The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School School of Humanities “TELLING YOU WHO WE ARE”: IDENTITY FORMATION ON AMERICA’S FIRST WESTERN FRONTIER A Dissertation in American Studies by Susan M. Ortmann ©2015 Susan M. Ortmann Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2015 The dissertation of Susan M. Ortmann was reviewed and approved* by the following: Simon J. Bronner Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore Chair, American Studies Program Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Michael Barton Professor of American Studies and Social Sciences Charles Kupfer Associate Professor of American Studies and History Elizabeth J. Tisdell Professor of Adult Education Francis Bremer Special Member Professor Emeritus Department of History Millersville University of Pennsylvania *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii ABSTRACT This work answers two main questions: How did settlers in the Old Northwest Territory and Kentucky identify themselves and how did they want others to see them as they lived on America’s first frontier from 1777 to 1830. It also challenges the idea of a western persona as one created after the 1830s in the far regions of the country. The first American West and the personality developed to portray frontier life initially began in the Old northwest Territory. Using rhetorical analysis, historical research, and psychological Interpretation, my answer to these questions is that settlers moving into Kentucky and the Old Northwest created an early American identity that designated them as the first westerners. These settlers used the process of identifying difference or “othering” to various degrees and memory to identify what they believed to be acceptable and unacceptable character traits. Although their experience was part of a larger attempt by American citizens to create a national character and culture, frontiersmen and women viewed themselves, not their eastern peers, as more emblematic of what it meant to be American. While race, gender and class each played an important role in helping pioneers self-identify, these provide a limited picture of what westerners considered markers of worth and civility. Religion, politics, and education also served as desired character traits. These qualities helped set the white western settlers apart from others and made them feel superior. As the frontier designation moved further west and beyond the Ohio region the persons who settled these newer territories experienced more of the same. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………........................................ v PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………………………… vi Chapter 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 2. “Who We Are and Are Not”: Choosing Our Identity on America’s First Frontier………... 34 Chapter 3. A Distinctive Character: Creating the Character of the Western American Man…..……... 68 Chapter 4. Wives and Mothers on America’s First American Frontier: Women Creating a Western Identity …………………………………………………………………………..…………..... 100 Chapter 5. “And the Children Shall Follow In Their Footsteps”: Childrearing and Education as a Means to Create Western American Citizens…………………………………………………. 140 Chapter 6. “Practicing Religion in the Garden of Good and Evil”: A Factor in Identity Creation…….. 172 Chapter 7: We Are American Citizens Too: Using Law and Politics to Identify Westerners Locally and Nationally…. ……………………………………………………………………………… 214 Chapter 8: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………....... 250 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………….......... 268 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Departure on December 3, 1787, from Manasseh Cutler’s parsonage in Ipswich, Massachusetts ………………………………………………………………………… 45 Figure 2-1: The Battle of Fallen Timbers………………………………………....................... 72 Figure 3-1: Liberty. In the form of the Goddess of Youth; Giving support to the bald eagle… 103 Figure 4-1: The Foraker Log Cabin…………………………………………………………… 151 Figure 5-1: Cane Ridge Meeting House in 1934……………………………………………... 188 Figure 6-1: Major General Arthur St. Clair…………………………………………………... 230 Figure 7-1: A Haircut in a Cavalry Stable…………………………………………………….. 264 v PREFACE This dissertation examines the formation of identity by settlers who moved onto America’s first western frontier following the defeat of the British in the Revolutionary War. The rhetoric of the pioneers left to researchers in letters, diaries, newspaper articles, and other documents offers a record of their ideas about themselves and their lives in the Old Northwest Territory and Kentucky. My thesis maintains that settlers created their identity as western Americans and civilized and exemplary citizens of the nation’s republic. In fact, they maintained they, not their eastern peers, offered an image of “true American.” The first western settlers, through the records they left set the prototype for the American pioneers who followed as the nation expanded. Their stories, in the spirit of American Studies, convey in addition to events their attitudes, biases, and perceptions of life on the frontier. My interest in these matters began during my years as a graduate student at the University of Delaware. Dr. Christine Heyrman challenged students to examine documents in The Lyman Draper Collection, a microfilm record housed in the university library. Though assigned to read only one of documents left by Thomas Hinde, an itinerant preacher and political commentator, I found myself pulling several of the reels of the collection. Elizabeth Perkins’ book, Borderlife (1998) drew me further into the study of America’s first west. Once I began to examine the primary source documents, the idea that writers and scholars with assertions to validate, created the identity of these earlier pioneers seemed too sweeping a claim. The experiences their documents relate offer insight into how the American pioneers viewed themselves and how they wished others to regard them. This work is interdisciplinary. It draws upon American Studies and social history and incorporates literature of the period, religious practice and affiliation, education, and government as vehicles for understanding how the identity and culture of America’s first western settlers developed. The record provided demonstrates change over time as the frontier line moved further westward by the 1830s and people emigrated onto the Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and beyond. vi Perry Miller, in his seminal work The New England Mind (1972) asserts that these early colonists’ ideas about themselves, government, and religion designated them as the first Americans. Their legacy, according to Miller, inspired those who followed and set a model for later Americans to follow.1 While the Puritan influence persisted, so did the impact left by those who settled in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the other British colonies. The Puritans, early Virginians, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and other colonists were not American. They were and claimed to be British. They settled land claimed by the British. Puritans sought reform of the English Church. They did not wish to break from it. Each of the colonies developed government that suited their needs and circumstances, but all retained British law and custom as well as they could. In contrast, the settlers who populated America’s first western frontier did so as Americans. They bore the name American, lived under the governance of the United States, and declared themselves different from and better than the British they fought during the Revolutionary War. The identity they created bore some resemblance to the British social and legal legacy. Yet, their rhetoric repeatedly rejected any notion that compared them to the British. The westerners’ belief in their unique opportunity to fashion a truly American government, society, and identity make claims to the contrary questionable, no matter how deeply rooted they are in our scholarship. This work builds upon a long list of scholarly sources, but relies mostly on primary sources left by a group of men and women, who expanded the United States and provided us with a western persona that was founded in a region that few of us consider when discussing the American West. They were our first westerners and their lives are an important part of our history and deserve recognition. In order to facilitate reading the spelling of words within the direct quotes have been updated. The “F” symbol that designates an “S” has also been changed to clarify words. 1 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972). vii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this dissertation is to highlight the importance of the Old Northwest and the white settlers who immigrated to the region. This area legally settled as American territory was the nation’s first frontier and the persons who settled there were our first westerners. The diaries, letters, and documents of the persons recorded in this text show that they consciously and in some instances unconsciously strove to create a new identity for themselves. While we have come to view identity as complicated, for the settlers presented in this dissertation it seemed less so. Race, ethnicity, gender, religion, politics, education, and occupation defined how they presented themselves to others and thought about themselves in diaries and other documents. The settlers featured in these pages who arrived in the Old northwest after 1776 saw themselves mostly as white, male