Well, the English had some of those also . Remember Lord Fairfax, with whose family Washington had many dealings? One reason for the Revolution was to keep the English aristocracy from taking the western lands that Americans wanted.
The Revolution was a grass roots uprising. Nobody commonly knew what was in the western lands. The colonial powers had difficulty finding any immigrants to settle in the their behalf in the colonies alone, hence the relaxation of all controls and promotion of any encouragement to find people who would inter into agreements to settle the New World.
Many didn't survive the natural world or the native attacks.