ics of the Fair Play settlers; it has also examined
the basis and structure of this society, including the value system
which undergirded it. The results have pictured the religious liberty
extant in a frontier society isolated from any regular or established
church, a liberty of conscience which left each man free to worship
according to the dictates of his own faith. This freedom, this right to
choose for himself, made the Fair Play settler surprisingly receptive to
other groups and their practices, practices which he was free to reject,
and often did.[19] This analysis has also pointed up the class structure
and its significance in promoting order in a frontier community. And
finally, an examination of the value system of these Pennsylvania
pioneers has provided an understanding of why they behaved as they did.

The last major aspect of this investigation concerned the nature of
leadership. Determined by the people, and thus essentially democratic,
it had certain peculiar characteristics. In the first place, the top
leaders tended to come from the Fair Play community in its broadest
social sense, but not from the Fair Play territory in its narrow
geographic sense.[20] Secondly, the political participation of the Fair
Play settlers, if office-holding is any criterion, emphasizes the high
degree of involvement in terms of the total population.[21] And last,
this leadership appeared to be overextended when faced with the problem
of defending its own frontier and the new nation which was striving so
desperately for independence. Consequently, it was forced to turn to
established government for support. This may have been the embryonic
beginning of the nationalism which the frontier fostered in later
generations.

What then, is the meaning of this particular study, an ethnographic
interpretation of Turner's thesis? Turner himself, gave the best
argument for ethnography. He said that

... the economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the
sociologist, the geographer, the student of literature, of art, of
religion--all the allied laborers in the study of society--have
contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These
contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly of new
points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of relations,
causes, and emphasis. Each of these special students is in some
danger of bias by his particular point of view, by his expo