With the end of the Revolution, the United States again had to face the old unsolved Western question -- the problem of expansion, with its complications of land, fur trade, Indians, settlement and local government. Lured by the richest land yet found in the country, pioneers poured over the Appalachian Mountains and beyond. By 1775 the far-flung outposts scattered along the waterways had tens of thousands of settlers. Separated by mountain ranges and hundreds of kilometers from the centers of political authority in the East, the inhabitants established their own governments.