The early immigrants to Oregon were not mendicants nor tramps. It is true some of them were of a roving disposition; probably a few were of the improvident class. Most of them were forceful, strong men and women, physically and mentally; strong also in their Americanism, and filled with the racial instinct to follow the western course of Empire. They came to Oregon as home-builders. Many of them had their lineage from the pioneers who first settled the Atlantic Coast, particularly the southern part of it. Descendants of these pioneers had crossed the mountains and were the hardy and courageous pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee in the early, perilous, and heroic days of Daniel Boone, John Sevier, George Rogers Clark, and James Robertson. The ancestors of some of these Oregon immigrants had taken part in the great war of the American Revolution on the Atlantic Coast, and had then assisted in upbuilding civilization in the Middle West. These forefathers had won the Middle West. These immigrants came to win Oregon. The grandfathers and fathers of some of them had taken part in the war of 1812, and in the later Indian wars. A few of these immigrants were veterans of the war of 1812 and of these Indian wars. There were immigrants who had taken active part in the troubles with the Mormons and had assisted in driving them out of Western Missouri. It was of this stock that parts of Missouri, and especially the western part of that state, had been then largely peopled, and many of these Oregon immigrants had settled there temporarily before coming to Oregon. A great majority of the immigrants to Oregon from 1843 to 1846, inclusive, and of some of the later immigrants, were from the Southern States. They, and their ancestors for many generations, had been born and brought up in the South. Most of them had the good qualities and were of the high type of American citizenship characteristic of the white people of the South. They were mostly plain people, but they and their ancestry were of good class. Theirs was an inheritance of indomitable will, high courage, and noble purposes. Their ancestors had conquered, settled, and upbuilded the country from the seaboards of Virginia and the Carolinas to the Mississippi River.[24] Oregon was another land to conquer, to settle, and to upbuild. There were also in these early immigrations a number of men and women, descendants of the sturdy peoples who settled in New England, and in other Northern States. There were a few men who were attracted to Oregon by the love of adventure incident to the journey and to the settlement of a new country. There were also a few men, born outside of the United States, who allied themselves with the Americans, and became identified with the Americans in Oregon, and subsequently were admitted as citizens of the United States.