INTRODUCTION
When the settlers along the Atlantic coast had disposed of the soldiers of George III, and forced a peace, and set up a nation to be known as the "United States of America," they promptly forgot about the Old World, so far as they could. They turned with all possible dispatch to home affairs. They thought, in particular, of the untold and virtually unknown riches to the westward, beyond Cumberland Gap, the headwaters of the Ohio and the other passes of the Alleghenies leading to the interior of the continent. And, since thought was the equivalent of action with these pioneer Americans, they promptly departed, by whatever means they could manage, through the mountain passes into the continent.
And this is something which we tend to forget, since so much intervenes to obscure our picture of that old migration: They did not fan out across plains and through forests when they made that crossing. There were no roads. There were no railways. And, coming from the seacoasts and the coastal rivers, they were used to water traffic. So they followed down the reaches of the Ohio and the reaches of the Tennessee, and followed up the tributaries of these and other rivers. They settled as close as possible to the banks, and once settled they used the network of rivers and streams for highways. This method of settlement and this way of life were so striking that in the final decades of the Eighteenth century and the first decades of the Nineteenth century, the men of the migration into the interior of the continent were known as the "Men of the Western Waters."
First there were the flatboats, or scows, and the many varieties of rowboats and canoes. Sail was used at times. Then steam power. And the river flourished into greater and greater importance.
It was toward the end of this period of river greatness—but still in that period—that the westernmost of the pioneers began moving from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Coast; specifically, so far as most of the farmers were concerned, to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. During the 1840's, their wagon wheels dug the ruts of the Oregon Trail.
