Migration into the "Backcountry" in Colonial Times - II

Geographic Barriers and the Politics of Conquest Directed Early Migrants from Virginia to the South and then the Southwest

Classic migrants, settlers looking for market opportunities in 17th and 18th century Virginia seem to have, as much as possible, avoided passage through market farming country. That is, smart migrants stayed as close to the frontier as comfortably possible to avoid paying market rates for provender. Frontier farmers, farming for subsistence, sold their excess to passing travelers at whatever rates that trade would bear.

In Virginia, the earliest routes of migration followed in the footprints of traders and explorers along paths and trails long known to prior residents. North from Jamestown in earliest times was a difficult option as stream after uncrossable stream flowing toward Chesapeake Bay intersected the way. These waterways forced northbound traffic westward, toward shallower fords, deeper into lands occupied by increasingly unfriendly Native Americans.

South of the James River, though, were passable streams and arable lands. Probably already in the middle decades of the 17th century the road from Bermuda Hundred to Norfolk was well traveled. By the last quater of that century, the roads to the Tuscarora west of the Chowan River were well known. And, after Bacon's Rebellion (1676) the trails into the central and western piedmont were all open for business. Into them a trickle of desperate frontier migrants in the middle of the 17th century became a steady flow by the start of the 18th century and a flood by the middle of the 18th century. So, travel into the backcountry from VA spread like a fan with its base at the falls of the James River from south to southwest and then westward to the Blue Ridge where it stalled a while.

These people, the early, desperate, frontier subsistence folk and then the pioneer market farming settlers, 'without benefit of law or clergy,' made it up as they went along and created a multi-cultural, multi-racial society so vibrant, so authentic, and so effective that the good the bad and the ugly of it now comprise a large part of American identity. It is for this reason and none other that we must save the archaeology of these early colonial years so that one day we may understand how it is we became what we have become. For, in the final analysis we each and every one and all of us are what we were.

trm

Migration into the "Backcountry" in Colonial Times - I

Frontier Folk Were Seldom Settlers and Vice Versa

English colonists began migrating inland, away from their colonial plantations and settlements almost the instant they landed, first at Roanoke (1585-1587) and then on Chesapeake Bay(starting in 1607). These migrating emigrants were usually the invisible to historians and barely visible to archaeologist; indentured servants and other less affluent folk. Their motives for migrating away from their countrymen ranged from curiosity to animosity. Some went to see what they could see and never came back. Some went to escape an odious labor contract and others to escape debt or other inconveniences common in the English colonial settlements, like wholesale hunger. But, more or less, all escaped into the backcountry, the unmapped, unknown frontier lands away from the coastal enclaves.

In the earliest years of settlement this meant escape into Indian country. And it flies in the face of most conventional beliefs to say that English men, women, and children fled to the Indians. But some did. Others went unwilling and stayed with pleasure. It seems "escape" from Indian country was the exception, not the rule.

In part this reflects Indian societies open to non-Indian participants. It seems the eastern Indians, though they had well defined ethnic identities (ie. knew who they were and who wasn't them) but absolutely no concept of race. These Native American societies apparently had few if any absolute barriers to admission. This is a common feature in subsistence economies where what you can contribute to mutual survival is more important than one's blood lineage. In part, it also resulted from bone-headed Virginia labor policies.

Virginia's elites, always desperate for labor, early in the colonial process enslaved local natives and put them to work in their fields alongside English indentured servants. Labor solidarity, it seems, prevailed and when the Indian's took Dutch leave from drudgery, they often took their English work-mates along. Enslaving people who know the country better than you do was a desperate and ultimately foolish labor policy and it cost Virginia dearly but, on the other hand, added immensely to the rich diversity of what came to be called "the backcountry."

It is likely that very few people migrated freely into the backcountry as moving into a frontier is essential hazardous with little promise of return on the risk. Frontier migrants were thus, almost by definition, desperadoes for one reason or another. And they should be recognized as a special class of migrant and dealt with separate from the more classic migrants of the 18th and 19th century. Frontier folk were folk willing and able to live in a subsistence economy without the advantages of civilization so as to avoid the costs of civilization.

Later migrants increasingly tended to be market farmers seeking cheap land on which to grow market crops, ambitious folks with goals off in the future. They moved not to frontiers but to new settlements. The important point to bear in mind when considering these classic migrants with their wagons full of capitol goods is that they seldom, if ever, moved into frontier regions, regions characterized by lawlessness and subsistence economies.

Though there are examples of market farmers moving very near to frontier zones, these exceptions are rare enough to prove the rule. For example, the Moravian team who first moved into the Wacovia District in North Carolina actually had to cut the roads and fords for their wagons in the last leg of their trip. Similarly, Daniel Boone led Judge Henderson's settlers over the mountains into "dark and bloody ground" on foot, without their wagons, carrying their goods on pack animals as the Wilderness Road was still but a trail. As with the Moravians, this is rare enough to be of note. Most settlers carried their capitol in wagons and moved onto lands defined by law and into an economy defined by markets.

Both the Moravians and Boone's people met squatters on the land they would call their own. William Byrd met some of these true frontier folk along Virginia's southern border in 1728. He said they had remained outside polite society "...for generations without benefit of law or clergy....." His witty dig reveals at least as much about the nature of frontier squatters as it does about Virginia prigs. They were rugged and even rough, unpretentious, frequently enmeshed in multi-racial, multi-cultural societies a polite gentleman like Mr. Byrd would not have recognized even if he deigned to see them.

So, rule number one about classic migration in Colonial America is that migrants were settlers, not frontiers people, and they moved to settle on lands already under the aegis of some authority capable of transferring more or less clear title to the lands on which they hoped to grow their estates.

Why we look at dirt first, then paper.

A random concatenation of events got me thinking about why we do what we do the way we do. It all came together when a volunteer asked about what documents to look for in order to find a stage coach road. My reply, more or less verbatim, follows:

Muscle powered transportation is my definition of "pre-modern" and those are the defining technologies for the old traces the Trading Path Association seeks. But (and this is a major but) muscle powered transport persisted well into the industrial age and the farther into that age it persisted the farther the roads deviated from their original course. For example, railroads caused wholesale rerouting of local roads and extinguished many a town that thrived until snuffed by cessation of wagon commerce. So, by the time scheduled bus service (stagecoaches) entered the backcountry there is no knowing where the original roads went. This is one reason that I pretty much reject the normal process of history which consists of looking for documents and then finding whatever was referred to in the documents.

First, the historic document set is very incomplete. Second, what documents remain are scattered between various archiving authorities and it is not inexpensive to do an exhaustive document study. Third, documents frequent obscure more than they reveal and sometime outright lie. Documents are quintessentially secondary sources. They are mere description of a physical or legal fact. As you well know from your personal life, the vast majority of your most important activities, with any luck at all, never get recorded on a public document. Those same important acts, though, frequently leave marks on the ground.

Dirt never lies. It may be disturbed or incomplete but, marks on the land are more than anything else, primary resources. So, the TPA seeks the marks and only then does it turn to documents to explain what the mark might mean. That way we think we'll find and understand more than if we start with secondary materials and work back toward the dirt.

I hope this gives you an idea of our methodology and its logical underpinnings.

trm

What this blog is about: what to expect here.

Hikers Alongside Old Road, Orange County, NC

"Beaten Paths" is a fair description of the object of our life; we seek the beaten paths of the southeast, the region of England's first North American frontier. That frontier lasted perhaps longer than any other American frontier and we believe much of what the world knows as "American" came into being there.

It took nearly two hundred years for English/Anglo-American government to gain control of the land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains, a distance of roughly three hundred miles. In the next hundred years Anglo-American government subdued, imposed itself on the rest of the lower 48 states. The lessons learned in two hundred years of trial and error were applied to the rest of the continental nation. As we all know, it was not a pretty sight.

But it does no good to avert your eyes from the icky bits in history. If you pretend they didn't happen they will come back and bite you hard one day. On the other hand, it does very little good to wallow in self-loathing over the acts of ancestors, truth be known, we would rather forget. We have changed a good deal and much for the better. That is the hopeful part of the story we're uncovering by finding the Beaten Paths.

We believe, from archaeological and archival evidence, that a multi-racial society occupied the southeastern backcountry frontier for much of the first two hundred years of American history. Subjugating that society, our first multi-cultural moment, informs much of the early history of Anglo-America.

So, if history floats your boat, if you're curious about the darker corners of American History, or if you have a taste for beaten paths, trails, cart tracks, wagon roads, keep an eye on this space. We intend to publish everything we know about finding these old places.