THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY
Kentucky had so long been spasmodically occupied and battled over by
Shawnese, Iroquois, and Cherokees, that it can not be said that any of
them had well-defined rights over its soil. Not until white men appeared
anxious to settle there did the tribes begin to assert their respective
claims, in the hope of gaining presents at the treaties whereat they
were asked to make cessions. The whites, on their part, when negotiating
for purchases, were well aware of the shadowy character of these claims;
but, when armed with a signed deed of cession, they had something
tangible upon which thenceforth to base their own claims of
proprietorship. There was therefore much insincerity upon both sides. It
is well to understand this situation in studying the history of Kentucky
settlement.
Colonel Richard Henderson was one of the principal judges in North
Carolina, a scholarly, talented man, eminent in the legal profession;
although but thirty-nine years of age, he wielded much influence.
Knowing and respecting Daniel Boone, Henderson was much impressed by the
former's enthusiastic reports concerning the soil, climate, and scenery
of Kentucky; and, acting solely upon this information, resolved to
establish a colony in that attractive country. He associated with
himself three brothers, Nathaniel, David, and Thomas Hart, the
last-named of whom in later life wrote that he "had known Boone of old,
when poverty and distress held him fast by the hand; and in those
wretched circumstances he had ever found him a noble and generous soul,
despising everything mean." Their proposed colony was styled
Transylvania, and the association of proprietors the Transylvania
Company.
It will be remembered that in the treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) the
Iroquois of New York had ceded to the English crown their pretensions to
lands lying between the Ohio and the Tennessee. The Transylvania
Company, however, applied to the Cherokees, because this was the tribe
commanding the path from Virginia and the Carolinas to Kentucky. In
March, 1775, a great council was held at Sycamore Shoals, on the Watauga
River, between the company and twelve hundred Cherokees who had been
brought in for the purpose by Boone. For $50,000 worth of cloths,
clothing, utensils, ornaments, and firearms, the Indians ceded to
Henderson and his partners an immense grant including all the country
lying between the Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers, also a path of
approach from the east, through Powell's Valley. At this council were
some of the most prominent Cherokee chiefs and southwestern
frontiersmen.
When the goods came to be distributed among the Indians it was found
that, although they filled a large cabin and looked very tempting in
bulk, there was but little for each warrior, and great dissatisfaction
arose. One Cherokee, whose portion was a shirt, declared that in one
day, upon this land, he could have killed deer enough to buy such a
garment; to surrender his hunting-ground for this trifle naturally
seemed to him a bad bargain. For the safety of the pioneers the chiefs
could give no guarantee; they warned Boone, who appears to have acted as
spokesman for the company, that "a black cloud hung over this land,"
warpaths crossed it from north to south, and settlers would surely get
killed; for such results the Cherokees must not be held responsible.
This was not promising. Neither was the news, now received, that
Governors Martin of North Carolina, and Dunmore of Virginia had both of
them issued proclamations against the great purchase. The former had
called Henderson and his partners an "infamous Company of Land Pyrates";
and they were notified that this movement was in violation of the king's
proclamation of 1763, forbidding Western settlements.
The company, relying upon popular sympathy and their great distance from
tidewater seats of government, proceeded without regard to these
proclamations. Boone, at the head of a party of about thirty enlisted
men, some of them the best backwoodsmen in the country,[11] was sent
ahead to mark a path through the forest to Kentucky River, and there
establish a capital for the new colony. They encountered many
difficulties, especially when traveling through cane-brakes and brush;
and once, while asleep, were attacked by Indians, who killed a negro
servant and wounded two of the party. Boone won hearty commendation for
his skill and courage throughout the expedition, which finally arrived
at its destination on the sixth of April. This was Big Lick, on Kentucky
River, just below the mouth of Otter Creek. Here it was decided to build
a town to be called Boonesborough, to serve as the capital of
Transylvania. The site was "a plain on the south side of the river,
wherein was a lick with sulphur springs strongly impregnated."
To Felix Walker, one of the pioneers, we are indebted for the details of
this notable colonizing expedition, set forth in a narrative which is
still preserved. "On entering the plain," he writes, "we were permitted
to view a very interesting and romantic sight. A number of buffaloes, of
all sizes, supposed to be between two and three hundred, made off from
the lick in every direction: some running, some walking, others loping
slowly and carelessly, with young calves playing, skipping, and bounding
through the plain. Such a sight some of us never saw before, nor perhaps
ever may again." A fort was commenced, and a few cabins "strung along
the river-bank;" but it was long before the stronghold was completed,
for, now that the journey was at an end, Boone's men had become callous
to danger.
Meanwhile Henderson was proceeding slowly from the settlements with
thirty men and several wagons loaded with goods and tools. Delayed from
many causes, they at last felt obliged to leave the encumbering wagons
in Powell's Valley. Pushing forward, they were almost daily met by
parties of men and boys returning home from Kentucky bearing vague
reports of Indian forays. This resulted in Henderson losing many of his
own followers from desertion. Arriving at Boonesborough on the twentieth
of April, the relief party was "saluted by a running fire of about
twenty-five guns." Some of Boone's men had, in the general uneasiness,
also deserted, and others had scattered throughout the woods, hunting,
exploring, or surveying on their own account.
The method of surveying then in vogue upon the Western frontier was of
the crudest, although it must be acknowledged that any system more
formal might, at that stage of our country's growth, have prevented
rapid settlement. Each settler or land speculator was practically his
own surveyor. With a compass and a chain, a few hours' work would
suffice to mark the boundaries of a thousand-acre tract. There were as
yet no adequate maps of the country, and claims overlapped each other
in the most bewildering manner. A speculator who "ran out" a hundred
thousand acres might, without knowing it, include in his domain a
half-dozen claims previously surveyed by modest settlers who wanted but
a hundred acres each. A man who paid the land-office fees might "patent"
any land he pleased and have it recorded, the colony, and later the
State, only guaranteeing such entries as covered land not already
patented. This overlapping, conscious or unconscious, at last became so
perplexing that thousands of vexatious lawsuits followed, some of which
are still unsettled; and even to-day in Kentucky there are lands whose
ownership is actually unknown, which pay no taxes and support only
squatters who can not be turned out--possibly some of it, lying between
patented tracts, by chance has never been entered at all. Nobody can now
say. Thus it was that we find our friend Daniel Boone quickly
transformed from a wilderness hunter into a frontier surveyor. Before
Henderson's arrival he had laid off the town site into lots of two
acres each. These were now drawn at a public lottery; while those who
wished larger tracts within the neighborhood were able to obtain them by
promising to plant a crop of corn and pay to the Transylvania Company a
quit-rent of two English shillings for each hundred acres.
[Illustration: A SURVEY NOTE BY BOONE.
Reduced facsimile from his field-books in possession of Wisconsin
State Historical Society.]
There were now four settlements in the Transylvania grant:
Boonesborough; Harrodsburg, fifty miles west, with about a hundred men;
Boiling Spring, some six or seven miles from Harrodsburg; and St. Asaph.
The crown lands to the north and east of the Kentucky, obtained by the
Fort Stanwix treaty, contained two small settlements; forty miles north
of Boonesborough was Hinkson's, later known as Ruddell's Station, where
were about nineteen persons; lower down the Kentucky, also on the north
side, was Willis Lee's settlement, near the present Frankfort; and
ranging at will through the crown lands were several small parties of
"land-jobbers," surveyors, and explorers, laying off the claims of
militia officers who had fought in the Indian wars, and here and there
building cabins to indicate possession.
Henderson had no sooner arrived than he prepared for a convention, at
which the people should adopt a form of government for the colony and
elect officers. This was held at Boonesborough, in the open air, under a
gigantic elm, during the week commencing Tuesday, the twenty-third of
May. There were eighteen delegates, representing each of the four
settlements south of the Kentucky. Among them were Daniel and Squire
Boone, the former of whom proposed laws for the preservation of game and
for improving the breed of horses; to the latter fell the presentation
of rules for preserving the cattle-ranges. The compact finally agreed
upon between the colonists and the proprietors declared "the powers of
the one and the liberties of the others," and was "the earliest form of
government in the region west of the Alleghanies." It provided for
"perfect religious freedom and general toleration," militia and judicial
systems, and complete liberty on the part of the settlers to conduct
colonial affairs according to their needs. This liberal and
well-digested plan appeared to please both Henderson and the settlers.
But the opposition of the governors, the objections raised by the
Assembly of Virginia, of which Kentucky was then a part,[12] and
finally, the outbreak of the Revolution, which put an end to proprietary
governments in America, caused the downfall of the Transylvania Company.
The Boonesborough legislative convention met but once more--in December,
to elect a surveyor-general.
The May meeting had no sooner adjourned than Transylvania began again to
lose its population. Few of the pioneers who had come out with Boone and
Henderson, or had since wandered into the district, were genuine
home-seekers. Many appear to have been mere adventurers, out for the
excitement of the expedition and to satisfy their curiosity, who either
returned home or wandered farther into the woods to seek fresh
experiences of wild life; others had deliberately intended first to
stake out claims in the neighborhood of the new settlements and then
return home to look after their crops, and perhaps move to Kentucky in
the autumn; others there were who, far removed from their families,
proved restless; while many became uneasy because of Indian outrages,
reports of which soon began to be circulated. Henderson wrote cheerful
letters to his partners at home, describing the country as a paradise;
but by the end of June, when Boone returned to the East for salt,
Harrodsburg and Boiling Spring were almost deserted, while Boonesborough
could muster but ten or twelve "guns," as men or boys capable of
fighting Indians were called in the militia rolls.
The infant colony of Kentucky had certainly reached a crisis in its
career. Game was rapidly becoming more scarce, largely because of
careless, inexperienced hunters who wounded more than they killed, and
killed more than was needed for food; the frightened buffaloes had now
receded so far west that they were several days' journey from
Boonesborough. Yet game was still the staff of life. Captain Floyd, the
surveyor-general, wrote to Colonel Preston: "I must hunt or starve."
As the summer wore away and crops in the Eastern settlements were
gathered, there was a considerable increase in the population. Many men
who, in later days, were to exert a powerful influence in Kentucky now
arrived--George Rogers Clark, the principal Western hero of the
Revolution; Simon Kenton, famous throughout the border as hunter, scout,
and Indian fighter; Benjamin Logan, William Whitley, the Lewises,
Campbells, Christians, Prestons, MacDowells, McAfees, Hite, Bowman,
Randolph, Todd, McClellan, Benton, Patterson--all of them names familiar
in Western history.
In the first week of September Boone arrived with his wife and family
and twenty young men--"twenty-one guns," the report reads; Squire and
his family soon followed; four Bryans, their brothers-in-law, came at
the head of thirty men from the Yadkin; and, at the same time,
Harrodsburg was reached by several other families who had, like the
Boones, come on horseback through Cumberland Gap and Powell's Valley.
This powerful reenforcement of pioneers, most of whom proposed to stay,
had largely been attracted by Henderson's advertisements in Virginia
newspapers offering terms of settlement on Transylvania lands. "Any
person," said the announcement, "who will settle on and inhabit the same
before the first day of June, 1776, shall have the privilege of taking
up and surveying for himself five hundred acres, and for each tithable
person he may carry with him and settle there, two hundred and fifty
acres, on the payment of fifty shillings sterling per hundred, subject
to a yearly quit-rent of two shillings, like money, to commence in the
year 1780." Toward the end of November Henderson himself, who had gone
on a visit to Carolina, returned with forty men, one of whom was Colonel
Arthur Campbell, a prominent settler in the Holston Valley.
This increase of population, which had been noticeable throughout the
autumn and early winter, received a sudden check, however, two days
before Christmas, when the Indians, who had been friendly for several
months past, began again to annoy settlers, several being either killed
or carried into captivity. This gave rise to a fresh panic, in the
course of which many fled to the east of the mountains.
During the year about five hundred persons from the frontiers of
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina had visited and explored
Kentucky; but now, at the close of December, the population of all the
settlements did not aggregate over two hundred. The recent outbreak had
much to do with this situation of affairs; but there were other causes
conspiring to disturb the minds of the people and postpone the growth of
settlement--the clashing of interests between the Transylvania Company
and the governors of Virginia and North Carolina, uncertainty as to the
possibilities of a general Indian war, the threatened rupture between
the colonies and the English crown, and the alarming scarcity of
provisions and ammunition throughout Kentucky.
Nevertheless, over nine hundred entries had been made in the
Transylvania land-office at Boonesborough, embracing 560,000 acres, and
most of these tracts were waiting to be surveyed; two hundred and thirty
acres of corn had been successfully raised; horses, hogs, and poultry
had been introduced, and apple- and peach-trees had been started at
several settlements. The germ of a colony was firmly planted, laws had
been made, the militia had been organized, civil and military officers
had been commissioned, and in the face of several slight Indian attacks
the savages had been repelled and the country maintained. Most promising
of all, there were now twelve women in the country, all of them heads of
families.
The principal pioneers were nearly all of sturdy Scotch-Irish blood, men
of sterling merit, intensely devoted to the cause of American liberty,
and destined to contribute powerfully to its aid in the great war which
had now begun, and concerning which messengers from over the mountains
had during the year brought them scanty information.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The names of this party of Kentucky pioneers, as preserved by
tradition, are worth presenting in our record, for many of them
afterward became prominent in the annals of the West: Squire Boone,
Edward Bradley, James Bridges, William Bush, Samuel Coburn, Colonel
Richard Calloway, Captain Crabtree, Benjamin Cutbirth, David Gass, John
Hart, William Hays (son-in-law of Daniel Boone), William Hicks, Edmund
Jennings, Thomas Johnson, John Kennedy, John King, William Miller,
William Moore, James Nall, James Peeke, Bartlet Searcy, Reuben Searcy,
Michael Stoner, Samuel Tate, Oswell Towns, Captain William Twitty
(wounded at Rockcastle), John Vardeman, and Felix Walker (also wounded
at Rockcastle). Mrs. Hays, Boone's daughter, traveled with her husband;
a negro woman accompanied Calloway, and a negro man (killed at
Rockcastle) was with Twitty.
[12] It was then within the far-stretching boundaries of Fincastle
County. Kentucky was set apart as a county, December 31, 1776.