THE NIMROD OF THE YADKIN
The lofty barrier of the Alleghany Mountains was of itself sufficient to
prevent the pioneers of Pennsylvania from wandering far westward.
Moreover, the Indians beyond these hills were fiercer than those with
whom the Quakers were familiar; their occasional raids to the eastward,
through the mountain passes, won for them a reputation which did not
incline the border farmers to cultivate their further acquaintance. To
the southwest, however, there were few obstacles to the spread of
settlement. For several hundred miles the Appalachians run in parallel
ranges from northeast to southwest--from Pennsylvania, through Virginia,
West Virginia, the Carolinas, and east Tennessee, until at last they
degenerate into scattered foot-hills upon the Georgia plain. Through the
long, deep troughs between these ranges--notably in the famous Valley of
Virginia between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies--Pennsylvanians
freely wandered into the south and southwest, whenever possessed by
thirst for new and broader lands. Hostile Indians sometimes penetrated
these great valleys and brought misery in their train; but the work of
pioneering along this path was less arduous than had the western
mountains been scaled at a time when the colonists were still few and
weak.
Between the years 1732 and 1750, numerous groups of
Pennsylvanians--Germans and Irish largely, with many Quakers among
them--had been wending their way through the mountain troughs, and
gradually pushing forward the line of settlement, until now it had
reached the upper waters of the Yadkin River, in the northwest corner of
North Carolina. Trials abundant fell to their lot; but the soil of the
valleys was unusually fertile, game was abundant, the climate mild, the
country beautiful, and life in general upon the new frontier, although
rough, such as to appeal to the borderers as a thing desirable. The
glowing reports of each new group attracted others. Thus was the
wilderness tamed by a steady stream of immigration from the older lands
of the northern colonies, while not a few penetrated to this Arcadia
through the passes of the Blue Ridge, from eastern Virginia and the
Carolinas.
Squire and Sarah Boone, of Oley, now possessed eleven children, some of
whom were married and settled within this neighborhood which consisted
so largely of the Boones and their relatives. The choicest lands of
eastern Pennsylvania had at last been located. The outlook for the
younger Boones, who soon would need new homesteads, did not appear
encouraging. The fame of the Yadkin Valley, five hundred miles
southwestward, had reached Oley, and thither, in the spring of 1750, the
majority of the Boones, after selling their lands and surplus stock,
bravely took up the line of march.[4]
With the women and children stowed in canvas-covered wagons, the men and
boys riding their horses at front and rear, and driving the lagging
cattle, the picturesque little caravan slowly found its way to the ford
at Harper's Ferry, thence up the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah. By
night they pitched their camps beside some gurgling spring, gathered the
animals within the circle of the wagons, and, with sentinel posted
against possible surprises by Indians, sat around the blazing fire to
discuss the experiences of the day--Daniel, as the hunter for the party,
doubtless having the most interesting adventures of them all.
Tradition has it that the Boones tarried by the way, for a year or more,
on Linnville Creek, six miles north of Harrisonburg, in Rockingham
County, Va. In any event, they appear to have resumed their journey by
the autumn of 1751. Pushing on through the Valley of Virginia--an
undulating, heavily forested table-land from three to ten miles in
width--they forded the upper waters of numerous rivers, some of which,
according to the tilt of the land, flow eastward and southeastward
toward the Atlantic, and others westward and southwestward toward the
Ohio. This is one of the fairest and most salubrious regions in America;
but they did not again stop until the promised land of the Yadkin was
reached.
The country was before them, to choose from it practically what they
would. Between the Yadkin and the Catawba there was a broad expanse of
elevated prairie, yielding a luxuriant growth of grass, while the
bottoms skirting the numerous streams were thick-grown to canebrake.
Here were abundant meadows for the cattle, fish and game and wild fruits
in quantity quite exceeding young Daniel's previous experience, a
well-tempered climate, and to the westward a mountain-range which cast
long afternoon shadows over the plain and spoke eloquently of untamed
dominions beyond. Out of this land of plenty Squire Boone chose a claim
at Buffalo Lick, where Dutchman's Creek joins with the North Fork of
Yadkin.
Daniel was now a lad of eighteen. Nominally, he helped in the working of
his father's farm and in the family smithy; actually, he was more often
in the woods with his long rifle. At first, buffaloes were so plenty
that a party of three or four men, with dogs, could kill from ten to
twenty in a day; but soon the sluggish animals receded before the
advance of white men, hiding themselves behind the mountain wall. An
ordinary hunter could slaughter four or five deer in a day; in the
autumn, he might from sunrise to sunset shoot enough bears to provide
over a ton of bear-bacon for winter use; wild turkeys were easy prey;
beavers, otters, and muskrats abounded; while wolves, panthers, and
wildcats overran the country. Overcome by his passion for the chase, our
young Nimrod soon began to spend months at a time in the woods,
especially in autumn and winter. He found also more profit in this
occupation than at either the forge or the plow; for at their nearest
market town, Salisbury, twenty miles away, good prices were paid for
skins, which were regularly shipped thence to the towns upon the
Atlantic coast.
The Catawba Indians lived about sixty miles distant, and the Cherokees
still farther. These tribesmen not infrequently visited the thinly
scattered settlement on the Yadkin, seeking trade with the whites, with
whom they were as yet on good terms. They were, however, now and then
raided by Northern Indians, particularly the Shawnese, who, collecting
in the Valley of Virginia, swept down upon them with fury; sometimes
also committing depredations upon the whites who had befriended their
tribal enemies, and who unfortunately had staked their farms in the
old-time war-path of the marauders.
In the year 1754, the entire American border, from the Yadkin to the St.
Lawrence, became deeply concerned in the Indian question. France and
England had long been rivals for the mastery of the North American
continent lying west of the Alleghanies. France had established a weak
chain of posts upon the upper Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi
River to New Orleans, thus connecting Canada with Louisiana. In the
Valley of the Ohio, however, without which the French could not long
hold the Western country, there was a protracted rivalry between French
and English fur-traders, each seeking to supplant the intruding
foreigner. This led to the outbreak of the French and Indian War, which
was waged vigorously for five years, until New France fell, and the
English obtained control of all Canada and that portion of the continent
lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi.
As early as 1748, backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania had made a small
settlement on New River, just west of the Alleghanies--a settlement
which the Boones must have visited, as it lay upon the road to the
Yadkin; and in the same season several adventurous Virginians hunted and
made land-claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. In the following year there
was formed for Western fur trading and colonizing purposes, the Ohio
Company, composed of wealthy Virginians, among them two brothers of
George Washington. In 1753 French soldiers built a little log fort on
French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany; and, despite Virginia's
protest, delivered by young Major Washington, were planning to erect
another at the forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now is. Thither
Washington went, in the succeeding year, with a body of Virginia
militiamen, to construct an English stockade at the forks; but the
French defeated him in the Great Meadows hard by and themselves erected
the fort. It is thought by some writers that young Boone, then twenty
years of age, served in the Pennsylvania militia which protected the
frontier from the Indian forays which succeeded this episode. A year
later (1755) the inexperienced General Braddock, fresh from England, set
out, with Washington upon his staff, to teach a lesson to these
Frenchmen who had intruded upon land claimed by the colony of Virginia.
In Braddock's little army were a hundred North Carolina frontiersmen,
under Captain Hugh Waddell; their wagoner and blacksmith was Daniel
Boone. His was one of those heavily laden baggage-wagons which, history
tells us, greatly impeded the progress of the English, and contributed
not a little to the terrible disaster which overtook the column in the
ravine of Turtle Creek, only a few miles from Pittsburg. The
baggage-train was the center of a fierce attack from Indians, led by
French officers, and many drivers were killed. Young Boone, however, cut
the traces of his team, and mounting a horse, fortunately escaped by
flight. Behind him the Indian allies of the French, now unchecked, laid
waste the panic-stricken frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. But the
Yadkin, which Boone soon reached, was as yet unscarred; the Northern
tribes were busied in the tide of intercolonial warfare, and the
Catawbas and Cherokees thus far remained steadfast to their old-time
promises of peace.
Daniel was now a man, full-grown. He had brought home with him not only
some knowledge of what war meant, but his imagination had become heated
by a new passion--the desire to explore as well as to hunt. While upon
the campaign he had fallen in with another adventurous soul, John Finley
by name, who fired his heart with strange tales of lands and game to the
west of the mountains. Finley was a Scotch-Irishman of roving
tendencies, who had emigrated to Pennsylvania and joined a colony of his
compatriots. As early as 1752 he had become a fur-trader. In the course
of his rambles many perilous adventures befell him in the Kentucky
wilds, into which he had penetrated as far as the Falls of the Ohio,
where Louisville is now built. Hurrying, with other woodsmen, to
Braddock's support, he enrolled himself under George Croghan, a famous
trader to the Indians. But the expert services of Croghan and his men,
who, well understanding the methods of savages upon the war-path,
offered to serve as scouts, were coldly rejected by Braddock, who soon
had occasion to regret that he had not taken their advice.
Finley found in the Yadkin wagoner a kindred spirit, and suggested to
him with eagerness a method of reaching Kentucky by following the trail
of the buffaloes and the Shawnese, northwestward through Cumberland Gap.
To reach this hunter's paradise, to which Finley had pointed the way,
was now Boone's daily dream.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] John and James remained, and lived and died in Oley.