USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 32
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Dunmore wrote to Lord Dartmouth that there were "three con- siderations" he wished to offer for his Majesty's approval: "The first is, to Suffer these Emigrants to hold their Lands of, and incor- porate with the Indians; the dreadfull Consequences of which may
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be easily foreseen, and which I leave to your Lordships Judgment. The Second, is to permit them to form a Set of Democratical Gov- ernments of their own, upon the backs of the old Colonies; a Scheme which, for obvious reasons, I apprehend cannot be allowed to be carried into execution. The last is, that which I proposed to your Lordship, to receive persons in their Circumstances, under the pro- tection of Some of His Majesty's Governments already established, and, in giving this advice, I had no thought of bringing a Dishonour upon the Crown."
These suggestions offered by the governor of the Virginia prov- ince, through the secretary of state for the colonies, to George III., King of England, make it obvious that Dunmore's War was waged more particularly for the benefit of the Royal Government than it was for the protection of the frontier settlers. Dunmore was aware that the principles of democracy were taking deep root in the minds and hearts of the inhabitants of the mountain regions of Virginia ; and that open resistance to their eager wishes to extend their set- tlements into Kentucky and along the southern banks of the Ohio would intensify rather than curb the growing democratie spirit of this liberty-loving people. And he realized that the methods he had used to thwart the main purpose of the Lewis expedition to the Ohio had kindled a flame of resentment among the inhabitants of the three great trans-montane counties, Augusta, Botetourt, and Fin- castle. Hence his wise suggestion to the British Government for the adoption of a conservative and compromising policy in its treatment of the frontiersmen, who had shown at Point Pleasant their ability to defeat the confederated tribes of the Northwestern Indians with- out any assistance from the Royal Government. The battle of Point Pleasant, which was won by the Virginia backwoodsmen, a number of Tazewell pioneers being in the engagement, was virtually the opening battle of the American Revolution.
One of the most important outcomes of the Point Pleasant bat- tle, and one that proved of vital benefit to the inhabitants of the Clinch Valley, was the opening up of Kentucky for permanent set- tlement. This erected a strong barrier in that direction between the hostile Indians and the Clinch settlements; and during the progress of the Revolutionary War greatly reduced the number of attacks that would otherwise have been made upon the pioneers of this region.
The battle of Point Pleasant was also an event of immense
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interest to the American colonies. It not only furnished opportunity for the permanent settlement of Kentucky and the Kanawha Valley, but gave George Rodgers Clark and his intrepid followers inspira- tion to originate and consummate the expedition that won for Vir- ginia the extensive and valuable Northwestern territory; and extended the northern boundary line of the American Nation from Nova Scotia along the chain of inland seas, and on to the Pacific Ocean. Eventually it gave the United States possession of the lower Mississippi Valley, through Thomas Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana in 1803; brought Texas, the splendid Lone Star State, into the Union; and secured, by conquest, the large territory ceded by Mexico in 1848. The descendants of the Tazewell pioneers can proudly claim that their ancestors were among the participants in the eventful battle. There were other results that flowed from the battle that are not so pleasant to contemplate. It sowed the seeds of life and greed in the broad road the white men afterwards traveled, but scattered the seeds of death and despair along the nar- row path the poor American Indians were forced to travel for more than a century.
Soon after the conclusion of Dunmore's War, Daniel Boone, who had been sojourning in the Clinch Valley for more than a year, determined to carry into effect his long coveted plans for planting a colony in Kentucky. The Fort Stanwix treaty had extinguished the ancient claim of the Iroquois to the territory in question ; and the treaty that Dunmore made with the Ohio Indians had procured from them an abandonment of the right they asserted to the hunting grounds south of the Ohio. The Cherokees, however, claimed, and justly so, absolute title to Kentucky by the terms of the treaty made at Lochaber, South Carolina ; and under a treaty made with the prov- ince of Virginia in 1772, which latter treaty provided that the boundary line between Virginia and the Cherokee Nation should "run west from the White Top Mountain in latitude thirty-six degrees thirty minutes."
Boone saw the necessity for getting rid of the claim of the Cherokees before making a further attempt to lead a colony into Kentucky. He remembered how his first attempt to migrate to that country, in the autumn of 1773, had been defeated by a roving band of Cherokees, who set upon and killed his son James, and Henry
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Russell, son of Captain William Russell, together with four white men and two negroes who were attending young Russell. This caused him to exercise caution to escape a similar occurrence. John Floyd had made, in the spring and summer of 1774, numerous sur- veys of large and valuable tracts of land in Kentucky for Patrick Henry, William Preston, William Russell, William Byrd, William Fleming, William Christian, Arthur Campbell, and other Virginians ; and all these, no doubt, joined Boone in the scheme to acquire the title of the Cherokees. Boone decided to enter into negotiations with the Indians. Early in the year 1775 he induced Colonel Rich- ard Henderson, Thomas Hart, John Williams, James Hogg, Nathan- iel Hart, Leonard H. Bullock, John Lutrell, and William John- ston, all living in North Carolina, to join him in an effort to pur- chase the Cherokee claim. A company was formed to that end, and Boone, Henderson and Nathaniel Hart went to the Cherokee towns to commence negotiations. They made a proposition to the Indians, and suggested that a general council of the Nation be held to con- sider the sale of the desired territory to Boone and his associates. A council was held at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River, at which about twelve hundred Cherokees were present, more than half of them warriors. On the 17th of March, 1775, a treaty was con- cluded and signed by the agents of the company and certain chiefs of the Cherokee Nation. In consideration of a large quantity of merchandise, said to be of the value of ten thousand pounds sterling, the Indians conveyed to the North Carolinians and their associates all the lands south of the Ohio and lying between the Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers. Dragging Canoe, the great chief, opposed the treaty and made a strong speech against it. He very earnestly and pathetically called the attention of his tribesmen to the happy state the Nation had occupied before it was encroached upon by the greedy white men, and how other tribes of their race had been driven from their homes by the whites, who seemed determined to drive the natives out or exterminate them. He declared that: "Whole nations had melted away in their presence like balls of snow before the sun, and had scarcely left their names behind, except as imperfectly recorded by their enemies and destroyers." Dragging Canoe saw in this proposition of Boone and his com- panions to get the remainder of their finest hunting grounds the beginning of a movement of the white men to drive his people from their beautiful homeland in the Southern Alleghanies, and force
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them into the wilderness beyond the Mississippi. The old chief urged his countrymen to fight to the death rather than submit to the loss of more of their territory. His pleas were unavailing, and the territory sought by Daniel Boone and others was sold to them.
The Cherokees had parted with their acknowledged title to their famous hunting grounds, from which they had in succession driven all intruders, "time out of mind." But instead of the lands becom- ing the property of Henderson's company, it merely removed the Cherokee cloud from the title which Virginia had acquired and was asserting under the charters granted by James I., King of Eng- land; and Kentucky at that time was a part of Fincastle County, Virginia. The Indian chiefs conceded that their title was of doubt- ful value, because they had never used the territory for residence, but only for hunting purposes. Oconostoto and Dragging Canoe told Henderson that the Northwestern Indians would oppose his occupancy of the territory and would show the white men no mercy. And another old chief told Daniel Boone: "Brother we have given you a fine land, but I believe you will have much trouble in set- tling it."
Regardless of these warnings, as soon as he was satisfied that the Cherokees would make the sale, Henderson started Boone with a company of thirty men to blaze and clear a trail from the Holston to the Kentucky River. Equipping his men with rifles and axes, Boone immediately started out to prepare the trail, which passed through Cumberland Gap, crossed the Cumberland, Laurel and Rock Castle rivers, and on to the Kentucky River. Boone's party was occupied two weeks in accomplishing its task, and on several occasions they were attacked by small parties of Indians and some of his men killed.
When the treaty with the Indians was completed, Henderson started out to follow the trail that Boone and his men had made. He had a large party of men; and wagons to transport the goods, tools implements and so forth, that would be needed in preparing a permanent settlement. But he had to abandon the wagons in Powell's Valley, because the trail beyond would not permit the use of vehicles ; and pack-horses were used for the balance of the jour- ney. On the 7th of April messengers from Boone met Henderson's party with the information that the Indians were proving danger- ous, and urging Henderson to hasten on to where Boone and his men had gone into camp. Henderson as quickly as possible joined
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Boone, reaching his uncompleted wooden fort on the 20th of April, where he was received with a salute from 20 or 30 rifles; and they proceeded to lay the foundation of the settlement at Boonesborough. Roosevelt says, in Winning of the West: "Beyond doubt the rest- less and vigorous frontiersmen would ultimately have won their way into the coveted western lands; yet had it not been for the battle of the Great Kanawha, Boone and Henderson could not, in 1775, have planted their colony in Kentucky; and had it not been for Boone and Henderson, it is most unlikely that the land would have been settled at all until after the Revolutionary War."
The purchase from the Indians by Henderson and his associates was made for the purpose of establishing a new province, or colony, to be separated from the colonies of Virginia and North Carolina, and they named it Transylvania. Nearly all of the present Kentucky and a considerable part of Tennessee, then North Caro- lina, was embraced in the purchase. About the same time that Henderson and Boone took their colony to their new possession, Colonel James Harrod returned to Kentucky with a large party of emigrants, and resumed work on the fort and village he had com- menced to build in 1774 on the present site of Harrodsburg. And Benjamin Logan, who was a lieutenant in one of the companies from the Holston in the Point Pleasant campaign, went out with a party and built Logan's Station, ten miles from Boonesborough. It is highly probable that Colonel William Preston, Major Arthur Camp- bell, and other prominent Virginians were identified in some way with Henderson's Transylvania Company, as John Floyd returned to Kentucky in 1775 to act as surveyor for that company. The scheme may have originated, in a measure, from resentment toward Governor Dunmore on account of his unfair treatment of the Fin- castle men who took part in the Ohio campaign; and with the inten- tion of forestalling Thomas Walpole and his speculative company of Englishmen, who were perfecting their plans to found the pro- vince of Vandalia.
After his arrival on the scene, Henderson lost no time in putting his plans into effective operation. He opened a land office at Boonesborough, and had boundaries that aggregated many thousands of acres surveyed by Daniel Boone and others; giving certificates of entry therefor to any colonists who wished to become purchasers. A number of the colonists were apprehensive of the legality of Henderson's right to sell and convey these lands. They decided
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to rest their right of entry upon the Virginia land laws. The Taze- well pioneers had made their settlements under these laws, as is shown by the patents issued to them after the Revolution. These laws gave to every man who settled in the wilderness regions the right to enter four hundred acres of unappropriated land, if he built a cabin thereon and cleared and cultivated in corn a small boundary. The General Assembly of Virginia afterwards confirmed the claims of the Kentucky colonists who relied upon the Virginia laws for their titles.
Henderson and his Transylvanians asked the consent of the Con- tinental Congress, then in session, to send representatives to that body, independent of Virginia and North Carolina. Lord Dunmore as governor of Virginia, made protest against all the acts of the proprietors of Translyvania as illegitimate, and claimed that the greater portion of the mushroom province was Virginia territory and was a part of Fincastle County. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who were delegates from Virginia to the Continental Con- gress, made vigorous protest against recognition of Transylvania, and the Congress refused to admit its representatives to seats in that assembly. The North Carolina Government adopted the same policy as that of Virginia. While the Revolutionary War was in progress, in 1778, the General Assembly of Virginia declared Henderson's purchase from the Indians null and void, using as authority for the act a general land law passed in 1705 by the General Assembly. One of the provisions of the act forbade the Indians from alienating their lands, "by whatsoever rights claimed or pretended to, to any but some of their own nation ;" and declared all conveyances contrary to the act void; and imposed heavy penalties on those who should purchase or procure conveyances from them. However, instead of inflicting penalties upon Henderson and his associates, the General Assembly thought it equitable, and sound public policy, to reimburse them for procuring from the Cherokees a relinquishment of their actual or pretended claims to the Virginia territory situated in Ken- tucky. In accordance with that view, the General Assembly in October, 1778, enacted the following relief measure:
"Whereas it has appeared to this Assembly, that Richard Hen- derson and Company, have been at very great expense, in making a purchase of the Cherokee Indians, and although the same has been declared void, yet as this Commonwealth is likely to receive great advantage therefrom, by increasing its inhabitants, and establishing
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a barrier against the Indians, it is therefore just and reasonable the said Richard Henderson and Company be made a compensation for their trouble and expense.
"1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That all that tract of land situate, lying, and being on the waters of the Ohio and Green rivers, bounded as follows, to wit: beginning at the mouth of Green river, thence running up the same twelve and a half miles, when reduced to a straight line, thence running at right angles with the said reduced lines, twelve and a half miles on each side of the said river, thence running lines from the termination of the line extended on each side of the said Green river, at right angles with the same, till the said lines intersect the Ohio, which said river Ohio shall be the western boundary of the said tract, be, and the same is hereby granted the said Richard Henderson and Company, and their heirs and tenants in common, subject to the payment of the same taxes,
* but this as other lands within this Commonwealth are; * *
grant shall, and it is hereby declared to be in full compensation to the said Richard Henderson and Company, and their heirs, for their charge and trouble, and for all advantage accruing therefrom to this Commonwealth, and they are hereby excluded from any further claims to lands, on account of any settlement or improvements here- tofore made by them, or any of them. on the lands so as aforesaid purchased from the Cherokee Indians."
As this act declared, the Commonwealth was greatly benefitted through the settlements made by Boone, Henderson and others in Kentucky, in that they erected on the western frontier a strong bar- rier against the Western Indians. It was of great value to the Clinch settlements, because it largely diverted the attention of the Western tribes from this region, and relieved our pioneer ancestors from hostile invasions by large bands of the red men. But it did not relieve the inhabitants on the headwaters of the Clinch and Bluestone rivers from frequent bloody attacks by small scalping partics. The Sandy River Valley still remained an open way by which the Indians could approach undetected the Clinch and Blue- stone settlements.
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CHAPTER XI.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
During the fall, winter and spring following the termination of Dunmore's War the Tazewell pioneers pursued their home- making labors with increased and unabated ardor. They had been here long enough to test the fertility of the soil, and had found they were not mistaken in their first estimate of its excellent quality. The delightful spring, summer, and autumn seasons they knew would more than compensate for the rigorous winter weather that would have to be endured for three months each succeeding year. Health, abundance of the best food, and other creature comforts, were assured to each and every one of the inhabitants that exercised a reasonable amount of intelligence and diligence to obtain these bless- ings. And the promise of relief from hostile invasions by the Indians gave fresh impulse to the purposes and hopes of the settlers of turning the wilderness country into a great agricultural and grazing region. More horses and cattle were brought out from the eastern settlements to be grazed on the ranges in the summer and to consume the excess of corn and other grains in the winter. Oats, rye and wheat had now been introduced; and the raising of hogs in large numbers became popular, as there was an ample supply of mast every fall in the forests to fatten thousands of porkers. Num- bers of new settlers moved into each community; new cabins were built ; the sound of the woodman's axe could be heard ringing during the day near every cabin home; and the crash of the falling forest giants as they yielded to the sturdy blows of the axemen rever- berated from every adjacent mountain hollow. The horrible cloud that had been hovering over and about the pioneer homes-the frightful massacres by the Indians-had been swept away; but a terrible storm was gradually approaching from the east, that, before many seasons were passed, would find its way into the peaceful val- leys where our ancestors were erecting their homes.
In the spring of 1775 the quarrels between England and her American colonies reached a crisis. The British Government was forcing the issue of whether the colonies should become sovereign independent governments, or be compelled to remain and be ruled
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as dependencies of Great Britain. This question had been agitating the mother country and the colonies ever since, 1765, and had reached an acute stage which precluded any hope of a peaceful settlement. In March, 1774, Parliament passed what was called the Boston Port Bill. It was a retaliative measure to punish the people of Boston for their physical resistance of the tax on tea imported into the colonies. The Port Bill provided that no merchandise of any kind should be landed at or shipped from the wharves of Bos- ton-with the threat that the other ports of Massachusetts, and the ports of all the colonies, would be inflicted with a similar embargo, if they followed Boston's example of resistance to the tea tax. When the news of the enactment by Parliament of the Port Bill reached Williamsburg, the Virginia Assembly, then being in session, im- mediately made protest against the outrageous measure; and had the protest entered on the journal of the House. Governor Dun- more, who was a repressive royalist, was so provoked that he dis- solved the assembly and ordered the members to return to their homes. Howe, in his history of Virginia says:
"On the following day the members convened in the Raleigh tavern, and, in an able and manly paper, expressed to their constit- uents and their government those sentiments and opinions which they had not been allowed to express in a legislative form. This meeting recommended a cessation of trade with the East India Company, a Congress of deputies from all the colonies, 'declaring their opinion that an attack upon one of the colonies was an attack upon all British America;' and a convention of the people of Vir- ginia. The sentiments of the people accorded with those of their late delegates; they elected members who met in convention at Wil- limsburg, on the 1st, of August, 1774."
The convention of Virginians gave a detailed review of the griev- ances that had been imposed upon the colonies, demanded measures of relief, elected delegates to a general Congress of the colonies, and instructed them as to the course they should follow in the Congress. The Congress assembled at Philadelphia on the 4th of September, 1774 ; and was in session while Dunmore was engaged in his expedi- tion to Ohio against the Indians. It is believed that Dunmore, in part, planned and executed his expedition to Ohio to divert the atten- tion of the people of Virginia, and especially those who lived beyond the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, from the exciting and dangerous controversies that were going on between the British Government
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and the colonies. If this was his intention, hc failed most signally in its accomplishment.
On the 14th, of October, 1774, just four days after the Virginia mountain men won their eventful victory at Point Pleasant, the second Continental Congress, in session at Philadelphia, passed strong and defiant resolutions setting forth numerous grievances imposed upon the colonies and demanding redress therefor. The first clause of the preamble was in the following words:
"Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British Parliament, claiming a power of right to bind the people of America by statute, in all cases whatsoever, hath in some Acts expressly imposed taxes on them, and on various other pretences, but in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties payable in these Colonies, established a board of commissioners with unconstitutional powers and extended the jurisdiction of the Courts of Admiralty, not only for collecting the said duties but for the trial of causes merely arising within the body of a county. And whereas, in con- sequence of other statutes, judges, who before held only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependent on the Crown alone for their salaries, and standing armies kept in time of peace. And it has lately been resolved in Parliament, that by force of a statute made in the 35th of Henry VIII., colonists may be transported to England and tried there upon accusations for treasons and mis- prisions, or concealment of treasons, committed in the Colonies; and by a late statute, such trials have been directed in cases therein men- tioned."
The second clause of the preamble referred to the Act passed by Parliament to discontinue shipping to and from Boston harbor, and mentioned the several other acts that had been enacted as sup- plemental of the "Port Bill;" and then declared: "All of which statutes are impolitick, unjust and cruel as well as unconstitutional, and most dangerous and destructive of American rights."
In the third clause the dissolving of the legislative bodies by colonial governors, as had been done by Dunmore in Virginia, was referred to in disapproving terms; and the fourth clause of the pre- amble announced that the deputies of the colonies had been called together in a general Congress for the purpose of asserting and vindicating their rights and liberties, and to make known to the British Government:
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