Turner established an evolutionary model (he had studied evolution with a leading geologist), using the temporal dimension of American history and the geographic space of country that became the United States. The first settlers to arrive on the Eastern Shore in the 17th century behaved and thought like Europeans. They were faced with a new environmental challenge very different from what they had known. The most significant difference was the vast amounts of high-quality unused agricultural land (some of which was used by a few thousand Indians as hunting grounds). They adapted to the new environment in certain ways - the sum of all the adaptations over the years would make them American. The next generation moved further inland. He discarded the more European aspects which were no longer useful, for example established churches, established aristocracies, intrusive government and control of the best lands by a small gentry class. Each generation moved further west and became more American, and the settlers became more democratic and less tolerant of hierarchy. They became more violent, more individualistic, more distrustful of authority, less artistic, less scientific, and more dependent on ad hoc organizations they themselves created. In general terms, the further west you go, the more American the community. Many of Turner's arguments, however, have serious flaws when examined more closely. One of the most critical is its inability to take into account the First Nations as a major actor in colonial history and to reduce their role to that of simple resistance to English colonization. He also dismisses the importance of the fur trade, even though it was a catalyst for intense commercial rivalries between the New England colonies, New France, and the Indians themselves. Finally, Turner's characterization of the frontier as a purely Western and English phenomenon completely ignores the frontier faced by French settlers on their western and southern borders, as well as the northern frontier of English colonies like New York and Massachusetts. At first, the border was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving further west, the border becomes more and more American. Just as successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, each boundary leaves its traces behind, and when it becomes an inhabited area, the region still shares the characteristics of the boundary. Thus, the advance of the frontier meant a constant movement away from the influence of Europe, a constant growth of independence on the American model.