USA > Kentucky > History of pioneer Kentucky > Part 2
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To the impartial observer it would seem that two hun- dred and fifty miles of separating forests and mountains would have sufficed to prevent the quarrels and even the contests of the red nations. But no obstacle seemed able to restrain the Shawnese on the north of Kentucky and the Cherokees on the south, and in consequence of this Kentucky was crossed and recrossed by well-marked war roads by which the warriors of either nation sallied forth for slaughter or revenge. These roads, like the paths of the desert, were marked white with the bones of the dead. Beginning at Shannoah on the Ohio, the greatest of all these roads ran south across the headwaters of the Great Salt Lick Creek and the Kentucky and through the passes of the Quasiotos to the Cherokee country.
Along this road went year after year Shawnese against Cherokee, and Cherokee against Shawnese, unceasingly. From many regions this was the "common road to the Cut- tawa country." 21 Boone built his Wilderness Road for fifty miles along this highway of contention. Another war road ran from Shannoah to the Great Buffalo Lick and thence
20 Fort Jefferson.
21 Lewis Evan's Map.
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west to the Falls of the Ohio, passing Big Bone Lick in its course. From Big Bone Lick a warpath ran to the great war road and joined it on the crossing of the north fork of the Kentucky; thence it ran northeast to the Totteroy and down it to the Ohio. The continuation of this road northward extended to the northwest territory and even to the Great Lakes.
Much effort has been expended and great ingenuity dis- played in the various attempts to determine the origin and meaning of the name Kentucky. The honor of giving a name to the State has been readily assigned to each tribe that has in the past threatened the country and molested its people. Common sense would suggest that the name of a country might originate with its owners, or at least its conquerors, and the truth seems to be that although Ken- tucky was known by different names to the various tribes that desired and tormented it, the dominant and lasting name was Iroquois. The Kentakee of the Six Nations was easily corrupted into "Kentuckee" by the traders whose spelling was conditioned on a by no means subtle percep- tion of sounds. Nor has the meaning of the word escaped the imaginative powers of the etymologist. The school children are taught that it signifies the "head of the river ;" it has been said to mean "a cane land," a "middle land" and even a "dark and bloody ground." But the Iroquois Kentakee was in simple English, "meadow land" 22 and was a term peculiarly appropriate to central Ken- tucky to which region the name was at first limited. For a score of years the land was called indifferently "Louisa" or "Kentucke." How the latter name prevailed and grad- ually extended to all sections of the State is rather a mat- ter for the psychologist than the historian.
22 Brown, Political Beginnings of Kentucky, p. 10 (note).
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BACKGROUND OF KENTUCKY HISTORY.
TT WOULD have been well for the pioneers of Kentucky had the policy of the Iroquois served to destroy the peo- ple whose country their strength sufficed to subdue. But the various tribes that had claimed or possessed Kentucky had been but prohibited from the land; they remained on the borders of the country, constantly striking at each other across the length and breadth of it, and prepared for all their internecine wars to unite against any prospec- tive occupant thereon. So it came to pass that when the first settlers came into Kentucky, their entrance was op- posed, their settlements endangered, and their progress delayed by Indians who were no more occupants of the land than they. Therefore, for the better understanding of the history of Kentucky it is necessary to consider the loca- tion and organization of these border Indians and the source and character of the immigration which wrested Kentucky from their hands.
Kentucky from its very position was an object of attack to both northern and southern Indians. The Cherokees from their homes in Georgia and Tennessee had an easy, though long, entrance to the land over the Cuttawa war road. The northern Indians 1 from their greater proxi- mity were even more to be feared. These northern Indians usually acted together in a loose confederation under the leadership of the Shawnese.2 This fierce and unforgiving people had its homes principally along the valleys of the
1 Dodge, Red Men of the Ohio Valley, Chap. I.
2 Croghan in 1765 estimated their number at 300.
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Scioto River. They were by no means destitute of towns, and at least two, under the names of Piqua and Chillicothe, attained considerable size and widespread notoriety. The Shawnese were not a savage or a nomadic people. They lived in the land of their fathers and could boast of, and apologize for, more than the ordinary advancement of an Indian tribe. They cultivated with success the rich valleys of the Scioto; their abundant corn crops aroused the cupid- ity of their white neighbor and became in time of war the first and principal object of attack. They dwelt in sub- stantial houses and, after the settlement of Kentucky by the white man, came to possess considerable property in horses and slaves. Up to the last half of the seventeenth century they had dwelt on the banks of the Cumberland River in western Kentucky, and had given their name to that stream. In 1682 they fell under the sway of the widely conquering Iroquois and remained so until the down- fall of the latter. They were divided into many sections in different parts of the country, until finally in 1760 the whole people was united along the Scioto. The Shawnese, notwithstanding their nominal vassalage to the Iroquois, were of a warlike and enterprising nature. Ninety per cent. of the battles and outrages of early Kentucky might, with justice, be laid at their door. Their chieftains were as a rule men of distinction and often of great ability. The warriors though bloodthirsty in battle did not often avenge themselves on captives or prisoners.
The Delawares had by 1750 diminished greatly in num- bers, valor and renown. They claimed and were acknowl- edged to be the most ancient of the aborigines. They, like the Shawnese, were now under the power of the Iroquois and had even been forced by the haughty confederacy to designate themselves "women." They had been removed
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by the Iroquois from their primitive homes in Delaware and Pennsylvania to the lands north of the Ohio. There they were settled on the banks of the Muskingum and Tusca- rawa rivers ; in the solitudes of their new environment they gradually came to possess many of their old-time virtues, and at the time of the American Revolution their chiefs exerted great influence in the affairs of the northern Indians. They were, in general, inclined to peace with the white man and only infrequently were induced by the fiercer Shawnese to unite with them in their bloody forays on the Kentucky settlements. Their warriors numbered some six hundred and fifty and had, united to the usual bravery and cunning of the Indian, a very unusual sense of justice and fairness.
The Wyandots 3 were nominally Christians and lived along the banks of the Sandusky River. They were origin- ally of Iroquois stock and were called Hurons by the French. They were the bravest of the brave. In their expeditions against foes of whatever color or nation they abandoned themselves to the wildest atrocities. They were characterized by a perseverance and tenacity of purpose rarely encountered among savages. They alone of the Indians preferred open fighting to ambuscade and pos- sessed the ability to continue a battle even when heavily punished. The ordinary Indian war party while not lack- ing in courage was not steadfast in fighting if its own loss was of any considerable extent; the Wyandots fought to the last man and would not retreat. While they less frequently took part in the forays into Kentucky they never entered the State without leaving a trail of blood and lamentation.4 They were unconquered by the Iroquois and,
3 Simon Girty was an honored member of the Wyandots.
4 Estill's defeat and the slaughter at Upper and Lower Blue Licks were due to the Wyandots.
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though with heavy losses, had brought to an abrupt and inglorious close the conquering march of that people towards the west.
The Shawnese were the principal people that molested Kentucky from the north, and the Wyandots and the Dela- wares were their chief abettors. A few other tribes, how- ever, are worthy of notice. The Miamis dwelt along the Miami and the Maumee rivers. Their ancient name was Twigtee or Tawixti.5 They, like the other Indians, waged war with the Iroquois and were not finally worsed by them until 1702. The Mingoes were a mongrel tribe of Indians made up chiefly of refugees and outcasts from other tribes ; their main strength came from the Senecas of New York. They were a savage and vicious race but some of their leaders were men of much magnanimity. They dwelt in eastern Ohio. All these differing tribes lived lives of con- stant strife among themselves, yet on many occasions they showed themselves capable of laying aside their conten- tions and acting in close alliance. With the exception of the Wyandots they were all nominally tributary to the Iroquois. But the burden of their vassalage rested lightly upon them ; in most essentials they were free. They num- bered, perhaps, some fifty thousand souls.
From the south, Kentucky enjoyed comparative immun- ity from Indian attack. In fact the only tribe whom in- terest or propinquity impelled to warfare with the first Kentuckians was the Cherokees. This tribe, when immi- gration was first directed to Kentucky, had its principal towns in eastern Tennessee. They had originally extended much farther north over the Alleghany region, but had gradually been driven south by the Iroquois and Shawnese.
" Croghan assigns 250 warriors each to the Wyandots and Twig- tees. Croghan's "Journal," Early Western Travels (ed. Thwaites).
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They were of Iroquois stock and called themselves Ani- Yunwiya.6 Among themselves they were divided into three main divisions. Each of these divisions spoke a differing dialect of the same language. Though as a people the Cherokees were confined to Tennessee and Georgia, they asserted a claim to all Kentucky as well. Moreover, they sold their claim at various prices and at different times.7 While they made no attempt to occupy Kentucky, they were continually fighting for it and on its soil. The Shaw- nese were their great enemies, and the two rivals struggled without ceasing along the whole length of Cuttawa road. Yet for the most part the Cherokees respected their trea- ties and agreements with the white men. Occasionally they were induced by the Shawnese to bury their ancestral enmity and aid in destroying the Kentucky settlers, but it must not be forgotten that the white men in their relation with both northern and southern Indians were often the ag- gressors. For the rest, the Cherokees, like most other Indian peoples, lived in fixed habitations and subsisted from the fruits of the field. They numbered about 2,500 warriors in 1750. They fled before the power, and sometimes acknowledged the suzerainty of the Iroquois.
Among the standard American delusions, that one in which Kentucky is represented as a child of Virginia de- servedly holds a prominent position. A close study, indeed, of the older commonwealth will result in great benefit, inas- much as it will not fail to disclose how thoroughly Ken- tucky was not Virginian in origin, in customs or in ideals. Virginia's part in Kentucky's history will be found to con-
6 Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokees," in Nineteenth Report of the American Bureau of Ethnology.
7 Notably to Henderson.
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sist not so much in a contribution of settlers as in an oppor- tune abandonment of a very shadowy claim to sovereignty.
Inasmuch as the aspirations and the movements of a people are for the most part a direct result of their eco- nomic environment, it becomes necessary to consider the industrial conditions of those sections from which the popu- lation of Kentucky was supposed to be drawn. For the peculiar economic development of Virginia, thanks must be given to the intricate workings of the organ popularly designated as the brain of James I. To the casual reader, the settlement of Virginia appears less a trading venture than an exploitation of this monarch's weird theories of government. He purposed to apply to the distant soli- tudes of America the same principles that Philip II had fastened upon the populous provinces of Holland ; the very lives of the colonists were to be regulated by the royal hand. But three thousand miles of stormy sea separated the government and the governed; the early control of England narrowed itself down to a careful framing of laws, the execution of which was prudently entrusted to divine Providence. For this reason the early Virginians were blessed with abundant laws and few restraints.
The laws of King James would indicate that he was by no means prodigal with the lands whose possession he en- joyed through explorations and divine right. By a gift of fifty acres of land covered with forest and reeking with malaria, the London Company proposed to compensate the settler for a lost home, a perilous voyage and the pros- pect of an early grave.8 Moreover for each colonist he succeeded, preferably by fair means, in bringing to the new world, an additional fifty acres was bestowed. The land laws of Virginia, as of Massachusetts, had for their
8 Bruce, Economic History of Virginia. Passim.
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object a system of small farms. But the laws of New Eng- land were framed by a home government ; the early regula- tions of Virginia were made and administered from across the sea. In consequence, while the New England laws were for the most part obeyed, those of Virginia were easily evaded. The absence of a strong home government and the presence of an obliging land office, contributed equally to establishing in Virginia a plantation system and a landed aristocracy. A large number of the plantations of Tide- water Virginia were built up of tracts taken out in the name of immigrants who had no existence save in the fertile imagination of the planter by whom their passage was supposed to be paid. Ancestors and acquaintances long dead, and even horses and cows, lent their names toward securing additional land. Instances are not lacking of enterprising settlers copying from neighboring cemeteries the names of a generation dead and certifying them as bona fide immigrants.
In this way was the plantation system established in Virginia ; it was perpetuated by the cultivation of tobacco and the consequent use of slave labor. The succeeding gen- erations were content to hold their possessions intact, and so far from increasing their estates they counted themselves fortunate to placate their creditors ; for the large estates, cultivated extensively and by slave labor, became to their owners not a source of profit but of positive loss. Nor was this condition the result entirely of the kind of labor or the manner of cultivation; it was largely the result of incapable landlords. Probably never has history exhibited such prominent examples of incompetency and degeneracy as in colonial Virginia. For one hundred and seventy-five years the State was politically and economically at the feet of its aristocracy and in all that time it added not one
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respectable item to history. Year after year the planters fell more hopelessly in debt to their London creditors.9 The principle of primogeniture and the prevalence of indent- ured servants filled the land with "poor white trash" whom the very slaves despised. The descendants of this class, whom conscience or the lack of opportunity prevented from acquiring land, were as distinguished for their shiftless- ness as for their poverty. They sank lower and lower each generation ; by 1750 they had lost all initiative and were living in such misery as to attract the attention of con- temporary writers. They were separated from the aris- tocracy by caste distinctions and joined to them by a mutual depravity. The settlement of a new land by any of these was about as probable as a descent of the Iguorrotes on the planet Venus.
In Pennsylvania, as in New England, the small-farm system prevailed and for similar reasons. There was no land-monopolizing tendency as in Virginia and as a conse- quence no such sharp division into classes. Great wealth was as rare as extreme poverty. Slave labor had little part in the economic life; the labor on each farm was done by the owner. Germans, Dutch, Swedes, and Scotch-Irish (who were neither Scotch nor Irish), were attracted to its domain by its lack of religious dissensions, security from Indian warfare, and, particularly, by its incentives to in- dustry and opportunities for prospering. Its population was heterogeneous and its people varied. The people were thrifty and keenly alive to all chances for bettering their worldly condition. In time when the country became more thickly settled and the best lands taken up, the character
9 Bassett, Virginia Planter and London Merchant, American His- torical Association Report, 1901, Vol. I.
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and condition of the settlers enabled them readily to migrate to other regions.
One of the most important of the migrations from this region followed southward the great valley which lies be- tween the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies and is watered by the Shenandoah. The low ranges of the Blue Ridge had formed an impenetrable barrier to the shiftless peasantry and effete aristocracy of the Tidewater Virginia, so that at the time of the Pennsylvania migration the valley was practically uninhabited. Into this poured the wave of im- migration from the north as a mighty river seeking a new channel. Many remained in the valley and established there the economic system of Pennsylvania as distinguished from that of Virginia.10 These pioneers were in but not of Virginia. They remained essentially Pennsylvanian in thought and custom and had no part in the social and poli- tical life of the State. Such of her population as Kentucky drew from Virginia came from this section and not from the preponderant Tidewater. Kentucky, then, was the child of Virginia in the same sense that the Plymouth colony was a child of the Dutch republic.
But not all the Pennsylvanians settled in the Shenandoah Valley; many went still farther southward beyond the limits of the State into North Carolina. Here along the Yadkin and the Catawba lived a community that differed from the aristocracy of the eastern section of the State in the same degree that the valley men of Virginia differed from the Tidewater planters. Slaves were few, small farms were the rule, and everybody worked in the fields. But the soil along the Yadkin was far inferior to that along the Shenandoah and poverty was widespread. Each man,
10 Wayland, German Element in the Shenandoah Valley. Passim.
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for the most part, united in himself the occupations of farming, hunting and mechanic. They were a rough peo- ple and had little respect for authority ; the government was too far remote to be dreaded or even felt. But it would have, indeed, been difficult to find a more virile people than they. They were none the less independent because of their poverty ; their intelligence was as keen as their illit- eracy was widespread. They were far from peaceful in their private lives and their fearlessness in battle equalled that of the fiercest Wyandot. Driven to hunting for subsistence, oftentimes, on account of the barrenness of their farms, they were accustomed to distant and prolonged travels which missed exploration only in name. They were peculiarly fitted above any body of men in English Amer- ica for the exploration and settling of a new and hazardous country.
When the tide of immigration began to flow into Ken- tucky, it was from the Shenandoah Valley, the backwoods of Pennsylvania and the frontiers of Carolina, that the mass of settlers came. Despite the absence of Indian in- habitants, the occupation of Kentucky was a task demand- ing men of the strongest caliber. The settlers must need be men of the most rugged mold, prompt in action and enduring in defeat. There was a work to be done that no weakling could do. In the men of the Yadkin and the Shenandoah there was found a type capable of doing the work. So clearly did their fitness display itself in the history of early Kentucky that we are prone to designate them, in the phrase, that Filson applied to Boone, as "in- struments ordained to settle the wilderness." Had the settlement of Kentucky depended on the achievements of Tidewater Virginians, it would be at this moment a king- dom of red Indians and a pasture for wild buffaloes.
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In the settlement of a new land there are, in general, three motives that impel the emigrant. These motives are desire for riches, a wish to escape persecution at home, and a love for adventure.
But the men of Pennsylvania, of Carolina, and of the Shenandoah Valley had experienced nothing in the line of persecution beyond an occasional quarrel with the Quakers in Pennsylvania, or the forcible seizure of some property for tax. Indeed, the temperament of these men was such that in any instance of persecution they were likely to be the aggressors rather than the sufferers. Nor was the economic condition in their homes at all to be deplored. They were poor, but not paupers ; they held in their own hands the means, if not the material, of permanent pros- perity. As for the Yadkin men, though their farms were small they were not exhausted and would have richly re- paid steady cultivation. But steady cultivation above all things they could not in the nature of things receive. The necessity, as well as the love of hunting, frequently called the farmer away when his presence was most necessary at home. Sporadic Indian attacks added another element of uncertainty to farming. But the same conditions prevailed or were thought to prevail in Kentucky, except that the land was more fertile. So a removal to Kentucky by these men could have added neither greater steadiness nor security to their labor. The condition of the valley men and the Pennsylvanians was even better than that of the Yadkin settlers. Their farms were more fertile and their settlements more compact. They were thus less frequently called on to supplement by the spoils of hunting, the fruits of agricul- ture. Their location exposed them less to Indian attack. In all three sections free land could still be easily obtained. Only to a very little extent had the people become crowded.
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Notwithstanding this, the abundance of free land in Ken- tucky and the prospect of acquiring a new home at little or no cost, must have been a decided influence in attracting immigrants. This influence was stronger when the coun- try became more settled and better known.
By far the strongest motive in the early settlement of Kentucky and at the beginning practically the only one, was the love of adventure. The Alleghany Mountains were as great an incentive to the imagination of the fron- tiersman as they were an impediment to his movements. What lay beyond the blue haze of their ranges was a mat- ter of much mystery and pleasing speculation. From time to time itinerant peddlers or traders wandered into the valley and related wondrous stories of their adventures be- yond the mountains. At harvest times, on hunting trips, or around the huge fireplaces in the dead of winter Ken- tucky was the chief subject of conversation. When game became scarce around their homes the farmer-hunters could but cast longing looks towards Kentucky where, if there was any truth in report, was a kingdom of game of all kinds, from the wild turkey to the buffalo. The wide soli- tudes of Kentucky bore a special charm for those of the settlers who disliked the presence of many neighbors. To the pioneers the thought of wandering unrestrained through the silent forest, of sleeping under open skies and of liv- ing for indefinite time without human companionship, was so far from being terrifying that it was their ideal of exis- tence. They were the true hermits. Nor did the proba- bility of an encounter with the Indians detract from the charm of the western country. The attitude of the set- tlers towards the Indians was by no means so sentimental as that of many of their descendants today. Their opinion and their treatment of them is suggested by the name which
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