USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 1 > Part 7
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These skeleton remains of the giants of the wilderness disappeared over half a century ago, to enrich the museums and to puzzle the naturalists and antiquarians of Europe, as well as of our own country. The adventurous hunters and surveyors of Douglas, designing to camp for some days in the midst of that great game field, constructed their tents of the huge bones that conveniently lay around, and sheltered and slept under the same. Plausibly,
: Collins, Vol. II., p. 608.
: Collins, Vol. il , p. 52.
24
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
we conjecture that these gigantic animals made the licks, and especially this one, their exclusive resorts before the buffalo, the elk, and other hoofed kinds. From their remains, they were of the elephant family, and without hoofs; hence, their soft and cushioned feet, though supporting ponderous bodies, did not wear away the earth, nor did they lick away the ground, and cause the depression below the natural level. We instinctively associate the existence of these prescientific families of the animal kingdom with that of the prehistoric people, of whom we know too little by tradition or remains to safely conjecture. We may plausibly conclude that these mastodons ranged the forests, over which they had exclusive dominion, before the advent and occupancy of man ; not only here, but in other parts of the earth where their remains have been found. With the first invasion and habitation of the same country by any race of men, the extermination of such a family of ani- mals would be but a question of short time, whether the people subsisted by hunting or cultivating the soil. The hunter's instinct and calling would lead him to slay such game, with pride in the sport. The tillers of the soil would suffer from the depredations of such monsters on their fields and gardens, as they do from the foraging wild elephants in Ceylon and Africa. Their grind- ers show that they were herbiverous, and more a terror of the destructiveness of property, than of danger to life or person. The first coming of man upon this part of the earth was the signal for the extermination of all such mammoth species, just as advancing civilization, with superior arms, has successively exterminated the buffalo, the elk, the deer, and the bear, in turn. These mammoths were not ferocious, combative, and destructive, more than our living elephants, and were less capable of defense. They were powerful in physical strength, but ponderous, awkward, and sluggish in their movements; and therefore fell an easy prey to the weapons and arts of even the rudest of men. As the prehistoric people became strong enough in numbers, and skilled by experience in the hunt, they would doubtless seek and attack them in armed bodies, single or in herds, as advantage offered. The gigantic bodies of such quadrupeds made the mammoth a conspicuous object for the assailant, and constantly invited the pursuit of the latter for sport and for food supply.
But why were such vast numbers of skeletons found at the lick ? A gen- tleman who gave much attention and study to these remains computes that the bones of one hundred mastodons and twenty arctic elephants were found at Big Bone. We can conceive of no natural causes for this spot becoming such a charnel house of death. It must have been from preconcerted and violent causes. The prehistoric aborigines, growing bolder and more skillful in the slaughter, and noting the time or season for the congregating of these animals at the lick, may have planned an organized and general assault on them, with a view to extermination ; or, as we know that many tribes of people learn in time the use of pitfalls to destroy large and unwieldy game, they may have dug such pitfalls, disguised with brush on top and set in
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25
COLONEL JOHN FLOYD.
convenient position, for their destruction at this spot, where they habitually congregated in numbers. Certainly, the first people who found them here slew these leviathans of the land to extinction. From the preserved state of the bones, it can not be many centuries since they perished; and from the adjacent trees and other marks of the depressed surface, it can not be more than a few centuries since the hoofed animals began the process of wearing away this earth. We have no historic knowledge of the mastodon, yet he is obscurely characterized in the language of the Bible. McAfee men- tions in his memoirs that a party of Delaware Indians were at Big Bone when he and his companions were there, and that he inquired of one of these Indians as to these remains. He replied that they had been seen very much as they were then, as long as he could remember, and the Indians knew nothing more about them. The Indian seemed to be about seventy years of age.
Kentucky was a part of Fincastle county, Virginia. of which William Preston was surveyor. Hancock Taylor and James Douglas were deputy sur- veyors under him. Colonel John Floyd was another deputy, and the three were now in Kentucky to locate choice lands for themselves. and for land speculators of capital and influence, whose cupidity was inflamed by the confirmation of the reports of the genial climate and generous soil of the now-famed El Dorado beyond the mountains. Than Colonel Floyd, but few men played a more prominent part in the dramatic events that make up the history of Kentucky, from this date until his tragic death upon the theater of his own acting. nine years later. In cultured intelligence, in noble presence and bearing, and in unselfish and intrepid courage, fewest of his age were his peers: and no one deserves to be held in more grateful remembrance by the posterity of to-day. John Floyd was born in Virginia, in 1750, and was one of five brothers, three of whom and two brothers-in-law were slain by the Indians, illustrating the dangers which beset the lives of our pioneer fathers. His parents, William Floyd and wife, emigrated early to Kentucky, lived in Jefferson county until 1800, and died at the age of ninety years. 1 The maternal grandmother of Colonel Floyd was an Indian squaw, the daughter of a brother of the celebrated chief. Powhatan, so well known in colonial history. Colonel Floyd made his first survey on the Ohio river in Lewis county, May 2. 1773, of two hundred acres, for Patrick Henry, the great patriot orator of Virginia, and continued to locate other tracts, at inter- vals, down the river until he reached the falls. In person, Colonel Floyd was tall and rather spare, with complexion. hair, and eyes of dark color. In address, he was courteous, with the manners of a well-bred gentleman. His countenance was animated and pleasing, while his disposition was amia- ble. In any country, he would have been admired for the superior manly virtues and graces which made him the chivalrous defender of the weak, and the fearless soldier at the front in every hour of danger. Like Boone, Clark,
z Collins, Vol. II . pp 2 38-0
26
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
and Kenton, his services endeared him to the early settlers, while his daring and skill made him well known to the Indians, by whom he was much feared.
Of the men who made hunting and Indian fighting an occupation, no one more nearly rivaled Daniel Boone than did Simon Kenton, throughout the pioneer age in the settlement of Kentucky. 1 He was born of an Irish father and a Scotch mother. in Fauquier county, Virginia, April 13, 1755, and at this date of narrative was but eighteen years old. His family ob- scure, and very poor, his education was neglected. unfortunately for one who to natural vigor and acuteness of mind added so much of enterprise and individuality of character. So conspicuous a part did he act throughout the eventful period of his life, that justice. alike to his memory and to the reader of history, requires more than a passing mention of his name. At the age of sixteen, he fell passionately in love with a bewitching girl of the neighborhood, and was unfortunate enough to have a favored rival. who bore off the prize. Mad with jealousy, and reckless with despair, young Ken- ton gave such insult and offense to the groom as to provoke a fierce battle between the two. In physical prowess, Kenton overmatched his adversary, and following up his punishment too far. the vanquished young man. bruised and bleeding, fell back insensible. Such conduct was foreign to all Kenton's subsequent nature. Realizing the cruel inhumanity of his deed, his better feelings revolted. He lifted up the head of his unconscious victim and spoke kindly to him, but no answer came, and Kenton believed him dead. Much alarmed, he dropped the lifeless body and fled to the woods.
Feeling that he was a fugitive from avenging justice, and that life at home was ruined, he turned his mind toward the solitudes of the great western wilderness, and determined that there should be found his city of refuge. Pushing on warily for days, with some difficulty he reached Ise's ford, on Cheat river, in April, 1771. Here he changed his name to Simon Butler. At this settlement, he hired himself to work for a rifle and ammunition. after which he joined a party going to Fort Pitt. At the latter place, he first met Simon Girty, afterward held in such infamous notoriety as a leader and instigator of the savages in their cruel warfare on his own people. Kenton here fell in with George Yeager and John Strader. in the autumn of the same year, and the three proceeded down the river. looking for the "cane land" of which Yeager had given glowing descriptions. repeated from the Indians among whom he had been. They went as far down as the mouth of Ken- tucky river, and then returned to the Big Kanawha, where. in the following winter, they built a camp, and hunted and trapped until the spring of 1773, when Yeager was killed by the Indians while lying in camp with his com- panions. Kenton and Strader fled to the woods, barefooted and naked, except their shirts. Without food, or guns to procure it, they wandered. with incredible hardships and sufferings. until the sixth day, on which they several times in despair laid down to die; but struggling on again, they at
I Collins, Vol. II., pp. 442-3.
27
MRS. INGLES' ESCAPE FROM THE INDIANS.
last reached the Ohio and found some hunters, who fortunately relieved them. perhaps from a premature death by famine.
In the summer of 1773, Kenton joined a party going down the Ohio in search of Bullitt. Pursuing as far as the mouth of the Big Miami, and find- ing Bullitt's camp deserted, they apprehended that he had been murdered by the Indians. Uneasy as to their own safety, they destroyed their canoes and, under the pilotage of Kenton, retraced their way through the wilder ness to Virginia: doubtless the first trip from Northern Kentucky to Virginia by land, if we except the wonderful escape of Mrs, Ingles and the Dutch woman from Indian captivity at Big Bone Lick. in 1750.
1This incident, so characteristic of the vicissitudes of frontier life, de- serves fuller mention, and there will be no fitter place than here. Mrs. Mary Ingles, her two little boys, and her sister-in-law. Mix. Draper, were taken prisoners by the Shawanee Indians. at their homes in what is now Montgom- ery county, Virginia, in 1756. They were carried down the Kanawha, and to the mouth of the Scioto, where Portsmouth now stands. She here became popular among the Indians by making superior garments out of some fancy goods brought in by French traders. She escaped running the gauntlet, which Mrs. Draper was compelled to do. She was cruelly separated from her children, and resolved to escape, if opportunity came. An Indian party setting out for Big Bone Lick to make salt, she was taken along, together with an old Dutch woman, who had been years a captive. Though over one hundred miles farther from home, she obtained the consent of her captive companion to a plan of escape. Obtaining the puvilage of going to the woods for grapes, the two women managed to secure blankets, a tomahawk, and a knife. Finding the Ohio river, they followed up the valley of the same and passed the mouth of Scioto, on the opposite side, after five days. Finding a horse browsing, and some corn raised here by the Indians, they put a sackful on the horse and continued on to the Big Sandy. This river being too deep to ford, they followed up its banks until they made a crossing on the drift-wood. The horse, unfortunately, fell among the logs, and they were compelled to leave him to his fate. All stores soon were exhausted, and they were reduced to a diet of wild grapes, walnuts, and pawpaws. Their privations and sufferings increased, until the old Dutch woman, becom- ing frantic with hunger and exposure, threatened, and did attempt, the life of Mrs. Ingles. Escaping her fury, she kept herself trom view under the banks of the Kanawha. Luckily, she found an old canoe, and managed to paddle across to the other bank, in sight of her dangerous companion, who now implored her to return to her rescue with besserhing promises, but in vain. Exhausted and weary, she bent her tired steps toward home, and finally, at the end of forty days of indescribable peut and privations, she reached the friendly cabin of an old neighbor, where tender sympathy and care put an end to these. A party went out and brought in safely the old
. Collins, Vol. II., p. 53.
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Dutch woman to the settlement. Mrs. Ingles died in 1813, aged eighty-four years. Her family was most noted; her daughters married men of distinc- tion, and a numerous posterity yet hold her in honored remembrance.
There were probably other adventurers in Kentucky during this eventful year of 1773 whose names and deeds have escaped the pen of the historian. We have introduced to the reader the honored names, and recorded the heroic devotion and deeds, of the representative pioneers who formed the vanguard, and who blased the way to future conquest and empire of the first civilization, whose germs were planted amid travails and watered in tears, in the great valley of the Mississippi, beyond the mountain barrier.
With the close of 1773, we will be surprised to find the most radical changes in the current of events, which in a few months drove homeward from her borders all the hunters, surveyors, and other adventurers who had come out during that year to Kentucky. The premonitions of war with England, which was soon to be anticipated with actual Indian hostilities of a formidable character, were heavy upon the spirits of the people. What effect were these cumulative troubles to have on the destinies of the new El Dorado of the western world, lying far away to the west? We pass into the revelations of 1774, and find an answer there, in part, to these inquiries.
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TOWN SITE OF HARRODSBURG LAID OFF.
CHAPTER VI.
Captain James Harrod leads a party of forty, and they " improve" at Harrods- burg and vicinity.
Indian attack on these.
Hancock Taylor mortally wounded by Indians.
Miami tribes threaten to invade Vir- ginia.
Boone and Michael Stoner sent by Gov-
ernor Dunmore to warn in all frontiersmen from Kentucky.
Harrod, Boone, and comrades return to Virginia and join the army to repel the Indians.
Defeat of the latter in a decisive battle at the mouth of Great Kanawha.
Many prepare to visit Kentucky in the spring of 1775.
The spring of 1774 opened with promise that the advance parties of the previous year would be sustained by yet a larger following for the current year. 1In May, Captain James Harrod, with Abram Hite and James and Jacob Sandusky, led about forty men from the Monongahela country, in Virginia, down the Ohio river, and transiently camped on the present site of Cincinnati, and there felled the first tree known to have been cut down on that spot by the ax of a white man. Continuing their adventurous journey to the mouth of Kentucky river, they turned the prows of their little fleet into that stream and ascended the same to what is now Oregon Landing, in Mercer county. Disembarking there, they made their way through the for- est to a point near Salt river, where the McAfee party had made their first surveys on that river, and proceeding up the east side of same, they built a permanent camp on the present site of Harrodsburg, one hundred yards below the Big Spring, beneath the branches of an elm tree familiar to many persons of to-day.
From this rendezvous, the men dispersed in small squads, to select for themselves suitable settlements, and to build on such locations improvement cabins. These latter were known as "lottery cabins," as they were appor- tioned among the men by lot. Thus, John Crow, James Brown, and others secured lottery cabins in the vicinity of Danville: James Wiley three miles east of Harrodsburg, and James Harrod at Boiling Spring, six miles south. On the 16th of June, Harrod's and Hite's men together laid off a town site at Big Spring camp, where they had before erected the first log cabin built in Kentucky: giving to each man a half-acre lot and a ten-acre outlot. The first name given to this place was Harrodstown, and finally it became known as Harrodsburg. Near the east end of the town, John Harman made a clearing, and there planted and raised the first corn that was known to have grown in Kentucky. About the 20th of July, three or four of Harrod's
I Collins, Vol. 11, pp 665, and 517-18.
30
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
men, who seem to have been out on a survey, were resting and refreshing themselves at a large spring, some three miles below Harrodstown, when they were ambushed and fired on by Indians. Jared Cowan was killed, while Jacob Sandusky and a comrade, believing that the whole command had been surprised, made their way to the falls. Descending the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in a bark canoe, they returned to Philadelphia by sea, and thence home. A fourth man of the party got back to camp with the intelli- gence of the attack. Captain Harrod, at the head of a company, went down and buried Cowan, and secured his papers. 1
.....
About the same period, Douglas, who had returned to Kentucky with his men, was engaged surveying lands on Elkhorn, Hickman, and Jessamine creeks, on the opposite side of Kentucky river. Also, John Floyd and Han- cock Taylor led survey parties, locating lands by virtue of military warrants. in Woodford and Fayette counties, and along the Ohio river to the falls. In the latter part of July, Hancock Taylor, whose brother Richard was the father of President Zachary Taylor, while surveying near the mouth of Kentucky river, was shot and seriously wounded by the Indians. 2 He died a few days after, while being borne back on the return to Virginia. and was buried two miles south of the present site of Richmond. Thus early, amid the opening incidents of pioneer days, was offered up to the atrocious spirit cf savage warfare one of the noblest, most enterprising, and promising men of the heroic period that gave germ and birth to transmontane civilization. He was an honored member of a distinguished family that, from its numer- ous branches, has given to both Virginia and Kentucky many worthy citizens, who have reflected honor upon their generation in varied responsible callings of life. His memory deserves the tribute of our praise, though his dawning reputation and his chosen mission found a tragic end, almost at their incep- tion.
In the drift of events which have made up the narrative of history for 1774, a storm-cloud had gathered, whose ominous threatenings aroused the colonial government of Virginia to a sense of impending danger, and whose fury was destined to be spent on the border settlements in the Ohio valley. The Miami tribes of Indians, on the north side of the river, watched with angry jealousy the continued intrusion and usurpation by the whites of their favorite hunting-grounds. This passionate feeling was warmed into a spirit of; violent resistance by the irritating remembrance that they had been ignored in the treaty of Stanwix, under the demands of the Six Nations, and that both their tribal dignity and rights had been humiliated: and that. so far. the white party to the treaty had failed to appease with the gratuities which had been promised and were expected. Some massacres of peaceful Indians on the upper Ohio were reported. and this served the pretext of preparation for open hostilities. Around the powerful Shawanees, as the central figure, and under the principal lead of the great chief. Corustalk, a north-western
: Collins, Vol. II., p 518.
2 Marshall, p. 1 ,3; Collins, Vol II., p. 213.
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3I
BOONE'S JOURNEY OF WARNING.
confederation was formed, and fifteen hundred warriors, painted and armed for war, rendezvoused at the towns on the Scioto. The recent individual massacres in Kentucky and elsewhere were but the isolated raindrops that precede the emptying of overhanging clouds.
' Amid the preparatory measures for inevitable hostilities, Governor Dun- more called upon Daniel Boone, whose fame as a frontiersman and scout was everywhere known. to undertake a journey through the wilderness, and, with warning of the dangers at hand. recall all hunters and survey parties from Kentucky. Boone selected Michael Stoner for his companion in this hazardous service. The latter was already trained in the arts and experience of backwoods life. Isaac Lindsay, with four others from South Carolina, made record of a visit to Kentucky in 1767, and following the waters of Cumberland to the mouth of Stone river. in Tennessee, there met Stoner and James Harrod, who had come down the Ohio from Fort Pitt, and reached that point, on a long hunt. From that time, Stoner seems to have been an active, though an unobtrusive, participant in the adventures and perils of the pioneer scenes that make up the early history of Kentucky.
Boone and Stoner set out in June, through the pathless wilderness, and with that energy and endurance which marked their careers, pushed on to the falls of Ohio. Visiting and warning the explorers in turn, they reached Harrodstown on their route at the time the town plat was being laid off. In this work Boone seems to have taken an interest, as a lot was assigned to him, adjoining one to Evan Hinton, and on these two lots a double cabin was built, which was known indiscriminately as " Boone's cabin," or " Hin- ton's cabin," until it was burned, with others, by the Indians, in March, 1777. Admonished by the raiding bands of savages, the murders of some of their comrades, and finally by the warning message of Lord Dunmore through Boone and Stoner. Harrod and Hite, with all their comrades, by the closing days of July were on their return march to Virginia. They buried their hopes and ambitions for a brief while, and left the untamed wilderness once again to the solitudes of centuries, which they had so lightly and so briefly disturbed with the crack of the rifle and the ring of the ax. Should they ever come again ?- to conquer, to possess, to enjoy?
The latter part of August, Boone and his returning friends reached Vir- ginia, he and Stoner having made the trip, twice through the wilderness and twice over the mountains, of eight hundred miles, in sixty days. At this time, Governor Dunmore had called into the field a force of three thousand regulars and volunteers, to meet the Indian army threatening to cross the Ohio and invade Virginia. The governor commissioned Captain Boone to take charge of three forts on the Kanawha frontier. Dunmore, as chief in command, concentrated the main army at Fort Pitt. General Andrew Lewis. skilled in border warfare, led eleven hundred men of the left wing, composed of veteran pioneers and Indian fighters, made up mainly of the
! Butler, p 27; Hartley's Daniel Boone : Boone's Narrative ; History of the Backwoods.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
settlers, across the mountains to the mouth of Great Kanawha. Here he met the invading army of the Indians, fifteen hundred strong, and defeated them in the sanguinary battle of the Point, on the toth of October. The van- quished warriors retreated across the Ohio, and to their towns on the Scioto. The Mc Afees and their men, Harrod and Hite and their men, and most of the Kentucky explorers, were actively engaged as volunteers in this short campaign. Their unerring rifles did execution in the sanguinary battle which had such important bearing on the future of the great West. The disaster of Braddock's defeat, near Fort Pitt, but a few years before, brought about by foolish pride and conceit of a military martinet in refusing the warnings and counsels of Washington, and the inefficiency of unpracticed regular troops against the tactics of savage warfare, was yet fresh in the memories of the colonists. They apprehended a like possible result under the lead of Lord Dunmore and the regulars under him. This feeling hastened the march of General Lewis across the mountains, and precipitated the battle by the back- woods veterans of the left wing. Governor Dunmore, soon after the defeat, crossed his army below Pittsburgh and marched to the Indian towns. and there received their capitulations. A treaty was negotiated, in which the Shawanees and their confederates again agreed to give up all title to the country south of the Ohio, and all claim to it as a privileged hunting-ground.
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