The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 301 



and their children's children. Often, of course, ' 

 these settlers of a higher grade found that for some 

 reason they did not prosper, or heard of better 

 chances still further in the wilderness, and so moved 

 onward, like their less thrifty and more uneasy 

 brethren, the men who half-cleared their lands and 

 half-built their cabins. But, as a rule, these better- 

 class settlers were not mere life-long pioneers. They 

 wished to find good land on which to build, and 

 plant, and raise their big families of healthy chil 

 dren, and when they found such land they wished 

 to make thereon their permanent homes. They did 

 not share the impulse which kept their squalid, rov 

 ing fellows of the backwoods ever headed for the 

 vague beyond. They had no sympathy with the feel 

 ing which drove these humbler wilderness-wander 

 ers always onward, and made them believe, wher 

 ever they were, that they would be better off some 

 where else, and that they would be better off in 

 that somewhere which lay in the unknown and un 

 tried. On the contrary, these thriftier settlers 

 meant to keep whatever they had once grasped. 

 They got clear title to their lands. Though they 

 first built cabins, as soon as might be they replaced 

 them with substantial houses and barns. Though 

 they at first girdled and burnt the standing timber, 

 to clear the land, later they tilled it as carefully as 

 any farmer of the seaboard States. They composed 

 the bulk of the population, and formed the backbone 

 and body of the State. The McAfees may be taken 

 as a typical family of this class. 



