PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES
The reader of this narrative has, of course, already discovered that
Daniel Boone was neither the original white explorer of Kentucky nor the
first white hunter within its limits. Many others had been there before
him. It will be worth our while at this point to take a hasty review of
some of the previous expeditions which had made the "dark and bloody
ground" known to the world.
Probably none of the several Spanish explorations of the sixteenth
century along the Mississippi River and through the Gulf States had
touched Kentucky. But during the seventeenth century both the French in
Canada and the English on the Atlantic tidewater came to have fairly
accurate notions of the country lying immediately to the south of the
Ohio River. As early as 1650 Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, made a vain
attempt to cross the Alleghany barrier in search of the Mississippi,
concerning which he had heard from Indians; and we know that at the same
time the French, especially the Jesuit missionaries, were looking
eagerly in that direction. A few years later Colonel Abraham Wood, of
Virginia, discovered streams which poured into the Ohio and the
Mississippi. Just a century before Boone's great hunt, John Lederer,
also of Virginia, explored for a considerable distance beyond the
mountains. The following year Thomas Batts and his party proclaimed King
Charles II upon New River, the upper waters of the Great Kanawha--twelve
months before La Salle took possession of all Western waters for the
French king, and nineteen before Marquette and Joliet discovered the
Mississippi.
There is a tradition that in 1678, only five years after the voyage of
Marquette and Joliet, a party of New Englanders ventured into the
Western wilderness as far as New Mexico. The later French expeditions of
La Salle, Hennepin, and D'Iberville are well known. Several Englishmen
traded with Indians upon the Mississippi before the close of the
seventeenth century; by 1719 the English were so numerous that Governor
Keith, of Pennsylvania, suggested that four forts be built for their
protection in the Wabash and Illinois countries. We hear of a French
expedition investigating Big Bone Lick, in Kentucky, in 1735; and other
visits were successively made by bands of their compatriots until the
downfall of New France, over a quarter of a century later. In 1742 John
Howard and Peter Salling, of Virginia, were exploring in Kentucky; six
years after them Dr. Thomas Walker made a notable expedition through the
same country; and two years after that Washington's backwoods friend,
Christopher Gist, was on the site of Louisville selecting lands for the
Ohio Company, which had a large grant upon the Ohio River.
Henceforward, border chronicles abound with reports of the adventures of
English fur-traders, hunters, and land-viewers, all along the Ohio River
and tributary waters above Louisville. Among these early adventurers was
our friend Finley, whose experiences in Kentucky dated from 1752, and
who piloted Boone to the promised land through the gateway of Cumberland
Gap. The subsequent Indian wars, with the expeditions into the upper
Ohio Valley by Generals Braddock, Forbes, and Bouquet, made the country
still better known; and settlers were soon rushing in by scores,
although as yet none of them appear to have made clearings within
Kentucky itself.
Officers and soldiers who had served in the French and Indian War were
given liberal grants of land in the West. Washington had not only his
own grant, as the principal officer upon the southwest frontier, but was
agent for a number of fellow-soldiers, and in 1767 went to the Ohio
River to select and survey claims. At the very time when Boone was
engaged upon his fruitless expedition down the Big Sandy, Washington was
making the first surveys in Kentucky on both the Little and Big Sandy.
Again, in 1770, when Boone was exploring the Kentucky wilderness,
Washington was surveying extensive tracts along the Ohio and the Great
Kanawha, and planning for a large colony upon his own lands. The
outbreak of the Revolution caused the great man to turn his attention
from the over-mountain region to the defense of his country. Had he been
left to carry out his plans, he would doubtless have won fame as the
most energetic of Western pioneers.
It will be remembered that when Boone and his companions passed through
Cumberland Gap in the early summer of 1769, they found the well-worn
trail of other hunters who had preceded them from the settlements. The
men of the Yadkin Valley were not the only persons seeking game in
Kentucky that year. At about the time when Boone was bidding farewell to
his family, Hancock and Richard Taylor, Abraham Hempinstall, and one
Barbour, frontiersmen of the same type, started from their homes in
Orange County, Va., to explore the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi.
They descended from Pittsburg in a boat, explored Kentucky, and
proceeded into Arkansas, where they camped and hunted during the
following winter. The next year two of them traveled eastward to
Florida, and thence northwardly to their homes; the others stayed in
Arkansas for another year, and returned by sea from New Orleans to New
York.
Simultaneously with the expeditions of Boone and the Taylors, a party of
twenty or more adventurous hunters and explorers was formed in the New
River region, in the Valley of Virginia. They set out in June (1769),
piloted by Uriah Stone, who had been in Kentucky three years before.
Entering by way of the now familiar Cumberland Gap, these men had
experiences quite similar to those of Boone and his comrades. At some of
the Kentucky salt-licks they found herds of buffaloes numbering up in
the thousands--at one lick a hundred acres were densely massed with
these bulky animals, who exhibited no fear until the wind blew from the
hunters toward them, and then they would "dash wildly away in large
droves and disappear." Like Boone's party, they also were the victims of
Cherokees, who plundered their camps, and after leaving them some guns
and a little ammunition, ordered them out of the country. The New River
party being large, however, some of their number were deputed to go to
the settlements and bring back fresh supplies, so that they could finish
their hunt. After further adventures with Indians half of the hunters
returned home; while the others wandered into Tennessee and as far as
the Ozark Mountains, finally reaching New River through Georgia and the
Carolinas. Another Virginian, named John McCulloch, who courted the
perils of exploration, was in Kentucky in the summer of 1769 with a
white man-servant and a negro. He visited the site of Terre Haute, Ind.,
and went by canoe to Natchez and New Orleans, and at length reached
Philadelphia by sea.
But the most famous of all the expeditions of the period was that of the
"Long Hunters," as they have come to be known in Western history.
Inspired by the favorable reports of Stone and others, about forty of
the most noted and successful hunters of New River and Holston Valleys
formed, in the summer of 1770, a company for hunting and trapping to the
west of Cumberland Mountains. Under the leadership of two of the best
woodsmen of the region, Joseph Drake and Henry Skaggs, and including
several of Stone's party, they set out in early autumn fully prepared
for meeting Indians and living on game. Each man took with him three
packhorses, rifles, ammunition, traps, dogs, blankets, and salt, and was
dressed in the deerskin costume of the times.
Pushing on through Cumberland Gap, the adventurers were soon in the
heart of Kentucky. In accordance with custom, they visited some of the
best licks--a few of which were probably first seen by them--for here
wild beasts were always to be found in profusion. At Knob Licks they
beheld from an eminence which overlooked the springs "what they
estimated at largely over a thousand animals, including buffaloe, elk,
bear, and deer, with many wild turkies scattered among them--all quite
restless, some playing, and others busily employed in licking the earth;
but at length they took flight and bounded away all in one direction, so
that in the brief space of a couple of minutes not an animal was to be
seen." Within an area of many acres, the animals had eaten the salty
earth to a depth of several feet.
Successful in a high degree, the party ceased operations in February,
and had completed preparations for sending a large shipment of skins,
furs, and "jerk" to the settlements, when, in their temporary absence,
roving Cherokees robbed them of much of their stores and spoiled the
greater part of the remainder. "Fifteen hundred skins gone to
ruination!" was the legend which one of them carved upon the bark of a
neighboring tree, a record to which were appended the initials of each
member of the party. A series of disasters followed, in the course of
which two men were carried off by Indians and never again seen, and
others fled for home. Those remaining, having still much ammunition and
the horses, continued their hunt, chiefly upon the Green and Cumberland
Rivers, and in due time brought together another store of peltries,
almost as extensive as that despoiled by the savages.
Not long after the robbery, when the Long Hunters were upon Green River,
one of the parties into which the band was divided were going into camp
for the night, when a singular noise was heard proceeding from a
considerable distance in the forest. The leader, Caspar Mausker,
commanded silence on the part of his comrades, and himself crept
cautiously from tree to tree in the direction of the sound. Imagine his
surprise and amusement to find "a man bare-headed, stretched flat upon
his back on a deerskin spread on the ground, singing merrily at the top
of his voice!" The singer was our hero, Daniel Boone, who, regardless of
possible Indian neighbors, was thus enjoying himself while awaiting
Squire's belated return to camp. Like most woodsmen of his day and ours,
Boone was fond of singing, in his rude way, as well as of relating tales
of stirring adventure. In such manner were many hours whiled away around
the camp-fires of wilderness hunters.
The Boones at once joined and spent some time with the Long Hunters, no
doubt delighted at this opportunity of once more mingling with men of
their kind. Among their amusements was that of naming rivers, creeks,
and hills after members of the party; many of these names are still
preserved upon the map of Kentucky. At one time they discovered that
some French hunters from the Illinois country had recently visited a
lick to kill buffaloes for their tongues and tallow, which they had
loaded into a keel-boat and taken down the Cumberland. In after years
one of the Long Hunters declared that this wholesale slaughter was so
great "that one could walk for several hundred yards in and around the
lick on buffaloes' skulls and bones, with which the whole flat around
the lick was bleached."
It was not until August that the Long Hunters returned to their homes,
after a profitable absence of eleven months. But the Boone brothers left
their comrades in March and headed for the Yadkin, with horses now well
laden with spoils of the chase. They were deeply in debt for their
latest supplies, but were returning in light heart, cheered with the
prospect of settling their accounts and being able to revisit Kentucky
in good condition. But in Powell's Valley, near Cumberland Gap, where
they might well have supposed that small chance of danger remained, they
were suddenly set upon by a war party of Northern Indians who had been
raiding the white settlers as well as their Southern foes, the Cherokees
and Catawbas. Roughly handled and robbed of their packs, the unfortunate
hunters reached the Yadkin in no happy frame of mind. Daniel had been
absent for two years, and was now poorer than when he left home. He used
to say, however, in after years, that having at last seen Kentucky, his
ideal of an earthly paradise, that served as solace for his woes.