e of this opposition of the interests of the trader and
the farmer, the Indian trade pioneered the way for civilization. The
buffalo trail became the Indian trail, and this became the trader's
"trace;" the trails widened into roads, and the roads into turnpikes,
and these in turn were transformed into railroads. The same origin can
be shown for the railroads of the South, the Far West, and the Dominion
of Canada.[14:1] The trading posts reached by these trails were on the
sites of Indian villages which had been placed in positions suggested by
nature; and these trading posts, situated so as to command the water
systems of the country, have grown into such cities as Albany,
Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kansas
City. Thus civilization in America has followed the arteries made by
geology, pouring an ever richer tide through them, until at last the
slender paths of aboriginal intercourse have been broadened and
interwoven into the complex mazes of modern commercial lines; the
wilderness has been interpenetrated by lines of civilization growing
ever more numerous. It is like the steady growth of a complex nervous
system for the originally simple, inert continent. If one would
understand why we are to-day one nation, rather than a collection of
isolated states, he must study this economic and social consolidation of
the country. In this progress from savage conditions lie topics for the
evolutionist.[15:1]

The effect of the Indian frontier as a consolidating agent in our
history is important. From the close of the seventeenth century various
intercolonial congresses have been called to treat with Indians and
establish common measures of defense. Particularism was strongest in
colonies with no Indian frontier. This frontier stretched along the
western border like a cord of union. The Indian was a common danger,
demanding united action. Most celebrated of these conferences was the
Albany congress of 1754, called to treat with the Six Nations, and to
consider plans of union. Even a cursory reading of the plan proposed by
the congress reveals the importance of the frontier. The powers of the
general council and the officers were, chiefly, the determination of
peace and war with the Indians, the regulation of Indian trade, the
purchase of Indian lands, and the creation and government of new
settlements as a security against the Indians. It is evident that the
unifying tendencies of the Revolutionary