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The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The Romantic Story of the Early

Pioneers into Virginia, The Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky

1740-1790

by Archibald Henderson

November, 2000 [Etext #2390]

Project Gutenberg Etext, The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The

Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers into Virginia, The Carolinas,

Tennessee, and Kentucky 1740-1790, by Archibald Henderson

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THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST: THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE

EARLY PIONEERS INTO VIRGINIA, THE CAROLINAS, TENNESSEE, AND

KENTUCKY 1740-1790

BY ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, Ph.D., D.C.L.

Some to endure and many to fail,

Some to conquer and many to quail

Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1920

TO THE HISTORIAN OF

OLD WEST AND NEW WEST

FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER

WITH ADMIRATION AND REGARD

The country might invite a prince from his palace, merely for the

pleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add

the rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can the

world offer for the loss of so glorious a prospect?--Richard

Henderson.

The established Authority of any government in America, and the

policy of Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain

the Americans . . . . They acquire no attachment to Place: But

wandering about Seems engrafted in their Nature; and it is a

weakness incident to it, that they Should for ever imagine the

Lands further off, are Still better than those upon which they

are already settled.--Lord Dunmore, to the Earl of Dartmouth.

INTRODUCTION

The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward

migration of successive waves of transplanted European peoples

throughout the entire course of the eighteenth century is the

history of the growth and evolution of American democracy. Upon

the American continent was wrought out, through almost superhuman

daring, incredible hardship, and surpassing endurance, the

formation of a new society. The European rudely confronted with

the pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon discovered that

his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his

individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himself

to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the

age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened

civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the

course of half a century.

A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing

the successive episodes in the history of a single family as it

wended its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely

repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up

the granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the

transmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give to

the spectator a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westward

movement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession,

revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhaps

escape his scrutiny. Back of the individual, back of the family,

even, lurk the creative and formative impulses of colonization,

expansion, and government. In the recognition of these social and

economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the

group into the community; the community into a new society. In

this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular

hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the

movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets,

gain in impressiveness and dignity.

As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever

southward and westward, seeking room for expansion and economic

independence, a series of frontiers was gradually thrust out

toward the wilderness in successive waves of irregular

indentation. The true leader in this westward advance, to whom

less than his deserts has been accorded by the historian, is the

drab and mercenary trader with the Indians. The story of his

enterprise and of his adventures begins with the planting of

European civilization upon American soil. In the mind of the

aborigines he created the passion for the fruits, both good and

evil, of the white man's civilization, and he was welcomed by the

Indian because he also brought the means for repelling the

further advance of that civilization. The trader was of

incalculable service to the pioneer in first spying out the land

and charting the trackless wilderness. The trail rudely marked by

the buffalo became in time the Indian path and the trader's

"trace"; and the pioneers upon the westward march, following the

line of least resistance, cut out their, roads along these very

routes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the

trader--brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty,

unscrupulous, and immoral--the expansionist movement upon the

American continent would have been greatly retarded.

So scattered and ramified were the enterprises and expeditions of

the traders with the Indians that the frontier which they

established was at best both shifting and unstable. Following far

in the wake of these advance agents of the civilization which

they so often disgraced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, who

took advantage of the extensive pastures and ranges along the

uplands and foot-hills to raise immense herds of cattle. Thus was

formed what might be called a rancher's frontier, thrust out in

advance of the ordinary farming settlements and serving as the

first serious barrier against the Indian invasion. The westward

movement of population is in this respect a direct advance from

the coast. Years before the influx into the Old Southwest of the

tides of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurous

struck straight westward in the wake of the fur-trader, and here

and there erected the cattle-ranges beyond the farming frontier

of the piedmont region. The wild horses and cattle which roamed

at will through the upland barrens and pea-vine pastures were

herded in and driven for sale to the city markets of the East.

The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau constituted the real

backbone of western settlement. The pioneering farmers, with the

adventurous instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plunged

deeper and ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the

prospect of free and still richer lands in the dim interior.

Settlements quickly sprang up in the neighborhood of military

posts or rude forts established to serve as safeguards against

hostile attack; and trade soon flourished between these

settlements and the eastern centers, following the trails of the

trader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The bolder

settlers who ventured farthest to the westward were held in

communication with the East through their dependence upon salt

and other necessities of life; and the search for salt-springs in

the virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence of the desire

of the pioneer to shake off his dependence upon the coast.

The prime determinative principle of the progressive American

civilization of the eighteenth century was the passion for the

acquisition of land. The struggle for economic independence

developed the germ of American liberty and became the

differentiating principle of American character. Here was a vast

unappropriated region in the interior of the continent to be had

for the seeking, which served as lure and inspiration to the man

daring enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It was in

accordance with human nature and the principles of political

economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited transmontane

land, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility, should

excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials

alike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody there

has his eye fixed on this country." Groups of wealthy or

well-to-do individuals organized themselves into land companies

for the colonization and exploitation of the West. The pioneer

promoter was a powerful creative force in westward expansion; and

the activities of the early land companies were decisive factors

in the colonization of the wilderness. Whether acting under the

authority of a crown grant or proceeding on their own authority,

the land companies tended to give stability and permanence to

settlements otherwise hazardous and insecure.

The second determinative impulse of the pioneer civilization was

wanderlust--the passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter,

the traveler, and the explorer. This restless class of nomadic

wanderers was responsible in part for the royal proclamation of

1763, a secondary object of which, according to Edmund Burke, was

the limitation of the colonies on the West, as "the charters of

many of our old colonies give them, with few exceptions, no

bounds to the westward but the South Sea." The Long Hunters,

taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth to a fabled

hunter's paradise in the far-away wilderness, because they were

driven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or a De Soto

to find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond.

But the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of the

chase and of discovery; he was intent also upon collecting the

furs and skins of wild animals for lucrative barter and sale in

the centers of trade. He was quick to make "tomahawk claims" and

to assert "corn rights" as he spied out the rich virgin land for

future location and cultivation. Free land and no taxes appealed

to the backwoodsman, tired of paying quit-rents to the agents of

wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the settler speedily followed

in the hunter's wake. In his wake also went many rude and lawless

characters of the border, horse thieves and criminals of

different sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in the

merciful liberality of the wilderness. For the most part,

however, it was the salutary instinct of the homebuilder--the man

with the ax, who made a little clearing in the forest and built

there a rude cabin that he bravely defended at all risks against

continued assaults--which, in defiance of every restraint,

irresistibly thrust westward the thin and jagged line of the

frontier. The ax and the surveyor's chain, along with the rifle

and the hunting-knife, constituted the armorial bearings of the

pioneer. With individual as with corporation, with explorer as

with landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse of the era.

The various desires which stimulated and promoted westward

expansion were, to be sure, often found in complete conjunction.

The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage,

selling him whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich

furs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and

collected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitary

and protracted hunting-expeditions. The rancher and the herder

sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the

cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for

fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to

the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward

advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new

region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for

the cultivation of his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet

in the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured the

wilderness in search of game "and spied out new lands for future

settlement".

This restless and nomadic race, says the keenly observant Francis

Baily, "delight much to live on the frontiers, where they can

enjoy undisturbed, and free from the control of any laws, the

blessings which nature has bestowed upon them." Independence of

spirit, impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the

nomadic temperament--these are the strains in the American

character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to

create a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of

settlement westward across the American continent, with a

reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest

frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each

successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the

eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the history of the

American people during two centuries. This era, constituting the

first stage in our national existence, and productive of a

buoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free soil,

closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cultivable free

land, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recent

death of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid inauguration of the period,

in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and

Kentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth century, is

the theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I THE MIGRATION OF THE PEOPLES

II THE CRADLE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION

III THE BACK COUNTRY AND THE BORDER

IV THE INDIAN WAR

V IN DEFENSE OF CIVILIZATION

VI CRUSHING THE CHEROKEES

VII THE LAND COMPANIES

VIII THE LONG HUNTERS IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE

IX DANIEL BOONE AND WILDERNESS EXPLORATION

X DANIEL BOONE IN KENTUCKY

XI THE REGULATORS

XII WATAUGA--HAVEN OF LIBERTY

XIII OPENING THE GATEWAY--DUNMORE'S WAR

XIV RICHARD HENDERSON AND THE TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY

XV TRANSYLVANIA--A WILDERNESS COMMONWEALTH

XVI THE REPULSE OF THE RED MEN

XVII THE COLONIZATION OF THE CUMBERLAND

XVIII KING'S MOUNTAIN

XIX THE STATE OF FRANKLIN

XX THE LURE OF SPAIN--THE HAVEN OF STATEHOOD

THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST

Chapter I. The Migration of the Peoples

Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania and

other parts of America, who are over-stocked with people and Mike

directly from Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards the

West, and have got near the mountains.--Gabriel Johnston,

Governor of North Carolina, to the Secretary of the Board of

Trade, February 15, 1751.

At the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of population

had swept inland to the "fall line", the westward boundary of the

established settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced by

the more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the Blue

Ridge. So rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in the

interval 1717-32 the population quadrupled in numbers. A map of

the colonial settlements in 1725 reveals a narrow strip of

populated land along the Atlantic coast, of irregular

indentation, with occasional isolated nuclei of settlements

further in the interior. The civilization thus established

continued to maintain a close and unbroken communication with

England and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economic

reasons, clung to the coast, they reacted but slowly to the

transforming influences of the frontier.. Within a triangle of

continental altitude with its apex in New England, bounded on the

east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Appalachian range,

lay the settlements, divided into two zones--tidewater and

piedmont. As no break occurred in the great mountain system south

of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the difficulties of cutting a

passage through the towering wall of living green long proved an

effective obstacle to the crossing of the grim mountain barrier.

In the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward from

the coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking form

around such natural centers of attraction as areas of fertile

soil, frontier posts, mines, salt-springs, and stretches of

upland favorable for grazing. After a time a second advance of

settlement was begun in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland,

running in a southwesterly direction along the broad terraces to

the east of the Appalachian Range, which in North Carolina lies

as far as two hundred and fifty miles from the sea. The Blue

Ridge in Virginia and a belt of pine barrens in North Carolina

were hindrances to this advance, but did not entirely check it.

This second streaming of the population thrust into the long,

narrow wedge of the piedmont zone a class of people differing in

spirit and in tendency from their more aristocratic and

complacent neighbors to the east.

These settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolina

piedmont region--English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish,

Welsh, and a few French--were the first pioneers of the Old

Southwest. From the joint efforts of two strata of population,

geographically, socially, and economically distinct--tidewater

and piedmont, Old South and New South--originated and flowered

the third and greatest movement of westward expansion, opening

with the surmounting of the mountain barrier and ending in the

occupation and assumption of the vast medial valley of the

continent.

Synchronous with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia,

significantly enough, was the first planting of Ulster with the

English and Scotch. Emigrants from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimes

as many as four thousand a year (1625), continued throughout the

century to pour into Ulster. "Those of the North of Ireland . .

.," as pungently described in 1679 by the Secretary of State,

Leoline Jenkins, to the Duke of Ormond, "are most Scotch and

Scotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians and phanatiques,

lusty, able bodied, hardy and stout men, where one may see three

or four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday, and all the

North of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the popular

place of all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and greedy

after land." During the quarter of a century after the English

Revolution of 1688 and the Jacobite uprising in Ireland, which

ended in 1691 with the complete submission of Ireland to William

and Mary, not less than fifty thousand Scotch, according to

Archbishop Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the beginning of the

eighteenth century there was no considerable emigration to

America; and it was first set up as a consequence of English

interference with trade and religion. Repressive measures passed

by the English parliament (1665 1699), prohibiting the

exportation from Ire land to England and Scotland of cattle,

beef, pork, dairy products, etc., and to any country whatever of

manufactured wool, had aroused deep resentment among the

Scotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce. This discontent

was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious

disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having

to pay tithes for the support of the established church, were

excluded from all civil and military office (1704), while their

ministers were made liable to penalties for celebrating

marriages.

This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in

an exodus to the New World. The principal ports by which the

Ulsterites entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware),

Philadelphia and Boston. The streams of immigration steadily

flowed up the Delaware Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began

to arrive in Bucks County. So rapid was the rate of increase in

immigration that the number of arrivals soon mounted from a few

hundred to upward of six thousand, in a single year (1729); and

within a few years this number was doubled. According to the

meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a very small

element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one fourth

of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350,000) in

1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of the

Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the

disputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers,

saying as their excuse when challenged for titles, that we had

solicited for colonists and they had come accordingly." The

spirit of these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed in

their statement to Logan that it "was against the laws of God and

nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians

wanted it to work on and to raise their bread."

The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from

ten pounds and two shillings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719

to fifteen pounds ten shillings per hundred acres with a

quit-rent of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes

of the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward.

In Maryland in 1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterling

per hundred acres. Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia free

grants of a thousand acres per family were being made. In the

North Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord Granville,

through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands to

settlers at the rate of three shillings proclamation money for

six hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and was

also making large free grants on the condition of seating a

certain proportion of settlers. "Lord Carteret's land in

Carolina," says North Carolina's first American historian, "where

the soil was cheap, presented a tempting residence to people of

every denomination. Emigrants from the north of Ireland, by the

way of Pennsylvania, flocked to that country; and a considerable

part of North Carolina . . . is inhabited by those people or

their descendants." From 1740 onward, attracted by the rich lure

of cheap and even free lands in Virginia and North Carolina, a

tide of immigration swept ceaselessly into the valleys of the

Shenandoah, the Yadkin, and the Catawba. The immensity of this

mobile, drifting mass, which sometimes brought "more than 400

families with horse waggons and cattle" into North Carolina in a

single year (1752-3), is attested by the fact that from 1732 to

1754, mainly as the result of the Scotch-Irish inundation, the

population of North Carolina more than doubled.

The second important racial stream of population in the

settlement of the same region was composed of Germans, attracted

to this country from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly

colored stories of the commercial agents for promoting

immigration--the "newlanders," who were thoroughly unscrupulous

in their methods and extravagant in their representations--a

migration from Germany began in the second decade of the

eighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions.

Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great

number were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who in order

to pay for their transportation were compelled to pledge

themselves to several years of servitude. This economic condition

caused the German immigrant, wherever he went, to become a

settler of the back country, necessity compelling him to pass by

the more expensive lands near the coast.

For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of

various sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen

hundred a year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed,

Pennsylvania, one third of whose population at the beginning of

the Revolution was German, early became the great distributing

center for the Germans as well as for the Scotch-Irish. Certainly

by 1727 Adam Miller and his fellow Germans had established the

first permanent white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. By

1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen families, came from York,

Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon River, in the

neighborhood of the present Winchester. There is no longer any

doubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley sloping to the

north was almost entirely settled by Germans."

It was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of the

Old Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty Pennsylvania

Germans (who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch"

from the incorrect translation of Pennsylvanische Deutsche),

began to pour into the piedmont region of North Carolina. In the

autumn, after the harvest was in, these ambitious Pennsylvania

pioneers would pack up their belongings in wagons and on beasts

of burden and head for the southwest, trekking down in the manner

of the Boers of South Africa. This movement into the fertile

valley lands of the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabated

throughout the entire third quarter of the century. Owing to

their unfamiliarity with the English language and the solidarity

of their instincts, the German settlers at first had little share

in government. But they devotedly played their part in the

defense of the exposed settlements and often bore the brunt of

Indian attack.

The bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionaries

sent out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of Count

Zinzendorf (1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), are

mirrored in the numerous diaries, written in German, happily

preserved to posterity in religious archives of Pennsylvania and

North Carolina. These simple, earnest crusaders, animated by pure

and unselfish motives, would visit on a single tour of a thousand

miles the principal German settlements in Maryland and Virginia

(including the present West Virginia). Sometimes they would make

an extended circuit through North Carolina, South Carolina, and

even Georgia, everywhere bearing witness to the truth of the

gospel and seeking to carry the most elemental forms of the

Christian religion, preaching and prayer, to the primitive

frontiersmen marooned along the outer fringe of white

settlements. These arduous journeys in the cause of piety place

this type of pioneer of the Old Southwest in alleviating contrast

to the often relentless and bloodthirsty figure of the rude

borderer.

Noteworthy among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journey

of Brothers Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmuller (October 12 to

December 12, 1749). At the last outpost of civilization, the

scattered settlements in Bath and Alleghany counties, these

courageous missionaries--feasting the while solely on bear meat,

for there was no bread--encountered conditions of almost

primitive savagery, of which they give this graphic picture:

"Then we came to a house, where we had to lie on bear skins

around the fire like the rest . . . . The clothes of the people

consist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes, deer and bear

meat. A kind of white people are found here, who live like

savages. Hunting is their chief occupation." Into the valley of

the Yadkin in December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg and a party

of Moravians, accompanied by a surveyor and two guides, for the

purpose of locating the one hundred thousand acres of land which

had been offered them on easy terms the preceding year by Lord

Granville. This journey was remarkable as an illustration of

sacrifices willingly made and extreme hardships uncomplainingly

endured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood. In the back

country of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found the

whole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting. A

beautiful site for the projected settlement met their delighted

gaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that it

had already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's future

father-in-law, Morgan Bryan.

On October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by the

Rev. Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,

to trek down to the new-found haven in the Carolina

hinterland--"a corner which the Lord has reserved for the

Brethren"--in Anson County. Following for the most part the great

highway extending from Philadelphia to the Yadkin, over which

passed the great throng sweeping into the back country of North

Carolina--through the Valley of Virginia and past Robert Luhny's

mill on the James River--they encountered many hardships along

the way. Because of their "long wagon," they had much difficulty

in crossing one steep mountain; and of this experience Brother

Grube, with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had told

us that this hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcely

be able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel this

way, had to take the wheels off his wagon and carry it piecemeal

to the top, and had been three months on the journey from the

Shanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin [Yadkin]."

These men were the highest type of the pioneers of the Old

Southwest, inspired with the instinct of homemakers in a land

where, if idle rumor were to be credited, "the people lived like

wild men never hearing of God or His Word." In one hand they bore

the implement of agriculture, in the other the book of the gospel

of Jesus Christ. True faith shines forth in the simply eloquent

words: "We thanked our Saviour that he had so graciously led us

hither, and had helped us through all the hard places, for no

matter how dangerous it looked, nor how little we saw how we

could win through, everything always went better than seemed

possible." The promise of a new day--the dawn of the heroic

age--rings out in the pious carol of camaraderie at their

journey's end:

We hold arrival Lovefeast here,

In Carolina land,

A company of Brethren true,

A little Pilgrim-Band,

Called by the Lord to be of those

Who through the whole world go,

To bear Him witness everywhere,

And nought but Jesus know.

Chapter II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion

In the year 1746 I was up in the country that is now Anson,

Orange and Rowan Counties, there was not then above one hundred

fighting men there is now at least three thousand for the most

part Irish Protestants and Germans and dailey increasing.--

Matthew Rowan, President of the North Carolina Council, to the

Board of Trade, June 28, 1753.

The conquest of the West is usually attributed to the ready

initiative, the stern self-reliance, and the libertarian instinct

of the expert backwoodsmen. These bold, nomadic spirits were

animated by an unquenchable desire to plunge into the wilderness

in search of an El Dorado at the outer verge of civilization,

free of taxation, quit-rents, and the law's restraint. They

longed to build homes for themselves and their descendants in a

limitless, free domain; or else to fare deeper and deeper into

the trackless forests in search of adventure. Yet one must not

overlook the fact that behind Boone and pioneers of his stamp

were men of conspicuous civil and military genius, constructive

in purpose and creative in imagination, who devoted their best

gifts to actual conquest and colonization. These men of large

intellectual mold-themselves surveyors, hunters, and

pioneers--were inspired with the larger vision of the

expansionist. Whether colonizers, soldiers, or speculators on the

grand scale, they sought to open at one great stroke the vast

trans-Alleghany regions as a peaceful abode for mankind.

Two distinct classes of society were gradually drawing apart from

each other in North Carolina and later in Virginia--the pioneer

democracy of the back country and the upland, and the planter

aristocracy of the lowland and the tide-water region. From the

frontier came the pioneer explorers whose individual enterprise

and initiative were such potent factors in the exploitation of

the wilderness. From the border counties still in contact with

the East came a number of leaders. Thus in the heart of the Old

Southwest the two determinative principles already referred to,

the inquisitive and the acquisitive instincts, found a fortunate

conjunction. The exploratory passion of the pioneer, directed in

the interest of commercial enterprise, prepared the way for the

great westward migration. The warlike disposition of the hardy

backwoodsman, controlled by the exercise of military strategy,

accomplished the conquest of the trans-Alleghany country.

Fleeing from the traditional bonds of caste and aristocracy in

England and Europe, from economic boycott and civil oppression,

from religious persecution and favoritism, many worthy members of

society in the first quarter of the eighteenth century sought a

haven of refuge in the "Quackerthal" of William Penn, with its

trustworthy guarantees of free tolerance in religious faith and

the benefits of representative self-government. From East

Devonshire in England came George Boone, the grandfather of the

great pioneer, and from Wales came Edward Morgan, whose daughter

Sarah became the wife of Squire Boone, Daniel's father. These

were conspicuous representatives of the Society of Friends, drawn

thither by the roseate representations of the great Quaker,

William Penn, and by his advanced views on popular government and

religious toleration. Hither, too, from Ireland, whither he had

gone from Denmark, came Morgan Bryan, settling in Chester County,

prior to 1719; and his children, William, Joseph, James, and

Morgan, who more than half a century later gave the name to

Bryan's Station in Kentucky, were destined to play important

roles in the drama of westward migration. In September, 1734,

Michael Finley from County Armagh, Ireland, presumably

accompanied by his brother Archibald Finley, settled in Bucks

County, Pennsylvania. According to the best authorities,

Archibald Finley was the father of John Finley, or Findlay as he

signed himself, Boone's guide and companion in his exploration of

Kentucky in 1769-71. To Pennsylvania also came Mordecai Lincoln,

great grandson of Samuel Lincoln, who had emigrated from England

to Hingham, Massachusetts, as early as 1637. This Mordecai

Lincoln, who in 1720 settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the

great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln, was the father of

Sarah Lincoln, who was wedded to William Boone, and of Abraham

Lincoln, who married Anne Boone, William's first cousin. Early

settlers in Pennsylvania were members of the Hanks family, one of

whom was the maternal grandfather of President Lincoln.

No one race or breed of men can lay claim to exclusive credit for

leadership in the hinterland movement and the conquest of the

West. Yet one particular stock of people, the Ulster Scots,

exhibited with most completeness and picturesqueness a group of

conspicuous qualities and attitudes which we now recognize to be

typical of the American character as molded by the conditions of

frontier life. Cautious, wary, and reserved, these Scots

concealed beneath a cool and calculating manner a relentlessness

in reasoning power and an intensity of conviction which glowed

and burned with almost fanatical ardor. Strict in religious

observance and deep in spiritual fervor, they never lost sight of

the main chance, combining a shrewd practicality with a wealth of

devotion. It has been happily said of them that they kept the

Sabbath and everything else they could lay their hands on. In the

polity of these men religion and education went hand in hand; and

they habitually settled together in communities in order that

they might have teachers and preachers of their own choice and

persuasion.

In little-known letters and diaries of travelers and itinerant

ministers may be found many quaint descriptions and faithful

characterizations of the frontier settlers in their habits of

life and of the scenes amidst which they labored. In a letter to

Edmund Fanning, the cultured Robin Jones, agent of Lord Granville

and Attorney-General of North Carolina, summons to view a piquant

image of the western border and borderers: "The inhabitants are

hospitable in their way, live in plenty and dirt, are stout, of

great prowess in manly athletics; and, in private conversation,

bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after the Indian

manner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and fruitful of

strategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid as the

ancient Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiors

even in their own way of fighting . . . . [The land] may be truly

called the land of the mountains, for they are so numerous that

when you have reached the summit of one of them, you may see

thousands of every shape that the imagination can suggest,

seeming to vie with each other which should raise his lofty head

to touch the clouds . . . . It seems to me that nature has been

wanton in bestowing her blessings on that country."

An excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditions

in the backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlers

in the middle of the century, exhibits in all their barren

cheerlessness the hardships and limitations of life in the

wilderness. The father of William Few, the narrator, had trekked

down from Maryland and settled in Orange County, some miles east

of the little hamlet of Hillsborough. "In that country at that

time there were no schools, no churches or parsons, or doctors or

lawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns, nor do I recollect

during the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical, civil or

military, except a justice of the peace, a constable and two or

three itinerant preachers . . . . These people had few wants, and

fewer temptations to vice than those who lived in more refined

society, though ignorant. They were more virtuous and more happy

. . . . A schoolmaster appeared and offered his services to teach

the children of the neighborhood for twenty shillings each per

year . . . . In that simple state of society money was but little

known; the schoolmaster was the welcome guest of his pupil, fed

at the bountiful table and clothed from the domestic loom . . . .

In that country at that time there was great scarcity of books."

The journals of itinerant ministers through the Valley of

Virginia and the Carolina piedmont zone yield precious mementoes

of the people, their longing after the things of the spirit, and

their pitiful isolation from the regular preaching of the gospel.

These missionaries were true pioneers in this Old Southwest,

ardent, dauntless, and heroic--carrying the word into remote

places and preaching the gospel beneath the trees of the forest.

In his journal (1755-6), the Rev. Hugh McAden, born in

Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, a graduate of Nassau Hall

(1753), makes the unconsciously humorous observation that

wherever he found Presbyterians he found people who "seemed

highly pleased, and very desirous to hear the word"; whilst

elsewhere he found either dissension and defection to Baptist

principles, or "no appearance of the life of religion." In the

Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlements in what is now Mecklenburg

County, the cradle of American liberty, he found "pretty serious,

judicious people" of the stamp of Moses, William, and James

Alexander. While traveling in the upper country of South

Carolina, he relates with gusto the story of "an old gentleman

who said to the Governor of South Carolina, when he was in those

parts, in treaty with the Cherokee Indians that 'he had never

seen a shirt, been in a fair, heard a sermon, or seen a minister

in all his life.' Upon which the governor promised to send him up

a minister, that he might hear one sermon before he died." The

minister came and preached; and this was all the preaching that

had been heard in the upper part of South Carolina before Mr.

McAden's visit.

Such, then, were the rude and simple people in the back country

of the Old Southwest--the deliberate and self-controlled English,

the aggressive, landmongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh,

the thrifty Germans, the debonair French, the impetuous Irish,

and the calculating Scotch. The lives they led were marked by

independence of spirit, democratic instincts, and a forthright

simplicity. In describing the condition of the English settlers

in the backwoods of Virginia, one of their number, Doddridge,

says: "Most of the articles were of domestic manufacture. There

might have been incidentally a few things brought to the country

for sale in a primitive way, but there was no store for general

supply. The table furniture usually consisted of wooden vessels,

either turned or coopered. Iron forks, tin cups, etc., were

articles of rare and delicate luxury. The food was of the most

wholesome and primitive kind. The richest meat, the finest

butter, and best meal that ever delighted man's palate were here

eaten with a relish which health and labor only know. The

hospitality of the people was profuse and proverbial."

The circumstances of their lives compelled the pioneers to become

self-sustaining. Every immigrant was an adept at many trades. He

built his own house, forged his own tools, and made his own

clothes. At a very early date rifles were manufactured at the

High Shoals of the Yadkin; Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, was an

expert gunsmith. The difficulty of securing food for the

settlements forced every man to become a hunter and to scour the

forest for wild game. Thus the pioneer, through force of sheer

necessity, became a dead shot--which stood him in good stead in

the days of Indian incursions and bloody retaliatory raids.

Primitive in their games, recreations, and amusements, which not

infrequently degenerated into contests of savage brutality, the

pioneers always set the highest premium upon personal bravery,

physical prowess, and skill in manly sports. At all public

gatherings, general musters, "vendues" or auctions, and even

funerals, whisky flowed with extraordinary freedom. It is worthy

of record that among the effects of the Rev. Alexander Craighead,

the famous teacher and organizer of Presbyterianism in

Mecklenburg and the adjoining region prior to the Revolution,

were found a punch bowl and glasses.

The frontier life, with its purifying and hardening influence,

bred in these pioneers intellectual traits which constitute the

basis of the American character. The single-handed and successful

struggle with nature in the tense solitude of the forest

developed a spirit of individualism, restive under control. On

the other hand, the sense of sharing with others the arduous

tasks and dangers of conquering the wilderness gave birth to a

strong sense of solidarity arid of human sympathy. With the lure

of free lands ever before them, the pioneers developed a

restlessness and a nervous energy, blended with a buoyancy of

spirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet this same

untrammeled freedom occasioned a disregard for law and a defiance

of established government which have exhibited themselves

throughout the entire course of our history. Initiative,

self-reliance, boldness in conception, fertility in resource,

readiness in execution, acquisitiveness, inventive genius,

appreciation of material advantages--these, shot through with a

certain fine idealism, genial human sympathy, and a high romantic

strain--are the traits of the American national type as it

emerged from the Old Southwest.

CHAPTER III. The Back Country and the Border

Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the most

delightful climate, and richest soil imaginable; they are

everywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes;

lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water, rich

valleys, and majestic woods; the whole interspersed with an

infinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute the landscape

surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are generally

robust; and live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want

and acquainted with but few vices. Their inexperience of the

elegancies of life precludes any regret that they possess not the

means of enjoying them, but they possess what many princes would

give half their dominion for, health, content, and tranquillity

of mind.--Andrew Burnaby: Travels Through North America.

The two streams of Ulstermen, the greater through Philadelphia,

the lesser through Charleston, which poured into the Carolinas

toward the middle of the century, quickly flooded the back

country. The former occupied the Yadkin Valley and tile region to

the westward, the latter the Waxhaws and the Anson County region

to the northwest. The first settlers were known as the

"Pennsylvania Irish," because they had first settled in

Pennsylvania after migrating from the north of Ireland; while

those who came by way of Charleston were known as the

"Scotch-Irish." The former, who had resided in Pennsylvania long

enough to be good judges of land, shrewdly made their settlements

along the rivers and creeks. The latter, new arrivals and less

experienced, settled on thinner land toward the heads of creeks

and water courses.

Shortly prior to 1735, Morgan Bryan, his wife Martha, and eight

children, together with other families of Quakers from

Pennsylvania, settled upon a large tract of land on the northwest

side of the Opeckon River near Winchester. A few years later they

removed up the Virginia Valley to the Big Lick in the present

Roanoke County, intent upon pushing westward to the very

outskirts of civilization. In the autumn of 1748, leaving behind

his brother William, who had followed him to Roanoke County,

Morgan Bryan removed with his family to the Forks of the Yadkin

River. The Morgans, with the exception of Richard, who emigrated

to Virginia, remained in Pennsylvania, spreading over

Philadelphia and Bucks counties; while the Hanks and Lincoln

families found homes in Virginia--Mordecai Lincoln's son, John,

the great-grandfather of President Lincoln, removing from Berks

to the Shenandoah Valley in 1765. On May 1, 1750, Squire Boone,

his wife Sarah (Morgan), and their eleven children--a veritable

caravan, traveling like the patriarchs of old--started south; and

tarried for a space, according to reliable tradition, on Linville

Creek in the Virginia Valley. In 1752 they removed to the Forks

of the Yadkin, and the following year received from Lord

Granville three tracts of land, all situated in Rowan County.

About the hamlet of Salisbury, which in 1755 consisted of seven

or eight log houses and the court house, there now rapidly

gathered a settlement of people marked by strong individuality,

sturdy independence, and virile self-reliance. The Boones and the

Bryans quickly accommodated themselves to frontier conditions and

immediately began to take an active part in the local affairs of

the county. Upon the organization of the county court Squire

Boone was chosen justice of the peace; and Morgan Bryan was soon

appearing as foreman of juries and director in road improvements.

The Great Trading Path, leading from Virginia to the towns of the

Catawbas and other Southern Indians, crossed the Yadkin at the

Trading Ford and passed a mile southeast of Salisbury. Above

Sapona Town near the Trading Ford was Swearing Creek, which,

according to constant and picturesque tradition, was the spot

where the traders stopped to take a solemn oath never to reveal

any unlawful proceedings that might occur during their sojourn

among the Indians. In his divertingly satirical "History of the

Dividing Line" William Byrd in 1728 thus speaks of this locality:

"The Soil is exceedingly rich on both sides the Yadkin, abounding

in rank Grass and prodigiously large Trees; and for plenty of

Fish, Fowl and Venison, is inferior to No Part of the Northern

Continent. There the Traders commonly lie Still for some days, to

recruit their Horses' Flesh as well as to recover their own

spirits." In this beautiful country happily chosen for settlement

by Squire Boone --who erected his cabin on the east side of the

Yadkin about a mile and a quarter from Alleman's, now Boone's,

Ford--wild game abounded. Buffaloes were encountered in eastern

North Carolina by Byrd while running the dividing line; and in

the upper country of South Carolina three or four men with their

dogs could kill fourteen to twenty buffaloes in a single day."

Deer and bears fell an easy prey to the hunter; wild turkeys

filled every thicket; the watercourses teemed with beaver, otter,

and muskrat, as well as with shad and other delicious fish.

Panthers, wildcats, and wolves overran the country; and the

veracious Brother Joseph, while near the present Wilkesboro,

amusingly records: "The wolves wh. are not like those in Germany,

Poland and Lifland (because they fear men and don't easily come

near) give us such music of six different cornets the like of wh.

I have never heard in my life." So plentiful was the game that

the wild deer mingled with the cattle grazing over the wide

stretches of luxuriant grass.

In the midst of this sylvan paradise grew up Squire Boone's son,

Daniel Boone, a Pennsylvania youth of English stock, Quaker

persuasion, and Baptist proclivities. Seen through a glorifying

halo after the lapse of a century and three quarters, he rises

before us a romantic figure, poised and resolute, simple,

benign--as naive and shy as some wild thing of the primeval

forest--five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and

shoulders, dark locks, genial blue eyes arched with fair

eyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of slightly Roman cast,

and fair, ruddy countenance. Farming was irksome to this

restless, nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse would

exchange the plow and the grubbing hoe for the long rifle and

keen-edged hunting knife. In a single day during the autumn

season he would kill four or five deer; or as many bears as would

snake from two to three thousand pounds weight of bear-bacon.

Fascinated with the forest, he soon found profit as well as

pleasure in the pursuit of game; and at excellent fixed prices he

sold his peltries, most often at Salisbury, some thirteen miles

away, sometimes at the store of the old "Dutchman," George

Hartman, on the Yadkin, and occasionally at Bethabara, the

Moravian town sixty odd miles distant. Skins were in such demand

that they soon came to replace hard money, which was incredibly

scarce in the back country, as a medium of exchange. Upon one

occasion a caravan from Bethabara hauled three thousand pounds,

upon another four thousand pounds, of dressed deerskins to

Charleston. So immense was this trade that the year after Boone's

arrival at the Forks of Yadkin thirty thousand deerskins were

exported from the province of North Carolina. We like to think

that the young Daniel Boone was one of that band of whom Brother

Joseph, while in camp on the Catawba River (November 12, 1752)

wrote: "There are many hunters about here, who live like Indians,

they kill many deer selling their hides, and thus live without

much work."

In this very class of professional hunters, living like Indians,

was thus bred the spirit of individual initiative and strenuous

leadership in the great westward expansionist movement of the

coming decade. An English traveler gives the following minute

picture of the dress and accoutrement of the Carolina

backwoodsman.

"Their whole dress is very singular, and not very materially

different from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt,

somewhat resembling a waggoner's frock, ornamented with a great

many fringes, tied round the middle with a broad belt, much

decorated also, in which is fastened a tomahawk, an instrument

that serves every purpose of defence and convenience; being a

hammer at one side and a sharp hatchet at the other; the shot bag

and powderhorn, carved with a variety of whimsical figures and

devices, hang from their necks over one shoulder; and on their

heads a flapped hat, of a reddish hue, proceeding from the

intensely hot beams of the sun.

Sometimes they wear leather breeches, made of Indian dressed elk,

or deer skins, but more frequently thin trowsers.

On their legs they have Indian boots, or leggings, made of coarse

woollen cloth, that either are wrapped round loosely and tied

with garters, or laced upon the outside, and always come better

than half-way up the thigh.

On their feet they sometimes wear pumps of their own manufacture,

but generally Indian moccossons, of their own construction also,

which are made of strong elk's, or buck's skin, dressed soft as

for gloves or breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over the

toe, and lacing from thence round to the fore part of the middle

of the ancle, without a seam in them, yet fitting close to the

feet, and are indeed perfectly easy and pliant.

Their hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a variety

of colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wear

them quite white."

No less unique and bizarre, though less picturesque, was the

dress of the women of the region--in particular of Surry County,

North Carolina, as described by General William Lenoir:

"The women wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a

dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some

had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey;

and some of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly

clubbed. Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two women

that had on long gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and the

body of the other was open, and the tail thereof drawn up and

tucked in her apron or coat-string."

While Daniel Boone was quietly engaged in the pleasant pursuits

of the chase, a vast world-struggle of which he little dreamed

was rapidly approaching a crisis. For three quarters of a century

this titanic contest between France and England for the interior

of the continent had been waged with slowly accumulating force.

The irrepressible conflict had been formally inaugurated at Sault

Ste. Marie in 1671, when Daumont de Saint Lusson, swinging aloft

his sword, proclaimed the sovereignty of France over "all

countries, rivers, lakes, and streams . . . both those which have

been discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter, in

all their length and breadth, bounded on the one side by the seas

of the North and of the West, and on the other by the South Sea."

Just three months later, three hardy pioneers of Virginia,

despatched upon their arduous mission by Colonel Abraham Wood in

behalf of the English crown, had crossed the Appalachian divide;

and upon the banks of a stream whose waters slipped into the Ohio

to join the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, had carved the

royal insignia upon the blazed trunk of a giant of the forest,

the while crying: "Long live Charles the Second, by the grace of

God, King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland and Virginia and

of the territories thereunto belonging."

La Salle's dream of a New France in the heart of America was

blotted out in his tragic death upon the banks of the River

Trinity (1687). Yet his mantle was to fall in turn upon the

square shoulders of Le Moyne d'Iberville and of his brother--the

good, the constant Bienville, who after countless and arduous

struggles laid firm the foundations of New Orleans. In the

precious treasury of Margry we learn that on reaching Rochelle

after his first voyage in 1699 Iberville in these prophetic words

voices his faith: "If France does not immediately seize this part

of America which is the most beautiful, and establish a colony

which is strong enough to resist any which England may have, the

English colonies (already considerable in Carolina) will so

thrive that in less than a hundred years they will be strong

enough to seize all America." But the world-weary Louis Quatorze,

nearing his end, quickly tired of that remote and unproductive

colony upon the shores of the gulf, so industriously described in

Paris as a "terrestrial paradise"; and the "paternal providence

of Versailles" willingly yielded place to the monumental

speculation of the great financier Antoine Crozat. In this Paris

of prolific promotion and amazed credulity, ripe for the colossal

scheme of Law, soon to blow to bursting-point the bubble of the

Mississippi, the very songs in the street echoed flamboyant,

half-satiric panegyrics upon the new Utopia, this Mississippi

Land of Cockayne:

It's to-day no contribution

To discuss the Constitution

And the Spanish war's forgot

For a new Utopian spot;

And the very latest phase

Is the Mississippi craze.

Interest in the new colony led to a great development of

southwesterly trade from New France. Already the French coureurs

de bois were following the water route from the Illinois to South

Carolina. Jean Couture, a deserter from the service in New

France, journeyed over the Ohio and Tennessee rivers to that

colony, and was known as "the greatest Trader and Traveller

amongst the Indians for more than Twenty years." In 1714 young

Charles Charleville accompanied an old trader from Crozat's

colony on the gulf to the great salt-springs on the Cumberland,

where a post for trading with the Shawanoes had already been

established by the French. But the British were preparing to

capture this trade as early as 1694, when Tonti warned Villermont

that Carolinians were already established on a branch of the

Ohio. Four years later, Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, was

urging trade with the Indians of the interior in the effort to

displace the French. At an early date the coast colonies began to

trade with the Indian tribes of the back country: the Catawbas of

the Yadkin Valley; the Cherokees, whose towns were scattered

through Tennessee; the Chickasaws, to the westward in northern

Mississippi; and the Choctaws farther to the southward. Even

before the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the South

Carolina settlements extended scarcely twenty miles from the

coast, English traders had established posts among the Indian

tribes four hundred miles to the west of Charleston. Following

the sporadic trading of individuals from Virginia with the inland

Indians, the heavily laden caravans of William Byrd were soon

regularly passing along the Great Trading Path from Virginia to

the towns of the Catawbas and other interior tribes of the

Carolinas, delighting the easily captivated fancy and provoking

the cupidity of the red men with "Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets

(which the Indians call Tomahawks), Kettles, red and blue Planes,

Duffields, Stroudwater blankets, and some Cutlary Wares, Brass

Rings and other Trinkets." In Pennsylvania, George Croghan, the

guileful diplomat, who was emissary from the Council to the Ohio

Indians (1748), had induced "all-most all the Ingans in the

Woods" to declare against the French; and was described by

Christopher Gist as a "meer idol among his countrymen, the Irish

traders."

Against these advances of British trade and civilization, the

French for four decades had artfully struggled, projecting tours

of exploration into the vast medial valley of the continent and

constructing a chain of forts and trading-posts designed to

establish their claims to the country and to hold in check the

threatened English thrust from the east. Soon the wilderness

ambassador of empire, Celoron de Bienville, was despatched by the

far-visioned Galissoniere at Quebec to sow broadcast with

ceremonial pomp in the heart of America the seeds of empire,

grandiosely graven plates of lasting lead, in defiant yet futile

symbol of the asserted sovereignty of France. Thus threatened in

the vindication of the rights of their colonial sea-to-sea

charters, the English threw off the lethargy with which they had

failed to protect their traders, and in grants to the Ohio and

Loyal land companies began resolutely to form plans looking to

the occupation of the interior. But the French seized the English

trading-house at Venango which they converted into a fort; and

Virginia's protest, conveyed by a calm and judicious young man, a

surveyor, George Washington, availed not to prevent the French

from seizing Captain Trent's hastily erected military post at the

forks of the Ohio and constructing there a formidable work, named

Fort Duquesne. Washington, with his expeditionary force sent to

garrison Captain Trent's fort, defeated Jumonville and his small

force near Great Meadows (May, 1754); but soon after he was

forced to surrender Fort Necessity to Coulon de Villiers.

The titanic struggle, fittingly precipitated in the backwoods of

the Old Southwest, was now on--a struggle in which the resolute

pioneers of these backwoods first seriously measured their

strength with the French and their copper-hued allies, and

learned to surpass the latter in their own mode of warfare. The

portentous conflict, destined to assure the eastern half of the

continent to Great Britain, is a grim, prophetic harbinger