Many backwoods families devoted themselves, through several generations, to the winning of the wilderness with rifle and axe. The debt of the nation to these people is a heavy one. They may be compared to the outposts of an encamped army, the border settlers being the sentries, stretching along the enemy’s face, and the backwoods towns the pickets. As an army sleeps in security behind its outposts, so was the main body of the colonists, screened from the Indians by the backwoods settlers, enabled to build up towns and cultivate its plantations in safety. And as, when an army resumes the march, the outpost of the night before forms the advance guard, so these border sentinels were ever in the front of our territorial progress. In 1783 the western boundary of the United States had been carried forward to the Mississippi River. The large area between it and the Alleghanies had been won for us by the dauntless backwoodsmen after a decade of intense struggle. By holding the border Indians in check they performed a valuable service to the colonies in their fight for freedom. The settlement of Kentucky made possible the capture of the British posts in the Illinois and Indiana regions, and paved the way for the acquisition of our Western territory. Whilst working out the destiny of a nation, the simple-minded backwoodsmen were quite unconscious of any such high purpose. They pushed forward into the wilderness because land was to be had there for practically nothing. They desired to make homes for their children, and were willing to risk their lives in the venture. As to the hardships, they and their fathers had been accustomed to arduous poverty in the old country. The life of the hunter, which was an inseparable part of backwoods existence, appealed to them as it does to all healthy men. In fact, the majority of them grew to love their hard lot, with its constant adventure. Many, like Boone, became so enamoured of the life, despite its dangers and hardships, that they shunned the approach of civilization and moved farther into the forest whenever the region they had opened up began to be at all thickly populated.