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 Cèloron 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 Findlay 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. [72]
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 the 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.
[73] 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 pre-eminence, 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." [74] 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." [75] 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. [76] 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. [77]
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. [78] The prevailing opinion among the shrewdest
men of the period was well expressed by George Washington, who wrote his
agent for preëmpting 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." [79]
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. [80] 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. [81] 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." [82] 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. [83]
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; [84] 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 made 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.
[85] 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 line to the mouth of the Great
Kanawha. [86] 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. [87]
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. [88]
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.