USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 1 > Part 8
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The results of this short war in several ways promised most auspiciously to the future colonization of Kentucky. The men of the hunting and sur- vey parties became, for some months, the army comrades of many colonial citizens, to whom they pictured, in radiant colors, the beauty and attractions of the new land of their adoption and adventure. The fever of emigration again became epidemic, and many new recruits began their preparations to follow the dim trail of the first pioneers, who had blased the way. in the coming spring. Again, now that the Indians were signally defeated, and a treaty of peace made, they hoped that the settlers would in future build their homes and fortunes without the hazards and dangers of savage assaults. Vain hope! Well for the posterity of to-day, that the veil of mystery and silence that obscured the future was silver lined with cheerful hues, and that there were hearts of faith and stern resolve to lift it to the view of history in the fullness of time.
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33
PROCLAMATION OF GOVERNOR DUNMORE.
CHAPTER VII.
Obstructions removed, and new induce- ments attract many toward Kentucky.
Treaties with Ohio tribes proclaimed ; also with the southern tribes.
Transitory nature of Indian titles.
Indecisive results of tribal wars illus- trated in the Mohawk conquests.
Kentucky a ground of dispute among all tribes from the Atlantic to the Missis- sippi.
The Transylvania Company purchases Kentucky from the Cherokees.
Judge Richard Henderson, the leader. A powerful land company.
Boone negotiates the treaty of Wataga with Chief Oconistoto.
" Boone's Road" made into the heart of Kentucky.
He leads his party to Madison county. Attacked by Indians.
Locates and founds Boonesborough.
Urges Henderson to come on with aid. Many adventurers alarmed, leave Ken- tucky.
Meet Henderson coming in.
Some return with him.
His diary.
Enlarges and strengthen's Boonesbor- ough.
A city plat laid off.
The birth-place, the early life and char- acteristics cf Daniel Boone.
Born at Exeter, Bucks county, Pennsyl- vania.
Boyish passion for hunting.
School-boy incidents.
Removed to North Carolina, on Vad- kin river.
Born for an adventurous life.
The hunter's adventures there.
Disturbed state of the country.
Extortions and insults of the English officials.
" Regulators " resist these.
The collision at Alamance, North Caro- lina, the first blow of the revolution. Boone's trust in God. Eulogy of him.
Kentucky remained almost deserted until the early months of the spring of 1775, after the recall of the explorers and settlers by Governor Dun- more, the year previous; yet the outlook was more inviting to emigration and enterprise than ever before, and busy notes of preparation engaged the attention of many during their stay in winter quarters for the time. Not only did the desire of the hunt, and of the founding of a new home and fortune in the cheap and fertile lands of the West, form the inspiration of motive to individual citizens; but persons of bold conception of plan and ability in execution began to confederate together and organize men and capital for vast land enterprises, looking to the amassing of great wealth with some, and most probably with a few, to the dream of empire itself. The treaty at Chillicothe, but a few months before, gave assurance that there would. for a time at least, be immunity from the incessant murders and pillage of savage incursions. In January. 1775, Governor Dunmore, by proclamation, announced that " the Shawanees, to remove all ground of future quarrel, have agreed not to hunt on this side of the Ohio river."
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
These tribes of the north were now doubly pledged to abstain from hostili- ties in the future.
But the Cherokee nation, whose habitations were on the upper Tennessee waters, yet made claim, under the treaty of Hard Labor, in South Carolina, October 14, 1768, to this same territory, which the Six Nations had ceded to the English crown at Stanwix, they assuming the right of conquest over the Cherokees, as over the Shawanees. 1 The treaty of Lochaber, in South Carolina, with the Cherokees, October 18, 1770, confirmed this asserted right of the nation to the territory south of the Ohio and west of the Kana- wha as their hunting-grounds. Out of the apparent conflict and confusion of these triangular title claims of different tribal confederacies to the territory of Kentucky, it is sufficient to the purposes of our State history to know that the issue was an ancient and unsettled dispute between the Cherokees of the South and the Miamis of the North-west. The Mohawk confederacy, or Six Nations of the North-east, composed of the Mohawks, Tuscaroras, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, claimed over both by virtue of conquest. During the treaty at Fort Stanwix, now Rome, New York, the Six Nations declared to Sir William Johnson, the English agent, who was eminent for his knowledge of Indian matters, that, " you who know all our affairs must be sensible that our rights go much farther to the South than the Kanawha; and that we have a very good and clear title as far south as the Cherokee (Tennessee) river. This we can not allow to be the right of any other In- dians without doing wrong to our posterity, and acting unworthy of those warriors who fought and conquered it. We expect, therefore, that this, our right, will be considered."? At this treaty were present representatives from both the Cherokee and Miami tribes, who acquiesced in the agreed stipulations, thus consenting to the superior claim of their former victors in war. Indeed, Hayward, in his history of Tennessee, relates an anecdote of the Cherokees who attended this treaty convention. Having killed some game for their support while on the route, on arrival at the treaty ground, they tendered the skins to the Six Nations, saying, " These are yours ; we killed them after passing the Big River"-the name they gave the Tennessee.
But we must not estimate the conquests of tribes of savages by other tribes, by the results of similar conquests among the civilized nations. The Indians seldom made provisions to occupy and hold lands from which they might drive out other tribes. By habit, and from necessity, they were shift- ing and transitory in their war expeditions. Accustomed at such times to depend on such game as they could procure for their food supplies, a few days halting in any one locality served to destroy or drive off the wild game, and compel a change to new fields and fresh supplies. In that mutability so incident to Indian life, permanent order and stability must not be anticipated in their tribal conditions and relations. The dominion of one nation over another was often relaxed or removed by the shifting events of a few years.
I Collins, Vol. 11 , p. 4,0.
2 Butler, pp. St and 37s -; 44.
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"TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY" ORGANIZED.
The victor tribe in campaign and battle could at best do little more than kill a number of the vanquished hostiles, and disperse the great body of the sur- viving warriors to the sheltering and safe retreats of the forest. As soon as the victorious army was withdrawn upon the countermarch homeward, the scattered forces of the dispersed hostiles emerged from the forest recesses, and resumed their tribal force and habits again. Thus, the dominancy of the Mohawk tribes of the North-east, which was asserted with so much em- phasis and effect twenty years before, was at this date virtually extinct in all but the name. The Miamis on the north, and Cherokees on the south, had resumed possession and held sway practically as unquestioned as before the invasion of the Mohawks. Then, also, the encroachment of the white settlements, upon the vicinage of these latter Indians in western New York and Pennsylvania, had the usual effect to divert and enfeeble, and at the same time to dishearten them as assumed conquerors, by contrast with the pres- ence of a people superior to themselves in numbers, in prowess, and in the resources of war.
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Kentucky, by these coincidences of tribal wars and title claims, is thus presented to us as the converging point of rival contestants over the entire region from the Alleghany mountains to the Mississippi river, and from the lakes and St. Lawrence river to the gulf. In this trinity of disputed titles, there was enough to constantly irritate the jealous and passionate natures of the savage nations who were the defiant rivals, and to continue those fierce raids and bloody strifes throughout Kentucky which yet signalized her, as in the traditional past, as the " Dark and Bloody Ground."
Of the many expeditionary measures for the colonization of Kentucky in inception and process of execution for the early spring of 1775, that organized under the name and style of the "Transylvania Company" was most conspicuous in the magnitude of its proportions, in the ability of its management, and in the means for its successful prosecution. During the previous autumn, Judge Richard Henderson, Nathaniel Hart, and several others of Granville and vicinity. North Carolina, gentlemen of large and varied resources, associated themselves into a land and improvement com- pany with the above title. for speculative venture on a gigantic scale in the new and expansive empire of the West.
1This association had the advantage of a personal leadership of some political experience. well sustained by bold originality. that dared nothing less than the creation of power, of fortune, and of empire out of the bound- less waste and chaos of unsubdued nature. Quickly perceiving that the treaty with the Mohawks in 1768, and that just negotiated with the Miamis, left no Indian claimant to the territory of Kentucky but the Cherokees; and that the alienations between Great Britain and her colonies must soon result in war, thus leaving in doubt whether there would be again a jurisdiction more than in name to either over the vast transmontane wilderness, Judge Hen-
i Trans purchase - Marshall, Vol. I., pp. 13-15; Collins, Vol. II., pp 337 and 496.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
derson determined to base a purchase and transfer of an immense territory in Kentucky on the title yet remaining in the Cherokees. In furtherance of this plan, he commissioned Daniel Boone to visit these Indians at their towns on the upper Tennessee waters, and open negotiations. Boone was successful in bringing about a favorable understanding and an early consum- mation. By appointment, Henderson, Boone, and friends met the Cherokee delegation led by Oconistoto, the first chief of the tribe, at Sycamore shoals, on the Wataga, a tributary of Holston river. The negotiations extended through twenty days, when, on the 17th of March, 1775, for ten thousand pounds sterling, there was ceded to the company all the tract of lands afterward called by the name of Transylvania, and bounded as follows: " Beginning on the Ohio river at the mouth of Cantuckey, Chenoca, or what the English call Louisa river, thence up said river and most northwardly fork of the same to the head spring thereof; thence, a south-east course to the top of Powell's mountain; thence westwardly, along the ridge of said mountain, unto a point from which a north-west course will strike the head spring of the most southwardly branch of Cumberland river; thence' down said river, including its waters, to the Ohio river; thence up said river, as it. meanders, to the beginning-which tract or territory of lands was, at the time of said purchase, and time out of mind had been, the land and hunting- grounds of the said Cherokee tribe of Indians." 1
Thus was it attempted to convey to the sovereign jurisdiction and con- trol of a few individuals by this treaty seventeen million acres of land in one. body, or an area equal to two-thirds of the present territory of Kentucky. It embraced about all except that part lying north and east of Kentucky river, and which was most subject to be disputed and raided by the restless and warlike Miami tribes across the Ohio. An arrangement was effected with Boone by the proprietors of Transylvania for the opening of a trace or road for the travel of men and pack-horses from a point on Holston river, not far from Wataga, to the mouth of Otter creek, on Kentucky river, the future site of Boonesborough. He, with a party composed of Squire Boone, Col- onel Richard Callaway, John Kennedy, and eighteen others, was joined by Captain William Twetty and his company of eight men, making thirty in all. With ax and tomahawk, they began the toilsome work of carving out the path through the wilderness. The narrative of one of the party, young Felix Walker, says: ? "We marked the track with our hatchets until we reached Rockcastle river. Thence, for twenty miles, we had to cut our way through a country entirely covered with dead brush. The next thirty miles were through thick cane and reed, and as the cane ceased, they began to discover the pleasing and rapturous appearance of the plains of Kentucky. So rich a soil we had never seen before, covered with clover in full bloom, while the woods abounded in wild game. It appeared that nature, in her
I Batler, p. 13; Roone's Narrative ; Henderson's Journal March, 1775.
2 Boone's Narrative ; Peck's Life of Boone; Collins, Vol. II., p. 493.
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FIRST FORT ERECTED IN KENTUCKY.
profusion, had spread a feast for all that lived, both for the animal and rational world." It was cruel to so suddenly dispel the charm of these realities in view, and the visions of delight they promised in the future.
The party had proceeded unmolested with their pioneer work until the morning of Saturday, the 25th day of March. Unconscious of danger, while lying asleep in camp at a point in Madison county, about fifteen miles south of Boonesborough, they were surprised and fired into by Indians just before the dawn of day. Captain Twetty was mortally wounded and his negro servant killed, and Felix Walker very seriously wounded. Captain Boone rallied his men and held his ground until daybreak, losing no prop- erty. On the 27th, two days after, an Indian party, perhaps the same, fired on a camp of six of Boone's men, killing two and wounding three, only a few miles distant from the first point. These unfortunate events necessitated the building of the first fort in Kentucky, five miles south of the present site of Richmond. The wounds of Twetty and Walker were too serious to admit of their removal. Boone and party hastily erected a stockade fort, or bullet- proof shelter, of logs, as a protection against further assaults of the savages, and placed the wounded men inside, and there nursed them until the 28th, when Captain Twetty died of his wounds and was buried in the enclosure. On the Ist of April, they moved on to the Kentucky river, to the point selected to be fortified, bearing the wounded Walker between two horses. 1 On the fourth day after their arrival, another of Boone's men was killed by the ambushed savages.
On the day of leaving Fort Twetty, as they had named this hasty struct- ure, Boone wrote to Colonel Henderson, urging that if he would thwart the designs of the Indians and hold the country, to hasten his presence with all the forces he could command to the aid of the men now in Kentucky. Henderson had left Wataga on the 20th of March, and in his journal, which he kept, shows strikingly the demoralizing effects these Indian butcheries were having upon the emigrants who had already set out to follow "Boone's Trace" into Kentucky. We quote from his diary :
"Saturday, April 8th .- Started about ten o'clock. Crossed Cumberland Gap. About four miles from it, met about forty persons returning from the Cantuckey on account of the late murders by the Indians. Could prevail on only one to return. Several Virginians who were with us turned back from here.
"Sunday, 16th .- About twelve o'clock, met James McAfee, with eigh- teen others, returning from Cantuckey. Of these, Robert McAfee, Samuel McAfee, and several others, were persuaded to turn back and go to Boones- borough."
This was most discouraging, but did not dishearten or deter the men of resolute will, who had planned and were executing their mission. They were too much the men of destiny to pause upon the threshold.
I Collins, Vol. II., p. 4;6.
38
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Boone and his companions, on arrival at the point selected, vigorously undertook the construction of two cabins, so connected with palisades as to give it the defensive character of a stockade fort, locating the structure near an ancient and widespreading elm tree that became of historic note in after days.1 Henderson and party arrived on the 20th, swelling the forces to sixty guns, in pioneer phrase. After a survey of the ground by Colonel Henderson, the site and plans for more extensive works of defense were determined on, and all available forces set to work in the rapid construction of the same.2 With so much energy did the men work that the main fort and its defenses were all complete on the 14th of June, less than two months after the arrival of the re-enforcements. At the instance of Judge Henderson, the first fortified camp ever built in Kentucky was christened " Boonesbor- ough," in honor of the intrepid leader who had selected the site and pioneered the way to its settlement. As described by Collins, " It was situated adjacent to the river, with one of the angles resting on its bank near the water, and extending from it in the form of a parallelogram. The length of the fort, allowing twenty feet for each cabin and opening, must have been about two hundred and sixty, and the breadth one hundred and fifty feet." The main houses were of hewn logs, and bullet-proof. They were square in form and two stories in height, and one of these projected from each corner of the fort, the spaces between being occupied with intervening cabins and pali- sades, thus protecting the four sides. The gates were on opposite sides, made of thick slabs of timber, and hung on wooden hinges.
The site of the fort is now better indicated as near the crossing of the Kentucky river by the railroad recently constructed from Winchester to Rich- mond, though it has long since lost importance as a trading point. Twenty acres were laid off into lots and streets, and fifty acres more were directed to be laid off, out of the full survey tract of six hundred and forty acres. Henderson found himself very much embarrassed on his first arrival, on this account. In his diary for April 21st, he says: "Captain Boone's company having laid out most of the adjacent good lands into lots of two acres each, and taking it as it fell to each individual by lot, was in actual possession of them. After some perplexity, I resolved to erect a fort three hundred yards from the other, and on the opposite bank of a large lick."
Boonesborough was only established as an incorporate town, however, by act of the Virginia Legislature, in October, 1779, "on the Kentucky river, in the county of Kentucky, for the reception of traders." At the same time, the Legislature established "at the town of Boonesborough, to the land on the opposite shore, a ferry over the Kentucky river. The price for a man, three shillings, and for a horse, the same: the keeping of which ferry. and the emoluments of the same, are hereby given and granted to Richard Calloway." Thus was projected the foundations of a city in vision, not to be realized in the future."
1 Collins, Vol II, p. 520
2 Collins, Vol II, p 520.
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REMINISCENCES OF EARLY LIFE OF BOONE.
The brightest dream of ambitious hope had now materialized to Daniel Boone. It is fit and opportune that we should pause here, and dwell for awhile upon the early life and incidents which form the mold in which was cast the character of a man, unsurpassed in history in simple heroism of unselfish purpose and action, in the modest sphere of life to which designing Providence undoubtedly called him. On the future page, as on the past, the name and deeds of this remarkable man must be prominent to the close of the pioneer era, or the history of Kentucky can not be written. Daniel Boone was born at Exeter, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, on the 14th of July, 1732, according to the family record in the handwriting of his uncle, James Boone.1 His parents were Squire and Sarah Boone, and he was one of eleven children, seven sons and four daughters. George and Mary Boone, the grandparents of Daniel, emigrated to America and arrived at Philadel- phia in October, 1717, from the vicinity of Exeter, England, bringing with them eleven children, nine sons and two daughters. He purchased a large tract of land in Bucks county, when it was yet on the frontier, and gave the name Exeter to it, after his native place in England, and by which the town- ship in Bucks county is yet known. Here, on the right bank of Delaware river, amid the almost unbroken forests, Boone learned his first lessons and acquired that passion for adventures of the hunt and the solitudes of the wilderness which was the ruling impulse of his life. Family reminiscence confirms the natural conjecture of the mind. that in earliest boyhood days, when he was able to shoulder the old flint-lock rifle, and to sight it at arm's rest at an object in view, he daily roamed the woods in search of sport and game. In boyish pride, he one day came in exulting, with the skin of a ferocious panther which he had brought down, just couched to spring upon him. While yet in early teens, he ventured to prolong his absence on the hunt for two days and nights. The alarmed family. joined by sympathizing neighbors, traversed the woods in search of the lost boy. They at length saw smoke rising from a rude structure in the distance, and on reaching it, found young Boone. in camp.2 The floor was covered with the skins of such animals as he had slain, while pieces of meat were roasting at the fire. Such was his beginning.
His education was scant, indeed. We have the tradition of the border school-house of rude logs and puncheon seats on the dirt floor; of the school- master of fickle humors, and given to frequent use of the bottle for himself and of the rod for the children. Boone one day, chasing a rabbit into the hollow root of an old tree, thrust in his hand and brought out the dominic's bottle. Preparing himself by the next day, he put in it a powerful emetic, and quietly prepared the older boys for the crisis. They had all suffered from his cruel temper, and they now knew the cause of it. The result was a day of distressing sickness to the master, of disgust and revolt among the
I Hartley's Daniel Boone ; Peck's Boone.
2 Adventures of Boone, the Kentucky Rifleman; Collins, Vol. II., p. 520.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
boys, and of the disruption of the school. In some way, Boone learned to read and write. Beyond this, his education was in that school of accom- plishment for his life-work-experience. In this, he graduated with the honors of his class. He was no truant or idler. Indolence and indifference never wrought out of crude humanity such a character as Boone, or Kenton, or Tecumseh !
About the year 1752, Boone's father moved the family to North Caro- lina, and settled on Yadkin river, near Holman's ford, some eight miles from Wilkesboro. Says the historian of that State : 1 .. In North Carolina, Daniel Boone was reared. Here his youthful days were spent; and here that bold spirit was trained which so fearlessly encountered the perils through which he passed in after life. His fame is part of her property, and she has inscribed his name on a town in the region where his youth was spent. His character was peculiar. and marks the age in which he lived." In the year 1755, Boone was married to Rebecca Bryan, a pretty, rustic maiden of the country, with whom he became enamored. To this wedlock were born nine children, five sons and four daughters. Of the sons, James and Israel fell in battle, slain By the hands of the common Indian foe; the latter at Blue Licks.
The period of Boone's residence on the Yadkin was one of continued turbulence and unrest. The seven years' war with France, terminating with the capture of Quebec and the cession of Canada, in 1760, subjected the borders of Virginia to the horrors of Indian warfare from the Miami tribes, and of North Carolina to the same from the Cherokees of the South, all being allies of the French. Following the comparative quiet which for a time succeeded this treaty of peace and partial immunity from savage hos- tilities, "the colonists of the Carolinas, and of Virginia, had been steadily advancing to the West, and we can trace their approaches in the direction of the boundaries of Kentucky and Tennessee, to the base of the great Appalachian range."
From Ramsey's annals of Tennessee, we have the historic account of the earliest known venture of Boone to the forests of the great West, in 1760. "At the head of one of the companies that visited the West this year came Daniel Boone, and traveled with them as low as where Abingdon now stands, and there left them." How far he penetrated the forest is not recorded; but "there is still to be seen on a beech tree standing in sight and east of the present stage-road leading from Jonesboro to Blountsville, and in the valley of Boone's creek, a tributary of Wataga, Tennessee, the following words, carved into the bark : . D. Boone CillED A. BAR On Tree in THE yEAR 1760.'"
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