Note 12 — II. DISTINCTIVE TRAITS AS FARMERS

Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (Boston, 1839), chap. x, 112-113, 117, says: “Loading a wagon with a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, the indispensable supply of tea and molasses, a Bible and a wife, and with his axe on his shoulder, the Yankee sets out for the West, without a servant, without an assistant, often without a companion, to build himself a log hut, six hundred miles from his father’s roof, and clear away a spot for a farm in the midst of the boundless forest.... He is incomparable as a pioneer, unequalled as a settler of the wilderness.”