The research division of the Foundation's educational mission presents a multi-thematic interpretation of the experiences of representative persons who inhabited, fought in, or passed through the region of the Upper Ohio Valley during the eighteenth century. This interpretation serves the larger goal of the Foundation's motto: "Learning from the people on America's first frontier what it means to be an American citizen today."

Our historical interpreters collaboratively participate in a pilot educational program to test our story lines in a wide variety of historical presentations. Translating these historical ideas into meaningful understanding and application for today's audiences is their chief task.

The result of our research is intended primarily for our own living history interpreters, researchers, and adjunct historians. Their collaborative feedback compliments, corrects, and clarifies the material and provides a rich and effective application to modern American audiences. Others who will profit from the use of the research are school teachers and college professors, given that our presentations exceed state academic standards. Finally, visitors to Providence Plantation can also benefit from this study as continuing education on the history lessons to which they were first exposed at the Plantation. Topical discussions at the end of each section are combined with recommended readings to assist in further study of subjects that hold special interest to them or to simply to acquire a more advanced level of frontier history in the region that embraces Western Pennsylvania, Northwestern Virginia, and the region west of the Ohio River. The term "Upper Ohio Valley Frontier" embraces this entire region.

Our distinctive educational goal at Providence Plantation is to tell the story about the role these frontier people----red, white, and black played in the making of a new and unprecedented nation in the 18th century. But the correlative goal is to enable modern Americans to discover things about themselves in stories about ordinary people and everyday life, as well as some who became extraordinary leaders and contributors to making America and were thereby permanently established in our national heritage. Our primary techniques for telling these personal stories are autobiographical (first-person) interpretation and presentation, and drama (multiple, interactive first-person presentations). In all cases, the interpreters seek to base their presentations on well-established research or a creative historical likelihood regarding the lives of those whom they portray. They also seek to take their inspiration from these figures whose lives where changed for the better by their experiences on the frontier.

Our strong desire is to exceed our visitor’s expectations every time they come to Providence Plantation, whether in our living history interpretations, our presentations in music, dance, or special events, as well as in the skill of our craftsmen, and in the authenticity of our physical plant.

ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS IN THE HISTORY LEARNING PROCESS

To teach frontier history effectively at least four critical elements are required in the learning experience of our visitors:

First, and most important, is the identification of the personal interests of our visitors and their concerns about contemporary life in America and in the world. These interests and concerns help to determine, for better or for worse, their understanding of the past and its relationship to the present. Our interpreters are strongly urged to interact with visitors before their presentations to determine what interests and concerns they bring to our programs, in order to relate past to present.

Second, the selection of historical themes and topics that tell the story of the frontier in ways that give visitors a perspective on themselves, and on American citizenship and society today. In this way younger generations will more fully appreciate what our forefathers endured to secure the many freedoms we now enjoy but may be in danger of taking for granted.

Third, the special teaching techniques that our history interpreters employ to help visitors visualize what it was like to live in a culturally diverse world (red, white, and black) that disappeared two hundred and more years ago. We encourage active participation on the part of the public to the extent that safety considerations permit.

Fourth, the reproduction buildings of the Providence Plantation site, including the earlier settlements and the Indian village. They reflect the successive and evolving stages of 18th century life on the frontier and, with our costumed interpreters and entertainers, create an aura of historical reality that is without equal in presenting the frontier history of the upper Ohio Valley.

The eighteenth century history of the Upper Ohio Valley frontier covers the period of the 1720s to 1800, roughly eighty years. The first period runs from 1720 to 1755, covering the fur trade to the French and Indian War. The second period constitutes the French and Indian War during the years 1756-63. The third begins in 1764 and extends to 1776, encompassing the time from Bouquet's mopping up operations after the French and Indian War and Pontiac's war for independence to the American war that achieved independence from Great Britain. The fourth period concerns the American Revolution events (1771781). The fifth period extends from 1782 to the end of the century with the establishment of the new nation and its Constitution.

Of the many themes and topics our pilot educational program we have chosen the following seven:

1. Becoming Americans on the Upper Ohio Valley Frontier:

2. Settlers, Slaves, and Indians: The American quest for individual and collective identity.

3. The Frontier World they made Together: The first multi-culture meltdown.

4. Trade, Entrepreneurism, and Labor: The economics of the frontier.

5. Roles, Relationships, and Rigors: The family on the frontier.

6. Counterpart Wars: The Seven Years War and the Revolutionary War

7. Providence and Patriotism: The role of religion on the frontier.

In all of the five periods of the eighteenth century Upper Ohio Valley frontier these themes (and others) will surface in our interpretations and presentations. This means that our visitors will more readily and more profoundly see the thematic connections between all of the historical periods and will also allow them to discover their own citizenship roots in the stories of ordinary people in frontier colonial and early America.

UPPER OHIO VALLEY: MICROCOSM OF AMERICAN FRONTIER HISTORY

While the early frontier history of America is connected in all the original thirteen colonies by its common experience, the focus of the Providence Plantation Foundation is on the history of the region west of the Allegheny Mountains as it bears on the far backcountry of Pennsylvania and Virginia in the eighteenth century. When deemed relevant our interpreters compare and contrast other colonial frontiers Similarly, the relevant history of the American colonies is presented to explicate the connection between the people, events and cultures of the east coast settlements and the and those on the trans-Appalachian frontier. The frontier history of the region in the Upper Ohio Valley is significant in that it developed sooner, quicker, and more extensively than any other frontier region (except New England) because of its location at the intersection between two empires at war, the French and the English. In kind, this frontier region was representative of what one would find in any of the other colonial frontiers. To study it is to virtually study the history of the colonial frontier everywhere. It is American frontier history in miniature. But the error of assuming that the parallels alone are important is to create a monolithic picture than simply is not historically accurate and suppresses what made each colonial frontier distinctive in important ways. Due to the trade, the war for empire, the quest for land by settlers and immigrants, and the Christian missionary efforts among Indians, Blacks, and Whites, the region was in many ways without significant parallel. Our presentations at Providence Plantation seek to maintain a balance between the distinctives and the parallels, and the impact each had on the others (for excellent summaries of all the regional frontier histories, see Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 2003). Defining "Frontier"

Modern historians now possess a richer and more nuanced meaning for our term than previously used. The contested terrain at the edge of the British and French empires in the eighteenth century Upper Ohio Valley was the (prior) habitation of the Ohio Indians and the region to which Blacks ran for refuge among those Indians or lived among the whites. Each peoples had its own "frontier," which together formed multiple sites of exchange with the other groups, cultures, and nations. Our educational goals include presentations that take variant perspectives (not just one: that of the Anglo-American, French, Indian, or Black) and yet look at the ways in the interaction of diverse peoples in these zones of interpenetration created new cultural forms. Attention is also focused on the multisided negotiations of power involved in forming that most distinctive of American landscapes, frontiers. For example, creative presentations of the treaty as the first form of theatre in the backcountry west of the settlements show how the Indians exercised some, albeit temporary, degree of restraint on Anglo-American colonialism. Given the great number of actors in the frontier history, the resources are limitless for developing living history presentations at Providence Plantation that spell out the practical lessons that ordinary people provide for modern audiences. Where we use the singular form, "frontier," it has a collective or generic sense that implies a great diversity of peoples and cultures on the backcountry of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The Role of the Ohio Country Frontier in Nation Building

One of the questions we seek to address is: In what ways and to what extent the Ohio Country frontier history played a role in the building of a new nation? If the colonists on the east coast were struggling with how to maintain autonomy within the British Imperial framework, the frontier people had already asserted autonomy in principle just by being on the frontier. Whether Euro American or Amerindian, they steadfastly resisted British control by colonial governments and by military might. The new settlers' ignoring the Royal Proclamation Line in 1763 is a classic example. In the case of the native population forty years of Franco and Anglo pressure was repeatedly met with a refusal to accept European domination. Blacks in the east ran away from white masters for freedom, and in protest of the horrible tyranny of slavery, and often found asylum among the Indians. The story that says it all is that many prisoners, white and black, taken from the Indians under Colonel Bouquet in 1764, preferred to return to the Indian villages west of the Ohio River, rather then return to Anglo-American "civilization." The undying quest for freedom and independence was not created in the eastern towns of the colonies and eventually made its way to the frontier! Here it was already, for some at least, a way of life apart from the politics of the east. The Fur Trade since the 1720s gave expression to colonial entrepreneurism, including the presence of blacksmiths who repaired guns and other tools for Indians and whites 5 alike. From its earliest days the evolution of the backcountry decisively shaped the legacy of colonialism in North America that ultimately contributed to the making of the new nation. The stories of individual traders, their white indentured servants and black slaves, and the Indians with whom the trade was carried on, provide first-hand experiences from which visitors to Providence Plantation can learn the role of the Upper Ohio Valley frontier in creating America.

The impact of the Seven Years War must also be appreciated in understanding the role the Ohio Country frontier played in nation building. Recently a number of scholars have come to give renewed and fuller expression to what only a few others have argued before ( Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 1991, 7,371, mentions Bernard Bailyn and Jack P. Greene). Historians and students of colonial and early American can no longer view the Seven Years' War as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution. It was clearly "the indispensable precursor and the counterpart influence in the formation of the early republic." Thus, " In shaping the world and the perceptions of both British and American leaders, the war became the necessary precondition for the development of an American nation-state...." (Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War, 2000, 745-746). The First World War began on the backcountry frontier of Ohio Country!

These frontier perspectives emerge in the history teaching presentations at Providence Plantation. Our interpreters master the technique of autobiographical (first-person) presentation and the art of social history storytelling so as to tell the big story of American nation making in the historical and social context of diverse peoples in the distant backcountry region known as "Ohio Country." They can bracket the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and show how on this western edge of the English North American empire Anglo-Americans and Amerindians came together for a variety of purposes, from trading goods and information, to making treaty-based alliances and engaging in war. But our first-person approach allows our visitors to see that history through the eyes of those who were there. Likewise, through drama, our interpreters illustrate the complex interactions that characterized an area where opportunity, intrigue, and conflict arose among the diverse people who inhabited it; storytelling invites our visitors to visualize and interact during and after the story is told.

Contrary to the common presentation of colonial and early American history where military leaders and politicians receive primacy of attention, our focus is on the lives and aspirations of ordinary people-the vast majority---that have always been at stake. In some ways the issues were very similar for frontier inhabitants to the Anglo-American of the eastern settlements. Their fundamental concerns were the commonplace things in peoples' lives: their businesses or jobs, their personal finances, their reputations, their social ties (family and friends), their health, their material possessions, their spiritual needs, and all their daily stress sources of stress. Social conflict arose when the needs or wants of two or more parties negatively affected one another. For those of a common religious faith or at least having sound values compromise was generally easier to achieve. But in general consensus was arrived at (as it is today) through confrontation, negotiation, and accommodation (unless, of course, the more powerful used coercion) to resolve 6 conflicting interests.

For many students of our national history the central dynamic in American democracy is the unending struggle among self-interested parties. This struggle has been the constant factor that has challenged the status quo and upset the balance of power. Historians and students seek to explain what caused things to change in the past to provide insight into what is causing change in the present and to prepare (or warn) us to deal with changes in the future. Insight results from the study of conflicts in the past and how they were or were not resolved. Some historians, for ex-ample, see the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolutionary War as "epochal events that yoked imperialism with republicanism in American political culture" and that this viewpoint "may ...enable us to take another step toward understanding a national history in which war and freedom have often intertwined. For ours is, in the end, an inheritance shaped no less by the quest for power than by the pursuit of happiness" (Anderson, Crucible of War, 746). If there is truth in this perspective, then their serious implications for modern Americans, even if we disagree with the idea that America is or ever has been an imperialistic nation. In any case, eighteenth century America on the eastern seaboard did not experience the chaos, disorder, and anxiety that characterized life so much of the time on the far backcountry frontier. Nonetheless, both east and west shared conflicts of interest, including those between each other, and it was these encounters in each period of the century that shaped personal and collective American identities and values.

The unique and compelling rationale for telling the eighteenth century story of the frontier at Providence Plantation is that it tells how culturally diverse peoples forged relationships across the boundaries that still separated them in the east and developed into a society that valued liberty and equality. This social and cultural interaction occurred at first among whites and blacks on the frontier who feared what they held to be Indian savages and their French colleagues. A common enemy led to a meltdown in traditional white-black relationships. At the same time, black runaways and prisoners taken from eastern settlements and plantations and adopted by the Indians, found that they had much in common in their cultural heritages (e.g. religion, the hunt, warfare, and agriculture). While some blacks were allowed to keep aloof relationships with the Indians, many intermarried, had children, rose to positions of power, and in rare cases became go-betweens on behalf of the Indians and European governmental and military authorities. Likewise, traders, frontiersmen, and white runaways established close relationships with some of the Indians through adoption and intermarriage. The Frontier changed everything for everyone.

Looking at the larger picture a major distinctive on the Ohio country frontier (and all of the frontiers) that separates it from the eastern experience was the virtual absence of institutions until after the Revolutionary war and the formation of the new nation. So while private lives of those in the east were lived in and through institutions larger than the family, their counterpart Euro Americans on the frontier had no formal organizations such the churches and the law courts. Nonetheless, doubtless some of them brought from the east the informal institutions such as folk customs, rules of etiquette, and a word-of-honor and a handshake based "gentleman's agreement." That such 7 arrangements included agreements between colonial governments and individuals on the frontier is well documented (e.g. Christopher Gist's requests for remuneration of his expenses and losses to Virginia and George Croghan's similar requests to Pennsylvania), demonstrating that on the frontier as well as in the east, public and private sphere are not always autonomous. This serves as a reminder that social history and civic history are inseparably bound together.

If Providence Plantation Foundation is to fulfill its role as a historical educational center for living history interpretation and presentations, it is restricted to doing so in a focused, microcosmic way. This means that our on-site programs will present the larger story of "becoming Americans on the frontier" in ways that are appropriate to the creative construction of the fictive physical plant of Providence Plantation. Our construction plans mirror and gives meaningful context to our interpretive programs. These plans embrace the most primitive habitations of the earliest scouts and pioneers-mere holes in the ground with canvas and tree-branch coverings-a log cabin with no windows or chimney (a mere hole in the roof as in Indian cabins), a cabin with stick and mud chimney, a larger cabin with windows, flooring, and stone chimney, and a two story log house with all the "amenities" the pre-Revolutionary War frontier could offer. Then, finally, visitors will tour and receive history presentations at the post-Revolutionary War site (c. 1780.) This features a complete late eighteenth century Virginia-style plantation built for a Virginia gentleman of influence after the region was acknowledged as part of the state of Pennsylvania in the newly formed nation. Last, but by no means least, two somewhat distinct Indian villages appear in the woods, to illustrate French architectural influence on Indian structures as well as a typical Ohio Indian village. History interpreters in appropriate dress will appear as well-known Indians who helped make the frontier history and who will explain the material culture, religion, and customs of these important peoples of the Upper Ohio country frontier in the eighteenth century.

Obviously the Indian and the Black experience illustrate that some persons have been long marginalized in the evolution of the American society that upholds liberty and equality. Their struggle to achieve the promise and the obstacles they have had to surmount began in our history and continued for all too long. The pain of the past and deep resentment prevents most people of black and Indian heritages from telling their own story as only they can. Providence Plantation Foundations invites persons of both cultures to proudly claim their primary right to become historical presenters of their peoples. The historical interpretation of that experience at Providence Plantation explores these issues that lie behind the critical challenges (and those who seek to exploit them for their own political and personal economic agendas) that still divide American society. We also seek to address the need for modern Americans to rediscover the fundamental values and ideals and how our nation's foundational documents and our earliest history define an American citizen.*

*We acknowledge our indebtedness to the manual Becoming Americans: Our Struggle to Be Both Free and Equal, Cary Carson, Editor (Williamsburg: The Colonial Williamsburg Fountion), for ideas, which we have adapted to the Upper Ohio Frontier history. (Stop here on the PPF Website)

The Value of Our Organizing Theme: Becoming Americans on the Frontier

The choice of our comprehensive organizing theme affects every aspect of the historical programming at Providence Plantation. First, it assists educational planners develop story lines, identify priorities, and select programs and sites that make the best use of our resources. Second, it gives our fund-raisers a rationale with which to approach donors who are more likely to support a well-package program. Third, it gives our interpreters a perspective from which to create well-written scripts on which their presentations are based and to provide a rationale for why things happened the way they did. Fourth, a common theme guides research, establishing the agenda of issues to be addressed and identifying the primary sources required to establish the historicity of the presentations. Even the acquisition and exhibition of collections and the construction of sites are given direction by the overarching theme of our programs. Fifth, and most important, the thematic interpretation of frontier history provides coherent meaning that our visitors can grasp, interact with our interpreters over, and take home with them as an ongoing experience of personal growth in their understand as to what it means to be an American citizen.

The Frontier Inhabitants' Stories

Much more complex and more representative than the situation in the small and larger towns on the eighteenth century east coast, the multicultural frontier was composed of its first inhabitants, the diverse Indian societies, then the white traders, scouts, land agents, settlers, and military figures, and the blacks who either ran to the Indians from white masters or accompanied them, civilians and military, to the frontier. Our history interpreters tell the stories of each group by portraying representative individuals whose experience would have been very similar-allowing for some differences--- to the other members of the group. Where the differences are significant, other presentations are made to provide a comprehensive and accurate telling of their story and that of the frontiers. 

The geographical and topographical shape of the frontier in the Upper Ohio Valley made for a series of natural divisions among the inhabitants and travelers to the region. The Alleghenies formed the major divider between the eastern half of the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia and the frontier Within the region of the frontier itself were the three major valleys through which ran the major rivers the Monongahela, the Allegheny, and the Ohio, and their tributaries, often serving as means of travel by canoe, bateaux, or less safely, raft. Along with heavily wooded and often stony hills in the area, these physical circumstances tended to retard the movements of many settlers, and made the travel of scouts, hunters, and military groups very difficult. But the Indians, who generally traveled by foot quickly and for long distances, used the terrain to their advantage, especially in sending (communication) runners by "short cut" to the east or in waging war in the region. Still, driven by economics, English-speaking entrepreneurs (following the longstanding French practice) created the traders frontier in Indian country, opening up ancient Indian paths and the river courses in the valleys. Traders followed the Delaware and Shawnee Indians to the Ohio Valley as early as the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. In this way the trade pioneered the way for Anglo-American settlement and its own ideas of what constituted civilization.

What is not sometimes recognized is that beyond the Alleghenies small but determined number of inhabitants, even after severe Indian assaults following Washington's defeat at Fort Necessity and Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela, continued to return or arrive for the first time in the Upper Ohio Valley of Pennsylvania and Virginia. No matter how devastating the attacks, the new settlers repeatedly persisted in taking up residence on land they claimed for themselves. The Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans advanced up the Shenandoah Valley into the western parts of Virginia, evidently in small settlements as far as the head waters of the Monongahela and the Great Kanawha (New River), Similarly, a greater number but the same ethnic mix of peoples moved slightly earlier into the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio river valleys.

If at first the frontier of the Atlantic coast was the frontier of Europe, eventually the movement westward became increasing American and less European in influence, in particular less British. True ethnicity (English, Scottish, German, French, etc.) that recalled its own traditions and culture continued to cling to succeeding generation, but to lessening degrees with each successive generation. The processes begun at the Atlantic frontier were but germs in the evolution of at each successive stage of the expanding frontiers. The complex European life-style was propelled by the wilderness into the very different primitive conditions in the hinterlands beyond the settlements and especially in the far backcountry. At all of the frontiers from the Atlantic to the Ohio Valley stood the issue of what to do with the Indians, the matter of the disposition of the public domain, and the question of the relationship of the frontier settlers to the older settlements on the east coast. Subsequent concerns included the problem of extending political organization, religious activity, and meeting educational needs. Thus, the two-fold law of continuity and development appears in the successive development of the frontiers that involved important social, religious, ethical, and legal issues. An example is the application of colonial land policy, Indian policy, constitutional issues, and the social evolution of an American cultural identity.

Throughout the successive stages of the developing frontiers, longitudinally speaking, threats to the well-being of Euro Americans came largely from the Indians who saw to resist and repel the advance of the invaders who were claiming ownership of lands they understood to belong to all. Early on the French alliance of the Ohio Indians intensified the threat to the settlers. Several of the British-American colonies were forced for the first time to take united action. The most noteworthy of the conferences of the directly affected colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia) was that held in Albany in 1754. It called not only for a unifying treaty with the Six Nations, but a plan of union among the colonies themselves. The centrality of the frontier emerged prominently in Albany. The whole purpose of the congress was to establish peace with the Indians, the regulation of Indian trade, the purchase of Indian lands, and the governing of new settlements that would serve as security against the Indians, and that on the over- mountain region.

From the time the Allegheny Mountains stood between the early settlers and the seaboard population an increasingly independent spirit arose among the backcountry inhabitants. It was a spirit that eventually manifested itself as something distinctively American, though to the British this reality was rationalized as colonialism until it found undeniable expression in the Revolution in 1776. Until then there was an uneven extension of the frontier settlements into Ohio Country, due to the combined realities of Euro American exploring expeditions, Indian resistance, the location of mountains, river valleys and passes, and the important centers of attraction such as fertile and favorably located soils, salt springs, and mining ores. Also frontier military posts that provided security against Indian raids were nucleuses for settlement. Initially the settlers were still somewhat dependent on the east for certain supplies and information that were obtained from traders, pack train owners, cattle drovers, colonial militias, land company agents, and occasional visits to coastal family and friends by the frontiersmen themselves. However, as the frontier evolved such dependence was removed.

What drove the settlers to push forward into the western wilderness was the availability of the land. Never before in recorded history could an ordinary person claim and hold hundreds of acres of land to call their own at either a very low cost or in many instances for free. But free land was only part of the larger freedom these backcountry settlers sought and achieved. It was a love of freedom that in time would distinctively characterize these American frontier people and set them apart from the rest of the world.

The impact of the developing frontiers on the east and Europe alike was significant. Avoiding any notion of inevitability ("manifest destiny") perceived ahead of time about this social phenomenon, it is critical to recognize that the Euro American frontier experience promoted a collective identity that would eventually evolve into an American people. This phenomenon is all the remarkable considering that much of the backcountry population was composed of rugged and self-reliant individualists on the one hand, and their preference to be with those of the same ethnic group who spoke the same language. In the middle colonies this was especially true where the Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans ("Pennsylvania Dutch) comprised the dominant element. Burke and other writers in the mid-eighteenth century believed that Pennsylvania was "threatened with the danger of being wholly foreign in language, manners, and perhaps even inclinations" ("European Settlements, 1765 ed., ii., 200). Indeed the "middle region" between New England and the South, was broader in its spectrum of ethnic-religious-racial identities and less English than these regions. In effect, the frontier over time became more democratic and nonsectional, if not national. Because it had no barriers to shut out its frontiers from its settle region, the middle region mediated between east and west as well as between north and south. In time it became the typically American region.

It is not incidental that often both Scotch-Irish and Germans held anti-slavery views contrary to the views of most English. Alongside them were the freed indentured servants ("redemptioners") who at the expiration of their time (usually five to seven years). Some of them had already been there earlier as servants of traders among the Indians and now returned to the frontier (some even ran, as did certain blacks, to the Indians). As early as 1717 Virginia governor Spotswood wrote that "The inhabitants of our frontiers are composed generally of such as have been transported hither as servants, and, being out of their time, settle themselves where land is to be taken up and that will produce the necessaries of life with little labor." ("Spotswood Papers," in Collections of Virginia Historical Society, i.ii). Most of the redemptioners were Irish or Scotch Irish, with understandable antipathies toward the English. In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were fused into a mixed people; in effect, they were Americanized. Unfortunately, at this time blacks and Indians were not yet able to give up their struggle to be free and equal.

With the exception of military dependence from 1755 to 1764, the frontiersmen became increasingly independent of Great Britain. This was especially true by contrast to the southern coastal populations that lacked the diversified industries and was dependent on England for most of its goods. There was even a dependence on the northern colonies for various foods. Shortly afterward the frontier created a demand for merchants. As the frontier moved inland England was un-able to bring her goods directly to the consumer's wharfs where they had before exchanged their supplies for staple crops. The problem for England trade was exacerbated by the rise of diversified agriculture for a time. The consequence of this phase of frontier impact upon the northern colonies is illustrated by the rivalry in seaboard cities such as Boston, New York, and Baltimore, for what Washington called "the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire." The frontier continued to have a significant impact on the government of the new nation right up to the end of the century. For example, many of the military leaders and soldiers of the Continental Army were prepared for war by their prior experience on the backcountry of the Upper Ohio Valley frontier. Much later the Whiskey Rebellion there and in other states would form a critical epilogue to the Revolution and (among other events) serve to force the eastern national government to reckon with the backcountry inhabitants of the new nation.

To some the most important effect of the frontier has been the promotion of democracy here and in Europe. Ironically, that effect was the direct result of the individualism of its frontiersmen. The immigrants and eastern populations who came to the frontier were forced to deal with the dangers of the wilderness on their own, but most came as families or relatives and friends. Whatever antipathies already existed before they arrived on the frontier, the individualism developed doubtless fostered strong resistance to direct control. Such frontier thinking was an important factor in explaining the American Revolution, when individual liberty was sometimes confused with the absence of government. These same conditions help to explain the problems involved in instituting a strong government in the period of the confederacy. Thus even at the end of the century, John Neville, Washington's agent for tax collection in what was by now Western Pennsylvania, was viewed as a representative of governmental oppression. By a piece of irony, frontier individualism from the beginning in colonial and early America countered all such threats to personal freedom and preserved its rights through creating a representative (republican) democracy. By telling the stories of the prominent and ordinary persons on the frontier at this time, Providence Plantation interpreters are able to open windows on the past in ways that simply cannot be achieved as effectively by any other pedagogical means.

THE FRONTIER STORY LINES

The next step in the planning of programs is to select story lines that highlight important angles on our central theme of becoming Americans on the frontier. The evolution and transformation of the Upper Ohio Valley frontier is not about one colony in one narrow period. Its story can and should be told in many different ways and different times, but always through the eyes of those who experienced some facet of the story. The variety of scenarios is almost endless in the broad spectrum of the entire eighteenth century. By focusing on one or the five major historical periods at a time, the contribution of each period to the evolution of the story of the frontier emerges clearly. The story itself is told by significant ordinary people whose diverse experiences illustrate the complexity and clashing of the cultures existing on the frontier. This sets the stage for discussions about how such conflict was dealt with then and the difficulty such multiculturalism presented in forming a new, single, united nation, and its relevance for addressing the conflict of interests among diverse peoples today. This is but one example of how the "Becoming Americans on the Frontier" theme connects critical issues of the eighteenth century to concerns of visitors to Providence Plantation today.

We share the goal with other living history organizations, such as Colonial Williamsburg, in exploring the development of basic American values. Obviously, in our own focus on the frontier, including that of Virginia, the issues and the timing of their relevance were significantly different from those of the east coast towns such as Williamsburg. Therefore, our story lines relate the "Becoming Americans" theme in considerably differing ways and times congruent with the frontier history. For example, in the manual (entitled "Becoming Americans") that Colonial Williamsburg provides its historical interpreters, the following questions relate to their own story lines that have relevance for the frontier but in ways and in times typically different from that of the British colonial populations in the east. Nevertheless, these questions may useful in provoking in-depth thought about how these and other issues involved, manifested themselves on the frontier.

l. Who are the protagonists in this story line, and what values, customs, and assumptions did they bring to their experiences west of the Alleghenies?

One can see how much more complex the answers to this question will be on the frontier. There are for example, in the first period of our history numerous players such as the fur traders (French and English, who themselves are from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, or the Carolinas, and each one having similar but also differing values, customs, and assumptions, which were partly defined by their old world culture, or if born in north America, would be defined by their local culture).

The fur traders had laborers to assist them in a variety of chores. Some of these laborers were indentured servants, typically from Northern Ireland or Scotland. Others were black slaves, some of whom came directly from Africa, some from the West Indies, and some were born on eastern plantations or settlements in North America. Where they came from and how long they were on the north American continent, and what cultures (simple or mixed with whites or Indians), deter-mined the values, customs, and assumptions they either brought to or created on the frontier as laborers of the fur traders It is reasonably certain that fur traders brought representatives of all of these servants and slaves with very diverse origins and cultures.

The native Indians also had their own values, customs, and assumptions, some of which their societies shared and on others they differed from one another. Certainly they differed in most respects from Euro Americans, but maintained certain beliefs and practices in common with blacks.

Clearly, on the frontier the identity of the protagonists in our story lines, and the values, customs, and assumptions they held in their experiences on the upper Ohio frontier were far more numerous and diverse than was the case in any one east coast town or even any one colony. Therefore, our historical researches and interpreters need to be prepared to do extensive work and planning to develop story lines that are accurate and complete.

2. The second question asked in the Williamsburg manual, and adapted to the frontier perspective, is: How did people's different backgrounds, ideas, and aspirations provoke conflicts, and how were their customary values and practices challenged by the unfamiliar conditions they encountered on the upper Ohio frontier?

Here again, the answer to the question will be addressed to each ethnic and racial group or groups of which each individual is part. In the case of Euro Americans, the backgrounds, ideas, and aspirations of each ethnic group are studied as well as the current social and physical environments in which the individual protagonist appears. For example, to understand a German immigrant within his own German community or even family in backcountry Pennsylvania or Virginia will vary in certain respects from a variant social environment among the Anglo-Americans or among the Indians. The same can be said for "settlement Indians" that lived in close affiliation with Euro- Americans or blacks that lived among white families on the frontier or in somewhat differing Indian societies. These issues require care in analyzing the clashing interests that provoked conflict.

3. A third question raised in the Williamsburg manual, and here adapted to the frontier circumstances is: What accommodations were reached that most parties were prepared, resigned, or forced to live with, and how may some of these have evolved into new values, however loosely shared?

Once more the numerous groups of peoples involved in the frontier experience require caution in researching the distinctions among them in addressing the issue of whether and how they came to hold shared values within the historical framework of the eighteenth century. In some instances, the issue was not about the values themselves, but who was eligible (and who determined eligibility) to enjoy them, and how any given person or group could achieve them. In some cases accommodations were made on one side, but not the other. British colonial militia officers had to accommodate to the reality that the officers of the regular British army never viewed them as on the same level of authority or privilege as they enjoyed. Blacks, slave, indentured, or even free, never attained the same freedom, respect, and privileges, as whites among whom they lived. Hence they were forced to accommodate to circumstances on the frontier that were extremely difficult to endure or ran away to the Indians where they resigned to adopting another foreign culture. Likewise the Amerindians accommodated colonialism in trade and by treaty for a decade or two and eventually fought back for their independence from unending Euro American pressures to concede.

On the other hand, shared values no doubt did manifest themselves among the same accommodating peoples among those with whom they chose, resigned, or were forced to live. Blacks and Indians both valued the hunt, warfare, agricultural and livestock interests, and many religious beliefs and practices. How much blacks actually influenced Indian cultural is difficult to say, given the lack of evidence. Indians might concede land, but less willingly their distinctive culture. Also, blacks among Indians in some rare cases re-established relationships with whites on new terms as "go-betweens" in negotiations between British (perhaps also French) authorities and the Indians among whom they had been adopted and in some instances achieved rank and status. In such arrangements blacks had a choice-an exercise of freedom-to accommodate to Anglo-American proposals. Likewise, as cattle breeders and sellers they accommodated and thus in at least one sense shared the values of those (Indian and white) with whom they carried on business. The same process manifested itself between blacks in business transactions with whites in a trade (e.g. blacksmith) that had been learned as a slave or indentured servant. Increasingly economics played a role in such accommodations in black-white relationships, just as they had in Indian-White relationships since early in the trade era. Accommodations also are apparent in white indentured servant relationships with their masters whom they voluntarily served for (usually) seven years in recompense for passage costs in immigrating to North America.

4. The fourth question concerns how these concessions were formally institutionalized. In the case of runaway blacks or whites the institution in question was native Indian rite of passage known as adoption. Between Anglo-American whites and native Indians the formal institution was treaty. While colonial law was (unevenly) applicable to the whites and blacks on the frontier, the earlier years provided no common means of enforcement, except in time of war the colonial militia or the British army may have provided some measure of it. Vigilantism on the part of individuals and groups tended to make and impose their own laws more than those of the colonies. In the post-Revolution era sheriffs and justices of the peace from both Pennsylvania and Virginia sought to enforce local country laws, a process often disrupted by border dispute issues between the two colonies. The Federal government got involved on the occasion of the Whiskey Rebellion at the end of the century, since refusal to pay federal taxes was at issue.

Sales (slaves and other "property") and work contracts were common in the eighteenth century just as they are now. Not all deals could be safely concluded on the basis of a handshake Enlisting in the colonial militia evidently was authorized by signature on the appropriate document. Marriage licenses were legally determined, but on the frontier in earliest times most people were either already married in the east before they came to the frontier, lived as common law partners, or were married according to native Indian marriage ceremonial dictates after adoption.

5. How these concessions favored some and were disadvantageous to others is another issue. In reference to the frontier it seems inaccurate to refer to the experience of the Indians and Blacks as having partial freedoms, as the Colonial Williamsburg manual describes the situation in the eighteenth century town of Williamsburg in the colony of Virginia. Obviously colonial laws always favored the Euro Americans, while Blacks were disadvantaged. In the case of the Amerindians, the only advantage was that in some cases colonial law was not imposed in order to keep some degree of peace with the native societies. For example, laws forbidding the harboring of runaway slaves were generally not enforced as they generally were among white colonists. In some instances the Indians themselves voluntarily, often for a fee, returned prisoners to show good faith, but evidently this did not always include runaway slaves or indentures. Laws relating to treaties between Indians and Anglo-Americans were rooted in ancient European diplomatic structures, which in the case of colonialism were bent to exploitative ends. Since accountability was not inherent in the diplomatic system, but on the assumption of countervailing force, the end of the Seven Years War meant the withdrawal of France and Spain from competition east of the Mississippi. This change in the context for diplomacy resulted in an erosion of the relative power of the Indians. Thus what began in the early 1760s as an accommodation treaty system that required mutual compromise had changed by the mid-1790s to the freeing of the new nation from the usual constraints of diplomacy and the exclusive power to set most of the terms of negotiation that had the form but not the substance of diplomacy.

6. The persistent injustices, inequalities, and unbalanced power relationships contained the seeds of unrest that led to the American Revolution and its War for Independence and, subsequently, near separation of early frontier peoples from the newly created union. But as often was the case, the circumstances of the frontier were quite different for its western inhabitants than for those residing in the east. Not only did the frontiersmen resent the British treatment of the colonials in the backcountry, and the indebtedness they were told they should show the king, they repudiated the controls that the colonial authorities sought to impose on them for failing to provide adequate protection against Indian atrocities against their settlements. Vigilantism After the Seven Years War and the expansion of settlement in the Upper Ohio Valley, a growing border dispute arose that caused animosity and confusion over which colony, Virginia or Pennsylvania, had the right to govern the region and enforce its laws. Economics were critically involved here as land was considerably cheaper under Virginia law than under that of Pennsylvania, and laws pertaining to slavery were very much different, especially after the latter's Gradual Abolition Law of 1780.

While the success of the Revolution required and got considerable manpower from the western frontier of the upper Ohio valley, the governments of the new states and of the federal government often did not take into adequate consideration the sentiments and needs of its inhabitants. Western leaders began to compare the eastern politicians to Britain's king George III and his parliament who likewise had sought to impose taxes without adequate representation. Likewise the economic problems created for commercial enterprises by the distance and poor roads between western producers and the eastern markets was forcing the growing commercial interests to look down the Ohio for profit. The frontier epilogue to the Revolution was the multi-state frontier crisis known as the Whiskey Rebellion (1796). So bitter had inhabitants of the upper Ohio Valley become that there was among them serious talk of succession from the newly created union of the colonies and statehood. Both Great Britain and the Spanish were eager to fan the flames of discontent. But in the end, George Washington, who had been an integral force on the frontier from the days of the French and Indian War, now as President, took the necessary steps to ensure that the frontier remained a vital part of the new nation.

Converging Backcountries in the Upper Ohio Valley

The western expansion of the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania occurred in such a manner as to result in the converging of two trajectories that began from two geographical points of reference some three hundred miles apart on the east coast. Therefore, to properly appreciate the unique complexity that characterized the region, it is necessary to look at the evolution of the frontiers of both colonies and the forces that brought about their interpenetration and eventual conflict on that part of the backcountry of British North America known as the Upper Ohio Valley. Because it was the colony that took the initiative in claiming royal charter rights to the region, and first sought to construct British colonialism there, our story begins with the Virginia frontier.