BOON AND THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY, 1775.
Lord Dunmore's war, waged by Americans for the good of America, was the
opening act in the drama whereof the closing scene was played at
Yorktown. It made possible the twofold character of the Revolutionary
war, wherein on the one hand the Americans won by conquest and
colonization new lands for their children, and on the other wrought out
their national independence of the British king. Save for Lord Dunmore's
war we could not have settled beyond the mountains until after we had
ended our quarrel with our kinsfolk across the sea. It so cowed the
northern Indians that for two or three years they made no further
organized effort to check the white advance. In consequence, the
Kentucky pioneers had only to contend with small parties of enemies
until time had been given them to become so firmly rooted in the land
that it proved impossible to oust them. Had Cornstalk and his
fellow-chiefs kept their hosts unbroken, they would undoubtedly have
swept Kentucky clear of settlers in 1775,--as was done by the mere rumor
of their hostility the preceding summer. Their defeat gave the
opportunity for Boon to settle Kentucky, and therefore for Robertson to
settle Middle Tennessee, and for Clark to conquer Illinois and the
Northwest; it was the first in the chain of causes that gave us for our
western frontier in 1783 the Mississippi and not the Alleghanies.
As already mentioned, the speculative North Carolinian Henderson had for
some time been planning the establishment of a proprietary colony beyond
the mountains, as a bold stroke to reestablish his ruined fortunes; and
early in 1775, as the time seemed favorable, he proceeded to put his
venturous scheme into execution. For years he had been in close business
relations with Boon; and the latter had attempted to lead a band of
actual settlers to Kentucky in 1773. Naturally, when Henderson wished to
fix on a place wherein to plant his colony, he chose the beautiful land
which the rumor of Boon's discovery had rendered famous all along the
border; and equally naturally he chose the pioneer hunter himself to act
as his lieutenant and as the real leader of the expedition. The result
of the joint efforts of these two men was to plant in Kentucky a colony
of picked settlers, backed by such moral and material support as enabled
them to maintain themselves permanently in the land. Boon had not been
the first to discover Kentucky, nor was he the first to found a
settlement therein;[1] but it was his exploration of the land that alone
bore lasting fruit, and the settlement he founded was the first that
contained within itself the elements of permanence and growth.
Of course, as in every other settlement of inland America, the especial
point to be noticed is the individual initiative of the different
settlers. Neither the royal nor the provincial governments had any thing
to do with the various colonies that were planted almost simultaneously
on the soil of Kentucky. Each little band of pioneers had its own
leaders, and was stirred by its own motives. All had heard, from
different sources, of the beauty and fertility of the land, and as the
great danger from the Indians was temporarily past, all alike went in to
take possession, not only acting without previous agreement, but for the
most part being even in ignorance of one another's designs. Yet the
dangers surrounding these new-formed and far-off settlements were so
numerous, and of such grave nature, that they could hardly have proved
permanent had it not been for the comparatively well-organized
settlement of Boon, and for the temporary immunity which Henderson's
treaty purchased from the southern Indians.
The settlement of Kentucky was a much more adventurous and hazardous
proceeding than had been the case with any previous westward extension
of population from the old colonies; because Kentucky, instead of
abutting on already settled districts, was an island in the wilderness,
separated by two hundred miles of unpeopled and almost impassable forest
from even the extreme outposts of the seacoast commonwealths. Hitherto
every new settlement had been made by the simple process of a portion of
the backwoods pioneers being thrust out in advance of the others, while,
nevertheless, keeping in touch with them, and having their rear covered,
as it were, by the already colonized country. Now, for the first time, a
new community of pioneers sprang up, isolated in the heart of the
wilderness, and thrust far beyond the uttermost limits of the old
colonies, whose solid mass lay along the Atlantic seaboard. The vast
belt of mountainous woodland that lay between was as complete a barrier
as if it had been a broad arm of the ocean. The first American incomers
to Kentucky were for several years almost cut off from the bulk of their
fellows beyond the forest-clad mountains; much as, thirteen centuries
before, their forebears, the first English settlers in Britain, had been
cut off from the rest of the low-Dutch folk who continued to dwell on
the eastern coast of the German Ocean.
Henderson and those associated with him in his scheme of land
speculation began to open negotiations with the Cherokees as soon as the
victory of the Great Kanawha for the moment lessened the danger to be
apprehended from the northwestern Indians. In October, 1774, he and
Nathaniel Hart, one of his partners in the scheme, journeyed to the
Otari towns, and made their proposals. The Indians proceeded very
cautiously, deputing one of their number, a chief called the Carpenter,
to return with the two white envoys, and examine the goods they proposed
to give in exchange. To this Henderson made no objection; on the
contrary, it pleased him, for he was anxious to get an indisputable
Indian title to the proposed new colony. The Indian delegate made a
favorable report in January, 1775; and then the Overhill Cherokees were
bidden to assemble at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga. The order was
issued by the head-chief, Oconostota, a very old man, renowned for the
prowess he had shown in former years when warring against the English.
On the 17th of March, Oconostota and two other chiefs, the Raven and the
Carpenter, signed the Treaty of the Sycamore Shoals, in the presence and
with the assent of some twelve hundred of their tribe, half of them
warriors; for all who could had come to the treaty grounds. Henderson
thus obtained a grant of all the lands lying along and between the
Kentucky and the Cumberland rivers. He promptly named the new colony
Transylvania. The purchase money was 10,000 pounds of lawful English
money; but, of course, the payment was made mainly in merchandise, and
not specie. It took a number of days before the treaty was finally
concluded; no rum was allowed to be sold, and there was little
drunkenness, but herds of beeves were driven in, that the Indians might
make a feast.
The main opposition to the treaty was made by a chief named Dragging
Canoe, who continued for years to be the most inveterate foe of the
white race to be found among the Cherokees. On the second day of the
talk he spoke strongly against granting the Americans what they asked,
pointing out, in words of glowing eloquence, how the Cherokees, who had
once owned the land down to the sea, had been steadily driven back by
the whites until they had reached the mountains, and warning his
comrades that they must now put a stop at all hazards to further
encroachments, under penalty of seeing the loss of their last
hunting-grounds, by which alone their children could live. When he had
finished his speech he abruptly left the ring of speakers, and the
council broke up in confusion. The Indian onlookers were much impressed
by what he said; and for some hours the whites were in dismay lest all
further negotiations should prove fruitless. It was proposed to get the
deed privately; but to this the treaty-makers would not consent,
answering that they cared nothing for the treaty unless it was concluded
in open council, with the full assent of all the Indians. By much
exertion Dragging Canoe was finally persuaded to come back; the council
was resumed next day, and finally the grant was made without further
opposition. The Indians chose their own interpreter; and the treaty was
read aloud and translated, sentence by sentence, before it was signed,
on the fourth day of the formal talking.
The chiefs undoubtedly knew that they could transfer only a very
imperfect title to the land they thus deeded away. Both Oconostota and
Dragging Canoe told the white treaty-makers that the land beyond the
mountains, whither they were going, was a "dark ground," a "bloody
ground"; and warned them that they must go at their own risk, and not
hold the Cherokees responsible, for the latter could no longer hold them
by the hand. Dragging Canoe especially told Henderson that there was a
black cloud hanging over the land, for it lay in the path of the
northwestern Indians--who were already at war with the Cherokees, and
would surely show as little mercy to the white men as to the red.
Another old chief said to Boon: "Brother, we have given you a fine land,
but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it." What he said
was true, and the whites were taught by years of long warfare that
Kentucky was indeed what the Cherokees called it, a dark and bloody
ground.[2]
After Henderson's main treaty was concluded, the Watauga Association
entered into another, by which they secured from the Cherokees, for
2,000 pounds sterling, the lands they had already leased.
As soon as it became evident that the Indians would consent to the
treaty, Henderson sent Boon ahead with a company of thirty men to clear
a trail from the Holston to the Kentucky.[3] This, the first regular
path opened into the wilderness, was long called Boon's trace, and
became forever famous in Kentucky history as the Wilderness Road, the
track along which so many tens of thousands travelled while journeying
to their hoped-for homes in the bountiful west. Boon started on March
10th with his sturdy band of rifle-bearing axemen, and chopped out a
narrow bridle-path--a pony trail, as it would now be called in the west.
It led over Cumberland Gap, and crossed Cumberland, Laurel, and
Rockcastle rivers at fords that were swimming deep in the time of
freshets. Where it went through tall, open timber, it was marked by
blazes on the tree trunks, while a regular path was cut and trodden out
through the thickets of underbrush and the dense canebrakes and
reed-beds.
After a fortnight's hard work the party had almost reached the banks of
the Kentucky River, and deemed that their chief trials were over. But
half an hour before daybreak on the morning of the 25th, as they lay
round their smouldering camp-fires, they were attacked by some Indians,
who killed two of them and wounded a third; the others sprang to arms at
once, and stood their ground without suffering further loss or damage
till it grew light, when the Indians silently drew off.[4] Continuing
his course, Boon reached the Kentucky River, and on April 1st began to
build Boonsborough, on an open plain where there was a lick with two
sulphur springs.
Meanwhile other pioneers, as hardy and enterprising as Boon's
companions, had likewise made up their minds that they would come in to
possess the land; and in bands or small parties they had crossed the
mountains or floated down the Ohio, under the leadership of such men as
Harrod, Logan,[5] and the McAfees.[6] But hardly had they built their
slight log-cabins, covered with brush or bark, and broken ground for the
corn-planting, when some small Indian war-parties, including that which
had attacked Boon's company, appeared among them. Several men were
"killed and sculped," as Boon phrased it; and the panic among the rest
was very great, insomuch that many forthwith set out to return. Boon was
not so easily daunted; and he at once sent a special messenger to hurry
forward the main body under Henderson, writing to the latter with quiet
resolution and much good sense:
"My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your
company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are
willing to stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to
flusterate the intentions of the Indians, and keep the country whilst we
are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case."[7]
Henderson had started off as soon as he had finished the treaty. He took
wagons with him, but was obliged to halt and leave them in Powell's
Valley, for beyond that even so skilful a pathfinder and road-maker as
Boon had not been able to find or make a way passable for wheels.[8]
Accordingly, their goods and implements were placed on pack-horses, and
the company started again.[9] Most fortunately a full account of their
journey has been kept; for among Henderson's followers at this time was
a man named William Calk, who jotted down in his diary the events of
each day.[10] It is a short record, but as amusing as it is instructive;
for the writer's mind was evidently as vigorous as his language was
terse and untrammelled. He was with a small party, who were going out as
partners; and his journal is a faithful record of all things, great or
small, that at the time impressed him. The opening entry contains the
information that "Abram's dog's leg got broke by Drake's dog." The owner
of the latter beast, by the way, could not have been a pleasant
companion on a trip of this sort, for elsewhere the writer, who, like
most backwoodsmen, appreciated cleanliness in essentials, records with
evident disfavor the fact that "Mr. Drake Bakes bread without washing
his hands." Every man who has had the misfortune to drive a pack-train
in thick timber, or along a bad trail, will appreciate keenly the
following incident, which occurred soon after the party had set out for
home:
* * * * *
"I turned my hors to drive before me and he got scard ran away threw
Down the Saddel Bags and broke three of our powder goards and Abram's
beast Burst open a walet of corn and lost a good Deal and made a
turrabel flustration amongst the Reast of the Horses Drake's mair run
against a sapling and noct it down we cacht them all again and went on
and lodged at John Duncan's."
* * * * *
Another entry records the satisfaction of the party when at a log fort
(before getting into the wilderness) they procured some good loaf-bread
and good whisky.
They carried with them seed-corn[11] and "Irish tators" to plant, and
for use on the journey had bacon, and corn-meal which was made either
into baked corn-dodgers or else into johnny-cakes, which were simply
cooked on a board beside the fire, or else perhaps on a hot stone or in
the ashes. The meal had to be used very sparingly; occasionally a beef
was killed, out of the herd of cattle that accompanied the emigrants;
but generally they lived on the game they shot--deer, turkeys, and, when
they got to Kentucky, buffaloes. Sometimes this was killed as they
travelled; more often the hunters got it by going out in the evening
after they had pitched camp.
The journey was hard and tiresome. At times it rained; and again there
were heavy snow-storms, in one of which an emigrant got lost, and only
found his way to camp by the help of a pocket-compass. The mountains
were very steep, and it was painfully laborious work to climb them,
while chopping out a way for the pack-train. At night a watch had to be
kept for Indians. It was only here and there that the beasts got good
grazing. Sometimes the horses had their saddles turned while struggling
through the woods. But the great difficulty came in crossing the creeks,
where the banks were rotten, the bottom bad, or the water deep; then the
horses would get mired down and wet their packs, or they would have to
be swum across while their loads were ferried over on logs. One day, in
going along a creek, they had to cross it no less than fifty times, by
"very bad foards."
On the seventh of April they were met by Boon's runner, bearing tidings
of the loss occasioned by the Indians; and from that time on they met
parties of would-be settlers, who, panic-struck by the sudden forays,
were fleeing from the country. Henderson's party kept on with good
courage, and persuaded quite a number of the fugitives to turn back with
them. Some of these men who were thus leaving the country were not doing
so because of fright; for many, among them the McAfees, had not brought
out their families, but had simply come to clear the ground, build
cabins, plant corn, and turn some branded cattle loose in the woods,
where they were certain to thrive well, winter and summer, on the
nourishing cane and wild pea-vine. The men then intended to go back to
the settlements and bring out their wives and children, perhaps not till
the following year; so that things were in a measure prepared for them,
though they were very apt to find that the cattle had been stolen by the
Indians, or had strayed too far to be recovered.[12]
The bulk of those fleeing, however, were simply frightened out of the
country. There seems no reason to doubt[13] that the establishment of
the strong, well-backed settlement of Boonsborough was all that
prevented the abandonment of Kentucky at this time; and when such was
the effect of a foray by small and scattered war parties of Indians from
tribes nominally at peace with us,[14] it can easily be imagined how
hopeless it would have been to have tried to settle the land had there
still been in existence a strong hostile confederacy such as that
presided over by Cornstalk. Beyond doubt the restless and vigorous
frontiersmen would ultimately have won their way into the coveted
western lands; yet had it not been for the battle of the Great Kanawha,
Boon and Henderson could not, in 1775, have planted their colony in
Kentucky; and had it not been for Boon and Henderson, it is most
unlikely that the land would have been settled at all until after the
Revolutionary war, when perhaps it might have been British soil. Boon
was essentially a type, and possesses his greatest interest for us
because he represents so well the characteristics as well as the
life-work of his fellow backwoodsmen; still, it is unfair not to bear in
mind also the leading part he played and the great services he rendered
to the nation.
The incomers soon recovered from the fright into which they had been
thrown by the totally unexpected Indian attack; but the revengeful anger
it excited in their breasts did not pass away. They came from a class
already embittered by long warfare with their forest foes; they hoarded
up their new wrongs in minds burdened with the memories of countless
other outrages; and it is small wonder that repeated and often
unprovoked treachery at last excited in them a fierce and indiscriminate
hostility to all the red-skinned race. They had come to settle on ground
to which, as far as it was possible, the Indian title had been by fair
treaty extinguished. They ousted no Indians from the lands they took;
they had had neither the chance nor the wish to themselves do wrong; in
their eyes the attack on the part of the Indians was as wanton as it was
cruel; and in all probability this view was correct, and their
assailants were actuated more by the desire for scalps and plunder than
by resentment at the occupation of hunting grounds to which they could
have had little claim. In fact, throughout the history of the discovery
and first settlement of Kentucky, the original outrages and murders were
committed by the Indians on the whites, and not by the whites on the
Indians. In the gloomy and ferocious wars that ensued, the wrongs done
by each side were many and great.
Henderson's company came into the beautiful Kentucky country in
mid-April, when it looked its best: the trees were in leaf, the air
heavy with fragrance, the snowy flowers of the dogwood whitened the
woods, and the banks of the streams burned dull crimson with the wealth
of red-bud blossoms. The travellers reached the fort that Boon was
building on the 20th of the month, being welcomed to the protection of
its wooden walls by a volley from twenty or thirty rifles. They at once
set to with a will to finish it, and to make it a strong place of refuge
against Indian attacks. It was a typical forted village, such as the
frontiersmen built everywhere in the west and southwest during the years
that they were pushing their way across the continent in the teeth of
fierce and harassing warfare; in some features it was not unlike the
hamlet-like "tun" in which the forefathers of these same pioneers dwelt,
long centuries before, when they still lived by the sluggish waters of
the lower Rhine, or had just crossed to the eastern coast of
Britain.[15]
The fort was in shape a parallelogram, some two hundred and fifty feet
long and half as wide. It was more completely finished than the majority
of its kind, though little or no iron was used in its construction. At
each corner was a two-storied loop-holed block-house to act as a
bastion. The stout log-cabins were arranged in straight lines, so that
their outer sides formed part of the wall, the spaces between them being
filled with a high stockade, made of heavy squared timbers thrust
upright into the ground, and bound together within by a horizontal
stringer near the top. They were loop-holed like the block-houses. The
heavy wooden gates, closed with stout bars, were flanked without by the
block-houses and within by small windows cut in the nearest cabins. The
houses had sharp, sloping roofs, made of huge clapboards, and these
great wooden slabs were kept in place by long poles, bound with withes
to the rafters. In case of dire need each cabin was separately
defensible. When danger threatened, the cattle were kept in the open
space in the middle.
Three other similar forts or stations were built about the same time as
Boonsborough, namely: Harrodstown, Boiling Springs, and St. Asaphs,
better known as Logan's Station, from its founder's name. These all lay
to the southwest, some thirty odd miles from Boonsborough. Every such
fort or station served as the rallying-place for the country round
about, the stronghold in which the people dwelt during time of danger;
and later on, when all danger had long ceased, it often remained in
changed form, growing into the chief town of the district. Each settler
had his own farm besides, often a long way from the fort, and it was on
this that he usually intended to make his permanent home. This system
enabled the inhabitants to combine for defence, and yet to take up the
large tracts of four to fourteen hundred acres,[16] to which they were
by law entitled. It permitted them in time of peace to live well apart,
with plenty of room between, so that they did not crowd one another--a
fact much appreciated by men in whose hearts the spirit of extreme
independence and self-reliance was deeply ingrained. Thus the settlers
were scattered over large areas, and, as elsewhere in the southwest, the
county and not the town became the governmental unit. The citizens even
of the smaller governmental divisions acted through representatives,
instead of directly, as in the New England town-meetings.[17] The centre
of county government was of course the county court-house.
Henderson, having established a land agency at Boonsborough, at once
proceeded to deed to the Transylvania colonists entry certificates of
surveys of many hundred thousand acres. Most of the colonists were
rather doubtful whether these certificates would ultimately prove of any
value, and preferred to rest their claims on their original cabin
rights; a wise move on their part, though in the end the Virginia
Legislature confirmed Henderson's sales in so far as they had been made
to actual settlers. All the surveying was of course of the very rudest
kind. Only a skilled woodsman could undertake the work in such a
country; and accordingly much of it devolved on Boon, who ran the lines
as well as he could, and marked the trees with his own initials, either
by powder or else with his knife.[18] The State could not undertake to
make the surveys itself, so it authorized the individual settler to do
so. This greatly promoted the rapid settlement of the country, making it
possible to deal with land as a commodity, and outlining the various
claims; but the subsequent and inevitable result was that the sons of
the settlers reaped a crop of endless confusion and litigation.
It is worth mentioning that the Transylvania company opened a store at
Boonsborough. Powder and lead, the two commodities most in demand, were
sold respectively for $2.66-2/3 and 16-2/3 cents per pound. The payment
was rarely made in coin; and how high the above prices were may be
gathered from the fact that ordinary labor was credited at 33-1/3 cents
per day while fifty cents a day was paid for ranging, hunting, and
working on the roads.[19]
Henderson immediately proceeded to organize the government of his
colony, and accordingly issued a call for an election of delegates to
the Legislature of Transylvania, each of the four stations mentioned
above sending members. The delegates, seventeen in all, met at
Boonsborough and organized the convention on the 23d of May. Their
meetings were held without the walls of the fort, on a level plain of
white clover, under a grand old elm. Beneath its mighty branches a
hundred people could without crowding find refuge from the noon-day sun;
it was a fit council-house for this pioneer legislature of game hunters
and Indian fighters.[20]
These weather-beaten backwoods warriors, who held their deliberations in
the open air, showed that they had in them good stuff out of which to
build a free government. They were men of genuine force of character,
and they behaved with a dignity and wisdom that would have well become
any legislative body. Henderson, on behalf of the proprietors of
Transylvania, addressed them, much as a crown governor would have done.
The portion of his address dealing with the destruction of game is worth
noting. Buffalo, elk, and deer had abounded immediately round
Boonsborough when the settlers first arrived, but the slaughter had been
so great that even after the first six weeks the hunters began to find
some difficulty in getting any thing without going off some fifteen or
twenty miles. However, stray buffaloes were still killed near the fort
once or twice a week.[21] Calk in his journal quoted above, in the midst
of entries about his domestic work--such as, on April 29th "we git our
house kivered with bark and move our things into it at Night and Begin
housekeeping," and on May 2d, "went and sot in to clearing for
corn,"--mentions occasionally killing deer and turkey; and once, while
looking for a strayed mare, he saw four "bofelos." He wounded one, but
failed to get it, with the luck that generally attended backwoods
hunters when they for the first time tried their small-bore rifles
against these huge, shaggy-maned wild cattle.
As Henderson pointed out, the game was the sole dependence of the first
settlers, who, most of the time, lived solely on wild meat, even the
parched corn having been exhausted; and without game the new-comers
could not have stayed in the land a week.[22] Accordingly he advised the
enactment of game-laws; and he was especially severe in his comments
upon the "foreigners" who came into the country merely to hunt, killing
off the wild beasts, and taking their skins and furs away, for the
benefit of persons not concerned in the settlement. This last point is
curious as showing how instantly and naturally the colonists succeeded
not only to the lands of the Indians, but also to their habits of
thought; regarding intrusion by outsiders upon their hunting-grounds
with the same jealous dislike so often shown by their red-skinned
predecessors.
Henderson also outlined some of the laws he thought it advisable to
enact, and the Legislature followed his advice. They provided for courts
of law, for regulating the militia, for punishing criminals, fixing
sheriffs' and clerks' fees, and issuing writs of attachment.[23] One of
the members was a clergyman: owing to him a law was passed forbidding
profane swearing or Sabbath-breaking; a puritanic touch which showed the
mountain rather than the seaboard origin of the men settling Kentucky.
The three remaining laws the Legislature enacted were much more
characteristic, and were all introduced by the two Boons--for Squire
Boon was still the companion of his brother. As was fit and proper, it
fell to the lot of the greatest of backwoods hunters to propose a scheme
for game protection, which the Legislature immediately adopted; and his
was likewise the "act for preserving the breed of horses,"--for, from
the very outset, the Kentuckians showed the love for fine horses and for
horse-racing which has ever since distinguished them. Squire Boon was
the author of a law "to protect the range"; for the preservation of the
range or natural pasture over which the branded horses and cattle of the
pioneers ranged at will, was as necessary to the welfare of the stock as
the preservation of the game was to the welfare of the men. In Kentucky
the range was excellent, abounding not only in fine grass, but in cane
and wild peas, and the animals grazed on it throughout the year. Fires
sometimes utterly destroyed immense tracts of this pasture, causing
heavy loss to the settlers; and one of the first cares of pioneer
legislative bodies was to guard against such accidents.
It was likewise stipulated that there should be complete religious
freedom and toleration for all sects. This seems natural enough now, but
in the eighteenth century the precedents were the other way. Kentucky
showed its essentially American character in nothing more than the
diversity of religious belief among the settlers from the very start.
They came almost entirely from the backwoods mountaineers of Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, among whom the predominant faith had
been Presbyterianism; but from the beginning they were occasionally
visited by Baptist preachers,[24] whose creed spread to the borders
sooner than Methodism; and among the original settlers of Harrodsburg
were some Catholic Marylanders.[25] The first service ever held in
Kentucky was by a clergyman of the Church of England, soon after
Henderson's arrival; but this was merely owing to the presence of
Henderson himself, who, it must be remembered, was not in the least a
backwoods product. He stood completely isolated from the other
immigrants during his brief existence as a pioneer, and had his real
relationship with the old English founders of the proprietary colonies,
and with the more modern American land speculators, whose schemes are so
often mentioned during the last half of the eighteenth century.
Episcopacy was an exotic in the backwoods; it did not take real root in
Kentucky till long after that commonwealth had emerged from the pioneer
stage.
When the Transylvanian Legislature dissolved, never to meet again,
Henderson had nearly finished playing his short but important part in
the founding of Kentucky. He was a man of the seacoast regions, who had
little in common with the backwoodsmen by whom he was surrounded; he
came from a comparatively old and sober community, and he could not
grapple with his new associates; in his journal he alludes to them as a
set of scoundrels who scarcely believed in God or feared the devil. A
British friend[26] of his, who at this time visited the settlement, also
described the pioneers as being a lawless, narrow-minded, unpolished,
and utterly insubordinate set, impatient of all restraint, and relying
in every difficulty upon their individual might; though he grudgingly
admitted that they were frank, hospitable, energetic, daring, and
possessed of much common-sense. Of course it was hopeless to expect that
such bold spirits, as they conquered the wilderness, would be content to
hold it even at a small quit-rent from Henderson. But the latter's
colony was toppled over by a thrust from without before it had time to
be rent in sunder by violence from within.
Transylvania was between two millstones. The settlers revolted against
its authority, and appealed to Virginia; and meanwhile Virginia,
claiming the Kentucky country, and North Carolina as mistress of the
lands round the Cumberland, proclaimed the purchase of the Transylvanian
proprietors null and void as regards themselves, though valid as against
the Indians. The title conveyed by the latter thus enured to the benefit
of the colonies; it having been our policy, both before and since the
Revolution, not to permit any of our citizens to individually purchase
lands from the savages.
Lord Dunmore denounced Henderson and his acts; and it was in vain that
the Transylvanians appealed to the Continental Congress, asking leave to
send a delegate thereto, and asserting their devotion to the American
cause; for Jefferson and Patrick Henry were members of that body, and
though they agreed with Lord Dunmore in nothing else, were quite as
determined as he that Kentucky should remain part of Virginia. So
Transylvania's fitful life flickered out of existence; the Virginia
Legislature in 1778, solemnly annulling the title of the company, but
very properly recompensing the originators by the gift of two hundred
thousand acres.[27] North Carolina pursued a precisely similar course;
and Henderson, after the collapse of his colony, drifts out of history.
Boon remained to be for some years one of the Kentucky leaders. Soon
after the fort at Boonsborough was built, he went back to North Carolina
for his family, and in the fall returned, bringing out a band of new
settlers, including twenty-seven "guns"--that is, rifle-bearing
men,--and four women, with their families, the first who came to
Kentucky, though others shortly followed in their steps.[28] A few
roving hunters and daring pioneer settlers also came to his fort in the
fall; among them, the famous scout, Simon Kenton, and John Todd,[29] a
man of high and noble character and well-trained mind, who afterwards
fell by Boon's side when in command at the fatal battle of Blue Licks.
In this year also Clark[30] and Shelby[31] first came to Kentucky; and
many other men whose names became famous in frontier story, and whose
sufferings and long wanderings, whose strength, hardihood, and fierce
daring, whose prowess as Indian fighters and killers of big game, were
told by the firesides of Kentucky to generations born when the elk and
the buffalo had vanished from her borders as completely as the red
Indian himself. Each leader gathered round him a little party of men,
who helped him build the fort which was to be the stronghold of the
district. Among the earliest of these town-builders were Hugh McGarry,
James Harrod, and Benjamin Logan. The first named was a coarse, bold,
brutal man, always clashing with his associates (he once nearly shot
Harrod in a dispute over work). He was as revengeful and foolhardy as he
was daring, but a natural leader in spite of all. Soon after he came to
Kentucky his son was slain by Indians while out boiling sugar from the
maples; and he mercilessly persecuted all redskins for ever after.
Harrod and Logan were of far higher character, and superior to him in
every respect. Like so many other backwoodsmen, they were tall, spare,
athletic men, with dark hair and grave faces. They were as fearless as
they were tireless, and were beloved by their followers. Harrod finally
died alone in the wilderness, nor was it ever certainly known whether he
was killed by Indian or white man, or perchance by some hunted beast.
The old settlers always held up his memory as that of a man ever ready
to do a good deed, whether it was to run to the rescue of some one
attacked by Indians, or to hunt up the strayed plough-horse of a brother
settler less skilful as a woodsman; yet he could hardly read or write.
Logan was almost as good a woodsman and individual fighter, and in
addition was far better suited to lead men. He was both just and
generous. His father had died intestate, so that all of his property by
law came to Logan, who was the eldest son; but the latter at once
divided it equally with his brothers and sisters. As soon as he came to
Kentucky he rose to leadership, and remained for many years among the
foremost of the commonwealth founders.
All this time there penetrated through the sombre forests faint echoes
of the strife the men of the seacoast had just begun against the British
king. The rumors woke to passionate loyalty the hearts of the pioneers;
and a roaming party of hunters, when camped on a branch[32] of the
Elkhorn, by the hut of one of their number, named McConnell, called the
spot Lexington, in honor of the memory of the Massachusetts minute-men,
about whose death and victory they had just heard.[33]
By the end of 1775 the Americans had gained firm foothold in Kentucky.
Cabins had been built and clearings made; there were women and children
in the wooden forts, cattle grazed on the range, and two or three
hundred acres of corn had been sown and reaped. There were perhaps some
three hundred men in Kentucky, a hardy, resolute, strenuous band. They
stood shoulder to shoulder in the wilderness, far from all help,
surrounded by an overwhelming number of foes. Each day's work was
fraught with danger as they warred with the wild forces from which they
wrung their living. Around them on every side lowered the clouds of the
impending death struggle with the savage lords of the neighboring lands.
These backwoodsmen greatly resembled one another; their leaders were but
types of the rank and file, and did not differ so very widely from them;
yet two men stand out clearly from their fellows. Above the throng of
wood-choppers, game-hunters, and Indian fighters loom the sinewy figures
of Daniel Boon and George Rogers Clark.
1. The first permanent settlement was Harrodsburg, then called
Harrodstown, founded in 1774, but soon abandoned, and only permanently
occupied on March 18, 1775, a fortnight before Boon began the erection
of his fort.
2. The whole account of this treaty is taken from the Jefferson MSS.,
5th Series, Vol. VIII.; "a copy of the proceedings of the Virginia
Convention, from June 15 to November 19, 1777, in relation to the
Memorial of Richard Henderson, and others"; especially from the
depositions of James Robertson, Isaac Shelby, Charles Robertson,
Nathaniel Gist, and Thomas Price, who were all present. There is much
interesting matter aside from the treaty; Simon Girty makes depositions
as to Braddock's defeat and Bouquet's fight; Lewis, Croghan, and others
show the utter vagueness and conflict of the Indian titles to Kentucky,
etc., etc. Though the Cherokees spoke of the land as a "dark" or
"bloody" place or ground, it does not seem that by either of these terms
they referred to the actual meaning of the name Kentucky. One or two of
the witnesses tried to make out that the treaty was unfairly made; but
the bulk of the evidence is overwhelmingly the other way.
Haywood gives a long speech made by Oconostota against the treaty; but
this original report shows that Oconostota favored the treaty from the
outset, and that it was Dragging Canoe who spoke against it. Haywood
wrote fifty years after the event, and gathered many of his facts from
tradition; probably tradition had become confused, and reversed the
position of the two chiefs. Haywood purports to give almost the exact
language Oconostota used; but when he is in error even as to who made
the speech, he is exceedingly unlikely to be correct in any thing more
than its general tenor.
3. Then sometimes called the Louisa; a name given it at first by the
English explorers, but by great good-fortune not retained.
4. Collins, II., 498. Letter of Daniel Boon, April 1, 1775. Collins has
done good work for Kentucky history, having collected a perfect mass of
materials of every sort. But he does not discriminate between facts of
undoubted authenticity, and tales resting on the idlest legend; so that
he must be used with caution, and he is, of course, not to be trusted
where he is biassed by the extreme rancor of his political prejudices.
Of the Kentucky historians, Marshall is by far the most brilliant, and
Mann Butler the most trustworthy and impartial. Both are much better
than Collins.
5. Benjamin Logan; there were many of the family in Kentucky. It was a
common name along the border; the Indian chief Logan had been named
after one of the Pennsylvania branch.
6. McAfee MSS.
7. Boon's letter.
8. Richard Henderson's "Journal of an Expedition to Cantucky in 1775"
(Collins).
9. April 5th.
10. It is printed in the Filson Club publications; see "The Wilderness
Road," by Thomas Speed, Louisville, Ky., 1886; one of the best of an
excellent series.
11. It is not necessary to say that "corn" means maize; Americans do not
use the word in the sense in which it is employed in Britain.
12. McAfee MSS. Some of the McAfees returned with Henderson.
13. Boon's letter, Henderson's journal, Calk's diary, McAfee's
autobiography all mention the way in which the early settlers began to
swarm out of the country in April, 1775. To judge from their accounts,
if the movement had not been checked instantly the country would have
been depopulated in a fortnight, exactly as in 1774.
14. It must be remembered that the outrages of the Indians this year in
Kentucky were totally unprovoked; they were on lands where they did not
themselves dwell, and which had been regularly ceded to the whites by
all the tribes--Iroquois, Shawnees, Cherokees, etc.--whom the whites
could possibly consider as having any claim to them. The wrath of the
Kentuckians against all Indians is easily understood.
15. When the block-house and palisade enclosed the farm of a single
settler the "tun," in its still earlier sense, was even more nearly
reproduced.
16. Four hundred acres were gained at the price of $2.50 per 100 acres,
by merely building a cabin and raising a crop of corn; and every settler
with such a "cabin right" had likewise a preemption right to 1,000 acres
adjoining, for a cost that generally approached forty dollars a hundred.
17. In Mr. Phelan's scholarly "History of Tennessee," pp. 202-204, etc.,
there is an admirably clear account of the way in which Tennessee
institutions (like those of the rest of the Southwest) have been
directly and without a break derived from English institutions; whereas
many of those of New England are rather pre-Normanic revivals, curiously
paralleled in England as it was before the Conquest.
18. Boon's deposition, July 29, 1795.
19. Mann Butler, p. 31.
20. Henderson's Journal. The beauty of the elm impressed him very
greatly. According to the list of names eighteen, not seventeen, members
were elected; but apparently only seventeen took part in the
proceedings.
21. Henderson's Journal.
22. "Our game, the only support of life amongst many of us, and without
which the country would be abandoned ere to-morrow." Henderson's
address.
23. Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates or
Representatives of the Colony of Transylvania.
24. Possibly in 1775, certainly in 1776; MS. autobiography of Rev. Wm.
Hickman. In Durrett's library.
25. "Life of Rev. Charles Nerinckx," by Rev. Camillus P. Maes,
Cincinnati, 1880, p. 67.
26. Smyth, p. 330.
27. Gov. James T. Morehead's "address" at Boonsborough, in 1840
(Frankfort, Ky., 1841).
28. _Do._, p. 51. Mrs. Boon, Mrs. Denton, Mrs. McGarry, Mrs. Hogan;
all were from the North Carolina backwoods; their ancestry is shown by
their names. They settled in Boonsborough and Harrodsburg.
29. Like Logan he was born in Pennsylvania, of Presbyterian Irish stock.
He had received a good education.
30. Morehead, p. 52.
31. Shelby's MS. autobiography, in Durrett's Library at Louisville.
32. These frontiersmen called a stream a "run," "branch," "creek," or
"fork," but never a "brook," as in the northeast.
33. "History of Lexington," G. W. Ranck, Cincinnati, 1872, p. 19. The
town was not permanently occupied till four years later.