Driven, A Brief History of Driving the Savages Out

When my great grandfather moved into the Kansas Territory, he went where wise men dared not tread –Comanche Territory. What the Comanche did not know was that at the vanguard of white men moving across the United States came a breed of man just as tough, and dangerous, and savage as the Comanche: the Scots-Irish. When they came to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, Benjamin Franklin commented that they were the last savages in Europe. They moved along the Wilderness Road of Appalachia, settling in the backcountry, because several colonies offered them religious freedom if they would form a buffer between the savage aborigines and the colonies North America. In the first 100 years of American settlement, civilization advanced only 50 miles from the coast, and it was believed that whites would never settle west of the Appalachians. Then came the Scots- Irish, and within another 100 years, white settlement reached the Pacific Ocean.