PREFACE

It is not the purpose of this volume to give in full detail the historical background of the successive great movements of population from the East to the country West of the Alleghenies; this ground has been covered by authors whose exhaustive books are named in the Bibliography.

"On the Trail of the Pioneers" gives glimpses of many of these great movements, the routes the emigrants took, and the sections to which they went. The endeavor is made to answer the questions, Who were the emigrants? How and where did they travel? What adventures did they have by the way? What were their impressions of the country through which they passed? What did they do when they reached their destinations? The book has been written because the author felt the need of which Claude S. Larzelere, in a paper on The Teaching of Michigan History, wrote:

We talk much in general terms in our American History classes about the westward movement of population. All too seldom do we take actual typical cases of emigrants moving to the West by way of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes, by the Cumberland Road and the Ohio River, or by other roads, bringing out the actual life on the road.

The graphic pictures of the struggles of actual emigrants emphasize as nothing else can the words of the author of A Journey on the Mississippi River:

The West is now a phrase of somewhat indefinite significance. Not very long ago it meant Pittsburgh. . . . Fifty years since,1 Cincinnati was on the verge of the white

'Written in 1847.