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 immagine 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. [1]
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." [2] 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 home-builder--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." [3] 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. [4] 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 3
II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion 19
III. The Back Country and the Border 32
IV. The Indian War 49
V. In Defense of Civilization 64
VI. Crushing the Cherokees 78
VII. The Land Companies 96
VIII. The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone 116
IX. Daniel Boone and Wilderness Exploration 130
X. Daniel Boone in Kentucky 144
XI. The Regulators 160
XII. Watauga--Haven of Liberty 175
XIII. Opening the Gateway--Dunmore's War 196
XIV. Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company 216
XV. Transylvania--A Wilderness Commonwealth 237
XVI. The Repulse of the Red Men 252
XVII. The Colonization of the Cumberland 269
XVIII. King's Mountain 289
XIX. The State of Franklin 306
XX. The Lure of Spain--The Haven of Statehood 327
List of Notes 351
Bibliographical Notes 363
Index 371
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 some 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 Ireland
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." [5] 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 Müller and his fellow
Germans had established the first permanent white settlement in the
Valley of Virginia. [6] 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. [7] 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 Pennsylvänische 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. [8]
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 Brandmüller (October 12 to December
12, 1749). [9] 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. [10] 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 home-makers 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.