ationality, the American woman is and always has been
strongly individual. While she is not an indigenous development, not a
result of racial growth and broadening, yet her development has been
essentially characteristic. She has reached forward upon lines of
variant trend from those of her sisters of other cultures, and she is
truly a product of her country in that she has been shaped by the
conditions of the time and circumstances of that country's birth. There
was breathed into her from the first the informing spirit of the typical
American civilization the spirit of freedom. And into her nature has
also come another spirit distinctively American--the spirit of the
wilderness subdued and conquered, of a barren land made to yield its
treasures to the arm of the pioneer the spirit of conquest. There is no
new gift of mind or soul brought to her by other nations that has not
been modified by these twin spirits. Thus, though heir to all nations
and peoples, though product of all cultures, she remains typically
American in dominant traits, in the path in which she has chosen to set
her feet. Latin and Teuton, Slav and Celt, she has in her veins the
blood of them all; but she is still less their result than their
modification, and she is still the child of America even more than of
the world which has given her life.

The conditions under which the northern continent of America was first
settled were somewhat peculiar as contrasted with those of any other
settlement whose full history we know. It was entirely different, for
example, from the settlement of South America or Mexico. In both the
latter cases there was what may be described as a blow and a victory;
there was a conquest over a primitive, even if remarkably civilized
people, and that was the end of the matter save for the mere formal
colonization which followed. This was not the case with the colonization
of North America. There was no overt or complete conquest; on the
contrary, there was at first overture of peace between the inhabitants
of the country and the newcomers. This did not last; the whole of the
first history of the colonization of North America may be summed up, at
least in its most prominent aspect, in one word--war. But this warfare
was not decisive; it was not waged against a nation, but against
nations, fighting individually and jealously of each other indeed,--else
they must have prevailed at first,--but yet constantly bringing forward
new disp