George Caleb Bingham - Daniel Boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap

American pioneers, also known as American settlers, were

European American European Americans are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes both people who descend from the first European settlers in the area of the present-day United States and people who descend from more recent European arrivals. Since th ...

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans with ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants). Although this term had historically been used fo ...

, and

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

settler A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a Human settlement, settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among ...

s who migrated westward from the British

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America. The Thirteen C ...

and later the

United States of America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...

to settle and develop areas of the nation within the continent of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. The pioneer concept and ethos greatly predate the migration to the

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. As American settlement i ...

, with which they are commonly associated, and many places now considered "East" were settled by pioneers from even further east. For example,

Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (, 1734September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyo ...

, a key figure in U.S. history, settled in

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

, when that "Dark and Bloody Ground" was still undeveloped. One important development in the Western settlement were the Homestead Acts, which provided formal legislation for settlers which regulated the settlement process with little to no concern for the existing inhabitants of the land. Pioneers also settled on land that was once inhabited by American Indian tribes.

Etymology

The word "pioneer" originates with the Middle French ''pionnier'' (originally, a foot soldier, or soldier involved in digging

trench A trench is a type of digging, excavation or depression in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a swale (landform), swale or a bar ditch), and narrow compared with its length (as opposed to a simple hole or trapping ...

es), from the same root as

peon Peon (English language, English , from the Spanish language, Spanish ''wikt:peón#Spanish, peón'' ) usually refers to a person subject to peonage: any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which t ...

or pawn.Philip Durkin, "Lexical borrowing, 5.1 Basic concepts and terminology" in ''The Oxford Guide to Etymology'' (2011), ch. 5, p. 134, 138. In the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

, the term independently evolved a sense of being an innovator or trailblazer. As early as 1664, Englishman John Evelyn used the term with a self-effacing "workman" meaning when he wrote in his treatise on planting, '' Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees'': "I speak now in relation to the Royal Society, not my self, who am but a Servant of it only and a Pioneer in the Works".

Pioneers

Various figures in American folklore and literature typify the pioneer. James Fenimore Cooper's '' The Deerslayer'' (1841) became the most successful of his early series, the '' Leatherstocking Tales'', about pioneer life in the

Province of New York The Province of New York was a British proprietary colony and later a royal colony on the northeast coast of North America from 1664 to 1783. It extended from Long Island on the Atlantic, up the Hudson River and Mohawk River valleys to ...

Laura Ingalls Wilder Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American writer, teacher, and journalist. She is best known as the author of the children's book series ''Little House on the Prairie'', published between 1932 and 1 ...

's '' Little House on the Prairie'' series, published a century later from 1932 to 1943 but set sixty years prior, typified later depictions of pioneer families.

(1734–1820) and

Davy Crockett Colonel (United States), Colonel David Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was an American politician, militia officer and frontiersman. Often referred to in popular culture as the "King of the Wild Frontier", he represented Tennesse ...

(1786–1836) became two real-life icons of pioneer history.

Historic details and episodes

History of settlement efforts

The first westward migrations occurred as members of the

sought to expand their respective colonies westward. Those whose original royal charters did not specify a western limit simply extended their lands westward indefinitely. After the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

was officially formed upon the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, federal coordination and legislation began to give settlement a more unified approach. The Land Ordinance of 1785 was the first official action by the federal government in deciding how political organization of new territories would be handled. Then in 1787 the

Northwest Ordinance The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Co ...

declared that states could not individually claim new lands, and that westward expansion would be handled by the federal government. In implementing the Land Act of 1804, the government took its first steps towards legislating the manner in which land would be individually claimed by and distributed to settlers. One federal effort to encourage western travel and settlement was the publication of ''The Prairie Traveler'' in 1859, three years before the Homestead Act was passed. Randolph B. Marcy, Captain of the U.S. Army, was commissioned by the War Department to provide a guide for those moving west. It provided not only mileage and stopping points during travel, but also gave advice about what to take on the journey, how to interact with Native Americans and also how to respond to threatening situations such as encounters with bears.The Prairie Traveler, Randolph B. Macy There were many other forms of this process, such as land runs including the Land Run of 1889, when parts of the territory of

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

were first made available to settlers on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Details of pioneer efforts and actions

As western settlement grew, certain trends began to emerge. Most pioneers traveled in wagon trains with their families and other settlers, banding together for defense and to spread the workload. Pioneers in the East often had to clear the land, owing to lush forests there. In the Midwest, the task was to bring agricultural fertility to the

Great Plains The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include th ...

. Some pioneers moved westward with the intent of claiming land for their families. Others, such as trappers, moved west for commercial reasons, and then remained there when their businesses proved to be profitable.

Popular culture and folklore

The figure of the pioneer has historically played a role in

American culture The culture of the United States encompasses various social behaviors, institutions, and Social norm, norms, including forms of Languages of the United States, speech, American literature, literature, Music of the United States, music, Visual a ...

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

and

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

. The pioneer is similar to other iconic figures involved in stories of the "settlement of the West," such as the

cowboy A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the ''vaquero'' ...

, trapper, prospector, and miner; however, the pioneer is distinct in that he represents those who went into unexplored territory in search of a new life, looking to establish permanent settlement. Various figures in American folklore and literature typify the pioneer. '' The Deerslayer'' was the most successful of an early series, the Leatherstocking Tales, about pioneer life in New York. '' Little House on the Prairie'', a century later, typified a later series of novels describing a pioneer family.

and

are two real-life icons of pioneer history.

References

External links

Culture

Western Folklife Center

History

Autry National Center of the American West – Los Angeles, California

American West History

New Perspectives on 'The West'
The West Film Project, WETA-TV, 2001
Dodge City, Kansas 'Cowboy Capital'

by Ida Ellen Rath, 1964 w/ photos
Old West Kansas

Tombstone Arizona History

"The American West"
BBC Radio 4 discussion with Frank McLynn, Jenni Calder and Christopher Frayling (''In Our Time'', June 13, 2002)

Media

''The Frontier: A Frontier Town Three Months Old'' by Ward Platt
– 1908 book on the real West. Free to read and full-text search.
161 photographs of frontier geography and personalities; these are pre-1923 and out of copyright
American frontier 18th century in the United States 19th century in the United States 20th century in the United States American folklore Culture of the Western United States History of United States expansionism Settler colonialism American pioneers {{DEFAULTSORT:American Pioneer