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 the 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. [18]
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. [19] 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. [20] 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.
[21] 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. [22] 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. [23] 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." [24] 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. [25] 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 naïve 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 make 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. [26] 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." [27]
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 powder-horn, 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. [28]
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 linsey [flax] petticoats and 'bed-gowns' [like a
dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had
bonnets and bed-gowns 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. [29]
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." [30] 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. [31]
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. [32] 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." [33] 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, Céloron de Bienville,
was despatched by the far-visioned Galissonière 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.