The Seven Years' War--Cherokee war--Period of Boone's first long
excursions to the West--Extract from Wheeler's History of
Tennessee--Indian accounts of the western country--Indian
traders--Their reports--Western
travelers--Doherty--Adair--Proceedings of the
traders--Hunters--Scotch traders--Hunters accompany the traders to
the West--Their reports concerning the country--Other
adventurers--Dr. Walker's expedition--Settlements in South-western
Virginia--Indian hostilities--Pendleton purchase--Dr. Walker's
second expedition--Hunting company of Walker and others--Boone
travels with them--Curious monument left by him.
The reader will recollect that the period referred to in the last
chapter, comprehended the latter years of the celebrated Seven Years'
War. During the chief portion of this period, the neighboring Colony
of Virginia suffered all the horrors of Indian war on its western
frontier--horrors from which even the ability, courage, and patriotism
of Washington were for a long time unable to protect them. The war was
virtually terminated by the campaign of 1759, when Quebec was taken.
The next year Canada was ceded to England; and a Cherokee war, which had
disturbed the border setters of North Carolina, was terminated. Daniel
Boone's biographers all agree that it was about this time when he first
began to make long excursions toward the West; but it is difficult to
fix exactly the date of his first long journey through the woods in
this direction. It is generally dated in 1771 or 1772, We now make a
quotation from Ramsay's Annals of Tennessee, which shows, beyond the
possibility of a doubt, that he hunted on the Wataga River in 1760, and
renders it probable that he was in the West at an earlier date. Our
readers will excuse the length of this quotation, as the first part of
it gives so graphic a picture of the hunter and pioneer life of the
times of Daniel Boone, and also shows what had been done by others in
western explorations before Boone's expeditions commenced.
"The Colonists of the Carolinas and of Virginia had been steadily
advancing to the West, and we have traced their approaches in the
direction of our eastern boundary,[8] to the base of the great
Appalachian range."
Of the country beyond it, little was positively known or accurately
understood. A wandering Indian would imperfectly delineate upon the
sand, a feeble outline of its more prominent physical features--its
magnificent rivers, with their numerous tributaries--its lofty
mountains, its dark forests, its extended plains and its vast extent.
A voyage in a canoe, from the source of the Hogohegee[9] to the
Wabash,[10] required for its performance, in their figurative language,
'two paddles, two warriors, three moons.' The Ohio itself was but a
tributary of a still larger river, of whose source, size and direction,
no intelligible account could be communicated or understood. The Muscle
Shoals and the obstructions in the river above them, were represented
as mighty cataracts and fearful whirlpools, and the Suck, as an awful
vortex. The wild beasts with which the illimitable forests abounded,
were numbered by pointing to the leaves upon the trees, or the stars
in a cloudless sky.
"These glowing descriptions of the West seemed rather to stimulate
than to satisfy the intense curiosity of the approaching settlers.
Information more reliable, and more minute, was, from time to time,
furnished from other sources. In the Atlantic cities, accounts had been
received from French and Spanish traders, of the unparalleled beauty and
fertility of the western interior. These reports, highly colored and
amplified, were soon received and known upon the frontier. Besides,
persons engaged in the interior traffic with the south-western Indian
tribes had, in times of peace, penetrated their territories--traded
with and resided amongst the natives--and upon their return to the white
settlements, confirmed what had been previously reported in favor of the
distant countries they had seen. As early as 1690, Doherty, a trader
from Virginia, had visited the Cherokees and afterward lived among them
a number of years. In 1730, Adair, from South Carolina, had traveled,
not only through the towns of this tribe, but had extended his tour
to most of the nations south and west of them. He was not only an
enterprising trader but an intelligent tourist. To his observations upon
the several tribes which he visited, we are indebted for most that is
known of their earlier history. They were published in London in 1775.
"In 1740 other traders went among the Cherokees from Virginia. They
employed Mr Vaughan as a packman, to transport their goods. West of
Amelia County, the country was then thinly inhabited; the last hunter's
cabin that he saw was on Otter River, a branch of the Staunton, now in
Bedford County, Va. The route pursued was along the Great Path to the
centre of the Cherokee nation. The traders and pack-men generally
confined themselves to this path till it crossed the Little Tennessee
River, then spreading themselves out among the several Cherokee villages
west of the mountain, continued their traffic as low down the Great
Tennessee as the Indian settlements upon Occochappo or Bear Creek, below
the Muscle Shoals, and there encountered the competition of other
traders, who were supplied from New Orleans and Mobile. They returned
heavily laden with peltries, to Charleston, or the more northern
markets, where they were sold at highly remunerating prices. A hatchet,
a pocket looking-glass, a piece of scarlet cloth, a trinket, and other
articles of little value, which at Williamsburg could be bought for a
few shillings, would command from an Indian hunter on the Hiwasse or
Tennessee peltries amounting in value to double the number of pounds
sterling. Exchanges were necessarily slow, but the profits realized from
the operation were immensely large. In times of peace this traffic
attracted the attention of many adventurous traders. It became mutually
advantageous to the Indian not less than to the white man. The trap and
the rifle, thus bartered for, procured, in one day, more game to the
Cherokee hunter than his bow and arrow and his dead-fall would have
secured during a month of toilsome hunting. Other advantages resulted
from it to the whites. They became thus acquainted with the great
avenues leading through the hunting grounds and to the occupied country
of the neighboring tribes--an important circumstance in the condition of
either war or peace. Further, the traders were an exact thermometer of
the pacific or hostile intention and feelings of the Indians with whom
they traded. Generally, they were foreigners, most frequently Scotchmen,
who had not been long in the country, or upon the frontier, who, having
experienced none of the cruelties, depredation or aggressions of the
Indians, cherished none of the resentment and spirit of retaliation born
with, and everywhere manifested, by the American settler. Thus, free
from animosity against the aborigines, the trader was allowed to remain
in the village where he traded unmolested, even when its warriors were
singing the war song or brandishing the war club, preparatory to an
invasion or massacre of the whites. Timely warning was thus often given
by a returning packman to a feeble and unsuspecting settlement, of the
perfidy and cruelty meditated against it.
"This gainful commerce was, for a time, engrossed by the traders; but
the monopoly was not allowed to continue long. Their rapid accumulations
soon excited the cupidity of another class of adventurers; and the
hunter, in his turn, became a co-pioneer with the trader, in the march
of civilization to the wilds of the West. As the agricultural population
approached the eastern base of the Alleghanies, the game became scarce,
and was to be found by severe toil in almost inaccessible recesses
and coves of the mountain. Packmen, returning from their trading
expeditions, carried with them evidences, not only of the abundance
of game across the mountains, but of the facility with which it was
procured. Hunters began to accompany the traders to the Indian towns;
but, unable to brook the tedious delay of procuring peltries by traffic,
and impatient of restraint, they struck boldly into the wilderness,
and western-like, to use a western phrase, set up for themselves. The
reports of their return, and of their successful enterprise, stimulated
other adventurers to a similar undertaking. 'As early as 1748 Doctor
Thomas Walker, of Virginia, in company with Colonels Wood, Patton and
Buchanan, and Captain Charles Campbell, and a number of hunters, made an
exploring tour upon the western waters. Passing Powel's valley, he gave
the name of 'Cumberland' to the lofty range of mountains on the west.
Tracing this range in a south-western direction, he came to a remarkable
depression in the chain: through this he passed, calling it 'Cumberland
Gap.' On the western side of the range he found a beautiful mountain
stream, which he named 'Cumberland River,' all in honor of the Duke of
Cumberland, then prime minister of England.[11] These names have ever
since been retained, and, with Loudon, are believed to be the only names
in Tennessee of English origin."
"Although Fort Loudon was erected as early as 1756, upon the Tennessee,
yet it was in advance of any white settlements nearly one hundred and
fifty miles, and was destroyed in 1760. The fort, too, at Long Island,
within the boundaries of the present State of Tennessee, were erected
in 1758, but no permanent settlements had yet been formed near it.
Still occasional settlers had begun to fix their habitations in the
south-western section of Virginia, and as early as 1754, six families
were residing west of New River. 'On the breaking out of the French war,
the Indians, in alliance with the French, made an irruption into these
settlements, and massacred Burke and his family. The other families,
finding their situation too perilous to be maintained, returned to the
eastern side of New River; and the renewal of the attempt to carry the
white settlements further west, was not made until after the close of
that war.'"[12]
[Sidenote: 1756]
"Under a mistaken impression that the Virginia line, when extended west,
would embrace it, a grant of land was this year made, by the authorities
of Virginia, to Edmund Pendleton, for three thousand acres of land,
lying in Augusta County, on a branch of the middle fork of the Indian
river called West Creek,[13] now Sullivan County, Tennessee."
[Sidenote: 1760]
In this year, Doctor Walker again passed over Clinch and Powell's
River, on a tour of exploration into what is now Kentucky.
[Sidenote: 1761]
'The Cherokees were now at peace with the whites, and hunters from the
back settlements began with safety to penetrate deeper and further into
the wilderness of Tennessee. Several of them, chiefly from Virginia,
hearing of the abundance of game with which the woods were stocked, and
allured by the prospects of gain, which might be drawn from this source,
formed themselves into a company, composed of Wallen, Scaggs, Blevins,
Cox, and fifteen others, and came into the valley since known as
Carter's Valley, in Hawkins County, Tennessee. They hunted eighteen
mouths upon Clinch and Powell's Rivers. Wallen's Creek and Wallen's
Ridge received their name from the leader of the company; as also did
the station which they erected in the present Lee County, Virginia,
the name of Wallen's station. They penetrated as far north as Laurel
Mountain, in Kentucky, where they terminated their journey, having met
with a body of Indians, whom they supposed to be Shawnees. At the head
of one of the companies that visited the West this year 'came Daniel
Boon, from the Yadkin, in North Carolina, and traveled with them as low
as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them.'
"This is the first time the advent of Daniel Boon to the western wilds
has been mentioned by historians, or by the several biographers of that
distinguished pioneer and hunter. There is reason, however, to believe
that he had hunted upon Watauga earlier. The writer is indebted to N.
Gammon, Esq., formerly of Jonesboro, now a citizen of Knoxville, for
the following inscription, still to be seen upon a beech tree, standing
in sight and east of the present stage-road, leading from Jonesboro to
Blountsville, and in the valley of Boon's Creek, a tributary of Watauga:"
D. Boon
CillED A. BAR On
Tree
in ThE
yEAR
1760
"Boon was eighty-six years old when he died, which was September, 1820.
He was thus twenty-six years old when the inscription was made. When he
left the company of hunters in 1761, as mentioned above by Haywood, it
is probable that he did so to revisit the theatre of a former hunt upon
the creek that still bears his name, and where his camp is still pointed
out near its banks. It is not improbable, indeed, that he belonged to,
or accompanied, the party of Doctor Walker, on his first, or certainly
on his second, tour of exploration in 1760. The inscription is
sufficient authority, as this writer conceives, to date the arrival of
Boon in Tennessee as early as its date, 1760, thus preceding the
permanent settlement of the country nearly ten years."
It will be observed that the historian in this extract, spells Boon
without the final _e_, following the orthography of the hunter, in his
inscription on the tree. This orthography Boone used at a later period,
as we shall show. But the present received mode of spelling the name is
the one which we have adopted in this work.
On a subsequent page of Wheeler's history, we find the following
memorandum:
"Daniel Boone, who still lived on the Yadkin, though he had previously
hunted on the Western waters, came again this year to explore the
country, being employed for this purpose by Henderson & Company.
With him came Samuel Callaway, his kinsman, and the ancestor of the
respectable family of that name, pioneers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and
Missouri. Callaway was at the side of Boon when, approaching the spurs
of the Cumberland Mountain, and in view of the vast herds of buffalo
grazing in the valleys between them, he exclaimed, 'I am richer than the
man mentioned in Scripture, who owned the cattle on a thousand hills;
I own the wild beasts of more than a thousand valleys.'"
After Boone and Callaway, came another hunter, Henry Scaggins, who was
also employed by Henderson. He extended his explorations to the Lower
Cumberland, and fixed his station at Mansco's Lick.
We shall have occasion to speak more particularly of Henderson's company
and Boone's connection with it; but we will first call the reader's
attention to the state of affairs in North Carolina at this period, and
their probable influence on the course pursued by Daniel Boone.
[Footnote 8: That is, the eastern boundary of Tennessee, which was then
a part of North Carolina.]
[Footnote 9: Holston.]
[Footnote 10: The Ohio was known many years by this name.]
[Footnote 11: Monette. The Indian name of this range was Wasioto, and of
the river, Shawnee.]
[Footnote 12: Howe.]
[Footnote 13: The original patent, signed by Governor Dinwiddie, and now
in the possession of the writer, was presented to him by T.A.R. Nelson,
Esq., of Jonesboro, Tennessee. It is probably the oldest grant in the
State.]