USA > Kentucky > History of pioneer Kentucky > Part 4
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ing of land companies for the utilizing of vacant and unsettled lands in the west. In the years 1748 and 1749 two such companies 1 were formed which, although failing of their main object, are of considerable interest from their relation to Kentucky history. In 1748 Hanbury, a London merchant, Thomas Lee, president of the Virginia Council, Robert Dinwiddie, later governor of Virginia, Lawrence and Augustine Washington, and others, formed the Ohio Company. They received by royal permission five hundred thousand acres of land between the Kentucky and the Monongahela rivers, and the privilege of settling it at their own risk. Their land was to be located in the western wilderness on both banks of the Ohio. In 1749 the Loyal Land Company was formed and given eight hundred thousand acres to be located indefinitely in the west, north of 36° 30'.
The Loyal Land Company, though the last to be organized, was the first to begin work. In the winter of 1749 they commissioned Dr. Thomas Walker of Albemarle County, Virginia, to explore the western country and report concerning its character. Dr. Walker began his journey in March, 1750, nowithstanding the bad season. With five companions 2 he set out for the southwest and entered Kentucky by way of Cumberland Gap. Had his movements been determined by a complete knowledge of the country he was seeking, he could not possibly have chosen a worse region for exploration. He named the gap through which he passed the Cumberland, and gave the same name to the Shawnee River which he discovered a little later. On April 23d, the little company had reached
1 Johnson, First Exploration of Kentucky, Introduction.
2 Powell, Tomlinson, Chew, Lawless and Hughes. The party was well mounted and took along two extra horses for baggage.
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a point on the Cumberland River some four miles below the present Barbousville. Here three men were left while Dr. Walker and the others pressed on in search of a better country. They soon returned in disappointment and found their companions had erected some cabins in their absence.3 The united company pressed on westward until on May 11th they reached a river, which from its banks of shelving rock they named Rockcastle. To the five tributaries of this stream were given the names of Walker's companions ; he, himself, modestly refrained from thus handing down his name to posterity. On Rockcastle River they made a four days' stop to make shoes for themselves. On May 22d, they reached the Kentucky River which Dr. Walker named the Milley. Then sore in body and spirit they turned their faces towards Virginia. They had entered the land the middle of April and left it the middle of June ; they had succeeded in traversing the worst possible section of the country and in viewing it at the most unpromising time of the year. They had caught not a glimpse of the Bluegrass. By chance, or lack of enterprise, they failed utterly to find the region they sought. No wonder, then, if when they reached Virginia they spread reports that were far from complimentary to Kentucky.
Much more fortunate was the Ohio Company in the choosing of an explorer, or the selection of his route. Their choice fell on Christopher Gist,4 a Yadkin man and a tried explorer. He was instructed to explore the western country as far as the Falls of the Ohio and to locate the Company's grant. Gist, in company with a negro servant, began his journey from Old Town on the Potomac, the
3 These may fairly be called the first cabins in Kentucky. The remnants of the old chimney is still standing.
4 He was a near neighbor to Boone.
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last day of October, 1750. He proceeded to Shannopin Town, the present Pittsburg, then through Ohio until he reached the Scioto River. He descended the Scioto to the Shawnee town, Shannoah, at its mouth, which he reached January 30, 1751. In order to ascertain the strength of the northern Indians, he made from Shannoah a wide detour of one hundred and fifty miles to the Twig- tee towns. Returning to Shannoah he crossed over into Kentucky, March 12th. He visited Big Bone Lick and secured for his employers a mastodon's tooth weighing five pounds. A few days later he reached and crossed the Licking at the Lower Blue Licks. An accommodating Indian had volunteered the information 5 that he was now within fifteen miles of the Falls of the Ohio, and that the surrounding country was infested by French and Indians. Whether to the Indian mind fifteen and one hundred and fifty are synonymous terms or whether the information was given in bad faith, Gist, at least, gave up all thoughts of visiting the Falls and turned his attention and his course to the south. He penetrated the Bluegrass, crossed the Kentucky and the Red rivers and from the summit of Pilot Knob, in what is now Powell County, looked over the wide plain of central Kentucky. After spending some time in viewing and exploring the land, he crossed the Cum- berland Mountains and returned to Virginia by Pound Gap and later proceeded to his old home on the Yadkin.6
The expeditions of Gist and Walker were similar, in that both had traversed a country desolate of men. But Walker had spent his entire time floundering through the
5 This information had been given him by an Indian at Shannoah.
6 Two years later, Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, suspecting the French activities along the Ohio, called upon Gist to guide Washington on an investigating journey.
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thickets and defiles of the mountains, while Gist had pene- trated to the heart of Kentucky. The Virginian had seen only the worst of Kentucky; the Carolinian had traversed the best. To Walker, the land was rough, infertile, abound- ing in venomous snakes and beasts of prey ; to Gist, it was a country of plains and a region of magnificent game. Walker's report was such as to discourage his employers and friends from further efforts to settle the land; the story of Gist incited the Ohio Company to fresh efforts and inflamed the already ardent spirits of his Yadkin neighbors. However, the intervention of the French and Indian war put an end to the activities of both companies and left Kentucky without a visitor almost for fifteen years.
Two years after the journeys of Walker and Gist, Lewis Evans of Philadelphia, made a map of Kentucky from in- formation he had acquired from the two and from traders. This map was published by Benjamin Franklin and was republished in 1755. Considering the prevailing ignor- ance of the western country and the astounding unrelia- bility of the traders' information, the map is surprising in its accuracy and extent. Although the English settlers of that day were by no means given to the reading of many books, it is highly probable that the Evans map fell into the hands of many restless spirits and excited their desire, while it increased their knowledge of Kentucky. But the only actual explorers of whom we have a record of visiting Kentucky in all that troubled time, were John Finley in 1752, and James McBride two years later.7 Finley was a frontier trader, trading back and forth with the Ohio Indians. From them he gathered such reports of Kentucky as to arouse in him a desire to visit it. In
7 Draper, MSS. Life of Boone, Vol. II, p. 164.
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1752, with three or four companions, he came down the Ohio in canoes to the Falls. Returning, he fell in with a band of Shawnese at Big Bone Lick. They carried him a prisoner to their post, Eskippakithiki, in central Kentucky. Here he was kept, probably not unwillingly, until January, 1753, when foreseeing trouble among the various tribes there assembled, he made his escape and returned home, destined to do much at a later time for the settlement of Kentucky.
There is little evidence that McBride really visited Ken- tucky. The story was that he, with several companions, came down the Ohio in canoes and landed at the mouth of the Kentucky.8 He cut the date and his initials on a tree. Nothing is known of his subsequent career, and for many years he was believed to be the first explorer of Kentucky, until the investigations of later historians. revealed the error.
The great French and Indian war, beginning in 1754, absorbed the interest and resources of the English. For nine years it was waged furiously over the wide expanse of America, from Quebec to Lookout Mountain. The French carried with them into the war their Indian neigh- bors of the northwest, and all but succeeded in detaching the Iroquois from their long alliance. While the war was in progress, and the Indians kept the field, there was little prospect of white visitors in Kentucky. And even when the war was ended and the French in yielding their dominions had pledged their late allies to peace, the com- pact was but indifferently observed on both sides. The Indians were far from liking their new masters ; they and the forest-loving French had many things in common, but
8 Filson, Description of Kentucky, p. 7.
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they differed from the English as the east from the west. Each race lived in constant suspicion of the other, and, as is usual, a suspicion of injury brought on the injury itself. For these reasons the exploration of Kentucky, which had ceased during the war, was slow to be renewed when the war was ended.
But it was not alone the attitude of the Indians that prevented, or at least retarded, exploration. Immediately after the war was ended by the treaty of Paris, the King of England issued a proclamation forbidding his "loving subjects" from settling or even possessing the lands west of the mountains. His proclaimed object was to keep the territory for the use of the Indians perpetually. But the English colonists had views far different from these and treated the King's decree with the same quality of reverence that they had shown to the earlier Navigation Acts. Even the commissioners chosen for drawing the line that should separate the two races deliberately dis- regarded their instructions, and instead of making the Kanawha the western limit of Virginia, they surveyed and induced the Iroquois to approve a line running down the Ohio and terminating at the Tennessee.9 This opened up Kentucky to the colonists, or at least gave them access to it as far as governmental permission was able to effect it.
It is necessary to consider one other event that bade well to close Kentucky permanently to the English. This was the war of Pontiac. Pontiac was a chief of the Ottawas and one of the many Indians who brooded sullenly over the changed relations of white men and red after the treaty of Paris. But while others were only ready to complain, Pontiac speedily prepared to oppose. He se-
9 Sir William Johnson and John Stuart, two royal Commissioners of Indian Affairs, had charge of the work.
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cretly and rapidly fanned the flames of Indian discontent, bound the jealous tribes together in a cohesive fighting mass, made and matured his plans with transcendent skill, and finally struck at the hated English such a swift and terrible blow that only three forts of a multitude escaped the well-plotted destruction.10 Even the Senecas joined him in his efforts. For the moment, the English power in America had more to dread at the hands of the des- perate Indians than ever from Frenchmen or Spaniards. But the qualities that had enabled the English to build up their power in the desert and the forest stood them in good stead now. They rallied and fought with unyielding tenacity and merciless power. After two years of such atrocities as perhaps America had never before witnessed, Bouquet penetrated the Indian territory with a force as wild, as ferocious, and as subtle as the Indians themselves and forced the reluctant tribes to peace. It does not re- quire a seer to conjecture, nor a prophet to predict that in this time Kentucky was by no means a Mecca for white explorers.
When the trouble was settled, one by one the explorers began to turn their course anew to Kentucky. In 1765 Colonel George Croghan 11 passed down the Ohio and traveled some little way into Kentucky.12 Like Gist fifteen years before, he visited and wondered at the remains around Big Bone Lick. A year later Captain Harry Gordon de- scended the Ohio from Fort Pitt and left in his journal some observations in regard to the Falls. Finally, in 1767,
10 This war is most vividly and accurately described by Park- man, in his Conspiracy of Pontiac.
11 Thwaites, Early Western Travels, Vol. I.
12 As an example of the vague geographical ideas current, it is interesting to note that Croghan, in landing at a certain stream, was uncertain whether he had reached the Kentucky or the Holstein.
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John Finley ventured again into central Kentucky and no doubt visited again the Indian Eskippakithiki whither he had been carried in 1752. This visit of Finley was to bear much fruit, for he, like Gist, was a Yadkin man, and on his return home he related his adventures with doubtless such embellishments as presented themselves to his Celtic fancy.
In May, 1769, the long-restrained movement of the Yadkin people to the Kentucky country began. John Stewart, Daniel Boone, Joseph Holden, James Mooney and William Cool, all farmers of the Yadkin community, banded themselves together to go in search of that famous but elusive country that the Iroquois called Kentucky.13 As the leader and guide of the company there went along the rollicking, roisterly, red-headed Irishman, John Fin- ley. Finley, who was at different seasons peddler, trader, farmer, hunter and explorer, had visited Kentucky at least twice before, and on each occasion had brought back with him manifold tales of what he had experienced there. He had made the acquaintance of Boone on the Braddock expedition and had greatly aroused the spirits of that ardent hunter by his reports of Kentucky and the game. The desire then kindled in Boone for seeing Kentucky had grown greater with the passing of years. He had already made one attempt to reach the land. In 1767 he had penetrated far into the interior of the Cumberlands, but failed to find the level land which Finley had de- scribed. While he was wandering through the mountains, Finley was actually encamped in central Kentucky; and when the latter reached the Yadkin and the two compared notes they were not long in resolving that another expedi-
13 Draper, MSS. Life of Boone, Vol. II, p. 173.
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tion should get under way for the land that Finley had vis- ited and both desired. The fact that it was spring and the season was at hand when hard work would be demanded by the farms made the plan for immediate departure a most welcome one to the men among whose virtues that of farm work was certainly not included. So on May 1, 1769, almost twenty years after Dr. Thomas Walker had entered Kentucky, the men took up their march for Cum- berland Gap, with Finley in the lead, pledging himself to - lead them to central Kentucky by the most direct route. They passed through the gap and pressed determinedly on through the mountains. On the seventh of June Finley made good his promises by bringing them to the top of a mountain overlooking Red River14 and pointing out the beautiful plain stretching out indefinitely to the west. Ac- cording to Boone's own account the little party was enrap- tured with the prospect ; they pitched their camp on Red River and abandoned themselves to joys of unlimited hunt- ing. Seemingly there was no end to the game. Boone had hunted over the Alleghany region from Pennsylvania to Florida, but had never found anything to compare to this. The men, and especially Finley, knew the reputation of the land for bloodshed and for carnage. But not even a sign of Indians was now to be seen in the land. So the men continued their hunting in all confidence while the days passed by as a dream. Summer came and went, and autumn passed, but still the hunters had no thoughts of returning. They gradually . moved their camp westward until they reached the Kentucky, for they all wished to view the beautiful land. So with their camp as a common
14 Z. F. Smith in his History of Kentucky, locates this camp at the junction of Clark, Powell and Estill counties. Without doubt Finley had piloted the party to Eskippakithiki.
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meeting place the party hunted and explored the land from the Kentucky to Dick's River. Nor was pleasure their only incentive to hunting; the furs and the skins of the slain animals would sell for a high price on the Yadkin and the members of the party hoped by the spoils of the chase to more than repay themselves for their neglected farms.
So secure did they feel against Indian attack that they began to separate into two's and three's for greater con- venience in hunting. On December 22d two of the party, Boone and Stewart, were suddenly set upon by a band of Shawnese near the old town Eskippakithiki. They soon found that the Indians were more eager for plunder than for bloodshed. Boone and Stewart were compelled to lead their captors to the hunting camp. Here the Indians found great quantities of skins which had been collected during the long hunt and these they proceeded to appro- priate with a satisfaction highly civilized. The business. completed, they released Boone and Stewart, leaving them enough food for their journey home and the exceedingly practical advice, "never to come back or the wasps and yellow jackets would sting them." They also relieved the hunters of all the horses they could find. But Boone and Stewart had no thought of walking home and, with empty hands, facing their insistent families. They has- tened to pursue the Indians and managed to recover five. horses. The Indians in their turn pursued Boone and Stewart and speedily recaptured them. The two were kept in close confinement for seven days by the exasperated Indians, but they finally succeeded in escaping and made the best of their way back to the camp. They found the camp deserted, and setting out with all speed for home they soon overtook their companions who had become-
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alarmed and decided to leave the country. Boone was more than pleased to find with them his brother Squire, who, with a companion, Alexander Neely, had come out into the "wilderness" and had stumbled on the party in the absence of Boone and Stewart.
Stewart, Neely and the two Boones 15 resolved to remain in Kentucky and resume the hunting, but the others made all haste home. After their late experience with the Shawnese it would seem that the hunters ought to have learned caution, but it was not long before the desire for game overcame all prudence, and they began hunting in pairs. In a few days Boone and Stewart again fell in with the Indians and only Boone escaped. A short time afterwards Neely disappeared,16 and the two broth- ers were left alone in the land. Not at all dismayed by the loss of Stewart and Neely they kept steadily at their hunting. The roving Shawnese were either ignorant or indifferent to the presence of the two hunters, for after the loss of their companions they were not again molested by the Indians. But a lack of ammunition threatened to bring to an abrupt close an expedition that human opposition had not been able to check. In this emergency it was decided that the younger brother should revisit the Yadkin and secure a supply of ammunition ; he was, more- over, to bring back if possible some horses on which they might convey to their homes the spoils they had secured. So at the beginning of May, 1770, one year after he had left his "peaceful habitation" on the Yadkin, Daniel Boone was left alone in the Kentucky country. Three months were consumed by Squire Boone on his overland journey.
15 Finley went to Pennsylvania, and here disappears from history. 16 The skeleton of Neely was found long afterwards in a hollow tree.
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Yet, though alone in the wilderness, Daniel was anything but unhappy. After the loneliness of the first few days had passed he found more pleasure even than before in his hunting and exploring. He roamed far enough north- ward to get a view of the Ohio River and penetrated to the Salt and Green rivers in the southwest. Many times he was alarmed by the indications of Indians, but never failed to avoid them. Moving with incessant caution. changing his camp every night, and sleeping in the dens- est canebrakes, he for three months performed the unique feat of roaming undetected in a country infested by hostile people. Squire Boone returned in July and the two met at their old camp on the twenty-seventh of the month. Warned by increasing signs of the Indians, they aban- doned central Kentucky and traveled to the Cumberland River. Here they found game in such abundance that their ammunition was again shortly exhausted and Squire Boone, in the autumn of 1770, again made the trip to the Yadkin for another supply. Daniel remain behind, evidently in no hurry to return to his neglected farm and family.
But the two Boones after all had not been alone in Kentucky. In the spring of 1770 a company of forty men, gathered from the Holstein, the Clinch and the New River regions, set out across the mountains and through Cumberland Gap for the Kentucky hunting grounds. In Wayne County, six miles from the present Monticello, the party pitched camp and scattered in different directions in pursuit of the abundant game. Every five weeks, so they agreed, they were to meet and deposit their spoils at the common camp. But the adventurous spirits of the men soon nullified the arrangement. Ten of the men con- structed rude boats and loading them with skins traveled down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Mississippi to
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the Spanish Natchez, whence after selling their spoils they returned home; others for various reasons recrossed the mountains and a few perished. A band of nine led by James Knox, had previous to this, separated from the others and pushed on toward central Kentucky. Not far from Laurel River they encountered a band of Cherokees ; the leader of the Indians was recognized through a slight deformity by one of the white men and was saluted as "Captain Dick." The flattered chieftain directed the party to his own river, Dick's River, where they might find abundant game, kill and go home. The white men obeyed the first two injunctions as implicitly as they neglected the last. They spent some time on Dick's River and gradually moved westward to the Green River. Here they erected a "skin house" on Caney Creek and speedily set about filling it. They were apparently alone in the coun- try. Their surprise, then, can be conjectured when one day while encamped they heard not far away in the forest a voice raised in what was probably meant to be song. Cautiously approaching they saw a white man stretched full length on the ground singing with the full strength of a pair of lungs which had evidently been fashioned for other purposes. It was Daniel Boone,17 who with rare recklessness was giving himself up to the pleasure of his own music in entire forgetfulness of Indians and all things hostile. Squire Boone, who had returned from his second trip to the Yadkin, soon joined the party. The meeting occurred in February, 1771, and they all hunted together until March, when the two brothers finally set out for home after an absence of two years. They reached Cumberland Gap with their pack horses laden with pelfries.
17 Draper, MSS. Life of Boone, Vol. III, p. 64.
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Here the Cherokees met them and with grim humor re- lieved them of their burden. So the two brothers after two years of hardship and danger, having collected a small fortune twice and lost it, returned home empty handed to their families.
Knox and his companions joined by twelve others, some of whom were their late comrades on the Cumberland, con- tinued their hunting along the Green River until the cap- ture of two of the party caused the others to hastily abandon the locality. Returning after two months they found their dogs gone wild and their "skin house" de- spoiled. One of the party, named Bledsoe, with a unique capacity for forceful and expressive English, carved on a convenient tree the laconic inscription, "2300 deer skins lost. Ruination, by God." The hunters persevered in establishing another depot only to have it plundered by the Cherokees, who seemed to regard the despoiling of other people's property as a part of their manifest des- tiny. This latter disaster lent sudden popularity to the idea of a return home, and late in 1772 the hunters re- turned to their own people, to be greeeted as the "Long Hunters," and to contribute by their stories to the increas- ing desire for Kentucky.
Twenty-two years had passed since Dr. Walker had traveled through the mountains of Kentucky. In this time many people had passed the mountains and had roamed with delight through the heart of Kentucky; yet at the close of the period there was not a single habitation nor a solitary white man in the land. But the period had been a time of exploration rather than of settlement; the men who had been in the land had come thither for game. With this idea they had taken every risk and had endured every hardship. But in their wandering throughout the
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