1) People who leave their home country to found colonies tend to be one of two kinds of person: a) people who "don't fit in" in their home country, or b) people who just like to take risks. Either way, the people who founded the United States were individualists because if they hadn't been, they would not have left England. 2) During the period of the "westward expansion," say 1800 to 1912, there was a continuous process in which the older Eastern states and cities became more settled, more civilized, more densely populated, and more like Europe. I have to tell this from the settlers' point of view, ignoring the Indians, the indigenous people who were already living here, whose land we stole in a deeply unjust way. But in the minds of the settlers, a huge supply of "empty" land to the West. As the Eastern states and cities became less individualistic, there was a constant expansion of the "frontier," a constant movement westward, and, again, a constant self-selection of the most individualistic people. George Orwell, in an essay on Mark Twain, wrote: "The raftsmen, Mississippi pilots, miners and bandits whom he describes are probably not much exaggerated, but they are as different from modern men, and from one another, as the gargoyles of a medieval cathedral. They could develop their strange and sometimes sinister individuality because of the lack of any outside pressure. The State hardly existed, the churches were weak and spoke with many voices, and land was to be had for the taking. If you disliked your job you simply hit the boss in the eye and moved further west."