Excerpt from The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers Into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky 1740 1790 The Indian path and the trader's trace and the pioneers upon the westward march, follow ing the line of least resistance, cut out their roads along these very routes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the trader - brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral - the expansionist movement upon the American continent would have been greatly retarded. So scattered and ramified were the enter prises and expeditions of the traders with the Indians that the frontier which they established was at best both shifting and unstable. Fol lowing far in the wake of these advance agents of the civilization which they so often dis graced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, who took advantage of the extensive pastures and ranges along the uplands and f oot-hills to raise immense herds of cattle Thus was formed what might be called a rancher's frontier, thrust out in advance of the ordinary farming settlements and serving as the first serious bar rier against the Indian invasion. The west. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.