The Pulitzer Prize-winning author talks about "The Pioneers," citing contributions by a Tiverton boat builder and a Providence surveyor.

Historian David McCullough says in his new book, “The Pioneers,” that the settlement of the Northwest Territory in the late 18th century was a key event in American history — and it happened with the help of some Rhode Islanders.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s book, which is subtitled “The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West,” tells of a group of New Englanders who set out to inhabit what was then called the frontier — the land just beyond McCullough's hometown of Pittsburgh.

Veterans of the Revolutionary War were keen on making the most out of an offer by the newly minted American government for free land in exchange for their military service.

“They were promised fine land with good soil, with few rocks," a draw for New Englanders, McCullough said in a recent phone interview from his home in Hingham, Massachusetts.

He said that two Rhode Islanders made great contributions to the settlement effort.