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

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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 of the

mighty movement of the next quarter of a century into the

twilight zone of the trans-Alleghany territory:

CHAPTER IV. The Indian War

All met in companies with their wives and children, and set about

building little fortifications, to defend themselves from such

barbarian and inhuman enemies, whom they concluded would be let

loose upon them at pleasure.--The Reverend Hugh McAden--Diary,

July, 1755.

Long before the actual outbreak of hostilities powerful forces

were gradually converging to produce a clash between the

aggressive colonials and the crafty Indians. As the settlers

pressed farther westward into the domain of the red men,

arrogantly grazing their stock over the cherished hunting-grounds

of the Cherokees, the savages, who were already well disposed

toward the French, began to manifest a deep indignation against

the British colonists because of this callous encroachment upon

their territory. During the sporadic forays by scattered bands of

Northern Indians upon the Catawbas and other tribes friendly to

the pioneers the isolated settlements at the back part of the

Carolinas suffered rude and sanguinary onslaughts. In the summer

of 1753 a party of northern Indians warring in the French

interest made their appearance in Rowan County, which had just

been organized, and committed various depredations upon the

scattered settlements. To repel these attacks a band of the

Catawbas sallied forth, encountered a detached party of the

enemy, and slew five of their number. Among the spoils,

significantly enough, were silver crucifixes, beads,

looking-glasses, tomahawks and other implements of war, all of

French manufacture.

Intense rivalry for the good will of the near-by southern tribes

existed between Virginia and South Carolina. In strong

remonstrance against the alleged attempt of Governor Dinwiddie of

Virginia to alienate the Cherokees, Catawbas, Muscogees, and

Chickasaws from South Carolina and to attach them to Virginia,

Governor Glen of South Carolina made pungent observations to

Dinwiddie: "South Carolina is a weak frontier colony, and in case

of invasion by the French would be their first object of attack.

We have not much to fear, however, while we retain the affection

of the Indians around us; but should we forfeit that by any

mismanagement on our part, or by the superior address of the

French, we are in a miserable situation. The Cherokees alone have

several thousand gunmen well acquainted with every inch of the

province . . . their country is the key to Carolina." By a treaty

concluded at Saluda (November 24, 1753), Glen promised to build

the Cherokees a fort near the lower towns, for the protection of

themselves and their allies; and the Cherokees on their part

agreed to become the subjects of the King of Great Britain and

hold their lands under him. This fort, erected this same year on

the headwaters of the Savannah, within gunshot distance of the

important Indian town of Keowee, was named Fort Prince George.

"It is a square," says the founder of the fort (Governor Glen to

the Board of Trade, August 26, 1754), "with regular Bastions and

four Ravelins it is near Two hundred foot from Salient Angle to

Salient Angle and is made of Earth taken out of the Ditch,

secured with fachines and well rammed with a banquet on the

Inside for the men to stand upon when they fire over, the

Ravelins are made of Posts of Lightwood which is very durable,

they are ten foot in length sharp pointed three foot and a half

in the ground." The dire need for such a fort in the back country

was tragically illustrated by the sudden onslaught upon the

"House of John Gutry & James Anshers" in York County by a party

of sixty French Indians (December 16, 1754), who brutally

murdered sixteen of the twenty-one persons present, and carried

off as captives the remaining five."

At the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 North

Carolina voted twelve thousand pounds for the raising of troops

and several thousand pounds additional for the construction of

forts--a sum considerably larger than that voted by Virginia. A

regiment of two hundred and fifty men was placed under the

command of Colonel James Innes of the Cape Fear section; and the

ablest officer under him was the young Irishman from the same

section, Lieutenant Hugh Waddell. On June 3, 1754, Dinwiddie

appointed Innes, his close friend, commander-in-chief of all the

forces against the French; and immediately after the disaster at

Great Meadows (July, 1754), Innes took command. Within two months

the supplies for the North Carolina troops were exhausted; and as

Virginia then failed to furnish additional supplies, Colonel

Innes had no recourse but to disband his troops and permit them

to return home. Appointed governor of Fort Cumberland by General

Braddock, he was in command there while Braddock advanced on his

disastrous march.

The lesson of Braddock's defeat (July 9, 1755) was memorable in

the history of the Old Southwest. Well might Braddock exclaim

with his last breath: "Who would have thought it? . . . We shall

know better how to deal with them another time." Led on by the

reckless and fiery Beaujeu, wearing an Indian gorget about his

neck, the savages from the protection of trees and rough

defenses, a pre pared ambuscade, poured a galling fire into the

compact divisions of the English, whose scarlet coats furnished

ideal targets. The obstinacy of the British commanders in

refusing to permit their troops to fight Indian fashion was

suicidal; for as Herman Alriclis wrote Governor Morris of

Pennsylvania (July 22, 1755): " . . . the French and Indians had

cast an Intrenchment across the road before our Army which they

Discovered not Untill they came Close up to it, from thence and

both sides of the road the enemy kept a constant fireing on them,

our Army being so confused, they could not fight, and they would

not be admitted by the Genl or Sir John St. Clair, to break thro'

their Ranks and Take behind trees." Daniel Boone, who went from

North Carolina as a wagoner in the company commanded by Edward

Brice Dobbs, was on the battle-field; but Dobbs's company at the

time was scouting in the woods. When the fierce attack fell upon

the baggage a train, Boone succeeded in effecting his escape only

by cutting the traces of his team and fleeing on one of the

horses. To his dying day Boone continued to censure Braddock's

conduct, and reprehended especially his fatal neglect to employ

strong flank-guards and a sufficient number of Provincial scouts

thoroughly acquainted with the wilderness and all the wiles and

strategies of savage warfare.

For a number of months following Braddock's defeat there was a

great rush of the frightened people southward. In a letter to

Dinwiddie, Washington expresses the apprehension that Augusta,

Frederick, and Hampshire County will soon be depopulated, as the

whole back country is in motion toward the southern colonies.

During this same summer Governor Arthur Dobbs of North Carolina

made a tour of exploration through the western part of the

colony, seeking a site for a fort to guard the frontier. The

frontier company of fifty men which was to garrison the projected

fort was placed under the command of Hugh Waddell, now promoted

to the rank of captain, though only twenty-one years old. In

addition to Waddell's company, armed patrols were required for

the protection of the Rowan County frontier; and during the

summer Indian alarms were frequent at the Moravian village of

Bethabara, whose inhabitants had heard with distress on March

31st of the slaughter of eleven Moravians on the Mahoni and of

the ruin of Gnadenhutten. Many of the settlers in the outlying

districts of Rowan fled for safety to the refuge of the little

village; and frequently every available house, every place of

temporary abode was filled with panic stricken refugees. So

persistent were the depredations of the Indians and so alarmed

were the scattered Rowan settlers by the news of the murders and

the destruction of Vaul's Fort in Virginia (June 25, 1756) that

at a conference on July 5th the Moravians "decided to protect our

houses with palisades, and make them safe before the enemy should

in vade our tract or attack us, for if the people were all going

to retreat we would be the last left on the frontier and the

first point of attack." By July 23d, they had constructed a

strong defense for their settlement, afterward called the "Dutch

Fort" by the Indians. The principal structure was a stockade,

triangular in plan, some three hundred feet on a side, enclosing

the principal buildings of the settlement; and the gateway was

guarded by an observation tower. The other defense was a stockade

embracing eight houses at the mill some distance away, around

which a small settlement had sprung up.

During the same year the fort planned by Dobbs was erected upon

the site he had chosen--between Third and Fourth creeks; and the

commissioners Richard Caswell and Francis Brown, sent out to

inspect the fort, made the following picturesque report to the

Assembly (December 21, 1756):

"That they had likewise viewed the State of Fort Dobbs, and found

it to be a good and Substantial Building of the Dimentions

following (that is to say) The Oblong Square fifty three feet by

forty, the opposite Angles Twenty four feet and Twenty-Two In

Height Twenty four and a half feet as by the Plan annexed

Appears, The Thickness of the Walls which are made of Oak Logs

regularly Diminished from sixteen Inches to Six, it contains

three floors and there may be discharged from each floor at one

and the same time about one hundred Musketts the same is

beautifully scituated in the fork of Fourth Creek a Branch of the

Yadkin River. And that they also found under Command of Cap' Hugh

Waddel Forty six Effective men Officers and Soldiers, the said

Officers and Soldiers Appearing well and in good Spirits."

As to the erection of a fort on the Tennessee, promised the

Cherokees by South Carolina, difficulties between the governor of

that province and of Virginia in regard to matters of policy and

the proportionate share of expenses made effective cooperation

between the two colonies well-nigh impossible. Glen, as we have

seen, had resented Dinwiddie's efforts to win the South Carolina

Indians over to Virginia's interest. And Dinwiddie had been very

indignant when the force promised him by the Indians to aid

General Braddock did not arrive, attributing this defection in

part to Glen's negotiations for a meeting with the chieftains and

in part to the influence of the South Carolina traders, who kept

the Indians away by hiring them to go on long hunts for furs and

skinns. But there was no such contention between Virginia and

North Carolina. Dinwiddie and Dobbs arranged (November 6, 1755)

to send a commission from these colonies to treat with the

Cherokees and the Catawbas. Virginia sent two commissioners,

Colonel William Byrd, third of that name, and Colonel Peter

Randolph; while North Carolina sent one, Captain Hugh Waddell.

Salisbury, North Carolina, was the place of rendezvous. The

treaty with the Catawbas was made at the Catawba Town, presumably

the village opposite the mouth of Sugaw Creek, in York County,

South Carolina, on February 20-21, 1756; that with the Cherokees

on Broad River, North Carolina, March 13-17. As a result of the

negotiations and after the receipt of a present of goods, the

Catawbas agreed to send forty warriors to aid Virginia within

forty days; and the Cherokees, in return for presents and

Virginia's promise to contribute her proportion toward the

erection of a strong fort, undertook to send four hundred

warriors within forty days, "as soon as the said fort shall be

built." Virginia and North Carolina thus wisely cooperated to

"straighten the path" and "brighten the chain" between the white

and the red men, in important treaties which Have largely escaped

the attention of historians."

On May 25, 1756, a conference was held at Salisbury between King

Heygler and warriors of the Catawba nation on the one side and

Chief Justice Henley, doubtless attended by Captain Waddell and

his frontier company, on the other. King Heygler, following the

lead set by the Cherokees, petitioned the Governor of North

Carolina to send the Catawbas some ammunition and to "build us a

fort for securing our old men, women and children when we turn

out to fight the Enemy on their coming." The chief justice

assured the King that the Catawbas would receive a necessary

supply of ammunition (one hundred pounds of gunpowder and four

hundred pounds of lead were later sent them) and promised to urge

with the governor their request to have a fort built as soon as

possible. Pathos not unmixed with dry humor tinges the eloquent

appeal of good old King Heygler, ever the loyal friend of the

whites, at this conference:

"I desire a stop may be put to the selling of strong Liquors by

the White people to my people especially near the Indian nation.

IF THE WHITE PEOPLE MAKE STRONG DRINK, LET THEM. SELL IT TO ONE

ANOTHER, OR DRINK IT IN THEIR OWN FAMILIES. This will avoid a

great deal of mischief which otherwise will, happen from my

people getting drunk and quarrelling with the White people. I

have no strong prisons like you to confine them for it. Our only

way is to put them under ground and all these (pointing proudly

to his Warriors) will be ready to do that to those who shall

deserve it."

In response to this request, the sum of four thousand pounds was

appropriated by the North Carolina Assembly for the erection of

"a Fort on our western frontier to protect and secure the

Catawbas" and for the support of two companies of fifty men each

to garrison this and another fort building on the sea coast. The

commissioners appointed for the purpose recommended (December 21,

1756) a site for the fort "near the 'Catawba nation"; and on

January 20, 1757, Governor Dobbs reported; " We are now building

a Fort in the midst of their towns at their own Request." The

fort thereupon begun must have stood near the mouth of the South

Fork of the Catawba River, as Dobbs says it was in the "midst" of

their towns, which are situated a "few miles north and south of

38 degrees" and might properly be included within a circle of

thirty miles radius."

During the succeeding months many depredations were committed by

the Indians upon the exposed and scattered settlements. Had it

not been for the protection afforded by all these forts, by the

militia companies under Alexander Osborne of Rowan and Nathaniel

Alexander of Anson, and by a special company of patrollers under

Green and Moore, the back settlers who had been so outrageously

"pilfered" by the Indians would have "retired from the Frontier

into the inner settlements."

CHAPTER V. In Defense of Civilization

We give thanks and praise for the safety and peace vouchsafed us

by our Heavenly Father in these times of war. Many of our

neighbors, driven hither and yon like deer before wild beasts,

came to us for shelter, yet the accustomed order of our

congregation life was not disturbed, no, not even by the more

than 150 Indians who at sundry times passed by, stopping for a

day at a time and being fed by us.--Wachovia Community Diary,

1757

With commendable energy and expedition Dinwiddie and Dobbs,

acting in concert, initiated steps for keeping the engagements

conjointly made by the two colonies with the Cherokees and the

Catawbas in tile spring and summer of 1756. Enlisting sixty men,

"most of them Artificers, with Tools and Provisions," Major

Andrew Lewis proceeded in the late spring to Echota in the

Cherokee country. Here during the hot summer months they erected

the Virginia Fort on the path from Virginia, upon the northern

bank of the Little Tennessee, nearly opposite the Indian town of

Echota and about twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville." While

the fort was in process of construction, the Cherokees were

incessantly tampered with by emissaries from the Nuntewees and

the Savannahs in the French interest, and from the French

themselves at the Alibamu Fort. So effective were these

machinations, supported by extravagant promises and doubtless

rich bribes, that the Cherokees soon were outspokenly expressing

their desire for a French fort at Great Tellico.

Dinwiddie welcomed the departure from America of Governor Glen of

South Carolina, who in his opinion had always acted contrary to

the king's interest. From the new governor, William Henry

Lyttelton, who arrived in Charleston on June 1, 1756, he hoped to

secure effective cooperation in dealing with the Cherokees and

the Catawbas. This hope was based upon Lyttelton's recognition,

as stated in Dinwiddie's words, of the "Necessity of strict Union

between the whole Colonies, with't any of them considering their

particular Interest separate from the general Good of the whole."

After constructing the fort "with't the least assistance from

South Carolina," Major Lewis happened by accident upon a grand

council being held in Echota in September. At that time he

discovered to his great alarm that the machinations of the French

had already produced the greatest imaginable change in the

sentiment of the Cherokees. Captain Raymond Demere of the

Provincials, with two hundred English troops, had arrived to

garrison the fort; but the head men of all the Upper Towns were

secretly influenced to agree to write a letter to Captain Demere,

ordering him to return immediately to Charleston with all the

troops under his command. At the grand council, Atta-kulla-kulla,

the great Cherokee chieftain, passionately declared to the head

men, who listened approvingly, that "as to the few soldiers of

Captain Demere that was there, he would take their Guns, and give

them to his young men to hunt with and as to their clothes they

would soon be worn out and their skins would be tanned, and be of

the same colour as theirs, and that they should live among them

as slaves." With impressive dignity Major Lewis rose and

earnestly pleaded for the observance of the terms of the treaty

solemnly negotiated the preceding March. In response, the crafty

and treacherous chieftains desired Lewis to tell the Governor of

Virginia that "they had taken up the Hatchet against all Nations

that were Enemies to the English"; but Lewis, an astute student

of Indian Psychology, rightly surmised that all their glib

professions of friendship and assistance were "only to put a

gloss on their knavery." So it proved; for instead of the four

hundred warriors promised under the treaty for service in

Virginia, the Cherokees sent only seven warriors, accompanied by

three women. Al though the Cherokees petitioned Virginia for a

number of men to garrison the Virginia fort, Dinwiddie postponed

sending the fifty men provided for by the Virginia Assembly until

he could reassure himself in regard to the "Behaviour and

Intention" of the treacherous Indian allies. This proved to be a

prudent decision; for not long after its erection the Virginia

fort was destroyed by the Indians.

Whether on account of the dissatisfaction expressed by the

Cherokees over the erection of the Virginia fort or because of a

recognition of the mistaken policy of garrisoning a work erected

by Virginia with troops sent from Charleston, South Carolina

immediately proceeded to build another stronghold on the southern

bank of the Tennessee at the mouth of Tellico River, some seven

miles from the site of the Virginia fort; and here were posted

twelve great guns, brought thither at immense labor through the

wilderness. To this fort, named Fort Loudoun in honor of Lord

Loudoun, then commander-in-chief of all the English forces in

America, the Indians allured artisans by donations of land; and

during the next three or four years a little settlement sprang up

there.

The frontiers of Virginia suffered most from the incursions of

hostile Indians during the fourteen months following May 1, 1755.

In July, the Rev. Hugh McAden records that he preached in

Virginia on a day set apart for fasting and prayer "on account of

the wars and many murders, committed by the savage Indians on the

back inhabitants." On July 30th a large party of Shawano Indians

fell upon the New River settlement and wiped it out of existence.

William Ingles was absent at the time of the raid; and Mrs.

Ingles, who was captured, afterward effected her escape. The

following summer (June 25, 1756), Fort Vaux on the headwaters of

the Roanoke, under the command of Captain John Smith, was

captured by about one hundred French and Indians, who burnt the

fort, killed John Smith junior, John Robinson, John Tracey and

John Ingles, wounded four men, and captured twenty-two men,

women, and children. Among the captured was the famous Mrs. Mary

Ingles, whose husband, John Ingles, was killed; but after being

"carried away into Captivity, amongst whom she was barbarously

treated," according to her own statement, she finally escaped and

returned to Virginia." The frontier continued to be infested by

marauding bands of French and Indians; and Dinwiddie gloomily

confessed to Dobbs (July 22d): "I apprehend that we shall always

be harrass'd with fly'g Parties of these Banditti unless we form

an Expedit'n ag'st them, to attack 'em in y'r Towns." Such an

expedition, known as the Sandy River Expedition, had been sent

out in February to avenge the massacre of the New River settlers;

but the enterprise engaged in by about four hundred Virginians

and Cherokees under Major Andrew Lewis and Captain Richard

Pearis, proved a disastrous failure. Not a single Indian was

seen; and the party suffered extraordinary hardships and narrowly

escaped starvation.

In conformity with his treaty obligations with the Catawbas,

Governor Dobbs commissioned Captain Hugh Waddell to erect the

fort promised the Catawbas at the spot chosen by the

commissioners near the mouth of the South Fork of the Catawba

River. This fort, for which four thousand pounds had been

appropriated, was for the most part completed by midsummer, 1757.

But owing, it appears, both to the machinations of the French and

to the intermeddling of the South Carolina traders, who desired

to retain the trade of the Catawbas for that province, Oroloswa,

the Catawba King Heygler, sent a "talk" to Governor Lyttelton,

requesting that North Carolina desist from the work of

construction and that no fort be built except by South Carolina.

Accordingly, Governor Dobbs ordered Captain Waddell to discharge

the workmen (August 11, 1757); and every effort was made for many

months thereafter to conciliate the Catawbas, erstwhile friends

of North Carolina. The Catawba fort erected by North Carolina was

never fully completed; and several years later South Carolina,

having succeeded in alienating the Catawbas from North Carolina,

which colony had given them the best possible treatment, built

for them a fort at the mouth of Line Creek on the east bank of

the Catawba River.

In the spring and summer of 1758 the long expected Indian allies

arrived in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May--Cherokees,

Catawbas, Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was wholly

unable to use them effectively; and in order to provide amusement

for them, he directed that they should go "a scalping" with the

whites--"a barbarous method of war," frankly acknowledged the

governor, "introduced by the French, which we are oblidged to

follow in our own defense." Most of the Indian allies

discontentedly returned home before the end of the year, but the

remainder waited until the next year, to take part in the

campaign against Fort Duquesne. Three North Carolina companies,

composed of trained soldiers and hardy frontiersmen, went through

this campaign under the command of Major Hugh Waddell, the

"Washington of North Carolina." Long of limb and broad of chest,

powerful, lithe, and active, Waddell was an ideal leader for this

arduous service, being fertile in expedient and skilful in the

employment of Indian tactics. With true provincial pride Governor

Dobbs records that Waddell "had great honor done him, being

employed in all reconnoitring parties, and dressed and acted as

an Indian; and his sergeant, Rogers, took the only Indian

prisoner, who gave Mr. Forbes certain intelligence of the forces

in Fort Duquesne, upon which they resolved to proceed." This

apparently trivial incident is remarkable, in that it proved to

be the decisive factor in a campaign that was about to be

abandoned. The information in regard to the state of the garrison

at Fort Duquesne, secured from the Indian, for the capture of

whom two leading officers had offered a reward of two hundred and

fifty pounds, emboldened Forbes to advance rather than to retire.

Upon reaching the fort (November 25th), he found it abandoned by

the enemy. Sergeant Rogers never received the reward promised by

General Forbes and the other English officer; but some time

afterward he was compensated by a modest sum from the colony of

North Carolina.

A series of unfortunate occurrences, chiefly the fault of the

whites, soon resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indian

outbreak. A party of Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758,

seized some stray horses on the frontier of Virginia--never

dreaming of any wrong, says an old historian, as they saw it

frequently done by the whites. The owners of the horses, hastily

forming a party, went in pursuit of the Indians and killed twelve

or fourteen of the number. The relatives of the slain Indians,

greatly incensed, vowed vengeance upon the whites. Nor was the

tactless conduct of Forbes calculated to quiet this resentment;

for when Atta-kulla-kulla and nine other chieftains deserted in

disgust at the treatment accorded them, they were pursued by

Forbes's orders, apprehended and disarmed. This rude treatment,

coupled with the brutal and wanton murder of some Cherokee

hunters a little earlier, by an irresponsible band of Virginians

under Captain Robert Wade, still further aggravated the Indians.

Incited by the French, who had fled to the southward after the

fall of Fort Duquesne, parties of bloodthirsty young Indians

rushed down upon the settlements and left in their path death and

desolation along the frontiers of the Carolinas. On the upper

branch of the Yadkin and below the South Yadkin near Fort Dobbs

twenty-two whites fell in swift succession before the secret

onslaughts of the savages from the lower Cherokee towns. Many of

the settlers along the Yadkin fled to the Carolina Fort at

Bethabara and the stockade at the mill; and the sheriff of Rowan

County suffered siege by the Cherokees, in his home, until

rescued by a detachment under Brother Loesch from Bethabara.

While many families took refuge in Fort Dobbs, frontiersmen under

Captain Morgan Bryan ranged through the mountains to the west of

Salisbury and guarded the settlements from the hostile incursions

of the savages. So gravely alarmed were the Rowan settlers,

compelled by the Indians to desert their planting and crops, that

Colonel Harris was despatched post-haste for aid to Cape Fear,

arriving there on July 1st. With strenuous energy Captain

Waddell, then stationed in the east, rushed two companies of

thirty men each to the rescue, sending by water-carriage six

swivel guns and ammunition on before him; and these

reinforcements brought relief at last to the harassed Rowan

frontiers." During the remainder of the year, the borders were

kept clear by bold and tireless rangers-under the leadership of

expert Indian fighters of the stamp of Grifth Rutherford and

Morgan Bryan.

When the Cherokee warriors who had wrought havoc along the North

Carolina border in April arrived at their town of Settiquo, they

proudly displayed the twenty-two scalps of the slain Rowan

settlers. Upon the demand for these scalps by Captain Demere at

Fort Loudon and under direction of Atta-kulla-kulla, the Settiquo

warriors surrendered eleven of the scalps to Captain Demere who,

according to custom in time of peace, buried them. New murders on

Pacolet and along the Virginia Path, which occurred shortly

afterward, caused gloomy forebodings; and it was plain, says a

contemporary gazette, that "the lower Cherokees were not

satisfied with the murder of the Rowan settlers, but intended

further mischief". On October 1st and again on October 31st,

Governor Dobbs received urgent requests from Governor Lyttelton,

asking that the North Carolina provincials and militia cooperate

to bring him assistance. Although there was no law requiring the

troops to march out of the province and the exposed frontiers of

North Carolina sorely needed protection, Waddell, now

commissioned colonel, assembled a force of five small companies

and marched to the aid of Governor Lyttelton. But early in

January, 1760, while on the march, Waddell received a letter from

Lyttelton, informing him that the assistance was not needed and

that a treaty of peace had been negotiated with the Cherokees.

CHAPTER VI. Crushing the Cherokees

Thus ended the Cherokee war, which was among the last humbling

strokes given to the expiring power of France in North America.-

-Hewatt: An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the

Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. 1779.

Governor Lyttelton's treaty of "peace", negotiated with the

Cherokees at the close of 1759, was worse than a crime: it was a

crass and hideous blunder. His domineering attitude and

tyrannical treatment of these Indians had aroused the bitterest

animosity. Yet he did not realize that it was no longer safe to

trust their word. No sooner did the governor withdraw his army

from the borders than the cunning Cherokees, whose passions had

been inflamed by what may fairly be called the treacherous

conduct of Lyttelton, rushed down with merciless ferocity upon

the innocent and defenseless families on the frontier. On

February 1, 1760, while a large party (including the family of

Patrick Calhoun), numbering in all about one hundred and fifty

persons, were removing from the Long Cane settlement to Augusta,

they were suddenly attacked by a hundred mounted Cherokees, who

slaughtered about fifty of them. After the massacre, many of the

children were found helplessly wandering in the woods. One man

alone carried to Augusta no less than nine of the pitiful

innocents, some horribly mutilated with the tomahawk, others

scalped, and all yet alive.

Atrocities defying description continued to be committed, and

many people were slain. The Cherokees, under the leadership of

Si-lou-ee, or the Young Warrior of Estatoe, the Round O, Tiftoe,

and others, were baffled in their persistent efforts to capture

Fort Prince George. On February 16th the crafty Oconostota

appeared before the fort and under the pretext of desiring some

White man to accompany him on a visit to the governor on urgent

business, lured the commander, Lieutenant Coytomore, and two

attendants to a conference outside the gates. At a preconceived

signal a volley of shots rang out; the two attendants were

wounded, and Lieutenant Coytomore, riddled with bullets, fell

dead. Enraged by this act of treachery, the garrison put to death

the Indian hostages within. During the abortive attack upon the

fort, Oconostota, unaware of the murder of the hostages, was

heard shouting above the din of battle: "Fight strong, and you

shall be relieved."

Now began the dark days along the Rowan border, which were so

sorely to test human endurance. Many refugees fortified

themselves in the different stockades; and Colonel Hugh Waddell

with his redoubtable frontier company of Indian-fighters awaited

the onslaught of the savages, who were reported to have passed

through the mountain defiles and to be approaching along the

foot-hills. The story of the investment of Fort Dobbs and the

splendidly daring sortie of Waddell and Bailey is best told in

Waddell's report to Governor Dobbs (February 29, 1760):

"For several Days I observed a small party of Indians were

constantly about the fort, I sent out several parties after them

to no purpose, the Evening before last between 8 & 9 o'clock I

found by the Dogs making an uncommon Noise there must be a party

nigh a Spring which we sometimes use. As my Garrison is but

small, and I was apprehensive it might be a scheme to draw out

the Garrison, I took our Capt. Bailie who with myself and party

made up ten: We had not marched 300 yds. from the fort when we

were attacked by at least 60 or 70 Indians. I had given my party

Orders not to fire until I gave the word, which they punctually

observed: We rec'd the Indians' fire: When I perceived they had

almost all fired, I ordered my party to fire which We did not

further than 12 steps each loaded with a Bullet and 7 Buck Shot,

they had nothing to cover them as they were advancing either to

tomahawk us or make us Prisoners: They found the fire very hot

from so small a Number which a good deal confused them: I then

ordered my party to retreat, as I found the Instant our skirmish

began another party had attacked the fort, upon our reinforcing

the garrison the Indians were soon repulsed with I am sure a

considerable Loss, from what I myself saw as well as those I can

confide in they cou'd not have less than 10 or 12 killed and

wounded; The next Morning we found a great deal of Blood and one

dead whom I suppose they cou'd not find in the night. On my side

I had 2 Men wounded one of whom I am afraid will die as he is

scalped, the other is in way of Recovery, and one boy killed near

the fort whom they durst not advance to scalp. I expected they

would have paid me another visit last night, as they attack all

Fortifications by Night, but find they did not like their

Reception."

Alarmed by Waddell's "offensive-defensive," the Indians abandoned

the siege. Robert Campbell, Waddell's ranger, who was scalped in

this engagement, subsequently recovered from his wounds and was

recompensed by the colony with the sum of twenty pounds.

In addition to the frontier militia, four independent companies

were now placed under Waddell's command. Companies of volunteers

scoured the woods in search of the lurking Indian foe. These

rangers, who were clad in hunting-shirts and buckskin leggings,

and who employed Indian tactics in fighting, were captained by

such hardy leaders as the veteran Morgan Bryan, the intrepid

Griffith Ruthe ford, the German partisan, Martin Phifer

(Pfeiffer), and Anthony Hampton, the father of General Wade

Hampton. They visited periodically a chain of "forest castles"

erected by the settlers--extending all the way from Fort Dobbs

and the Moravian fortifications in the Wachau to Samuel

Stalnaker's stockade on the Middle Fork of the Holston in

Virginia. About the middle of March, thirty volunteer Rowan

County rangers encountered a band of forty Cherokees, who

fortified themselves in a deserted house near the Catawba River.

The famous scout and hunter, John Perkins, assisted by one of his

bolder companions, crept up to the house and flung lighted

torches upon the roof. One of the Indians, as the smoke became

suffocating and the flames burned hotter, exclaimed: "Better for

one to die bravely than for all to perish miserably in the

flames," and darting forth, dashed rapidly hither and thither, in

order to draw as many shots as possible. This act of superb

self-sacrifice was successful; and while the rifles of the

whites, who riddled the brave Indian with balls, were empty, the

other savages made a wild dash for liberty. Seven fell thus under

the deadly rain of bullets; but many escaped. Ten of the Indians,

all told, lost their scalps, for which the volunteer rangers were

subsequently paid one hundred pounds by the colony of North

Carolina.

Beaten back from Fort Dobbs, sorely defeated along the Catawba,

hotly pursued by the rangers, the Cherokees continued to lurk in

the shadows of the dense forests, and at every opportunity to

fall suddenly upon way faring settlers and isolated cabins remote

from any stronghold. On March 8th William Fish, his son, and

Thompson, a companion, were riding along the "trace," in search

of provisions for a group of families fortified on the Yadkin,

when a flight of arrows hurtled from the cane-brake, and Fish and

his son fell dead. Although pierced with two arrows, one in the

hip and one clean through his body, Thompson escaped upon his

fleet horse; and after a night of ghastly suffering finally

reached the Carolina Fort at Bethabara. The good Dr. Bonn, by

skilfully extracting the barbed shafts from his body, saved

Thompson's life. The pious Moravians rejoiced over the recovery

of the brave messenger, whose sensational arrival gave them

timely warning of the close proximity of the Indians. While

feeding their cattle, settlers were shot from ambush by the

lurking foe; and on March 11th, a family barricaded within a

burning house, which they were defending with desperate courage,

were rescued in the nick of time by the militia. No episode from

Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales surpasses in melancholy

interest Harry Hicks's heroic defense of his little fort on Bean

Island Creek. Surrounded by the Indians, Hicks and his family

took refuge within the small outer palisade around his humble

home. Fighting desperately against terrific odds, he was finally

driven from his yard into his log cabin, which he continued to

defend with dauntless courage. With every shot he tried to send a

redskin to the happy hunting-grounds; and it was only after his

powder was exhausted that he fell, fighting to the last, beneath

the deadly tomahawk. So impressed were the Indians by his bravery

that they spared the life of his wife and his little son; and

these were afterward rescued by Waddell when he marched to the

Cherokee towns in 1761.

The kindly Moravians had always entertained with generous

hospitality the roving bands of Cherokees, who accordingly held

them in much esteem and spoke of Bethabara as "the Dutch Fort,

where there are good people and much bread." But now, in these

dread days, the truth of their daily text was brought forcibly

home to the Moravians: "Neither Nehemiah nor his brethren put off

their clothes, but prayed as they watched." With Bible in one

hand and rifle in the other, the inhabitant of Wachovia sternly

marched to religious worship. No Puritan of bleak New England

ever showed more resolute courage or greater will to defend the

hard-won outpost of civilization than did the pious Moravian of

the Wachau. At the new settlement of Bethania on Easter Day, more

than four hundred souls, including sixty rangers, listened

devoutly to the eloquent sermon of Bishop Spangenberg concerning

the way of salvation--the while their arms, stacked without the

Gemein Haus, were guarded by the watchful sentinel. On March 14th

the watchmen at Bethania with well-aimed shots repelled the

Indians, whose hideous yells of baffled rage sounded down the

wind like "the howling of a hundred wolves". Religion was no

protection against the savages; for three ministers journeying to

the present site of Salem were set upon by the red men--one

escaping, another suffering capture, and the third, a Baptist,

losing his life. A little later word came to Fort Dobbs that John

Long and Robert Gillespie of Salisbury had been shot from ambush

and scalped--Long having been pierced with eight bullets and

Gillespie with seven.

There is one beautiful incident recorded by the Moravians, which

has a truly symbolic significance. While the war was at its

height, a strong party of Cherokees, who had lost their chief,

planned in retaliation to attack Bethabara. "When they went

home," sets forth the Moravian Diary, "they said they had been to

a great town, where there were a great many people, where the

bells rang often, and during the night, time after time, a horn

was blown, so that they feared to attack the town and had taken

no prisoners." The trumpet of the watchman, announcing the

passing of the hour, had convinced the Indians that their plans

for attack were discovered; and the regular evening bell,

summoning the pious to prayer, rang in the stricken ears of the

red men like the clamant call to arms.

Following the retirement from office of Governor Lyttelton,

Lieutenant-Governor Bull proceeded to prosecute the war with

vigor. On April 1, 1760, twelve hundred men under Colonel

Archibald Montgomerie arrived at Charleston, with instructions to

strike an immediate blow and to relieve Fort Loudon, then

invested by the Cherokees. With his own force, two hundred and

ninety-five South Carolina Rangers, forty picked men of the new

"levies," and "a good number of guides," Montgomerie moved from

Fort Ninety-Six on May 28th. On the first of June, crossing

Twelve-Mile River, Montgomerie began the campaign in earnest,

devastating and burning every Indian village in the Valley of

Keowee, killing and capturing more than a hundred of the

Cherokees, and destroying immense stores of corn. Receiving no

reply to his summons to the Cherokees of the Middle and Upper

Towns to make peace or suffer like treatment, Montgomerie took up

his march from Fort Prince George on June 24th, resolved to carry

out his threat. On the morning of the 27th, he was drawn into an

ambuscade within six miles of Et-chow-ee, eight miles south of

the present Franklin, North Carolina, a mile and a half below

Smith's Bridge, and was vigorously attacked from dense cover by

some six hundred and thirty warriors led by Si-lou-ee. Fighting

with Indian tactics, the Provincial Rangers under Patrick Calhoun

particularly distinguished themselves; and the bloodcurdling

yells of the painted savages were responded to by the wild huzzas

of the kilted Highlanders who, waving their Scotch bonnets,

impetuously charged the redskins and drove them again and again

from their lurking-places. Nevertheless Montgomerie lost from

eighty to one hundred in killed and wounded, while the loss of

the Indians was supposed to be about half the loss of the whites.

Unable to care for his wounded and lacking the means of removing

his baggage, Montgomerie silently withdrew his forces. In so

doing, he acknowledged defeat, since he was compelled to abandon

his original intention of relieving the beleaguered garrison of

Fort London.

Captain Demere and his devoted little band, who had been

resolutely holding out, were now left to their tragic fate. After

the bread was exhausted, the garrison was reduced to the

necessity of eating dogs and horses; and the loyal aid of the

Indian wives of some of the garrison, who secretly brought them

supplies of food daily, enabled them to hold out still longer.

Realizing at last the futility of prolonging the hopeless

contest, Captain Demere surrendered the fort on August 8, 1760.

At daylight the next morning, while on the march to Fort Prince

George, the soldiers were set upon by the treacherous Cherokees,

who at the first onset killed Captain Demere and twenty-nine

others. A humane chieftain, Outassitus, says one of the gazettes

of the day, "went around the field calling upon the Indians to

desist, and making such representations to them as stopped the

further progress and effects of their barbarous and brutal rage,"

which expressed itself in scalping and hacking off the arms and

legs of the defenseless whites. Atta-kulla-kulla, who was

friendly to the whites, claimed Captain Stuart, the second

officer, as his captive, and bore him away by stealth. After nine

days' journey through the wilderness they encountered an advance

party under Major Andrew Lewis, sent out by Colonel Byrd, head of

a relieving army, to rescue and succor any of the garrison who

might effect their escape. Thus Stuart was restored to his

friends. This abortive and tragic campaign, in which the victory

lay conclusively with the Indians, ended when Byrd disbanded his

new levies and Montgomerie sailed from Charleston for the north

(August, 1760).

During the remainder of the year, the province of North Carolina

remained free of further alarms from the Indians. But the view

was generally entertained that one more joint Effort of North

Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia would have to be made in

order to humble the Cherokees. At the sessions of the North

Carolina Assembly in November and again in December, matters in

dispute between Governor Dobbs and the representatives of the

people made impossible the passage of a proposed aid bill,

providing for five hundred men to cooperate with Virginia and

South Carolina. Nevertheless volunteers in large numbers

patriotically marched from North Carolina to Charleston and the

Congaree (December, 1760, to April, 1761), to enlist in the

famous regiment being organized by Colonel Thomas Middleton. On

March 31, 1761, Governor Dobbs called together the Assembly to

act upon a letter received from General Amherst, outlining a more

vigorous plan of campaign appropriate to the succession of a

young and vigorous sovereign, George III. An aid bill was passed,

providing twenty thousand pounds for men and supplies; and one

regiment of five companies of one hundred men each, under the

command of Colonel Hugh Waddell, was mustered into service for

seven months' duty, beginning May 1, 1761.

On July 7, 1761, Colonel James Grant, detached from the main army

in command of a force of twenty-six hundred men, took up his

march from Fort Prince George. Attacked on June l0th two miles

south of the spot where Montgomerie was engaged the preceding

year, Grant's army, after a vigorous engagement lasting several

hours, drove off the Indians. The army then proceeded at leisure

to lay waste the fifteen towns of the Middle Settlements; and,

after this work of systematic devastation was over, returned to

Fort Prince George. Peace was concluded in September as the

result of this campaign; and in consequence the frontier was

pushed seventy miles farther to the west.

Meantime, Colonel Waddell with his force of five hundred North

Carolinians had acted in concert with Colonel William Byrd,

commanding the Virginia detachment. The combined forces went into

camp at Captain Samuel Stalnaker's old place on the Middle Fork

of Holston. Because of his deliberately dilatory policy, Byrd was

superseded in the command by Colonel Adam Stephen. Marching their

forces to the Long Island of Holston, Stephen and Waddell erected

there Fort Robinson, in compliance with the instructions of

Governor Fauquier, of Virginia. The Cherokees, heartily tired of

the war, now sued for peace, which was concluded, independent of

the treaty at Charleston, on November 19, 1761.

The successful termination of this campaign had an effect of

signal importance in the development of the expansionist spirit.

The rich and beautiful lands which fell under the eye of the

North Carolina and Virginia pioneers under Waddell, Byrd, and

Stephen, lured them irresistibly on to wider casts for fortune

and bolder explorations into the unknown, beckoning West.

CHAPTER VII. The Land Companies

It was thought good policy to settle those lands as fast as

possible, and that the granting them to men of the first

consequence who were likeliest and best able to procure large

bodies of people to settle on them was the most probable means of

effecting the end proposed.--Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia

to the Earl of Hillsborough: 1770.

Although for several decades the Virginia traders had been

passing over the Great Trading Path to the towns of the Cherokees

and the Catawbas, it was not until the early years of the

eighteenth century that Virginians of imaginative vision directed

their eyes to the westward, intent upon crossing the mountains

and locating settlements as a firm barrier against the

imperialistic designs of France. Acting upon his oft-expressed

conviction that once the English settlers had established

themselves at the source of the James River "it would not be in

the power of the French to dislodge them," Governor Alexander

Spotswood in 1716, animated with the spirit of the pioneer, led

an expedition of fifty men and a train of pack-horses to the

mountains, arduously ascended to the summit of the Blue Ridge,

and claimed the country by right of discovery in behalf of his

sovereign. In the journal of John Fontaine this vivacious account

is given of the historic episode: "I graved my name on a tree by

the river side; and the Governor buried a bottle with a paper

enclosed on which he writ that he took possession of this place

in the name and for King George the First of England. We had a

good dinner, and after it we got the men together and loaded all

their arms and we drank the King's health in Burgundy and fired a

volley, and all the rest of the Royal Family in claret and a

volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another volley."

By this jovial picnic, which the governor afterward commemorated

by presenting to each of the gentlemen who accompanied him a

golden horseshoe, inscribed with the legend, Sic juvat

transcendere montes, Alexander Spotswood anticipated by a third

of a century the more ambitious expedition on behalf of France by

Celoron de Bienville (see Chapter III), and gave a memorable

object-lesson in the true spirit of westward expansion. During

the ensuing years it began to dawn upon the minds of men of the

stamp of William Byrd and Joshua Gee that there was imperative

need for the establishment of a chain of settlements in the

trans-Alleghany, a great human wall to withstand the advancing

wave of French influence and occupation. By the fifth decade of

the century, as we have seen, the Virginia settlers, with their

squatter's claims and tomahawk rights, had pushed on to the

mountains; and great pressure was brought to bear upon the

council to issue grants for vast tracts of land in the uncharted

wilderness of the interior.

At this period the English ministry adopted the aggressive policy

already mentioned in connection with the French and Indian war,

indicative of a determination to contest with France the right to

occupy the interior of the continent. This policy had been

inaugurated by Virginia with the express purpose of stimulating

the adoption of a similar policy by North Carolina and

Pennsylvania. Two land companies, organized almost

simultaneously, actively promoted the preliminaries necessary to

settlement, despatching parties under expert leadership to

discover the passes through the mountains and to locate the best

land in the trans-Alleghany.

In June, 1749, a great corporation, the Loyal Land Company of

Virginia, received a grant of eight hundred thousand acres above

the North Carolina line and west of the mountains. Dr. Thomas

Walker, an expert surveyor, who in company with several other

gentlemen had made a tour of exploration through eastern

Tennessee and the Holston region in 1748, was chosen as the agent

of this company. Starting from his home in Albemarle County,

Virginia, March 6, 1750, accompanied by five stalwart pioneers,

Walker made a tour of exploration to the westward, being absent

four months and one week. On this journey, which carried the

party as far west as the Rockcastle River (May 11th) and as far

north as the present Paintsville, Kentucky, they named many

natural objects, such as mountains and rivers, after members of

the party. Their two principal achievements were the erection of

the first house built by white men between the Cumberland

Mountains and the Ohio River a feat, however, which led to no

important developments; and the discovery of the wonderful gap in

the Alleghanies to which Walker gave the name Cumberland, in

honor of the ruthless conqueror at Culloden, the "bloody duke."

In 1748 the Ohio Company was organized by Colonel Thomas Lee,

president of the Virginia council, and twelve other gentlemen, of

Virginia and Maryland. In their petition for five hundred

thousand acres, one of the declared objects of the company was

"to anticipate the French by taking possession of that country

southward of the Lakes to which the French had no right . . . ."

By the royal order of May 19, 1749, the company was awarded two

hundred thousand acres, free of quit-rent for ten years; and the

promise was made of an additional award of the remainder

petitioned for, on condition of seating a hundred families upon

the original grant and the building and maintaining of a fort.

Christopher Gist, summoned from his remote home on the Yadkin in

North Carolina, was instructed "to search out and discover the

Lands upon the river Ohio & other adjoining branches of the

Mississippi down as low as the great Falls thereof." In this

journey, which began at Colonel Thomas Cresap's, in Maryland, in

October, 1750, and ended at Gist's home on May 18, 1751, Gist

visited the Lower Shawnee Town and the Lower Blue Licks, ascended

Pilot Knob almost two decades before Find lay and Boone, from the

same eminence, "saw with pleasure the beautiful level of

Kentucky," intersected Walker's route at two points, and crossed

Cumberland Mountain at Pound Gap on the return journey. This was

a far more extended journey than Walker's, enabling Gist to

explore the fertile valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami

rivers and to gain a view of the beautiful meadows of Kentucky.

It is eminently significant of the spirit of the age, which was

inaugurating an era of land hunger unparalleled in American

history, that the first authentic records of the trans-Alleghany

were made by surveyors who visited the country as the agents of

great land companies. The outbreak of the French and Indian War

so soon afterward delayed for a decade and more any important

colonization of the West. Indeed, the explorations and findings

of Walker and Gist were almost unknown, even to the companies

they represented. But the conclusion of peace in 1763, which gave

all the region between the mountains and the Mississippi to the

British, heralded the true beginning of the westward expansionist

movement in the Old Southwest, and inaugurated the constructive

leadership of North Carolina in f he occupation and colonization

of the imperial domain of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.

In the middle years of the century many families of Virginia

gentry removed to the back country of North Carolina in the

fertile region ranging from Williamsborough on the east to

Hillsborough on the west. There soon arose in this section of the

colony a society marked by intellectual distinction, social

graces, and the leisured dignity of the landlord and the large

planter. So conspicuous for means, intellect, culture, and

refinement were the people of this group, having "abundance of

wealth and leisure for enjoyment," that Governor Josiah Martin,

in passing through this region some years later, significantly

observes: "They have great preeminence, as well with respect to

soil and cultivation, as to the manners and condition of the

inhabitants, in which last respect the difference is so great

that one would be led to think them people of another region."

This new wealthy class which was now turning its gaze toward the

unoccupied lands along the frontier was "dominated by the

democratic ideals of pioneers rather than by the aristocratic

tendencies of slave-holding planters." From the cross-

fertilization of the ideas of two social groups--this back-

country gentry, of innate qualities of leadership, democratic

instincts, economic independence, and expansive tendencies, and

the primitive pioneer society of the frontier, frugal in taste,

responsive to leadership, bold, ready, and thorough in execution-

-there evolved the militant American expansion in the Old

Southwest.

A conspicuous figure in this society of Virginia emigrants was a

young man named Richard Henderson, whose father had removed with

his family from Hanover County, Virginia, to Bute, afterward

Granville County, North Carolina, in 1742. Educated at home by a

private tutor, he began his career as assistant of his father,

Samuel Henderson, the High Sheriff of Granville County; and after

receiving a law-license, quickly acquired an extensive practice.

"Even in the superior courts where oratory and eloquence are as

brilliant and powerful as in Westminster hall," records an

English acquaintance, "he soon became distinguished and eminent,

and his superior genius shone forth with great splendour, and

universal applause." This young attorney, wedded to the daughter

of an Irish lord, often visited Salisbury on his legal circuit;

and here he became well acquainted with Squire Boone, one of the

"Worshipfull Justices," and often appeared in suits before him.

By his son, the nomadic Daniel Boone, conspicuous already for his

solitary wanderings across the dark green mountains to the

sun-lit valleys and boundless hunting-grounds beyond, Henderson

was from time to time regaled with bizarre and fascinating tales

of western exploration; and Boone, in his dark hour of poverty

and distress, when he was heavily involved financially, turned

for aid to this friend and his partner, who composed the law-firm

of Williams and Henderson.

Boone's vivid descriptions of the paradise of the West stimulated

Henderson's imaginative mind and attracted his attention to the

rich possibilities of unoccupied lands there. While the Board of

Trade in drafting the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763,

forbade the granting of lands in the vast interior, which was

specifically reserved to the Indians, it was clearly not their

intention to set permanent western limits to the colonies. The

prevailing opinion among the shrewdest men of the period was well

expressed by George Washington, who wrote his agent for

preempting western lands: "I can never look upon that

proclamation in any other light (but I say this between

ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of

the Indians." And again in 1767: "It (the proclamation of 1763)

must fall, of course, in a few years, especially when those

Indians consent to our occupying the lands. Any person,

therefore, who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out

good lands, and in some measure marking out and distinguishing

them for his own, in order to keep others from settling them,

will never regain it." Washington had added greatly to his

holdings of bounty lands in the West by purchasing at trivial

prices the claims of many of the officers and soldiers. Three

years later we find him surveying extensive tracts along the Ohio

and the Great Kanawha, and, with the vision of the expansionist,

making large plans for the establishment of a colony to be seated

upon his own lands. Henderson, too, recognized the importance of

the great country west of the Appalachians. He agreed with the

opinion of Benjamin Franklin, who in 1756 called it "one of the

finest in North America for the extreme richness and fertility of

the land, the healthy temperature of the air and the mildness of

the climate, the plenty of hunting, fishing and fowling, the

facility of trade with the Indians and the vast convenience of

inland navigation or water carriage." Henderson therefore

proceeded to organize a land company for the purpose of acquiring

and colonizing a large domain in the West. This partnership,

which was entitled Richard Henderson and Company, was composed of

a few associates, including Richard Henderson, his uncle and

law-partner, John Williams, and, in all probability, their close

friends Thomas and Nathaniel Hart of Orange County, North

Carolina, immigrants from Hanover County, Virginia.

Seizing the opportunity presented just after the conclusion of

peace, the company engaged Daniel Boone as scout and surveyor. He

was instructed, while hunting and trapping on his own account, to

examine, with respect to their location and fertility, the lands

which he visited, and to report his findings upon his return. The

secret expedition must have been transacted with commendable

circumspection; for although in after years it became common

knowledge among his friends that he had acted as the company's

agent, Boone himself consistently refrained from betraying the

confidence of his employers. Upon a similar mission, Gist had

carefully concealed from the suspicious Indians the fact that he

carried a compass, which they wittily termed "land stealer"; and

Washington likewise imposed secrecy upon his land agent Crawford,

insisting that the operation be carried on under the guise of

hunting game." The discreet Boone, taciturn and given to keeping

his own counsel, in one instance at least deemed it advantageous

to communicate the purpose of his mission to some hunters, well

known to him, in order to secure the results of their information

in regard to the best lands they had encountered in the course of

their hunting expedition. Boone came among the hunters, known as

the "Blevens connection," at one of their Tennessee station camps

on their return from a long hunt in Kentucky, in order, as

expressed in the quaint phraseology of the period, to be

"informed of the geography and locography of these woods, saying

that he was employed to explore them by Henderson & Company." The

acquaintance which Boone on this occasion formed with a member of

the party, Henry Scaggs, the skilled hunter and explorer, was

soon to bear fruit; for shortly afterward Scaggs was employed as

prospector by the same land company. In 1764 Scaggs had passed

through Cumberland Gap and hunted for the season on the

Cumberland; and accordingly the following year, as the agent of

Richard Henderson and Company, he was despatched on an extended

exploration to the lower Cumberland, fixing his station at the

salt lick afterward known as Mansker's Lick.

Richard Henderson thus, it appears, "enlisted the Harts and

others in an enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck,

the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then

encouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn where

the best lands lay." Just why Henderson and his associates did

not act sooner upon the reports brought back by the

hunters--Boone and Scaggs and Callaway, who accompanied Boone in

1764 in the interest of the land company "is not known; but in

all probability the fragmentary nature of these reports, however

glowing and enthusiastic, was sufficient cause for the delay of

five years before the land company, through the agency of Boone

and Findlay, succeeded in having a thorough exploration inside of

the Kentucky region. Delay was also caused by rival claims to the

territory. In the Virginia Gazette of December 1, 1768, Henderson

must have read with astonishment not unmixed with dismay that

"the Six Nations and all their tributaries have granted a vast

extent of country to his majesty, and the Proprietaries of

Pennsylvania, and settled an advantageous boundary line between

their hunting country and this, and the other colonies to the

Southward as far as the Cherokee River, for which they received

the most valuable present in goods and dollars that was ever

given at any conference since the settlement of America." The

news was now bruited about through the colony of North Carolina,

that the Cherokees were hot in their resentment because the

Northern Indians, the inveterate foes of the Cherokees and the

perpetual disputants for the vast Middle Ground of Kentucky, had

received at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, November 5, 1768, an

immense compensation from the crown for the territory which they,

the Cherokees, claimed from time immemorial. Only three weeks

before, John Stuart, Superintendent for Indian Affairs in the

Southern Department, had negotiated with the Cherokees the Treaty

of Hard Labor, South Carolina (October 14th), by which Governor

Tryon's line of 1767, from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain, was

continued direct to Colonel Chiswell's mine, the present

Wytheville, Virginia, and thence in a straight Brie to the mouth

of the Great Kanawha. Thus at the close of the year 1768 the

crown through both royal governor and superintendent of Indian

affairs acknowledged in fair and open treaty the right of the

Cherokees, whose Tennessee villages guarded the gateway, to the

valley lands east of the mountain barrier as well as to the dim

mid-region of Kentucky. In the very act of negotiating the Treaty

of Fort Stanwix, Sir William Johnson privately acknowledged that

possession of the trans-Alleghany could be legally obtained only

by extinguishing the title of the Cherokees.

These conflicting claims soon led to collisions between the

Indians and the company's settlers. In the spring of 1769

occurred one of those incidents in the westward advance which,

though slight in itself, was to have a definite bearing upon the

course of events in later years. In pursuance of his policy, as

agent of the Loyal Land Company, of promoting settlement upon the

company's lands, Dr. Thomas Walker, who had visited Powell's

Valley the preceding year and come into possession of a very

large tract there, simultaneously made proposals to one party of

men including the Kirtleys, Captain Rucker, and others, and to

another party led by Joseph Martin, trader of Orange County,

Virginia, afterward a striking figure in the Old Southwest. The

fevered race by these bands of eighteenth-century "sooners" for

possession of an early "Cherokee Strip" was won by the latter

band, who at once took possession and began to clear; so that

when the Kirtleys arrived, Martin coolly handed them "a letter

from Dr. Walker that informed them that if we got to the valley

first, we were to have 21,000 acres of land, and they were not to

interfere with us." Martin and his companions were delighted with

the beautiful valley at the base of the Cumberland, quickly "eat

and destroyed 23 deer--15 bears--2 buffaloes and a great quantity

of turkeys," and entertained gentlemen from Virginia and Maryland

who desired to settle more than a hundred families there. The

company reckoned, however, without their hosts, the Cherokees,

who, fortified by the treaty of Hard Labor (1768) which left this

country within the Indian reservation, were determined to drive

Martin and his company out. While hunting on the Cumberland

River, northwest of Cumberland Gap, Martin and his company were

surrounded and disarmed by a party of Cherokees who said they had

orders from Cameron, the royal agent, to rob all white men

hunting on their lands. When Martin and his party arrived at

their station in Powell's Valley, they found it broken up and

their goods stolen by the Indians, which left them no recourse

but to return to the settlements in Virginia. It was not until

six years later that Martin, under the stable influence of the

Transylvania Company, was enabled to return to this spot and

erect there the station which was to play an integral part in the

progress of westward expansion.

Before going on to relate Boone's explorations of Kentucky under

the auspices of the land company, it will be convenient to turn

back for a moment and give some account of other hunters and

explorers who visited that territory between the time of its

discovery by Walker and Gist and the advent of Boone.

CHAPTER VIII. The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone

The long Hunters principally resided in the upper countries of

Virginia & North Carolina on New River & Holston River, and when

they intended to make a long Hunt (as they calls it) they

Collected near the head of Holston near whare Abingdon now stands

. . . .--General William Hall.

Before the coming of Walker and Gist in 1750 and 1751

respectively, the region now called Kentucky had, as far as we

know, been twice visited by the French, once in 1729 when

Chaussegros de Lery and his party visited the Big Bone Lick, and

again in the summer of 1749 when the Baron de Longueuil with four

hundred and fifty-two Frenchmen and Indians, going to join

Bienville in an expedition against "the Cherickees and other

Indians lying at the back of Carolina and Georgia," doubtless

encamped on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio. Kentucky was also

traversed by John Peter Salling with his three adventurous

companions in their journey through the Middle West in 1742. But

all these early visits, including the memorable expeditions of

Walker and Gist, were so little known to the general public that

when John Filson wrote the history of Kentucky in 1784 he

attributed its discovery to James McBride in 1754. More

influential upon the course of westward expansion was an

adventure which occurred in 1752, the very year in which the

Boones settled down in their Vadkin home.

In the autumn of 1752, a Pennsylvania trader, John Findlay, with

three or four companions, descended the Ohio River in a canoe as

far as the falls at the present Louisville, Kentucky, and

accompanied a party of Shawnees to their town of

Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, eleven miles east of what is now Winchester.

This was the site of the "Indian Old Corn Field," the Iroquois

name for which ("the place of many fields," or "prairie") was Ken

-ta-ke, whence came the name of the state.

Five miles east of this spot, where still may be seen a mound and

an ellipse showing the outline of the stockade, is the famous

Pilot Knob, from the summit of which the fields surrounding the

town lie visible in their smooth expanse. During Findlay's stay

at the Indian town other traders from Pennsylvania and Virginia,

who reported that they were "on their return from trading with

the Cuttawas (Catawbas), a nation who live in the Territories of

Carolina," assembled in the vicinity in January, 1753. Here, as

the result of disputes arising from their barter, they were set

upon and captured by a large party of straggling Indians

(Coghnawagas from Montreal) on January 26th; but Findlay and

another trader named James Lowry were so fortunate as to escape

and return through the wilderness to the Pennsylvania

settlements." The incident is of important historic significance;

for it was from these traders, who must have followed the Great

Warriors' Path to the country of the Catawbas, that Findlay

learned of the Ouasioto (Cumberland) Gap traversed by the Indian

path. His reminiscences of this gateway to Kentucky, of the site

of the old Indian town on Lulbegrud Creek, a tributary of the Red

River, and of the Pilot Knobwere sixteen years later to fire

Boone to his great tour of exploration in behalf of the

Transylvania Company.

During the next two decades, largely because of the hostility of

the savage tribes, only a few traders and hunters from the east

ranged through the trans-Alleghany. But in 1761, a party of

hunters led by a rough frontiersman, Elisha Walden, penetrated

into Powell's Valley, followed the Indian trail through

Cumberland Gap, explored the Cumberland River, and finally

reached the Laurel Mountain where, encountering a party of

Indians, they deemed it expedient to return. With Walden went

Henry Scaggs, afterward explorer for the Henderson Land Company,

William Elevens and Charles Cox, the famous Virginia hunters, one

Newman, and some fifteen other stout pioneers. Their itinerary

may be traced from the names given to natural objects in honor of

members of the party--Walden's Mountain and Walden's Creek,

Scaggs' Ridge and Newman's Ridge. Following the peace of 1763,

which made travel in this region moderately safe once more, the

English proceeded to occupy the territory which they had won. In

1765 George Croghan with a small party, on the way to prepare the

inhabitants of the Illinois country for transfer to English

sovereignty, visited the Great Bone Licks of Kentucky (May 30th,

31st); and a year later Captain Harry Gordon, chief engineer in

the Western Department in North America, visited and minutely

described the same licks and the falls. But these, and numerous

other water-journeys and expeditions of which no records were

kept, though interesting enough in themselves, had little bearing

upon the larger phases of westward expansion and colonization.

The decade opening with the year 1765 is the epoch of bold and

ever bolder exploration--the more adventurous frontiersmen of the

border pushing deep into the wilderness in search of game, lured

on by the excitements of the chase and the profit to be derived

from the sale of peltries. In midsummer, 1766, Captain James

Smith, Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William Baker, and a young

mulatto slave passed through Cumberland Gap, hunted through the

country south of the Cherokee and along the Cumberland and

Tennessee rivers, and as Smith reports "found no vestige of any

white man." During the same year a party of five hunters from

South Carolina, led by Isaac Lindsey, penetrated the Kentucky

wilderness to the tributary of the Cumberland, named Stone's

River by the former party, for one of their number. Here they

encountered two men, who were among the greatest of the western

pioneers, and were destined to leave their names in historic

association with the early settlement of Kentucky, James Harrod

and Michael Stoner, a German, both of whom had descended the Ohio

from Fort Pitt. With the year 1769 began those longer and more

extended excursions into the interior which were to result in

conveying at last to the outside world graphic and detailed

information concerning "the wonderful new country of Cantucky."

In the late spring of this year Hancock and Richard Taylor (the

latter the father of President Zachary Taylor), Abraham

Hempinstall, and one Barbour, all true-blue frontiersmen, left

their homes in Orange County, Virginia, and hunted extensively in

Kentucky and Arkansas. Two of the party traveled through Georgia

and East and West Florida; while the other two hunted on the

Washita during the winter of 1770-1. Explorations of this type

became increasingly hazardous as the animosity of the Indians

increased; and from this time onward for a number of years almost

all the parties of roving hunters suffered capture or attack by

the crafty red men. In this same year Major John McCulloch,

living on the south branch of the Potomac, set out accompanied by

a white man-servant and a negro, to explore the western country.

While passing down the Ohio from Pittsburgh McCulloch was

captured by the Indians near the mouth of the Wabash and carried

to the present site of Terre Haute, Indiana. Set free after four

or five months, he journeyed in company with some French

voyageurs first to Natchez and then to New Orleans, whence he

made the sea voyage to Philadelphia. Somewhat later, Benjamin

Cleveland (afterward famous in the Revolution), attended by four

companions, set out from his home on the upper Yadkin to explore

the Kentucky wilderness. After passing through Cumberland Gap,

they encountered a band of Cherokees who plundered them of

everything they had, even to their hats and shoes, and ordered

them to leave the Indian hunting-grounds. On their return journey

they almost starved, and Cleveland, who was reluctantly forced to

kill his faithful little hunting-dog, was wont to declare in

after years that it was the sweetest meat he ever ate.

Fired to adventure by the glowing accounts brought back by Uriah

Stone, a much more formidable band than any that had hitherto

ventured westward--including Uriah Stone as pilot, Gasper

Mansker, John Rains, Isaac Bledsoe, and a dozen others--assembled

in June, 1769, in the New River region. "Each Man carried two

horses," says an early pioneer in describing one of these

parties, "traps, a large supply of powder and led, and a small

hand vise and bellows, files and screw plate for the purpose of

fixing the guns if any of them should get out of fix." Passing

through Cumberland Gap, they continued their long journey until

they reached Price's Meadow, in the present Wayne County,

Kentucky, where they established their encampment. In the course

of their explorations, during which they gave various names to

prominent natural features, they established their "station camp"

on a creek in Sumner County, Tennessee, whence originated the

name of Station Camp Creek. Isaac Bledsoe and Gasper Mansker,

agreeing to travel from here in opposite directions along a

buffalo trace passing near the camp, each succeeded in

discovering the famous salt-lick which bears his name--namely

Bledsoe's Lick and Mansker's Lick. The flat surrounding the lick,

about one hundred acres in extent, discovered by Bledsoe,

according to his own statement "was principally Covered with

buffelows in every direction--not hundreds but thousands." As he

sat on his horse, he shot down two deer in the lick; but the

buffaloes blindly trod them in the mud. They did not mind him and

his horse except when the wind blew the scent in their nostrils,

when they would break and run in droves. Indians often lurked in

the neighbourhood of these hunters -plundering their camp,

robbing them, and even shooting down one of their number, Robert

Crockett, from ambush. After many trials and vicissitudes, which

included a journey to the Spanish Natchez and the loss of a great

mass of peltries when they were plundered by Piomingo and a war

party of Chickasaws, they finilly reached home in the late spring

of 1770."

The most notable expedition of this period, projected under the

auspices of two bold leaders extraordinarily skilled in

woodcraft, Joseph Drake and Henry Scaggs, was organized in the

early autumn of 1770. This imposing band of stalwart hunters from

the New River and Holston country, some forty in number, garbed

in hunting shirts, leggings, and moccasins, with three

pack-horses to each man, rifles, ammunition, traps, dogs,

blankets, and salt, pushed boldly through Cumberland Gap into the

heart of what was later justly named the "Dark and Bloody Ground"

(see Chapter XIV)--"not doubting," says an old border chronicler,

"that they were to be encountered by Indians, and to subsist on

game." From the duration of their absence from home, they

received the name of the Long Hunters--the romantic appellation

by which they are known in the pioneer history of the Old

Southwest. Many natural objects were named by this party--in

particular Dick's River, after the noted Cherokee hunter, Captain

Dick, who, pleased to be recognized by Charles Scaggs, told the

Long Hunters that on HIS river, pointing it out, they would find

meat plenty--adding with laconic signifigance: "Kill it and go

home." From the Knob Lick, in Lincoln County, as reported by a

member of the party, "they beheld largely over a thousand

animals, including buffaloe, elk, bear, and deer, with many wild

turkies scattered among them; all quite restless, some playing,

and others busily employed in licking the earth . . . . The

buffaloe and other animals had so eaten away the soil, that they

could, in places, go entirely underground." Upon the return of a

detachment to Virginia, fourteen fearless hunters chose to

remain; and one day, during the absence of some of the band upon

a long exploring trip, the camp was attacked by a straggling

party of Indians under Will Emery, a halfbreed Cherokee. Two of

the hunters were carried into captivity and never heard of again;

a third managed to escape. In embittered commemoration of the

plunder of the camp and the destruction of the peltries, they

inscribed upon a poplar, which had lost its bark, this emphatic

record, followed by their names:

2300 Deer Skins lost Ruination by God

Undismayed by this depressing stroke of fortune, they continued

their hunt in the direction of the lick which Bledsoe had

discovered the preceding year. Shortly after this discovery, a

French voyageur from the Illinois who had hunted and traded in

this region for a decade, Timothe de Monbreun, subsequently

famous in the history of Tennessee, had visited the lick and

killed an enormous number of buffaloes for their tallow and

tongues with which he and his companion loaded a keel boat and

descended the Cumberland. An early pioneer, William Hall, learned

from Isaac Bledsoe that when "the long hunters Crossed the ridge

and came down on Bledsoe's Creek in four or five miles of the

Lick the Cane had grown up so thick in the woods that they

thought they had mistaken the place until they Came to the Lick

and saw what had been done . . . . One could walk for several

hundred yards a round the Lick and in the lick on buffellows

Skuls, & bones and the whole flat round the Lick was bleached

with buffellows bones, and they found out the Cause of the Canes

growing up so suddenly a few miles around the Lick which was in

Consequence of so many buffellows being killed."

This expedition was of genuine importance, opening the eyes of

the frontiersmen to the charms of the country and influencing

many to settle subsequently in the West, some in Tennessee, some

in Kentucky. The elaborate and detailed information brought back

by Henry Scaggs exerted an appreciable influence, no doubt, in

accelerating the plans of Richard Henderson and Company for the

acquisition and colonization of the trans-Alleghany. But while

the "Long Hunters" were in Tennessee and Kentucky the same region

was being more extensively and systematically explored by Daniel

Boone. To his life, character, and attainments, as the typical

"long hunter" and the most influential pioneer we may now turn

our particular attention.

CHAPTER IX. Daniel Boone and Wilderness Exploration

Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent;

where the horrid yells of the savages, and the groans of the

distressed, sounded in our ears, we now hear the praises and

adorations of our Creator; where wretched wigwams stood, the

miserable abodes of savages, we behold the foundations of cities

laid, that, in all probability, will equal the glory of the

greatest upon earth.--Daniel Boone, 1781.

The wandering life of a border Nimrod in a surpassingly beautiful

country teeming with game was the ideal of the frontiersman of

the eighteenth century. AS early as 1728, while running the

dividing line between North Carolina and Virginia, William Byrd

encountered along the North Carolina frontier the typical figure

of the professional hunter: "a famous Woodsman, call'd

Epaphroditus Bainton. This Forester Spends all his time in

ranging the Woods, and is said to make great Havock among the

Deer, and other Inhabitants of the Forest, not much wilder than

himself." By the middle of the century, as he was threading his

way through the Carolina piedmont zone, the hunter's paradise of

the Yadkin and Catawba country, Bishop Spangenberg found ranging

there many hunters, living like Indians, who killed thousands of

deer each year and sold the skins in the local markets or to the

fur-traders from Virginia whose heavy pack-trains with their

tinkling bells constantly traversed the course of the Great

Trading Path. The superlative skill of one of these hunters, both

as woodsman and marksman, was proverbial along the border. The

name of Daniel Boone became synonymous with expert huntsmanship

and almost uncanny wisdom in forest lore. The bottoms of the

creek near the Boone home, three miles west of present

Mocksville, contained a heavy growth of beech, which dropped

large quantities of its rich nuts or mast, greatly relished by

bears; and this creek received its name, Bear Creek, because

Daniel and his father killed in its rich bottoms ninety-nine

bears in a single hunting-season. After living for a time with

his young wife, Rebecca Bryan, in a cabin in his father's yard,

Daniel built a home of his own upon a tract of land, purchased

from his father on October 12, 1759, and lying on Sugar Tree, a

tributary of Dutchman's Creek. Here he dwelt for the next five

years, with the exception of the period of his temporary removal

to Virginia during the terrible era of the Indian war. Most of

his time during the autumn and winter, when he was not engaged in

wagoning or farming, he spent in long hunting-journeys into the

mountains to the west and northwest. During the hunting-season of

1760 he struck deeper than ever before into the western mountain

region and encamped in a natural rocky shelter amidst fine

hunting-grounds, in what is now Washington County in east

Tennessee. Of the scores of inscriptions commemorative of his

hunting-feats, which Boone with pardonable pride was accustomed

throughout his life time to engrave with his hunting-knife upon

trees and rocks, the earliest known is found upon a leaning beech

tree, only recently fallen, near his camp and the creek which

since that day has borne his name. This is a characteristic and

enduring record in the history of American exploration

D. Boon

CillED A. BAR On

Tree

in The

yEAR

1760

Late in the summer of the following year Boone marched under the

command of the noted Indian-fighter of the border, Colonel Hugh

Waddell, in his campaign against the Cherokees. From the lips of

Waddell, who was outspoken in his condemnation of Byrd's futile

delays in road-cutting and fort-building, Boone learned the true

secret of success in Indian warfare, which was lost upon

Braddock, Forbes, and later St. Clair: that the art of defeating

red men was to deal them a sudden and unexpected blow, before

they had time either to learn the strength of the force employed

against them or to lay with subtle craft their artful ambuscade.

In the late autumn of 1761, Daniel Boone and Nathaniel Gist, the

son of Washington's famous guide, who were both serving under

Waddell, temporarily detached themselves from his command and led

a small party on a "long hunt" in the Valley of the Holston,

While encamping near the site of Black's Fort, subsequently

built, they were violently assailed by a pack of fierce wolves

which they had considerable difficulty in beating off; and from

this incident the locality became known as Wolf Hills (now

Abingdon, Virginia).

From this time forward Boone's roving instincts had full sway.

For many months each year he threaded his way through that

marvelously beautiful country of western North Carolina

felicitously described as the Switzerland of America. Boone's

love of solitude and the murmuring forest was surely inspired by

the phenomenal beauties of the country' through which he roamed

at will. Blowing Rock on one arm of a great horseshoe of

mountains and Tryon Mountain upon the other arm, overlooked an

enormous, primeval bowl, studded by a thousand emerald-clad

eminences. There was the Pilot Mountain, the towering and

isolated pile which from time immemorial had served the

aborigines as a guide in their forest wanderings; there was the

dizzy height of the Roan on the border; there was Mt. Mitchell,

portentous in its grandeur, the tallest peak on the continent

east of the Rockies; and there was the Grandfather, the oldest

mountain on earth according to geologists, of which it has been

written:

Oldest of all terrestrial things--still holding

Thy wrinkled forehead high;

Whose every scam, earth's history enfolding,

Grim science doth defy!

Thou caught'st the far faint ray from Sirius rising,

When through space first was hurled

The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising,

This atom, called the World!

What more gratifying to the eye of the wanderer than the

luxuriant vegetation and lavish profusion of the gorgeous flowers

upon the mountain slopes, radiant rhododendron, rosebay, and

laurel, and the azalea rising like flame; or the rare beauties of

the water--the cataract of Linville, taking its shimmering leap

into the gorge, and that romantic river poetically celebrated in

the lines:

Swannanoa, nymph of beauty,

I would woo thee in my rhyme,

Wildest, brightest, loveliest river

Of our sunny Southern clime.

* * *

Gone forever from the borders

But immortal in thy name,

Are the Red Men of the forest

Be thou keeper of their fame!

Paler races dwell beside thee,

Celt and Saxon till thy lands

Wedding use unto thy beauty

Linking over thee their hands.

The long rambling excursions which Boone made through western

North Carolina and eastern Tennessee enabled him to explore every

nook and corner of the rugged and beautiful mountain region.

Among the companions and contemporaries with whom he hunted and

explored the country were his little son James and his brother

Jesse; the Linville who gave the name to the beautiful falls;

Julius Caesar Dugger, whose rock house stood near the head of Elk

Creek; and Nathaniel Gist, who described for him the lofty

gateway to Kentucky, through which Christopher Gist had passed in

1751. Boone had already heard of this gateway, from Findlay, and

it was one of the secret and cherished ambitions of his life to

scale the mountain wall of the Appalachians and to reach that

high portal of the Cumberland which beckoned to the mysterious

new Eden beyond. Although hunting was an endless delight to Boone

he was haunted in the midst of this pleasure, as was Kipling's

Explorer, by the lure of the undiscovered:

Till a voice as bad as conscience, rang interminable changes

On one everlasting whisper day and night repeated--so:

'Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges-

-

'Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go.'

Of Boone's preliminary explorations for the land company known as

Richard Henderson and Company, an account has already been given;

and the delay in following them up has been touched on and in

part explained. Meanwhile Boone transferred his efforts for a

time to another field. Toward the close of the summer of 1765 a

party consisting of Major John Field, William Hill, one

Slaughter, and two others, all from Culpeper County, Virginia,

visited Boone and induced him to accompany them on the "long

Journey" to Florida, whither they were attracted by the liberal

offer of Colonel James Grant, governor of the eastern section,

the Florida of to-day. On this long and arduous expedition they

suffered many hardships and endured many privations, found little

game, and on one occasion narrowly escaped starvation. They

explored Florida from St. Augustine to Pensacola; and Boone, who

relished fresh scenes and a new environment, purchased a house

and lot in Pensacola in anticipation of removal thither. But upon

his return home, finding his wife unwilling to go, Boone once

more turned his eager eye toward the West, that mysterious and

alluring region beyond the great range, the fabled paradise of

Kentucky.

The following year four young men from the Yadkin, Benjamin

Cutbird, John Stewart (Boone's brother-in-law who afterwards

accompanied him to Kentucky), John Baker, and James Ward made a

remarkable journey to the westward, crossing the Appalachian

mountain chain over some unknown route, and finally reaching the

Mississippi. The significance of the journey, in its bearing upon

westward expansion, inheres in the fact that while for more than

half a century the English traders from South Carolina had been

winning their way to the Mississippi along the lower routes and

Indian trails, this was the first party from either of the

Carolinas, as far as is known, that ever reached the Mississippi

by crossing the great mountain barrier. When Cutbird, a superb

woodsman and veritable Leather stocking, narrated to Boone the

story of his adventures, it only confirmed Boone in his

determination to find the passage through the mountain chain

leading to the Mesopotamia of Kentucky.

Such an enterprise was attended by terrible dangers. During 1766

and 1767 the steady encroachments of the white settlers upon the

ancestral domain which the Indians reserved for their imperial

hunting-preserve aroused bitter feelings of resentment among the

red men. Bloody reprisal was often the sequel to such

encroachment. The vast region of Tennessee and the

trans-Alleghany was a twilight zone, through which the savages

roamed at will. From time to time war parties of northern

Indians, the inveterate foes of the Cherokees, scouted through

this no-man's land and even penetrated into the western region of

North Carolina, committing murders and depredations upon the

Cherokees and the whites indiscriminately. During the summer of

1766, while Boone's friend and close connection, Captain William

Linville, his son John, and another young man, named John

Williams, were in camp some ten miles below Linville Falls, they

were unexpectedly fired upon by a hostile band of Northern

Indians, and before they had time to fire a shot, a second volley

killed both the Linvilles and severely wounded Williams, who

after extraordinary sufferings finally reached the settlements."

In May, 1767, four traders and a half-breed child of one of them

were killed in the Cherokee country. In the summer of this year

Governor William Tryon of North Carolina laid out the boundary

line of the Cherokees, and upon his return issued a proclamation

forbidding any purchase of land from the Indians and any issuance

of grants for land within one mile of the boundary line. Despite

this wise precaution, seven North Carolina hunters who during the

following September had lawlessly ventured into the mountain

region some sixty miles beyond the boundary were fired upon, and

several of them killed, by the resentful Cherokees Undismayed by

these signs of impending danger, undeterred even by the tragic

fate of the Linvilles, Daniel Boone, with the determination of

the indomitable pioneer, never dreamed of relinquishing his

long-cherished design. Discouraged by the steady disappearance of

game under the ruthless attack of innumerable hunters, Boone

continued to direct his thoughts toward the project of exploring

the fair region of Kentucky. The adventurous William Hill, to

whom Boone communicated his purpose, readily consented to go with

him; and in the autumn of 1768 Boone and Hill, accompanied, it is

believed, by Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, set forth upon their

almost inconceivably hazardous expedition. They crossed the Blue

Ridge and the Alleghanies, the Holston and Clinch rivers near

their sources, and finally reached the head waters of the West

Fork of the Big Sand. Surmising from its course that this stream

must flow into the Ohio, they pushed on a hundred miles to the

westward and finally, by following a buffalo path, reached a

salt-spring in what is now Floyd County, in the extreme eastern

section of Kentucky. Here Boone beheld great droves of buffalo

that visited the salt-spring to drink the water or lick the

brackish soil. After spending the winter in hunting and trapping,

the Boones and Hill, discouraged by the forbidding aspect of the

hill-country which with its dense growth of laurel was

exceedingly difficult to penetrate, abandoned all hope of finding

Kentucky by this route and wended their arduous way back to the

Yadkin.

The account of Boone's subsequent accomplishment of his purpose

must be postponed to the next chapter.

CHAPTER X. Daniel Boone in Kentucky

He felt very much as Columbus did, gazing from his caravel on San

Salvador; as Cortes, looking down, from the crest of Ahualco, on

the Valley of Mexico; or Vasco Nunez, standing alone on the peak

of Darien, and stretching his eyes over the hitherto undiscovered

waters of the Pacific.---William Gilmore Simms: Views and

Reviews.

A chance acquaintance formed by Daniel Boone, during the French

and Indian War, with the Irish lover of adventure, John Findlay,

was the origin of Boone's cherished longing to reach the El

Dorado of the West. In this slight incident we may discern the

initial inspiration for the epochal movement of westward

expansion. Findlay was a trader and horse peddler, who had early

migrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had been licensed a trader

with the Indians in 1747. During the same year he was married to

Elizabeth Harris, daughter of John Harris, the Indian-trader at

Harris's Ferry on the Susquehanna River, after whom Harrisburg

was named. During the next eight years Findlay carried on his

business of trading in the interior. Upon the opening of the

French and Indian War he was probably among "the young men about

Paxtang who enlisted immediately," and served as a waggoner in

Braddock's expedition. Over the campfires, during the ensuing

campaign in 1765, young Boone was an eager listener to Findlay's

stirring narrative of his adventures in the Ohio Valley and on

the wonderfully beautiful levels of Kentucky in 1752. The fancies

aroused in his brooding mind by Findlay's moving recital and his

description of an ancient passage through the Ouasioto or

Cumberland Gap and along the course of the Warrior's Path,

inspired him with an irrepressible longing to reach that alluring

promised land which was the perfect realization of the hunter's

paradise.

Thirteen years later, while engaged in selling pins, needles,

thread, and Irish linens in the Yadkin country, Findlay learned

from the Pennsylvania settlers at Salisbury or at the Forks of

the Yadkin of Boone's removal to the waters of the upper Yadkin.

At Boone's rustic home, in the winter of 1768-9, Findlay visited

his old comrade-in-arms of Braddock's campaign. On learning of

Boone's failure during the preceding year to reach the Kentucky

levels by way of the inhospitable Sandy region, Findlay again

described to him the route through the Ouasioto Gap traversed

sixteen years before by Pennsylvania traders in their traffic

with the Catawbas. Boone, as we have seen, knew that Christopher

Gist, who had formerly lived near him on the upper Yadkin, had

found some passage through the lofty mountain defiles; but he had

never been able to discover the passage. Findlay's renewed

descriptions of the immense herds of buffaloes he had seen in

Kentucky, the great salt-licks where they congregated, the

abundance of bears, deer, and elk with which the country teemed,

the innumerable flocks of wild turkeys, geese, and ducks, aroused

in Boone the hunter's passion for the chase; while the beauty of

the lands, as mirrored in the vivid fancy of the Irishman,

inspired him with a new longing to explore the famous country

which had, as John Filson records, "greatly engaged Mr. Findlay's

attention."

In the comprehensive designs of Henderson, now a judge, for

securing a "graphic report of the trans-Alleghany region in

behalf of his land company", Boone divined the means of securing

the financial backing for an expedition of considerable size and

ample equipment. In numerous suits for debt, aggregating hundreds

of dollars, which had been instituted against Boone by some of

the leading citizens of Rowan, Williams and Henderson had acted

as Boone's attorneys. In order to collect their legal fees, they

likewise brought suit against Boone; but not wishing to press the

action against the kindly scout who had hitherto acted as their

agent in western exploration, they continued the litigation from

court to court, in lieu of certain "conditions performed" on

behalf of Boone, during his unbroken absence, by his attorney in

this suit, Alexander Martin. Summoned to appear in 1769 at the

March term of court at Salisbury, Boone seized upon the occasion

to lay before Judge Henderson the designs for a renewed and

extended exploration of Kentucky suggested by the golden

opportunity of securing the services of Findlay as guide. Shortly

after March 6th, when Judge Henderson reached Salisbury, the

conference, doubtless attended by John Stewart, Boone's

brother-in-law, John Findlay, and Boone, who were all present at

this term of court, must have been held, for the purpose of

devising ways and means for the expedition. Peck, the only

reliable contemporary biographer of the pioneer, who derived many

facts from Boone himself and his intimate acquaintances, draws

the conclusion (1847): "Daniel Boone was engaged as the master

spirit of this exploration, because in his judgment and fidelity

entire confidence could be reposed . . . . He was known to

Henderson and encouraged by him to make the exploration, and to

examine particularly the whole country south of the Kentucky--or

as then called the Louisa River." As confidential agent of the

land company, Boone carried with him letters and instructions for

his guidance upon this extended tour of exploration."

On May 1, 1769, with Findlay as guide, and accompanied by four of

his neighbors, John Stewart, a skilled woodsman, Joseph Holden,

James Mooney, and William Cooley, Boone left his "peaceable

habitation" on the upper Yadkin and began his historic journey

"in quest of the country of Kentucky." Already heavily burdened

with debts, Boone must have incurred considerable further

financial obligations to Judge Henderson and Colonel Williams,

acting for the land company, in order to obtain the large amount

of supplies requisite for so prolonged an expedition. Each of the

adventurers rode a good horse of strength and endurance; and

behind him were securely strapped the blanket, ammunition, salt,

and cooking-utensils so indispensable for a long sojourn in the

wilderness. In Powell's Valley they doubtless encountered the

party led thither by Joseph Martin (see Chapter VII), and there

fell into the "Hunter's Trail" commented on in a letter written

by Martin only a fortnight before the passing of Boone's

cavalcade. Crossing the mountain at the Ouasioto Gap, they made

their first "station camp" in Kentucky on the creek, still named

after that circumstance, on the Red Lick Fork. After a

preliminary journey for the purpose of locating the spot, Findlay

led the party to his old trading-camp at Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki,

where then (June 7, 1769) remained but charred embers of the

Indian huts, with some of the stockading and the gate-posts still

standing. In Boone's own words, he and Findlay at once "proceeded

to take a more thorough survey of the country;" and during the

autumn and early winter, encountering on every hand apparently

inexhaustible stocks of wild game and noting the ever-changing

beauties of the country, the various members of the party made

many hunting and exploring journeys from their "station camp" as

base. On December 22, 1769, while engaged in a hunt, Boone and

Stewart were surprised and captured by a large party of

Shawanoes, led by Captain Will, who were returning from the

autumn hunt on Green River to their villages north of the Ohio.

Boone and Stewart were forced to pilot the Indians to their main

camp, where the savages, after robbing them of all their peltries

and supplies and leaving them inferior guns and little

ammunition, set off to the northward. They left, on parting, this

menacing admonition to the white intruders: "Now, brothers, go

home and stay there. Don't come here any more, for this is the

Indians' hunting-ground, and all the animals, skins, and furs are

ours. If you are so foolish as to venture here again, you may be

sure the wasps and yellow jackets will sting you severely."

Chagrined particularly by the loss of the horses, Boone and

Stewart for two days pursued the Indians in hot haste. Finally

approaching the Indians' camp by stealth in the dead of night,

they secured two of the horses, upon which they fled at top

speed. In turn they were immediately pursued by a detachment of

the Indians, mounted upon their fleetest horses; and suffered the

humiliation of recapture two days later. Indulging in wild

hilarity over the capture of the crestfallen whites, the Indians

took a bell from one of the horses and, fastening it about

Boone's neck, compelled him under the threat of brandished

tomahawks to caper about and jingle the bell, jeering at him the

while with the derisive query, uttered in broken English: "Steal

horse, eh?" With as good grace as they could summon--wry smiles

at best--Boone and Stewart patiently endured these humiliations,

following the Indians as captives. Some days later (about January

4, 1770), while the vigilance of the Indians was momentarily

relaxed, the captives suddenly plunged into a dense canebrake and

in the subsequent confusion succeeded in effecting their escape.

Finding their camp deserted upon their return, Boone and Stewart

hastened on and finally overtook their companions. Here Boone was

both surprised and delighted to encounter his brother Squire,

loaded down with supplies. Having heard nothing from Boone, the

partners of the land company had surmised that he and his party

must have run short of ammunition, flour, salt, and other things

sorely needed in the wilderness; and because of their desire that

the party should remain, in order to make an exhaustive

exploration of the country, Squire Boone had been sent to him

with supplies. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley returned to

the settlements; but Stewart, Squire Boone, and Alexander Neely,

who had accompanied Squire, threw in their lot with the intrepid

Daniel, and fared forth once more to the stirring and bracing

adventures of the Kentucky wilderness. In Daniel Boone's own

words, he expected "from the furs and peltries they had an

opportunity of taking . . . to recruit his shattered

circumstances; discharge the debts he had contracted by the

adventure; and shortly return under better auspices, to settle

the newly discovered country."

Boone and his party now stationed themselves near the mouth of

the Red River, and soon provided themselves, against the hard.

ships of the long winter, with jerk, bear's oil, buffalo tallow,

dried buffalo tongues, fresh meat, and marrow-bones as food, and

buffalo robes and bearskins as shelter from the inclement

weather. Neely had brought with him, to while away dull hours, a

copy of "Gulliver's Travels"; and in describing Neely's

successful hunt for buffalo one day, Boone in after years

amusingly deposed: "In the year 1770 I encamped on Red River with

five other men, and we had with us for our amusement the History

of Samuel Gulliver's Travels, wherein he gave an account of his

young master, Glumdelick, careing him on market day for a show to

a town called Lulbegrud. A young man of our company called

Alexander Neely came to camp and told us he had been that day to

Lulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their capital." Far

from unlettered were pioneers who indulged together in such

literary chat and gave to the near-by creek the name (after Dean

Swift's Lorbrugrud) of Lulbegrud which name, first seen on

Filson's map of Kentucky (1784), it bears to this day. From one

of his long, solitary hunts Stewart never returned; and it was

not until five years later, while cutting out the Transylvania

Trail, that Boone and his companions discovered, near the old

crossing at Rockcastle, Stewart's remains in a standing hollow

sycamore. The wilderness never gave up its tragic secret.

The close of the winter and most of the spring were passed by the

Boones, after Neely's return to the settlements, in exploration,

hunting, and trapping beaver and otter, in which sport Daniel

particularly excelled. Owing to the drain upon their ammunition,

Squire was at length compelled to return to the settlements for

supplies; and Daniel, who remained alone in the wilderness to

complete his explorations for the land company, must often have

shared the feelings of Balboa as, from lofty knob or towering

ridge, he gazed over the waste of forest which spread from the

dim out lines of the Alleghanies to the distant waters of the

Mississippi. He now proceeded to make those remarkable solitary

explorations of Kentucky which have given him immortality--

through the valley of the Kentucky and the Licking, and along the

"Belle Riviere" (Ohio) as low as the falls. He visited the Big

Bone Lick and examined the wonderful fossil remains of the

mammoth found there. Along the great buffalo roads, worn several

feet below the surface of the ground, which led to the Blue

Licks, he saw with amazement and delight thousands of huge shaggy

buffalo gamboling, bellowing, and making the earth rumble beneath

the trampling of their hooves. One day, while upon a cliff near

the junction of the Kentucky and Dick's Rivers, he suddenly found

himself hemmed in by a party of Indians. Seizing his only chance

of escape, he leaped into the top of a maple tree growing beneath

the cliffs and, sliding to safety full sixty feet below, made his

escape, pursued by the sound of a chorus of guttural "Ughs" from

the dumbfounded savages.

Finally making his way back to the old camp, Daniel was rejoined

there by Squire on July 27, 1770. During the succeeding months,

much of their time was spent in hunting and prospecting in

Jessamine County, where two caves are still known as Boone's

caves. Eventually, when ammunition and supplies had once more run

low, Squire was compelled a second time to return to the

settlements. Perturbed after a time by Squire's failure to rejoin

him at the appointed time, Daniel started toward the settlements,

in search of him; and by a stroke of good fortune encountered him

along the trail. Overjoyed at this meeting (December, 1770) the

indomitable Boones once more plunged into the wilderness,

determined to conclude their explorations by examining the

regions watered by the Green and Cumberland rivers and their

tributaries. In after years, Gasper Mansker, the old German

scout, was accustomed to describe with comic effect the

consternation created among the Long Hunters, while hunting one

day on Green River, by a singular noise which they could not

explain. Stealthily slipping from tree to tree, Mansker finally

beheld with mingled surprise and amusement a hunter, bareheaded,

stretched flat upon his back on a deerskin spread on the ground,

singing merrily at the top of his voice! It was Daniel Boone,

joyously whiling away the solitary hours in singing one of his

favorite songs of the border. In March, 1771, after spending some

time in company with the Long Hunters, the Boones, their horses

laden with furs, set their faces homeward. On their return

journey, near Cumberland Gap, they had the misfortune to be

surrounded by a party of Indians who robbed them of their guns

and all their peltries. With this humiliating conclusion to his

memorable tour of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he himself says,

"once more reached home after experiencing hardships which would

defy credulity in the recital."

Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the

ambition of years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a

second paradise." The reports of his extended explorations, which

he made to Judge Henderson, were soon communicated to the other

partners of the land company; and their letters of this period,

to one another, bristle with glowing and minute descriptions of

the country, as detailed by their agent. Boone was immediately

engaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the Cherokees

confidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or sell

the beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. The high

hopes of Henderson and his associates at last gave promise of

brilliant realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions of

Kentucky excited in their minds, says a gifted early chronicler,

the "spirit of an enterprise which in point of magnitude and

peril, as well as constancy and heroism displayed in its

execution, has never been paralleled in the history of America."

CHAPTER XI. The Regulators

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, but

if he has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one

cow to give a little milk for his children, they must all go to

raise money which is not to be had. And lastly if his personal

estate (sold at one tenth of its value) will not do, then his

lands (which perhaps has cost him many years of toil and labour)

must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungry

caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our

Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a

very short time.--George Sims: A Serious Address to the

Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our

deplorable Situation we suffer .... and some necessary Hints with

Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier

explorations in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel

Boone anticipated speedy removal to the West. Indeed, in the very

year of his first tour in their interest, Daniel and his wife

Rebeckah sold all their property in North Carolina, consisting of

their home and six hundred and forty acres of land, and after

several removals established themselves upon the upper Yadkin.

This removal and the later western explorations just outlined

were due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery.

Three other causes also were at work. In the first place there

was the scarcity of game. For fifteen years the shipments of

deerskins from Bethabara to Charleston steadily increased; and

the number of skins bought by Gammern, the Moravian storekeeper,

ran so high that in spite of the large purchases made at the

store by the hunters he would sometimes run entirely out of

money. Tireless in the chase, the far roaming Boone was among

"the hunters, who brought in their skins from as far away as the

Indian lands"; and the beautiful upland pastures and mountain

forests, still teeming with deer and bear, doubtless lured him to

the upper Yadkin, where for a time in the immediate neighborhood

of his home abundance of game fell before his unerring rifle.

Certainly the deer and other game, which were being killed in

enormous numbers to satisfy the insatiable demand of the traders

at Salisbury, the Forks, and Bethabara, became scarcer and

scarcer; and the wild game that was left gradually fled to the

westward. Terrible indeed was the havoc wrought among the elk;

and it was reported that the last elk was killed in western North

Carolina as early as 1781.

Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope in

the back country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguised

outlawry, similar to that found on the western plains of a later

era. This ruthless brigand age arose as the result of the

unsettled state of the country and the exposed condition of the

settlements due to the Indian alarms. When rude borderers,

demoralized by the enforced idleness attendant upon fort life

during the dark days of Indian invasion, sallied forth upon

forays against the Indians, they found much valuable

property--horses, cattle, and stock--left by their owners when

hurriedly fleeing to the protection of the frontier stockades.

The temptations thus afforded were too great to resist; and the

wilder spirits of the backwoods, with hazy notions of private

rights, seized the property which they found, slaughtered the

cattle, sold the horses, and appropriated to their own use the

temporarily abandoned household goods and plantation tools. The

stealing of horses, which were needed for the cultivation of the

soil and useful for quickly carrying unknown thieves beyond the

reach of the owner and the law, became a common practice; and was

carried on by bands of outlaws living remote from one another and

acting in collusive concert.

Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon the

New River settlements in Virginia had frightened away all the

families at the Town Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, a

man of Welsh stock, who had settled in the spring of 1752 in the

upper Yadkin near the Mulberry Fields, was suspected of having

robbed the storekeeper on the Meho. Not long afterward a band of

outlaws who plundered the exposed cabins in their owners'

absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain region in the rear

of the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their ill-gotten

plunder and made themselves secure from attack. Other members of

the band dwelt in the settlements, where they concealed their

robber friends by day and aided them by night in their nefarious

projects of theft and rapine.

The entire community was finally aroused by the bold depredations

of the outlaws; and the most worthy settlers of the Yadkin

country organized under the name of Regulators to break up the

outlaw band. When it was discovered that Owen, who was well known

at Bethabara, had allied himself with the highwaymen, one of the

justices summoned one hundred men; and seventy, who answered the

call, set forth on December 26, 1755, to seek out the outlaws and

to destroy their fortress. Emboldened by their success, the

latter upon one occasion had carried off a young girl of the

settlements. Daniel Boone placed himself at the head of one of

the parties, which included the young girl's father, to go to her

rescue; and they fortunately succeeded in effecting the release

of the frightened maiden. One of the robbers was apprehended and

brought to Salisbury, where he was thrown into prison for his

crimes. Meanwhile a large amount of plunder had been discovered

at the house of one Cornelius Howard; and the evidences of his

guilt so multiplied against him that he finally confessed his

connection with the outlaw band and agreed to point out their

fort in the mountains.

Daniel Boone and George Boone joined the party of seventy men,

sent out by the colonial authorities under the guidance of

Howard, to attack the stronghold of the bandits. Boone afterward

related that the robbers' fort was situated in the most fitly

chosen place for such a purpose that he could imagine--beneath an

overhanging cliff of rock, with a large natural chimney, and a

considerable area in front well stockaded. The frontiersmen

surrounded the fort, captured five women and eleven children, and

then burned the fort to the ground. Owen and his wife,

Cumberland, and several others were ultimately made prisoners;

but Harman and the remainder of the band escaped by flight. Owen

and his fellow captives were then borne to Salisbury,

incarcerated in the prison there, and finally (May, 1756)

condemned to the gallows. Owen sent word to the Moravians,

petitioning them to adopt his two boys and to apprentice one to a

tailor, the other to a carpenter. But so infuriated was Owen's

wife by Howard's treachery that she branded him as a second

Judas; and this at once fixed upon him the sobriquet "Judas"

Howard-a sobriquet he did not live long to bear, for about a year

later he was ambushed and shot from his horse at the crossing of

a stream. He thus paid the penalty of his betrayal of the outlaw

band. For a number of years, the Regulators continued to wage war

against the remaining outlaws, who from time to time committed

murders as well as thefts. As late as January, 1768, the

Regulators caught a horse thief in the Hollows of Surry County

and brought him to Bethabara, whence Richter and Spach took him

to the jail at Salisbury. After this year, the outlaws were heard

of no more; and peace reigned in the settlements.

Colonel Edmund Fanning--of whom more anon--declared that the

Regulation began in Anson County which bordered upon South

Carolina. Certain it is that the upper country of that province

was kept in an uproar by civil disturbances during this early

period. Owing to the absence of courts in this section, so remote

from Charleston, the inhabitants found it necessary, for the

protection of property and the punishment of outlaws, to form an

association called, like the North Carolina society, the

Regulation. Against this association the horse thieves and other

criminals made common cause, and received tacit support from

certain more reputable persons who condemned "the irregularity of

the Regulators." The Regulation which had been thus organized in

upper South Carolina as early as 1764 led to tumultuous risings

of the settlers; and finally in the effort to suppress these

disorders, the governor, Lord Charles Montagu, appointed one

Scovil, an utterly unworthy representative, to carry out his

commands. After various disorders, which became ever more

unendurable to the law-abiding, matters came to a crisis (1769)

as the result of the high-handed proceedings of Scovil, who

promiscuously seized and flung into prison all the Regulators he

could lay hands on. In the month of March the back country rose

in revolt against Scovil and a strong body of the settlers was on

the point of attacking the force under his command when an

eleventh-hour letter arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil from

office. Thus was happily averted, by the narrowest of margins, a

threatened precursor of the fight at Alamance in 1771 (see

Chapter XII). As the result of the petition of the Calhouns and

others, courts were established in 1760, though not opened until

four years later. Many horse thieves were apprehended, tried, and

punished. Justice once more held full sway.

Another important cause for Boone's removal from the neighborhood

of Salisbury into the mountain fastnesses was the oppressive

administration of the law by corrupt sheriffs, clerks, and

tax-gatherers, and the dissatisfaction of the frontier squatters

with the owners of the soil. At the close of the year 1764

reports reached the town of Wilmington, after the adjournment of

the assembly in November, of serious disturbances in Orange

County, due, it was alleged, to the exorbitant exactions of the

clerks, registers, and some of the attorneys. As a result of this

disturbing news, Governor Dobbs issued a proclamation forbidding

any officer to take illegal fees. Troubles had been brewing in

the adjacent county of Granville ever since the outbreak of the

citizens against Francis Corbin, Lord Granville's agent (January

24, 1759), and the issuance of the petition of Reuben Searcy and

others (March 23d) protesting against the alleged excessive fees

taken and injustices practised by Robert (Robin) Jones, the

famous lawyer. These disturbances were cumulative in their

effect; and the people at last (1765 ) found in George Sims, of

Granville, a fit spokesman of their cause and a doughty champion

of popular rights. In his "Serious Address to the Inhabitants of

Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable

Situation we suffer . . . and some necessary Hints with Respect

to a Reformation," recently brought to light, he presents a

crushing indictment of the clerk of the county court, Samuel

Benton, the grandfather of Thomas Hart Benton. After describing

in detail the system of semi-peonage created by the merciless

exactions of lawyers and petty court officials, and the

insatiable greed of "these cursed hungry caterpillars," Sims with

rude eloquence calls upon the people to pull them down from their

nests for the salvation of the Commonwealth.

Other abuses were also recorded. So exorbitant was the charge for

a marriage-license, for instance, that an early chronicler

records "The consequence was that some of the inhabitants on the

head-waters of the Yadkin took a short cut. They took each other

for better or for worse; and considered themselves as married

without further ceremony." The extraordinary scarcity of currency

throughout the colony, especially in the back country, was

another great hardship and a perpetual source of vexation. All

these conditions gradually became intolerable to the uncultured

but free spirited men of the back country. Events were slowly

converging toward a crisis in government and society. Independent

in spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted not

only against excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and

extortionate fees, but also against the rapacious practices of

the agents of Lord Granville. These agents industriously picked

flaws in the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary upon

which the poorer settlers were seated; and compelled them to pay

for the land if they had not already done so, or else to pay the

fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only remedy of

the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the

spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the

proprietary agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close

bargains for the lands or else to eject those who held them,

Henry Eustace McCulloh, in February, 1765, went into the county

to call a reckoning. The settlers, many of whom had located

without deeds, indignantly retorted by offering to buy only at

their own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out the

holdings when this smaller price was declined. They not only

terrorized into acquiescence those among them who were willing to

pay the amount charged for the lands, but also openly declared

that they would resist by force any sheriff in ejectment

proceedings. On May 7th an outbreak occurred; and a mob, led by

Thomas Polk, set upon John Frohock, Abraham Alexander, and

others, as they were about to survey a parcel of land, and gave

them a severe thrashing, even threatening the young McCulloh with

death.

The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement with

Francis Bacon, considered revenge as a sort of wild justice.

Especial objects of their animosity were the brothers Frohock,

John and Thomas, the latter clerk of the court at Salisbury, and

Edmund Fanning, a cultured gentleman-adventurer, associate

justice of the superior court. So rapacious and extortionate were

these vultures of the courts who preyed upon the vitals of the

common people, that they were savagely lampooned by Rednap

Howell, the backwoods poet-laureate of the Regulation. The temper

of the back country is well caught in Howell's lines anent this

early American "grafter", the favorite of the royal governor:

When Fanning first to Orange came,

He looked both pale and wan;

An old patched coat was on his back,

An old mare he rode on.

Both man and mare wan't worth five pounds,

As I've been often told;

But by his civil robberies,

He's laced his coat with gold.

The germs of the great westward migration in the coming decade

were thus working among the people of the back country. If the

tense nervous energy of the American people is the transmitted

characteristic of the border settlers, who often slept with

loaded rifle in hand in grim expectation of being awakened by the

hideous yells, the deadly tomahawk, and the lurid firebrand of

the savage, the very buoyancy of the national character is in

equal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded on a

freehold inheritance of land." The desire for free land was the

fundamental factor in the development of the American democracy.

No colony exhibited this tendency more signally than did North

Carolina in the turbulent days of the Regulation. The North

Carolina frontiersmen resented the obligation to pay quit-rents

and firmly believed that the first occupant of the soil had an

indefeasible right to the land which he had won with his rifle

and rendered productive by the implements of toil. Preferring the

dangers of the free wilderness to the paying of tribute to

absentee landlords and officials of an intolerant colonial

government, the frontiersman found title in his trusty rifle

rather than in a piece of parchment, and was prone to pay his

obligations to the owner of the soil in lead rather than in gold.

CHAPTER XII. Watauga--Haven of Liberty

The Regulators despaired of seeing better times and therefore

quitted the Province. It is said 1,500 departed since the Battle

of Alamance and to my knowledge a great many more are only

waiting to dispose of their plantations in order to follow them.-

-Reverend Morgan Edwards, 1772.

The five years (1766-1771) which saw the rise, development, and

ultimate defeat of the popular movement known as the Regulation,

constitute a period not only of extraordinary significance in

North Carolina but also of fruitful consequences in the larger

movements of westward expansion. With the resolute intention of

having their rulers "give account of their stewardship," to

employ their own words, the Sandy Creek Association of Baptists

(organized in 1758), in a series of papers known as Regulators'

Advertisements (1766-8) proceeded to mature, through popular

gatherings, a rough form of initiative and referendum. At length,

discouraged in its efforts, and particularly in the attempt to

bring county officials to book for charging illegal fees, this

association ceased actively to function. It was the precursor of

a movement of much more drastic character and formidable

proportions, chiefly directed against Colonel Edmund Fanning and

his associates. This movement doubtless took its name, "the

Regulation," from the bands of men already described who were

organized first in North Carolina and later in South Carolina, to

put down highwaymen and to correct many abuses in the back

country, such as the tyrannies of Scovil and his henchmen.

Failing to secure redress of their grievances through legal

channels, the Regulators finally made such a powerful

demonstration in support of their refusal to pay taxes that

Governor William Tryon of North Carolina, in 1768, called out the

provincial militia, and by marching with great show of force

through the disaffected regions, succeeded temporarily in

overawing the people and thus inducing them to pay their

assessments.

The suits which had been brought by the Regulators against Edmund

Fanning, register, and Francis Nash, clerk, of Orange County,

resulted in both being "found guilty of taking too high fees."

Fanning immediately resigned his commission as register; while

Nash, who in conjunction with Fanning had fairly offered in 1766

to refund to any one aggrieved any fee charged by him which the

Superior Court might hold excessive, gave bond for his appearance

at the next court. Similar suits for extortion against the three

Froliocks in Rowan County in 1769 met with failure, however; and

this outcome aroused the bitter resentment of the Regulators, as

recorded by Herman Husband in his "Impartial Relation." During

this whole period the insurrectionary spirit of the people, who

felt themselves deeply aggrieved but recognized their inability

to secure redress, took the form of driving local justices from

the bench and threatening court officials with violence.

At the session of the Superior Court at Hillsborough, September

22, 1770, an elaborate petition prepared by the Regulators,

demanding unprejudiced juries and the public accounting for taxes

by the sheriffs, was handed to the presiding justice by James

Hunter, a leading Regulator. This justice was our acquaintance,

Judge Richard Henderson, of Granville County, the sole high

officer in the provincial government from the entire western

section of the colony. In this petition occur these trenchant

words: "As we are serious and in good earnest and the cause

respects the whole body of the people it would be loss of time to

enter into arguments on particular points for though there are a

few men who have the gift and art of reasoning, yet every man has

a feeling and knows when he has justice done him as well as the

most learned." On the following Monday (September 24th), upon

convening of court, some one hundred and fifty Regulators, led by

James Hunter, Herman Husband, Rednap Howell, and others, armed

with clubs, whips, and cudgels, surged into the court-room and

through their spokesman, Jeremiah Fields, presented a statement

of their grievances. "I found myself," says Judge Henderson,

"under a necessity of attempting to soften and turn away the fury

of these mad people, in the best manner in my power, and as such

could well be, pacify their rage and at the same time preserve

the little remaining dignity of the court."

During an interim, in which the Regulators retired for

consultation, they fell without warning upon Fanning and gave him

such rough treatment that he narrowly escaped with his life. The

mob, now past control, horsewhipped a number of leading lawyers

and citizens gathered there at court, and treated others, notably

the courtly Mr. Hooper of Boston, "with every mark of contempt

and insult." Judge Henderson was assured by Fields that no harm

should come to him provided he would conduct the court in

accordance with the behest of the Regulators: namely, that no

lawyer, save the King's Attorney, should be admitted to the

court, and that the Regulators' cases should be tried with new

jurors chosen by the Regulators. With the entire little village

terrorized by this campaign of "frightfulness," and the court

wholly unprotected, Judge Henderson reluctantly acknowledged to

himself that "the power of the judiciary was exhausted."

Nevertheless, he says, "I made every effort in my power

consistent with my office and the duty the public is entitled to

claim to preserve peace and good order." Agreeing under duress to

resume the session the following day, the judge ordered an

adjournment. But being unwilling, on mature reflection, to permit

a mockery of the court and a travesty of justice to be staged

under threat and intimidation, he returned that night to his home

in Granville and left the court adjourned in course. Enraged by

the judge's escape, the Regulators took possession of the court

room the following morning, called over the cases, and in futile

protest against the conditions they were powerless to remedy,

made profane entries which may still be seen on the record:

"Damned rogues," "Fanning pays cost but loses nothing," "Negroes

not worth a damn, Cost exceeds the whole," "Hogan pays and be

damned," and, in a case of slander, "Nonsense, let them argue for

Ferrell has gone hellward."

The uprising of these bold and resolute, simple and imperfectly

educated people, which had begun as a constitutional struggle to

secure justice and to prevent their own exploitation by dishonest

lawyers of the county courts, now gave place to open anarchy and

secret incendiarism. In the dead of night, November 12th and

14th, Judge Henderson's barn, stables, and dwelling house were

fired by the Regulators and went up in flames. Glowing with a

sense of wrong, these misguided people, led on by fanatical

agitators, thus vented their indiscriminate rage, not only upon

their op pressors, but also upon men wholly innocent of injuring

them--men of the stamp of William Hooper, afterward signer of the

Declaration of Independence, Alexander Martin, afterward governor

and United States Senator,,and Richard Henderson, popular

representative of the back country and a firm champion of due

process of law. It is perhaps not surprising in view of these

events that Governor Tryon and the ruling class, lacking a

sympathy broad enough to ensure justice to the oppressed people,

seemed to be chiefly impressed with the fact that a widespread

insurrection was in progress, threatening not only life and

property, but also civil government itself. The governor called

out the militia of the province and led an army of well nigh one

thousand men and officers against the Regulators, who had

assembled at Alamance to the number of two thousand. Tryon stood

firm upon the demands that the people should submit to government

and disperse at a designated hour. The Regulators, on their side,

hoped to secure the reforms they desired by intimidating the

governor with a great display of force. The battle was a tragic

fiasco for the Regulators, who fought bravely, but without

adequate arms or real leadership. With the conclusion of this

desultory action, a fight lasting about two hours (May 16, 1771),

the power of the Regulators was completely broken."

Among these insurgents there was a remarkable element, an element

whose influence upon the course of American history has been but

imperfectly understood which now looms into prominence as the

vanguard of the army of westward expansion. There were some of

the Regulators who, though law-abiding and conservative, were

deeply imbued with ideas of liberty, personal independence, and

the freedom of the soil. Through the influence of Benjamin

Franklin, with whom one of the leaders of the group, Herman

Husband, was in constant correspondence, the patriotic ideas then

rapidly maturing into revolutionary sentiments furnished the

inspiration to action. As early as 1766, the Sandy Creek leaders,

referred to earlier in this chapter, issued a call to each

neighborhood to send delegates to a gathering for the purpose of

investigating the question "whether the free men of this country

labor under any abuses of power or not." The close connection

between the Sandy Creek men and the Sons of Liberty is amply

demonstrated in this paper wherein the Sons of Liberty in

connection with the "stamp law" are praised: for "redeeming us

from Tyranny" and for having "withstood the lords in Parliament

in behalf of true liberty." Upon the records of the Dutchman's

Creek Church, of "regular" Baptists, at the Forks of the Yadkin,

to which Daniel Boone's family belonged, may be found this

memorable entry, recognizing the "American Cause" well-nigh a

year before the declaration of independence at Philadelphia: "At

the monthly meeting it was agreed upon concerning the American

Cause, if any of the brethren see cause to join it they have the

liberty to do it without being called to an account by the

church. But whether they join or do not join they should be used

with brotherly love.

The fundamental reasons underlying the approaching westward

hegira are found in the remarkable petition of the Regulators of

An son County (October 9, 1769), who request that "Benjamin

Franklin or some other known PATRIOT" be appointed agent of the

province in London to seek redress at the source. They exposed

the basic evil in the situation by pointing out that, in

violation of the law restricting the amount of land that might be

granted to each person to six hundred and forty acres, much of

the most fertile territory in the province had been distributed

in large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "great

numbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in the

cultivation of the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist." It

was these poor people, "thereby deprived of His Majesties

liberality and Bounty," who soon turned their gaze to the

westward and crossed the mountains in search of the rich, free

lands of the trans-Alleghany region.

This feverish popular longing for freedom, stimulated by the

economic pressure of thousands of pioneers who were annually

entering North Carolina, set in motion a wave of migration across

the mountains in 1769. Long before Alamance, many of the true

Americans, distraught by apparently irremediable injustices,

plunged fearlessly into the wilderness, seeking beyond the

mountains a new birth of liberty, lands of their own selection

free of cost or quit-rents, and a government of their own

choosing and control."' The glad news of the rich valleys beyond

the mountains early lured such adventurous pioneers as Andrew

Greer and Julius Caesar Dugger to the Watauga country. The

glowing stories, told by Boone, and disseminated in the back

country by Henderson, Williams, and the Harts, seemed to give

promise to men of this stamp that the West afforded relief from

oppressions suffered in North Carolina. During the winter of

1768-9 there was also a great rush of settlers from Virginia into

the valley of the Holston. A party from Augusta County, led by

men who had been delighted with the country viewed seven years

before when they were serving under Colonel William Byrd against

the Cherokees, found that this region, a wilderness on their

outward passage in 1768, was dotted with cabins on every spot

where the grazing was good, upon their return the following year.

Writing to Hillsborough on October 18, 1770, concerning the "many

hundred families" in the region from Green River to the branches

of the Holston, who refused to comply with the royal proclamation

of 1763, Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia reports that "very

little if any Quit Rents have been received for His Majesty's use

from that Quarter for some time past"--the people claiming that

"His Majesty hath been pleased to withdraw his protection from

them since 1763."

In the spring of 1770, with the express intention of discovering

suitable locations for homes for himself and a number of others,

who wished to escape the accumulating evils of the times, James

Robertson of Orange County, North Carolina, made an arduous

journey to the pleasing valley of the Watauga. Robertson, who was

born in Brunswick County, Virginia, June 28, 1742, of excellent

Scotch-Irish ancestry, was a noteworthy figure of a certain type-

-quiet, reflective, conservative, wise, a firm believer in the

basic principles of civil Liberty and the right of local

self-government. Robertson spent some time with a man named

Honeycut in the Watauga region, raised a crop of corn, and chose

for himself and his friends suitable locations for settlement.

Lost upon his return in seeking the mountain defiles traversed by

him on the outward journey, Robertson probably escaped death from

starvation only through the chance passing of two hunters who

succored him and set him upon the right path. On arriving in

Orange he found political and social conditions there much worse

than before, many of the colonists declining to take the

obligatory oath of allegiance to the British Crown after the

Battle of Alamance, preferring to carve out for themselves new

homes along the western waters. Some sixteen families of this

stamp, indignant at the injustices and oppressions of British

rule, and stirred by Robertson's description of the richness and

beauty of the western country, accompanied him to Watauga shortly

after the battle.

This vanguard of the army of westward advance, independent

Americans in spirit with a negligible sprinkling of Loyalists,

now swept in a great tide into the northeastern section of

Tennessee. The men of Sandy Creek, actuated by independent

principles but out of sympathy with the anarchic side of the

Regulation, left the colony almost to a man. "After the defeat of

the Regulators," says the historian of the Sandy Creek

Association, "thousands of the oppressed, seeing no hope of

redress for their grievances, moved into and settled east

Tennessee. A large proportion of these were of the Baptist

population. Sandy Creek Church which some time previous to 1771,

numbered 606, was afterward reduced to fourteen members!" This

movement exerted powerful influence in stimulating westward

expansion. Indeed, it was from men of Regulating principles-

-Boone, Robertson, and the Searcys--who vehemently condemned the

anarchy and incendiarism of 1770, that Judge Henderson received

powerful cooperation in the opening up of Kentucky and Tennessee.

The several treaties concerning the western boundary of white

settlement, concluded in close succession by North Carolina,

Virginia, and the Crown with the Southern and Northern Indians,

had an important bearing upon the settlement of Watauga. The

Cherokee boundary line, as fixed by Governor Tryon (1767) and by

John Stuart (1768), ran from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain,

thence straight to Chiswell's Mine, and thence direct to the

mouth of the Great Kanawha River. By the treaty at Fort Stanwix

(November 5, 1768), in the negotiation of which Virginia was

represented by Dr. Thomas Walker and Major Andrew Lewis, the Six

Nations sold to the Crown their shadowy claim to a vast tract of

western country, including in particular all the land between the

Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers. The news of the cession resulted

in a strong southwestward thrust of population, from the

neighborhood of Abingdon, in the direction of the Holston Valley.

Recognizing that hundreds of these settlers were beyond the line

negotiated by Stuart, but on lands not yet surveyed, Governor

Botetourt instructed the Virginia commissioners to press for

further negotiations, through Stuart, with the Cherokees.

Accordingly, on October 18, 1770, a new treaty was made at

Lochaber, South Carolina, by which a new line back of Virginia

was established, beginning at the intersection of the North

Carolina-Cherokee line (a point some seventy odd miles east of

Long Island), running thence in a west course to a point six

miles east of Long Island, and thence in a direct course to the

confluence of the Great Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. At the time of

the treaty, it was agreed that the Holston River, from its

intersection with the North Carolina-Virginia line, and down the

course of the same, should be a temporary southern boundary of

Virginia until the line should be ascertained by actual survey. A

strong influx of population into the immense new triangle thus

released for settlement brought powerful pressure to bear upon

northern Tennessee, the point of least resistance along the

western barrier. Singularly enough, this advance was not opposed

by the Cherokees, whose towns were strung across the extreme

southeast corner of Tennessee.

When Colonel John Donelson ran the line in the latter part of

1771, The Little Carpenter, who with other Indian chiefs

accompanied the surveying party, urged that the line agreed upon

at Lochaber should break off at the head of the Louisa River, and

should run thence to the mouth thereof, and thence up the Ohio to

the mouth of the Great Kanawha. For this increase in the

territory of Virginia they of course expected additional payment.

As a representative of Virginia, Donelson agreed to the proposed

alteration in the boundary line; and accordingly promised to send

the Cherokees, in the following spring, a sum alleged by them to

have been fixed at five hundred pounds, in compensation for the

additional area. This informal agreement, it is believed, was

never ratified by Virginia; nor was the promised compensation

ever paid the Cherokees.

Under the belief that the land belonged to Virginia, Jacob Brown

with one or two families from North Carolina settled in 1771 upon

a tract of land on the northern bank of the Nonachunheh

(corruption, Nolichucky) River. During the same year, an

experimental line run westward from Steep Rock and Beaver Creek

by Anthony Bledsoe showed that upon the extension of the boundary

line, these settlers would fall within the bounds of North

Carolina. Although thus informally warned of the situation, the

settlers made no move to vacate the lands. But in the following

year, after the running of Donelson's line, Alexander Cameron,

Stuart's deputy, required "all persons who had made settlements

beyond the said line to relinquish them." Thus officially warned,

Brown and his companions removed to Watauga. Cameron's order did

not apply, however, to the settlement, to the settlement north of

the Holston River, south and east of Long Island; and the

settlement in Carter's Valley, although lying without the

Virginia boundary, strangely enough remained unmolested. The

order was directed at the Watauga settlers, who were seated south

of the Holston River in the Watauga Valley.

The plight in which the Watauga settlers now found themselves was

truly desperate; and the way in which they surmounted this

apparently insuperable difficulty is one of the most striking and

characteristic events in the pre-Revolutionary history of the Old

Southwest. It exhibits the indomitable will and fertile resource

of the American character at the margin of desperation. The

momentous influence of the Watauga settlers, inadequately

reckoned hitherto by historians, was soon to make itself

powerfully felt in the first epochal movement of westward

expansion.

CHAPTER XIII. Opening the Gateway--Dunmore's War

Virginia, we conceive, can claim this Country [Kentucky] with the

greatest justice and propriety, its within the Limits of their

Charter. They Fought and bled for it. And had it not been for the

memorable Battle, at the Great Kanaway those vast regions had yet

continued inaccessable.--The Harrodsburg Petition. June 7-15,

1776.

It was fortunate for the Watauga settlers that the Indians and

the whites were on the most peaceful terms with each other at the

time the Watauga Valley was shown, by the running of the boundary

line, to lie within the Indian reservation. With true American

self reliance, the settlers met together for deliberation and

counsel, and deputed James Robertson and John Been, as stated by

Tennessee's first historian, "to treat with their landlords, and

agree upon articles of accommodation and friendship. The attempt

succeeded. For though the Indians refused to give up the land

gratuitously, they consented, for a stipulated amount of

merchandise, muskets, and other articles of convenience, to lease

all the country on the waters of the Watauga." In addition to the

land thus leased for ten years, several other tracts were

purchased from the Indians by Jacob Brown, who reoccupied his

former location on the Nolichucky.

In taking this daring step, the Watauga settlers moved into the

spotlight of national history. For the inevitable consequence of

leasing the territory was the organization of a form of

government for the infant settlement. Through his familiarity

with the North Carolina type of "association," in which the

settlers had organized for the purpose of "regulating" abuses,

and his acquaintance with the contents of the "Impartial

Relation," in which Husband fully expounded the principles and

practices of this association, Robertson was peculiarly fitted

for leadership in organizing this new government. The convention

at which Articles of Association, unfortunately lost, were drawn

up, is noteworthy as the first governmental assemblage of

free-born American citizens ever held west of the Alleghanies.

The government then established was the first free and

independent government, democratic in spirit, representative in

form, ever organized upon the American continent. In describing

this mimic republic, the royal Governor of Virginia says: "They

appointed magistrates, and framed laws for their present

occasion, and to all intents and purposes, erected themselves

into, though an inconsiderable, yet a separate State." The most

daring spirit in this little state was the young John Sevier, of

French Huguenot family (originally spelled Xavier), born in

Augusta County, Virginia, on September 23, 1745. It was from

Millerstown in Shenandoah County where he was living the

uneventful life of a small farmer, that he emigrated (December,

1773) to the Watauga region. With his arrival there begins one of

the most fascinating and romantic careers recorded in the varied

arid stirring annals of the Old Southwest. In this daring and

impetuous young fellow, fair-haired, blue-eyed, magnetic,

debonair--of powerful build, splendid proportions, and athletic

skill--we hold the gallant exemplar of the truly heroic life of

the border. The story of his life, thrilling in the extreme, is

rich in all the multi-colored elements which impart romance to

the arduous struggle of American civilization in the opening

years of the republic.

The creative impulses in the Watauga commonwealth are hinted at

by Dunmore, who serves, in the letter above quoted, that Watauga

"sets a dangerous example to the people America, of forming

governments distinct from and independent of his Majesty's

authority."

It is true that the experiment was somewhat limited. The

organization of the Watauga association, which constituted a

temporary expedient to meet a crisis in the affairs of a frontier

community cut off by forest wilderness and mountain barriers from

the reach of the arm of royal or provincial government, is not to

be compared with the revolutionary assemblage at Boonesborough,

May 23, 1775, or with the extraordinary demands for inde pendence

in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the same month.

Nevertheless the Watauga settlers defied both North Carolina and

the Crown, by adopting the laws of Virginia and by ignoring

Governor Josiah Martin's proclamation (March 26, 1774) "requiring

the said settlers immediately to retire from the Indian

Territories." Moreover, Watauga really was the parent of a series

of mimic republics in the Old Southwest, gradually tending toward

higher forms of organization, with a larger measure of individual

liberty. Watauga, Transylvania, Cumberland, Franklin represent

the evolving political genius of a free people under the creative

leadership of three constructive minds--James Robertson, John

Sevier, and Richard Henderson. Indeed, Watauga furnished to Judge

Henderson precisely the "dangerous example" of which Dunmore

prophetically speaks.

Immediately upon his return in 1771 from the extended exploration

of Kentucky, Daniel Boone as already noted was engaged as secret

agent, to treat with the Cherokees for the lease or purchase of

the trans-Alleghany region, on behalf of Judge Henderson and his

associates. Embroiled in the exciting issues of the Regulation

and absorbed by his confining duties as colonial judge, Henderson

was unable to put his bold design into execution until after the

expiration of the court itself which ceased to exist in 1773.

Disregarding the royal proclamation of 1763 and Locke's

Fundamental Constitutions for the Carolinas, which forbade

private parties to purchase lands from the Indians, Judge

Henderson applied to the highest judicial authorities in England

to know if there was any law in existence forbidding purchase of

lands from the Indian tribes. Lord Mansfield gave Judge Henderson

the "sanction of his great authority in favor of the purchase."

Lord Chancellor Camden and Mr. Yorke had officially advised the

King in 1757, in regard to the petition of the East Indian

Company, "that in respect to such territories as have been, or

shall be acquired by treaty or grant from the Great Mogul, or any

of the Indian princes or governments, your Majesty's letters

patent are NOT NECESSARY; the property of the soil vesting in the

company by the Indian grant subject only to your Majesties right

of sovereignty over the settlements, as English settlements, and

over the inhabitants, as English subjects, who carry with them

your Majesties laws wherever they form colonies, and receive your

Majesties protection by virtue of your royal charters." This

opinion, with virtually no change, was rendered in regard to the

Indian tribes of North America by the same two authorities,

certainly as early as 1769; and a true copy, made in London,

April 1, 1772, was transmitted to Judge Henderson. Armed with the

legal opinions received from England, Judge Henderson was fully

persuaded that there was no legal bar whatsoever to his seeking

to acquire by purchase from the Cherokees the vast domain of the

trans-Alleghany. A golden dream of empire, with its promise of an

independent republic in the form of a proprietary colony, casts

him under the spell of its alluring glamour.

In the meantime, the restless Boone, impatient over the delay in

the consummation of Judge Henderson's plans, resolved to

establish himself in Kentucky upon his own responsibility.

Heedless of the question of title and the certain hazards

incident to invading the territory of hostile savages, Boone

designated a rendezvous in Powell's Valley where he and his party

of five families were to be met by a band under the leadership of

his connections, the Bryans, and another company led by Captain

William Russell, a daring pioneer of the Clinch Valley. A small

detachment of Boone's party was fiercely attacked by Shawanoes in

Powell's Valley on October 10, 1773, and almost all were killed,

including sons of Boone and Russell, and young John and Richard

Mendenhall of Guilford County, North Carolina. As the result of

this bloody repulse, Boone's attempt to settle in Kentucky at

this time was definitely abandoned. His failure to effect a

settlement in Kentucky was due to that characteristic disregard

of the territorial rights of the Indians which was all too common

among the borderers of that period.

This failure was portentous of the coming storm. The reign of the

Long Hunters was over. Dawning upon the horizon was the day of

stern adventurers, fixed in the desperate and lawless resolve to

invade the trans-Alleghany country and to battle savagely with

the red man for its possession. More successful than Boone was

the McAfee party, five in number, from Botetourt County,

Virginia, who between May l0th and September 1, 1773, safely

accomplished a journey through Kentucky and carefully marked

well-chosen sites for future location." An ominous incident of

the time was the veiled warning which Cornstalk, the great

Shawanoe chieftain, gave to Captain Thomas Bullitt, head of a

party of royal surveyors, sent out by Lord Dunmore, Governor of

Virginia. Cornstalk at Chillicothe, June 7, 1773, warned Bullitt

concerning the encroachments of the whites, "designed to deprive

us," he said, "of the hunting of the country, as usual . . . the

hunting we stand in need of to buy our clothing." During the

preceding summer, George Rogers Clark, an aggressive young

Virginian, with a small party, had descended the Ohio as low as

Fish Creek, where he built a cabin; and in this region for many

months various parties of surveyors were busily engaged in

locating and surveying lands covered by military grants. Most

significant of the ruthless determination of the pioneers to

occupy by force the Kentucky area was the action of the large

party from Monongahela, some forty in number, led by Captain

James Harrod, who penetrated to the present Miller County, where

in June, 1774, they made improvements and actually laid out a

town.

A significant, secretly conducted movement, of which historians

have taken but little account, was now in progress under the

manipulation of Virginia's royal governor. As early as 1770 Dr.

John Connolly proposed the establishment of an extensive colony

south of the Ohio; and the design of securing such territory from

the Indians found lodgment in the mind of Lord Dunmore. But this

design was for the moment thwarted when on October 28, 1773, an

order was issued from the Privy Council chamber in Whitehall

granting an immense territory, including all of the present West

Virginia and the land alienated to Virginia by Donelson's

agreement with the Cherokees (1772), to a company including

Thomas Walpole, Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin, and others.

This new colony, to be named "Vandalia," seemed assured. A clash

between Dunmore and the royal authorities was imminent; for

Virginia under her sea-to-sea charter claimed the vast middle

region of the continent, extending without known limit to west

and northwest. Moreover, Dunmore was interested in great land

speculations on his own account; and while overtly vindicating

Virginia's claim to the trans-Alleghany by despatching parties of

surveyors to the western wilderness to locate and survey lands

covered by military grants, he with the collusion of certain

members of the "Honourable Board," his council, as charged by

Washington, was more than "lukewarm," secretly restricting as

rigorously as he dared the extent and number of the soldiers'

allotments. According to the famous Virginia Remonstrance, he was

in league with "men of great influence in some of the neighboring

states" to secure, under cover of purchases from the Indians,

large tracts of country between the Ohio and the Mississippi." In

shaping his plans Dunmore had the shrewd legal counsel of Patrick

Henry, who was equally intent upon making for himself a private

purchase from the Cherokees. It was Henry's legal opinion that

the Indiana purchase from the Six Nations by the Pennsylvania

traders at Fort Stanwix (November 5, 1768) was valid; and that

purchase by private individuals from the Indians gave full and

ample title. In consequence of these facts, William Murray, in

behalf of himself and his associates of the Illinois Land

Company, and on the strength of the Camden Yorke decision,

purchased two large tracts, on the Illinois and Ohio

respectively, from the Illinois Indians (July 5, 1773); and in

order to win the support of Dunmore, who was ambitious to make a

fortune in land speculation, organized a second company, the

Wabash (Ouabache) Land Company, with the governor as the chief

share-holder. In response to Murray's petition on behalf of the

Illinois Land Company, Dunmore (May, 1774) recommended it to Lord

Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and urged that it

be granted; and in a later letter he disingenuously disclaimed

any personal interest in the Illinois speculation.

The party of surveyors sent out under the direction of Colonel

William Preston, on the request of Washington and other leading

eastern men, in 1774 located lands covered by military grants on

the Ohio and in the Kentucky area for prominent Virginians,

including Washington, Patrick Henry, William Byrd, William

Preston, Arthur Campbell, William Fleming, and Andrew Lewis,

among others, and also a large tract for Dr. Connolly. Certain of

these grants fell within the Vandalia area; and in his reply

(September 10, 1774) to Dunmore's letter, Lord Dartmouth sternly

censured Dunmore for allowing these grants, and accused the white

settlers of having brought on, by such unwarrantable aggressions,

the war then raging with the Indians. This charge lay at the door

of Dunmore himself; and there is strong evidence that Dunmore

personally fomented the war, ostensibly in support of Virginia's

charter rights, but actually in order to further his own

speculative designs." Dunmore's agent, Dr. Connolly, heading a

party posing as Virginia militia, fired without provocation upon

a delegation of Shawanoe chiefs assembled at Fort Pitt (January,

1774). Taking advantage of the alarming situation created by the

conflict of the claims of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Connolly,

inspired by Dunmore without doubt, then issued an incendiary

circular (April 21, 1774), declaring a state of war to exist.

Just two weeks before the Battle of the Great Kanawha, Patrick

Henry categorically stated, in conversation with Thomas Wharton:

"that he was at Williamsburg with Ld. D. when Dr. Conolly first

came there, that Conolly is a chatty, sensible man, and informed

Ld. Dunmore of the extreme richness of the lands which lay on

both sides of the Ohio; that the prohibitory orders which had

been sent him relative to the land on the hither side (or

Vandalia) had caused him to turn his thoughts to the opposite

shore, and that as his Lordship was determined to settle his

family in America he was really pursueing this war, in order to

obtain by purchase or treaty from the natives a tract of

territory on that side; he then told me that he was convinced

from every authority that the law knew, that a purchase from the

natives was as full and ample a title as could be obtained, that

they had Lord Camden and Mr. York's opinion on that head, which

opinion with some others that Ld. Dunmore had consulted, and with

the knowledge Conolly had given him of the quality of the country

and his determined resolution to settle his family on this

continent, were the real motives or springs of the present

expedition."

At this very time, Patrick Henry, in conjunction with William

Byrd 3d and others, was negotiating for a private purchase of

lands from the Cherokees; and when Wharton, after answering

Henry's inquiry as to where he might buy Indian goods, remarked:

"It's not possible you mean to enter the Indian trade at this

period," Henry laughingly replied: "The wish-world is my hobby

horse." "From whence I conclude," adds Wharton, "he has some

prospect of making a purchase of the natives, but where I know

not."

The war, thus promulgated, we believe, at Dunmore's secret

instigation and heralded by a series of ghastly atrocities, came

on apace. After the inhuman murder of the family of Logan, the

Indian chieftain, by one Greathouse and his drunken companions

(April 30th), Logan, who contrary to romantic views was a

blackhearted and vengeful savage, harried the Tennessee and

Virginia borders, burning and slaughtering. Unable to arouse the

Cherokees, owing to the opposition of Atta-kulla-kulla, Logan as

late as July 21st said in a letter to the whites: "The Indians

are not angry, only myself," and not until then did Dunmore begin

to give full execution to his warlike plans. The best woodsmen of

the border, Daniel Boone and the German scout Michael Stoner,

having been despatched on July 27th by Colonel William Preston to

warn the surveyors of the trans-Alleghany, made a remarkable

journey on foot of eight hundred miles in sixty-one days.

Harrod's company at Harrodsburg, a company of surveyors at

Fontainebleau, Floyd's party on the Kentucky, and the surveyors

at Mann's Lick, this warned, hurried in to the settlements and

were saved. Meanwhile, Dunmore, in command of the Virginia

forces, invaded territory guaranteed to the Indians by the royal

proclamation of 1763 and recently (1774) added to the province of

Quebec, a fact of which he was not aware, conducted a vigorous

campaign, and fortified Camp Charlotte, near Old Chillicothe.

Andrew Lewis, however, in charge of the other division of

Dunmore's army, was the one destined to bear the real brunt and

burden of the campaign. His division, recruited from the very

flower of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, was the most

representative body of borderers of this region that up to this

time had assembled to measure strength with the red men. It was

an army of the true stalwarts of the frontier, with fringed

leggings and hunting-capes, rifles and powder-horns,

hunting-knives and tomahawks.

The Battle of the Great Kanawha, at Point Pleasant, was fought on

October 10, 1774, between Lewis's force, eleven hundred strong,

and the Indians, under Cornstalk, somewhat inferior in numbers.

It was a desultory action, over a greatly extended front and in

very brushy country between Crooked Creek and the Ohio.

Throughout the long day, the Indians fought with rare craft and

stubborn bravery--loudly cursing the white men, cleverly picking

off their leaders, and derisively inquiring, in regard to the

absence of the fifes: "Where are your whistles now?" Slowly

retreating, they sought to draw the whites into an ambuscade and

at a favorable moment to "drive the Long Knives like bullocks

into the river." No marked success was achieved on either side

until near sunset, when a flank movement directed by young Isaac

Shelby alarmed the Indians, who mistook this party for the

expected reinforcement under Christian, and retired across the

Ohio. In the morning the whites were amazed to discover that the

Indians, who the preceding day so splendidly heeded the echoing

call of Cornstalk, "Be strong! Be strong!", had quit the

battlefield and left the victory with the whites.

The peace negotiated by Dunmore was durable. The governor had

accomplished his purpose, defied the authority of the crown, and

vindicated the claim of Virginia, to the enthusiastic

satisfaction of the backwoodsmen. While tendering their thanks to

him and avowing their allegiance to George III, at the close of

the campaign, the borderers proclaimed their resolution to exert

all their powers "for the defense of American liberty, and for

the support of her just rights and privileges, not in any

precipitous, riotous or tumultuous manner, but when regularly

called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen." Dunmore's

War is epochal, in that it procured for the nonce a state of

peace with the Indians, which made possible the advance of Judge

Henderson over the Transylvania Trail in 1775, and, through his

establishment of the Transylvania Fort at Boonesborough, the

ultimate acquisition by the American Confederation of the

imperial domain of the trans-Alleghany.

CHAPTER XIV. Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company

I happened to fall in company, and have a great deal of

conversation with one of the most singular and extraordinary

persons and excentric geniuses in America, and perhaps in the

world. His name is Richard Henderson.--J. F. D. Smyth: A Tour in

the United States of America.

Early in 1774, chastened by his own disastrous failure the

preceding autumn, Boone advised Judge Henderson that the time was

auspicious for opening negotiations with the Cherokees for

purchasing the trans-Alleghany region." In organizing a company

for this purpose, Henderson chose men of action and resource,

leaders in the colony, ready for any hazard of life and fortune

in this gigantic scheme of colonization and promotion. The new

men included, in addition to the partners in the organization

known as Richard Henderson and Company, were Colonel John

Luttrell, destined to win laurels in the Revolution, and William

Johnston, a native of Scotland, the leading merchant of

Hillsborough.

Meeting in Hillsborough on August 27, 1774, these men organized

the new company under the name of the Louisa Company. In the

articles then drawn up they agreed to "rent or purchase" a tract

of land from the Indian owners of the soil for the express

purpose of "settling the country." Each partner obligated himself

to "furnish his Quota of Expenses necessary towards procuring the

grant." In full anticipation of the grave dangers to be

encountered, they solemnly bound themselves, as "equal sharers in

the property," to "support each other with our lives and

fortunes." Negotiations with the Indians were begun at once.

Accompanied by Colonel Nathaniel Hart and guided by the

experienced Indian-trader, Thomas Price, Judge Henderson visited

the Cherokee chieftains at the Otari towns. After elaborate

consultations, the latter deputed the old chieftain,

Atta-kulla-kulla, a young buck, and a squaw, "to attend the said

Henderson and Hart to North Carolina, and there examine the Goods

and Merchandize which had been by them offered as the

Consideration of the purchase." The goods purchased at Cross

Creek (now Fayetteville, North Carolina), in which the Louisa

Company "had embarked a large amount," met the entire approval of

the Indians--the squaw in particular shrewdly examining the goods

in the interest of the women of the tribe.

On January 6, 1775, the company was again enlarged, and given the

name of the Transylvania Company-the three new partners being

David Hart, brother to Thomas and Nathaniel, Leonard Henley

Bullock, a prominent citizen of Granville, and James Hogg, of

Hillsborough, a native Scotchman and one of the most influential

men in the colony. In the elaborate agreement drawn up reference

is explicitly made to the contingency of "settling and voting as

a proprietor and giving Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants

etc." Hillsborough was the actual starting-point for the westward

movement, the first emigrants, traveling thence to the Sycamore

Shoals of the Watauga. In speaking of the departure of the

settlers, the first movement of extended and permanent westward

migration, an eye-witness quaintly says: "At this place

[Hillsborough] I saw the first party of emigrant families that

moved to Kentucky under the auspices of Judge Henderson. They

marched out of the town with considerable solemnity, and to many

their destination seemed as remote as if it had been to the South

Sea Islands." Meanwhile, the "Proposals for the encouragement of

settling the lands etc.," issued on Christmas Day, 1774, were

quickly spread broadcast through the colony and along the

border." It was the greatest sensation North Carolina had known

since Alamance; and Archibald Neilson, deputy-auditor and naval

officer of the colony, inquired with quizzical anxiety: "Pray, is

Dick Henderson out of his head?" The most liberal terms,

proffered by one quite in possession of his head, were embodied

in these proposals. Land at twenty shillings per hundred acres

was offered to each emigrant settling within the territory and

raising a crop of corn before September 1, 1775, the emigrant

being permitted to take up as much as five hundred acres for him

self and two hundred and fifty acres for each tithable person

under him. In these "Proposals" there was no indication that the

low terms at which the lands were offered would be maintained

after September 1, 1775. In a letter to Governor Dunmore

(January, 1775), Colonel William Preston, county surveyor of

Fincastle County, Virginia, says "The low price he [Henderson]

proposes to sell at, together with some further encouragement he

offers, will I am apprehensive induce a great many families to

remove from this County (Fincastle) & Carolina and settle there."

Joseph Martin, states his son, "was appointed entry-Taker and

agent for the Powell Valley portion" of the Transylvania Purchase

on January 20, 1775; and "he (Joseph Martin) and others went on

in the early part of the year 1775 and made their stand at the

very spot where he had made corn several years before. In

speaking of the startling design, unmasked by Henderson, of

establishing an independent government, Colonel Preston writes to

George Washington of the contemplated "large Purchase by one Col.

Henderson of North Carolina from the Cherokees . . . . I hear

that Henderson talks with great Freedom & Indecency of the

Governor of Virginia, sets the Government at Defiance & says if

he once had five hundred good Fellows settled in that Country he

would not Value Virginia."

Early in 1775 runners were sent off to the Cherokee towns to

summon the Indians to the treaty ground at the Sycamore Shoals of

the Watauga; and Boone, after his return from a hunt in Kentucky

in January, was summoned by Judge Henderson to aid in the

negotiations preliminary to the actual treaty. The dominating

figure in the remarkable assemblage at the treaty ground,

consisting of twelve hundred Indians and several hundred whites,

was Richard Henderson, "comely in person, of a benign and social

disposition," with countenance betokening the man of strenuous

action" noble forehead, prominent nose, projecting chin, firm-set

jaw, with kindness and openness of expression." Gathered about

him, picturesque in garb and striking in appearance, were many of

the buckskin-clad leaders of the border--James Robertson, John

Sevier, Isaac Shelby, William Bailey Smith, and their

compeers--as well as his Carolina friends John Williams, Thomas

and Nathaniel Hart, Nathaniel Henderson, Jesse Benton,and

Valentine Searcy.

Little was accomplished on the first day of the treaty (March

14th); but on the next day, the Cherokees offered to sell the

section bargained for by Donelson acting as agent for Virginia in

1771. Although the Indians pointed out that Virginia had never

paid the promised compensation of five hundred pounds and had

therefore forfeited her rights, Henderson flatly refused to

entertain the idea of purchasing territory to which Virginia had

the prior claim. Angered by Henderson's refusal, The Dragging

Canoe, leaping into the circle of the seated savages, made an

impassioned speech touched with the romantic imagination peculiar

to the American Indian. With pathetic eloquence he dwelt upon the

insatiable land-greed of the white men, and predicted the

extinction of his race if they committed the insensate folly of

selling their beloved hunting-grounds. Roused to a high pitch of

oratorical fervor, the savage with uplifted arm fiercely exhorted

his people to resist further encroachments at all hazards--and

left the treaty ground. This incident brought the conference to a

startling and abrupt conclusion. On the following day, however,

the savages proved more tractable,agreeing to sell the land as

far as the Cumberland River. In order to secure the additional

territory watered by the tributaries of the Cumberland, Henderson

agreed to pay an additional sum of two thousand pounds. Upon this

day there originated the ominous phrase descriptive of Kentucky

when The Dragging Canoe, dramatically pointing toward the west,

declared that a DARK Cloud hung over that land, which was known

as the BLOODY GROUND.

On the last day, March 17th, the negotiations were opened with

the signing of the "Great Grant." The area purchased, some twenty

millions of acres, included almost all the present state of

Kentucky, and an immense tract in Tennessee, comprising all the

territory watered by the Cumberland River and all its

tributaries. For "two thousand weight of leather in goods"

Henderson purchased "the lands lying down Holston and between the

Watauga lease, Colonel Donelson's line and Powell's Mountain" as

a pathway to Kentucky -the deed for which was known as the "Path

Deed." By special arrangement, Carter's Valley in this tract went

to Carter and Lucas; two days later, for two thousand pounds,

Charles Robertson on behalf of the Watauga Association purchased

a large tract in the valleys of the Holston, Watauga, and New

Rivers; and eight days later Jacob Brown purchased two large

areas, including the Nolichucky Valley. This historic treaty,

which heralds the opening of the West, was conducted with

absolute justice and fairness by Judge Henderson and his

associates. No liquor was permitted at the treaty ground; and

Thomas Price, the ablest of the Cherokee traders, deposed that

"he at that time understood the Cherokee language, so as to

comprehend everything which was said and to know that what was

observed on either side was fairly and truly translated; that the

Cherokees perfectly understood, what Lands were the subject of

the Treaty . . . ." The amount paid by the Transylvania Company

for the imperial domain was ten thousand pounds sterling, in

money and in goods.

Although Daniel Boone doubtless assisted in the proceedings prior

to the negotiation of the treaty, his name nowhere appears in the

voluminous records of the conference. Indeed, he was not then

present; for a fortnight before the conclusion of the treaty he

was commissioned by Judge Henderson to form a party of competent

woodmen to blaze a passage through the wilderness. On March l0th

this party of thirty ax-men, under the leadership of Boone,

started from the rendezvous, the Long Island of Holston, to

engage in the arduous labor of cutting out the Transylvania

Trail.

Henderson, the empire-builder, now faced with courage and

resolution the hazardous task of occupying the purchased

territory and establishing an independent government. No mere

financial promoter of a vast speculative enterprise, he was one

of the heroic figures of the Old Southwest; and it was his

dauntless courage, his unwavering resolve to go forward in the

face of all dangers, which carried through the armed "trek" to a

successful conclusion. At Martin's Station, where Henderson and

his party tarried to build a house in which to store their

wagons, as the road could be cleared no further, they were joined

by another party, of five adventurers from Prince William County,

Virginia." In Henderson's party were some forty men and boys,

with forty packhorses and a small amount of powder, lead, salt,

and garden-seeds. The warning freely given by Joseph Martin of

the perils of the path was soon confirmed, as appears from the

following entry in Henderson's diary:

"Friday the 7th. [April] About Brake of Day began to snow. About

11 O'Clock received a letter from Mr. Luttrells camp that were

five persons killd on the road to the Cantuckie by Indians. Capt.

[Nathaniel] Hart, uppon the receipt of this News Retreated back

with his Company, & determined to Settle in the Valley to make

Corn for the Cantucky people. The same Day Received a Letter from

Dan. Boone, that his Company was fired uppon by Indians, Kill'd

Two of his men--tho he kept the ground & saved the Baggage &c."

The following historic letter, which reveals alike the dogged

resolution of Boone and his reliance upon Henderson and his

company in this black hour of disaster, addressed "Colonel

Richard Henderson--these with care," is eloquent in its

simplicity

"Dear Colonel: After my compliments to you, I shall acquaint you

of our misfortunes. On March the 25 a party of Indians fired on

my Company about half an hour before day, and killed Mr. Twitty

and his negro, and wounded Mr. Walker very deeply, but I hope he

will recover.

"On March the 28 as we were hunting for provisions, we found

Samuel Tate's son, who gave us an account that the Indians fired

on their camp on the 27th day. My brother and I went down and

found two men killed and sculped, Thomas McDowell and Jeremiah

McFeters. I have sent a man down to all the lower companies in

order to gather them all at the mouth of Otter Creek.

"My advice to you, Sir, is to come or send as soon as possible.

Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy,

but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you. and now

is the time to flusterate their [the Indians'] intentions, and

keep the country, whilst we are in it. If we give way to them

now, it will ever be the case. This day we start from the battle

ground, for the mouth of Otter Creek, where we shall immediately

erect a Fort, which will be done before you can come or send,

then we can send ten men to meet you, if you send for them.

"I am, Sir, your most obedient

Omble Sarvent

Daniel Boone.

"N.B. We stood on the ground and guarded our baggage till day,

and lost nothing. We have about fifteen miles to Cantuck

[Kentucky River] at Otter Creek."

This dread intelligence caused the hearts of strong men to quail

and induced some to turn back, but Henderson, the jurist-pioneer,

was made of sterner stuff. At once (April 8th) he despatched an

urgent letter in hot haste to the proprietors of Transylvania,

enclosing Boone's letter, informing them of Boone's plight and

urging them to send him immediately a large quantity of powder

and lead, as he had been compelled to abandon his supply of

saltpeter at Martin's Station. "We are all in high spirits," he

assures the proprietors, "and on thorns to fly to Boone's

assistance, and join him in defense of so fine and valuable a

country."

Laconically eloquent is this simple entry in his diary: "Saturday

the 8th. Started abt. 10 oClock Crossed Cumberland Gap about 4

miles met about 40 persons Returning from the Cantucky, on Acct.

of the Late Murders by the Indians could prevail on one only to

return. Memo Several Virginians who were with us return'd."

There is no more crucial moment in early Western history than

this, in which we see the towering form of Henderson, clad in the

picturesque garb of the pioneer, with outstretched arm resolutely

pointing forward to the "dark and bloody ground," and in

impassioned but futile eloquence pleading with the pale and

panic-stricken fugitives to turn about, to join his company, and

to face once more the mortal dangers of pioneer conquest.

Significant indeed are the lines:

Some to endure, and many to fail,

Some to conquer, and many to quail,

Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

The spirit of the pioneer knight-errant inspires Henderson's

words: "In this situation, some few, of genuine courage and

undaunted resolution, served to inspire the rest; by the help of

whose example, assisted by a little pride and some ostentation,

we made a shift to march on with all the appearance of gallantry,

and, cavalier like, treated every insinuation of danger with the

utmost contempt."

Fearing that Boone, who did not even know that Henderson's

cavalcade was on the road, would be unable to hold out, Henderson

realized the imperative necessity for sending him a message of

encouragement. The bold young Virginian, William Cocke,

volunteered to brave alone the dangers of the murder-haunted

trail to undertake a ride more truly memorable and hazardous than

that of Revere. "This offer, extraordinary as it was, we could by

no means refuse," remarks Henderson, who shed tears of gratitude

as he proffered his sincere thanks and wrung the brave

messenger's hand. Equipped with "a good Queen Anne's musket,

plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, a large cuttoe knife [French,

couteau], a Dutch blanket, and no small quantity of jerked beef,"

Cocke on April l0th rode off "to the Cantuckey to Inform Capt

Boone that we were on the road." The fearful apprehensions felt

for Cocke's safety were later relieved, when along the road were

discovered his letters in forming Henderson of his arrival and of

his having been joined on the way by Page Portwood of Rowan. On

his arrival at Otter Creek, Cocke found Boone and his men, and on

relating his adventures, "came in for his share of applause."

Boone at once despatched the master woodman, Michael Stoner, with

pack-horses to assist Henderson's party, which he met on April

18th at their encampment "in the Eye of the Rich Land." Along

with "Excellent Beef in plenty," Stoner brought the story of

Boone's determined stand and an account of the erection of a rude

little fortification which they had hurriedly thrown up to resist

attack. With laconic significance Henderson pays the following

tribute to Boone which deserves to be perpetuated in national

annals: "It was owing to Boone's confidence in us, and the

people's in him, that a stand was ever attempted in order to wait

for our coming."

In the course of their journey over the mountains and through the

wilderness, the pioneers forgot the trials of the trail in the

face of the surpassing beauties of the country. The Cumberlands

were covered with rich undergrowth of the red and white

rhododendron, the delicate laurel, the mountain ivy, the

flameazalea, the spicewood, and the cane; while the white stars

of the dogwood and the carmine blossoms of the red-bud, strewn

across the verdant background of the forest, gleamed in the eager

air of spring. "To enter uppon a detail of the Beuty & Goodness

of our Country," writes Nathaniel Henderson, "would be a task too

arduous . . . . Let it suffice to tell you it far exceeds any

country I ever saw or herd off. I am conscious its out of the

power of any man to make you clearly sensible of the great Beuty

and Richness of Kentucky." Young Felix Walker, endowed with more

vivid powers of description, says with a touch of native

eloquence:

"Perhaps no Adventurer Since the days of donquicksotte or before

ever felt So Cheerful & Ilated in prospect, every heart abounded

with Joy & excitement . . . & exclusive of the Novelties of the

Journey the advantages & accumalations arising on the Settlement

of a new Country was a dazzling object with many of our Company .

. . . As the Cain ceased, we began to discover the pleasing &

Rapturous appearance of the plains of Kentucky, a New Sky &

Strange Earth to be presented to our view . . . . So Rich a Soil

we had never Saw before, Covered with Clover in full Bloom. the

Woods alive abounding in wild Game, turkeys so numerous that it

might be said there appeared but one flock Universally Scattered

in the woods . . . it appeared that Nature in the profusion of

her Bounties, had Spread a feast for all that lives, both for the

Animal & Rational World, a Sight so delightful to our View and

grateful to our feelings almost Induced us, in Immitation of

Columbus in Transport to Kiss the Soil of Kentucky, as he haild &

Saluted the sand on his first setting his foot on the Shores of

America."

On the journey Henderson was joined in Powell's Valley by

Benjamin Logan, afterward so famous in Kentucky annals, and a

companion, William Galaspy. At the Crab Orchard they left

Henderson's party; and turning their course westward finally

pitched camp in the present Lincoln County, where Logan

subsequently built a fort. On Sunday, April 16th, on Scaggs's

Creek, Henderson records: "About 12 oClock Met James McAfee with

18 other persons Returning from Cantucky." They advised Henderson

of the "troublesomeness and danger" of the Indians, says Robert

McAfee junior: "but Henderson assured them that he had purchased

the whole country from the Indians, that it belonged to him, and

he had named it Transylvania . . . . Robt, Samuel, and William

McAfee and 3 others were inclined to return, but James opposed

it, alleging that Henderson had no right to the land, and that

Virginia had previously bought it. The former (6) returned with

Henderson to Boonesborough." Among those who had joined

Henderson's party was Abraham Hanks from Virginia, the maternal

grandfather of Abraham Lincoln; but alarmed by the stories

brought by Stewart and his party of fugitives, Hanks and Drake,

as recorded by William Calk on that day (April 13th), turned

back.

At last the founder of Kentucky with his little band reached the

destined goal of their arduous journeyings. Henderson's record on

his birthday runs: "Thursday the 20th [April] Arrived at Fort

Boone on the Mouth of Oter Creek Cantuckey River where we were

Saluted by a running fire of about 25 Guns; all that was then at

Fort . . . . The men appeared in high spirits & much rejoiced in

our arrival." It is a coincidence of historic interest that just

one day after the embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord

"fired the shots heard round the world," the echoing shots of

Boone and his sturdy backwoodsmen rang out to announce the

arrival of the proprietor of Transylvania and the birth of the

American West.

CHAPTER XV. Transylvania--A wilderness Commonwealth

You are about a work of the utmost importance to the well-being

of this country in general, in which the interest and security of

each and every individual are inseparably connected .... Our

peculiar circumstances in this remote country, surrounded on all

sides with difficulties, and equally subject to one common

danger, which threatens our common overthrow, must, I think, in

their effects, secure to us an union of interests, and,

consequently, that harmony in opinion, so essential to the

forming good, wise and wholesome laws.--Judge Richard Henderson:

Address to the Legislature of Transylvania, May 23, 1775.

The independent spirit displayed by the Transylvania Company, and

Henderson's procedure in open defiance of the royal governors of

both North Carolina and Virginia, naturally aroused grave alarm

throughout these colonies and South Carolina. "This in my

Opinion," says Preston in a letter to George Washington (January

31, 1775), "will soon become a serious Affair, & highly deserves

the Attention of the Government. For it is certain that a vast

Number of People are preparing to go out and settle on this

Purchase; and if once they get fixed there, it will be next to

impossible to remove them or reduce them to Obedience; as they

are so far from the Seat of Government. Indeed it may be the

Cherokees will support them." Governor Martin of North Carolina,

already deeply disturbed in anticipation of the coming

revolutionary cataclysm, thundered in what was generally regarded

as a forcible-feeble proclamation (February 19, 1775) against

"Richard Henderson and his Confederates" in their "daring, unjust

and unwarrantable proceedings." In a letter to Dartmouth he

denounces "Henderson the famous invader" and dubs the

Transylvania Company "an infamous Company of land Pyrates."

Officials who were themselves eager for land naturally opposed

Henderson's plans. Lord Dunmore, who in 1774, as we have seen,

was heavily interested in the Wabash Land Company engineered by

William Murray, took the ground that the Wabash purchase was

valid under the Camden-Yorke decision. This is so stated in the

records of the Illinois Company. Likewise under Murray's control.

But although the "Ouabache Company," of which Dunmore was a

leading member, was initiated as early as May 16, 1774, the

purchase of the territory was not formally effected until October

18, 1775--too late to benefit Dunmore, then deeply embroiled in

the preliminaries to the Revolution. Under the cover of his

agent's name, it is believed, Dunmore, with his "passion for land

and fees," illegally entered tracts aggregating thousands of

acres of land surveyed by the royal surveyors in the summer of

1774 for Dr. John Connolly. Early in this same year, Patrick

Henry, who, as already pointed out, had entered large tracts in

Kentucky in violation of Virginia's treaty obligations with the

Cherokees, united with William Byrd 3d, John Page, Ralph Wormley,

Samuel Overton, and William Christian, in the effort to purchase

from the Cherokees a tract of land west of Donelson's line, being

firmly persuaded of the validity of the Camden-Yorke opinion.

Their agent, William Kenedy, considerably later in the year, went

on a mission to the Cherokee towns, and upon his return reported

that the Indians might be induced to sell. When it became known

that Judge Henderson had organized the Transylvania Company and

anticipated Patrick Henry and his associates, Colonel Arthur

Campbell, as he himself states, applied to several of the

partners of the Transylvania Company on behalf of Patrick Henry,

requesting that Henry be taken in as a partner. It was afterward

stated, as commonly understood among the Transylvania

proprietors, that both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson desired

to become members of the company; but that Colonel Richard

Henderson was instrumental in preventing their admission "lest

they should supplant the Colonel [Henderson] as the guiding

spirit of the company."

Fully informed by Preston's elaborate communication on the

gravity of the situation, Dunmore acted energetically, though

tardily, to prevent the execution of Henderson's designs. On

March 21st Dunmore sent flying through the back country a

proclamation, demanding the immediate relinquishment of the

territory by "one Richard Henderson and other disorderly persons,

his associates," and "in case of refusal, and of violently

detaining such possession, that he or they be immediately fined

and imprisoned. This proclamation, says a peppery old chronicler,

may well rank with the one excepting those arch traitors and

rebels, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, from the mercy of the

British monarch. In view of Dunmore's confidence in the validity

of the Camden-Yorke decision, it is noteworthy that no mention of

the royal proclamation of 1763 occurs in his broadside; and that

he bases his objection to the Transylvania purchase upon the

king's instructions that all vacant lands "within this colony" be

laid off in tracts, from one hundred to one thousand acres in

extent, and sold at public auction. This proclamation which was

enclosed, oddly enough, in a letter of official instructions to

Preston warning him not to survey any lands "beyond the line run

by Colonel Donaldson," proved utterly ineffective. At the same

time, Dunmore despatched a pointed letter to Oconostota,

Atta-kulla-kulla, Judge's Friend, and other Cherokee chieftains,

notifying them that the sale of the great tract of land below the

Kentucky was illegal and threatening them with the king's

displeasure if they did not repudiate the sale.

News of the plans which Henderson had already matured for

establishing an independent colony in the trans-Alleghany

wilderness, now ran like wild-fire through Virginia. In a letter

to George Washington (April 9, 1775), Preston ruefully says:

"Henderson I hear has made the Purchase & got a Conveyance of the

great and Valluable Country below the Kentucky from the

Cherokees. He and about 300 adventurers are gone out to take

Possession, who it is said intends to set up an independent

Government & form a Code of Laws for themselves. How this may be

I cant say, but I am affraid the steps taken by the Government

have been too late. Before the Purchase was made had the Governor

interfered it is believed the Indians would not have sold."

Meanwhile Judge Henderson, with strenuous energy, had begun to

erect a large stockaded fort according to plans of his own.

Captain James Harrod with forty-two men was stationed at the

settlement he had made the preceding year, having arrived there

before the McAfees started back to Virginia; and there were small

groups of settlers at Boiling Spring, six miles southeast of

Harrods settlement, and at St. Asaph's, a mile west of the

present Stanford. A representative government for Transylvania

was then planned. When the frank and gallant Floyd arrived at the

Transylvania Fort on May 3d, he "expressed great satisfaction,"

says Judge Henderson, "on being informed of the plan we proposed

for Legislation & sayd he must most heartily concur in that &

every other measure we should adopt for the well Govern'g or good

of the Community in Gen'l." In reference to a conversation with

Captain James Harrod and Colonel Thomas Slaughter of Virginia,

Henderson notes in his diary (May 8th): "Our plan of Legislation,

the evils pointed out--the remedies to be applyed &c &c &c were

Acceeded to without Hesitation. The plann was plain & Simple-

-'twas nothing novel in its essence a thousand years ago it was

in use, and found by every year's experience since to be

unexceptionable. We were in four distinct settlem'ts. Members or

delegates from every place by free choice of Individuals they

first having entered into writings solemnly binding themselves to

obey and carry into Execution Such Laws as representatives should

from time to time make, Concurred with, by A Majority of the

Proprietors present in the Country."

In reply to inquiries of the settlers, Judge Henderson gave as

his reason for this assembling of a Transylvania Legislature that

"all power was derived from the people." Six days before the

prophetic arrival of the news of the Battle of Lexington and

eight days before the revolutionary committee of Mecklenburg

County, North Carolina, promulgated their memorable Resolves

establishing laws for independent government, the pioneers

assembled on the green beneath the mighty plane-tree at the

Transylvania Fort. In his wise and statesmanlike address to this

picturesque convention of free Americans (May 23, 1775), an

address which Felix Walker described as being "considered equal

to any of like kind ever delivered to any deliberate body in that

day and time," Judge Henderson used these memorable words:

"You, perhaps, are fixing the palladium, or placing the first

corner stone of an edifice, the height and magnificence of whose

superstructure . . . can only become great in proportion to the

excellence of its foundation . . . . If any doubt remain amongst

you with respect to the force or efficiency of whatever laws you

now, or hereafter make, be pleased to consider that ALL POWER IS

ORIGINALLY IN THE PEOPLE; MAKE AND THEIR INTEREST, THEREFORE, BY

IMPARTIAL AND BENEFICENT LAWS, AND YOU MAY BE SURE OF THEIR

INCLINATION TO SEE THEM ENFORCED."

An early writer, in speaking of the full blooded democracy of

these "advanced" sentiments, quaintly comments: "If Jeremy

Bentham had been in existence of manhood, he would have sent his

compliments to the President of Transylvania." This, the first

representative body of American freemen which ever convened west

of the Alleghanies, is surely the most unique colonial government

ever set up on this continent. The proceedings of this backwoods

legislature--the democratic leader ship of the principal

proprietor; the prudence exhibited in the laws for protecting

game, breeding horses, etc.; the tolerance shown in the granting

of full religious liberty--all display the acumen and practical

wisdom of these pioneer law-givers. As the result of Henderson's

tactfulness, the proprietary form of government, thoroughly

democratized in tone, was complacently accepted by the backwoods

men. From one who, though still under royal rule, vehemently

asserted that the source of all political power was the people,

and that "laws derive force and efficiency from our mutual

consent," Western democracy thus born in the wilderness was

"taking its first political lesson." In their answer to

Henderson's assertion of freedom from alien authority the

pioneers unhesitatingly declared: "That we have an absolute

right, as a political body, without giving umbrage to Great

Britain, or any of the colonies, to form rules for the government

of our little society, cannot be doubted by any sensible mind and

being without the jurisdiction of, and not answerable to any of

his Majesty's courts, the constituting tribunals of justice shall

be a matter of our first contemplation . . . ." In the

establishment of a constitution for the new colony, Henderson

with paternalistic wisdom induced the people to adopt a legal

code based on the laws of England. Out of a sense of

self-protection he reserved for the proprietors only one

prerogative not granted them by the people, the right of veto. He

clearly realized that if this power were given up, the delegates

to any convention that might be held after the first would be

able to assume the claims and rights of the proprietors.

A land-office was formally opened, deeds were issued, and a store

was established which supplied the colonists with powder, lead,

salt, osnaburgs, blankets, and other chief necessities of pioneer

existence. Writing to his brother Jonathan from Leestown, the

bold young George Rogers Clark, soon to plot the downfall of

Transylvania, enthusiastically says (July 6, 1775): "A richer and

more Beautifull Cuntry than this I believe has never been seen in

America yet. Col. Henderson is hear and Claims all ye Country

below Kentucke. If his Claim Should be good, land may be got

Reasonable Enough and as good as any in ye World." Those who

settled on the south side of Kentucky River acknowledged the

validity of the Transylvania purchase; and Clark in his Memoir

says: "the Proprietors at first took great pains to Ingratiate

themselves in the fav'r of the people."

In regard to the designs of Lord Dunmore, who, as noted above,

had illegally entered the Connolly grant on the Ohio and sought

to outlaw Henderson, and of Colonel William Byrd 3d, who, after

being balked in Patrick Henry's plan to anticipate the

Transylvania Company in effecting a purchase from the Cherokees,

was supposed to have tried to persuade the Cherokees to repudiate

the "Great Treaty," Henderson defiantly says: "Whether Lord

Dunmore and Colonel Byrd have interfered with the Indians or not,

Richard Henderson is equally ignorant and indifferent. The utmost

result of their efforts can only serve to convince them of the

futility of their schemes and possibly frighten some few

faint-hearted persons, naturally prone to reverence great names

and fancy everything must shrink at the magic of a splendid

title."

Prompted by Henderson's desire to petition the Continental

Congress then in session for recognition as the fourteenth

colony, the Transylvania legislature met again on the first

Thursday in September and elected Richard Henderson and John

Williams, among others, as delegates to the gathering at

Philadelphia. Shortly afterward the Proprietors of Transylvania

held a meeting at Oxford, North Carolina (September 25, 1775),

elected Williams as the agent of the colony, and directed him to

proceed to Boonesborough there to reside until April, 1776. James

Hogg, of Hillsborough, chosen as Delegate to represent the Colony

in the Continental Congress, was despatched to Philadelphia,

bearing with him an elaborate memorial prepared by the President,

Judge Henderson, petitioning the Congress "to take the infant

Colony of Transylvania into their protection."

Almost immediately upon his arrival in Philadelphia, James Hogg

was presented to "the famous Samuel and John Adams." The latter

warned Hogg, in view of the efforts then making toward

reconciliation between the colonies and the king, that "the

taking under our protection a body of people who have acted in

defiance of the King's proclamation, will be looked on as a

confirmation of that independent spirit with which we are daily

reproached." Jefferson said that if his advice were followed, all

the use the Virginians should make of their charter would be "to

prevent any arbitrary or oppressive government to be established

within the boundaries of it"; and that it was his wish "to see a

free government established at the back of theirs [Virginia's]

properly united with them." He would not consent, however, that

Congress should acknowledge the colony of Transylvania, until it

had the approbation of the Virginia Convention. The quit-rents

imposed by the company were denounced in Congress as a mark of

vassalage; and many advised a law against the employment of

negroes in the colony. "They even threatened us with their

opposition," says Hogg, with precise veracity, "if we do not act

upon liberal principles when we have it so much in our power to

render ourselves immortal."

CHAPTER XVI. The Repulse of the Red Men

To this short war may be properly attributed all the kind

feelings and fidelity to treaty stipulations manifested by the

Cherokees ever afterwards. General Rutherford instilled into the

Indians so great a fear of the whites, that never afterwards were

they disposed to engage in any cruelty, or destroy any of the

property of our frontier men.--David L. Swain: The Indian War of

1776.

During the summer of 1775 the proprietors of Transylvania were

confronted with two stupendous tasks--that of winning the favor

and support of the frontiersmen and that of rallying the rapidly

dwindling forces in Kentucky in defense of the settlements.

Recognizing the difficulty of including Martin's Station, because

of its remoteness, with the government provided for Transylvania,

Judge Henderson prepared a plan of government for the group of

settlers located in Powell's Valley. In a letter to Martin (July

30th), in regard to the recent energetic defense of the settlers

at that point against the Indians, Henderson says: "Your spirited

conduct gives me much pleasure . . . . Keep your men in heart if

possible, NOW IS OUR TIME, THE INDIANS MUST NOT DRIVE US." The

gloom which had been occasioned by the almost complete desertion

of the stations at Harrodsburg, the Boiling Spring, and the

Transylvania Fort or Boonesborough was dispelled with the return

of Boone, accompanied by some thirty persons, on September 8th,

and of Richard Callaway with a considerable party on September

26th. The crisis was now passed; and the colony began for the

first time really to flourish. The people on the south side of

the Kentucky River universally accepted proprietary rule for the

time being. But the seeds of dissension were soon to be sown

among those who settled north of the river, as well as among men

of the stamp of James Harrod, who, having preceded Henderson in

the establishment of a settlement in Kentucky, naturally resented

holding lands under the Transylvania Company.

The great liberality of this organization toward incoming

settlers had resulted in immense quantities of land being taken

up through their land-office. The ranging, hunting, and

road-building were paid for by the company; and the entire

settlement was furnished with powder, lead, and supplies, wholly

on credit, for this and the succeeding year. "Five hundred and

sixty thousand acres of land are now entered," reports Floyd on

December 1st, "and most of the people waiting to have it run

out." After Dunmore, having lost his hold upon the situation,

escaped to the protection of a British vessel, the Fowey, Colonel

Preston continued to prevent surveys for officers' grants within

the Transylvania territory; and his original hostility to Judge

Henderson gave place to friendship and support. On December 1st,

Colonel John Williams, resident agent of the Transylvania

Company, announced at Boonesborough the long-contemplated and

widely advertised advance in price of the lands, from twenty to

fifty shillings per hundred acres, with surveying fees of four

dollars for tracts not exceeding six hundred and forty acres. At

a meeting of the Transylvania legislature, convened on December

21st, John Floyd was chosen surveyor general of the colony,

Nathaniel Henderson was placed in charge of the Entering Office,

and Richard Harrison given the post of secretary. At this meeting

of the legislature, the first open expression of discontent was

voiced in the "Harrodsburg Remonstrance," questioning the

validity of the proprietors' title, and protesting against any

increase in the price of lands, as well as the taking up by the

proprietors and a few other gentlemen of the best lands at the

Falls of the Ohio. Every effort was made to accommodate the

remonstrants, who were led by Abraham Hite. Office fees were

abolished, and the payment of quit-rents was deferred until

January 1, 1780. Despite these efforts at accommodation, grave

doubts were implanted by this Harrodsburg Remonstrance in the

minds of the people; and much discussion and discontent ensued.

By midsummer, 1775, George Rogers Clark, a remarkably

enterprising and independent young pioneer, was "engrossing all

the land he could" in Kentucky. Upon his return to Virginia, as

he relates, he "found there was various oppinions Respecting

Henderson claim. many thought it good, others douted whether or

not Virginia coud with propriety have any pretentions to the

cuntrey." Jefferson displayed a liberal attitude toward the

claims of the Transylvania proprietors; and Patrick Henry openly

stated that, in his opinion, "their claim would stand good." But

many others, of the stamp of George Mason and George Washington,

vigorously asserted Virginia's charter rights over the Western

territory." This sharp difference of opinion excited in Clark's

mind the bold conception of seizing the leadership of the country

and making terms with Virginia under threat of secession. With

the design of effecting some final disposition in regard to the

title of the Transylvania proprietors, Judge Henderson and

Colonel Williams set off from Boonesborough about May 1st,

intending first to appeal to the Virginia Convention and

ultimately to lay their claims before the Continental Congress.

"Since they have gone," reports Floyd to Preston, "I am told most

of the men about Harrodsburg have re-assumed their former

resolution of not complying with any of the office rules

whatever. Jack Jones, it is said, is at the head of the party &

flourishes away prodigiously." John Gabriel Jones was the mere

figurehead in the revolt. The real leader, the brains of the

conspiracy, was the unscrupulous George Rogers Clark. At Clark's

instance, an eight-day election was held at Harrodsburg (June

7-15), at which time a petition to the Virginia Convention was

drawn up; and Clark and Jones were elected delegates. Clark's

plan, the scheme of a bold revolutionist, was to treat with

Virginia for terms; and if they were not satisfactory, to revolt

and, as he says, "Establish an Independent Government" . . .

"giving away great part of the Lands and disposing of the

Remainder." In a second petition, prepared by the self-styled

"Committee of West Fincastle" (June 20th), it was alleged that

"if these pretended Proprietors have leave to continue to act in

their arbitrary manner out the controul of this colony [Virginia]

the end must be evident to every well wisher to American

Liberty."

The contest which now ensued between Richard Henderson and George

Rogers Clark, waged upon the floor of the convention and behind

the scenes, resulted in a conclusion that was inevitable at a

moment in American history marked by the signing of the

Declaration of Independence. Virginia, under the leader ship of

her new governor, Patrick Henry, put an end to the proprietary

rule of the Transylvania Company. On December 7th such part of

Transylvania as lay within the chartered limits of Virginia was

erected by the legislature of that colony into the County of

Kentucky. The proprietary form of government with its "marks of

vassalage," although liberalized with the spirit of democracy,

was unendurable to the independent and lawless pioneers, already

intoxicated with the spirit of freedom swept in on the first

fresh breezes of the Revolution. Yet it is not to be doubted that

the Transylvania Company, through the courage and moral influence

of its leaders, made a permanent contribution to the colonization

of the West, which, in providential timeliness and effective

execution, is without parallel in our early annals.

While events were thus shaping themselves in Kentucky--events

which made possible Clark's spectacular and meteoric campaign in

the Northwest and ultimately resulted in the establishment of the

Mississippi instead of the Alleghanies as the western boundary of

the Confederation--the pioneers of Watauga were sagaciously

laying strong the foundations of permanent occupation. In

September, 1775, North Carolina, through her Provincial Congress,

provided for the appointment in each district of a Committee of

Safety, to consist of a president and twelve other members.

Following the lead thus set, the Watauga settlers assumed for

their country the name of "Washington District"; and proceeded by

unanimous vote of the people to choose a committee of thirteen,

which included James Robertson and John Sevier. This district was

organized "shortly after October, 1775, according to Felix

Walker; and the first step taken after the election of the

committee was the organization of a court, consisting of five

members. Felix Walker was elected clerk of the court thus

organized, and held the position for about four years. James

Robertson and John Sevier, it is believed, were also members of

this court. To James Robertson who, with the assistance of his

colleagues, devised this primitive type of frontier rule--a true

commission form of government, on the "Watauga Plan"--is justly

due distinctive recognition for this notable inauguration of the

independent democracy of the Old Southwest. The Watauga

settlement was animated by a spirit of deepest loyalty to the

American cause. In a memorable petition these hardy settlers

requested the Provincial Council of North Carolina not to regard

them as a "lawless mob," but to "annex" them to North Carolina

without delay. "This committee (willing to become a party in the

present unhappy contest)", states the petition, which must have

been drafted about July 15, 1776, "resolved (which is now on our

records), to adhere strictly to the rules and orders of the

Continental Congress, and in open committee acknowledged

themselves indebted to the united colonies their full proportion

of the Continental expense."

While these disputes as to the government of the new communities

were in progress an additional danger threatened the pioneers.

For a whole year the British had been plying the various Indian

tribes from the lakes to the gulf with presents, supplies, and

ammunition. In the Northwest bounties had actually been offered

for American scalps. During the spring of 1776 plans were

concerted, chiefly through Stuart and Cameron, British agents

among the Southern Indians, for uniting the Loyalists and the

Indians in a crushing attack upon the Tennessee settlements and

the back country of North Carolina. Already the frontier of South

Carolina had passed through the horrors of Indian uprising; and

warning of the approaching invasion had been mercifully sent the

Holston settlers by Atta-kulla-kulla's niece, Nancy Ward, the

"Pocahontas of the West"--doubtless through the influence of her

daughter, who loved Joseph Martin. The settlers, flocking for

refuge into their small stockaded forts, waited in readiness for

the dreaded Indian attacks, which were made by two forces

totaling some seven hundred warriors.

On July 20th, warned in advance of the approach of the Indians,

the borderers, one hundred and seventy in all, marched in two

columns from the rude breastwork, hastily thrown up at Eaton's

Station, to meet the Indians, double their own number, led by The

Dragging Canoe. The scouts surprised one party of Indians,

hastily poured in a deadly fire, and rushed upon them with such

impetuous fury that they fled precipitately. Withdrawing now

toward their breastwork, in anticipation of encountering there a

larger force, the backwoodsmen suddenly found themselves attacked

in their rear and in grave danger of being surrounded. Extending

their own line under the direction of Captain James Shelby, the

frontiersmen steadily met the bold attack of the Indians, who,

mistaking the rapid extension of the line for a movement to

retreat, incautiously made a headlong onslaught upon the whites,

giving the war-whoop and shouting: "The Unakas are running!" In

the ensuing hot conflict at close quarters, in some places hand

to hand, the Indians were utterly routed--The Dragging Canoe

being shot down, many warriors wounded, and thirteen left dead

upon the field.

On the day after Thompson, Cocke, Shelby, Campbell, Madison, and

their men were thus winning the battle of the Long Island

"flats," Robertson, Sevier, and their little band of forty-two

men were engaged in repelling an attack, begun at sunrise, upon

the Watauga fort near the Sycamore Shoals. This attack, which was

led by Old Abraham, proved abortive; but as the result of the

loose investment of the log fortress, maintained by the Indians

for several weeks, a few rash venturers from the fort were killed

or captured, notably a young boy who was carried to one of the

Indian towns and burned at the stake, and the wife of the pioneer

settler, William Been, who was rescued from a like fate by the

intercession of the humane and noble Nancy Ward. It was during

this siege, according to constant tradition, that a frontier

lass, active and graceful as a young doe, was pursued to the very

stockade by the fleet-footed savages. Seeing her plight, an

athletic young officer mounted the stockade at a single leap,

shot down the foremost of the pursuers, and leaning over, seized

the maiden by the hands and lifted her over the stockade. The

maiden who sank breathless into the arms of the young officer,

John Sevier, was "Bonnie Kate Sherrill"--who, after the fashion

of true romance, afterward became the wife of her gallant

rescuer.

While the Tennessee settlements were undergoing the trials of

siege and attack, the settlers on the frontiers of Rowan were

falling beneath the tomahawk of the merciless savage. In the

first and second weeks of July large forces of Indians penetrated

to the outlying settlements; and in two days thirty-seven persons

were killed along the Catawba River. On July 13th, the bluff old

soldier of Rowan, General Griffith Rutherford, reported to the

council of North Carolina that "three of our Captains are killed

and one wounded"; and that he was setting out that day with what

men he could muster to relieve Colonel McDowell, ten men, and one

hundred and twenty women and children, who were "besieged in some

kind of a fort." Aroused to extraordinary exertions by these

daring and deadly blows, the governments of North Carolina, South

Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia instituted a joint campaign

against the Cherokees. It was believed that, by delivering a

series of crushing blows to the Indians and so conclusively

demonstrating the overwhelming superiority of the whites, the

state governments in the Old Southwest would convince the savages

of the futility, of any attempt ever again to oppose them

seriously.

Within less than a week after sending his despatches to the

council Rutherford set forth at the head of twenty-five hundred

men to protect the frontiers of North Carolina and to overwhelm

the foe. Leading the South Carolina army of more than eighteen

hundred men, Colonel Andrew Williamson directed his attack

against the lower Cherokee towns; while Colonel Samuel Jack led

two hundred Georgians against the Indian towns at the heads of

the Chattahoochee and Tugaloo Rivers. Assembling a force of some

sixteen hundred Virginians, Colonel William Christian

rendezvoused in August at the Long Island of Holston, where his

force was strengthened by between three and four hundred North

Carolinians under Colonels Joseph Williams and Love, and Major

Winston. The various expeditions met with little effective

opposition on the whole, succeeding everywhere in their design of

utterly laying waste the towns of the Cherokees. One serious

engagement occurred when the Indians resolutely challenged

Rutherford's advance at the gap of the Nantahala Mountains.

Indian women--heroic Amazons disguised in war-paint and armed

with the weapons of warriors and the courage of despair--fought

side by side with the Indian braves in the effort to arrest

Rutherford's progress and compass his defeat. More than forty

frontiersmen fell beneath the deadly shots of this truly Spartan

band before the final repulse of the savages.

The most picturesque figures in this overwhelmingly successful

campaign were the bluff old Indian-fighter, Griffith Rutherford,

wearing "a tow hunting shirt, dyed black, and trimmed with white

fringe" as a uniform; Captain Benjamin Cleveland, a rude paladin

of gigantic size, strength, and courage; Lieutenant William

Lenoir (Le Noir), the gallant and recklessly brave French

Huguenot, later to win a general's rank in the Revolution; and

that militant man of God, the Reverend James Hall, graduate of

Nassau Hall, stalwart and manly, who carried a rifle on his

shoulder and, in the intervals between the slaughter of the

savages, preached the gospel to the vindictive and bloodthirsty

backwoodsmen. Such preaching was sorely needed on that campaign--

when the whites, maddened beyond the bounds of self-control by

the recent ghastly murders, gladly availed themselves of the

South Carolina bounty offered for fresh Indian scalps. At times

they exultantly displayed the reeking patches of hair above the

gates of their stockades; at others, with many a bloody oath,

they compelled their commanders either to sell the Indian

captives into slavery or else see them scalped on the spot.

Twenty years afterward Benjamin Hawkins relates that among Indian

refugees in extreme western Georgia the children had been so

terrorized by their parents' recitals of the atrocities of the

enraged borderers in the campaign of 1776, that they ran

screaming from the face of a white man.

CHAPTER XVII. The Colonization of the Cumberland

March 31, 1760. Set out this day, and after running some

distance, met with Col. Richard Henderson, who was running the

line between Virginia and North Carolina. At this meeting we were

much rejoiced. He gave us every information we wished, and

further informed us that he had purchased a quantity of corn in

Kentucky, to be shipped at the Falls of Ohio, for the use of the

Cumberland settlement. We are now without bread, and are

compelled to hunt the buffalo to preserve life.--John Donelson:

Journal of a Voyage, intended by God's permission, in the good

boat Adventure, from Fort Patrick Henry, on Holston River, to the

French Salt Springs on Cumberland River.

To the settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky, which they had

seized and occupied, the pioneers held on with a tenacious grip

which never relaxed. From these strongholds, won through sullen

and desperate strokes, they pushed deeper into the wilderness,

once again to meet with undimmed courage the bitter onslaughts of

their resentful foes. The crushing of the Cherokees in 1776

relieved the pressure upon the Tennessee settlers, enabling them

to strengthen their hold and prepare effectively for future

eventualities; the possession of the gateway to Kentucky kept

free the passage for Western settlement; Watauga and its

defenders continued to offer a formidable barrier to British

invasion of the East from Kentucky and the Northwest during the

Revolution; while these Tennessee frontiersmen were destined soon

to set forth again to invade a new wilderness and at frightful

cost to colonize the Cumberland.

The little chain of stockades along the farflung frontier of

Kentucky was tenaciously held by the bravest of the race, grimly

resolved that this chain must not break. The Revolution

precipitated against this chain wave after wave of formidable

Indian foes from the Northwest under British leadership. At the

very time when Grifth Rutherford set out for the relief of

McDowell's Fort, a marauding Indian band captured by stealth near

the Transylvania Fort, known as Boone's Fort (Boonesborough),

Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, and Jemima Boone, the daughters

of Richard Callaway and Daniel Boone, and rapidly marched them

away toward the Shawanoe towns on the Ohio. A relief party, in

two divisions, headed respectively by the young girls' fathers,

and composed among others of the lovers of the three girls,

Samuel Henderson, John Holder, and Flanders Callaway, pursued

them with almost incredible swiftness. Guided by broken twigs and

bits of cloth surreptitiously dropped by Elizabeth Callaway, they

finally overtook the unsuspecting savages, killed two of them,

and rescued the three maidens unharmed. This romantic

episode--which gave Fenimore Cooper the theme for the most

memorable scene in one of his Leatherstocking Tales had an even

more romantic sequel in the subsequent marriage of the three

pairs of lovers.

This bold foray, so shrewdly executed and even more sagaciously

foiled, was a true precursor of the dread happenings of the

coming neighborhood of the stations; and relief was felt when the

Transylvania Fort, the great stockade planned by Judge Henderson,

was completed by the pioneers (July, 1776). Glad tidings arrived

only a few days later when the Declaration of Independence, read

aloud from the Virginia Gazette, was greeted with wild huzzas by

the patriotic backwoodsmen. During the ensuing months occasional

invasions were made by savage bands; but it was not until April

24, 1777, that Henderson's "big fort" received its first attack,

being invested by a company of some seventy-five savages. The

twenty-two riflemen in the fort drove off the painted warriors,

but not before Michael Stoner, Daniel Boone, and several others

were severely wounded. As he lay helpless upon the ground, his

ankle shattered by a bullet, Boone was lifted by Simon Kenton and

borne away upon his shoulders to the haven of the stockade amid a

veritable shower of balls. The stoical and taciturn Boone clasped

Kenton's hand and gave him the accolade of the wilderness in the

brief but heartfelt utterance; "You are a fine fellow." On July

4th of this same year the fort was again subjected to siege, when

two hundred gaudily painted savages surrounded it for two days.

But owing to the vigilance and superb markmanship of the

defenders, as well as to the lack of cannon by the besieging

force, the Indians reluctantly abandoned the siege, after leaving

a number dead upon the field. Soon afterward the arrival of two

strong bodies of prime riflemen, who had been hastily summoned

from the frontiers of North Carolina and Virginia, once again

made firm the bulwark of white supremacy in the West.

Kentucky's terrible year, 1778, opened with a severe disaster to

the white settlers--when Boone with thirty men, while engaged in

making salt at the "Lower Salt Spring," was captured in February

by more than a hundred Indians, sent by Governor Hamilton of

Detroit to drive the white settlers from "Kentucke." Boone

remained in captivity until early summer, when, learning that his

Indian captors were planning an attack in force upon the

Transylvania Fort, he succeeded in effecting his escape. After a

break-neck journey of one hundred and sixty miles, during which

he ate but one meal, Boone finally arrived at the big fort on

June 20th. The settlers were thus given ample time for

preparation, as the long siege did not begin until September 7th.

The fort was invested by a powerful force flying the English

flag--four hundred and forty-four savages gaudy in the vermilion

and ochre of their war-paint, and eleven Frenchmen, the whole

being commanded by the French-Canadian, Captain Dagniaux de

Quindre, and the great Indian Chief, Black-fish who had adopted

Boone as a son. In the effort to gain his end de Quindre resorted

to a dishonorable stratagem, by which he hoped to outwit the

settlers and capture the fort with but slight loss. "They formed

a scheme to deceive us," says Boone, "declaring it was their

orders, from Governor Hamilton, to take us captives, and not to

destroy us; but if nine of us would come out and treat with them,

they would immediately withdraw their forces from our walls, and

return home peacably." Transparent as the stratagem was, Boone

incautiously agreed to a conference with the enemy; Callaway

alone took the precaution to guard against Indian duplicity.

After a long talk, the Indians proposed to Boone, Callaway, and

the seven or eight pioneers who accompanied them that they shake

hands in token of peace and friendship. As picturesquely

described by Daniel Trabue:

"The Indians sayed two Indians must shake hands with one white

man to make a Double or sure peace at this time the Indians had

hold of the white men's hands and held them. Col. Calloway

objected to this but the other Indians laid hold or tryed to lay

hold of the other hand but Colonel Calloway was the first that

jerked away from them but the Indians seized the men two Indians

holt of one man or it was mostly the case and did their best to

hold them but while the man and Indians was a scuffling the men

from the Fort agreeable to Col. Calloway's order fired on them

they had a dreadful skuffel but our men all got in the fort safe

and the fire continued on both sides."

During the siege Callaway, the leader of the pioneers, made a

wooden cannon wrapped with wagon tires, which on being fired at a

group of Indians "made them scamper perdidiously." The secret

effort of the Indians to tunnel a way underground into the fort,

being discovered by the defenders, was frustrated by a

countermine. Unable to outwit, outfight, or outmaneuver the

resourceful Callaway, de Quindre finally withdrew on September

16th, closing the longest and severest attack that any of the

fortified stations of Kentucky had ever been called upon to

withstand.

The successful defense of the Transylvania Fort, made by these

indomitable backwoodsmen who were lost sight of by the

Continental Congress and left to fight alone their battles in the

forests, was of national significance in its results. Had the

Transylvania Fort fallen, the northern Indians in overwhelming

numbers, directed by Hamilton and led by British officers, might

well have swept Kentucky free of defenders and fallen with

devastating force upon the exposed settlements along the western

frontiers of North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, This

defense of Boonesborough, therefore, is deserving of

commemoration in the annals of the Revolution, along with

Lexington and Bunker's Hill. Coupled with Clark's meteoric

campaign in the Northwest and the subsequent struggles in the

defense of Kentucky, it may be regarded as an event basically

responsible for the retention of the trans-Alleghany region by

the United States. The bitter struggles, desperate sieges, and

bloody reprisals of these dark years came to a close with the

expeditions of Clark and Logan in November, 1782, which

appropriately concluded the Revolution in the West by putting a

definite end to all prospect of formidable invasion of Kentucky.

In November, 1777, "Washington District," the delegates of which

had been received in the preceding year by the Provincial

Congress of North Carolina, was formed by the North Carolina

General Assembly into Washington County; and to it were assigned

the boundaries of the whole of the present state of Tennessee.

While this immense territory was thus being definitely included

within the bounds of North Carolina, Judge Henderson on behalf of

the Transylvania Company was making a vigorous effort to secure

the reestablishment of its rights from the Virginia Assembly. By

order of the Virginia legislature, an exhaustive investigation of

the claims of the Transylvania Company was therefore made,

hearings being held at various points in the back country. On

July 18, 1777, Judge Henderson presented to the peace

commissioners for North Carolina and Virginia at the Long Island

treaty ground an elaborate memorial in behalf of the Transylvania

Company, which the commissioners unanimously refused to consider,

as not coming under their jurisdiction. Finally, after a full and

impartial discussion before the Virginia House of Delegates, that

body declared the Transylvania purchase void. But in

consideration of "the very great expense [incurred by the

company] in making the said purchase, and in settling the said

lands, by which the commonwealth is likely to receive great

advantage, by increasing its inhabitants, and establishing a

barrier against the Indians," the House of Delegates granted

Richard Henderson and Company two hundred thousand acres of land

situated between the Ohio and Green rivers, where the town of

Henderson, Kentucky, now stands. With this bursting of the

Transylvania bubble and the vanishing of the golden dreams of

Henderson and his associates for establishing the fourteenth

American colony in the heart of the trans-Alleghany, a first

romantic chapter in the history of Westward expansion comes to a

close.

But another and more feasible project immediately succeeded.

Undiscouraged by Virginia's confiscation of Transylvania, and

disregarding North Carolina's action in extending her boundaries

over the trans-Alleghany region lying within her chartered

limits, Henderson, in whom the genius of the colonizer and the

ambition of the speculative capitalist were found in striking

conjunction, was now inspired to repeat, along broader and more

solidly practical lines, the revolutionary experiment of

Transylvania. It was not his purpose, however, to found an

independent colony; for he believed that millions of acres in the

Transylvania purchase lay within the bounds of North Carolina,

and he wished to open for colonization, settlement, and the sale

of lands, the vast wilderness of the valley of the Cumberland

supposed to lie within those confines. But so universal was the

prevailing uncertainty in regard to boundaries that it was

necessary to prolong the North Carolina-Virginia line in order to

determine whether or not the Great French Lick, the ideal

location for settlement, lay within the chartered limits of North

Carolina.

Judge Henderson's comprehensive plans for the promotion of an

extensive colonization of the Cumberland region soon began to

take form in vigorous action. Just as in his Transylvania project

Henderson had chosen Daniel Boone, the ablest of the North

Carolina pioneers, to spy out the land and select sites for

future location, so now he chose as leader of the new colonizing

party the ablest of the Tennessee pioneers, James Robertson.

Although he was the acknowledged leader of the Watauga settlement

and held the responsible position of Indian agent for North

Carolina, Robertson was induced by Henderson's liberal offers to

leave his comparatively peaceful home and to venture his life in

this desperate hazard of new fortunes. The advance party of eight

white men and one negro, under Robertson's leadership, set forth

from the Holston settlement on February 6, 1779, to make a

preliminary exploration and to plant corn "that bread might be

prepared for the main body of emigrants in the fall." After

erecting a few cabins for dwellings and posts of defense,

Robertson plunged alone into the wilderness and made the long

journey to Post St. Vincent in the Illinois, in order to consult

with George Rogers Clark, who had entered for himself in the

Virginia Land Office several thousand acres of land at the French

Lick. After perfecting arrangements with Clark for securing

"cabin rights" should the land prove to lie in Virginia,

Robertson returned to Watauga to take command of the migration.

Toward the end of the year two parties set out, one by land, the

other by water, for the wonderful new country on the Cumberland

of which Boone and Scaggs and Mansker had brought back such

glowing descriptions. During the autumn Judge Henderson and other

commissioners from North Carolina, in conjunction with

commissioners from Virginia, had been running out the boundary

line between the two states. On the very day--Christmas,

1779--that Judge Henderson reached the site of the Transylvania

Fort, now called Boonesborough, the swarm of colonists from the

parent hive at Watauga, under Robertson's leadership, reached the

French Lick and on New Year's Day, 1780, crossed the river on the

ice to the present site of Nashville.

The journal of the other party, which, as has been aptly said,

reads like a chapter from one of Captain Mayne Reid's fascinating

novels of adventure, was written by Colonel John Donelson, the

father-in-law of Andrew Jackson. Setting out from Fort Patrick

Henry on Holston River, December 22, 1779, with a flotilla

consisting of about thirty flatboats, dugouts, and canoes, they

encountered few difficulties until they began to run the gauntlet

of the Chickamauga towns on the Tennessee. Here they were

furiously attacked by the Indians, terrible in their red and

black war-paint; and a well-filled boat lagging in the rear, with

smallpox on board, was driven to shore by the Indians. The

occupants were massacred; but the Indians at once contracted the

disease and died by the hundreds. This luckless sacrifice of

"poor Stuart, his family and friends," while a ghastly price to

pay, undoubtedly procured for the Cumberland settlements

comparative immunity from Indian forays until the new-comers had

firmly established themselves in their wilderness stronghold.

Eloquent of the granite endurance and courageous spirit of the

typical American pioneer in its thankfulness for sanctuary, for

reunion of families and friends, and for the humble shelter of a

log cabin, is the last entry in Donelson's diary (April 24,

1780):

"This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big Salt Lick,

where we have the pleasure of finding Capt. Robertson and his

company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to

restore to him and others their families and friends, who were

intrusted to our care, and who, some time since, perhaps,

despaired of ever meeting again. Though our prospects at present

are dreary, we have found a few log cabins which have been built

on a cedar bluff above the Lick by Capt. Robertson and his

company."

In the midst of the famine during this terrible period of the

"hard winter," Judge Henderson was sorely concerned for the fate

of the new colony which he had projected, and immediately

proceeded to purchase at huge cost a large stock of corn. On

March 5, 1780, this corn, which had been raised by Captain

Nathaniel Hart, was "sent from Boonesborough in perogues

[pettiaugers or flatboats] under the command of William Bailey

Smith . . . . This corn was taken down the Kentucky River, and

over the Falls of Ohio, to the mouth of the Cumberland, and

thence up that river to the fort at the French Lick. It is

believed have been the only bread which the settlers had until it

was raised there in 1781." There is genuine impressiveness in

this heroic triumphing over the obstacles of obdurate nature and

this paternalistic provision for the exposed Cumberland

settlement--the purchase by Judge Henderson, the shipment by

Captain Hart, and the transportation by Colonel Smith, in an

awful winter of bitter cold and obstructed navigation, of this

indispensable quantity of corn purchased for sixty thousand

dollars in depreciated currency.

Upon his arrival at the French Lick, shortly after the middle of

April, Judge Henderson at once proceeded to organize a government

for the little community. On May 1st articles of association were

drawn up; and important additions thereto were made on May 13th,

when the settlers signed the complete series. The original

document, still preserved, was drafted by Judge Henderson, being

written throughout in his own handwriting; and his name heads the

list of two hundred and fifty and more signatures. The

"Cumberland Compact," as this paper is called, is fundamentally a

mutual contract between the copartners of the Transylvania

Company and the settlers upon the lands claimed by the company.

It represents the collective will of the community; and on

account of the careful provisions safeguarding the rights of each

party to the contract it may be called a bill of rights. The

organization of this pure democracy was sound and

admirable--another notable early example of the commission form

of government. The most remarkable feature of this backwoods

constitution marks Judge Henderson as a pioneer in the use of the

political device so prominent to-day, one hundred and forty years

later--the "recall of judges." In the following striking clause

this innovation in government was recognized thus early in

American history as the most effective means of securing and

safeguarding justice in a democracy:

"As often as the people in general are dissatisfied with the

doings of the Judges or Triers so to be chosen, they may call a

new selection in any of the said stations, and elect bothers in

their stead, having due respect to the number now agreed to be

elected at each station, which persons so to be chosen shall have

the same power with those in whose room or place they shall or

may be chosen to act."

A land-office was now opened, the entry-taker being appointed by

Judge Henderson, in accordance with. the compact; and the lands,

for costs of entry, etc., were registered for the nominal fee of

ten dollars per thousand acres. But as the Transylvania Company

was never able to secure a "satisfactory and indisputable title,"

the clause resulted in perpetual nonpayment. In 1783, following

the lead of Virginia in the case of Transylvania, North Carolina

declared the Transylvania Company's purchase void, but granted

the company in compensation a tract of one hundred and ninety

thousand acres in Powell's Valley. As compensation, the grants of

North Carolina and Virginia were quite inadequate, considering

the value of the service in behalf of permanent western

colonization rendered by the Transylvania company.

James Robertson was chosen as presiding officer of the court of

twelve commissioners, and was also elected commander-in-chief of

the military forces of the eight little associated settlements on

the Cumberland. Here for the next two years the self-reliant

settlers under Robertson's wise and able leadership successfully

repelled the Indians in their guerrilla warfare, firmly

entrenched themselves in their forest-girt stronghold, and

vindicated their claim to the territory by right of occupation

and conquest. Here sprang up in later times a great and populous

city--named, strangely enough, neither for Henderson, the

founder, nor for Robertson and Donelson, the leaders of the two

colonizing parties, but for one having no association with its

history or origins, the gallant North Carolinian, General Francis

Nash, who was killed at the Battle of Germantown.

CHAPTER XVIII. King's Mountain

With the utmost satisfaction I can acquaint you with the sudden

and favorable turn of our public affairs. A few days ago

destruction hung over our heads. Cornwallis with at least 1500

British and Tories waited at Charlotte for the reinforcement of

1000 from Broad River, which reinforcement has been entirely cut

off, 130 killed and the remainder captured. Cornwallis

immediately retreated, and is now on his way toward Charleston,

with part of our army in his rear . . . .--Elizabeth Maxwell

Steel: Salisbury, October 25, 1780.

So thoroughly had the Cherokees been subdued by the devastations

of the campaign of 1776 that for several years thereafter they

were unable to organize for a new campaign against the

backwoodsmen along the frontiers of North Carolina and Tennessee.

During these years the Holston settlers principally busied

themselves in making their position secure, as well as in setting

their house in order by severely punishing the lawless Tory

element among them. In 1779 the Chickamaugas, with whom The

Dragging Canoe and his irreconcilable followers among the

Cherokees had joined hands after the campaign of 1776, grew so

bold in their bloody forays upon small exposed settlements that

North Carolina and Virginia in conjunction despatched a strong

expedition against them. Embarking on April l0th at the mouth of

Big Creek near the present Rogersville, Tennessee, three hundred

and fifty men led by Colonel Evan Shelby descended the Tennessee

to the fastnesses of the Chickamaugas. Meeting with no resistance

from the astonished Indians, who fled to the shelter of the

densely wooded hills, they laid waste the Indian towns and

destroyed the immense stores of goods collected by the British

agents for distribution among the red men. The Chickamaugas were

completely quelled; and during the period of great stress through

which the Tennessee frontiersmen were soon to pass, the Cherokees

were restrained through the wise diplomacy of Joseph Martin,

Superintendent of Indian affairs for Virginia.

The great British offensive against the Southern colonies, which

were regarded as the vulnerable point in the American

Confederacy, was fully launched upon the fall of Charleston in

May, l780. Cornwallis established his headquarters at Camden; and

one of his lieutenants, the persuasive and brilliant Ferguson,

soon rallied thousands of Loyalists in South Carolina to the

British standard. When Cornwallis inaugurated his campaign for

cutting Washington wholly off from the Southern colonies by

invading North Carolina, the men upon the western waters realized

that the time had come to rise, in defense of their state and in

protection of their homes. Two hundred Tennessee riflemen from

Sullivan County, under Colonel Isaac Shelby, were engaged in

minor operations in South Carolina conducted by Colonel Charles

McDowell; and conspicuous among these engagements was the affair

at Musgrove's Mill on August 18th when three hundred horsemen led

by Colonel James Williams, a native of Granville County, North

Carolina, Colonel Isaac Shelby, and Lieutenant-Colonel Clark of

Georgia repulsed with heavy loss a British force of between four

and five hundred.

These minor successes availed nothing in face of the disastrous

defeat of Gates by Cornwallis at Camden on August 16th and the

humiliating blow to Sumter at Rocky Mount on the following day.

Ferguson hotly pursued the frontiersmen, who then retreated over

the mountains; and from his camp at Gilbert Town he despatched a

threatening message to the Western leaders, declaring that if

they did not desist from their opposition to the British arms and

take protection under his standard, he would march his army over

the mountains and lay their country waste with fire and sword.

Stung to action, Shelby hastily rode off to consult with Sevier

at his log castle near Jonesboro; and together they matured a

plan to arouse the mountain men and attack Ferguson by surprise.

In the event of failure, these wilderness free-lances planned to

leave the country and find a home with the Spaniards in

Louisiana.

At the original place of rendezvous, the Sycamore Shoals of the

Watauga, the overmountain men gathered on September 25th. There

an eloquent sermon was preached to them by that fiery man of God,

the Reverend Samuel Doak, who concluded his discourse with a

stirring invocation to the sword of the Lord and of Gideon--a

sentiment greeted with the loud applause of the militant

frontiersmen. Here and at various places along the march they

were joined by detachments of border fighters summoned to join

the expedition--Colonel William Campbell, who with some

reluctance had abandoned his own plans in response to Shelby's

urgent and repeated message, in command of four hundred hardy

frontiersmen from Washington County, Virginia; Colonel Benjamin

Cleveland, with the wild fighters of Wilkes known as "Cleveland's

Bulldogs"; Colonel Andrew Hampton, with the stalwart riflemen of

Rutherford; Major Joseph Winston, the cousin of Patrick Henry,

with the flower of the citizenry of Surry; the McDowells, Charles

and Joseph, with the bold borderers of Burke; Colonels Lacy and

Hill, with well-trained soldiers of South Carolina; and

Brigadier-General James Williams, leading the intrepid Rowan

volunteers.

Before breaking camp at Quaker Meadows, the leading officers in

conference chose Colonel William Campbell as temporary officer of

the day, until they could secure a general officer from

headquarters as commander-in-chief. The object of the

mountaineers and big-game hunters was, in their own terms, to

pursue Ferguson, to run him down, and to capture him. In

pursuance of this plan, the leaders on arriving at the ford of

Green River chose out a force of six hundred men, with the best

mounts and equipment; and at daybreak on October 6th this force

of picked mounted riflemen, followed by some fifty "foot-cavalry"

eager to join in the pursuit, pushed rapidly on to the Cowpens.

Here a second selection took place; and Colonel Campbell, was

again elected commander of the detachment, now numbering some

nine hundred and ten horsemen and eighty odd footmen, which

dashed rapidly on in pursuit of Ferguson.

The British commander had been apprised of the coming of the

over-mountain men. Scorning to make a forced march and attempt to

effect a junction with Cornwallis at Charlotte, Ferguson chose to

make a stand and dispose once for all of the barbarian horde whom

he denounced as mongrels and the dregs of mankind. After

despatching to Cornwallis a message asking for aid, Ferguson took

up his camp on King's Mountain, just south of the North Carolina

border line, in the present York County, South Carolina. Here,

after his pickets had been captured in silence, he was surprised

by his opponents. At three o'clock in the afternoon of October

7th the mountain hunters treed their game upon the heights.

The battle which ensued presents an extraordinary contrast in the

character of the combatants and the nature of the strategy and

tactics. Each party ran true to form--Ferguson repeating

Braddock's suicidal policy of opposing bayonet charges to the

deadly fusillade of riflemen, who in Indian fashion were

carefully posted behind trees and every shelter afforded by the

natural inequalities of the ground. In the army of the Carolina

and Virginia frontiersmen, composed of independent detachments

recruited from many sources and solicitous for their own

individual credit, each command was directed in the battle by its

own leader. Campbell--like Cleveland, Winston, Williams, Lacey,

Shelby, McDowell, Sevier, and Hambright--personally led his own

division; but the nature of the fighting and the peculiarity of

the terrain made it impossible for him, though the chosen

commander of the expedition, actually to play that role in the

battle. The plan agreed upon in advance by the frontier leaders

was simple enough--to surround and capture Ferguson's camp on the

high plateau. The more experienced Indian fighters, Sevier and

Shelby, unquestionably suggested the general scheme which in any

case would doubtless have been employed by the frontiersmen; it

was to give the British "Indian play"--namely to take cover

everywhere and to fire from natural shelter. Cleveland, a

Hercules in strength and courage who had fought the Indians and

recognized the wisdom of Indian tactics, ordered his men, as did

some of the other leaders, to give way before a bayonet charge,

but to return to the attack after the charge had spent its force.

"My brave fellows," said Cleveland, "every man must consider

himself an officer, and act from his own judgment. Fire as quick

as you can, and stand your ground as long as you can. When you

can do no better, get behind trees, or retreat; but I beg you not

to run quite off. If we are repulsed, let us make a point of

returning and renewing the fight; perhaps we may have better luck

in the second attempt than in the first."

The plateau upon which Ferguson was encamped was the top of an

eminence some six hundred yards long and about two hundred and

fifty yards from one base across to the other; and its shape was

that of an Indian paddle, varying from one hundred and twenty

yards at the blade to sixty yards at the handle in width.

Outcropping boulders upon the outer edge of the plateau afforded

some slight shelter for Ferguson's force; but, unsuspicious of

attack, Ferguson had made no abatis to protect his camp from the

assault to which it was so vulnerable because of the protection

of the timber surrounding it on all sides. As to the disposition

of the attacking force, the center to the northeast was occupied

by Cleveland with his "Bulldogs," Hambright with his South Fork

Boys from the Catawba (now Lincoln County, North Carolina), and

Winston with his Surry riflemen; to the south were the divisions

of Joseph McDowell, Sevier, and Campbell; while Lacey's South

Carolinians, the Rowan levies under Williams, and the Watauga

borderers under Shelby were stationed upon the north side.

Ferguson's forces consisted of Provincial Rangers, one hundred

and fifty strong, and other well-drilled Loyalists, between eight

and nine hundred in number; but his strength was seriously

weakened by the absence of a foraging party of between one and

two hundred who had gone off on the morning the battle occurred.

Shelby's men, before getting into position, received a hot fire,

the opening shots of the engagement. This inspired Campbell, who

now threw off his coat, to shout encouraging orders to his men

posted on the side of the mountain opposite to Shelby's force.

When Campbell's Virginians uttered a series of piercing shouts,

the British officer, De Peyster, second in command, remarked to

his chief: "These things are ominous--these are the damned

yelling boys."

The battle, which lasted some minutes short of an hour, was waged

with terrific ferocity. The Loyalist militia, whenever possible,

fired from the shelter of the rocks; while the Provincial Corps,

with fixed bayonets, steadily charged the frontiersmen, who fired

at close range and then rapidly withdrew to the very base of the

mountain. After each bayonet charge the Provincials coolly

withdrew to the summit, under the accumulating fire of the

returning mountaineers, who quickly gathered in their rear. Owing

to their elevated location, the British, although using the

rapid-fire breech-loading rifle invented by Ferguson himself,

found their vision deflected, and continually fired high, thus

suffering from nature's handicap, refraction. The militia, using

sharpened butcher-knives which Ferguson had taught them to

utilize as bayonets, charged against the mountaineers; but their

fire, in answer to the deadly fusillade of the expert squirrel-

shooters, was belated, owing to the fact that they could not fire

while the crudely improvised bayonets remained inserted in their

pieces. The Americans, continually firing upward, found ready

marks for their aim in the clearly delineated outlines of their

adversaries, and felt the fierce exultation which animates the

hunter who has tracked to its lair and surrounded wild game at

bay.

The leaders of the various divisions of the mountaineers bore

themselves with impetuous bravery, recklessly rushing between the

lines of fire and with native eloquence, interspersed with

profanity, rallying their individual commands again and again to

the attack. The valiant Campbell scaled the rugged heights,

loudly encouraging his men to the ascent. Cleveland, resolutely

facing the foe, urged on is Bulldogs with the inspiriting words:

"Come, boys; let's try 'em again. We'll have better luck next

time." No sooner did Shelby's men reach the bottom of the hill,

in retreating before a charge, than their commander, fiery and

strenuous, ardently shouted: "Now boys, quickly reload your

rifles, and let's advance upon them, and give them another hell

of a fire." The most deadly charge, led by De Peyster himself,

fell upon Hambright's South Fork boys; and one of their gallant

officers, Major Chronicle, waving his military hat, was mortally

wounded, the command, "Face to the hill!", dying on his lips.

These veteran soldiers, unlike the mountaineers, firmly met the

shock of the charge, and a number of their men were shot down or

transfixed; but the remainder, reserving their fire until the

charging column was only a few feet away, poured in a deadly

volley before retiring. The gallant William Lenoir, whose

reckless bravery made him a conspicuous target for the enemy,

received several wounds and emerged from the battle with his hair

and clothes torn by balls. The ranking American officer,

Brigadier General James Williams, was mortally wounded while "on

the very top of the mountain, in the thickest of the fight"; and

as he momentarily revived, his first words were: "For God's sake,

boys, don't give up the hill." Hambright, sorely wounded, his

boot overflowing with blood and his hat riddled with three bullet

holes, declined to dismount, but pressed gallantly forward,

exclaiming in his "Pennsylvania Dutch": "Huzza, my prave poys,

fight on a few minutes more, and the pattle will be over!" On the

British side, Ferguson was supremely valorous, rapidly dashing

from one point to another, rallying his men, oblivious to all

danger. Wherever the shrill note of his silver whistle sounded,

there the fighting was hottest and the British resistance the

most stubborn. His officers fought with the characteristic

steadiness of the British soldier; and again and again his men

charged headlong against the wavering and fiery circle of the

frontiersmen.

Ferguson's boast that "he was on King's Mountain, that he was

king of the Mountain, and God Almighty could not drive him from

it" was doubtless prompted, less by a belief in the

impregnability of his position, than by a desperate desire to

inspire confidence in his men. His location was admirably chosen

for defense against attack by troops employing regulation

tactics; but, never dreaming of the possibility of sudden

investment, Ferguson had erected no fortifications for his

encampment. His frenzied efforts on the battlefield seem like a

mad rush against fate; for the place was indefensible against the

peculiar tactics of the frontiersmen. While the mountain flamed

like a volcano and resounded with the thunder of the guns, a

steady stricture was in progress. The lines were drawn tighter

and tighter around the trapped and frantically struggling army;

and at last the fall of their commander, riddled with bullets,

proved the tragic futility of further resistance. The game was

caught and bagged to a man. When Winston, with his fox-hunters of

Surry, dashed recklessly through the woods, says a chronicler of

the battle, and the last to come into position,

Flow'd in, and settling, circled all the lists,

then

From all the circle of the hills death sleeted in upon the

doomed.

The battle was decisive in its effect--shattering the plans of

Cornwallis, which till then appeared certain of success. The

victory put a full stop to the invasion of North Carolina, which

was then well under way. Cornwallis abandoned his carefully

prepared campaign and immediately left the state. After

ruthlessly hanging nine prisoners, an action which had an

effectively deterrent effect upon future Tory murders and

depredations, the patriot force quietly disbanded. The brilliant

initiative of the buckskin-clad borderers, the strenuous energy

of their pursuit, the perfection of their surprise--all

reinforced by the employment of ideal tactics for meeting the

given situation--were the controlling factors in this

overwhelming victory of the Revolution. The pioneers of the Old

Southwest--the independent and aggressive yeomanry of North

Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina--had risen in their might.

Without the aid or authority of blundering state governments,

they had created an army of frontiersmen, Indian-fighters, and

big-game hunters which had found no parallel or equal on the

continent since the Battle of the Great Kanawha.

CHAPTER XIX. The State of Franklin

Designs of a more dangerous nature and deeper die seem to glare

in the western revolt .... I have thought proper to issue this

manifesto, hereby warning all persons concerned in the said

revolt . . . that the honour of this State has been particularly

wounded, by seizing that by violence which, in time, no doubt,

would have been obtained by consent, when the terms of separation

would have been explained or stipulated, to the mutual

sat'isfaction of the mother and new State . . . . Let your

proposals be consistent with the honour of the State to accede

to, which by your allegiance as good citizens, you cannot violate

and I make no doubt but her generosity, in time, will meet your

wishes.--Governor Alexander Martin: Manifesto against the State

of Franklin, April 25, 1785.

To the shrewd diplomacy of Joseph Martin, who held the Cherokees

in check during the period of the King's Mountain campaign, the

settlers in the valleys of the Watauga and the Holston owed their

temporary immunity from Indian attack. But no sooner did Sevier

and his over-mountain men return from the battle-field of King's

Mountain than they were called upon to join in an expedition

against the Cherokees, who had again gone on the war-path at the

instigation of the British. After Sevier with his command had

defeated a small party of Indians at Boyd's Creek in December,

the entire force of seven hundred riflemen, under the command of

Colonel Arthur Campbell, with Major Joseph Martin as subordinate,

penetrated to the heart of the Indian country, burned Echota,

Chilhowee, Settiquo, Hiawassee, and seven other principal

villages, and destroyed an immense amount of property and

supplies. In March, suspecting that the arch-conspirators against

the white settlers were the Cherokees at the head waters of the

Little Tennessee, Sevier led one hundred and fifty horsemen

through the devious mountain defiles and struck the Indians a

swift and unexpected blow at Tuckasegee, near the present

Webster, North Carolina. In this extraordinarily daring raid, one

of his most brilliant feats of arms, Sevier lost only one man

killed and one wounded; while upon the enemy he inflicted the

loss of thirty killed, took many more prisoners, burned six

Indian towns, and captured many horses and supplies. Once his

deadly work was done, Sevier with his bold cavaliers silently

plunged again into the forest whence he had so suddenly emerged,

and returned in triumph to the settlements.

Disheartened though the Indians were to see the smoke of their

burning towns, they sullenly remained averse to peace; and they

did not keep the treaty made at Long Island in July, 1781. The

Indians suffered from very real grievances at the hands of the

lawless white settlers who persisted in encroaching upon the

Indian lands. When the Indian ravages were resumed, Sevier and

Anderson, the latter from Sullivan County, led a punitive

expedition of two hundred riflemen against the Creeks and the

Chickamaugas; and employing the customary tactics of laying waste

the Indian towns, administered stern and salutary chastisement to

the copper-colored marauders.

During this same period the settlers on the Cumberland were

displaying a grim fortitude and stoical endurance in the face of

Indian attack forever memorable in the history of the Old

Southwest. On the night of January 15, 1781, the settlers at

Freeland's Station, after a desperate resistance, succeeded in

beating off the savages who attacked in force. At Nashborough on

April 2d, twenty of the settlers were lured from the stockade by

the artful wiles of the savages; and it was only after serious

loss that they finally won their way back to the protection of

the fort. Indeed, their return was due to the fierce dogs of the

settlers, which were released at the most critical moment, and

attacked the astounded Indians with such ferocity that the

diversion thus created enabled the settlers to escape from the

deadly trap. During the next two years the history of the

Cumberland settlements is but the gruesome recital of murder

after murder of the whites, a few at a time, by the lurking

Indian foe. Robertson's dominant influence alone prevented the

abandonment of the sorely harassed little stations. The arrival

of the North Carolina commissioners for the purpose of laying off

bounty lands and settlers' preemptions, and the treaty of peace

concluded at the French Lick on November 5 and 6, 1783, gave

permanence and stability to the Cumberland settlements. The

lasting friendship of the Chickasaws was won; but the Creeks for

some time continued to harass the Tennessee pioneers. The

frontiersmen's most formidable foe, the Cherokees, stoically,

heroically fighting the whites in the field, and smallpox,