70 The Winning of the West 



This distress at home inclined many people of 

 means and ambition to try their fortunes in the 

 West: while another and equally powerful motive 

 was the desire to secure great tracts of virgin lands, 

 for possession or speculation. Many distinguished 

 soldiers had been rewarded by successive warrants 

 for unoccupied land, which they entered wherever 

 they choose, until they could claim thousands upon 

 thousands of acres. 16 Sometimes they sold these 

 warrants to outsiders ; but whether they remained in 

 the hands of the original owners or not, they served 

 as a great stimulus to the westward movement, and 

 drew many of the representatives of the wealthiest 

 and most influential families in the parent States to 

 the lands on the farther side of the mountains. 



At the close of the Revolution, however, the men 

 from the sea-coast region formed but an insignifi 

 cant portion of the western pioneers. The country 

 beyond the Alleghanies was first won and settled 

 by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their 

 own leaders, obeying their own desires, and follow 

 ing their own methods. They were a marked and 

 peculiar people. The good and evil traits in their 

 character were such as naturally belonged to a 

 strong, harsh, and homely race, which, with all its 

 shortcomings, was nevertheless bringing a tremen 

 dous work to a triumphant conclusion. The back- 



14 Thus Col. Wm. Christian, for his services in Braddock's 

 and Dunmore's wars and against the Cherokees, received 

 many warrants; he visited Kentucky to enter them, 9,000 

 acres in all. See "Life of Caleb Wallace," by Wm. H. 

 Whitsitt, Louisville, 1888. 



