The wide gap between the ways in which the Northwest and the Southwest were settled is made plain by such a statement.  In the Northwest, it was the action of Congress, the action of the representatives of the nation acting as a whole, which was all-important.  In the Southwest, no action of Congress was of any importance when compared with the voluntary movements of the backwoodsmen themselves.  In the Northwest, it was the nation which acted.  In the Southwest, the determining factor was the individual initiative of the pioneers.  The most striking feature in the settlement of the Southwest was the free play given to the workings of extreme individualism.  The settlement of the Northwest represented the triumph of an intelligent collectivism, which yet allowed to each man a full measure of personal liberty.

    Difference in Stock of the Settlers.

Another difference of note was the difference in stock of the settlers.  The Southwest was settled by the true backwoodsmen, the men who lived on their small clearings among the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.  The first settlement in Ohio, the settlement which had most effect upon the history of the Northwest, and which largely gave it its peculiar trend, was the work of New Englanders.  There was already a considerable population in New England; but the rugged farmers with their swarming families had to fill up large waste spaces in Maine and in Northern New Hampshire and Vermont, and there was a very marked movement among them towards New York, and especially into the Mohawk valley, all west of which was yet a wilderness.  In consequence, during the years immediately succeeding the close of the Revolutionary War, the New England emigrants made their homes in those stretches of wilderness which were nearby, and did not appear on the western border.  But there had always been enterprising individuals among them desirous of seeking a more fertile soil in the far west or south, and even before the Revolution some of these men ventured to Louisiana itself, to pick out a good country in which to form a colony.  After the close of the war the fame of the lands along the Ohio was spread abroad; and the men who wished to form companies for the purposes of adventurous settlement began to turn their eyes thither.

    Land Claims of the States.

The first question to decide was the ownership of the wished-for country.  This decision had to be made in Congress by agreement among the representatives of the different States.  Seven States—­Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Georgia, and both Carolinas—­claimed portions of the western lands.  New York’s claim was based with entire solemnity on the ground that she was the heir of the Iroquois tribes, and therefore inherited all the wide regions overrun by their terrible war-bands.  The other six States based their claims on various charters, which in reality conferred rights not one whit more substantial.