USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 12
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cut emigrants before named, now large holders of real estate, were unwilling to submit to the autho- rity of Spain. Arming themselves, they attacked the weak garrison left in Fort Panmure, formerly Fort Rosalie, at Natchez, and succeeded, by stratagem and other means, in dispossessing the Spanish. They heard, furthermore, that a large British fleet was coming to chastise the Spanish upon the Gulf; but, sorrowful to tell, just after their success in ejecting the Spanish from the fort, they learned that these ac- counts of coming fleets were all deceptive and untrue. And now Don Galvez, having taken Mobile and Pen- sacola, invested with great honors and powers, is about to come and punish these disobedient British subjects of Spain. But they, well knowing the treacherous and cruel nature of the Spaniards, re- solve, rather than to await their coming and to abide their revenge, to abandon their homes and undertake the long and adventurous journey to the settlements in Georgia. Before them is a trackless wilderness, then lying between the Mississippi River on the west and the Ogeechee upon the east-a tract of country inha- bited only by wild beasts and wilder savages. With the bloodhounds of Spain upon their track, more than one hundred of these people set out, mounted upon horses with their wives and little ones, some of the children in arms, with their servants and move. ables upon pack-horses, and proceed norteastwardly,
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in hopes to reach the prairie region of Mississippi. This is the month of May, 1781. It is an unusually dry spring. They gain the prairie country, and no water is to be found. Far in the distance before them, as the mariner at sea beholds what he supposes islands near the blue horizon, so rise upon the level prairie clumps of trees, and here they hope for water. Toward that they press, only to be disappointed. Thir- ty-six hours have passed, yet no drop of cooling liquid has touched their lips or tongues. At length a camp is formed. The women and children are deposited here, and the men start out in parties to search for the precious liquid. The whole day is passed ; they return, faint, weary, and despairing, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, and fall upon the ground utterly dejected and brokenhearted. In this emer- gency, when man's hardihood and courage has failed, female instinct and energy step forward. Mrs. Dwight, wife of Dr. Dwight, sallies from the camp, attended by several women and one or two men. They reach a tract of ground at the foot of a couple of hills, where, in a spongy spot, she bids the men to dig. The spades are stoutly handled ; they come to moist earth, to trickling drops, and after a little they stay their hands ; for a pure and beautiful fountain of water gushes up. Thank God ! is the universal exclamation. The news is borne backward to the camp, and now all the party, men, women, and child-
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ren, and their patient, suffering beasts, rush wildly to the fountain-a fountain of life in a parched and thirsty land. Dr. Dwight stations guards about the spring, to prevent an intemperate use of the pure ele- ment; and all through the livelong night, men and women, and jaded horses, allowed to slake their thirst quietly and by slow degrees, drink and drink, with a thirst almost unquenchable. And now they turn to the northwestward to avoid the Indians, the Chickasaws on the one side and the Choctaws on the other, who, it is feared, are in league with the Spanish.
Their compass is lost, and they have no guide except the sun in heaven, which is often concealed by clouds, for now the weather becomes rainy and inclement. Ever and anon a prowling party of Indians, under the shadow of the night, creep into camp and run off horses or plunder baggage. And worse than all, a loathsome disease infects the worn-out company. Having wandered northward, nearly to the Tennessee River, they turn about and march nearly straight south again to near the present city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, where they cross the Tombigbee on rafts of logs. Thence they struggle through the wilderness to the Black Warrior River, which they cross at Tuscaloosa Falls ; and thence, afraid to follow any trail for fear of enemies, they go wandering up and down in their helpless misery,
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until they find themselves in the mountainous regions of the upper part of Alabama. Then they direct their steps toward the Georgian settlements, hoping to reach them by way of the Cherokee nation. One day, to their terror-for a human form inspires them with nameless fears of Indian ambus- cades and savage tortures-they see three men advancing on the rude path which they are pursuing, to meet them. The strangers advance, and are found to be an old trader among the Indians, and two Chickasaws with him. The rugged frontiersman, shocked at the wretched appearance of the forlorn and famine-stricken troop, served out to them all his provisions, and his last gallon of tafia or trading- rum. IIe added to his kind gifts, kind advice, admonishing them to avoid the Tennessee mountains, and the Cherokees, who were mostly whiggish in alliance and feeling, and rather to turn southward and venture themselves among the Creeks, trusting to their loyalist attitude, and to the influence and well-known humanity of their chief, the celebrated Colonel Alexander McGillivray.
This advice they implicitly followed ; turned south- ward once more; once more crossed the intervening ranges of mountains, for two hundred miles, often walking with feet bare, torn and bleeding; obliged to lead their laden horses along the perilous and pathless rocks. And now they reach the Coosa
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River, in Antauga County, in central Alabama. Exhausted and feeble, the deep, strong and rapid current and the dangerous obstructing rocks of the noble river are obstacles which they have not strength remaining to overcome, and they lie down upon the banks in listless despair, unable even to build a raft. They might all have perished in their stupid discouragement, had it not been for the courage and resolution of the same Mrs. Dwight who discovered the fountain that saved their lives before. She declared that if there was even one man bold enough to go with her, she would at least try to cross the river, and find a canoe or some better ford. Her husband and one other man, inspired by her brave spirit, swore she should not risk her life alone, and all three swam their horses across the stream ; carried down by the current, and at least once plunged completely under water, by leaping from a ledge. On the other side they found, a mile above, a large canoe, stove on the rocks. They repaired it as well as they could, and leaving Mrs. Dwight with the horses, the two men took it down to their friends; and by the end of the next day they were all safely across.
Resuming their march, after proceeding about twenty miles they approach a Creek town, known as the Hickory Ground, at the present town of We- tumpka. Colonel McGillivray, the celebrated Creek
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ruler, has a residence there, but is absent. Afraid to enter the village, the trembling loyalists send in three deputies to explain their condition and ask relief. The ambassadors ride into the Indian town, along the path, amongst squaws hoeing corn, and between pleasant cabins, and lazy warriors, basking in the sun. But at the sight of strangers the fierce savages quickly gather about them in a dissatisfied and increasingly angry crowd, for they see that the saddles are not Spanish, like those of their allies, but English, like those of their unscrupulous and bitter foes, the Georgians. The wretched deputies in vain set forth the truth, that they are royalists, friends of King George and of the Creek nation; in vain explain whence and why they have come, and urge their helpless state, the misery of their company, and their frank and confiding application. The savages converse and argue together ; their tones grow fero- cious, their eyes begin to gleam with fury, and they handle their weapons. The unhappy men see death close before them; they and their hapless friends will end their long desperate journey under the toma- hawks and knives of these fierce Indians.
A negro rides up, and with some seeming authority demands the cause of the excitement. It is Paro, body-servant to Col. McGillivray, this moment re- turned from a journey. The Indians answer that these are some Georgians whom they propose to
10*
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kill. But the deputies quickly tell him their sad and truthful story, and he believes it, and tries to con- vince the warriors. But though he adds violent reproaches to persuasions and arguments, they simply answer that all the company must die. An ignorant but fair-minded warrior, now bethinking himself of the strange custom-which he takes it for granted is universal among all the whites-of putting talk on paper, all at once calls out-for he would be just, and appeals to the records-" If you tell the truth, make the paper talk !" The quick-witted negro takes a hint from their demand and asks them for a journal of their trip. They kept none. Then have they any paper with writing on it ? They search in terror. At last, one of them finds an old letter in his pocket. Paro tells him what to do, and how; and accordingly he reads as if from the letter, in a slow and solemn manner-it may be believed he would not lack earnestness-a full and detailed account of their journey, and of its causes, Paro interpreting with much spirit and many gestures. As the reader proceeds, the wild faces of his audience soften and light up, and putting aside their weapons, they all come up to the deputies, at the end of the account, shake hands all round, welcome them to the town, and presently bringing in the whole company, furnish them good lodging and bounteous entertainment.
After abundant rest and refreshment, the party
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proceeded castward, separating into two divisions. One reached Savannah, and the other was taken by the whigs, thoughi soon released. During the whole of this terrible journey of one hundred and forty-nine days from Natchez, not one of the party lost his life.
The fatigues and dangers of the way, however, had undermined the health of some of the travellers; and two daughters of Gen. Lyman died after reaching Savannah. Three of their brothers were also mem- bers of the expedition ; of whom, when the British left Georgia, one went to Nova Scotia, one to New York, and one to New Providence in the island of Nassau. It is said that all these sons died of broken hearts; and as Dr. Dwight observes, in his account of General Lyman's misfortunes, this may well be termed " the Unhappy Family ;" so long and uninter- rupted was the series of crushing misfortunes which bore them, one after another, down into obscure graves.
In western Pennsylvania had settled, in the early part of the century, a stout Englishman and his wife, whose lands had increased, and his children had mul- tiplied around his board. To him was born, in 1735, his son Daniel Boone. The boy, a hunter by birth and nature, early became a daring and skillful woods- man, strong, fleet and active, and unrivalled in the use of the rifle. He was but eighteen when his father
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removed to the upper country on the Yadkin, among the mountains in the west of North Carolina ; rejoicing in the wild and noble scenery, the primeval forest, the richness of the virgin soil and the abounding game. Here Boone married, while yet young, and lived for some time, hunting and farming ; loving and beloved by wife and children; but yet essentially a wild and solitary man, spending his happiest hours alone in the woods, hunting sometimes, and often enjoying with a strange delight, for a man so rude and unlettered, the numberless beauties of the mountain and river land- scapes.
In the spring of 1769 he had already become un- easy at the approach of other men ; for other settlers were planting themselves along the streams, other hunters were wandering in the woods; so he medi- tates an expedition into the unknown forest world beyond the mountains. The handles of the plough are dropped in the furrow, he hastens to his house, gathers his rifle and accoutrements, and starts in com- pany with an old Indian trader and hunter named Finlay, and four other men. They commence their journey on the 1st of May, 1769. A long, toilsome way they follow for six weeks. Crossing the Alle- ghany, the iron mountain, to the Cumberland Pass, they come out upon the headwaters of the Kanawha, and now have reached the goodly land. And truly, is it not an Eden ? During a sojourn of six and a half
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months, feasting his eyes with the glories which he can enjoy there without end-herds of buffalo which no man can number, beautiful springs gushing from every hill-side, wide, wealthy savannas, broad tree- fringed rivers, noble forests, and all the unimaginable, solitary splendors of a rich land, without human inha- bitant. At the expiration of this time, Boone and William Stewart are taken captive by the Indians. The remainder of the company are frightened, and hurry homeward. Boone and his companion remain in the hands of their captors, pretending quiet satis- faction, for a week ; then easily escape. Not a great while thereafter, William Stewart is shot by the In- dians ; and now Daniel Boone remains alone. The spring of the year comes to this lonely hunter, wan- dering here through all these wide and pleasant lands of forest and prairie and canebrake, which the Indians call "The Dark and Bloody Ground." Now he is joined by his brother, Squire Boone, a man who shares many peculiarities with himself. For a year and a half longer do these intrepid men remain in Ken- tucky, when Squire Boone returns to the settlements for a fresh supply of powder and lead, while Daniel remains alone in the wilderness, surrounded by savage foes seeking his trail ; yet unfearing and defiant. They go in groups ; he without an associate, without even a dog to bear him company. This strange safety was assured by a weed-a thistle-which grew in abund-
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ance throughout Kentucky, as if Providence had spread a carpet of safety over the land for this solitary wanderer. On this humble herb the foot of the tra- veller leaves a peculiar impress, which remains long and distinctly ; and the Indians, the lords of the soil, numerous and bold, tread carelessly as they rove across their hereditary forests and prairies, and leave patent to the trained unerring eye of the solitary white man the record of their number and their jour- ney ; while he, avoiding the tell-tale herb, moves un- known and safe from one hunting-ground to another. Thus, to his eyes, the ground is covered as if with a sheet of snow, bearing the impression of his enemies' trails ; while, for their eyes, no snow is on the ground, and his step has left no trace. Thus wanders this one solitary Anglo-Saxon, glad at heart in the revelation of a new apocalypse of earthly beauty ; a man untaught in books and erudition, but whose eyes often overflow with happy, grateful tears as he looks abroad upon the loveliness of nature, tasting the sweetest and pro- foundest things of God; reading, with clear, keen eye, the open secret which nature reveals to all her children, and pursuing his way of peril to find it a way of delight and joy. Having fully explored the country in company with his brother, he returns to the settlements. The tidings he brings are hailed with rapture by the people ; but two years are allowed to pass before active measures are taken to assume
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the occupancy of the new soil. At length Boone de- parts with his family, having first shaken hands with all his neighbors twice round ; for, notwithstanding his silent ways, he is much beloved, because he never omitted an opportunity to do a kindly office to his brother man, at whatever inconvenience to himself.
With five more families he sets out, with wife and children; is joined, in Powell's Valley, by forty well- armed men ; and advances prosperously, until just as the last mountain pass is before them. Even as they are ascending the rugged way, the rear of the party is attacked by the Indians, and at the first fire, Boone's oldest son, a promising youth of about twenty, falls --- the second victim. William Stewart was the first ; and they two are the precious first-fruits of that fearful hecatomb offered so cheerfully by those dauntless and uncompromising men, the heroic forefathers of the Mississippi Valley.
After the Indians are vanquished and driven from their coverts, a halt is called ; and though the parley which ensues is attended only by the men, the women and children are represented. The company deter- mine to fall back upon Powell's Valley. Here they take up a position, put themselves in a defensive atti- tude, and month after month is passed away in hunt- ing or dreaming. Boone sits one day in the porch of his humble cabin, when down the valley comes, all foaming with his haste, an express messenger from
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Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, looking for Daniel Boone. This is in 1774. He is wanted by Lord Dunmore to go westward four hundred miles, to the falls on the Ohio River, at what is now Louis- ville, to bear tidings to a party of surveyors and land jobbers there, that the Indians are about to break in- to hostility ; and then safely to convoy these men home again. One furtive glanee at Mrs. Boone, who nods assent, and his rifle is grasped, and Daniel, with a quiet and easy heart, starts alone upon his wild and terrible journey. He reaches the Falls, surprises the surveyors and speculators, and brings them back in safety, performing the journey of 800 miles in six weeks; and receives not only the thanks of the men thus rescued from the clutches of the savages, but also of the lordly Governor of Virginia.
And now it is not needful for me to stop to detail the peculiar transactions of Logan's War, or that other war of Lord Dunmore, whose scene was the western border in 1774. The Indians, wronged and outraged by the conduct of the squatter settlers, who had grasped their land without remunerating them, had again risen ; but after a brief campaign, were overcome, and forced to yield their lands to the whites ; and Lord Dunmore hastened back to uphold and maintain the tottering authority of the British Crown within the territories of Virginia.
And now, in 1774, there has penetrated the interior
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of Kentucky another lone hunter, James Harrod. James Logan also has come. Daniel Boone.is en- gaged as superintendent by one Col. Henderson, who purposes to be a great land-jobber in the west ; a man who taught himself to read and write after at- taining adult years, and who began life in the province of Carolina. He was a man of strong sense, and of much practical skill and enterprise. He ran for and obtained the lofty office of constable, next became a magistrate, and afterward lived to reach the bench of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. He was not a cross-grained ascetic, not a studious scholar, but a free, bold, dashing, spirited fellow, who had made his money easily, and spent it yet more easily-gene- rous and jovial to all, and expending in good living and speculation all that he earned. At this time he was bankrupt ; and casting lis eye about the world to see from what quarter he could gather new sup- plies, he thought of western lands. He would found an empire in the West. He makes a treaty with the Cherokees for some land which did not belong to them ; but that is a small matter ; his title is as good as that of the British government to American lands. He buys the vast region of country lying between the Kanawha and Cherokee rivers. Here he proposes to establish the Republic of Transylvania ; and Boone is sent out as a pioneer, to found the first settlement. And now, in conjunction with the settlements of
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Harrod and Logan, Boonesborough is established, and into this new home comes Mrs. Boone, with three other women. These were the pioneer women of the West; the women who, with their children, braved the perils of the way, the dangers of the forest, and the more fearful wiles of the bloodthirsty, insidious foes who lurk in every thicket, and ambuscade every ravine.
As the war of the Revolution broke out in the eastern colonies, the aristocratic ministry of England contrived a grand coup d'état, to arm the Indian sa- vages against the western settlements; that, having destroyed these, they might sweep eastward over the mountains. The colonists, thus attacked at once in front and rear, it was imagined must quickly suc- cumb ; and in truth, had it not been for these infant settlements in the land of the canebrake-these three little forts of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg and Lo- gansport-manned altogether by not more than one hundred fighting-men, which stood, a slender but im- pregnable breakwater, against the wild, tempestuous rush of the forest tribes of the Northwest-there is reason for believing that the onset of those fierce war- riors might have turned the wavering balance of the war, and given the victory, in the bitter struggle of the Revolution, to the British.
But there is another life, less known than Daniel Boone's, but, if possible, still more hardily adventurous,
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and certainly more closely characteristic of the inen and times of which I am speaking. Let us follow it, and see what were the deeds and the dangers of onc whom we may well call the ideal man-the represen- tative man of ante-Revolutionary Kentucky. I mean the life of General Simon Kenton, the refugee, hunter, spy, horse-stealer, Indian-fighter, soldier and officer ; and withial the perfect hero, true friend and brave protector of the scattered, imperilled outposts of civili- zation that scantily dotted the blood-stained forests of Kentucky.
Simon Kenton was born in Fauquier County, Vir- ginia, in 1755. IIe was of the wild and insubordinate, but cool, adventurous and daring Scotch-Irish blood --- his mother Scotch and his father Irish. The parents were so poor that the boy's education, to his lasting disadvantage in life, was quite neglected. In those wild days, and in the hardy, healthy life of the moun- tains, marriages were early made. Kenton was only about sixteen when he was in love ; and lost his sweet- heart, too, by the success of a preferred rival, his own most intimate friend, one Veach, who was, for all that appears, as young as he. Desperate with disap- pointment, lie recklessly, as the old song says, "came to the wedding without any bidding," and finding the happy couple among their friends, seated on a bed, he seems to have quite lost his wits, and crazily and rudely thrust himself between them. Upon this,
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Veach and his brothers pounced upon him, gave him a sound thrashing and turned him out of the house. But meeting Veach alone in the woods, soon after- ward, Kenton intimating that he was still dissatisfied, they had a long and severe pitched battle, which ended in Kenton's thoroughly squaring accounts by beating his adversary to helplessness, and leaving him on the ground for dead. Frightened at his work, fearing the revenge of friends and the rude penalties of border law, his friend and his love both lost, a sud- den mighty sense of loneliness and hate for civilized life came upon him, and he fled to the mountains and the woods. Journeying by night, and hiding by day, he pushes westward, and in April, 1771, reaches Cheat River; works for hire until he earns a good rifle ; goes on to Fort Pitt ; engages himself to hunt for the garrison ; and forms a strong friendship with that Simon Girty who stands amidst the blood and fire of the fearful Indian wars of those times, a figure infernal with murder and treason, a renegade among the savages, and yet-as if to prove that the worst men are not all bad-more than once proving him- self an eminently faithful and unflinching protector of the very few to whom he felt gratitude or affection.
In the autumn of 1771, with two hunters named Yeager and Strader, the first of whom had excited his fancy with wonderful stories of the cane-lands of Kentucky, he went down the Ohio to find them. Not
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succeeding, they returned to the woods of the great Kanawha, and hunted for a year and a half. In the spring of 1773 the Indians, then becoming excited against the settlements, suddenly fired upon the three hunters while asleep in their camp, and killed Yeager; Strader and Kenton fled into the woods naked, as they lay in their shirts only, without arms or food, and after wandering six days, torn, bleeding, and famished, so footsore that their last day's journey was but six miles, and so exhausted that on that same day they repeatedly lay down to die, they met some hunters, obtained food and clothes, and returned to a settlement. Kenton now went to work again, until he liad obtained another rifle and hunter's outfit; accompanied a party searching for Capt. Bullitt, who had gone down the Ohio on a sur- veying expedition ; guided it, when unsuccessful, back to Virginia; volunteered into Dunmore's army in 1774, doing good service as a spy ; and being dis- charged in the fall, hunted on the Big Sandy that winter ; and the next summer made a second trip with a hunter named Williams, in search of the cane-lands of Kentucky, the glowing descriptions of his dead friend Yeager still dwelling in his mind. He discovered the long-wished-for cane by accident, not far from Maysville, in Mason County ; cleared some land and planted an acre of corn upon one of the richest and loveliest spots in Kentucky,
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