conditions of the wilderness soon discovered that
his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his
individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himself
to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the
age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened
civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the
course of half a century.

A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing
the successive episodes in the history of a single family as it
wended its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely
repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up
the granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the
transmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give to
the spectator a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westward
movement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession,
revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhaps
escape his scrutiny. Back of the individual, back of the family,
even, lurk the creative and formative impulses of colonization,
expansion, and government. In the recognition of these social and
economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the
group into the community; the community into a new society. In
this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular
hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the
movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets,
gain in impressiveness and dignity.

As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever
southward and westward, seeking room for expansion and economic
independence, a series of frontiers was gradually thrust out
toward the wilderness in successive waves of irregular
indentation. The true leader in this westward advance, to whom
less than his deserts has been accorded by the historian, is the
drab and mercenary trader with the Indians. The story of his
enterprise and of his adventures begins with the planting of
European civilization upon American soil. In the mind of the
aborigines he created the passion for the fruits, both good and
evil, of the white man's civilization, and he was welcomed by the
Indian because he also brought the means for repelling the
further advance of that civilization. The trader was of
incalculable service to the pioneer in first spying out the land
and charting the trackless wilderness. The trail rudely marked by
the buffalo became in time the Indi