History of pioneer Kentucky, Part 1

Author: Cotterill, Robert Spencer, 1884-
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Cincinnati : Johnson & Hardin
Number of Pages: 282

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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02303 1690

REYNOLD GENEALOGY COLLECTION

GENEALOGY 976.9 C82

History of Pioneer 1 Kentucky

R. S. Cotterill

Member of the Filson Club, of the Kentucky State Historical Society and of the Bradford Memorial and Historical Association; Professor of History, Western Maryland College

1917 Johnson & Hardin Cincinnati

Travelers 125

412202

To MY WIFE

PREFACE

T HE HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY is submitted to the reader with many misgivings on the part of its author. As the work has progressed he has come to realize more and more clearly the greatness of the under- taking and his own deficiencies as a historian. Seven years ago, when this little book was begun, he had, if the truth be told, but scant suspicion of either. Perhaps the only good thing that can be said of it is, that the author has searched diligently for the truth and told it without prejudice when he found it.

The preparation of the book has gone forward in the midst of constant duties as a teacher, and this fact has affected the plan of the work. It was a State history that was first in mind. But the fleetness of time and the rarity of opportunities for research soon made it necessary to limit the period under investigation. It is the author's hope to carry on the history of the State in succeeding volumes as leisure, and the public, permits.

Most of the material used has been obtained from the Draper Collection now housed in the Historical Library at the University of Wisconsin, and from the Durrett Col- lection now distributed in the Library of the University of Chicago. Much of this material, especially in the Draper Collection, is in manuscript, uncalendared and practically inaccessible save after most patient searching. No claim is made of having exhausted this; a thorough investiga-

PREFACE.

tion would require constant effort over a long period of time, and this the writer was not able to make.

The author tenders his warmest thanks to his present and former pupils for their constant aid and encourage- ment. Except for the untiring efforts of Miss Bessie Conkwright the book would hardly have seen the light of day. For the faithful assistance of Miss Eloise Somerlatt in revision and proof-reading the author is entirely unable to express an adequate appreciation.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE DEBATABLE

LAND

BACKGROUND OF KENTUCKY HISTORY

PREHISTORIC

KENTUCKY

EXPLORATION OF KENTUCKY

4.2

THE SURVEYORS

TRANSYLVANIA

TRANSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA

KENTUCKY COUNTY

108

THE GREAT INVASION

129

GROWTH AND EXPANSION

. 150

THE YEAR OF SORROWS

177

THE STRUGGLE FOR AUTONOMY

. 198

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

. 229

History of Pioneer Kentucky

THE DEBATABLE LAND

B Y THE middle of the eighteenth century, the English colonies in America had grown, by means of wars, treachery and natural increase, from a few isolated settle- ments to twelve virile states. In the same age, the French, impelled by religion and lust of power, had extended their claims and sometimes their authority over a region many times larger than the mother country. But the Alleghany Mountains barred the western advance of the English, while the French had not the power, though not lacking the inclination, to settle the long reaches separating their villages on the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Gulf. There was left between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies a vast region claimed by both nations and occupied by neither. Through this flowed a broad river which the French, from its appearance and their own ignorance, named La Belle Riviere. South of this river lay in un- broken wildness, a land which had not yet suffered the habitation of a white man. Both French and English claimed it, the Indian fought for it, and no one possessed it. It was, indeed, a Debatable Land.

It was not, however, an unknown country. If it could be said of early Kentucky, as of ancient Athens, that it was as great as it reputation, it would have lacked little of perfection. Although inhabited by no tribe, hardly a warrior of the Ohio Indians but had visited it on war

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

was owing not to the poverty of the soil but to the cunning of red hunters. The Indians had early cleared away the trees from the land in order that the growing grass might tempt thither the buffaloes that roamed the prairies of Illinois and the west. Whether persuaded by this or by other causes, the buffaloes came in numbers large enough to excite the wonder, the admiration and sometimes the fear of the settler. The belief in a great desert existing some- where in the heart of America was a part of the creed of all orthodox men in colonial days. It held in the popular imagination the place of the El Dorado of two centuries before ; everyone believed in it and it was marked down in every map. It required, then, very little provoca- tion for an explorer to discover a desert. When the first travelers in Kentucky looked out upon the "Barrens," they were not slow to persuade themselves that they saw before them the Great American Desert and to name it accordingly. The desert character of the "Barrens" has long since been exploded, but it is interesting to observe that the idea of a great central desert in America is not yet extinct. Since the settlement of Kentucky, the desert has moved gradually westward, until at the present time it rests at the base of the Rocky Moutains in much dimin- ished awfulness.

But is was not alone as a woodland that Kentucky excited the curiosity or the desire of the hunter. The earth there, so said the Indians, was carpeted with cane even as the land of Virginia with the grass. To the men of the Yadkin and Shenandoah this was passing strange, and not a few of them were drawn to Kentucky to view the novel spectacle.4 Nor had the Indians reported falsely: the

4 Simon Kenton was led to Kentucky by the desire of finding the famous canelands. Collins, History of Kentucky, Vol. II, p. 443.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

4 Simon Kenton was led to Kentucky by the desire of finding the famous canelands. Collins, History of Kentucky, Vol. II, p. 443.

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HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

northern region of Kentucky lying along the Ohio was covered with the evergreen crop. Herein the cane grew wild and rank. At its greatest height it reached twelve feet and never fell below three. At times the stalk attained a diameter of two inches, and never were paths able to be made through the brakes save with the utmost difficulty. It was in these cane-brakes that the Indians fought their fiercest battles and prepared their deadliest ambushes. When the settlement of Kentucky began, it was in the cane- brakes that the settlers were most often ensnared. As Ken- tucky was divided into barrens and woodland, so was it divided-sharply-into hill and plain. The entire eastern region-one-third of the present state-was a "vein of mountains" running from northeast to southwest and half a hundred miles in breadth. Their Indian name, "Quasiotos,"5 has long been replaced by the Cumberland. They were in no case lofty nor difficult of passage, but from their eastern slope presented an appearance so gloomy that ofttimes the hunter had not the courage to attempt their real difficulties. But once safely over their ranges, a traveler might feel well repaid for his past privations by the prospect before him of central Kentucky. This was a region of rolling plain, covered with the now famous bluegrass and dotted closely with stately trees. Herein then, as now, lay the heart of Kentucky. The Indians saw in it their favorite hunting ground and the eastern hunters sought it as their heart's desire ; the first and firmest settle- ments were planted on its rivers, and it early demanded, and has since retained, the hegemony of the state. Along the Ohio and the Mississippi the plains fell slowly away to the prairie. A broken chain of hills ran through at

5 The name is so spelled on Evan's map of 1755.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

the north from east to west which, although of considerable elevation in some places, never approached the dignity of mountains.

Not the least beautiful nor the least useful of the features of Kentucky were the rivers. ' There need be no error in writing of these, since they remain in appearance, as in use, practically the same as in the days of Pontiac. There are the same shoals in their beds and the same jungles along their banks. Their currents are crossed not by bridges but by ferry boats which, even if not as old as those of pioneer build, are yet of very similar structure and utility. One of these rivers, rising in the eastern mountains, after many wearisome detours flows into the Ohio near its mouth. Among the Indians it was called the Shawnee River, but Dr. Walker renamed it the Cum- berland 6 in honor of the Duke of Cumberland to whose character the "amazing crookedness" of the stream bore a startling resemblance. Twin sister of the Cumberland is the Tennessee, which after beginning in east Tennessee makes many weird detours in that State and Alabama before turning to the Ohio. It was the Cherokee River in the same sense that the Mediterranean was a Roman sea.7 Somewhat to the east of these were the Green and the Salt rivers. The latter of these in early times was called Pigeon River. The licking was known to the Indians as the Nepernine and to the early settlers as the Great Salt Creek.8 It owes its present name to the multitude of salt "licks" along its banks. The Big Sandy River of today was the Totteroy or Chatteraway of the Indians. But

6 Walker's "Journal" in Johnston, First Exploration of Ken- tucky.

7 Treaty of Fort Stanwix in Documentary History of New York, Vol. I, p. 587.

8 Lewis Evan's map, 1755.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

the largest, the most beautiful, and the best known was the river now called the Kentucky. Among the Indians themselves it was a favorite stream, and the fertile plains through which it flowed were the favorite hunting ground of the red men. In the facile limestone soil its current had cut a deep bed and the banks in pioneer time, and even now, were clothed with the stately forest. Its wide reputation among the Indian tribes is evidenced by the numerous names it possessed. It was variously called Cuttawa, Catawba, Catawa, Chenoka, Chenoa and Mille- wakane .? From this last the indefatigable Dr. Walker evolved a name of his own, "Milley." Among the early settlers it was for some time known as the Louisa or Levisa River through a mistaken identification with another stream to which Dr. Walker had given that name.10 The tribu- taries and headwaters of the Kentucky rivers interlocked in a most remarkable manner. A map of Kentucky seemed a mere network of rivers. All rose in the Cumberland Mountains and all flowed into the Ohio. Portages were short and easy. The rivers were all alike distinguished by winding courses and multiple shoals.

The bluegrass of Kentucky grew from a soil that rested lightly upon deep strata of limestone. This was a rock easily affected by the action of water. As a result many of the rivers had cut deep beds for themselves and some had even sunk from view, existing for much of their courses as underground streams. The same causes had produced caverns and caves over the land in almost endless variety. Of these the most noted was Mammoth Cave on Green River. It was an object of awe to the Indians and, since its discovery by the white men, has ranked as one of the

9 Johnston, First Explorations of Kentucky, p. 63 (note). 10 A tributary of the Kanawha.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

Seven Wonders of the world. At its dark mouth the super- stitious Indian paused in veneration as the devout Greek before the Lake of Avernus. Generations gone, their mound-building ancestors had used the caves for a much more practical purpose in making them their dwelling places. Exploration has revealed in the caves many ves- tiges of their past life-their pottery, their clothing and their arms. It was, in fact, from their dwelling in the caves of Kentucky that the Cherokees gained their distinctive name among their Indian neighbors.

More tempting to the buffaloes than the long grasses of the barrens were the numerous salt "licks" that were scattered over the land. These were springs of salt water11 and derive their name from the fact that the game thronged thither to lick the surrounding ground so deeply impreg- nated with the salt. They were the great congregating places of all the wild animals : one observer reported that he saw ten thousand at the Lower Blue Licks at one time. It is undoubtedly true that they thronged to the licks in enormous numbers and literally trampled each other under foot in their eagerness to reach the salt. The ground surrounding the various licks are for many acres veritable reservoirs of buried bones. All paths led to the licks. Beasts of prey found it more profitable to await at the licks their intended victim than to hunt them down in the forest. Nor did the settlers neglect the methods of the beasts, whose instincts they in so large measure possessed ; the licks furnished them the meat and the means of pre- serving it. The licks were scattered all over the land but were more numerous along the rivers-one of which owes

11 Prof. Shaler asserts in his History of Kentucky that the salt springs are an indication that at one time the surface of Kentucky was below sea level, pp. 40, 41.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

its name to their proximity. The two best known, perhaps, were the Upper and Lower Blue Licks on the Licking. Both are now extinct. Drennon's Lick and Boone's on the Kentucky and Bullitt's on Salt River were, and are, springs of great power. The latter was the great salt manufacturing center in the pioneer days of Kentucky. Big Bone Lick in northern Kentucky was not so much a spring as a sepulcher. To the Indians it was from time immemorial the "place of the big bones." 12 When the first pioneers reached the Lick they found bones lying around it in great quantities and of gigantic size. They were the melancholy relics of a vanished race of mas- todons. These animals must have exceeded by many times the size of elephants and indubitably flourished when the earth was young. The Indians when questioned about them asserted stolidly that the bones had lain in that posi- tion since the beginning of years.

The game to be found in Kentucky was of such qual- ity and quantity as to render the land the favorite hunt- ing ground of both northern and southern Indians.13 The buffaloes abounded at the licks and on the plain. They fed and moved in large herds at fixed periods and by regu- lar roads. As they traveled the forests year after year from one lick to another, they made deeply marked roads through the country. On account of their huge size and the delicious savor of their cooked flesh they were esteemed by the Indians above all other game. The deer were not less numerous than the buffaloes and were hunted by both red men and white for the flesh and the skins. Bears were numerous, and with the panther, the wildcat and the wolf, were frequently encountered at the licks or in the

12 Lewis Evan's map of Kentucky, 1755.

13 Filson, Description of Kentucky, p. 27.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

mountains. Wild ducks and geese were abundant on the rivers and were "amazingly" numerous on the Ohio. Tur- keys, pheasants, partridges and parroquets were common, while the Indians asserted and the white man believed that there was native to the land a woodcock whose bill was pure ivory! Great owls there were, too, we are told, which made surprising noises. In the rivers were buffalo-fish and cat-fish whose weight often reached one hundred pounds. There were trout of thirty-pound weight, but no shad or herring. Beavers and otters were found in not a few streams.

The English race in America owes to the Iroquois Indians a debt which it has but tardily acknowledged and never paid.14 Living among the lakes of New York they formed for the colonies a conscious shield which the French, try as they might, could not successfully pierce. Had Champlain, instead of arousing their enmity, secured their allegiance, the war for Independence might have been fought against the fleur-de-lis rather than the blended cross. Nor was their power confined to their habitation ; like their Roman prototype, they conquered widely and ruthlessly. By 1750 there was not a tribe east of the Mississippi failing to acknowledge their pre-eminence, and but few that failed to bow to their power. They brooked no rivals ; many a rivaling tribe conquered was compelled to take the name "women," under which stigma they could initiate nothing of importance either at home or in the field save by express permission of their masters, the Iroquois. The pax Iroquois was of incalculable benefit to the English. Penn settled among, christianized and de- spoiled the Susquehannas, who dared not fight against the

14 Fiske, Discovery of America, Vol. I, Chap. I.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

will of the Iroquois; the Tuscaroras of North Carolina suffered without revenge a myriad of injuries from the white men until it pleased their overlords to let them take the warpath. Finally, when the human tide of settlers poured over the Alleghanies into the valley of Kentucky, it was into a country almost void of men. It was the hunting ground of the dreaded Six Nations ; their savage mandate had gone forth that no one should dwell therein. The fear of the Iroquois and the dread of their wrath had kept the land inviolate. Short hunting parties stole in and out of the state, but of fixed habitation there was little, and, at the time of settlement, none. So the early Kentuckians had no obstinate Indian tribes to subdue, but merely straggling parties to encounter or friendly Iroquois to cajole. When the Iroquois finally were compelled to choose between the Englishman and the colonist, the ex- ploration was too far advanced to be checked.

There were, in truth, in 1750 but three places in Kentucky where the red men dwelt. These were the ex- treme west of Kentucky, where the Chickasaws lived in savage independence on the cliffs of the Mississippi; a small section of ground opposite the mouth of the Scioto River, occupied by a Shawnese town ; and an isolated town in central Kentucky. The record of the last of these is at once the most interesting and the least known. In 1745, Chartier, a French trader, met and traded with the Shawnese Indians at the Falls of the Ohio.15 Setting out from the Falls in company with a predatory band of Indians, his company soon encountered two traders whom they despoiled of their goods, amounting to about £1600 in value. Continuing their journey southward, they set-

15 Draper, MSS. Life of Boone, Vol. II, p. 169.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

tled on a small stream that was afterwards named Lulbe- grud Creek.16 Here they laid out a town to which they gave the name Eskippakithiki. Though the town has long since disappeared, the present name, Indian Old Fields, preserves the memory of the ancient post.17 Dwell- ing in the heart of the bluegrass region and at a distance from both kinsman and foe, the exiled Shawnese pros- pered and grew apace. But after two or three years the warriors of the Six Nations learned of the trespassers on their hunting grounds. From that hour the life of the Shawnese was one of danger and fear; the Iroquois harassed them incessantly. The northern Shawnese mean- while sent reiterated requests for their wandering brethren to return to the tribe, but they were reluctant to leave Kentucky. Finally, worn out by Iroquois attacks, the exiles began their journey out of the land. Numbering four hundred and fifty, they traveled down the Lulbegrud, the Red, the Kentucky, and the Ohio, to the Tennessee. Ascending the Tennessee to Bear Creek they met and wantonly attacked the Chickasaws. That warlike tribe speedly punished and expelled the intruders, who fled to the Creeks of the south. In 1748 the remnant of the tribe took up anew the journey to the Ohio Shawnese. They tarried for awhile on the Cumberland River in Tennessee until attacked by the unforgiving Chickasaws. Reduced to two hundred and fifty they set out again down the Cumberland, having their women and children in canoes and the warriors traveling on guard along the bank. They reached the Ohio, but on account of the heavy rains were unable to ascend it. Stopping at the Wabash they were

16 Lulbegrud Creek was so named by Boone.

17 The site of the old town is some fifteen miles from the present town of Winchester.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

persuaded to join the Indians at Kaskaskia. After a stay here of two years they were, in 1762, taken home by the Ohio Shawnese. Eskippakithiki at one time was a town of considerable size. It was a market and a neutral meet- ing place for the northern and southern Indians. In the period of its prosperity and after its abandonment, it was visited frequently by white traders, among whom the rollicking John Finley was conspicuous. It was at Eskip- pakithiki that the venerable Shawnese chieftain, Black Hoof, was born. He accompanied the tribe on all its wanderings, and years afterwards when Kentucky was set- tled and himself an old man, he revisited his old home, identified its landmarks and related its history.

The Ohio Shawnese dwelling along the banks of the Scioto River possessed at its mouth on the Ohio a capital of a hundred houses. A portion of this was destroyed some years before the exploration of Kentucky by a furious storm that raised the Scioto and the Ohio far above their accustomed beds.18 The dispossessed Shawnese took courage to cross the Ohio and establish anew their dwelling places on the Kentucky shore. The new town was, in modern par- lance, merely a suburb of the old and the same name Shan- noah was common to both. The Kentucky town contained forty houses and the combined strength of the two was about two hundred and fifty men.

The Chickasaws of the region bordering on the Missis- sippi could hardly be called inhabitants of Kentucky; to the early Kentuckians the name embraced the land east of the Cherokee or Tennessee River.19 The Chickasaws were comparatively few in number, never having more than a

18 Gist's "Journal" in Johnston, First Exploration of Kentucky.

19 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in Documentary History of New York, Vol. I, p. 587.

HISTORY OF PIONEER KENTUCKY

few hundred fighting men, but their numerical weakness was more than overbalanced by their native fierceness and daring. Happily, their arms were never turned against the infant settlements; secure behind their river they ig- nored and were ignored by the settlers. Not until Clarke, in violation of all rights of friendship and fairness, at- tempted to place a fort 20 in the midst of their homes did they lift their hands. In the early annals of Kentucky there is much mention of the Shawnese, the Wyandots and the Cherokees, but the name of the Chickasaws rarely finds a place in its history.

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History of pioneer Kentucky, Part 1

Author: Cotterill, Robert Spencer, 1884- Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Cincinnati : Johnson & Hardin Number of Pages: 282

Author: Cotterill, Robert Spencer, 1884-
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Cincinnati : Johnson & Hardin
Number of Pages: 282