Thus western occupation advanced in a series of waves: [Footnote:
J.M. Peck, New Guide to the West (Cincinnati, 1848), chap. iv.; T.
Flint, Geography and Hist. of the Western States, 350 et seq.; J.
Flint, Letters from America, 206; cf. Turner, Significance of the
Frontier in American History, in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1893, p.
214; McMaster, United States, V., 152-160.] the Indian was sought by
the fur-trader; the fur-trader was followed by the frontiersman,
whose live-stock exploited the natural grasses and the acorns of the
forest; next came the wave of primitive agriculture, followed by
more intensive farming and city life. All the stages of social
development went on under the eye of the traveler as he passed from
the frontier towards the east. Such were the forces which were
steadily pushing their way into the American wilderness, as they had
pushed for generations.

While thus the frontier folk spread north of the Ohio and up the
Missouri, a different movement was in progress in the Gulf region of
the west. In the beginning precisely the same type of occupation was
to be seen: the poorer classes of southern emigrants cut out their
clearings along rivers that flowed to the Gulf and to the lower
Mississippi, and, with the opening of this decade, went in
increasing numbers into Texas, where enterprising Americans secured
concessions from the Mexican government. [Footnote: Garrison, Texas,
chaps, xiii., xiv.; Wooten (editor), Comprehensive Hist. of Texas,
I., chaps. viii., ix.; Texas State Hist. Assoc., Quarterly, VII.,
29, 289; Bugbee, "Texas Frontier," in Southern Hist. Assoc.,
Publications, IV., 106.]

Almost all of the most recently occupied area was but thinly