oski River route to the Connecticut;
(3) boundary towns which marked the edges of that inferior agricultural
region, where the hard crystalline rocks furnished a later foundation
for Shays' Rebellion, opposition to the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, and the abandoned farm; and (4) the isolated intervale of
Brookfield which lay intermediate between these frontiers.

Besides this New England frontier there was a belt of settlement in New
York, ascending the Hudson to where Albany and Schenectady served as
outposts against the Five Nations, who menaced the Mohawk, and against
the French and the Canadian Indians, who threatened the Hudson by way of
Lake Champlain and Lake George.[43:1] The sinister relations of leading
citizens of Albany engaged in the fur trade with these Indians, even
during time of war, tended to protect the Hudson River frontier at the
expense of the frontier towns of New England.

The common sequence of frontier types (fur trader, cattle-raising
pioneer, small primitive farmer, and the farmer engaged in intensive
varied agriculture to produce a surplus for export) had appeared, though
confusedly, in New England. The traders and their posts had prepared the
way for the frontier towns,[44:1] and the cattle industry was most
important to the early farmers.[44:2] But the stages succeeded rapidly
and intermingled. After King Philip's War, while Albany was still in the
fur-trading stage, the New England frontier towns were rather like mark
colonies, military-agricultural outposts against the Indian enemy.

The story of the border warfare between Canada and the frontier towns
furnishes ample material for studying frontier life and institutions;
but I shall not attempt to deal with the narrative of the wars. The
palisaded meeting-house square, the fortified isolated garrison houses,
the massacres and captivities are familiar features of New England's
history. The Indian was a very real influence upon the mind and morals
as well as upon the institutions of frontier New England. The occasional
instances of Puritans returning from captivity to visit the frontier
towns, Catholic in religion, painted and garbed as Indians and speaking
the Indian tongue,[44:3] and the half-breed children of captive Puritan
mothers, tell a sensational part of the story; but in the normal, as
well as in such exceptional relations of the frontier townsmen to the
Indians, there are clear evidences of the transforming influence o