The wood-choppers, game hunters, and Indian fighters, who dressed and lived alike, were the typical pioneers.

They were a shifting people.

In every settlement the tide ebbed and flowed.
Some of the new-comers would be beaten in the hard struggle for existence, and would drift back to whence they had come.

Of those who succeeded some would take root in the land, and others would move still farther into the wilderness.

Thus each generation rolled westward, leaving its children at the point where the wave stopped no less than at that where it started.