"The land was ours before we were the land's," the poet said, and it seems apropos of this moment in history.[41] Fair Play territory, possessed before it was owned and operated under _de facto_ rule, would be some time in Americanizing the sturdy frontiersmen who came to bring civilization to this wilderness. FOOTNOTES: [1] Carl L. Becker, _Beginnings of the American People_ (Ithaca, N. Y., 1960), p. 182. [2] Turner, _Frontier and Section_, p. 51. [3] Frederick Jackson Turner, _The Frontier in American History_ (New York, 1963), p. 9. [4] E. B. O'Callaghan, _Documentary History of the State of New York_ (Albany, 1849), I, 587-591. [5] Henry Steele Commager, _Documents of American History_ (New York, 1958), I, 49. [6] An earlier twentieth-century historian misinterprets the first Stanwix Treaty in much the same manner as earlier colonial historians erred in their judgments of the Proclamation of 1763. Albert T. Volwiler, _George Croghan and the Westward Movement, 1741-1782_ (Cleveland, 1926), p. 250, really overstates his case, if the Fair Play settlers are any example, when he claims that the Fort Stanwix line, by setting a definite boundary, impeded the western advance. Establishing friendships with the Indians and then persuading them to sell their lands proved valuable to more than speculators, whose case Volwiler documents so well, as West Branch settlements after 1768 will attest. [7] The extension of Provincial authority to Pine Creek would have taken in three-fourths of what we have labeled Fair Play territory.