If you’re ever traveling the highways of America in the wee small hours of the morning you’re apt to see a touring coach, pedal to the metal, interior lights dimmed, heading out for who knows where, hauling a band of tired musicians bound to their next show.

It took a lot of muscle, blood, courage and tenacity to tame a continent. It took a people who refused to give up on the dream of freedom and prosperity that had uprooted them and motivated them to leave ancestral homes, and sail thousands of miles of treacherous ocean to make landfall in a new world they knew nothing about and face hostile indigents, raging rivers and endless, uncharted wilderness inundated with aggressive animals, poisonous snakes and only Heaven knew what else.