A large company will meet at the Crab Orchard the 19th of November
in order to start the next day through the Wilderness. As it is very
dangerous on account of the Indians, it is hoped each person will go
well armed.
It appears that unarmed persons sometimes attached themselves to
companies and relied on others to protect them in times of danger.
One advertisement urged that every one should go armed and "not to
depend upon others to defend them."
The frequency of the departure of such companies suggests the great
amount of travel on Boone's Road. As early as 1788 parties were
advertised to leave Crab Orchard May 5, May 15, May 26, June 4 and
June 16. Nor does it seem that there was much abatement during
the more inclement months; in the fall of the year companies were
advertised to depart November 19, December 9 and December 19. Yet at
this season the Indians were often out waylaying travelers--driven,
no doubt, by hunger to deeds of desperation. The sufferings of such
red-skinned marauders have found little place in history; but they
are, nevertheless, suggestive. One story is to the point.
In the winter of 1787-88 a party on Boone's Road was attacked by
Indians not far from the Kentucky border. Their horses were plundered
of goods, but the travelers escaped. Hurrying in to the settlement a
company was raised to make a pursuit. By their tracks in the snow the
Indians were accurately followed. They were overtaken at a camp where
they were drying their blankets before a great fire. At the first
charge, the savages, completely surprised, took to their heels--stark
naked. Not satisfied with recovering their goods, the Kentuckians
pursued the fugitives into the mountains, where the awful fate of the
savages is unquestionable.
Before Richard Henderson arrived in Kentucky Daniel Boone wrote him:
"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 frustrate the intentions of the Indians, and keep the country
whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will be ever the
case."
This letter shows plainly how the best informed man in Kentucky
regarded the situation.
What it meant to the American Colonies during the Revolution to have
a brave band of pioneers in Kentucky at that crucial epoch, is an
important chapter in the history of Boone's Road.
It is interesting to note that the leaders of civilization in the
West were true Americans--American born and American bred. It was
a race of Americanized Britons who pressed from Virginia to the
West. Hardly a name among them but was pure Norman or Saxon. Of the
twenty-five members of the Political Club at Danville, Kentucky,
which discussed with ability the Federal Constitution, all but two
were descendants of colonists from Great Britain and Ireland. Of
forty-five members of the convention which framed Kentucky's first
constitution, only three could claim Continental ancestry.
This race gave to the West its real heroes. In frontier cabins
they were bred to a free life in a free land--worthy successors
to Washington and his school, worthy men to subdue and rule the
empire of which they began the conquest. In the form of these sturdy
colonizers the American republic stretched its arm across the
Appalachian Mountain system and took in its grasp the richest river
valley in the world at the end of Boone's Wilderness Road.
Yet the road itself was only what Boone made it--a blazed footpath
westward. It was but the merest footpath from 1774 to 1792, while
thousands floundered over its uncertain track to lay the rude
foundations of civilization in the land to which it led. There was
probably not a more desperate pioneer road in America than this. The
mountains to be crossed, the rivers and swamps to be encountered,
were as difficult as any on Braddock's Road; and Boone's Road was
very much longer.
A vivid description of what a journey over it meant in the year 1779
has been left by Chief-Justice Robertson in an address given half a
century ago:
"During the fall and winter of that year came an unexampled tide
of emigrants, who, exchanging all the comforts of their native
society and homes for settlements for themselves and their children
here, came like pilgrims to a wilderness to be made secure by their
arms and habitable by the toil of their lives. Through privations
incredible and perils thick, thousands of men, women and children
came in successive caravans, forming continuous streams of human
beings, horses, cattle and other domestic animals all moving onward
along a lonely and houseless path to a wild and cheerless land.
Cast your eyes back on that long procession of missionaries in the
cause of civilization; behold the men on foot with their trusty
guns on their shoulders, driving stock and leading pack-horses; and
the women, some walking with pails on their heads, others riding
with children in their laps, and other children swung in baskets
on horses, fastened to the tails of others going before; see them
encamped at night expecting to be massacred by Indians; behold
them in the month of December, in that ever-memorable season of
unprecedented cold, called the 'hard winter,' traveling two or
three miles a day, frequently in danger of being frozen or killed
by the falling of horses on the icy and almost impassable trace,
and subsisting on stinted allowances of stale bread and meat; but
now lastly look at them at the destined fort, perhaps on the eve of
merry Christmas, when met by the hearty welcome of friends who had
come before, and cheered by fresh buffalo meat and parched corn, they
rejoice at their deliverance and resolve to be contented with their
lot.
"This is no vision of the imagination, it is but an imperfect
description of the pilgrimage of my own father and mother."