunt 

 ers, and Indian fighters, who dressed and lived 

 alike, were the typical pioneers. They were a shift 

 ing people. In every settlement the tide ebbed and 

 flowed. Some of the new-comers would be beaten 

 in the hard struggle for existence, and would drift 

 back to whence they had come. Of those who suc 

 ceeded some would take root in the land, and others 

 would move still further into the wilderness. Thus 

 each generation rolled westward, leaving its chil 

 dren at the point where the wave stopped no less 



13 See in Gardoqui MSS. the letters of George Rogers 

 Clark to Gardoqui, March 15, 1788; and of John Sevier to 

 Gardoqui, September 12, 1788; and in the Robertson MS. 

 the letter of Robertson to McGillivray, August 3, 1788. It 

 is necessary to allude to the feeling here ; but the separatist 

 and disunion movements did not gather full force until later, 

 and are properly to be considered in connection with post- 

 Revolutionary events. 



