found quite different from what had gone before. They did not wander
about, as in the fall, but stayed in one place for weeks at a time.
Trapping was their chief occupation, and their object to secure the
furs of beaver, otter, mink, and other desirable animals. The rifle was
only used for the purpose of providing food.
They had plenty of tramping to do, for making the rounds of the traps
involved a journey of several miles; but at night they always came
back to the spot where their shelter stood and where their stores were
kept. This was called a “closed” camp, or a “half-faced cabin.” It was
made in the following manner: A log was placed for the back and two or
three logs along each side. These were chinked with moss to keep out
the cold wind. Boughs or poles were laid over the top and skins or bark
covered these, sloping down to the back-log. The shelter was open in
front.
When Indians were not to be feared, a fire was kept burning before
the cabin all night and the hunters lay with their stockinged feet
to it, their wet moccasins being hung to dry. The bed was made of
boughs covered with a blanket, or a skin with the hair on it. Except
in the very severest weather, this kind of shelter afforded sufficient
protection to the hardy hunters. During the winter of 1773-1774,
Boone and Hardy Goodfellow occupied such a camp during two trapping
expeditions which resulted in good takes.
With the approach of spring, conditions on the border became such that
Boone was obliged to abandon hunting and take up another phase of the
backwoodsman’s life, that of Indian fighter.
With the increase of population in the colonies and the corresponding
increased demand for lands, the border had been steadily pushed forward
towards the Indian country. The savages had gradually become alarmed
at the threatened invasion of their hunting-grounds and at the time
of our story were preparing to contest the advance in force. They had
shown many evidences of ill temper, but as yet no open declaration of
war had been made. There were frequent conflicts between small parties
or individuals of the two races and, in fact, whenever a redman met a
white the rifle generally came into immediate play. Now, however, there
were indications that the tribes upon the western border were preparing
to go on the war-path unitedly.
Although the backwoodsmen were a fine class as a whole, there were
among them some ruffians. In the spring of 1774, a band of such
men committed a dastardly deed that acted as a firebrand upon the
inflammable minds of the Cherokees and Shawnees. This was no less than
the cold-blooded and unprovoked murder of the family of Chief Logan.
Logan was an Indian of exceptionally fine character and peaceable
disposition, and the whites, no less than his own people, deplored the
outrage. The Indians were aroused to a pitch of fury. The tomahawk was
dug up; the war-pipe was carried through the villages; runners were
sent to recall hunting parties; and all the usual preparations for a
war to the knife were put in train.
The danger was, of course, greatest on the frontier, and every man and
boy who could bear arms was mustered into the militia. Boone received a
commission as captain and was given command of three stockaded forts,
in one of which Hardy Goodfellow served as rifleman. A few hundred
soldiers were distributed among the frontier posts but they were not
the valuable accession that might be supposed. The regulars always
proved to be much inferior to the Indians in forest fights. The former
were brave enough but utterly ignorant of the tactics of backwoods
warfare. In conflicts with the savages, one frontiersman was worth a
score of redcoats.
But before actual hostilities had broken out, it was found that a
company of land prospectors and surveyors were in Kentucky, with great
danger of being cut off and massacred. Lord Dunmore, the Governor of
Virginia, sent a messenger to the Clinch Valley with the request that
Boone and another should go out and endeavor to bring the party back.
Boone immediately accepted the dangerous and difficult task and taking
with him Michael Stoner, a backwoodsman of experience, started upon
the long journey without delay. “If they are alive,” wrote Russell to
Colonel Preston, the commandant in the Valley, “it is indisputable
but Boone must find them.” So, indeed, he did and accomplished his
errand successfully, having travelled upwards of eight hundred miles in
sixty-five days, including a halt of more than a week.
A detailed description of Dunmore’s War, as it is called, is not
necessary to our story. Suffice it to say that after a fierce
battle, in which fifteen hundred braves were opposed by a force of
frontiersmen, under General Lewis, the Indians were glad to sue for
peace and entered into a treaty waiving all claim to the country now
known as Kentucky.
Boone and Hardy, who had their share of the fighting, came through the
campaign without serious mishap. Before the close of the year they were
cheered by the opening of a prospect of pursuing the desire which both
possessed to go on to the fair land of Kentucky.
IV.
THE DARING PIONEER
Colonel Henderson plans a semi-independent republic--He employs
Boone to spy out the land--Boone makes a hazardous journey into
Kentucky alone--He locates the site of Boonesborough and after
six weeks’ absence returns--Boone gathers the Indian chiefs at
Sycamore Shoals--The Indians sell Kentucky to Henderson and his
associates--Boone with a small band starts out to blaze the way
into the interior--They are attacked by Indians and see buffalo for
the first time--They commence the erection of a fort--Hundreds of
speculators flock to the new territory.
The important part played by Daniel Boone in the settlement of Kentucky
was due to the extraordinary combination of qualities possessed by this
ideal backwoodsman, a combination which was not found in any other of
the pioneers who were associated with him. George Rogers Clark was
his superior in intellect, but Clark lacked Boone’s calm, even temper
and infinite patience. Kenton was as fearless, but he had not Boone’s
prudence and foresight. Harrod, Logan, Todd, and others were able
captains, but each was wanting in some of the qualities that combined
to fit Boone so perfectly for the rôle he filled in frontier history.
The men of the border, with their independent dispositions, were
extremely difficult to control. Even when imminent danger demanded
concerted action, they were amenable only to the lightest discipline.
If they followed a leader, it was not from any consideration of their
obligations as militiamen, but because they had confidence in him and
personal regard for him. These sentiments Boone excited in almost every
one with whom he came in contact, and his influence over the rough,
untrammelled backwoods fighters was probably greater than that exerted
by any other leader. In the time of dire danger and stress that came
upon the Kentucky settlers, when hundreds fled at the approach of the
storm, had not Boone stood his ground, the new country must have been
deserted.
The affection and respect which the settlers evinced for Boone were
enhanced by the fact that he was in all respects one of themselves.
Born on the border, of backwoods parentage, he was wedded to the hard
life led by the frontier people, and like most of them he was poor
and unlettered. There is much in his simple, honest character, with
its homely common sense and cheery humor, to remind us of Abraham
Lincoln, and it is not difficult to believe that Lincoln, under similar
circumstances, would have been just such a backwoodsman as Boone.
The high qualities which made Daniel Boone a natural leader among
his fellows were not lost upon men of superior station with whom he
happened to have relations. Colonel Richard Henderson, of Granville
County, North Carolina, had the highest opinion of the pioneer’s
character and ability. Henderson was a judge whose circuit included
the backwoods town of Hillsboro, and here he had frequently met Boone
at the time that the latter lived upon the Yadkin. In fact, there is a
tradition that Boone once saved Henderson from ill-treatment, if not
death, at the hands of a band of Regulators.
Boone’s descriptions of Kentucky had keenly interested the Judge and
ultimately awoke in his mind the idea of establishing in that wonderful
region a semi-independent republic, to be called Transylvania. Of
course, such a movement would meet with the disapprobation of the
British authorities, but active opposition was hardly to be feared in
such a remote part of the country. Three brothers named Hart who, like
Colonel Henderson, were men of means, associated themselves with him in
this romantic project. The defeat of the Indians in Dunmore’s War and
the subsequent treaty of peace seemed to open a promising prospect of
prosecuting the enterprise with success.
Towards the close of the year, Colonel Henderson put himself in
communication with Boone, in whose judgment and discretion he had,
as we have said, implicit confidence. The plan was outlined to the
backwoodsman and his services as prospector were readily secured.
Though Boone was not, perhaps, so sanguine as the promoters in
the ultimate success of the undertaking, he fully appreciated its
advantages as a preliminary step. He knew that in the past, the
dwellers upon the frontier had been left to fight their own battles and
manage their own affairs, with no considerable aid from the colonial
authorities, and he did not believe that they would fare much better
in the contemplated case with a corporation at their backs; but he
realized that the efforts of Henderson and his associates might have
a powerful effect in starting the settlement and he entered into the
scheme with hearty good-will.
Leaving Hardy, who was duly proud of the responsibility, to look after
the family on the Clinch, Boone started in January, 1775, upon a
solitary expedition into Kentucky. His ostensible purpose was hunting,
but in reality he was engaged in spying out the land for his employers.
He struck the Kentucky River near the Virginia border and followed it
to the site of Harrodsburg, which had been surveyed the year before.
Thence he took a diagonal course across the great valley to the
Cumberland Gap, and so home.
It was a hazardous journey, but just such an adventure as Boone
delighted in. He found a genuine pleasure in the solitude of the
wilderness, and felt safer when alone than with a companion whose
imprudence might lead him into trouble. Kentucky was the common
hunting-ground of several tribes and did not contain any permanent
Indian villages. There were, therefore, few savages about in the
winter. Perils of other kinds were, however, plentiful. Panthers,
wolves, and bears sometimes attacked lone men. There was the
possibility of becoming lost or, worse still, of suffering a crippling
accident. Imagine the plight of a man with a broken leg, lying in
the snowy wastes hundreds of miles from a human being. Such a fate
befell more than one scout and pioneer, but Boone accomplished his task
without mishap and returned after an absence of about six weeks to the
cabin on the Clinch.
When Boone reported the result of his observations to Colonel Henderson
and his associates, who now called themselves the Transylvania Company,
it was determined to entrust him with a task calling for qualities
of a different nature from those exercised in his exploration. It
was proposed by the Company to purchase from the Cherokees the land
which they decided on Boone’s recommendation to settle, and to him was
entrusted the matter of opening negotiations.
It should be understood that the Cherokees had no better title to the
territory in question than had the Choctaws, Shawnees, or Iroquois.
In fact, the last named had some few years previous transferred to
the British Crown all the lands lying between the Ohio and Tennessee
Rivers. However, the Company felt that its position would be
strengthened by securing some title, however shadowy, from an Indian
tribe, and the Cherokees were selected because they commanded the path
that would be followed by the settlers from the South in going to the
new country.
As usual, Boone accomplished his errand and in March brought twelve
hundred Cherokees to the Sycamore Shoals, on the Watauga River, where
the promoters met them and after considerable bickering struck a
bargain. It was agreed that in consideration of the payment of fifty
thousand dollars, the tribe should cede to Henderson and his partners
in the Transylvania Company all the land lying between the Kentucky
and Cumberland Rivers, and should allow them a free road to the region
through Powell’s Valley and the Cumberland Gap.
According to the general practice of the time, the purchase price was
paid in merchandise, consisting of cloth, clothing, guns, ammunition,
cooking utensils, hatchets, and ornaments. The goods filled a large
cabin but when it came to distributing them, each warrior’s share
proved to be small. One brave, to whom was allotted a deerskin
hunting-shirt, expressed his disgust in no uncertain terms. What a fool
he had been, he said, to sell for such an article his hunting-grounds,
where in a single day he could kill deer enough to make half a dozen
such garments.
Thus, at the outset, the arrangement met with the dissatisfaction of
the Indians. Indeed, before the meeting broke up one of the chiefs
warned Boone that he must not expect to effect the settlement of the
region without trouble. He pointed out, truthfully enough, that the
Indian chiefs could no more control their young men than the frontier
leaders could the hot-heads among themselves. The Cherokees as a
nation might, he said, be at peace with the Virginians--they called
all frontiersmen “Virginians”--and a few individuals on either side
wantonly commit some act that would bring on war. The chiefs could not,
he declared, guarantee the safety of emigrants upon the promised path,
much less of settlers in Kentucky itself.
This was not very promising, but it did not daunt the promoters, for
they had expected nothing better. All they had looked for from the
agreement was something that would give them a moral right to fight
for the possession of the land and entitle them to the countenance of
the Crown authorities. In this hope they were, however, immediately
disappointed; for the Governors of North Carolina and Virginia
denounced the transaction as soon as knowledge of it reached them.
By this time the colonists, and especially those on the borders, had
begun to treat the representatives of King George with scant respect,
and the Transylvania Company was in no measure deterred from the
prosecution of its enterprise by the proclamations issued against it
by Governors Martin and Dunmore. Boone counselled immediate action,
reasoning that the Indians might be expected to observe the treaty for
a few months and that by driving the entering wedge home before they
should awake to active opposition, much would be gained. In this view
the promoters concurred and again they relied upon their trusty agent
to carry out their designs.
In his expedition of the preceding January, Boone had marked a spot
for the first settlement of the Transylvania Company, and now it
was arranged that he should go out at the head of a body of thirty
picked backwoodsmen to mark a path through the wilderness to the place
selected. The party started immediately after the conclusion of the
meeting on the Watauga and arrived at their destination on the sixth
day of April. They encountered many difficulties on the way and were
more than once attacked by Indians, several of their number being
killed and wounded.
The point at which it was decided to locate the capital town of
Transylvania, as the colony was to be called, was Big Lick, just
below Otter Creek on the Kentucky River. The site was a plain on
the south side of the river, and as the pioneers approached it they
were confronted with a sight which to most of them was entirely
novel. Hundreds of buffalo occupied the destined ground, where they
were engaged in licking the earth for the salt with which it was
impregnated. As the men advanced, the huge beasts scattered in every
direction, some running, some walking, others loping carelessly along
with young calves skipping and bounding at their sides. Such a sight
was common enough in Kentucky at that time, but soon after the advent
of white men the great herds of bison moved westward.
The pioneers immediately commenced the erection of a fort and raised a
few cabins along the river bank, but it was long before the stockade
of Boonesborough, as the settlement was named, was completed. In the
absence of women, it was hard to induce the backwoodsmen to devote
themselves to measures of defence while such tempting opportunities for
hunting presented themselves. They were a self-confident and somewhat
reckless lot. Their first thought was to mark off a claim by a rude
method of surveying which entailed endless after trouble. Their second,
to pursue the game which abounded in a plenteousness far surpassing
anything in their past experience.
Before the close of April, Colonel Henderson arrived with a reinforcement
of thirty men and a quantity of tools and ammunition. In the succeeding
months arrivals were numerous from various quarters and by different
routes. During the course of the year upwards of five hundred men from
the frontiers of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina went into
Kentucky, but the majority of them were not settlers. Some were merely
hunters but the greater number land speculators or “cabiners,” as they
were termed, who ran up a shanty on a piece of land as evidence of
occupation and returned to the colonies in the hope of selling the
tract.
At the close of the summer Boone brought in his family from the Clinch
Valley and his wife and daughters were, as he proudly declared, “the
first white women to stand on the banks of the Kentucky.” Shortly
afterwards, several other families came in, and there were before
the end of September four or five settlements, the principal being
Boonesborough and Harrodsburg, about fifty miles to the west of the
former place. Two or three hundred acres of corn had been planted,
fruit trees had been set, and horses, cattle and hogs had been
introduced.
The settlers were for the most part of Scotch-Irish extraction, sturdy,
patriotic men, attaching themselves to the soil with a tenacity that
nothing could shake. In the struggle to maintain their homes in the new
territory they greatly aided their countrymen in the Revolution, which
was just about to break out. Indeed, they guarded the western flank
of the colonies and even carried the war into the Crown dominions on
the north. Among those who came into Kentucky in this first year of
its settlement were a number whose names figure prominently in border
story and in the history of our western march--George Rogers Clark,
Simon Kenton, the Lewises, Benjamin Logan, James Harrod, John Todd, the
brothers McAfee, Bowman, Hite, Randolph, McClellan.
During the latter months of 1775 the Indians gave little trouble and
many settlers began to congratulate themselves upon the prospect of
occupying the land without serious opposition, but in the closing
days of the year several attacks were made on the whites at different
points. These were the signal for the hurried departure of the timid,
and of speculators, surveyors, and others who had no permanent
interests in the country, making it apparent that in time of stress the
tenure of the land would depend upon a few bold spirits.
In order to dispose of the Transylvania Company once for all, we shall
anticipate the course of time somewhat. The settlers found many causes
of dissatisfaction with the Company’s methods of managing affairs, and
the declaration of independence by the colonies in July, 1776, made it
evident that a proprietary government could not long exist. Under the
circumstances, the settlers of Kentucky wished for definite inclusion
in the new republic and with that view they sent a delegation to the
Virginia Assembly praying that body to give them recognition as part of
the State. In accordance with this petition, Kentucky was organized as
a county of Virginia, with David Robinson as county lieutenant, John
Bowman colonel, Anthony Bledsoe and George Rogers Clark majors, and
Daniel Boone, James Harrod, Benjamin Logan and John Todd captains.
Ultimately the Transylvania Company was compensated for the forfeiture
of its possessions by a large grant of land.
But before all this happened, Kentucky had entered upon the stormy days
that earned for it the grim title of “the dark and bloody ground.”
V.
IN FAIR KENTUCKY
The settlers find themselves in a rich and beautiful land--But soon
learn that they must fight for the possession of it--A night alarm
on the border--How a woman and two children defended their home--The
stockade at Boonesborough--Two girls carried off by the savages--Hardy
raises an alarm and a party is soon in hot pursuit--Boone circumvents
the wily redskins--They are overtaken and caught unprepared--A volley,
a charge, and the girls are safe--Back to Boonesborough and a happy
reunion.
The country in which Boone and his companions found themselves differed
greatly from the gloomy, forest-covered region that they had left. Here
were extensive forests, it is true, but they were not so dense as those
along the Alleghanies, and furthermore they were interspersed with
stretches of fertile plain and valleys of succulent grass. Hill and
vale, river-bottom and prairie, timber-land and cane-brake, succeeded
one another in pleasing variety and offered the widest opportunities
for agricultural pursuits. Game was so plentiful that the settler
might almost shoot it from his door-sill, but this very abundance
induced to reckless and unnecessary killing, with the result that in a
few years there was an actual scarcity and more than once the little
community was hard pressed to secure a sufficient supply of food. The
wanton killing of game continued until recent years.
Settlers were allowed to acquire lands on very easy terms. An
advertisement inserted by Henderson in the newspapers of Virginia
stated that: “Any person 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.” The deeds required the holders of the lands to pay this nominal
rent “yearly and every year for ever,” so that had the Company’s title
been confirmed, a large portion of Kentucky might have been subject to
proprietary control at this day.
Having selected his land, the settler proceeded to clear it of timber
and brush and to erect upon it a cabin. In this work he was aided by
his neighbors, and himself stood ready to help the next comer. The
farms were widely separated from one another and were in many cases
situated several miles from the town or fort. Families lived upon them
in times of quiet and almost invariably in the winter, when it was the
habit of the Indians to retire to their villages. During troublous
periods, one half of the men were engaged in scouting and guarding the
settlement, whilst the other half tilled the ground. Often runners
would make the rounds of the outlying farms warning the occupants of
impending attack. There might not be a moment to spare, in which case
all the worldly possessions of the family would be abandoned and they
would make a hasty retreat to the stockaded village.