THE HERO OF CLINCH VALLEY
While Daniel Boone had been hunting and exploring amid the deep forests
and waving greenswards of Kentucky, important events had been taking
place in the settlements. The colonists along the Atlantic tidewater had
become so crowded that there were no longer any free lands in that
region; and settlers' cabins in the western uplands of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia had so multiplied that now much of
the best land there had also been taken up. The far-outlying frontier
upon which the Boones and Bryans had reared their rude log huts nearly a
quarter of a century before, no longer abounded in game and in free
pastures for roving herds; indeed, the frontier was now pushed forward
to the west-flowing streams--to the head waters of the Watauga, Clinch,
Powell, French Broad, Holston, and Nolichucky, all of them affluents of
the Tennessee, and to the Monongahela and other tributaries of the
upper Ohio.
The rising tide of population demanded more room to the westward. The
forbidding mountain-ranges had long hemmed in the restless borderers;
but the dark-skinned wilderness tribes had formed a still more serious
barrier, as, with rifles and tomahawks purchased from white traders,
they terrorized the slowly advancing outposts of civilization. With the
French government no longer in control of Canada and the region east of
the Mississippi--although French-Canadian woodsmen were freely employed
by the British Indian Department--with the consequent quieting of Indian
forays, with increased knowledge of the over-mountain passes, and with
the strong push of population from behind, there had arisen a general
desire to scale the hills, and beyond them to seek exemption from
tax-gatherers, free lands, and the abundant game concerning which the
Kentucky hunters had brought glowing reports.
Upon the defeat of the French, the English king had issued a
proclamation (1763) forbidding his "loving subjects" to settle to the
west of the mountains. The home government was no doubt actuated in this
by two motives: first, a desire to preserve the wilderness for the
benefit of the growing fur trade, which brought wealth to many London
merchants; second, a fear that borderers who pushed beyond the mountains
might not only be beyond the reach of English trade, but also beyond
English political control. But the frontiersmen were already too far
distant to have much regard for royal proclamations. The king's command
appears to have had no more effect than had he, like one of his
predecessors, bade the ocean tide rise no higher.
In 1768, at Fort Stanwix, N.Y., the Iroquois of that province, whose war
parties had raided much of the country between the Hudson and the
Mississippi, surrendered what shadowy rights they might be supposed to
have over all lands lying between the Ohio and the Tennessee. Meanwhile,
at the South, the Cherokees had agreed to a frontier which opened to
settlement eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.
But, without waiting for these treaties, numerous schemes had been
proposed in England and the Atlantic coast colonies for the settlement
of Kentucky and the lands of the upper Ohio. Most of these projects
failed, even the more promising of them being checked by the opening of
the Revolutionary War; but their existence showed how general was the
desire of English colonists to occupy those fertile Western lands which
explorers like Gist, Washington, the Boones, and the Long Hunters had
now made familiar to the world. The new treaties strengthened this
desire, so that when Daniel and Squire Boone reached their homes upon
the Yadkin the subject of Western settlement was uppermost in the minds
of the people.
The land excitement was, however, less intense in North Carolina than in
the Valley of Virginia and other mountain troughs to the north and
northeast. At Boone's home there was unrest of a more serious character.
The tax-gatherers were arousing great popular discontent because of
unlawful and extortionate demands, and in some cases Governor Tryon had
come to blows with the regulators who stood for the people's rights.
For two and a half years after his return Boone quietly conducted his
little farm, and, as of old, made long hunting trips in autumn and
winter, occasionally venturing--sometimes alone, sometimes with one or
two companions--far west into Kentucky, once visiting French Lick, on
the Cumberland, where he found several French hunters. There is reason
to believe that in 1772 he moved to the Watauga Valley, but after living
there for a time went back to the Yadkin. Early in the following year he
accompanied Benjamin Cutbirth and others as far as the present Jessamine
County, Ky., and from this trip returned fired with quickened zeal for
making a settlement in the new country.
The spring and summer were spent in active preparations. He enlisted the
cooperation of Captain William Russell, the principal pioneer in the
Clinch Valley; several of the Bryans, whose settlement was now
sixty-five miles distant, also agreed to join him; and five other
families in his own neighborhood engaged to join the expedition. The
Bryan party, numbering forty men, some of them from the Valley of
Virginia and Powell's Valley, were not to be accompanied by their
families, as they preferred to go in advance and prepare homes before
making a final move. But Boone and the other men of the upper Yadkin
took with them their wives and children; most of them sold their farms,
as did Boone, thus burning their bridges behind them. Arranging to meet
the Bryan contingent in Powell's Valley, Boone's party left for the West
upon the twenty-fifth of September, 1773--fifty-six years after old
George Boone had departed from England for the Pennsylvania frontier
near Philadelphia, and twenty-three after the family had set out for the
new southwest frontier on the Yadkin.
Reaching Powell's, Boone went into camp to await the rear party, his
riding and packhorses hoppled and belled, after the custom of such
caravans, and their small herd of cattle properly guarded in a meadow.
His eldest son, James, now a boy of sixteen years, was sent with two
men, with pack-animals, across country to notify Russell and to secure
some flour and farming tools. They were returning laden, in company with
Russell's son Henry, a year older than James, two of Russell's negro
slaves, and two or three white workpeople, when, missing their path,
they went into camp for the night only three miles from Boone's
quarters. At daybreak they were attacked by a Shawnese war party and all
killed except a white laborer and a negro. This pathetic tragedy created
such consternation among the movers that, despite Boone's entreaties to
go forward, all of them returned to Virginia and Carolina. Daniel and
his family, no longer having a home on the Yadkin, would not retreat,
and took up their quarters in an empty cabin upon the farm of Captain
David Gass, seven or eight miles from Russell's, upon Clinch River.
Throughout this sorrowful winter the Boones were supported from their
stock of cattle and by means of Daniel's unerring rifle.
It was long before the intrepid pioneers could again take up their line
of march. Ever since the Bouquet treaty of 1764 there had been more or
less disturbance upon the frontiers. During all these years, although
there was no open warfare between whites and reds, many scores of lives
had been lost. Indians had wantonly plundered and murdered white men,
and the latter had been quite as merciless toward the savages. Whenever
a member of one race met a man of the other the rifle was apt to be at
once brought into play. Meanwhile, armed parties of surveyors and land
speculators were swarming into Kentucky, notching the trees for
landmarks, and giving evidence to apprehensive tribesmen that the hordes
of civilization were upon them. In 1773 George Rogers Clark, afterward
the most famous of border leaders, had staked a claim at the mouth of
Fishing Creek, on the Ohio; Washington had, this summer, descended the
river to the same point; while at the Falls of the Ohio, and upon
interior waters of the Kentucky wilderness, other parties were laying
ambitious plans for the capitals of new colonies.
In the following spring the Cherokees and Shawnese, now wrought to a
high pitch of ill temper, combined for onslaughts on the advancing
frontiersmen. The wanton murder by border ruffians of Chief John Logan's
family, near Mingo Junction, on the Ohio, was the match which, in early
summer, fired the tinder. The Mingos, ablaze with the fire of vengeance,
carried the war-pipe through the neighboring villages; runners were sent
in every direction to rouse the tribes; tomahawks were unearthed,
war-posts were planted; messages of defiance were sent to the
"Virginians," as all frontiersmen were generally called by the Western
Indians; and in a few days the border war to which history has given the
name of Lord Dunmore, then governor of Virginia, was in full swing from
Cumberland Gap to Fort Pitt, from the Alleghanies to the Wabash.
Its isolation at first protected the Valley of the Clinch. The
commandant of the southwest militia--which comprised every boy or man
capable of bearing arms--was Colonel William Preston; under him was
Major Arthur Campbell; the principal man in the Clinch Valley was
Boone's friend, Russell. When, in June, the border captains were
notified by Lord Dunmore that the war was now on, forts were erected in
each of the mountain valleys, and scouts sent out along the trails and
streams to ascertain the whereabouts of the enemy.
There were in Kentucky, at this time, several surveying parties which
could not obtain news by way of the Ohio because of the blockade
maintained by the Shawnese. It became necessary to notify them overland,
and advise their retreat to the settlements by way of Cumberland Gap.
Russell having been ordered by Preston to employ "two faithful woodsmen"
for this purpose, chose Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner. "If they are
alive," wrote Russell to his colonel, "it is indisputable but Boone must
find them." Leaving the Clinch on June twenty-seventh, the two envoys
were at Harrodsburg before July eighth. There they found James Harrod
and thirty-four other men laying off a large town,[9] in which they
proposed to give each inhabitant a half-acre in-lot and a ten-acre
out-lot. Boone, who had small capacity for business, but in land was
something of a speculator, registered as a settler, and in company with
a neighbor put up a cabin for his future occupancy. This done, he and
Stoner hurried on down the Kentucky River to its mouth, and thence to
the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville), notifying several bands of
surveyors and town-builders of their danger. After an absence of
sixty-one days they were back again upon the Clinch, having traveled
eight hundred miles through a practically unbroken forest, experienced
many dangers from Indians, and overcome natural difficulties almost
without number.
Meanwhile Lord Dunmore, personally unpopular but an energetic and
competent military manager, had sent out an army of nearly three
thousand backwoodsmen against the Shawnese north of the Ohio. One wing
of this army, led by the governor himself, went by way of Fort Pitt and
descended the Ohio; among its members was George Rogers Clark. The other
wing, commanded by General Andrew Lewis, included the men of the
Southwest, eleven hundred strong; they were to descend the Great
Kanawha and rendezvous with the northern wing at Point Pleasant, at the
junction of the Kanawha and the Ohio.
When Boone arrived upon the Clinch he found that Russell and most of the
other militiamen of the district had departed upon the campaign. With a
party of recruits, the great hunter started out to overtake the
expedition, but was met by orders to return and aid in defending his own
valley; for the drawing off of the militia by Dunmore had left the
southwest frontiers in weak condition. During September the settlers
upon the Clinch suffered much apprehension; the depredations of the
tribesmen were not numerous, but several men were either wounded or
captured.
In a letter written upon the sixth of October, Major Campbell gives a
list of forts upon the Clinch: "Blackmore's, sixteen men, Sergeant Moore
commanding; Moore's, twenty miles above, twenty men, Lieutenant Boone
commanding; Russell's, four miles above, twenty men, Sergeant W. Poage
commanding; Glade Hollow, twelve miles above, fifteen men, Sergeant
John Dunkin commanding; Elk Garden, fourteen miles above, eighteen men,
Sergeant John Kinkead commanding; Maiden Spring, twenty-three miles
above, five men, Sergeant John Crane commanding; Whitton's Big Crab
Orchard, twelve miles above, three men, Ensign John Campbell, of Rich
Valley, commanding." During this month Boone and his little garrison
made frequent sallies against the enemy, and now and then fought brief
but desperate skirmishes. He appears to have been by far the most active
commander in the valley, and when neighboring forts were attacked his
party of well-trained riflemen generally furnished the relief necessary
to raise the siege. "Mr. Boone," writes Campbell to Preston, "is very
diligent at Castle's-woods, and keeps up good order." His conduct is
frequently alluded to in the military correspondence of that summer;
Campbell and other leaders exhibited in their references to our hero a
respectful and even deferential tone. An eye-witness of some of these
stirring scenes has left us a description of Daniel Boone, now forty
years of age, in which it is stated that his was then a familiar figure
throughout the valley as he hurried to and fro upon his military duties
"dressed in deerskin colored black, and his hair plaited and clubbed
up."
Upon the tenth of October, Cornstalk, a famous Shawnese chief, taking
advantage of Dunmore's failure to join the southern wing, led against
Lewis's little army encamped at Point Pleasant a thousand picked
warriors gathered from all parts of the Northwest. Here, upon the wooded
eminence at the junction of the two rivers, was waged from dawn until
dusk one of the most bloody and stubborn hand-to-hand battles ever
fought between Indians and whites. It is hard to say who displayed the
best generalship, Cornstalk or Lewis. The American savage was a splendid
fighter; although weak in discipline he could competently plan a battle.
The tactics of surprise were his chief resource, and these are
legitimate even in civilized warfare; but he could also make a
determined contest in the open, and when, as at Point Pleasant, the
opposing numbers were nearly equal, the result was often slow of
determination. Desperately courageous, pertinacious, with a natural
aptitude for war combined with consummate treachery, cruelty, and
cunning, it is small wonder that the Indian long offered a formidable
barrier to the advance of civilization. In early Virginia, John Smith
noticed that in Indian warfare the whites won at the expense of losses
far beyond those suffered by the tribesmen; and here at Point Pleasant,
while the "Long Knives"[10] gained the day, the number of their dead and
wounded was double that of the casualties sustained by Cornstalk's
painted band.
The victory at Point Pleasant practically closed the war upon the
border. Boone had been made a captain in response to a popular petition
that the hero of Clinch Valley be thus honored, and was given charge of
the three lower forts; but there followed only a few alarms, and upon
the twentieth of November he and his brother militiamen of the region
received their discharge. The war had cost Virginia L10,000 sterling,
many valuable lives had been sacrificed, and an incalculable amount of
suffering and privation had been occasioned all along the three hundred
and fifty miles of American frontier. But the Shawnese had been humbled,
the Cherokees had retired behind the new border line, and a lasting
peace appeared to be assured.
In the following January Captain Boone, true son of the wilderness, was
celebrating his freedom from duties incident to war's alarms by a
solitary hunt upon the banks of Kentucky River.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Previous to this there had been built in Kentucky many hunters'
camps, also a few isolated cabins by "improvers"; but Harrodsburg (at
first called "Harrodstown") was the first permanent settlement, thus
having nearly a year's start of Boonesborough. June 16, 1774, is the
date given by Collins and other chroniclers for the actual settlement by
Harrod.
[10] The Indians had called the Americans "Knifemen," "Long Knives," or
"Big Knives," from the earliest historic times; but it was not until
about the middle of the eighteenth century that the Virginia colonists
began to make record of the use of this epithet by the Indians with whom
they came in contact. It was then commonly supposed that it grew out of
the use of swords by the frontier militiamen, and this is the meaning
still given in dictionaries; but it has been made apparent by Albert
Matthews, writing in the New York Nation, March 14, 1901, that the
epithet originated in the fact that Englishmen used knives as
distinguished from the early stone tools of the Indians. The French
introduced knives into America previous to the English, but apparently
the term was used only by Indians within the English sphere of
influence.