intercourse; but Nova Scotia, the last of the continental colonies to be
established, was looked upon as a sort of outlyer, and its history has
little connection with the history of the thirteen colonies farther south.
The western frontier was a source of apprehension and of danger. In
northern Maine, on the frontiers of New York, on the west and southwest,
lived tribes of Indians, often disaffected, and sometimes hostile. Behind
them lay the French, hereditary enemies of the colonists. The natural
tendency of the English was to push their frontier westward into the
Indian and French belt.
3. THE PEOPLE AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.
[Sidenote: Population.]
This westward movement was not occasioned by the pressure of population.
All the colonies, except, perhaps, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware,
had abundance of vacant and tillable land. The population in 1750 was
about 1,370,000. It ranged from less than 5,000 in Georgia to 240,000 in
Virginia. Several strains of non-English white races were included in
these numbers. There were Dutch in New York, a few Swedes in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey, Germans in New York and Pennsylvania, Scotch Irish and
Scotch Highlanders in the mountains of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, a
few Huguenots, especially in the South, and a few Irish and Jews. All the
rest of the whites were English or the descendants of English. A slow
stream of immigration poured into the colonies, chiefly from England.
Convicts were no longer deported to be sold as private servants; but
redemptioners--persons whose services were mortgaged for their passage--
were still abundant. Many years later, Washington writes to an agent
inquiring about "buying a ship-load of Germans," that is, of
redemptioners. There was another important race-element,--the negroes,
perhaps 220,000 in number; in South Carolina they far out-numbered the
whites. A brisk trade was carried on in their importation, and probably
ten thousand a year were brought into the country. This stream poured
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