nd Canada during the French and Indian wars from 1690 to
1760, and under frontier conditions different from the conditions of the
earlier Puritan colonization. In 1676, Virginia was passing through
Indian fighting--keenest along the fall line, where the frontier
lay--and also experiencing a social revolt which resulted in the defeat
of the democratic forces that sought to stay the progress of
aristocratic control in the colony.[70:1] The date marks the end of the
period when the Virginia tidewater could itself be regarded as a
frontier region, and consequently the beginning of a more special
interest in the interior.

Let us first examine the northern part of the movement into the back
country. The expansion of New England into the vacant spaces of its own
section, in the period we have chosen for discussion, resulted in the
formation of an interior society which contrasted in many ways with that
of the coast, and which has a special significance in Western history,
in that it was this interior New England people who settled the Greater
New England in central and western New York, the Wyoming Valley, the
Connecticut Reserve of Ohio, and much of the prairie areas of the Old
Northwest. It is important to realize that the Old West included
interior New England.

The situation in New England at the close of the seventeenth century is
indicated by the Massachusetts act of 1694 enumerating eleven towns,
then on the frontier and exposed to raids, none of which might be
voluntarily deserted without leave of the governor and council, on
penalty of loss of their freeholds by the landowners, or fine of other
inhabitants.[70:2]

Thus these frontier settlers were made substantially garrisons, or "mark
colonies." Crowded into the palisades of the town, and obliged in spite
of their poverty to bear the brunt of Indian attack, their hardships are
illustrated in the manly but pathetic letters of Deerfield's minister,
Mr. Williams,[70:3] in 1704. Parkman succinctly describes the general
conditions in these words:[70:4]

The exposed frontier of New England was between two and three
hundred miles long, and consisted of farms and hamlets loosely
scattered through an almost impervious forest. . . . Even in
so-called villages the houses were far apart, because, except
on the seashore, the people lived by farming. Such as were
able to do so fenced their dwellings with palisades, or built
them of solid ti