n traders engaged in rivalry for this
trade.

It was not long before cattle raisers from the older settlements,
learning from the traders of the fertile plains and peavine pastures of
this land, followed the fur-traders and erected scattered "cow-pens" or
ranches beyond the line of plantations in the Piedmont. Even at the
close of the seventeenth century, herds of wild horses and cattle ranged
at the outskirts of the Virginia settlements, and were hunted by the
planters, driven into pens, and branded somewhat after the manner of the
later ranching on the Great Plains.[88:1] Now the cow-drovers and the
cow-pens[88:2] began to enter the uplands. The Indians had by this time
been reduced to submission in most of the Virginia Piedmont--as Governor
Spotswood[88:3] reported in 1712, living "quietly on our frontiers,
trafficking with the Inhabitants."

After the defeat of the Tuscaroras and Yemassees about this time in the
Carolinas, similar opportunities for expansion existed there. The cattle
drovers sometimes took their herds from range to range; sometimes they
were gathered permanently near the pens, finding the range sufficient
throughout the year. They were driven to Charleston, or later sometimes
even to Philadelphia and Baltimore markets. By the middle of the
century, disease worked havoc with them in South Carolina[89:1] and
destroyed seven-eighths of those in North Carolina; Virginia made
regulations governing the driving of cattle through her frontier
counties to avoid the disease, just as in our own time the northern
cattlemen attempted to protect their herds against the Texas fever.

Thus cattle raisers from the coast followed the fur-traders toward the
uplands, and already pioneer farmers were straggling into the same
region, soon to be outnumbered by the tide of settlement that flowed
into the region from Pennsylvania.

The descriptions of the uplands by contemporaneous writers are in
glowing terms. Makemie, in his "Plain and Friendly Persuasion" (1705),
declared "The best, richest, and most healthy part of your Country is
yet to be inhabited, above the falls of every River, to the Mountains."
Jones, in his "Present State of Virginia" (1724), comments on the
convenience of tidewater transportation, etc., but declares that section
"not nearly so healthy as the uplands and Barrens which serve for Ranges
for Stock," although he speaks less enthusiastically of the savannas and
marshes which lay in the midst of t