 For example, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden — relatively few in number but pioneering Pennsylvania before the Germans and Irish arrived — contributed techniques of forest pioneering such as the log cabin, the "zig-zag" split-rail fence, and frontier methods of shifting cultivation such as girdling trees and using slash and burn to convert forest into temporary crop and pasture land.The pattern of settlement that had begun in the Appalachian foothills was continued and extended through the mountains and highlands to the west and across the Mississippi River into the Ozark highland region.Where there was the danger of Indian attacks, people settled at first in clustered "stations," but as danger lessened settlement tended to be in a rural, dispersed, kin-structured pattern, with relatively few towns and cities.