The first great stream of Western emigration after the Revolution
flowed into the region now included within the borders of Kentucky and
Tennessee. This territory was a neutral hunting-ground for Northern
and Southern Indians. The red men hunted over it, but did not live
permanently upon it or claim it as their own. The district, therefore,
was easier for the white man to settle than were the surrounding
regions in which the Indians had permanent homes.
The settlement of the Kentucky region really began several years before
the Revolution. In 1769 Daniel Boone, a great hunter and one of the
most interesting of American pioneers, left his home on the Yadkin
River, in North Carolina, to seek the wilderness of Kentucky. With
five companions he passed through the gorges of the Cumberland Gap and
reached the blue-grass region, "a land of running waters, of groves and
glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, and stretches of lofty forests."
[Illustration: Daniel Boone.]
Boone returned to North Carolina, but not to remain. His restless
spirit still yearned for the beautiful banks of the far-off Kentucky.
In 1773 he sold his farms, and with wife and children and about fifty
persons besides started for Kentucky with the purpose of making a
permanent settlement there. On the way, however, the party was attacked
by Indians--for even in this neutral territory the Indian was sometimes
troublesome--and Boone and his companions were compelled to turn back.
But the fame of the Kentucky country was now widespread, and its
settlement was near at hand. In 1774 James Harrod of Virginia, with
fifty men, floated down the Ohio River in flatboats, and, ascending the
Kentucky River, selected the present site of Harrodsburg as a place
for a settlement and built some cabins. The place was given the name
of Harrodstown (afterward Harrodsburg) and was the first permanent
settlement in Kentucky. The next year Boone safely reached Kentucky and
founded the town of Boonesborough. In 1775 Lexington also was founded.
"When the embattled farmers fired the shot heard round the world, a
party of hunters heard the echo and baptized the station they were
building Lexington." Louisville was founded in 1777.
While Boone and his followers were laying the foundation for a State
on the banks of the Kentucky, other pioneers from North Carolina and
Virginia were laying the foundations for another State on the banks
of streams that flow into the Tennessee. In the very year (1769) that
Boone visited the blue-grass region, William Bean of Virginia built
himself a log cabin on the Watauga River. Pioneers came and settled
near Bean, and in a short time several hundred people had their homes
on the banks of the Watauga. This Watauga settlement was the beginning
of the State of Tennessee.
North Carolina continued to let her Western children shift for
themselves, until at last for their own defense and safety they
organized as a separate State, and called the new State Franklin, in
honor of Benjamin Franklin. John Sevier, the greatest of the early
leaders in Tennessee, was elected governor of Franklin, and Greenville
was made the capital of the State. But the State of Franklin had only
a short life. North Carolina came forward promptly and asserted her
rights, and by 1788 the officers of Franklin were all driven from
power, the new State was dead, and North Carolina was again in full
control of Tennessee.
[Illustration: Kentucky, Tennessee, and Early Ohio.]
In the rapid and wonderful growth of Kentucky and Tennessee we see the
first-fruits of the Westward Movement. Here out of the wilderness south
of the Ohio had sprung up, almost overnight, two prosperous, populous,
well-organized commonwealths, States that almost at once could hold
their heads as high as the oldest and proudest of their sisters.