This turned out to be very much worth the second read. There are five main characters and I was better able to follow them in their lives. I was better able to understand the Indian problems and the other issues that pioneers had like crops and getting things started.

The Pioneers:
The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
by David McCullough
2019 / 332 pp
read by John Bedford Lloyd 10h 23
rating: 10 / US history
*******

“They had courage, they had respect for their fellow man and woman, self-reliance, devotion to truth, to honesty, perseverance,” said McCullough. “And to being able to say they had ended each day having made themselves useful.”   Per McCullough in: 
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/life/2019/07/01/mcculloughs-book-the-pioneers-rediscovers-history-ohio-marietta/1546365001/

Warning – it’s not about pioneers and their experiences all over the country and it’s not an expose of American’s inhumanity to Natives. Rather it’s a beautifully rendered history of the pioneers of Marietta, Ohio taken from their own journals, letters and other personal resources.

Marietta was on the cutting edge of American ideals from education to slavery. The men and women who first settled in the wilderness of Ohio were spreading their ideals, their hopes and dreams. This is surly an endeavor to be admired.