第7章 The Red Man's Trail (3)

In the Month of March the Cows begin to drop their Calves, then the Cow-pen Master, with all his Men, rides out to see and drive up the Cows with all their new fallen Calves; they being weak cannot run away so as to escape, therefore are easily drove up, and the Bulls and other Cattle follow them; and they put these Calves into the Pasture, and every Morning and Evening suffer the Cows to come and suckle them, which done they let the Cows out into the great Woods to shift for their Food as well as they can;whilst the Calf is sucking one Tit of the Cow, the Woman of the Cow-Pen is milking one of the other Tits, so that she steals some Milk from the Cow, who thinks she is giving it to the Calf; soon as the Cow begins to go dry, and the Calf grows Strong, they mark them, if they are Males they cut them, and let them go into the Wood.Every Year in September and October they drive up the Market Steers, that are fat and of a proper Age, and kill them;they say they are fat in October, but I am sure they are not so in May, June and July; they reckon that out of 100 Head of Cattle they can kill about 10 or 12 steers, and four or five Cows a Year; so they reckon that a Cow-Pen for every 100 Head of Cattle brings about 40 pounds Sterling per Year.The Keepers live chiefly upon Milk, for out of their Vast Herds, they do condescend to tame Cows enough to keep their Family in Milk, Whey, Curds, Cheese and Butter; they also have Flesh in Abundance such as it is, for they eat the old Cows and lean Calves that are like to die.The Cow-Pen Men are hardy People, are almost continually on Horseback, being obliged to know the Haunts of their Cattle"."You see, Sir, what a wild set of Creatures Our English Men grow into, when they lose Society, and it is surprising to think how many Advantages they throw away, which our industrious Country-Men would be glad of: Out of many hundred Cows they will not give themselves the trouble of milking more than will maintain their Family."With such a race of born horsemen, every whit as bold and resourceful as the voyageurs, to bear the brunt of a new era of transportation, all that was needed to challenge French trade beyond the Alleghanies was competent and aggressive leadership.

The situation called for men of means, men of daring, men closely in touch with governors and assemblies and acquainted with the web of politics that was being spun at Philadelphia, Williamsburg, New York, London, and Paris.Generations of tenacious struggle along the American frontier had developed such men.The Weisers, Croghans, Gists, Washingtons, Franklins, Walkers, and Cresaps were men of varied descent and nationality.

They had the cunning, the boldness, and the resources to undertake successfully the task of conquering commercially the Great West.They were the first men of the colonies to be unafraid of that bugbear of the trader, Distance.We may aptly call them the first Americans because, though not a few were actually born abroad, they were the first whose plans, spirit, and very life were dominated by the vision of an America of continental dimensions.

The long story of French and English rivalry and of the war which ended it concerns us here chiefly as a commercial struggle.The French at Niagara (1749) had access to the Ohio by way of Lake Erie and any one of several rivers--the Allegheny, the Muskingum, the Scioto, or the Miami.The main routes of the English were the Nemacolin and Kittanning paths.The French, laboring under the disadvantages of the longer distance over which their goods had to be transported to the Indians and of the higher price necessarily demanded for them, had to meet the competition of the traders from the rival colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia, each of them jealous of and underbidding the other.