USA > Kentucky > History of pioneer Kentucky > Part 5
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land they insensibly fell under the spell of the beauty that had thrice lured John Finley from his home. When they compared the abundant game, the fertile soil, the level land, and the beautiful rivers with the region of their home, they could but form the desire to enter into and possess the land. And so it came to pass that the Boones and the Long Hunters, notwithstanding they had suffered much in their hunting and had been ultimately robbed of the profit of it, on returning home began straightway to make plans for settling the land. Nor they alone: the stories of the country and their adventures therein had aroused the entire Yadkin people. All other thoughts and plans were put aside; their farms and even their hunting were allowed to suffer while the community made ready for the new promised land. At the opening of 1773 the Yadkin people resembled for all the world a mighty river held momentarily in check by the dam of the Cumberlands.
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THE SURVEYORS.
K ENTUCKY, however, was not ready for settlement. After the Boones and the Long Hunters had left the land there came in as a prelude to settlement, men of a more prosaic and practical profession than the pictur- esque hunters and adventurers who preceded them. These were the surveyors. Sent by the State of Virginia, they traveled up and down Kentucky, surveying the lands for record and laying out imaginary towns and cities in almost every valley. They were practical men and were con- cerned primarily with the land and its fertility. The beau- tiful forests, the wide plains, and the abounding game meant little or nothing to them. They formed, as it were, the skirmish line of the army of actual settlers that from 1775 came into Kentucky.
Mention has already been made of the benevolent decree issued by the King of England in 1763. It set apart for the Indians and the royal fur trade all the western region gained by the treaty of Paris. But the colonials who had fought the French and Indians and had been prom- ised bounty lands therefor, desired to have them located nowhere so much as in this western wilderness. Moreover, the sympathies of all classes in America were with the old soldiers. Long practice had rendered them adepts at dis- regarding royal regulations. They speedily and unani- mously decided that the King's decree was properly to be interpreted merely as a document to soothe the ruffled feel- ings of the Indians, but was by no means to be taken seriously as a guide for Anglo-Saxon conduct. The patroons of New York, the burgesses of Virginia, and the
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peasants of the Yadkin turned to the west with a prompt- ness highly suggestive of colonial capacity for ignoring the kingly will. Washington sent confidential agents at once to survey for him the best lands they could find. Governor Dunmore dispatched official surveyors to cement Virginia's shadowy claim to the land, and the King's own commissioner at Fort Stanwix in 1768, in express dis- obedience of the King, induced the Iroquois first to claim and then to cede to the King the entire region between the Ohio and the Tennessee. In this arrangement the King sullenly acquiesced.
In May, 1773, a party of surveyors, headed by Captain Bullitt and including James Harrod, were sent out by Governor Dunmore to survey in Kentucky the bounty lands for Virginia soldiers. . Bullitt began his journey from Fort Pitt and descended the Ohio in canoes. At the mouth of the Kanawha they met a company whose leading spirits were the three McAfee brothers, James, George and Robert. These had come from Botecourt County, Vir- ginia, across the mountains to the Kanawha and there meeting Hancock Taylor and others by agreement, they had all come on down the river to the Ohio. Here at the mouth of the Kanawha, Bullitt separated from the others and journeyed into the interior of the Ohio country to visit the Miamis who, it was feared, might have a natural reluctance to see the Iroquois cede away the Kentucky lands claimed by themselves. He reached Old Chillicothe unnoticed and demanded a conference with the surprised red men. In this conference, after many metaphors1 and no little juggling with the facts, he induced the Miamis to consent in consideration of prospective presents, to the
1 His speech is given in full in Marshall, History of Kentucky, Vol. I, p. 34.
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occupation of Kentucky by the white men. Much pleased with himself, he returned to the Ohio and rejoined his companions at Limestone Creek.2 His journey had con- sumed thirteen days.
The united company spent several days in the vicinity of Limestone Creek.3 They surveyed several tracts of land and laid off a section in town lots. Moving gradually down the Ohio, they discovered and named Bracken and Wilper's creeks after two of the party. At the mouth of the latter creek, Robert McAfee parted from his com- panions for an exploring expedition. He journeyed south- ward until he came to the Licking and down it to the forks.4 Here, after making some surveys, he abandoned the river and again journed overland to the Ohio. Finding his company gone past he hastily built a canoe and overtook them at the mouth of the Licking. Here Doug- lass, a surveyor, was left behind to make surveys while the others drifted on down the Ohio. At the mouth of the Big Miami, Hite with six men joined them and the entire party began to give their attention to finding Big Bone Lick of which they had heard much both from Indian and white man. In the night they passed Big Bone Creek without knowing it and only discovered their mis- take when they were ten miles below. Marching back they found the Lick and spent the Fourth of July there. They used the ribs of the mastodons for tent poles and the heads for chairs. They observed with wonder and awe the mighty skeletons that lay strewn around the spring, and the swarming thousands of animals that came there to drink. Here, on July 7th, the McAfee party left Bul-
2 This was the site of the future Maysville, which in colonial days bore the name Limestone.
3 The McAfee "Journals" in the Woods-McAfee Memorial.
4 The site of the modern Falmouth.
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litt and his company, and moving down the Ohio soon reached the mouth of the Kentucky. They rowed up the river twenty miles until they came to a salt lick where they went ashore to get a closer view of the game throng- ing around. Here they came upon one of their late com- panions who, profiting by the information received from a Delaware Indian at Big Bone Lick, had followed an Indian trail to this place and quietly preempted the best location, much to the indignation of the McAfees. Nevertheless they called the lick Drennon's, for the man.
After a week's delay at Drennon's Lick the company moved on up the Kentucky, surveying as they went. Fol- lowing a buffalo trail they crossed the river where Lees- town was later built and turning to the west soon found themselves on Salt River, which they promptly christened Crooked Creek. July 31st, after having surveyed some fifteen thousand acres of land, the party began their journey home.5 They crossed Dick's and the Kentucky rivers, and crossing the mountains after great hardships passed through Cumberland Gap and thence home.
Meanwhile Bullitt and his men had moved down the Ohio the day after McAfee, and had encamped at the Falls. For six weeks between this place and Salt River the men, having been joined by the three surveyors of the McAfee party, were busily engaged in surveying and locating new land. In August Bullitt himself surveyed the tract where Louisville now stands and marked it off in town lots. The men were charmed with the appearance and fertility of the region ; they resolved to return home and prepare for a permanent settlement in the land. Fortune, however, prevented the carrying out of their resolution.
" Taylor, Bracken and Drennon joined Bullitt at the Falls.
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The surveyors and the adventurers that had made up the companies of Bullitt and McAfee had been fortunate in entering Kentucky and successful in traversing it;6 a far different fate was in store for the men from the south. The reports of the Boones and the Long Hunters had not failed of results. The Yadkin men were preparing to move on to Kentucky. With the elder Boone as their leader, they collected in September, 1773, six families of neighbors and began the journey to Kentucky. It was not a party of hunters or surveyors ; it was a migration of settlers. Women and children were along; the pack horses were laden heavily with the baggage to be used in their new homes. Their cattle were driven before them, even as when the Massachusetts' congregation overflowed into the valley of the Connecticut. In Powell's Valley Boone was joined by forty men. The company, now swelled to formidable power, moved on and encamped at Cumberland Gap on the brink of Kentucky. But it so happened that in the rear of the main body were a few 7 with whom Boone wished to communicate. He dispatched his son James with two men to meet them and secure flour. On his return with several companions, young Boone missed the trail and was compelled to encamp for the night some three miles from his father. At daybreak the camp was sur- prised by the Shawnese and all slain except one laborer and a negro slave. Boone and his men on hearing the firing hastened up, but was too late for all but the melan- choly task of burying the dead. As a consequence of this inauspicious beginning, the majority, of which Boone was not one, were clamorous to return to safer fields. The
6 It was in 1773 that Kenton came down the Ohio seeking the cane lands. Draper, MSS. Life of Boone, Vol. III, p. 108.
7 These were the Bryans into which family Boone had married.
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long growing desire for Kentucky had received a rude check. The entire band retreated forty miles into the Clinch Valley and passed the winter there. So failed the first concerted effort of the Yadkin people to settle Ken- tucky. An Indian war was soon to demand their energies.
With the coming of spring the rush of surveyors to Kentucky began anew. The people, or at least the offi- cials, of Virginia did not consider that in losing their royal charter they had also lost the rights therein granted. To their minds the Old Dominion continued to extend to the indefinite west, widening its domain as its length was increased. Fincastle County, as the westernmost organ- ized section of Virginia, claimed and asserted jurisdiction over the transmontane west. Of this county Colonel Wil- liam Preston was official surveyor and under him as deputies were John Floyd, James Douglass and Hancock Taylor.8 In May, 1774, Preston sent all three to Kentucky to con- tinue the locating of the bounty lands. Floyd made his first surveys in eastern Kentucky and extended his labors over the central and the northern parts as far west as the Falls. Douglass began on Licking River and later moved into the same region as Floyd. Taylor confined his efforts to the Kentucky River region, and in the midst of his work was wounded by the prowling Shawnese and found a speedy grave in Madison County.
Of much more importance than any of these was the well-nigh successful attempt of James Harrod 9 to found a settlement in central Kentucky. In May, Harrod at the head of thirty-one men came from his home in Virginia down the Monongahela River to the Ohio and down that
8 Douglass and Taylor had both been members of the Bullitt- McAfee party.
9 Harrod had been a valued companion of Bullitt in 1773.
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stream to the mouth of the Kentucky. This they then ascended to Oregon Creek ; they journeyed across to Salt River, whence they proceeded to where Harrodsburg now stands.10 Within two weeks Isaac Hite joined them with eleven men. Rendezvousing near the Big Spring, east of Harrodsburg, the men proceeded with great alacrity to locate and select by lot places suitable for building cabins. The vicinities of Danville, Boiling Springs, Big Spring, and Harrodsburg were surveyed and appropriated. Har- rodsburg, then called Harrodstown, was named and laid off as a town, each man receiving two lots, one of one-half acres and the other of ten acres. Some land was cleared and a corn crop raised by an enterprising settler. Yet the company did not escape unscathed the ubiquitous Indians ; a few men while separated from the others were ambuscaded and one killed. Two of the others set out straightway for home and a fourth man 11 alone reached camp and told the news.
Notice has already been taken of the French and Indian War and of the conspiracy of Pontiac in their relation to the exploration of Kentucky. The crushing of Pontiac had left the northern Indians nominally subdued. But their surrender was a sullen one and the white frontiers- men found the condition of peace much more terrible than war, for the red men saw with lowering brow the steady, lawless, irresistible march of the English to the west. Nor was this all; the passions engendered by a half century of conflict raged wildly in both red man and white. Forays and reprisals were frequent on either side. Complaint and upbraidings speedily followed. White men living on the frontier forgot their heritage and gave themselves up
10 Collins, History of Kentucky, Vol. II, p. 517.
11 John Harmon.
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to the wildest passions. A hunter on the Kanawha having a favorite dog stolen straightway suspected an Indian and murdered both him and his squaw; many an event fully as trifling served to bring the exasperated savage to the warpath.12 Wherever white men met red in this piping time of peace there followed quarrels and blows, the slay- ing of women and children, the burning of cabins, and the sacking of Indian villages. It was evident, even to the most peaceful, that the Indian war must be fought anew.
Politics insinuated itself into the question and compli- cated it. The Indians faced the frontiers of both Penn- sylvania and Virginia. But their relations with the two were far from similar. With the Pennsylvanians they were sincerely and justly at peace,13 for the Quakers were scrupulous in their dealings with them. But Virginia from the beginning recognized or respected no rights inherent under a red skin. The Virginia men, moreover, were filled with a lust for new land. They were constantly encroach- ing, always moving forward. They cared little for ab- tract justice and nothing at all for concrete Indian rights. So the Indians regarded the Pennsylvanians tranquilly, but the Virginians with bitter hatred. From Fort Pitt as her most western post Pennsylvania was accustomed to carry on her dealings with the well-disposed Indians. But early in the spring of 1774 Virginia, whose object it seemed was avowedly to bring on another war with the Indians, forcibly seized Fort Pitt and asserted a claim to the sur- rounding country.14 Governor Dunmore appointed Con-
12 Magill, History of Kentucky.
13 St. Clair to Penn, May 29, 1774. American Archives, Vol. I, p. 286.
14 Dunmore to Penn, March 3, 1774. American Archives, Vol. I, p. 252.
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nolly, a wild, intemperate Irishman, as commandant there. The Indians, already well experienced in the ways of the Virginians, were quick to take alarm. They could expect no justice if Virginia was to be their neighbor. Their apprehensions were justified. Connolly, and probably Dun- more, were speculating heavily in Kentucky land and Con- nolly in person owned great tracts around the Falls. He left no stone unturned to provoke the Shawnese to war. In April he sent a circular letter 15 to all settlers along the Ohio that the Shawnese were not trustworthy and that they could look out for themselves. The frontiersmen took this as a declaration of war. A certain Captain Cresap with a band of frontiersmen at once began hostilities by attacking and defeating several canoes of Indians on the Ohio. A more savage deed was that of Greathouse in ambuscading and murdering a band of friendly Indians some forty miles above Wheeling. Among the slain were members of the family of Logan, the great Mingo chief, who promptly took the war trail and secured thirteen scalps before his anger was appeased. He carried the entire Mingo tribe into the war with him and the entire northern region gradually united for the inevitable war. Cornstalk, the Shawnese chief, was their leader.
Meanwhile Connolly by repeated injuries did his best to keep the Indians aroused and the Virginia frontiersmen were constantly writing to Governor Dunmore that war was necessary, inevitable, and already begun. The wily Governor made quick use of the pretext. Loudly censur- ing the conduct of the Indians, he ordered two large forces to be levied for service against the enemy ; one, commanded
15 Connolly's Proclamation of April 7, 1774. American Archives, Vol. I, p. 278.
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by himself, to proceed by way of Fort Pitt and the Ohio, and the other under General Lewis to march overland and meet him north of the Ohio.
But Kentucky at this time contained many surveyors sent there by the Governor's own command, and Harrod was already laying the foundations for a permanent settle- ment at a town which bears his name. These men would fall the first victims in an Indian war, and Dunmore had no thought of sacrificing them. So through Preston and his subordinate, Russell, Boone was commissioned 16 to once more cross Kentucky and warn the white men of the coming conflict. Boone was to have one companion and he chose Michael Stoner. The two began their journey from the Clinch Valley and lost no time in penetrating into Kentucky.17 They reached Harrodstown in the midst of the building activity. Boone, notwithstanding his mis- sion, seemed to take great interest in the new settlement and secured half of a double cabin for himself. After a little delay the two messengers passed on to the Falls and explained their errand to the men at work. Then, fol- lowed by the alarmed surveyors, they once more crossed the valley and reached home by way of Cumberland Gap sixty-eight days after they had left it. They had trav- eled over eight hundred miles on their journey.
The surveyors and settlers after abandoning Kentucky, joined General Lewis at Point Pleasant. Lewis expected to meet Dunmore at this place,18 but the wily Cornstalk had with instinctive genius planned to destroy each force in detail. Leading his Shawnese, Delaware, Wyandot
16 Draper, MSS. Life of Boone, Vol. III, p. 126.
17 On this trip Boone passed over the site of the future Boones- borough.
18 Thwaites and Kellogg, Lord Dunmore's War, p. 237.
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and Mingo warriors stealthily through the forest, he crossed the Ohio and fell like a thunderbolt on the unsuspecting English. But English perseverance was too much for Indian valor, and after an all day's battle the beaten chieftain was compelled to draw back in the shadows of the northern forests. Dunmore, marching from Fort Pitt, soon reached the Indian country and dictated terms of peace to the dispirited warriors.19 By their treaty the red men pledged themselves not to cross to the south of the Ohio except for trade, and to do no harm to white men coming down the river. Enough has been written to show that the war was provoked more by white men than by red, but once begun the Indian had fought it valiantly and to utter exhaustion. In consideration of their cause for war and their valor in conducting it, a Kentuckian may be pardoned for failing to censure their violation of the treaty that closed it. The war is known to history as Lord Dunmore's War, a name given to it in commemora- tion of its chief provoker.
But the Kentucky country had been drained of its men by the conflict. Not a soul was within its borders or among its forests. Here and there were melancholy reminders of vanished hopes, trees blazed by explorers, stakes driven by surveyors ; at Harrodstown a few desolate cabins, and in Madison County a new-made grave. The land had once more returned to solitude and quiet.
In the meantime, while the explorers and surveyors had been traversing Kentucky, and even while the campaign was being carried on against the Ohio Indians, the tide of eastern immigration was moving steadily and resist-
19 Logan remained defiant and on this occasion burst out in the passionate speech that has immortalized his name.
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lessly toward the Kentucky country. From the Shenan- doah Valley in Virginia, a well-defined movement was under way westward into the smaller mountain valleys wherever fertile or habitable country could be found. This advance in the course of its slow groping way finally reached and came to a halt in the valleys of the Tennessee River and its tributaries, in what is now the eastern part of the State of Tennessee. This transmontane country was vaguely known to the Tidewater population and it was for many years a matter of conjecture whether it was in the limits of Virginia or of North Carolina. The people of western Virginia took the former view and were soon engaged in finding homes along the Wataga, the Clinch, the Powell and the Holstein. It was in 1769 that William Bean led the first Virginians to the Wataga River. Joined shortly by many others, his settlement became known as the Wa- taga settlement. In 1771 the Indian trader Carter settled on the Holstein River, and being joined by his neighbors from Abingdon, Virginia, his settlement became known as the Carter Valley settlement. Carter, a few years later, played a part in helping Henderson secure his path grant to Kentucky. The approach of the Revolution drove many Carolinians across the mountains to settle along the Clinch, the Powell and the Nolichucky. Separated by long distances from the governments of Virginia and North Carolina the Wataga and Carter Valley settlements united in 1772 in the Wataga Association for local government. The other settlements shortly came into the association, which modeled its laws after those of Virginia and aspired to independence. John Carter was a leading spirit in the movement.
In 1775 the Wataga Association was "farthest west," and when the emigration began anew westward to Ken-
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tucky, Powell's Valley served as the point of departure. It was the gathering point for men from all sections who were seeking the western lands, and Henderson, when he came to negotiate with the Cherokees for the ill-fated Transylvania found the Wataga River the most conven- ient point for his conference with the red men.
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TRANSYLVANIA.
T HE year 1775 was a troubled one for the English- speaking people in America. The mother country and her child had been separated now for over half a century. For a long time their different paths had been apart only in place, not in spirit; now even the conscious- ness of kind was departing. The first colonists had deemed themselves Englishmen sojourning in a strange land. How- ever distant they wandered, or long, they never lost nor sought to lose the memory of their English birthright. But now a new generation had grown up that knew not England. They had no memories of its fields, acquaint- ance with its customs, or affection for its name. Their home was America and their hearts were there. In the process of becoming colonial they had ceased to be English. So it came to pass, without the intention of either, that out of this difference in sympathy that followed the sepa- ration of place, many misunderstandings arose and flour- ished. Actions of the mother country that would have been received as a matter of course fifty years before, became, in 1775, considered as symptoms of conscious tyranny. Colonial aspirations which would have found ready sympathy in the England of William of Orange, or even the second James, occasioned only distrust and sus- picion in 1775. Suspicion had taken the place of co-oper- ation ; antagonism, of friendship; hostility, of peace. So, in 1775, without real cause, but as the result of petit meas- ures on each side, two great peoples were on the brink of war. Both were suffering from high indignation and wounded vanity. Stamp Acts, Boston Port Bills, Com-
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mittees of Correspondence and Continental Congresses swiftly followed.
As war grew more and more inevitable, both English and Americans began to make overtures for the aid of the Indians. The English influence, thanks to Sir John John- son in New York, and the remembrance the Indians of the Ohio had of their Virginia neighbors, finally prevailed. The Indians became in fact allies of the English; from Detroit in Canada a vigilant English ruler directed their movements and mitigated, wherever possible, their atroci- ties.1 It seemed a most inopportune time for the settle- ment of Kentucky or any western land. Nevertheless, it was this time above all others that the colonists chose for western expansion. In the troubled state of affairs at home there was a prospect that in the remote west they would be allowed to attain that which the colonial mind considered the greatest of blessings, self-government.
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