Land, Power, and Reputation: The Cultural Dimension of Politics in the Ohio Country

Abstract

H HISTORIANS of the Northwest Territory have long recognized that the interaction of settlers from throughout the eastern United States was central to the formation of the territory's social character. Indeed, white American society in the territory-which in the I790s was limited largely to the river valleys of the Ohio Countryconsisted of migrants from regions as culturally distinct as New England and Virginia. Observers from Crevecoeur to Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick have argued that the demands of frontier life quickly dissolved these distinctions into a more or less homogeneous society. An examination of the cultural dimension of territorial politics suggests, however, that the settlement of the Ohio Country intensified rather than weakened cultural differences.1 Contemporary travelers noted a sequence of quite discrete settlements along the Ohio and up its tributaries. From east to west, moving