THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST:

 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE EARLY PIONEERS INTO VIRGINIA, THE CAROLINAS, TENNESSEE, AND KENTUCKY 1740-1790

BY

ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, Ph. D. , D. C. L. 

 Some to endure and many to fail, Some to conquer and many to quail Toiling over the Wilderness Trail. 

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO. 

1920

 TO THE HISTORIAN OF OLD WEST AND NEW WEST FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER WITH ADMIRATION AND REGARD

The country might invite a prince from his palace, merely for thepleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only addthe rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can theworld offer for the loss of so glorious a prospect?--RichardHenderson. 

The established Authority of any government in America, and thepolicy of Government at home, are both insufficient to restrainthe Americans. .. . They acquire no attachment to Place: Butwandering about Seems engrafted in their Nature; and it is aweakness incident to it, that they Should for ever imagine theLands further off, are Still better than those upon which theyare already settled. --Lord Dunmore, to the Earl of Dartmouth. 

INTRODUCTION

The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westwardmigration of successive waves of transplanted European peoplesthroughout the entire course of the eighteenth century is thehistory of the growth and evolution of American democracy. Uponthe American continent was wrought out, through almost superhumandaring, incredible hardship, and surpassing endurance, theformation of a new society. The European rudely confronted withthe pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon discovered thathis maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon hisindividual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himselfto his environment. The very history of the human race, from theage of primitive man to the modern era of enlightenedcivilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout thecourse of half a century. 

A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturingthe successive episodes in the history of a single family as itwended its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutelyrepulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully upthe granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into thetransmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give tothe spectator a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westwardmovement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession, revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhapsescape his scrutiny. Back of the individual, back of the family, even, lurk the creative and formative impulses of colonization, expansion, and government. In the recognition of these social andeconomic tendencies the individual merges into the group; thegroup into the community; the community into a new society. Inthis clear perspective of historic development the spectacularhero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, themovement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets, gain in impressiveness and dignity. 

As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept eversouthward and westward, seeking room for expansion and economicindependence, a series of frontiers was gradually thrust outtoward the wilderness in successive waves of irregularindentation. The true leader in this westward advance, to whomless than his deserts has been accorded by the historian, is thedrab and mercenary trader with the Indians. The story of hisenterprise and of his adventures begins with the planting ofEuropean civilization upon American soil. In the mind of theaborigines he created the passion for the fruits, both good andevil, of the white man's civilization, and he was welcomed by theIndian because he also brought the means for repelling thefurther advance of that civilization. The trader was ofincalculable service to the pioneer in first spying out the landand charting the trackless wilderness. The trail rudely marked bythe buffalo became in time the Indian path and the trader's"trace"; and the pioneers upon the westward march, following theline of least resistance, cut out their roads along these veryroutes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for thetrader--brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral--the expansionist movement upon theAmerican continent would have been greatly retarded. 

So scattered and ramified were the enterprises and expeditions ofthe traders with the Indians that the frontier which theyestablished was at best both shifting and unstable. Following farin the wake of these advance agents of the civilization whichthey so often disgraced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, whotook advantage of the extensive pastures and ranges along theuplands and foot-hills to raise immense herds of cattle. Thus wasformed what might be called a rancher's frontier, thrust out inadvance of the ordinary farming settlements and serving as thefirst serious barrier against the Indian invasion. The westwardmovement of population is in this respect a direct advance fromthe coast. Years before the influx into the Old Southwest of thetides of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurousstruck straight westward in the wake of the fur-trader, and hereand there erected the cattle-ranges beyond the farming frontierof the piedmont region. The wild horses and cattle which roamedat will through the upland barrens and pea-vine pastures wereherded in and driven for sale to the city markets of the East. 

The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau constituted the realbackbone of western settlement. The pioneering farmers, with theadventurous instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plungeddeeper and ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by theprospect of free and still richer lands in the dim interior. Settlements quickly sprang up in the neighborhood of militaryposts or rude forts established to serve as safeguards againsthostile attack; and trade soon flourished between thesesettlements and the eastern centers, following the trails of thetrader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The boldersettlers who ventured farthest to the westward were held incommunication with the East through their dependence upon saltand other necessities of life; and the search for salt-springs inthe virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence of the desireof the pioneer to shake off his dependence upon the coast. 

The prime determinative principle of the progressive Americancivilization of the eighteenth century was the passion for theacquisition of land. The struggle for economic independencedeveloped the germ of American liberty and became thedifferentiating principle of American character. Here was a vastunappropriated region in the interior of the continent to be hadfor the seeking, which served as lure and inspiration to the mandaring enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It was inaccordance with human nature and the principles of politicaleconomy that this unknown extent of uninhabited transmontaneland, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility, shouldexcite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonialsalike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody therehas his eye fixed on this country. " Groups of wealthy orwell-to-do individuals organized themselves into land companiesfor the colonization and exploitation of the West. The pioneerpromoter was a powerful creative force in westward expansion; andthe activities of the early land companies were decisive factorsin the colonization of the wilderness. Whether acting under theauthority of a crown grant or proceeding on their own authority, the land companies tended to give stability and permanence tosettlements otherwise hazardous and insecure. 

The second determinative impulse of the pioneer civilization waswanderlust--the passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter, the traveler, and the explorer. This restless class of nomadicwanderers was responsible in part for the royal proclamation of1763, a secondary object of which, according to Edmund Burke, wasthe limitation of the colonies on the West, as "the charters ofmany of our old colonies give them, with few exceptions, nobounds to the westward but the South Sea. " The Long Hunters, taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth to a fabledhunter's paradise in the far-away wilderness, because they weredriven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or a De Sototo find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond. 

But the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of thechase and of discovery; he was intent also upon collecting thefurs and skins of wild animals for lucrative barter and sale inthe centers of trade. He was quick to make "tomahawk claims" andto assert "corn rights" as he spied out the rich virgin land forfuture location and cultivation. Free land and no taxes appealedto the backwoodsman, tired of paying quit-rents to the agents ofwealthy lords across the sea. Thus the settler speedily followedin the hunter's wake. In his wake also went many rude and lawlesscharacters of the border, horse thieves and criminals ofdifferent sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in themerciful liberality of the wilderness. For the most part, however, it was the salutary instinct of the homebuilder--the manwith the ax, who made a little clearing in the forest and builtthere a rude cabin that he bravely defended at all risks againstcontinued assaults--which, in defiance of every restraint, irresistibly thrust westward the thin and jagged line of thefrontier. The ax and the surveyor's chain, along with the rifleand the hunting-knife, constituted the armorial bearings of thepioneer. With individual as with corporation, with explorer aswith landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse of the era. 

The various desires which stimulated and promoted westwardexpansion were, to be sure, often found in complete conjunction. The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage, selling him whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for richfurs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself andcollected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitaryand protracted hunting-expeditions. The rancher and the herdersought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, thecane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need forfresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer tothe mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westwardadvance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the newregion, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, forthe cultivation of his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yetin the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured thewilderness in search of game "and spied out new lands for futuresettlement". 

This restless and nomadic race, says the keenly observant FrancisBaily, "delight much to live on the frontiers, where they canenjoy undisturbed, and free from the control of any laws, theblessings which nature has bestowed upon them. " Independence ofspirit, impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and thenomadic temperament--these are the strains in the Americancharacter of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended tocreate a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave ofsettlement westward across the American continent, with areversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthestfrontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at eachsuccessive stage of settlement, from the western limit to theeastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the history of theAmerican people during two centuries. This era, constituting thefirst stage in our national existence, and productive of abuoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free soil, closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cultivable freeland, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recentdeath of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid inauguration of the period, in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, andKentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth century, isthe theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest. 

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

 I THE MIGRATION OF THE PEOPLES II THE CRADLE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION III THE BACK COUNTRY AND THE BORDER IV THE INDIAN WAR V IN DEFENSE OF CIVILIZATION VI CRUSHING THE CHEROKEES VII THE LAND COMPANIES VIII THE LONG HUNTERS IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE IX DANIEL BOONE AND WILDERNESS EXPLORATION X DANIEL BOONE IN KENTUCKY XI THE REGULATORS XII WATAUGA--HAVEN OF LIBERTY XIII OPENING THE GATEWAY--DUNMORE'S WAR XIV RICHARD HENDERSON AND THE TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY XV TRANSYLVANIA--A WILDERNESS COMMONWEALTH XVI THE REPULSE OF THE RED MEN XVII THE COLONIZATION OF THE CUMBERLAND XVIII KING'S MOUNTAIN XIX THE STATE OF FRANKLIN XX THE LURE OF SPAIN--THE HAVEN OF STATEHOOD

THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST

CHAPTER I. The Migration of the Peoples

Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania andother parts of America, who are over-stocked with people and Mikedirectly from Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards theWest, and have got near the mountains. --Gabriel Johnston, Governor of North Carolina, to the Secretary of the Board ofTrade, February 15, 1751. 

At the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of populationhad swept inland to the "fall line", the westward boundary of theestablished settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced bythe more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the BlueRidge. So rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in theinterval 1717-32 the population quadrupled in numbers. A map ofthe colonial settlements in 1725 reveals a narrow strip ofpopulated land along the Atlantic coast, of irregularindentation, with occasional isolated nuclei of settlementsfurther in the interior. The civilization thus establishedcontinued to maintain a close and unbroken communication withEngland and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economicreasons, clung to the coast, they reacted but slowly to thetransforming influences of the frontier. . Within a triangle ofcontinental altitude with its apex in New England, bounded on theeast by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Appalachian range, lay the settlements, divided into two zones--tidewater andpiedmont. As no break occurred in the great mountain system southof the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the difficulties of cutting apassage through the towering wall of living green long proved aneffective obstacle to the crossing of the grim mountain barrier. 

In the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward fromthe coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking formaround such natural centers of attraction as areas of fertilesoil, frontier posts, mines, salt-springs, and stretches ofupland favorable for grazing. After a time a second advance ofsettlement was begun in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, running in a southwesterly direction along the broad terraces tothe east of the Appalachian Range, which in North Carolina liesas far as two hundred and fifty miles from the sea. The BlueRidge in Virginia and a belt of pine barrens in North Carolinawere hindrances to this advance, but did not entirely check it. This second streaming of the population thrust into the long, narrow wedge of the piedmont zone a class of people differing inspirit and in tendency from their more aristocratic andcomplacent neighbors to the east. 

These settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolinapiedmont region--English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and a few French--were the first pioneers of the OldSouthwest. From the joint efforts of two strata of population, geographically, socially, and economically distinct--tidewaterand piedmont, Old South and New South--originated and floweredthe third and greatest movement of westward expansion, openingwith the surmounting of the mountain barrier and ending in theoccupation and assumption of the vast medial valley of thecontinent. 

Synchronous with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, significantly enough, was the first planting of Ulster with theEnglish and Scotch. Emigrants from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimesas many as four thousand a year (1625), continued throughout thecentury to pour into Ulster. "Those of the North of Ireland. .. , "as pungently described in 1679 by the Secretary of State, Leoline Jenkins, to the Duke of Ormond, "are most Scotch andScotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians and phanatiques, lusty, able bodied, hardy and stout men, where one may see threeor four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday, and all theNorth of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the popularplace of all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and greedyafter land. " During the quarter of a century after the EnglishRevolution of 1688 and the Jacobite uprising in Ireland, whichended in 1691 with the complete submission of Ireland to Williamand Mary, not less than fifty thousand Scotch, according toArchbishop Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the beginning of theeighteenth century there was no considerable emigration toAmerica; and it was first set up as a consequence of Englishinterference with trade and religion. Repressive measures passedby the English parliament (1665 1699), prohibiting theexportation from Ire land to England and Scotland of cattle, beef, pork, dairy products, etc. , and to any country whatever ofmanufactured wool, had aroused deep resentment among theScotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce. This discontentwas greatly aggravated by the imposition of religiousdisabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to havingto pay tithes for the support of the established church, wereexcluded from all civil and military office (1704), while theirministers were made liable to penalties for celebratingmarriages. 

This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably inan exodus to the New World. The principal ports by which theUlsterites entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware), Philadelphia and Boston. The streams of immigration steadilyflowed up the Delaware Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish beganto arrive in Bucks County. So rapid was the rate of increase inimmigration that the number of arrivals soon mounted from a fewhundred to upward of six thousand, in a single year (1729); andwithin a few years this number was doubled. According to themeticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a very smallelement of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one fourthof the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350, 000) in1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of theProvince, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on thedisputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers, saying as their excuse when challenged for titles, that we hadsolicited for colonists and they had come accordingly. " Thespirit of these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed intheir statement to Logan that it "was against the laws of God andnature that so much land should be idle while so many Christianswanted it to work on and to raise their bread. "

The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing fromten pounds and two shillings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719to fifteen pounds ten shillings per hundred acres with aquit-rent of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyesof the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward. In Maryland in 1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterlingper hundred acres. Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia freegrants of a thousand acres per family were being made. In theNorth Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord Granville, through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands tosettlers at the rate of three shillings proclamation money forsix hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and wasalso making large free grants on the condition of seating acertain proportion of settlers. "Lord Carteret's land inCarolina, " says North Carolina's first American historian, "wherethe soil was cheap, presented a tempting residence to people ofevery denomination. Emigrants from the north of Ireland, by theway of Pennsylvania, flocked to that country; and a considerablepart of North Carolina . .. Is inhabited by those people ortheir descendants. " From 1740 onward, attracted by the rich lureof cheap and even free lands in Virginia and North Carolina, atide of immigration swept ceaselessly into the valleys of theShenandoah, the Yadkin, and the Catawba. The immensity of thismobile, drifting mass, which sometimes brought "more than 400families with horse waggons and cattle" into North Carolina in asingle year (1752-3), is attested by the fact that from 1732 to1754, mainly as the result of the Scotch-Irish inundation, thepopulation of North Carolina more than doubled. 

The second important racial stream of population in thesettlement of the same region was composed of Germans, attractedto this country from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highlycolored stories of the commercial agents for promotingimmigration--the "newlanders, " who were thoroughly unscrupulousin their methods and extravagant in their representations--amigration from Germany began in the second decade of theeighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions. Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very greatnumber were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who in orderto pay for their transportation were compelled to pledgethemselves to several years of servitude. This economic conditioncaused the German immigrant, wherever he went, to become asettler of the back country, necessity compelling him to pass bythe more expensive lands near the coast. 

For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants ofvarious sects was very great, averaging something like fifteenhundred a year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed, Pennsylvania, one third of whose population at the beginning ofthe Revolution was German, early became the great distributingcenter for the Germans as well as for the Scotch-Irish. Certainlyby 1727 Adam Miller and his fellow Germans had established thefirst permanent white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. By1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen families, came from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon River, in theneighborhood of the present Winchester. There is no longer anydoubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley sloping to thenorth was almost entirely settled by Germans. "

It was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of theOld Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty PennsylvaniaGermans (who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch"from the incorrect translation of Pennsylvanische Deutsche), began to pour into the piedmont region of North Carolina. In theautumn, after the harvest was in, these ambitious Pennsylvaniapioneers would pack up their belongings in wagons and on beastsof burden and head for the southwest, trekking down in the mannerof the Boers of South Africa. This movement into the fertilevalley lands of the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabatedthroughout the entire third quarter of the century. Owing totheir unfamiliarity with the English language and the solidarityof their instincts, the German settlers at first had little sharein government. But they devotedly played their part in thedefense of the exposed settlements and often bore the brunt ofIndian attack. 

The bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionariessent out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of CountZinzendorf (1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), aremirrored in the numerous diaries, written in German, happilypreserved to posterity in religious archives of Pennsylvania andNorth Carolina. These simple, earnest crusaders, animated by pureand unselfish motives, would visit on a single tour of a thousandmiles the principal German settlements in Maryland and Virginia(including the present West Virginia). Sometimes they would makean extended circuit through North Carolina, South Carolina, andeven Georgia, everywhere bearing witness to the truth of thegospel and seeking to carry the most elemental forms of theChristian religion, preaching and prayer, to the primitivefrontiersmen marooned along the outer fringe of whitesettlements. These arduous journeys in the cause of piety placethis type of pioneer of the Old Southwest in alleviating contrastto the often relentless and bloodthirsty figure of the rudeborderer. 

Noteworthy among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journeyof Brothers Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmuller (October 12 toDecember 12, 1749). At the last outpost of civilization, thescattered settlements in Bath and Alleghany counties, thesecourageous missionaries--feasting the while solely on bear meat, for there was no bread--encountered conditions of almostprimitive savagery, of which they give this graphic picture:"Then we came to a house, where we had to lie on bear skinsaround the fire like the rest. .. . The clothes of the peopleconsist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes, deer and bearmeat. A kind of white people are found here, who live likesavages. Hunting is their chief occupation. " Into the valley ofthe Yadkin in December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg and a partyof Moravians, accompanied by a surveyor and two guides, for thepurpose of locating the one hundred thousand acres of land whichhad been offered them on easy terms the preceding year by LordGranville. This journey was remarkable as an illustration ofsacrifices willingly made and extreme hardships uncomplaininglyendured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood. In the backcountry of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found thewhole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting. Abeautiful site for the projected settlement met their delightedgaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that ithad already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's futurefather-in-law, Morgan Bryan. 

On October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by theRev. Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to trek down to the new-found haven in the Carolinahinterland--"a corner which the Lord has reserved for theBrethren"--in Anson County. Following for the most part the greathighway extending from Philadelphia to the Yadkin, over whichpassed the great throng sweeping into the back country of NorthCarolina--through the Valley of Virginia and past Robert Luhny'smill on the James River--they encountered many hardships alongthe way. Because of their "long wagon, " they had much difficultyin crossing one steep mountain; and of this experience BrotherGrube, with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had toldus that this hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcelybe able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel thisway, had to take the wheels off his wagon and carry it piecemealto the top, and had been three months on the journey from theShanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin [Yadkin]. "

These men were the highest type of the pioneers of the OldSouthwest, inspired with the instinct of homemakers in a landwhere, if idle rumor were to be credited, "the people lived likewild men never hearing of God or His Word. " In one hand they borethe implement of agriculture, in the other the book of the gospelof Jesus Christ. True faith shines forth in the simply eloquentwords: "We thanked our Saviour that he had so graciously led ushither, and had helped us through all the hard places, for nomatter how dangerous it looked, nor how little we saw how wecould win through, everything always went better than seemedpossible. " The promise of a new day--the dawn of the heroicage--rings out in the pious carol of camaraderie at theirjourney's end:

 We hold arrival Lovefeast here, In Carolina land, A company of Brethren true, A little Pilgrim-Band, Called by the Lord to be of those Who through the whole world go, To bear Him witness everywhere, And nought but Jesus know. 

CHAPTER II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion

In the year 1746 I was up in the country that is now Anson, Orange and Rowan Counties, there was not then above one hundredfighting men there is now at least three thousand for the mostpart Irish Protestants and Germans and dailey increasing. --MatthewRowan, President of the North Carolina Council, to theBoard of Trade, June 28, 1753. 

The conquest of the West is usually attributed to the readyinitiative, the stern self-reliance, and the libertarian instinctof the expert backwoodsmen. These bold, nomadic spirits wereanimated by an unquenchable desire to plunge into the wildernessin search of an El Dorado at the outer verge of civilization, free of taxation, quit-rents, and the law's restraint. Theylonged to build homes for themselves and their descendants in alimitless, free domain; or else to fare deeper and deeper intothe trackless forests in search of adventure. Yet one must notoverlook the fact that behind Boone and pioneers of his stampwere men of conspicuous civil and military genius, constructivein purpose and creative in imagination, who devoted their bestgifts to actual conquest and colonization. These men of largeintellectual mold-themselves surveyors, hunters, andpioneers--were inspired with the larger vision of theexpansionist. Whether colonizers, soldiers, or speculators on thegrand scale, they sought to open at one great stroke the vasttrans-Alleghany regions as a peaceful abode for mankind. 

Two distinct classes of society were gradually drawing apart fromeach other in North Carolina and later in Virginia--the pioneerdemocracy of the back country and the upland, and the planteraristocracy of the lowland and the tide-water region. From thefrontier came the pioneer explorers whose individual enterpriseand initiative were such potent factors in the exploitation ofthe wilderness. From the border counties still in contact withthe East came a number of leaders. Thus in the heart of the OldSouthwest the two determinative principles already referred to, the inquisitive and the acquisitive instincts, found a fortunateconjunction. The exploratory passion of the pioneer, directed inthe interest of commercial enterprise, prepared the way for thegreat westward migration. The warlike disposition of the hardybackwoodsman, controlled by the exercise of military strategy, accomplished the conquest of the trans-Alleghany country. 

Fleeing from the traditional bonds of caste and aristocracy inEngland and Europe, from economic boycott and civil oppression, from religious persecution and favoritism, many worthy members ofsociety in the first quarter of the eighteenth century sought ahaven of refuge in the "Quackerthal" of William Penn, with itstrustworthy guarantees of free tolerance in religious faith andthe benefits of representative self-government. From EastDevonshire in England came George Boone, the grandfather of thegreat pioneer, and from Wales came Edward Morgan, whose daughterSarah became the wife of Squire Boone, Daniel's father. Thesewere conspicuous representatives of the Society of Friends, drawnthither by the roseate representations of the great Quaker, William Penn, and by his advanced views on popular government andreligious toleration. Hither, too, from Ireland, whither he hadgone from Denmark, came Morgan Bryan, settling in Chester County, prior to 1719; and his children, William, Joseph, James, andMorgan, who more than half a century later gave the name toBryan's Station in Kentucky, were destined to play importantroles in the drama of westward migration. In September, 1734, Michael Finley from County Armagh, Ireland, presumablyaccompanied by his brother Archibald Finley, settled in BucksCounty, Pennsylvania. According to the best authorities, Archibald Finley was the father of John Finley, or Findlay as hesigned himself, Boone's guide and companion in his exploration ofKentucky in 1769-71. To Pennsylvania also came Mordecai Lincoln, great grandson of Samuel Lincoln, who had emigrated from Englandto Hingham, Massachusetts, as early as 1637. This MordecaiLincoln, who in 1720 settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania, thegreat-great-grandfather of President Lincoln, was the father ofSarah Lincoln, who was wedded to William Boone, and of AbrahamLincoln, who married Anne Boone, William's first cousin. Earlysettlers in Pennsylvania were members of the Hanks family, one ofwhom was the maternal grandfather of President Lincoln. 

No one race or breed of men can lay claim to exclusive credit forleadership in the hinterland movement and the conquest of theWest. Yet one particular stock of people, the Ulster Scots, exhibited with most completeness and picturesqueness a group ofconspicuous qualities and attitudes which we now recognize to betypical of the American character as molded by the conditions offrontier life. Cautious, wary, and reserved, these Scotsconcealed beneath a cool and calculating manner a relentlessnessin reasoning power and an intensity of conviction which glowedand burned with almost fanatical ardor. Strict in religiousobservance and deep in spiritual fervor, they never lost sight ofthe main chance, combining a shrewd practicality with a wealth ofdevotion. It has been happily said of them that they kept theSabbath and everything else they could lay their hands on. In thepolity of these men religion and education went hand in hand; andthey habitually settled together in communities in order thatthey might have teachers and preachers of their own choice andpersuasion. 

In little-known letters and diaries of travelers and itinerantministers may be found many quaint descriptions and faithfulcharacterizations of the frontier settlers in their habits oflife and of the scenes amidst which they labored. In a letter toEdmund Fanning, the cultured Robin Jones, agent of Lord Granvilleand Attorney-General of North Carolina, summons to view a piquantimage of the western border and borderers: "The inhabitants arehospitable in their way, live in plenty and dirt, are stout, ofgreat prowess in manly athletics; and, in private conversation, bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after the Indianmanner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and fruitful ofstrategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid as theancient Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiorseven in their own way of fighting. .. . [The land] may be trulycalled the land of the mountains, for they are so numerous thatwhen you have reached the summit of one of them, you may seethousands of every shape that the imagination can suggest, seeming to vie with each other which should raise his lofty headto touch the clouds. .. . It seems to me that nature has beenwanton in bestowing her blessings on that country. "

An excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditionsin the backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlersin the middle of the century, exhibits in all their barrencheerlessness the hardships and limitations of life in thewilderness. The father of William Few, the narrator, had trekkeddown from Maryland and settled in Orange County, some miles eastof the little hamlet of Hillsborough. "In that country at thattime there were no schools, no churches or parsons, or doctors orlawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns, nor do I recollectduring the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical, civil ormilitary, except a justice of the peace, a constable and two orthree itinerant preachers. .. . These people had few wants, andfewer temptations to vice than those who lived in more refinedsociety, though ignorant. They were more virtuous and more happy. .. . A schoolmaster appeared and offered his services to teachthe children of the neighborhood for twenty shillings each peryear. .. . In that simple state of society money was but littleknown; the schoolmaster was the welcome guest of his pupil, fedat the bountiful table and clothed from the domestic loom. .. . In that country at that time there was great scarcity of books. "

The journals of itinerant ministers through the Valley ofVirginia and the Carolina piedmont zone yield precious mementoesof the people, their longing after the things of the spirit, andtheir pitiful isolation from the regular preaching of the gospel. These missionaries were true pioneers in this Old Southwest, ardent, dauntless, and heroic--carrying the word into remoteplaces and preaching the gospel beneath the trees of the forest. In his journal (1755-6), the Rev. Hugh McAden, born inPennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, a graduate of Nassau Hall(1753), makes the unconsciously humorous observation thatwherever he found Presbyterians he found people who "seemedhighly pleased, and very desirous to hear the word"; whilstelsewhere he found either dissension and defection to Baptistprinciples, or "no appearance of the life of religion. " In theScotch-Irish Presbyterian settlements in what is now MecklenburgCounty, the cradle of American liberty, he found "pretty serious, judicious people" of the stamp of Moses, William, and JamesAlexander. While traveling in the upper country of SouthCarolina, he relates with gusto the story of "an old gentlemanwho said to the Governor of South Carolina, when he was in thoseparts, in treaty with the Cherokee Indians that 'he had neverseen a shirt, been in a fair, heard a sermon, or seen a ministerin all his life. ' Upon which the governor promised to send him upa minister, that he might hear one sermon before he died. " Theminister came and preached; and this was all the preaching thathad been heard in the upper part of South Carolina before Mr. McAden's visit. 

Such, then, were the rude and simple people in the back countryof the Old Southwest--the deliberate and self-controlled English, the aggressive, landmongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh, the thrifty Germans, the debonair French, the impetuous Irish, and the calculating Scotch. The lives they led were marked byindependence of spirit, democratic instincts, and a forthrightsimplicity. In describing the condition of the English settlersin the backwoods of Virginia, one of their number, Doddridge, says: "Most of the articles were of domestic manufacture. Theremight have been incidentally a few things brought to the countryfor sale in a primitive way, but there was no store for generalsupply. The table furniture usually consisted of wooden vessels, either turned or coopered. Iron forks, tin cups, etc. , werearticles of rare and delicate luxury. The food was of the mostwholesome and primitive kind. The richest meat, the finestbutter, and best meal that ever delighted man's palate were hereeaten with a relish which health and labor only know. Thehospitality of the people was profuse and proverbial. "

The circumstances of their lives compelled the pioneers to becomeself-sustaining. Every immigrant was an adept at many trades. Hebuilt his own house, forged his own tools, and made his ownclothes. At a very early date rifles were manufactured at theHigh Shoals of the Yadkin; Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, was anexpert gunsmith. The difficulty of securing food for thesettlements forced every man to become a hunter and to scour theforest for wild game. Thus the pioneer, through force of sheernecessity, became a dead shot--which stood him in good stead inthe days of Indian incursions and bloody retaliatory raids. Primitive in their games, recreations, and amusements, which notinfrequently degenerated into contests of savage brutality, thepioneers always set the highest premium upon personal bravery, physical prowess, and skill in manly sports. At all publicgatherings, general musters, "vendues" or auctions, and evenfunerals, whisky flowed with extraordinary freedom. It is worthyof record that among the effects of the Rev. Alexander Craighead, the famous teacher and organizer of Presbyterianism inMecklenburg and the adjoining region prior to the Revolution, were found a punch bowl and glasses. 

The frontier life, with its purifying and hardening influence, bred in these pioneers intellectual traits which constitute thebasis of the American character. The single-handed and successfulstruggle with nature in the tense solitude of the forestdeveloped a spirit of individualism, restive under control. Onthe other hand, the sense of sharing with others the arduoustasks and dangers of conquering the wilderness gave birth to astrong sense of solidarity arid of human sympathy. With the lureof free lands ever before them, the pioneers developed arestlessness and a nervous energy, blended with a buoyancy ofspirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet this sameuntrammeled freedom occasioned a disregard for law and a defianceof established government which have exhibited themselvesthroughout the entire course of our history. Initiative, self-reliance, boldness in conception, fertility in resource, readiness in execution, acquisitiveness, inventive genius, appreciation of material advantages--these, shot through with acertain fine idealism, genial human sympathy, and a high romanticstrain--are the traits of the American national type as itemerged from the Old Southwest. 

CHAPTER III. The Back Country and the Border

Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the mostdelightful climate, and richest soil imaginable; they areeverywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes;lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water, richvalleys, and majestic woods; the whole interspersed with aninfinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute the landscapesurrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are generallyrobust; and live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of wantand acquainted with but few vices. Their inexperience of theelegancies of life precludes any regret that they possess not themeans of enjoying them, but they possess what many princes wouldgive half their dominion for, health, content, and tranquillityof mind. --Andrew Burnaby: Travels Through North America. 

The two streams of Ulstermen, the greater through Philadelphia, the lesser through Charleston, which poured into the Carolinastoward the middle of the century, quickly flooded the backcountry. The former occupied the Yadkin Valley and the region tothe westward, the latter the Waxhaws and the Anson County regionto the northwest. The first settlers were known as the"Pennsylvania Irish, " because they had first settled inPennsylvania after migrating from the north of Ireland; whilethose who came by way of Charleston were known as the"Scotch-Irish. " The former, who had resided in Pennsylvania longenough to be good judges of land, shrewdly made their settlementsalong the rivers and creeks. The latter, new arrivals and lessexperienced, settled on thinner land toward the heads of creeksand water courses. 

Shortly prior to 1735, Morgan Bryan, his wife Martha, and eightchildren, together with other families of Quakers fromPennsylvania, settled upon a large tract of land on the northwestside of the Opeckon River near Winchester. A few years later theyremoved up the Virginia Valley to the Big Lick in the presentRoanoke County, intent upon pushing westward to the veryoutskirts of civilization. In the autumn of 1748, leaving behindhis brother William, who had followed him to Roanoke County, Morgan Bryan removed with his family to the Forks of the YadkinRiver. The Morgans, with the exception of Richard, who emigratedto Virginia, remained in Pennsylvania, spreading overPhiladelphia and Bucks counties; while the Hanks and Lincolnfamilies found homes in Virginia--Mordecai Lincoln's son, John, the great-grandfather of President Lincoln, removing from Berksto the Shenandoah Valley in 1765. On May 1, 1750, Squire Boone, his wife Sarah (Morgan), and their eleven children--a veritablecaravan, traveling like the patriarchs of old--started south; andtarried for a space, according to reliable tradition, on LinvilleCreek in the Virginia Valley. In 1752 they removed to the Forksof the Yadkin, and the following year received from LordGranville three tracts of land, all situated in Rowan County. About the hamlet of Salisbury, which in 1755 consisted of sevenor eight log houses and the court house, there now rapidlygathered a settlement of people marked by strong individuality, sturdy independence, and virile self-reliance. The Boones and theBryans quickly accommodated themselves to frontier conditions andimmediately began to take an active part in the local affairs ofthe county. Upon the organization of the county court SquireBoone was chosen justice of the peace; and Morgan Bryan was soonappearing as foreman of juries and director in road improvements. 

The Great Trading Path, leading from Virginia to the towns of theCatawbas and other Southern Indians, crossed the Yadkin at theTrading Ford and passed a mile southeast of Salisbury. AboveSapona Town near the Trading Ford was Swearing Creek, which, according to constant and picturesque tradition, was the spotwhere the traders stopped to take a solemn oath never to revealany unlawful proceedings that might occur during their sojournamong the Indians. In his divertingly satirical "History of theDividing Line" William Byrd in 1728 thus speaks of this locality:"The Soil is exceedingly rich on both sides the Yadkin, aboundingin rank Grass and prodigiously large Trees; and for plenty ofFish, Fowl and Venison, is inferior to No Part of the NorthernContinent. There the Traders commonly lie Still for some days, torecruit their Horses' Flesh as well as to recover their ownspirits. " In this beautiful country happily chosen for settlementby Squire Boone--who erected his cabin on the east side of theYadkin about a mile and a quarter from Alleman's, now Boone's, Ford--wild game abounded. Buffaloes were encountered in easternNorth Carolina by Byrd while running the dividing line; and inthe upper country of South Carolina three or four men with theirdogs could kill fourteen to twenty buffaloes in a single day. "Deer and bears fell an easy prey to the hunter; wild turkeysfilled every thicket; the watercourses teemed with beaver, otter, and muskrat, as well as with shad and other delicious fish. Panthers, wildcats, and wolves overran the country; and theveracious Brother Joseph, while near the present Wilkesboro, amusingly records: "The wolves wh. Are not like those in Germany, Poland and Lifland (because they fear men and don't easily comenear) give us such music of six different cornets the like of wh. I have never heard in my life. " So plentiful was the game thatthe wild deer mingled with the cattle grazing over the widestretches of luxuriant grass. 

In the midst of this sylvan paradise grew up Squire Boone's son, Daniel Boone, a Pennsylvania youth of English stock, Quakerpersuasion, and Baptist proclivities. Seen through a glorifyinghalo after the lapse of a century and three quarters, he risesbefore us a romantic figure, poised and resolute, simple, benign--as naive and shy as some wild thing of the primevalforest--five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest andshoulders, dark locks, genial blue eyes arched with faireyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of slightly Roman cast, and fair, ruddy countenance. Farming was irksome to thisrestless, nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse wouldexchange the plow and the grubbing hoe for the long rifle andkeen-edged hunting knife. In a single day during the autumnseason he would kill four or five deer; or as many bears as wouldsnake from two to three thousand pounds weight of bear-bacon. Fascinated with the forest, he soon found profit as well aspleasure in the pursuit of game; and at excellent fixed prices hesold his peltries, most often at Salisbury, some thirteen milesaway, sometimes at the store of the old "Dutchman, " GeorgeHartman, on the Yadkin, and occasionally at Bethabara, theMoravian town sixty odd miles distant. Skins were in such demandthat they soon came to replace hard money, which was incrediblyscarce in the back country, as a medium of exchange. Upon oneoccasion a caravan from Bethabara hauled three thousand pounds, upon another four thousand pounds, of dressed deerskins toCharleston. So immense was this trade that the year after Boone'sarrival at the Forks of Yadkin thirty thousand deerskins wereexported from the province of North Carolina. We like to thinkthat the young Daniel Boone was one of that band of whom BrotherJoseph, while in camp on the Catawba River (November 12, 1752)wrote: "There are many hunters about here, who live like Indians, they kill many deer selling their hides, and thus live withoutmuch work. "

In this very class of professional hunters, living like Indians, was thus bred the spirit of individual initiative and strenuousleadership in the great westward expansionist movement of thecoming decade. An English traveler gives the following minutepicture of the dress and accoutrement of the Carolinabackwoodsman. 

"Their whole dress is very singular, and not very materiallydifferent from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt, somewhat resembling a waggoner's frock, ornamented with a greatmany fringes, tied round the middle with a broad belt, muchdecorated also, in which is fastened a tomahawk, an instrumentthat serves every purpose of defence and convenience; being ahammer at one side and a sharp hatchet at the other; the shot bagand powderhorn, carved with a variety of whimsical figures anddevices, hang from their necks over one shoulder; and on theirheads a flapped hat, of a reddish hue, proceeding from theintensely hot beams of the sun. 

Sometimes they wear leather breeches, made of Indian dressed elk, or deer skins, but more frequently thin trowsers. 

On their legs they have Indian boots, or leggings, made of coarsewoollen cloth, that either are wrapped round loosely and tiedwith garters, or laced upon the outside, and always come betterthan half-way up the thigh. 

On their feet they sometimes wear pumps of their own manufacture, but generally Indian moccossons, of their own construction also, which are made of strong elk's, or buck's skin, dressed soft asfor gloves or breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over thetoe, and lacing from thence round to the fore part of the middleof the ancle, without a seam in them, yet fitting close to thefeet, and are indeed perfectly easy and pliant. 

Their hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a varietyof colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wearthem quite white. "

No less unique and bizarre, though less picturesque, was thedress of the women of the region--in particular of Surry County, North Carolina, as described by General William Lenoir:

"The women wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like adressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Somehad bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey;and some of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonlyclubbed. Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two womenthat had on long gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and thebody of the other was open, and the tail thereof drawn up andtucked in her apron or coat-string. "

While Daniel Boone was quietly engaged in the pleasant pursuitsof the chase, a vast world-struggle of which he little dreamedwas rapidly approaching a crisis. For three quarters of a centurythis titanic contest between France and England for the interiorof the continent had been waged with slowly accumulating force. The irrepressible conflict had been formally inaugurated at SaultSte. Marie in 1671, when Daumont de Saint Lusson, swinging alofthis sword, proclaimed the sovereignty of France over "allcountries, rivers, lakes, and streams . .. Both those which havebeen discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter, inall their length and breadth, bounded on the one side by the seasof the North and of the West, and on the other by the South Sea. "Just three months later, three hardy pioneers of Virginia, despatched upon their arduous mission by Colonel Abraham Wood inbehalf of the English crown, had crossed the Appalachian divide;and upon the banks of a stream whose waters slipped into the Ohioto join the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, had carved theroyal insignia upon the blazed trunk of a giant of the forest, the while crying: "Long live Charles the Second, by the grace ofGod, King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland and Virginia andof the territories thereunto belonging. "

La Salle's dream of a New France in the heart of America wasblotted out in his tragic death upon the banks of the RiverTrinity (1687). Yet his mantle was to fall in turn upon thesquare shoulders of Le Moyne d'Iberville and of his brother--thegood, the constant Bienville, who after countless and arduousstruggles laid firm the foundations of New Orleans. In theprecious treasury of Margry we learn that on reaching Rochelleafter his first voyage in 1699 Iberville in these prophetic wordsvoices his faith: "If France does not immediately seize this partof America which is the most beautiful, and establish a colonywhich is strong enough to resist any which England may have, theEnglish colonies (already considerable in Carolina) will sothrive that in less than a hundred years they will be strongenough to seize all America. " But the world-weary Louis Quatorze, nearing his end, quickly tired of that remote and unproductivecolony upon the shores of the gulf, so industriously described inParis as a "terrestrial paradise"; and the "paternal providenceof Versailles" willingly yielded place to the monumentalspeculation of the great financier Antoine Crozat. In this Parisof prolific promotion and amazed credulity, ripe for the colossalscheme of Law, soon to blow to bursting-point the bubble of theMississippi, the very songs in the street echoed flamboyant, half-satiric panegyrics upon the new Utopia, this MississippiLand of Cockayne:

 It's to-day no contribution To discuss the Constitution And the Spanish war's forgot For a new Utopian spot; And the very latest phase Is the Mississippi craze. 

Interest in the new colony led to a great development ofsouthwesterly trade from New France. Already the French coureursde bois were following the water route from the Illinois to SouthCarolina. Jean Couture, a deserter from the service in NewFrance, journeyed over the Ohio and Tennessee rivers to thatcolony, and was known as "the greatest Trader and Travelleramongst the Indians for more than Twenty years. " In 1714 youngCharles Charleville accompanied an old trader from Crozat'scolony on the gulf to the great salt-springs on the Cumberland, where a post for trading with the Shawanoes had already beenestablished by the French. But the British were preparing tocapture this trade as early as 1694, when Tonti warned Villermontthat Carolinians were already established on a branch of theOhio. Four years later, Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, wasurging trade with the Indians of the interior in the effort todisplace the French. At an early date the coast colonies began totrade with the Indian tribes of the back country: the Catawbas ofthe Yadkin Valley; the Cherokees, whose towns were scatteredthrough Tennessee; the Chickasaws, to the westward in northernMississippi; and the Choctaws farther to the southward. Evenbefore the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the SouthCarolina settlements extended scarcely twenty miles from thecoast, English traders had established posts among the Indiantribes four hundred miles to the west of Charleston. Followingthe sporadic trading of individuals from Virginia with the inlandIndians, the heavily laden caravans of William Byrd were soonregularly passing along the Great Trading Path from Virginia tothe towns of the Catawbas and other interior tribes of theCarolinas, delighting the easily captivated fancy and provokingthe cupidity of the red men with "Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets(which the Indians call Tomahawks), Kettles, red and blue Planes, Duffields, Stroudwater blankets, and some Cutlary Wares, BrassRings and other Trinkets. " In Pennsylvania, George Croghan, theguileful diplomat, who was emissary from the Council to the OhioIndians (1748), had induced "all-most all the Ingans in theWoods" to declare against the French; and was described byChristopher Gist as a "meer idol among his countrymen, the Irishtraders. "

Against these advances of British trade and civilization, theFrench for four decades had artfully struggled, projecting toursof exploration into the vast medial valley of the continent andconstructing a chain of forts and trading-posts designed toestablish their claims to the country and to hold in check thethreatened English thrust from the east. Soon the wildernessambassador of empire, Celoron de Bienville, was despatched by thefar-visioned Galissoniere at Quebec to sow broadcast withceremonial pomp in the heart of America the seeds of empire, grandiosely graven plates of lasting lead, in defiant yet futilesymbol of the asserted sovereignty of France. Thus threatened inthe vindication of the rights of their colonial sea-to-seacharters, the English threw off the lethargy with which they hadfailed to protect their traders, and in grants to the Ohio andLoyal land companies began resolutely to form plans looking tothe occupation of the interior. But the French seized the Englishtrading-house at Venango which they converted into a fort; andVirginia's protest, conveyed by a calm and judicious young man, asurveyor, George Washington, availed not to prevent the Frenchfrom seizing Captain Trent's hastily erected military post at theforks of the Ohio and constructing there a formidable work, namedFort Duquesne. Washington, with his expeditionary force sent togarrison Captain Trent's fort, defeated Jumonville and his smallforce near Great Meadows (May, 1754); but soon after he wasforced to surrender Fort Necessity to Coulon de Villiers. 

The titanic struggle, fittingly precipitated in the backwoods ofthe Old Southwest, was now on--a struggle in which the resolutepioneers of these backwoods first seriously measured theirstrength with the French and their copper-hued allies, andlearned to surpass the latter in their own mode of warfare. Theportentous conflict, destined to assure the eastern half of thecontinent to Great Britain, is a grim, prophetic harbinger of themighty movement of the next quarter of a century into thetwilight zone of the trans-Alleghany territory:

CHAPTER IV. The Indian War

All met in companies with their wives and children, and set aboutbuilding little fortifications, to defend themselves from suchbarbarian and inhuman enemies, whom they concluded would be letloose upon them at pleasure. --The Reverend Hugh McAden--Diary, July, 1755. 

Long before the actual outbreak of hostilities powerful forceswere gradually converging to produce a clash between theaggressive colonials and the crafty Indians. As the settlerspressed farther westward into the domain of the red men, arrogantly grazing their stock over the cherished hunting-groundsof the Cherokees, the savages, who were already well disposedtoward the French, began to manifest a deep indignation againstthe British colonists because of this callous encroachment upontheir territory. During the sporadic forays by scattered bands ofNorthern Indians upon the Catawbas and other tribes friendly tothe pioneers the isolated settlements at the back part of theCarolinas suffered rude and sanguinary onslaughts. In the summerof 1753 a party of northern Indians warring in the Frenchinterest made their appearance in Rowan County, which had justbeen organized, and committed various depredations upon thescattered settlements. To repel these attacks a band of theCatawbas sallied forth, encountered a detached party of theenemy, and slew five of their number. Among the spoils, significantly enough, were silver crucifixes, beads, looking-glasses, tomahawks and other implements of war, all ofFrench manufacture. 

Intense rivalry for the good will of the near-by southern tribesexisted between Virginia and South Carolina. In strongremonstrance against the alleged attempt of Governor Dinwiddie ofVirginia to alienate the Cherokees, Catawbas, Muscogees, andChickasaws from South Carolina and to attach them to Virginia, Governor Glen of South Carolina made pungent observations toDinwiddie: "South Carolina is a weak frontier colony, and in caseof invasion by the French would be their first object of attack. We have not much to fear, however, while we retain the affectionof the Indians around us; but should we forfeit that by anymismanagement on our part, or by the superior address of theFrench, we are in a miserable situation. The Cherokees alone haveseveral thousand gunmen well acquainted with every inch of theprovince . .. Their country is the key to Carolina. " By a treatyconcluded at Saluda (November 24, 1753), Glen promised to buildthe Cherokees a fort near the lower towns, for the protection ofthemselves and their allies; and the Cherokees on their partagreed to become the subjects of the King of Great Britain andhold their lands under him. This fort, erected this same year onthe headwaters of the Savannah, within gunshot distance of theimportant Indian town of Keowee, was named Fort Prince George. "It is a square, " says the founder of the fort (Governor Glen tothe Board of Trade, August 26, 1754), "with regular Bastions andfour Ravelins it is near Two hundred foot from Salient Angle toSalient Angle and is made of Earth taken out of the Ditch, secured with fachines and well rammed with a banquet on theInside for the men to stand upon when they fire over, theRavelins are made of Posts of Lightwood which is very durable, they are ten foot in length sharp pointed three foot and a halfin the ground. " The dire need for such a fort in the back countrywas tragically illustrated by the sudden onslaught upon the"House of John Gutry & James Anshers" in York County by a partyof sixty French Indians (December 16, 1754), who brutallymurdered sixteen of the twenty-one persons present, and carriedoff as captives the remaining five. "

At the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 NorthCarolina voted twelve thousand pounds for the raising of troopsand several thousand pounds additional for the construction offorts--a sum considerably larger than that voted by Virginia. Aregiment of two hundred and fifty men was placed under thecommand of Colonel James Innes of the Cape Fear section; and theablest officer under him was the young Irishman from the samesection, Lieutenant Hugh Waddell. On June 3, 1754, Dinwiddieappointed Innes, his close friend, commander-in-chief of all theforces against the French; and immediately after the disaster atGreat Meadows (July, 1754), Innes took command. Within two monthsthe supplies for the North Carolina troops were exhausted; and asVirginia then failed to furnish additional supplies, ColonelInnes had no recourse but to disband his troops and permit themto return home. Appointed governor of Fort Cumberland by GeneralBraddock, he was in command there while Braddock advanced on hisdisastrous march. 

The lesson of Braddock's defeat (July 9, 1755) was memorable inthe history of the Old Southwest. Well might Braddock exclaimwith his last breath: "Who would have thought it? . .. We shallknow better how to deal with them another time. " Led on by thereckless and fiery Beaujeu, wearing an Indian gorget about hisneck, the savages from the protection of trees and roughdefenses, a pre pared ambuscade, poured a galling fire into thecompact divisions of the English, whose scarlet coats furnishedideal targets. The obstinacy of the British commanders inrefusing to permit their troops to fight Indian fashion wassuicidal; for as Herman Alriclis wrote Governor Morris ofPennsylvania (July 22, 1755): ". .. The French and Indians hadcast an Intrenchment across the road before our Army which theyDiscovered not Untill they came Close up to it, from thence andboth sides of the road the enemy kept a constant fireing on them, our Army being so confused, they could not fight, and they wouldnot be admitted by the Genl or Sir John St. Clair, to break thro'their Ranks and Take behind trees. " Daniel Boone, who went fromNorth Carolina as a wagoner in the company commanded by EdwardBrice Dobbs, was on the battle-field; but Dobbs's company at thetime was scouting in the woods. When the fierce attack fell uponthe baggage a train, Boone succeeded in effecting his escape onlyby cutting the traces of his team and fleeing on one of thehorses. To his dying day Boone continued to censure Braddock'sconduct, and reprehended especially his fatal neglect to employstrong flank-guards and a sufficient number of Provincial scoutsthoroughly acquainted with the wilderness and all the wiles andstrategies of savage warfare. 

For a number of months following Braddock's defeat there was agreat rush of the frightened people southward. In a letter toDinwiddie, Washington expresses the apprehension that Augusta, Frederick, and Hampshire County will soon be depopulated, as thewhole back country is in motion toward the southern colonies. During this same summer Governor Arthur Dobbs of North Carolinamade a tour of exploration through the western part of thecolony, seeking a site for a fort to guard the frontier. Thefrontier company of fifty men which was to garrison the projectedfort was placed under the command of Hugh Waddell, now promotedto the rank of captain, though only twenty-one years old. Inaddition to Waddell's company, armed patrols were required forthe protection of the Rowan County frontier; and during thesummer Indian alarms were frequent at the Moravian village ofBethabara, whose inhabitants had heard with distress on March31st of the slaughter of eleven Moravians on the Mahoni and ofthe ruin of Gnadenhutten. Many of the settlers in the outlyingdistricts of Rowan fled for safety to the refuge of the littlevillage; and frequently every available house, every place oftemporary abode was filled with panic stricken refugees. Sopersistent were the depredations of the Indians and so alarmedwere the scattered Rowan settlers by the news of the murders andthe destruction of Vaul's Fort in Virginia (June 25, 1756) thatat a conference on July 5th the Moravians "decided to protect ourhouses with palisades, and make them safe before the enemy shouldin vade our tract or attack us, for if the people were all goingto retreat we would be the last left on the frontier and thefirst point of attack. " By July 23d, they had constructed astrong defense for their settlement, afterward called the "DutchFort" by the Indians. The principal structure was a stockade, triangular in plan, some three hundred feet on a side, enclosingthe principal buildings of the settlement; and the gateway wasguarded by an observation tower. The other defense was a stockadeembracing eight houses at the mill some distance away, aroundwhich a small settlement had sprung up. 

During the same year the fort planned by Dobbs was erected uponthe site he had chosen--between Third and Fourth creeks; and thecommissioners Richard Caswell and Francis Brown, sent out toinspect the fort, made the following picturesque report to theAssembly (December 21, 1756):

"That they had likewise viewed the State of Fort Dobbs, and foundit to be a good and Substantial Building of the Dimentionsfollowing (that is to say) The Oblong Square fifty three feet byforty, the opposite Angles Twenty four feet and Twenty-Two InHeight Twenty four and a half feet as by the Plan annexedAppears, The Thickness of the Walls which are made of Oak Logsregularly Diminished from sixteen Inches to Six, it containsthree floors and there may be discharged from each floor at oneand the same time about one hundred Musketts the same isbeautifully scituated in the fork of Fourth Creek a Branch of theYadkin River. And that they also found under Command of Cap' HughWaddel Forty six Effective men Officers and Soldiers, the saidOfficers and Soldiers Appearing well and in good Spirits. "

As to the erection of a fort on the Tennessee, promised theCherokees by South Carolina, difficulties between the governor ofthat province and of Virginia in regard to matters of policy andthe proportionate share of expenses made effective cooperationbetween the two colonies well-nigh impossible. Glen, as we haveseen, had resented Dinwiddie's efforts to win the South CarolinaIndians over to Virginia's interest. And Dinwiddie had been veryindignant when the force promised him by the Indians to aidGeneral Braddock did not arrive, attributing this defection inpart to Glen's negotiations for a meeting with the chieftains andin part to the influence of the South Carolina traders, who keptthe Indians away by hiring them to go on long hunts for furs andskinns. But there was no such contention between Virginia andNorth Carolina. Dinwiddie and Dobbs arranged (November 6, 1755)to send a commission from these colonies to treat with theCherokees and the Catawbas. Virginia sent two commissioners, Colonel William Byrd, third of that name, and Colonel PeterRandolph; while North Carolina sent one, Captain Hugh Waddell. Salisbury, North Carolina, was the place of rendezvous. Thetreaty with the Catawbas was made at the Catawba Town, presumablythe village opposite the mouth of Sugaw Creek, in York County, South Carolina, on February 20-21, 1756; that with the Cherokeeson Broad River, North Carolina, March 13-17. As a result of thenegotiations and after the receipt of a present of goods, theCatawbas agreed to send forty warriors to aid Virginia withinforty days; and the Cherokees, in return for presents andVirginia's promise to contribute her proportion toward theerection of a strong fort, undertook to send four hundredwarriors within forty days, "as soon as the said fort shall bebuilt. " Virginia and North Carolina thus wisely cooperated to"straighten the path" and "brighten the chain" between the whiteand the red men, in important treaties which Have largely escapedthe attention of historians. "

On May 25, 1756, a conference was held at Salisbury between KingHeygler and warriors of the Catawba nation on the one side andChief Justice Henley, doubtless attended by Captain Waddell andhis frontier company, on the other. King Heygler, following thelead set by the Cherokees, petitioned the Governor of NorthCarolina to send the Catawbas some ammunition and to "build us afort for securing our old men, women and children when we turnout to fight the Enemy on their coming. " The chief justiceassured the King that the Catawbas would receive a necessarysupply of ammunition (one hundred pounds of gunpowder and fourhundred pounds of lead were later sent them) and promised to urgewith the governor their request to have a fort built as soon aspossible. Pathos not unmixed with dry humor tinges the eloquentappeal of good old King Heygler, ever the loyal friend of thewhites, at this conference:

"I desire a stop may be put to the selling of strong Liquors bythe White people to my people especially near the Indian nation. IF THE WHITE PEOPLE MAKE STRONG DRINK, LET THEM. SELL IT TO ONEANOTHER, OR DRINK IT IN THEIR OWN FAMILIES. This will avoid agreat deal of mischief which otherwise will, happen from mypeople getting drunk and quarrelling with the White people. Ihave no strong prisons like you to confine them for it. Our onlyway is to put them under ground and all these (pointing proudlyto his Warriors) will be ready to do that to those who shalldeserve it. "

In response to this request, the sum of four thousand pounds wasappropriated by the North Carolina Assembly for the erection of"a Fort on our western frontier to protect and secure theCatawbas" and for the support of two companies of fifty men eachto garrison this and another fort building on the sea coast. Thecommissioners appointed for the purpose recommended (December 21, 1756) a site for the fort "near the 'Catawba nation"; and onJanuary 20, 1757, Governor Dobbs reported; "We are now buildinga Fort in the midst of their towns at their own Request. " Thefort thereupon begun must have stood near the mouth of the SouthFork of the Catawba River, as Dobbs says it was in the "midst" oftheir towns, which are situated a "few miles north and south of38 degrees" and might properly be included within a circle ofthirty miles radius. "

During the succeeding months many depredations were committed bythe Indians upon the exposed and scattered settlements. Had itnot been for the protection afforded by all these forts, by themilitia companies under Alexander Osborne of Rowan and NathanielAlexander of Anson, and by a special company of patrollers underGreen and Moore, the back settlers who had been so outrageously"pilfered" by the Indians would have "retired from the Frontierinto the inner settlements. "

CHAPTER V. In Defense of Civilization

We give thanks and praise for the safety and peace vouchsafed usby our Heavenly Father in these times of war. Many of ourneighbors, driven hither and yon like deer before wild beasts, came to us for shelter, yet the accustomed order of ourcongregation life was not disturbed, no, not even by the morethan 150 Indians who at sundry times passed by, stopping for aday at a time and being fed by us. --Wachovia Community Diary, 1757

With commendable energy and expedition Dinwiddie and Dobbs, acting in concert, initiated steps for keeping the engagementsconjointly made by the two colonies with the Cherokees and theCatawbas in the spring and summer of 1756. Enlisting sixty men, "most of them Artificers, with Tools and Provisions, " MajorAndrew Lewis proceeded in the late spring to Echota in theCherokee country. Here during the hot summer months they erectedthe Virginia Fort on the path from Virginia, upon the northernbank of the Little Tennessee, nearly opposite the Indian town ofEchota and about twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville. " Whilethe fort was in process of construction, the Cherokees wereincessantly tampered with by emissaries from the Nuntewees andthe Savannahs in the French interest, and from the Frenchthemselves at the Alibamu Fort. So effective were thesemachinations, supported by extravagant promises and doubtlessrich bribes, that the Cherokees soon were outspokenly expressingtheir desire for a French fort at Great Tellico. 

Dinwiddie welcomed the departure from America of Governor Glen ofSouth Carolina, who in his opinion had always acted contrary tothe king's interest. From the new governor, William HenryLyttelton, who arrived in Charleston on June 1, 1756, he hoped tosecure effective cooperation in dealing with the Cherokees andthe Catawbas. This hope was based upon Lyttelton's recognition, as stated in Dinwiddie's words, of the "Necessity of strict Unionbetween the whole Colonies, with't any of them considering theirparticular Interest separate from the general Good of the whole. "After constructing the fort "with't the least assistance fromSouth Carolina, " Major Lewis happened by accident upon a grandcouncil being held in Echota in September. At that time hediscovered to his great alarm that the machinations of the Frenchhad already produced the greatest imaginable change in thesentiment of the Cherokees. Captain Raymond Demere of theProvincials, with two hundred English troops, had arrived togarrison the fort; but the head men of all the Upper Towns weresecretly influenced to agree to write a letter to Captain Demere, ordering him to return immediately to Charleston with all thetroops under his command. At the grand council, Atta-kulla-kulla, the great Cherokee chieftain, passionately declared to the headmen, who listened approvingly, that "as to the few soldiers ofCaptain Demere that was there, he would take their Guns, and givethem to his young men to hunt with and as to their clothes theywould soon be worn out and their skins would be tanned, and be ofthe same colour as theirs, and that they should live among themas slaves. " With impressive dignity Major Lewis rose andearnestly pleaded for the observance of the terms of the treatysolemnly negotiated the preceding March. In response, the craftyand treacherous chieftains desired Lewis to tell the Governor ofVirginia that "they had taken up the Hatchet against all Nationsthat were Enemies to the English"; but Lewis, an astute studentof Indian Psychology, rightly surmised that all their glibprofessions of friendship and assistance were "only to put agloss on their knavery. " So it proved; for instead of the fourhundred warriors promised under the treaty for service inVirginia, the Cherokees sent only seven warriors, accompanied bythree women. Al though the Cherokees petitioned Virginia for anumber of men to garrison the Virginia fort, Dinwiddie postponedsending the fifty men provided for by the Virginia Assembly untilhe could reassure himself in regard to the "Behaviour andIntention" of the treacherous Indian allies. This proved to be aprudent decision; for not long after its erection the Virginiafort was destroyed by the Indians. 

Whether on account of the dissatisfaction expressed by theCherokees over the erection of the Virginia fort or because of arecognition of the mistaken policy of garrisoning a work erectedby Virginia with troops sent from Charleston, South Carolinaimmediately proceeded to build another stronghold on the southernbank of the Tennessee at the mouth of Tellico River, some sevenmiles from the site of the Virginia fort; and here were postedtwelve great guns, brought thither at immense labor through thewilderness. To this fort, named Fort Loudoun in honor of LordLoudoun, then commander-in-chief of all the English forces inAmerica, the Indians allured artisans by donations of land; andduring the next three or four years a little settlement sprang upthere. 

The frontiers of Virginia suffered most from the incursions ofhostile Indians during the fourteen months following May 1, 1755. In July, the Rev. Hugh McAden records that he preached inVirginia on a day set apart for fasting and prayer "on account ofthe wars and many murders, committed by the savage Indians on theback inhabitants. " On July 30th a large party of Shawano Indiansfell upon the New River settlement and wiped it out of existence. William Ingles was absent at the time of the raid; and Mrs. Ingles, who was captured, afterward effected her escape. Thefollowing summer (June 25, 1756), Fort Vaux on the headwaters ofthe Roanoke, under the command of Captain John Smith, wascaptured by about one hundred French and Indians, who burnt thefort, killed John Smith junior, John Robinson, John Tracey andJohn Ingles, wounded four men, and captured twenty-two men, women, and children. Among the captured was the famous Mrs. MaryIngles, whose husband, John Ingles, was killed; but after being"carried away into Captivity, amongst whom she was barbarouslytreated, " according to her own statement, she finally escaped andreturned to Virginia. " The frontier continued to be infested bymarauding bands of French and Indians; and Dinwiddie gloomilyconfessed to Dobbs (July 22d): "I apprehend that we shall alwaysbe harrass'd with fly'g Parties of these Banditti unless we forman Expedit'n ag'st them, to attack 'em in y'r Towns. " Such anexpedition, known as the Sandy River Expedition, had been sentout in February to avenge the massacre of the New River settlers;but the enterprise engaged in by about four hundred Virginiansand Cherokees under Major Andrew Lewis and Captain RichardPearis, proved a disastrous failure. Not a single Indian wasseen; and the party suffered extraordinary hardships and narrowlyescaped starvation. 

In conformity with his treaty obligations with the Catawbas, Governor Dobbs commissioned Captain Hugh Waddell to erect thefort promised the Catawbas at the spot chosen by thecommissioners near the mouth of the South Fork of the CatawbaRiver. This fort, for which four thousand pounds had beenappropriated, was for the most part completed by midsummer, 1757. But owing, it appears, both to the machinations of the French andto the intermeddling of the South Carolina traders, who desiredto retain the trade of the Catawbas for that province, Oroloswa, the Catawba King Heygler, sent a "talk" to Governor Lyttelton, requesting that North Carolina desist from the work ofconstruction and that no fort be built except by South Carolina. Accordingly, Governor Dobbs ordered Captain Waddell to dischargethe workmen (August 11, 1757); and every effort was made for manymonths thereafter to conciliate the Catawbas, erstwhile friendsof North Carolina. The Catawba fort erected by North Carolina wasnever fully completed; and several years later South Carolina, having succeeded in alienating the Catawbas from North Carolina, which colony had given them the best possible treatment, builtfor them a fort at the mouth of Line Creek on the east bank ofthe Catawba River. 

In the spring and summer of 1758 the long expected Indian alliesarrived in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May--Cherokees, Catawbas, Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was whollyunable to use them effectively; and in order to provide amusementfor them, he directed that they should go "a scalping" with thewhites--"a barbarous method of war, " frankly acknowledged thegovernor, "introduced by the French, which we are oblidged tofollow in our own defense. " Most of the Indian alliesdiscontentedly returned home before the end of the year, but theremainder waited until the next year, to take part in thecampaign against Fort Duquesne. Three North Carolina companies, composed of trained soldiers and hardy frontiersmen, went throughthis campaign under the command of Major Hugh Waddell, the"Washington of North Carolina. " Long of limb and broad of chest, powerful, lithe, and active, Waddell was an ideal leader for thisarduous service, being fertile in expedient and skilful in theemployment of Indian tactics. With true provincial pride GovernorDobbs records that Waddell "had great honor done him, beingemployed in all reconnoitring parties, and dressed and acted asan Indian; and his sergeant, Rogers, took the only Indianprisoner, who gave Mr. Forbes certain intelligence of the forcesin Fort Duquesne, upon which they resolved to proceed. " Thisapparently trivial incident is remarkable, in that it proved tobe the decisive factor in a campaign that was about to beabandoned. The information in regard to the state of the garrisonat Fort Duquesne, secured from the Indian, for the capture ofwhom two leading officers had offered a reward of two hundred andfifty pounds, emboldened Forbes to advance rather than to retire. Upon reaching the fort (November 25th), he found it abandoned bythe enemy. Sergeant Rogers never received the reward promised byGeneral Forbes and the other English officer; but some timeafterward he was compensated by a modest sum from the colony ofNorth Carolina. 

A series of unfortunate occurrences, chiefly the fault of thewhites, soon resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indianoutbreak. A party of Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758, seized some stray horses on the frontier of Virginia--neverdreaming of any wrong, says an old historian, as they saw itfrequently done by the whites. The owners of the horses, hastilyforming a party, went in pursuit of the Indians and killed twelveor fourteen of the number. The relatives of the slain Indians, greatly incensed, vowed vengeance upon the whites. Nor was thetactless conduct of Forbes calculated to quiet this resentment;for when Atta-kulla-kulla and nine other chieftains deserted indisgust at the treatment accorded them, they were pursued byForbes's orders, apprehended and disarmed. This rude treatment, coupled with the brutal and wanton murder of some Cherokeehunters a little earlier, by an irresponsible band of Virginiansunder Captain Robert Wade, still further aggravated the Indians. 

Incited by the French, who had fled to the southward after thefall of Fort Duquesne, parties of bloodthirsty young Indiansrushed down upon the settlements and left in their path death anddesolation along the frontiers of the Carolinas. On the upperbranch of the Yadkin and below the South Yadkin near Fort Dobbstwenty-two whites fell in swift succession before the secretonslaughts of the savages from the lower Cherokee towns. Many ofthe settlers along the Yadkin fled to the Carolina Fort atBethabara and the stockade at the mill; and the sheriff of RowanCounty suffered siege by the Cherokees, in his home, untilrescued by a detachment under Brother Loesch from Bethabara. While many families took refuge in Fort Dobbs, frontiersmen underCaptain Morgan Bryan ranged through the mountains to the west ofSalisbury and guarded the settlements from the hostile incursionsof the savages. So gravely alarmed were the Rowan settlers, compelled by the Indians to desert their planting and crops, thatColonel Harris was despatched post-haste for aid to Cape Fear, arriving there on July 1st. With strenuous energy CaptainWaddell, then stationed in the east, rushed two companies ofthirty men each to the rescue, sending by water-carriage sixswivel guns and ammunition on before him; and thesereinforcements brought relief at last to the harassed Rowanfrontiers. " During the remainder of the year, the borders werekept clear by bold and tireless rangers-under the leadership ofexpert Indian fighters of the stamp of Grifth Rutherford andMorgan Bryan. 

When the Cherokee warriors who had wrought havoc along the NorthCarolina border in April arrived at their town of Settiquo, theyproudly displayed the twenty-two scalps of the slain Rowansettlers. Upon the demand for these scalps by Captain Demere atFort Loudon and under direction of Atta-kulla-kulla, the Settiquowarriors surrendered eleven of the scalps to Captain Demere who, according to custom in time of peace, buried them. New murders onPacolet and along the Virginia Path, which occurred shortlyafterward, caused gloomy forebodings; and it was plain, says acontemporary gazette, that "the lower Cherokees were notsatisfied with the murder of the Rowan settlers, but intendedfurther mischief". On October 1st and again on October 31st, Governor Dobbs received urgent requests from Governor Lyttelton, asking that the North Carolina provincials and militia cooperateto bring him assistance. Although there was no law requiring thetroops to march out of the province and the exposed frontiers ofNorth Carolina sorely needed protection, Waddell, nowcommissioned colonel, assembled a force of five small companiesand marched to the aid of Governor Lyttelton. But early inJanuary, 1760, while on the march, Waddell received a letter fromLyttelton, informing him that the assistance was not needed andthat a treaty of peace had been negotiated with the Cherokees. 

CHAPTER VI. Crushing the Cherokees

Thus ended the Cherokee war, which was among the last humblingstrokes given to the expiring power of France in North America. --Hewatt:An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of theColonies of South Carolina and Georgia. 1779. 

Governor Lyttelton's treaty of "peace", negotiated with theCherokees at the close of 1759, was worse than a crime: it was acrass and hideous blunder. His domineering attitude andtyrannical treatment of these Indians had aroused the bitterestanimosity. Yet he did not realize that it was no longer safe totrust their word. No sooner did the governor withdraw his armyfrom the borders than the cunning Cherokees, whose passions hadbeen inflamed by what may fairly be called the treacherousconduct of Lyttelton, rushed down with merciless ferocity uponthe innocent and defenseless families on the frontier. OnFebruary 1, 1760, while a large party (including the family ofPatrick Calhoun), numbering in all about one hundred and fiftypersons, were removing from the Long Cane settlement to Augusta, they were suddenly attacked by a hundred mounted Cherokees, whoslaughtered about fifty of them. After the massacre, many of thechildren were found helplessly wandering in the woods. One manalone carried to Augusta no less than nine of the pitifulinnocents, some horribly mutilated with the tomahawk, othersscalped, and all yet alive. 

Atrocities defying description continued to be committed, andmany people were slain. The Cherokees, under the leadership ofSi-lou-ee, or the Young Warrior of Estatoe, the Round O, Tiftoe, and others, were baffled in their persistent efforts to captureFort Prince George. On February 16th the crafty Oconostotaappeared before the fort and under the pretext of desiring someWhite man to accompany him on a visit to the governor on urgentbusiness, lured the commander, Lieutenant Coytomore, and twoattendants to a conference outside the gates. At a preconceivedsignal a volley of shots rang out; the two attendants werewounded, and Lieutenant Coytomore, riddled with bullets, felldead. Enraged by this act of treachery, the garrison put to deaththe Indian hostages within. During the abortive attack upon thefort, Oconostota, unaware of the murder of the hostages, washeard shouting above the din of battle: "Fight strong, and youshall be relieved. "

Now began the dark days along the Rowan border, which were sosorely to test human endurance. Many refugees fortifiedthemselves in the different stockades; and Colonel Hugh Waddellwith his redoubtable frontier company of Indian-fighters awaitedthe onslaught of the savages, who were reported to have passedthrough the mountain defiles and to be approaching along thefoot-hills. The story of the investment of Fort Dobbs and thesplendidly daring sortie of Waddell and Bailey is best told inWaddell's report to Governor Dobbs (February 29, 1760):

"For several Days I observed a small party of Indians wereconstantly about the fort, I sent out several parties after themto no purpose, the Evening before last between 8 & 9 o'clock Ifound by the Dogs making an uncommon Noise there must be a partynigh a Spring which we sometimes use. As my Garrison is butsmall, and I was apprehensive it might be a scheme to draw outthe Garrison, I took our Capt. Bailie who with myself and partymade up ten: We had not marched 300 yds. From the fort when wewere attacked by at least 60 or 70 Indians. I had given my partyOrders not to fire until I gave the word, which they punctuallyobserved: We rec'd the Indians' fire: When I perceived they hadalmost all fired, I ordered my party to fire which We did notfurther than 12 steps each loaded with a Bullet and 7 Buck Shot, they had nothing to cover them as they were advancing either totomahawk us or make us Prisoners: They found the fire very hotfrom so small a Number which a good deal confused them: I thenordered my party to retreat, as I found the Instant our skirmishbegan another party had attacked the fort, upon our reinforcingthe garrison the Indians were soon repulsed with I am sure aconsiderable Loss, from what I myself saw as well as those I canconfide in they cou'd not have less than 10 or 12 killed andwounded; The next Morning we found a great deal of Blood and onedead whom I suppose they cou'd not find in the night. On my sideI had 2 Men wounded one of whom I am afraid will die as he isscalped, the other is in way of Recovery, and one boy killed nearthe fort whom they durst not advance to scalp. I expected theywould have paid me another visit last night, as they attack allFortifications by Night, but find they did not like theirReception. "

Alarmed by Waddell's "offensive-defensive, " the Indians abandonedthe siege. Robert Campbell, Waddell's ranger, who was scalped inthis engagement, subsequently recovered from his wounds and wasrecompensed by the colony with the sum of twenty pounds. 

In addition to the frontier militia, four independent companieswere now placed under Waddell's command. Companies of volunteersscoured the woods in search of the lurking Indian foe. Theserangers, who were clad in hunting-shirts and buckskin leggings, and who employed Indian tactics in fighting, were captained bysuch hardy leaders as the veteran Morgan Bryan, the intrepidGriffith Ruthe ford, the German partisan, Martin Phifer(Pfeiffer), and Anthony Hampton, the father of General WadeHampton. They visited periodically a chain of "forest castles"erected by the settlers--extending all the way from Fort Dobbsand the Moravian fortifications in the Wachau to SamuelStalnaker's stockade on the Middle Fork of the Holston inVirginia. About the middle of March, thirty volunteer RowanCounty rangers encountered a band of forty Cherokees, whofortified themselves in a deserted house near the Catawba River. The famous scout and hunter, John Perkins, assisted by one of hisbolder companions, crept up to the house and flung lightedtorches upon the roof. One of the Indians, as the smoke becamesuffocating and the flames burned hotter, exclaimed: "Better forone to die bravely than for all to perish miserably in theflames, " and darting forth, dashed rapidly hither and thither, inorder to draw as many shots as possible. This act of superbself-sacrifice was successful; and while the rifles of thewhites, who riddled the brave Indian with balls, were empty, theother savages made a wild dash for liberty. Seven fell thus underthe deadly rain of bullets; but many escaped. Ten of the Indians, all told, lost their scalps, for which the volunteer rangers weresubsequently paid one hundred pounds by the colony of NorthCarolina. 

Beaten back from Fort Dobbs, sorely defeated along the Catawba, hotly pursued by the rangers, the Cherokees continued to lurk inthe shadows of the dense forests, and at every opportunity tofall suddenly upon way faring settlers and isolated cabins remotefrom any stronghold. On March 8th William Fish, his son, andThompson, a companion, were riding along the "trace, " in searchof provisions for a group of families fortified on the Yadkin, when a flight of arrows hurtled from the cane-brake, and Fish andhis son fell dead. Although pierced with two arrows, one in thehip and one clean through his body, Thompson escaped upon hisfleet horse; and after a night of ghastly suffering finallyreached the Carolina Fort at Bethabara. The good Dr. Bonn, byskilfully extracting the barbed shafts from his body, savedThompson's life. The pious Moravians rejoiced over the recoveryof the brave messenger, whose sensational arrival gave themtimely warning of the close proximity of the Indians. Whilefeeding their cattle, settlers were shot from ambush by thelurking foe; and on March 11th, a family barricaded within aburning house, which they were defending with desperate courage, were rescued in the nick of time by the militia. No episode fromFenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales surpasses in melancholyinterest Harry Hicks's heroic defense of his little fort on BeanIsland Creek. Surrounded by the Indians, Hicks and his familytook refuge within the small outer palisade around his humblehome. Fighting desperately against terrific odds, he was finallydriven from his yard into his log cabin, which he continued todefend with dauntless courage. With every shot he tried to send aredskin to the happy hunting-grounds; and it was only after hispowder was exhausted that he fell, fighting to the last, beneaththe deadly tomahawk. So impressed were the Indians by his braverythat they spared the life of his wife and his little son; andthese were afterward rescued by Waddell when he marched to theCherokee towns in 1761. 

The kindly Moravians had always entertained with generoushospitality the roving bands of Cherokees, who accordingly heldthem in much esteem and spoke of Bethabara as "the Dutch Fort, where there are good people and much bread. " But now, in thesedread days, the truth of their daily text was brought forciblyhome to the Moravians: "Neither Nehemiah nor his brethren put offtheir clothes, but prayed as they watched. " With Bible in onehand and rifle in the other, the inhabitant of Wachovia sternlymarched to religious worship. No Puritan of bleak New Englandever showed more resolute courage or greater will to defend thehard-won outpost of civilization than did the pious Moravian ofthe Wachau. At the new settlement of Bethania on Easter Day, morethan four hundred souls, including sixty rangers, listeneddevoutly to the eloquent sermon of Bishop Spangenberg concerningthe way of salvation--the while their arms, stacked without theGemein Haus, were guarded by the watchful sentinel. On March 14ththe watchmen at Bethania with well-aimed shots repelled theIndians, whose hideous yells of baffled rage sounded down thewind like "the howling of a hundred wolves". Religion was noprotection against the savages; for three ministers journeying tothe present site of Salem were set upon by the red men--oneescaping, another suffering capture, and the third, a Baptist, losing his life. A little later word came to Fort Dobbs that JohnLong and Robert Gillespie of Salisbury had been shot from ambushand scalped--Long having been pierced with eight bullets andGillespie with seven. 

There is one beautiful incident recorded by the Moravians, whichhas a truly symbolic significance. While the war was at itsheight, a strong party of Cherokees, who had lost their chief, planned in retaliation to attack Bethabara. "When they wenthome, " sets forth the Moravian Diary, "they said they had been toa great town, where there were a great many people, where thebells rang often, and during the night, time after time, a hornwas blown, so that they feared to attack the town and had takenno prisoners. " The trumpet of the watchman, announcing thepassing of the hour, had convinced the Indians that their plansfor attack were discovered; and the regular evening bell, summoning the pious to prayer, rang in the stricken ears of thered men like the clamant call to arms. 

Following the retirement from office of Governor Lyttelton, Lieutenant-Governor Bull proceeded to prosecute the war withvigor. On April 1, 1760, twelve hundred men under ColonelArchibald Montgomerie arrived at Charleston, with instructions tostrike an immediate blow and to relieve Fort Loudon, theninvested by the Cherokees. With his own force, two hundred andninety-five South Carolina Rangers, forty picked men of the new"levies, " and "a good number of guides, " Montgomerie moved fromFort Ninety-Six on May 28th. On the first of June, crossingTwelve-Mile River, Montgomerie began the campaign in earnest, devastating and burning every Indian village in the Valley ofKeowee, killing and capturing more than a hundred of theCherokees, and destroying immense stores of corn. Receiving noreply to his summons to the Cherokees of the Middle and UpperTowns to make peace or suffer like treatment, Montgomerie took uphis march from Fort Prince George on June 24th, resolved to carryout his threat. On the morning of the 27th, he was drawn into anambuscade within six miles of Et-chow-ee, eight miles south ofthe present Franklin, North Carolina, a mile and a half belowSmith's Bridge, and was vigorously attacked from dense cover bysome six hundred and thirty warriors led by Si-lou-ee. Fightingwith Indian tactics, the Provincial Rangers under Patrick Calhounparticularly distinguished themselves; and the bloodcurdlingyells of the painted savages were responded to by the wild huzzasof the kilted Highlanders who, waving their Scotch bonnets, impetuously charged the redskins and drove them again and againfrom their lurking-places. Nevertheless Montgomerie lost fromeighty to one hundred in killed and wounded, while the loss ofthe Indians was supposed to be about half the loss of the whites. Unable to care for his wounded and lacking the means of removinghis baggage, Montgomerie silently withdrew his forces. In sodoing, he acknowledged defeat, since he was compelled to abandonhis original intention of relieving the beleaguered garrison ofFort London. 

Captain Demere and his devoted little band, who had beenresolutely holding out, were now left to their tragic fate. Afterthe bread was exhausted, the garrison was reduced to thenecessity of eating dogs and horses; and the loyal aid of theIndian wives of some of the garrison, who secretly brought themsupplies of food daily, enabled them to hold out still longer. Realizing at last the futility of prolonging the hopelesscontest, Captain Demere surrendered the fort on August 8, 1760. At daylight the next morning, while on the march to Fort PrinceGeorge, the soldiers were set upon by the treacherous Cherokees, who at the first onset killed Captain Demere and twenty-nineothers. A humane chieftain, Outassitus, says one of the gazettesof the day, "went around the field calling upon the Indians todesist, and making such representations to them as stopped thefurther progress and effects of their barbarous and brutal rage, "which expressed itself in scalping and hacking off the arms andlegs of the defenseless whites. Atta-kulla-kulla, who wasfriendly to the whites, claimed Captain Stuart, the secondofficer, as his captive, and bore him away by stealth. After ninedays' journey through the wilderness they encountered an advanceparty under Major Andrew Lewis, sent out by Colonel Byrd, head ofa relieving army, to rescue and succor any of the garrison whomight effect their escape. Thus Stuart was restored to hisfriends. This abortive and tragic campaign, in which the victorylay conclusively with the Indians, ended when Byrd disbanded hisnew levies and Montgomerie sailed from Charleston for the north(August, 1760). 

During the remainder of the year, the province of North Carolinaremained free of further alarms from the Indians. But the viewwas generally entertained that one more joint Effort of NorthCarolina, South Carolina, and Virginia would have to be made inorder to humble the Cherokees. At the sessions of the NorthCarolina Assembly in November and again in December, matters indispute between Governor Dobbs and the representatives of thepeople made impossible the passage of a proposed aid bill, providing for five hundred men to cooperate with Virginia andSouth Carolina. Nevertheless volunteers in large numberspatriotically marched from North Carolina to Charleston and theCongaree (December, 1760, to April, 1761), to enlist in thefamous regiment being organized by Colonel Thomas Middleton. OnMarch 31, 1761, Governor Dobbs called together the Assembly toact upon a letter received from General Amherst, outlining a morevigorous plan of campaign appropriate to the succession of ayoung and vigorous sovereign, George III. An aid bill was passed, providing twenty thousand pounds for men and supplies; and oneregiment of five companies of one hundred men each, under thecommand of Colonel Hugh Waddell, was mustered into service forseven months' duty, beginning May 1, 1761. 

On July 7, 1761, Colonel James Grant, detached from the main armyin command of a force of twenty-six hundred men, took up hismarch from Fort Prince George. Attacked on June 10th two milessouth of the spot where Montgomerie was engaged the precedingyear, Grant's army, after a vigorous engagement lasting severalhours, drove off the Indians. The army then proceeded at leisureto lay waste the fifteen towns of the Middle Settlements; and, after this work of systematic devastation was over, returned toFort Prince George. Peace was concluded in September as theresult of this campaign; and in consequence the frontier waspushed seventy miles farther to the west. 

Meantime, Colonel Waddell with his force of five hundred NorthCarolinians had acted in concert with Colonel William Byrd, commanding the Virginia detachment. The combined forces went intocamp at Captain Samuel Stalnaker's old place on the Middle Forkof Holston. Because of his deliberately dilatory policy, Byrd wassuperseded in the command by Colonel Adam Stephen. Marching theirforces to the Long Island of Holston, Stephen and Waddell erectedthere Fort Robinson, in compliance with the instructions ofGovernor Fauquier, of Virginia. The Cherokees, heartily tired ofthe war, now sued for peace, which was concluded, independent ofthe treaty at Charleston, on November 19, 1761. 

The successful termination of this campaign had an effect ofsignal importance in the development of the expansionist spirit. The rich and beautiful lands which fell under the eye of theNorth Carolina and Virginia pioneers under Waddell, Byrd, andStephen, lured them irresistibly on to wider casts for fortuneand bolder explorations into the unknown, beckoning West. 

CHAPTER VII. The Land Companies

It was thought good policy to settle those lands as fast aspossible, and that the granting them to men of the firstconsequence who were likeliest and best able to procure largebodies of people to settle on them was the most probable means ofeffecting the end proposed. --Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginiato the Earl of Hillsborough: 1770. 

Although for several decades the Virginia traders had beenpassing over the Great Trading Path to the towns of the Cherokeesand the Catawbas, it was not until the early years of theeighteenth century that Virginians of imaginative vision directedtheir eyes to the westward, intent upon crossing the mountainsand locating settlements as a firm barrier against theimperialistic designs of France. Acting upon his oft-expressedconviction that once the English settlers had establishedthemselves at the source of the James River "it would not be inthe power of the French to dislodge them, " Governor AlexanderSpotswood in 1716, animated with the spirit of the pioneer, ledan expedition of fifty men and a train of pack-horses to themountains, arduously ascended to the summit of the Blue Ridge, and claimed the country by right of discovery in behalf of hissovereign. In the journal of John Fontaine this vivacious accountis given of the historic episode: "I graved my name on a tree bythe river side; and the Governor buried a bottle with a paperenclosed on which he writ that he took possession of this placein the name and for King George the First of England. We had agood dinner, and after it we got the men together and loaded alltheir arms and we drank the King's health in Burgundy and fired avolley, and all the rest of the Royal Family in claret and avolley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another volley. "

By this jovial picnic, which the governor afterward commemoratedby presenting to each of the gentlemen who accompanied him agolden horseshoe, inscribed with the legend, Sic juvattranscendere montes, Alexander Spotswood anticipated by a thirdof a century the more ambitious expedition on behalf of France byCeloron de Bienville (see Chapter III), and gave a memorableobject-lesson in the true spirit of westward expansion. Duringthe ensuing years it began to dawn upon the minds of men of thestamp of William Byrd and Joshua Gee that there was imperativeneed for the establishment of a chain of settlements in thetrans-Alleghany, a great human wall to withstand the advancingwave of French influence and occupation. By the fifth decade ofthe century, as we have seen, the Virginia settlers, with theirsquatter's claims and tomahawk rights, had pushed on to themountains; and great pressure was brought to bear upon thecouncil to issue grants for vast tracts of land in the unchartedwilderness of the interior. 

At this period the English ministry adopted the aggressive policyalready mentioned in connection with the French and Indian war, indicative of a determination to contest with France the right tooccupy the interior of the continent. This policy had beeninaugurated by Virginia with the express purpose of stimulatingthe adoption of a similar policy by North Carolina andPennsylvania. Two land companies, organized almostsimultaneously, actively promoted the preliminaries necessary tosettlement, despatching parties under expert leadership todiscover the passes through the mountains and to locate the bestland in the trans-Alleghany. 

In June, 1749, a great corporation, the Loyal Land Company ofVirginia, received a grant of eight hundred thousand acres abovethe North Carolina line and west of the mountains. Dr. ThomasWalker, an expert surveyor, who in company with several othergentlemen had made a tour of exploration through easternTennessee and the Holston region in 1748, was chosen as the agentof this company. Starting from his home in Albemarle County, Virginia, March 6, 1750, accompanied by five stalwart pioneers, Walker made a tour of exploration to the westward, being absentfour months and one week. On this journey, which carried theparty as far west as the Rockcastle River (May 11th) and as farnorth as the present Paintsville, Kentucky, they named manynatural objects, such as mountains and rivers, after members ofthe party. Their two principal achievements were the erection ofthe first house built by white men between the CumberlandMountains and the Ohio River a feat, however, which led to noimportant developments; and the discovery of the wonderful gap inthe Alleghanies to which Walker gave the name Cumberland, inhonor of the ruthless conqueror at Culloden, the "bloody duke. "

In 1748 the Ohio Company was organized by Colonel Thomas Lee, president of the Virginia council, and twelve other gentlemen, ofVirginia and Maryland. In their petition for five hundredthousand acres, one of the declared objects of the company was"to anticipate the French by taking possession of that countrysouthward of the Lakes to which the French had no right. .. . "By the royal order of May 19, 1749, the company was awarded twohundred thousand acres, free of quit-rent for ten years; and thepromise was made of an additional award of the remainderpetitioned for, on condition of seating a hundred families uponthe original grant and the building and maintaining of a fort. Christopher Gist, summoned from his remote home on the Yadkin inNorth Carolina, was instructed "to search out and discover theLands upon the river Ohio & other adjoining branches of theMississippi down as low as the great Falls thereof. " In thisjourney, which began at Colonel Thomas Cresap's, in Maryland, inOctober, 1750, and ended at Gist's home on May 18, 1751, Gistvisited the Lower Shawnee Town and the Lower Blue Licks, ascendedPilot Knob almost two decades before Find lay and Boone, from thesame eminence, "saw with pleasure the beautiful level ofKentucky, " intersected Walker's route at two points, and crossedCumberland Mountain at Pound Gap on the return journey. This wasa far more extended journey than Walker's, enabling Gist toexplore the fertile valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miamirivers and to gain a view of the beautiful meadows of Kentucky. 

It is eminently significant of the spirit of the age, which wasinaugurating an era of land hunger unparalleled in Americanhistory, that the first authentic records of the trans-Alleghanywere made by surveyors who visited the country as the agents ofgreat land companies. The outbreak of the French and Indian Warso soon afterward delayed for a decade and more any importantcolonization of the West. Indeed, the explorations and findingsof Walker and Gist were almost unknown, even to the companiesthey represented. But the conclusion of peace in 1763, which gaveall the region between the mountains and the Mississippi to theBritish, heralded the true beginning of the westward expansionistmovement in the Old Southwest, and inaugurated the constructiveleadership of North Carolina in f he occupation and colonizationof the imperial domain of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley. 

In the middle years of the century many families of Virginiagentry removed to the back country of North Carolina in thefertile region ranging from Williamsborough on the east toHillsborough on the west. There soon arose in this section of thecolony a society marked by intellectual distinction, socialgraces, and the leisured dignity of the landlord and the largeplanter. So conspicuous for means, intellect, culture, andrefinement were the people of this group, having "abundance ofwealth and leisure for enjoyment, " that Governor Josiah Martin, in passing through this region some years later, significantlyobserves: "They have great preeminence, as well with respect tosoil and cultivation, as to the manners and condition of theinhabitants, in which last respect the difference is so greatthat one would be led to think them people of another region. "This new wealthy class which was now turning its gaze toward theunoccupied lands along the frontier was "dominated by thedemocratic ideals of pioneers rather than by the aristocratictendencies of slave-holding planters. " From the cross-fertilizationof the ideas of two social groups--this back-countrygentry, of innate qualities of leadership, democraticinstincts, economic independence, and expansive tendencies, andthe primitive pioneer society of the frontier, frugal in taste, responsive to leadership, bold, ready, and thorough inexecution--there evolved the militant American expansion in the OldSouthwest. 

A conspicuous figure in this society of Virginia emigrants was ayoung man named Richard Henderson, whose father had removed withhis family from Hanover County, Virginia, to Bute, afterwardGranville County, North Carolina, in 1742. Educated at home by aprivate tutor, he began his career as assistant of his father, Samuel Henderson, the High Sheriff of Granville County; and afterreceiving a law-license, quickly acquired an extensive practice. "Even in the superior courts where oratory and eloquence are asbrilliant and powerful as in Westminster hall, " records anEnglish acquaintance, "he soon became distinguished and eminent, and his superior genius shone forth with great splendour, anduniversal applause. " This young attorney, wedded to the daughterof an Irish lord, often visited Salisbury on his legal circuit;and here he became well acquainted with Squire Boone, one of the"Worshipfull Justices, " and often appeared in suits before him. By his son, the nomadic Daniel Boone, conspicuous already for hissolitary wanderings across the dark green mountains to thesun-lit valleys and boundless hunting-grounds beyond, Hendersonwas from time to time regaled with bizarre and fascinating talesof western exploration; and Boone, in his dark hour of povertyand distress, when he was heavily involved financially, turnedfor aid to this friend and his partner, who composed the law-firmof Williams and Henderson. 

Boone's vivid descriptions of the paradise of the West stimulatedHenderson's imaginative mind and attracted his attention to therich possibilities of unoccupied lands there. While the Board ofTrade in drafting the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763, forbade the granting of lands in the vast interior, which wasspecifically reserved to the Indians, it was clearly not theirintention to set permanent western limits to the colonies. Theprevailing opinion among the shrewdest men of the period was wellexpressed by George Washington, who wrote his agent forpreempting western lands: "I can never look upon thatproclamation in any other light (but I say this betweenourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds ofthe Indians. " And again in 1767: "It (the proclamation of 1763)must fall, of course, in a few years, especially when thoseIndians consent to our occupying the lands. Any person, therefore, who neglects the present opportunity of hunting outgood lands, and in some measure marking out and distinguishingthem for his own, in order to keep others from settling them, will never regain it. " Washington had added greatly to hisholdings of bounty lands in the West by purchasing at trivialprices the claims of many of the officers and soldiers. Threeyears later we find him surveying extensive tracts along the Ohioand the Great Kanawha, and, with the vision of the expansionist, making large plans for the establishment of a colony to be seatedupon his own lands. Henderson, too, recognized the importance ofthe great country west of the Appalachians. He agreed with theopinion of Benjamin Franklin, who in 1756 called it "one of thefinest in North America for the extreme richness and fertility ofthe land, the healthy temperature of the air and the mildness ofthe climate, the plenty of hunting, fishing and fowling, thefacility of trade with the Indians and the vast convenience ofinland navigation or water carriage. " Henderson thereforeproceeded to organize a land company for the purpose of acquiringand colonizing a large domain in the West. This partnership, which was entitled Richard Henderson and Company, was composed ofa few associates, including Richard Henderson, his uncle andlaw-partner, John Williams, and, in all probability, their closefriends Thomas and Nathaniel Hart of Orange County, NorthCarolina, immigrants from Hanover County, Virginia. 

Seizing the opportunity presented just after the conclusion ofpeace, the company engaged Daniel Boone as scout and surveyor. Hewas instructed, while hunting and trapping on his own account, toexamine, with respect to their location and fertility, the landswhich he visited, and to report his findings upon his return. Thesecret expedition must have been transacted with commendablecircumspection; for although in after years it became commonknowledge among his friends that he had acted as the company'sagent, Boone himself consistently refrained from betraying theconfidence of his employers. Upon a similar mission, Gist hadcarefully concealed from the suspicious Indians the fact that hecarried a compass, which they wittily termed "land stealer"; andWashington likewise imposed secrecy upon his land agent Crawford, insisting that the operation be carried on under the guise ofhunting game. " The discreet Boone, taciturn and given to keepinghis own counsel, in one instance at least deemed it advantageousto communicate the purpose of his mission to some hunters, wellknown to him, in order to secure the results of their informationin regard to the best lands they had encountered in the course oftheir hunting expedition. Boone came among the hunters, known asthe "Blevens connection, " at one of their Tennessee station campson their return from a long hunt in Kentucky, in order, asexpressed in the quaint phraseology of the period, to be"informed of the geography and locography of these woods, sayingthat he was employed to explore them by Henderson & Company. " Theacquaintance which Boone on this occasion formed with a member ofthe party, Henry Scaggs, the skilled hunter and explorer, wassoon to bear fruit; for shortly afterward Scaggs was employed asprospector by the same land company. In 1764 Scaggs had passedthrough Cumberland Gap and hunted for the season on theCumberland; and accordingly the following year, as the agent ofRichard Henderson and Company, he was despatched on an extendedexploration to the lower Cumberland, fixing his station at thesalt lick afterward known as Mansker's Lick. 

Richard Henderson thus, it appears, "enlisted the Harts andothers in an enterprise which his own genius planned, " says Peck, the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and thenencouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn wherethe best lands lay. " Just why Henderson and his associates didnot act sooner upon the reports brought back by thehunters--Boone and Scaggs and Callaway, who accompanied Boone in1764 in the interest of the land company "is not known; but inall probability the fragmentary nature of these reports, howeverglowing and enthusiastic, was sufficient cause for the delay offive years before the land company, through the agency of Booneand Findlay, succeeded in having a thorough exploration inside ofthe Kentucky region. Delay was also caused by rival claims to theterritory. In the Virginia Gazette of December 1, 1768, Hendersonmust have read with astonishment not unmixed with dismay that"the Six Nations and all their tributaries have granted a vastextent of country to his majesty, and the Proprietaries ofPennsylvania, and settled an advantageous boundary line betweentheir hunting country and this, and the other colonies to theSouthward as far as the Cherokee River, for which they receivedthe most valuable present in goods and dollars that was evergiven at any conference since the settlement of America. " Thenews was now bruited about through the colony of North Carolina, that the Cherokees were hot in their resentment because theNorthern Indians, the inveterate foes of the Cherokees and theperpetual disputants for the vast Middle Ground of Kentucky, hadreceived at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, November 5, 1768, animmense compensation from the crown for the territory which they, the Cherokees, claimed from time immemorial. Only three weeksbefore, John Stuart, Superintendent for Indian Affairs in theSouthern Department, had negotiated with the Cherokees the Treatyof Hard Labor, South Carolina (October 14th), by which GovernorTryon's line of 1767, from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain, wascontinued direct to Colonel Chiswell's mine, the presentWytheville, Virginia, and thence in a straight Brie to the mouthof the Great Kanawha. Thus at the close of the year 1768 thecrown through both royal governor and superintendent of Indianaffairs acknowledged in fair and open treaty the right of theCherokees, whose Tennessee villages guarded the gateway, to thevalley lands east of the mountain barrier as well as to the dimmid-region of Kentucky. In the very act of negotiating the Treatyof Fort Stanwix, Sir William Johnson privately acknowledged thatpossession of the trans-Alleghany could be legally obtained onlyby extinguishing the title of the Cherokees. 

These conflicting claims soon led to collisions between theIndians and the company's settlers. In the spring of 1769occurred one of those incidents in the westward advance which, though slight in itself, was to have a definite bearing upon thecourse of events in later years. In pursuance of his policy, asagent of the Loyal Land Company, of promoting settlement upon thecompany's lands, Dr. Thomas Walker, who had visited Powell'sValley the preceding year and come into possession of a verylarge tract there, simultaneously made proposals to one party ofmen including the Kirtleys, Captain Rucker, and others, and toanother party led by Joseph Martin, trader of Orange County, Virginia, afterward a striking figure in the Old Southwest. Thefevered race by these bands of eighteenth-century "sooners" forpossession of an early "Cherokee Strip" was won by the latterband, who at once took possession and began to clear; so thatwhen the Kirtleys arrived, Martin coolly handed them "a letterfrom Dr. Walker that informed them that if we got to the valleyfirst, we were to have 21, 000 acres of land, and they were not tointerfere with us. " Martin and his companions were delighted withthe beautiful valley at the base of the Cumberland, quickly "eatand destroyed 23 deer--15 bears--2 buffaloes and a great quantityof turkeys, " and entertained gentlemen from Virginia and Marylandwho desired to settle more than a hundred families there. Thecompany reckoned, however, without their hosts, the Cherokees, who, fortified by the treaty of Hard Labor (1768) which left thiscountry within the Indian reservation, were determined to driveMartin and his company out. While hunting on the CumberlandRiver, northwest of Cumberland Gap, Martin and his company weresurrounded and disarmed by a party of Cherokees who said they hadorders from Cameron, the royal agent, to rob all white menhunting on their lands. When Martin and his party arrived attheir station in Powell's Valley, they found it broken up andtheir goods stolen by the Indians, which left them no recoursebut to return to the settlements in Virginia. It was not untilsix years later that Martin, under the stable influence of theTransylvania Company, was enabled to return to this spot anderect there the station which was to play an integral part in theprogress of westward expansion. 

Before going on to relate Boone's explorations of Kentucky underthe auspices of the land company, it will be convenient to turnback for a moment and give some account of other hunters andexplorers who visited that territory between the time of itsdiscovery by Walker and Gist and the advent of Boone. 

CHAPTER VIII. The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone

The long Hunters principally resided in the upper countries ofVirginia & North Carolina on New River & Holston River, and whenthey intended to make a long Hunt (as they calls it) theyCollected near the head of Holston near whare Abingdon nowstands. .. . --General William Hall. 

Before the coming of Walker and Gist in 1750 and 1751respectively, the region now called Kentucky had, as far as weknow, been twice visited by the French, once in 1729 whenChaussegros de Lery and his party visited the Big Bone Lick, andagain in the summer of 1749 when the Baron de Longueuil with fourhundred and fifty-two Frenchmen and Indians, going to joinBienville in an expedition against "the Cherickees and otherIndians lying at the back of Carolina and Georgia, " doubtlessencamped on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio. Kentucky was alsotraversed by John Peter Salling with his three adventurouscompanions in their journey through the Middle West in 1742. Butall these early visits, including the memorable expeditions ofWalker and Gist, were so little known to the general public thatwhen John Filson wrote the history of Kentucky in 1784 heattributed its discovery to James McBride in 1754. Moreinfluential upon the course of westward expansion was anadventure which occurred in 1752, the very year in which theBoones settled down in their Vadkin home. 

In the autumn of 1752, a Pennsylvania trader, John Findlay, withthree or four companions, descended the Ohio River in a canoe asfar as the falls at the present Louisville, Kentucky, andaccompanied a party of Shawnees to their town ofEs-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, eleven miles east of what is now Winchester. 

This was the site of the "Indian Old Corn Field, " the Iroquoisname for which ("the place of many fields, " or "prairie") wasKen-take, whence came the name of the state. 

Five miles east of this spot, where still may be seen a mound andan ellipse showing the outline of the stockade, is the famousPilot Knob, from the summit of which the fields surrounding thetown lie visible in their smooth expanse. During Findlay's stayat the Indian town other traders from Pennsylvania and Virginia, who reported that they were "on their return from trading withthe Cuttawas (Catawbas), a nation who live in the Territories ofCarolina, " assembled in the vicinity in January, 1753. Here, asthe result of disputes arising from their barter, they were setupon and captured by a large party of straggling Indians(Coghnawagas from Montreal) on January 26th; but Findlay andanother trader named James Lowry were so fortunate as to escapeand return through the wilderness to the Pennsylvaniasettlements. " The incident is of important historic significance;for it was from these traders, who must have followed the GreatWarriors' Path to the country of the Catawbas, that Findlaylearned of the Ouasioto (Cumberland) Gap traversed by the Indianpath. His reminiscences of this gateway to Kentucky, of the siteof the old Indian town on Lulbegrud Creek, a tributary of the RedRiver, and of the Pilot Knobwere sixteen years later to fireBoone to his great tour of exploration in behalf of theTransylvania Company. 

During the next two decades, largely because of the hostility ofthe savage tribes, only a few traders and hunters from the eastranged through the trans-Alleghany. But in 1761, a party ofhunters led by a rough frontiersman, Elisha Walden, penetratedinto Powell's Valley, followed the Indian trail throughCumberland Gap, explored the Cumberland River, and finallyreached the Laurel Mountain where, encountering a party ofIndians, they deemed it expedient to return. With Walden wentHenry Scaggs, afterward explorer for the Henderson Land Company, William Elevens and Charles Cox, the famous Virginia hunters, oneNewman, and some fifteen other stout pioneers. Their itinerarymay be traced from the names given to natural objects in honor ofmembers of the party--Walden's Mountain and Walden's Creek, Scaggs' Ridge and Newman's Ridge. Following the peace of 1763, which made travel in this region moderately safe once more, theEnglish proceeded to occupy the territory which they had won. In1765 George Croghan with a small party, on the way to prepare theinhabitants of the Illinois country for transfer to Englishsovereignty, visited the Great Bone Licks of Kentucky (May 30th, 31st); and a year later Captain Harry Gordon, chief engineer inthe Western Department in North America, visited and minutelydescribed the same licks and the falls. But these, and numerousother water-journeys and expeditions of which no records werekept, though interesting enough in themselves, had little bearingupon the larger phases of westward expansion and colonization. 

The decade opening with the year 1765 is the epoch of bold andever bolder exploration--the more adventurous frontiersmen of theborder pushing deep into the wilderness in search of game, luredon by the excitements of the chase and the profit to be derivedfrom the sale of peltries. In midsummer, 1766, Captain JamesSmith, Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William Baker, and a youngmulatto slave passed through Cumberland Gap, hunted through thecountry south of the Cherokee and along the Cumberland andTennessee rivers, and as Smith reports "found no vestige of anywhite man. " During the same year a party of five hunters fromSouth Carolina, led by Isaac Lindsey, penetrated the Kentuckywilderness to the tributary of the Cumberland, named Stone'sRiver by the former party, for one of their number. Here theyencountered two men, who were among the greatest of the westernpioneers, and were destined to leave their names in historicassociation with the early settlement of Kentucky, James Harrodand Michael Stoner, a German, both of whom had descended the Ohiofrom Fort Pitt. With the year 1769 began those longer and moreextended excursions into the interior which were to result inconveying at last to the outside world graphic and detailedinformation concerning "the wonderful new country of Cantucky. "In the late spring of this year Hancock and Richard Taylor (thelatter the father of President Zachary Taylor), AbrahamHempinstall, and one Barbour, all true-blue frontiersmen, lefttheir homes in Orange County, Virginia, and hunted extensively inKentucky and Arkansas. Two of the party traveled through Georgiaand East and West Florida; while the other two hunted on theWashita during the winter of 1770-1. Explorations of this typebecame increasingly hazardous as the animosity of the Indiansincreased; and from this time onward for a number of years almostall the parties of roving hunters suffered capture or attack bythe crafty red men. In this same year Major John McCulloch, living on the south branch of the Potomac, set out accompanied bya white man-servant and a negro, to explore the western country. While passing down the Ohio from Pittsburgh McCulloch wascaptured by the Indians near the mouth of the Wabash and carriedto the present site of Terre Haute, Indiana. Set free after fouror five months, he journeyed in company with some Frenchvoyageurs first to Natchez and then to New Orleans, whence hemade the sea voyage to Philadelphia. Somewhat later, BenjaminCleveland (afterward famous in the Revolution), attended by fourcompanions, set out from his home on the upper Yadkin to explorethe Kentucky wilderness. After passing through Cumberland Gap, they encountered a band of Cherokees who plundered them ofeverything they had, even to their hats and shoes, and orderedthem to leave the Indian hunting-grounds. On their return journeythey almost starved, and Cleveland, who was reluctantly forced tokill his faithful little hunting-dog, was wont to declare inafter years that it was the sweetest meat he ever ate. 

Fired to adventure by the glowing accounts brought back by UriahStone, a much more formidable band than any that had hithertoventured westward--including Uriah Stone as pilot, GasperMansker, John Rains, Isaac Bledsoe, and a dozen others--assembledin June, 1769, in the New River region. "Each Man carried twohorses, " says an early pioneer in describing one of theseparties, "traps, a large supply of powder and led, and a smallhand vise and bellows, files and screw plate for the purpose offixing the guns if any of them should get out of fix. " Passingthrough Cumberland Gap, they continued their long journey untilthey reached Price's Meadow, in the present Wayne County, Kentucky, where they established their encampment. In the courseof their explorations, during which they gave various names toprominent natural features, they established their "station camp"on a creek in Sumner County, Tennessee, whence originated thename of Station Camp Creek. Isaac Bledsoe and Gasper Mansker, agreeing to travel from here in opposite directions along abuffalo trace passing near the camp, each succeeded indiscovering the famous salt-lick which bears his name--namelyBledsoe's Lick and Mansker's Lick. The flat surrounding the lick, about one hundred acres in extent, discovered by Bledsoe, according to his own statement "was principally Covered withbuffelows in every direction--not hundreds but thousands. " As hesat on his horse, he shot down two deer in the lick; but thebuffaloes blindly trod them in the mud. They did not mind him andhis horse except when the wind blew the scent in their nostrils, when they would break and run in droves. Indians often lurked inthe neighbourhood of these hunters--plundering their camp, robbing them, and even shooting down one of their number, RobertCrockett, from ambush. After many trials and vicissitudes, whichincluded a journey to the Spanish Natchez and the loss of a greatmass of peltries when they were plundered by Piomingo and a warparty of Chickasaws, they finilly reached home in the late springof 1770. "

The most notable expedition of this period, projected under theauspices of two bold leaders extraordinarily skilled inwoodcraft, Joseph Drake and Henry Scaggs, was organized in theearly autumn of 1770. This imposing band of stalwart hunters fromthe New River and Holston country, some forty in number, garbedin hunting shirts, leggings, and moccasins, with threepack-horses to each man, rifles, ammunition, traps, dogs, blankets, and salt, pushed boldly through Cumberland Gap into theheart of what was later justly named the "Dark and Bloody Ground"(see Chapter XIV)--"not doubting, " says an old border chronicler, "that they were to be encountered by Indians, and to subsist ongame. " From the duration of their absence from home, theyreceived the name of the Long Hunters--the romantic appellationby which they are known in the pioneer history of the OldSouthwest. Many natural objects were named by this party--inparticular Dick's River, after the noted Cherokee hunter, CaptainDick, who, pleased to be recognized by Charles Scaggs, told theLong Hunters that on HIS river, pointing it out, they would findmeat plenty--adding with laconic signifigance: "Kill it and gohome. " From the Knob Lick, in Lincoln County, as reported by amember of the party, "they beheld largely over a thousandanimals, including buffaloe, elk, bear, and deer, with many wildturkies scattered among them; all quite restless, some playing, and others busily employed in licking the earth. .. . Thebuffaloe and other animals had so eaten away the soil, that theycould, in places, go entirely underground. " Upon the return of adetachment to Virginia, fourteen fearless hunters chose toremain; and one day, during the absence of some of the band upona long exploring trip, the camp was attacked by a stragglingparty of Indians under Will Emery, a halfbreed Cherokee. Two ofthe hunters were carried into captivity and never heard of again;a third managed to escape. In embittered commemoration of theplunder of the camp and the destruction of the peltries, theyinscribed upon a poplar, which had lost its bark, this emphaticrecord, followed by their names:

2300 Deer Skins lost Ruination by God

Undismayed by this depressing stroke of fortune, they continuedtheir hunt in the direction of the lick which Bledsoe haddiscovered the preceding year. Shortly after this discovery, aFrench voyageur from the Illinois who had hunted and traded inthis region for a decade, Timothe de Monbreun, subsequentlyfamous in the history of Tennessee, had visited the lick andkilled an enormous number of buffaloes for their tallow andtongues with which he and his companion loaded a keel boat anddescended the Cumberland. An early pioneer, William Hall, learnedfrom Isaac Bledsoe that when "the long hunters Crossed the ridgeand came down on Bledsoe's Creek in four or five miles of theLick the Cane had grown up so thick in the woods that theythought they had mistaken the place until they Came to the Lickand saw what had been done. .. . One could walk for severalhundred yards a round the Lick and in the lick on buffellowsSkuls, & bones and the whole flat round the Lick was bleachedwith buffellows bones, and they found out the Cause of the Canesgrowing up so suddenly a few miles around the Lick which was inConsequence of so many buffellows being killed. "

This expedition was of genuine importance, opening the eyes ofthe frontiersmen to the charms of the country and influencingmany to settle subsequently in the West, some in Tennessee, somein Kentucky. The elaborate and detailed information brought backby Henry Scaggs exerted an appreciable influence, no doubt, inaccelerating the plans of Richard Henderson and Company for theacquisition and colonization of the trans-Alleghany. But whilethe "Long Hunters" were in Tennessee and Kentucky the same regionwas being more extensively and systematically explored by DanielBoone. To his life, character, and attainments, as the typical"long hunter" and the most influential pioneer we may now turnour particular attention. 

CHAPTER IX. Daniel Boone and Wilderness Exploration

Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent;where the horrid yells of the savages, and the groans of thedistressed, sounded in our ears, we now hear the praises andadorations of our Creator; where wretched wigwams stood, themiserable abodes of savages, we behold the foundations of citieslaid, that, in all probability, will equal the glory of thegreatest upon earth. --Daniel Boone, 1781. 

The wandering life of a border Nimrod in a surpassingly beautifulcountry teeming with game was the ideal of the frontiersman ofthe eighteenth century. AS early as 1728, while running thedividing line between North Carolina and Virginia, William Byrdencountered along the North Carolina frontier the typical figureof the professional hunter: "a famous Woodsman, call'dEpaphroditus Bainton. This Forester Spends all his time inranging the Woods, and is said to make great Havock among theDeer, and other Inhabitants of the Forest, not much wilder thanhimself. " By the middle of the century, as he was threading hisway through the Carolina piedmont zone, the hunter's paradise ofthe Yadkin and Catawba country, Bishop Spangenberg found rangingthere many hunters, living like Indians, who killed thousands ofdeer each year and sold the skins in the local markets or to thefur-traders from Virginia whose heavy pack-trains with theirtinkling bells constantly traversed the course of the GreatTrading Path. The superlative skill of one of these hunters, bothas woodsman and marksman, was proverbial along the border. Thename of Daniel Boone became synonymous with expert huntsmanshipand almost uncanny wisdom in forest lore. The bottoms of thecreek near the Boone home, three miles west of presentMocksville, contained a heavy growth of beech, which droppedlarge quantities of its rich nuts or mast, greatly relished bybears; and this creek received its name, Bear Creek, becauseDaniel and his father killed in its rich bottoms ninety-ninebears in a single hunting-season. After living for a time withhis young wife, Rebecca Bryan, in a cabin in his father's yard, Daniel built a home of his own upon a tract of land, purchasedfrom his father on October 12, 1759, and lying on Sugar Tree, atributary of Dutchman's Creek. Here he dwelt for the next fiveyears, with the exception of the period of his temporary removalto Virginia during the terrible era of the Indian war. Most ofhis time during the autumn and winter, when he was not engaged inwagoning or farming, he spent in long hunting-journeys into themountains to the west and northwest. During the hunting-season of1760 he struck deeper than ever before into the western mountainregion and encamped in a natural rocky shelter amidst finehunting-grounds, in what is now Washington County in eastTennessee. Of the scores of inscriptions commemorative of hishunting-feats, which Boone with pardonable pride was accustomedthroughout his life time to engrave with his hunting-knife upontrees and rocks, the earliest known is found upon a leaning beechtree, only recently fallen, near his camp and the creek whichsince that day has borne his name. This is a characteristic andenduring record in the history of American exploration

 D. Boon CillED A. BAR On Tree in The yEAR 1760

Late in the summer of the following year Boone marched under thecommand of the noted Indian-fighter of the border, Colonel HughWaddell, in his campaign against the Cherokees. From the lips ofWaddell, who was outspoken in his condemnation of Byrd's futiledelays in road-cutting and fort-building, Boone learned the truesecret of success in Indian warfare, which was lost uponBraddock, Forbes, and later St. Clair: that the art of defeatingred men was to deal them a sudden and unexpected blow, beforethey had time either to learn the strength of the force employedagainst them or to lay with subtle craft their artful ambuscade. 

In the late autumn of 1761, Daniel Boone and Nathaniel Gist, theson of Washington's famous guide, who were both serving underWaddell, temporarily detached themselves from his command and leda small party on a "long hunt" in the Valley of the Holston, While encamping near the site of Black's Fort, subsequentlybuilt, they were violently assailed by a pack of fierce wolveswhich they had considerable difficulty in beating off; and fromthis incident the locality became known as Wolf Hills (nowAbingdon, Virginia). 

From this time forward Boone's roving instincts had full sway. For many months each year he threaded his way through thatmarvelously beautiful country of western North Carolinafelicitously described as the Switzerland of America. Boone'slove of solitude and the murmuring forest was surely inspired bythe phenomenal beauties of the country' through which he roamedat will. Blowing Rock on one arm of a great horseshoe ofmountains and Tryon Mountain upon the other arm, overlooked anenormous, primeval bowl, studded by a thousand emerald-clademinences. There was the Pilot Mountain, the towering andisolated pile which from time immemorial had served theaborigines as a guide in their forest wanderings; there was thedizzy height of the Roan on the border; there was Mt. Mitchell, portentous in its grandeur, the tallest peak on the continenteast of the Rockies; and there was the Grandfather, the oldestmountain on earth according to geologists, of which it has beenwritten:

 Oldest of all terrestrial things--still holding Thy wrinkled forehead high; Whose every scam, earth's history enfolding, Grim science doth defy!

 Thou caught'st the far faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space first was hurled The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, This atom, called the World!

What more gratifying to the eye of the wanderer than theluxuriant vegetation and lavish profusion of the gorgeous flowersupon the mountain slopes, radiant rhododendron, rosebay, andlaurel, and the azalea rising like flame; or the rare beauties ofthe water--the cataract of Linville, taking its shimmering leapinto the gorge, and that romantic river poetically celebrated inthe lines:

 Swannanoa, nymph of beauty, I would woo thee in my rhyme, Wildest, brightest, loveliest river Of our sunny Southern clime. * * * Gone forever from the borders But immortal in thy name, Are the Red Men of the forest Be thou keeper of their fame! Paler races dwell beside thee, Celt and Saxon till thy lands Wedding use unto thy beauty Linking over thee their hands. 

The long rambling excursions which Boone made through westernNorth Carolina and eastern Tennessee enabled him to explore everynook and corner of the rugged and beautiful mountain region. Among the companions and contemporaries with whom he hunted andexplored the country were his little son James and his brotherJesse; the Linville who gave the name to the beautiful falls;Julius Caesar Dugger, whose rock house stood near the head of ElkCreek; and Nathaniel Gist, who described for him the loftygateway to Kentucky, through which Christopher Gist had passed in1751. Boone had already heard of this gateway, from Findlay, andit was one of the secret and cherished ambitions of his life toscale the mountain wall of the Appalachians and to reach thathigh portal of the Cumberland which beckoned to the mysteriousnew Eden beyond. Although hunting was an endless delight to Boonehe was haunted in the midst of this pleasure, as was Kipling'sExplorer, by the lure of the undiscovered:

Till a voice as bad as conscience, rang interminable changesOn one everlasting whisper day and night repeated--so:'Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind theranges--'Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go. '

Of Boone's preliminary explorations for the land company known asRichard Henderson and Company, an account has already been given;and the delay in following them up has been touched on and inpart explained. Meanwhile Boone transferred his efforts for atime to another field. Toward the close of the summer of 1765 aparty consisting of Major John Field, William Hill, oneSlaughter, and two others, all from Culpeper County, Virginia, visited Boone and induced him to accompany them on the "longJourney" to Florida, whither they were attracted by the liberaloffer of Colonel James Grant, governor of the eastern section, the Florida of to-day. On this long and arduous expedition theysuffered many hardships and endured many privations, found littlegame, and on one occasion narrowly escaped starvation. Theyexplored Florida from St. Augustine to Pensacola; and Boone, whorelished fresh scenes and a new environment, purchased a houseand lot in Pensacola in anticipation of removal thither. But uponhis return home, finding his wife unwilling to go, Boone oncemore turned his eager eye toward the West, that mysterious andalluring region beyond the great range, the fabled paradise ofKentucky. 

The following year four young men from the Yadkin, BenjaminCutbird, John Stewart (Boone's brother-in-law who afterwardsaccompanied him to Kentucky), John Baker, and James Ward made aremarkable journey to the westward, crossing the Appalachianmountain chain over some unknown route, and finally reaching theMississippi. The significance of the journey, in its bearing uponwestward expansion, inheres in the fact that while for more thanhalf a century the English traders from South Carolina had beenwinning their way to the Mississippi along the lower routes andIndian trails, this was the first party from either of theCarolinas, as far as is known, that ever reached the Mississippiby crossing the great mountain barrier. When Cutbird, a superbwoodsman and veritable Leather stocking, narrated to Boone thestory of his adventures, it only confirmed Boone in hisdetermination to find the passage through the mountain chainleading to the Mesopotamia of Kentucky. 

Such an enterprise was attended by terrible dangers. During 1766and 1767 the steady encroachments of the white settlers upon theancestral domain which the Indians reserved for their imperialhunting-preserve aroused bitter feelings of resentment among thered men. Bloody reprisal was often the sequel to suchencroachment. The vast region of Tennessee and thetrans-Alleghany was a twilight zone, through which the savagesroamed at will. From time to time war parties of northernIndians, the inveterate foes of the Cherokees, scouted throughthis no-man's land and even penetrated into the western region ofNorth Carolina, committing murders and depredations upon theCherokees and the whites indiscriminately. During the summer of1766, while Boone's friend and close connection, Captain WilliamLinville, his son John, and another young man, named JohnWilliams, were in camp some ten miles below Linville Falls, theywere unexpectedly fired upon by a hostile band of NorthernIndians, and before they had time to fire a shot, a second volleykilled both the Linvilles and severely wounded Williams, whoafter extraordinary sufferings finally reached the settlements. "In May, 1767, four traders and a half-breed child of one of themwere killed in the Cherokee country. In the summer of this yearGovernor William Tryon of North Carolina laid out the boundaryline of the Cherokees, and upon his return issued a proclamationforbidding any purchase of land from the Indians and any issuanceof grants for land within one mile of the boundary line. Despitethis wise precaution, seven North Carolina hunters who during thefollowing September had lawlessly ventured into the mountainregion some sixty miles beyond the boundary were fired upon, andseveral of them killed, by the resentful Cherokees Undismayed bythese signs of impending danger, undeterred even by the tragicfate of the Linvilles, Daniel Boone, with the determination ofthe indomitable pioneer, never dreamed of relinquishing hislong-cherished design. Discouraged by the steady disappearance ofgame under the ruthless attack of innumerable hunters, Boonecontinued to direct his thoughts toward the project of exploringthe fair region of Kentucky. The adventurous William Hill, towhom Boone communicated his purpose, readily consented to go withhim; and in the autumn of 1768 Boone and Hill, accompanied, it isbelieved, by Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, set forth upon theiralmost inconceivably hazardous expedition. They crossed the BlueRidge and the Alleghanies, the Holston and Clinch rivers neartheir sources, and finally reached the head waters of the WestFork of the Big Sand. Surmising from its course that this streammust flow into the Ohio, they pushed on a hundred miles to thewestward and finally, by following a buffalo path, reached asalt-spring in what is now Floyd County, in the extreme easternsection of Kentucky. Here Boone beheld great droves of buffalothat visited the salt-spring to drink the water or lick thebrackish soil. After spending the winter in hunting and trapping, the Boones and Hill, discouraged by the forbidding aspect of thehill-country which with its dense growth of laurel wasexceedingly difficult to penetrate, abandoned all hope of findingKentucky by this route and wended their arduous way back to theYadkin. 

The account of Boone's subsequent accomplishment of his purposemust be postponed to the next chapter. 

CHAPTER X. Daniel Boone in Kentucky

He felt very much as Columbus did, gazing from his caravel on SanSalvador; as Cortes, looking down, from the crest of Ahualco, onthe Valley of Mexico; or Vasco Nunez, standing alone on the peakof Darien, and stretching his eyes over the hitherto undiscoveredwaters of the Pacific. ---William Gilmore Simms: Views andReviews. 

A chance acquaintance formed by Daniel Boone, during the Frenchand Indian War, with the Irish lover of adventure, John Findlay, was the origin of Boone's cherished longing to reach the ElDorado of the West. In this slight incident we may discern theinitial inspiration for the epochal movement of westwardexpansion. Findlay was a trader and horse peddler, who had earlymigrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had been licensed a traderwith the Indians in 1747. During the same year he was married toElizabeth Harris, daughter of John Harris, the Indian-trader atHarris's Ferry on the Susquehanna River, after whom Harrisburgwas named. During the next eight years Findlay carried on hisbusiness of trading in the interior. Upon the opening of theFrench and Indian War he was probably among "the young men aboutPaxtang who enlisted immediately, " and served as a waggoner inBraddock's expedition. Over the campfires, during the ensuingcampaign in 1765, young Boone was an eager listener to Findlay'sstirring narrative of his adventures in the Ohio Valley and onthe wonderfully beautiful levels of Kentucky in 1752. The fanciesaroused in his brooding mind by Findlay's moving recital and hisdescription of an ancient passage through the Ouasioto orCumberland Gap and along the course of the Warrior's Path, inspired him with an irrepressible longing to reach that alluringpromised land which was the perfect realization of the hunter'sparadise. 

Thirteen years later, while engaged in selling pins, needles, thread, and Irish linens in the Yadkin country, Findlay learnedfrom the Pennsylvania settlers at Salisbury or at the Forks ofthe Yadkin of Boone's removal to the waters of the upper Yadkin. At Boone's rustic home, in the winter of 1768-9, Findlay visitedhis old comrade-in-arms of Braddock's campaign. On learning ofBoone's failure during the preceding year to reach the Kentuckylevels by way of the inhospitable Sandy region, Findlay againdescribed to him the route through the Ouasioto Gap traversedsixteen years before by Pennsylvania traders in their trafficwith the Catawbas. Boone, as we have seen, knew that ChristopherGist, who had formerly lived near him on the upper Yadkin, hadfound some passage through the lofty mountain defiles; but he hadnever been able to discover the passage. Findlay's reneweddescriptions of the immense herds of buffaloes he had seen inKentucky, the great salt-licks where they congregated, theabundance of bears, deer, and elk with which the country teemed, the innumerable flocks of wild turkeys, geese, and ducks, arousedin Boone the hunter's passion for the chase; while the beauty ofthe lands, as mirrored in the vivid fancy of the Irishman, inspired him with a new longing to explore the famous countrywhich had, as John Filson records, "greatly engaged Mr. Findlay'sattention. "

In the comprehensive designs of Henderson, now a judge, forsecuring a "graphic report of the trans-Alleghany region inbehalf of his land company", Boone divined the means of securingthe financial backing for an expedition of considerable size andample equipment. In numerous suits for debt, aggregating hundredsof dollars, which had been instituted against Boone by some ofthe leading citizens of Rowan, Williams and Henderson had actedas Boone's attorneys. In order to collect their legal fees, theylikewise brought suit against Boone; but not wishing to press theaction against the kindly scout who had hitherto acted as theiragent in western exploration, they continued the litigation fromcourt to court, in lieu of certain "conditions performed" onbehalf of Boone, during his unbroken absence, by his attorney inthis suit, Alexander Martin. Summoned to appear in 1769 at theMarch term of court at Salisbury, Boone seized upon the occasionto lay before Judge Henderson the designs for a renewed andextended exploration of Kentucky suggested by the goldenopportunity of securing the services of Findlay as guide. Shortlyafter March 6th, when Judge Henderson reached Salisbury, theconference, doubtless attended by John Stewart, Boone'sbrother-in-law, John Findlay, and Boone, who were all present atthis term of court, must have been held, for the purpose ofdevising ways and means for the expedition. Peck, the onlyreliable contemporary biographer of the pioneer, who derived manyfacts from Boone himself and his intimate acquaintances, drawsthe conclusion (1847): "Daniel Boone was engaged as the masterspirit of this exploration, because in his judgment and fidelityentire confidence could be reposed. .. . He was known toHenderson and encouraged by him to make the exploration, and toexamine particularly the whole country south of the Kentucky--oras then called the Louisa River. " As confidential agent of theland company, Boone carried with him letters and instructions forhis guidance upon this extended tour of exploration. "

On May 1, 1769, with Findlay as guide, and accompanied by four ofhis neighbors, John Stewart, a skilled woodsman, Joseph Holden, James Mooney, and William Cooley, Boone left his "peaceablehabitation" on the upper Yadkin and began his historic journey"in quest of the country of Kentucky. " Already heavily burdenedwith debts, Boone must have incurred considerable furtherfinancial obligations to Judge Henderson and Colonel Williams, acting for the land company, in order to obtain the large amountof supplies requisite for so prolonged an expedition. Each of theadventurers rode a good horse of strength and endurance; andbehind him were securely strapped the blanket, ammunition, salt, and cooking-utensils so indispensable for a long sojourn in thewilderness. In Powell's Valley they doubtless encountered theparty led thither by Joseph Martin (see Chapter VII), and therefell into the "Hunter's Trail" commented on in a letter writtenby Martin only a fortnight before the passing of Boone'scavalcade. Crossing the mountain at the Ouasioto Gap, they madetheir first "station camp" in Kentucky on the creek, still namedafter that circumstance, on the Red Lick Fork. After apreliminary journey for the purpose of locating the spot, Findlayled the party to his old trading-camp at Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, where then (June 7, 1769) remained but charred embers of theIndian huts, with some of the stockading and the gate-posts stillstanding. In Boone's own words, he and Findlay at once "proceededto take a more thorough survey of the country;" and during theautumn and early winter, encountering on every hand apparentlyinexhaustible stocks of wild game and noting the ever-changingbeauties of the country, the various members of the party mademany hunting and exploring journeys from their "station camp" asbase. On December 22, 1769, while engaged in a hunt, Boone andStewart were surprised and captured by a large party ofShawanoes, led by Captain Will, who were returning from theautumn hunt on Green River to their villages north of the Ohio. Boone and Stewart were forced to pilot the Indians to their maincamp, where the savages, after robbing them of all their peltriesand supplies and leaving them inferior guns and littleammunition, set off to the northward. They left, on parting, thismenacing admonition to the white intruders: "Now, brothers, gohome and stay there. Don't come here any more, for this is theIndians' hunting-ground, and all the animals, skins, and furs areours. If you are so foolish as to venture here again, you may besure the wasps and yellow jackets will sting you severely. "

Chagrined particularly by the loss of the horses, Boone andStewart for two days pursued the Indians in hot haste. Finallyapproaching the Indians' camp by stealth in the dead of night, they secured two of the horses, upon which they fled at topspeed. In turn they were immediately pursued by a detachment ofthe Indians, mounted upon their fleetest horses; and suffered thehumiliation of recapture two days later. Indulging in wildhilarity over the capture of the crestfallen whites, the Indianstook a bell from one of the horses and, fastening it aboutBoone's neck, compelled him under the threat of brandishedtomahawks to caper about and jingle the bell, jeering at him thewhile with the derisive query, uttered in broken English: "Stealhorse, eh?" With as good grace as they could summon--wry smilesat best--Boone and Stewart patiently endured these humiliations, following the Indians as captives. Some days later (about January4, 1770), while the vigilance of the Indians was momentarilyrelaxed, the captives suddenly plunged into a dense canebrake andin the subsequent confusion succeeded in effecting their escape. Finding their camp deserted upon their return, Boone and Stewarthastened on and finally overtook their companions. Here Boone wasboth surprised and delighted to encounter his brother Squire, loaded down with supplies. Having heard nothing from Boone, thepartners of the land company had surmised that he and his partymust have run short of ammunition, flour, salt, and other thingssorely needed in the wilderness; and because of their desire thatthe party should remain, in order to make an exhaustiveexploration of the country, Squire Boone had been sent to himwith supplies. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley returned tothe settlements; but Stewart, Squire Boone, and Alexander Neely, who had accompanied Squire, threw in their lot with the intrepidDaniel, and fared forth once more to the stirring and bracingadventures of the Kentucky wilderness. In Daniel Boone's ownwords, he expected "from the furs and peltries they had anopportunity of taking . .. To recruit his shatteredcircumstances; discharge the debts he had contracted by theadventure; and shortly return under better auspices, to settlethe newly discovered country. "

Boone and his party now stationed themselves near the mouth ofthe Red River, and soon provided themselves, against the hard. Ships of the long winter, with jerk, bear's oil, buffalo tallow, dried buffalo tongues, fresh meat, and marrow-bones as food, andbuffalo robes and bearskins as shelter from the inclementweather. Neely had brought with him, to while away dull hours, acopy of "Gulliver's Travels"; and in describing Neely'ssuccessful hunt for buffalo one day, Boone in after yearsamusingly deposed: "In the year 1770 I encamped on Red River withfive other men, and we had with us for our amusement the Historyof Samuel Gulliver's Travels, wherein he gave an account of hisyoung master, Glumdelick, careing him on market day for a show toa town called Lulbegrud. A young man of our company calledAlexander Neely came to camp and told us he had been that day toLulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their capital. " Farfrom unlettered were pioneers who indulged together in suchliterary chat and gave to the near-by creek the name (after DeanSwift's Lorbrugrud) of Lulbegrud which name, first seen onFilson's map of Kentucky (1784), it bears to this day. From oneof his long, solitary hunts Stewart never returned; and it wasnot until five years later, while cutting out the TransylvaniaTrail, that Boone and his companions discovered, near the oldcrossing at Rockcastle, Stewart's remains in a standing hollowsycamore. The wilderness never gave up its tragic secret. 

The close of the winter and most of the spring were passed by theBoones, after Neely's return to the settlements, in exploration, hunting, and trapping beaver and otter, in which sport Danielparticularly excelled. Owing to the drain upon their ammunition, Squire was at length compelled to return to the settlements forsupplies; and Daniel, who remained alone in the wilderness tocomplete his explorations for the land company, must often haveshared the feelings of Balboa as, from lofty knob or toweringridge, he gazed over the waste of forest which spread from thedim out lines of the Alleghanies to the distant waters of theMississippi. He now proceeded to make those remarkable solitaryexplorations of Kentucky which have given him immortality--throughthe valley of the Kentucky and the Licking, and along the"Belle Riviere" (Ohio) as low as the falls. He visited the BigBone Lick and examined the wonderful fossil remains of themammoth found there. Along the great buffalo roads, worn severalfeet below the surface of the ground, which led to the BlueLicks, he saw with amazement and delight thousands of huge shaggybuffalo gamboling, bellowing, and making the earth rumble beneaththe trampling of their hooves. One day, while upon a cliff nearthe junction of the Kentucky and Dick's Rivers, he suddenly foundhimself hemmed in by a party of Indians. Seizing his only chanceof escape, he leaped into the top of a maple tree growing beneaththe cliffs and, sliding to safety full sixty feet below, made hisescape, pursued by the sound of a chorus of guttural "Ughs" fromthe dumbfounded savages. 

Finally making his way back to the old camp, Daniel was rejoinedthere by Squire on July 27, 1770. During the succeeding months, much of their time was spent in hunting and prospecting inJessamine County, where two caves are still known as Boone'scaves. Eventually, when ammunition and supplies had once more runlow, Squire was compelled a second time to return to thesettlements. Perturbed after a time by Squire's failure to rejoinhim at the appointed time, Daniel started toward the settlements, in search of him; and by a stroke of good fortune encountered himalong the trail. Overjoyed at this meeting (December, 1770) theindomitable Boones once more plunged into the wilderness, determined to conclude their explorations by examining theregions watered by the Green and Cumberland rivers and theirtributaries. In after years, Gasper Mansker, the old Germanscout, was accustomed to describe with comic effect theconsternation created among the Long Hunters, while hunting oneday on Green River, by a singular noise which they could notexplain. Stealthily slipping from tree to tree, Mansker finallybeheld with mingled surprise and amusement a hunter, bareheaded, stretched flat upon his back on a deerskin spread on the ground, singing merrily at the top of his voice! It was Daniel Boone, joyously whiling away the solitary hours in singing one of hisfavorite songs of the border. In March, 1771, after spending sometime in company with the Long Hunters, the Boones, their horsesladen with furs, set their faces homeward. On their returnjourney, near Cumberland Gap, they had the misfortune to besurrounded by a party of Indians who robbed them of their gunsand all their peltries. With this humiliating conclusion to hismemorable tour of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he himself says, "once more reached home after experiencing hardships which woulddefy credulity in the recital. "

Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved theambition of years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed asecond paradise. " The reports of his extended explorations, whichhe made to Judge Henderson, were soon communicated to the otherpartners of the land company; and their letters of this period, to one another, bristle with glowing and minute descriptions ofthe country, as detailed by their agent. Boone was immediatelyengaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the Cherokeesconfidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or sellthe beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. The highhopes of Henderson and his associates at last gave promise ofbrilliant realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions ofKentucky excited in their minds, says a gifted early chronicler, the "spirit of an enterprise which in point of magnitude andperil, as well as constancy and heroism displayed in itsexecution, has never been paralleled in the history of America. "

CHAPTER XI. The Regulators

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, butif he has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or onecow to give a little milk for his children, they must all go toraise money which is not to be had. And lastly if his personalestate (sold at one tenth of its value) will not do, then hislands (which perhaps has cost him many years of toil and labour)must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungrycaterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of ourCommonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in avery short time. --George Sims: A Serious Address to theInhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of ourdeplorable Situation we suffer . .. . And some necessary Hints withRespect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765. 

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlierexplorations in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, DanielBoone anticipated speedy removal to the West. Indeed, in the veryyear of his first tour in their interest, Daniel and his wifeRebeckah sold all their property in North Carolina, consisting oftheir home and six hundred and forty acres of land, and afterseveral removals established themselves upon the upper Yadkin. This removal and the later western explorations just outlinedwere due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery. Three other causes also were at work. In the first place therewas the scarcity of game. For fifteen years the shipments ofdeerskins from Bethabara to Charleston steadily increased; andthe number of skins bought by Gammern, the Moravian storekeeper, ran so high that in spite of the large purchases made at thestore by the hunters he would sometimes run entirely out ofmoney. Tireless in the chase, the far roaming Boone was among"the hunters, who brought in their skins from as far away as theIndian lands"; and the beautiful upland pastures and mountainforests, still teeming with deer and bear, doubtless lured him tothe upper Yadkin, where for a time in the immediate neighborhoodof his home abundance of game fell before his unerring rifle. Certainly the deer and other game, which were being killed inenormous numbers to satisfy the insatiable demand of the tradersat Salisbury, the Forks, and Bethabara, became scarcer andscarcer; and the wild game that was left gradually fled to thewestward. Terrible indeed was the havoc wrought among the elk;and it was reported that the last elk was killed in western NorthCarolina as early as 1781. 

Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope inthe back country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguisedoutlawry, similar to that found on the western plains of a laterera. This ruthless brigand age arose as the result of theunsettled state of the country and the exposed condition of thesettlements due to the Indian alarms. When rude borderers, demoralized by the enforced idleness attendant upon fort lifeduring the dark days of Indian invasion, sallied forth uponforays against the Indians, they found much valuableproperty--horses, cattle, and stock--left by their owners whenhurriedly fleeing to the protection of the frontier stockades. The temptations thus afforded were too great to resist; and thewilder spirits of the backwoods, with hazy notions of privaterights, seized the property which they found, slaughtered thecattle, sold the horses, and appropriated to their own use thetemporarily abandoned household goods and plantation tools. Thestealing of horses, which were needed for the cultivation of thesoil and useful for quickly carrying unknown thieves beyond thereach of the owner and the law, became a common practice; and wascarried on by bands of outlaws living remote from one another andacting in collusive concert. 

Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon theNew River settlements in Virginia had frightened away all thefamilies at the Town Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, aman of Welsh stock, who had settled in the spring of 1752 in theupper Yadkin near the Mulberry Fields, was suspected of havingrobbed the storekeeper on the Meho. Not long afterward a band ofoutlaws who plundered the exposed cabins in their owners'absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain region in the rearof the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their ill-gottenplunder and made themselves secure from attack. Other members ofthe band dwelt in the settlements, where they concealed theirrobber friends by day and aided them by night in their nefariousprojects of theft and rapine. 

The entire community was finally aroused by the bold depredationsof the outlaws; and the most worthy settlers of the Yadkincountry organized under the name of Regulators to break up theoutlaw band. When it was discovered that Owen, who was well knownat Bethabara, had allied himself with the highwaymen, one of thejustices summoned one hundred men; and seventy, who answered thecall, set forth on December 26, 1755, to seek out the outlaws andto destroy their fortress. Emboldened by their success, thelatter upon one occasion had carried off a young girl of thesettlements. Daniel Boone placed himself at the head of one ofthe parties, which included the young girl's father, to go to herrescue; and they fortunately succeeded in effecting the releaseof the frightened maiden. One of the robbers was apprehended andbrought to Salisbury, where he was thrown into prison for hiscrimes. Meanwhile a large amount of plunder had been discoveredat the house of one Cornelius Howard; and the evidences of hisguilt so multiplied against him that he finally confessed hisconnection with the outlaw band and agreed to point out theirfort in the mountains. 

Daniel Boone and George Boone joined the party of seventy men, sent out by the colonial authorities under the guidance ofHoward, to attack the stronghold of the bandits. Boone afterwardrelated that the robbers' fort was situated in the most fitlychosen place for such a purpose that he could imagine--beneath anoverhanging cliff of rock, with a large natural chimney, and aconsiderable area in front well stockaded. The frontiersmensurrounded the fort, captured five women and eleven children, andthen burned the fort to the ground. Owen and his wife, Cumberland, and several others were ultimately made prisoners;but Harman and the remainder of the band escaped by flight. Owenand his fellow captives were then borne to Salisbury, incarcerated in the prison there, and finally (May, 1756)condemned to the gallows. Owen sent word to the Moravians, petitioning them to adopt his two boys and to apprentice one to atailor, the other to a carpenter. But so infuriated was Owen'swife by Howard's treachery that she branded him as a secondJudas; and this at once fixed upon him the sobriquet "Judas"Howard-a sobriquet he did not live long to bear, for about a yearlater he was ambushed and shot from his horse at the crossing ofa stream. He thus paid the penalty of his betrayal of the outlawband. For a number of years, the Regulators continued to wage waragainst the remaining outlaws, who from time to time committedmurders as well as thefts. As late as January, 1768, theRegulators caught a horse thief in the Hollows of Surry Countyand brought him to Bethabara, whence Richter and Spach took himto the jail at Salisbury. After this year, the outlaws were heardof no more; and peace reigned in the settlements. 

Colonel Edmund Fanning--of whom more anon--declared that theRegulation began in Anson County which bordered upon SouthCarolina. Certain it is that the upper country of that provincewas kept in an uproar by civil disturbances during this earlyperiod. Owing to the absence of courts in this section, so remotefrom Charleston, the inhabitants found it necessary, for theprotection of property and the punishment of outlaws, to form anassociation called, like the North Carolina society, theRegulation. Against this association the horse thieves and othercriminals made common cause, and received tacit support fromcertain more reputable persons who condemned "the irregularity ofthe Regulators. " The Regulation which had been thus organized inupper South Carolina as early as 1764 led to tumultuous risingsof the settlers; and finally in the effort to suppress thesedisorders, the governor, Lord Charles Montagu, appointed oneScovil, an utterly unworthy representative, to carry out hiscommands. After various disorders, which became ever moreunendurable to the law-abiding, matters came to a crisis (1769)as the result of the high-handed proceedings of Scovil, whopromiscuously seized and flung into prison all the Regulators hecould lay hands on. In the month of March the back country rosein revolt against Scovil and a strong body of the settlers was onthe point of attacking the force under his command when aneleventh-hour letter arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil fromoffice. Thus was happily averted, by the narrowest of margins, athreatened precursor of the fight at Alamance in 1771 (seeChapter XII). As the result of the petition of the Calhouns andothers, courts were established in 1760, though not opened untilfour years later. Many horse thieves were apprehended, tried, andpunished. Justice once more held full sway. 

Another important cause for Boone's removal from the neighborhoodof Salisbury into the mountain fastnesses was the oppressiveadministration of the law by corrupt sheriffs, clerks, andtax-gatherers, and the dissatisfaction of the frontier squatterswith the owners of the soil. At the close of the year 1764reports reached the town of Wilmington, after the adjournment ofthe assembly in November, of serious disturbances in OrangeCounty, due, it was alleged, to the exorbitant exactions of theclerks, registers, and some of the attorneys. As a result of thisdisturbing news, Governor Dobbs issued a proclamation forbiddingany officer to take illegal fees. Troubles had been brewing inthe adjacent county of Granville ever since the outbreak of thecitizens against Francis Corbin, Lord Granville's agent (January24, 1759), and the issuance of the petition of Reuben Searcy andothers (March 23d) protesting against the alleged excessive feestaken and injustices practised by Robert (Robin) Jones, thefamous lawyer. These disturbances were cumulative in theireffect; and the people at last (1765 ) found in George Sims, ofGranville, a fit spokesman of their cause and a doughty championof popular rights. In his "Serious Address to the Inhabitants ofGranville County, containing an Account of our deplorableSituation we suffer . .. And some necessary Hints with Respectto a Reformation, " recently brought to light, he presents acrushing indictment of the clerk of the county court, SamuelBenton, the grandfather of Thomas Hart Benton. After describingin detail the system of semi-peonage created by the mercilessexactions of lawyers and petty court officials, and theinsatiable greed of "these cursed hungry caterpillars, " Sims withrude eloquence calls upon the people to pull them down from theirnests for the salvation of the Commonwealth. 

Other abuses were also recorded. So exorbitant was the charge fora marriage-license, for instance, that an early chroniclerrecords "The consequence was that some of the inhabitants on thehead-waters of the Yadkin took a short cut. They took each otherfor better or for worse; and considered themselves as marriedwithout further ceremony. " The extraordinary scarcity of currencythroughout the colony, especially in the back country, wasanother great hardship and a perpetual source of vexation. Allthese conditions gradually became intolerable to the unculturedbut free spirited men of the back country. Events were slowlyconverging toward a crisis in government and society. Independentin spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted notonly against excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, andextortionate fees, but also against the rapacious practices ofthe agents of Lord Granville. These agents industriously pickedflaws in the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary uponwhich the poorer settlers were seated; and compelled them to payfor the land if they had not already done so, or else to pay thefees twice over and take out a new patent as the only remedy ofthe alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County thespirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against theproprietary agents. Acting under instructions to survey and closebargains for the lands or else to eject those who held them, Henry Eustace McCulloh, in February, 1765, went into the countyto call a reckoning. The settlers, many of whom had locatedwithout deeds, indignantly retorted by offering to buy only attheir own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out theholdings when this smaller price was declined. They not onlyterrorized into acquiescence those among them who were willing topay the amount charged for the lands, but also openly declaredthat they would resist by force any sheriff in ejectmentproceedings. On May 7th an outbreak occurred; and a mob, led byThomas Polk, set upon John Frohock, Abraham Alexander, andothers, as they were about to survey a parcel of land, and gavethem a severe thrashing, even threatening the young McCulloh withdeath. 

The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement withFrancis Bacon, considered revenge as a sort of wild justice. Especial objects of their animosity were the brothers Frohock, John and Thomas, the latter clerk of the court at Salisbury, andEdmund Fanning, a cultured gentleman-adventurer, associatejustice of the superior court. So rapacious and extortionate werethese vultures of the courts who preyed upon the vitals of thecommon people, that they were savagely lampooned by RednapHowell, the backwoods poet-laureate of the Regulation. The temperof the back country is well caught in Howell's lines anent thisearly American "grafter", the favorite of the royal governor:

 When Fanning first to Orange came, He looked both pale and wan; An old patched coat was on his back, An old mare he rode on. 

 Both man and mare wan't worth five pounds, As I've been often told; But by his civil robberies, He's laced his coat with gold. 

The germs of the great westward migration in the coming decadewere thus working among the people of the back country. If thetense nervous energy of the American people is the transmittedcharacteristic of the border settlers, who often slept withloaded rifle in hand in grim expectation of being awakened by thehideous yells, the deadly tomahawk, and the lurid firebrand ofthe savage, the very buoyancy of the national character is inequal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded on afreehold inheritance of land. " The desire for free land was thefundamental factor in the development of the American democracy. No colony exhibited this tendency more signally than did NorthCarolina in the turbulent days of the Regulation. The NorthCarolina frontiersmen resented the obligation to pay quit-rentsand firmly believed that the first occupant of the soil had anindefeasible right to the land which he had won with his rifleand rendered productive by the implements of toil. Preferring thedangers of the free wilderness to the paying of tribute toabsentee landlords and officials of an intolerant colonialgovernment, the frontiersman found title in his trusty riflerather than in a piece of parchment, and was prone to pay hisobligations to the owner of the soil in lead rather than in gold. 

CHAPTER XII. Watauga--Haven of Liberty

The Regulators despaired of seeing better times and thereforequitted the Province. It is said 1, 500 departed since the Battleof Alamance and to my knowledge a great many more are onlywaiting to dispose of their plantations in order to followthem. --Reverend Morgan Edwards, 1772. 

The five years (1766-1771) which saw the rise, development, andultimate defeat of the popular movement known as the Regulation, constitute a period not only of extraordinary significance inNorth Carolina but also of fruitful consequences in the largermovements of westward expansion. With the resolute intention ofhaving their rulers "give account of their stewardship, " toemploy their own words, the Sandy Creek Association of Baptists(organized in 1758), in a series of papers known as Regulators'Advertisements (1766-8) proceeded to mature, through populargatherings, a rough form of initiative and referendum. At length, discouraged in its efforts, and particularly in the attempt tobring county officials to book for charging illegal fees, thisassociation ceased actively to function. It was the precursor ofa movement of much more drastic character and formidableproportions, chiefly directed against Colonel Edmund Fanning andhis associates. This movement doubtless took its name, "theRegulation, " from the bands of men already described who wereorganized first in North Carolina and later in South Carolina, toput down highwaymen and to correct many abuses in the backcountry, such as the tyrannies of Scovil and his henchmen. Failing to secure redress of their grievances through legalchannels, the Regulators finally made such a powerfuldemonstration in support of their refusal to pay taxes thatGovernor William Tryon of North Carolina, in 1768, called out theprovincial militia, and by marching with great show of forcethrough the disaffected regions, succeeded temporarily inoverawing the people and thus inducing them to pay theirassessments. 

The suits which had been brought by the Regulators against EdmundFanning, register, and Francis Nash, clerk, of Orange County, resulted in both being "found guilty of taking too high fees. "Fanning immediately resigned his commission as register; whileNash, who in conjunction with Fanning had fairly offered in 1766to refund to any one aggrieved any fee charged by him which theSuperior Court might hold excessive, gave bond for his appearanceat the next court. Similar suits for extortion against the threeFroliocks in Rowan County in 1769 met with failure, however; andthis outcome aroused the bitter resentment of the Regulators, asrecorded by Herman Husband in his "Impartial Relation. " Duringthis whole period the insurrectionary spirit of the people, whofelt themselves deeply aggrieved but recognized their inabilityto secure redress, took the form of driving local justices fromthe bench and threatening court officials with violence. 

At the session of the Superior Court at Hillsborough, September22, 1770, an elaborate petition prepared by the Regulators, demanding unprejudiced juries and the public accounting for taxesby the sheriffs, was handed to the presiding justice by JamesHunter, a leading Regulator. This justice was our acquaintance, Judge Richard Henderson, of Granville County, the sole highofficer in the provincial government from the entire westernsection of the colony. In this petition occur these trenchantwords: "As we are serious and in good earnest and the causerespects the whole body of the people it would be loss of time toenter into arguments on particular points for though there are afew men who have the gift and art of reasoning, yet every man hasa feeling and knows when he has justice done him as well as themost learned. " On the following Monday (September 24th), uponconvening of court, some one hundred and fifty Regulators, led byJames Hunter, Herman Husband, Rednap Howell, and others, armedwith clubs, whips, and cudgels, surged into the court-room andthrough their spokesman, Jeremiah Fields, presented a statementof their grievances. "I found myself, " says Judge Henderson, "under a necessity of attempting to soften and turn away the furyof these mad people, in the best manner in my power, and as suchcould well be, pacify their rage and at the same time preservethe little remaining dignity of the court. "

During an interim, in which the Regulators retired forconsultation, they fell without warning upon Fanning and gave himsuch rough treatment that he narrowly escaped with his life. Themob, now past control, horsewhipped a number of leading lawyersand citizens gathered there at court, and treated others, notablythe courtly Mr. Hooper of Boston, "with every mark of contemptand insult. " Judge Henderson was assured by Fields that no harmshould come to him provided he would conduct the court inaccordance with the behest of the Regulators: namely, that nolawyer, save the King's Attorney, should be admitted to thecourt, and that the Regulators' cases should be tried with newjurors chosen by the Regulators. With the entire little villageterrorized by this campaign of "frightfulness, " and the courtwholly unprotected, Judge Henderson reluctantly acknowledged tohimself that "the power of the judiciary was exhausted. "Nevertheless, he says, "I made every effort in my powerconsistent with my office and the duty the public is entitled toclaim to preserve peace and good order. " Agreeing under duress toresume the session the following day, the judge ordered anadjournment. But being unwilling, on mature reflection, to permita mockery of the court and a travesty of justice to be stagedunder threat and intimidation, he returned that night to his homein Granville and left the court adjourned in course. Enraged bythe judge's escape, the Regulators took possession of the courtroom the following morning, called over the cases, and in futileprotest against the conditions they were powerless to remedy, made profane entries which may still be seen on the record:"Damned rogues, " "Fanning pays cost but loses nothing, " "Negroesnot worth a damn, Cost exceeds the whole, " "Hogan pays and bedamned, " and, in a case of slander, "Nonsense, let them argue forFerrell has gone hellward. "

The uprising of these bold and resolute, simple and imperfectlyeducated people, which had begun as a constitutional struggle tosecure justice and to prevent their own exploitation by dishonestlawyers of the county courts, now gave place to open anarchy andsecret incendiarism. In the dead of night, November 12th and14th, Judge Henderson's barn, stables, and dwelling house werefired by the Regulators and went up in flames. Glowing with asense of wrong, these misguided people, led on by fanaticalagitators, thus vented their indiscriminate rage, not only upontheir op pressors, but also upon men wholly innocent of injuringthem--men of the stamp of William Hooper, afterward signer of theDeclaration of Independence, Alexander Martin, afterward governorand United States Senator, and Richard Henderson, popularrepresentative of the back country and a firm champion of dueprocess of law. It is perhaps not surprising in view of theseevents that Governor Tryon and the ruling class, lacking asympathy broad enough to ensure justice to the oppressed people, seemed to be chiefly impressed with the fact that a widespreadinsurrection was in progress, threatening not only life andproperty, but also civil government itself. The governor calledout the militia of the province and led an army of well nigh onethousand men and officers against the Regulators, who hadassembled at Alamance to the number of two thousand. Tryon stoodfirm upon the demands that the people should submit to governmentand disperse at a designated hour. The Regulators, on their side, hoped to secure the reforms they desired by intimidating thegovernor with a great display of force. The battle was a tragicfiasco for the Regulators, who fought bravely, but withoutadequate arms or real leadership. With the conclusion of thisdesultory action, a fight lasting about two hours (May 16, 1771), the power of the Regulators was completely broken. "

Among these insurgents there was a remarkable element, an elementwhose influence upon the course of American history has been butimperfectly understood which now looms into prominence as thevanguard of the army of westward expansion. There were some ofthe Regulators who, though law-abiding and conservative, weredeeply imbued with ideas of liberty, personal independence, andthe freedom of the soil. Through the influence of BenjaminFranklin, with whom one of the leaders of the group, HermanHusband, was in constant correspondence, the patriotic ideas thenrapidly maturing into revolutionary sentiments furnished theinspiration to action. As early as 1766, the Sandy Creek leaders, referred to earlier in this chapter, issued a call to eachneighborhood to send delegates to a gathering for the purpose ofinvestigating the question "whether the free men of this countrylabor under any abuses of power or not. " The close connectionbetween the Sandy Creek men and the Sons of Liberty is amplydemonstrated in this paper wherein the Sons of Liberty inconnection with the "stamp law" are praised: for "redeeming usfrom Tyranny" and for having "withstood the lords in Parliamentin behalf of true liberty. " Upon the records of the Dutchman'sCreek Church, of "regular" Baptists, at the Forks of the Yadkin, to which Daniel Boone's family belonged, may be found thismemorable entry, recognizing the "American Cause" well-nigh ayear before the declaration of independence at Philadelphia: "Atthe monthly meeting it was agreed upon concerning the AmericanCause, if any of the brethren see cause to join it they have theliberty to do it without being called to an account by thechurch. But whether they join or do not join they should be usedwith brotherly love. 

The fundamental reasons underlying the approaching westwardhegira are found in the remarkable petition of the Regulators ofAn son County (October 9, 1769), who request that "BenjaminFranklin or some other known PATRIOT" be appointed agent of theprovince in London to seek redress at the source. They exposedthe basic evil in the situation by pointing out that, inviolation of the law restricting the amount of land that might begranted to each person to six hundred and forty acres, much ofthe most fertile territory in the province had been distributedin large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "greatnumbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in thecultivation of the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist. " Itwas these poor people, "thereby deprived of His Majestiesliberality and Bounty, " who soon turned their gaze to thewestward and crossed the mountains in search of the rich, freelands of the trans-Alleghany region. 

This feverish popular longing for freedom, stimulated by theeconomic pressure of thousands of pioneers who were annuallyentering North Carolina, set in motion a wave of migration acrossthe mountains in 1769. Long before Alamance, many of the trueAmericans, distraught by apparently irremediable injustices, plunged fearlessly into the wilderness, seeking beyond themountains a new birth of liberty, lands of their own selectionfree of cost or quit-rents, and a government of their ownchoosing and control. "' The glad news of the rich valleys beyondthe mountains early lured such adventurous pioneers as AndrewGreer and Julius Caesar Dugger to the Watauga country. Theglowing stories, told by Boone, and disseminated in the backcountry by Henderson, Williams, and the Harts, seemed to givepromise to men of this stamp that the West afforded relief fromoppressions suffered in North Carolina. During the winter of1768-9 there was also a great rush of settlers from Virginia intothe valley of the Holston. A party from Augusta County, led bymen who had been delighted with the country viewed seven yearsbefore when they were serving under Colonel William Byrd againstthe Cherokees, found that this region, a wilderness on theiroutward passage in 1768, was dotted with cabins on every spotwhere the grazing was good, upon their return the following year. Writing to Hillsborough on October 18, 1770, concerning the "manyhundred families" in the region from Green River to the branchesof the Holston, who refused to comply with the royal proclamationof 1763, Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia reports that "verylittle if any Quit Rents have been received for His Majesty's usefrom that Quarter for some time past"--the people claiming that"His Majesty hath been pleased to withdraw his protection fromthem since 1763. "

In the spring of 1770, with the express intention of discoveringsuitable locations for homes for himself and a number of others, who wished to escape the accumulating evils of the times, JamesRobertson of Orange County, North Carolina, made an arduousjourney to the pleasing valley of the Watauga. Robertson, who wasborn in Brunswick County, Virginia, June 28, 1742, of excellentScotch-Irish ancestry, was a noteworthy figure of a certaintype--quiet, reflective, conservative, wise, a firm believer in thebasic principles of civil Liberty and the right of localself-government. Robertson spent some time with a man namedHoneycut in the Watauga region, raised a crop of corn, and chosefor himself and his friends suitable locations for settlement. Lost upon his return in seeking the mountain defiles traversed byhim on the outward journey, Robertson probably escaped death fromstarvation only through the chance passing of two hunters whosuccored him and set him upon the right path. On arriving inOrange he found political and social conditions there much worsethan before, many of the colonists declining to take theobligatory oath of allegiance to the British Crown after theBattle of Alamance, preferring to carve out for themselves newhomes along the western waters. Some sixteen families of thisstamp, indignant at the injustices and oppressions of Britishrule, and stirred by Robertson's description of the richness andbeauty of the western country, accompanied him to Watauga shortlyafter the battle. 

This vanguard of the army of westward advance, independentAmericans in spirit with a negligible sprinkling of Loyalists, now swept in a great tide into the northeastern section ofTennessee. The men of Sandy Creek, actuated by independentprinciples but out of sympathy with the anarchic side of theRegulation, left the colony almost to a man. "After the defeat ofthe Regulators, " says the historian of the Sandy CreekAssociation, "thousands of the oppressed, seeing no hope ofredress for their grievances, moved into and settled eastTennessee. A large proportion of these were of the Baptistpopulation. Sandy Creek Church which some time previous to 1771, numbered 606, was afterward reduced to fourteen members!" Thismovement exerted powerful influence in stimulating westwardexpansion. Indeed, it was from men of Regulating principles--Boone, Robertson, and the Searcys--who vehemently condemned theanarchy and incendiarism of 1770, that Judge Henderson receivedpowerful cooperation in the opening up of Kentucky and Tennessee. 

The several treaties concerning the western boundary of whitesettlement, concluded in close succession by North Carolina, Virginia, and the Crown with the Southern and Northern Indians, had an important bearing upon the settlement of Watauga. TheCherokee boundary line, as fixed by Governor Tryon (1767) and byJohn Stuart (1768), ran from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain, thence straight to Chiswell's Mine, and thence direct to themouth of the Great Kanawha River. By the treaty at Fort Stanwix(November 5, 1768), in the negotiation of which Virginia wasrepresented by Dr. Thomas Walker and Major Andrew Lewis, the SixNations sold to the Crown their shadowy claim to a vast tract ofwestern country, including in particular all the land between theOhio and the Tennessee Rivers. The news of the cession resultedin a strong southwestward thrust of population, from theneighborhood of Abingdon, in the direction of the Holston Valley. Recognizing that hundreds of these settlers were beyond the linenegotiated by Stuart, but on lands not yet surveyed, GovernorBotetourt instructed the Virginia commissioners to press forfurther negotiations, through Stuart, with the Cherokees. Accordingly, on October 18, 1770, a new treaty was made atLochaber, South Carolina, by which a new line back of Virginiawas established, beginning at the intersection of the NorthCarolina-Cherokee line (a point some seventy odd miles east ofLong Island), running thence in a west course to a point sixmiles east of Long Island, and thence in a direct course to theconfluence of the Great Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. At the time ofthe treaty, it was agreed that the Holston River, from itsintersection with the North Carolina-Virginia line, and down thecourse of the same, should be a temporary southern boundary ofVirginia until the line should be ascertained by actual survey. Astrong influx of population into the immense new triangle thusreleased for settlement brought powerful pressure to bear uponnorthern Tennessee, the point of least resistance along thewestern barrier. Singularly enough, this advance was not opposedby the Cherokees, whose towns were strung across the extremesoutheast corner of Tennessee. 

When Colonel John Donelson ran the line in the latter part of1771, The Little Carpenter, who with other Indian chiefsaccompanied the surveying party, urged that the line agreed uponat Lochaber should break off at the head of the Louisa River, andshould run thence to the mouth thereof, and thence up the Ohio tothe mouth of the Great Kanawha. For this increase in theterritory of Virginia they of course expected additional payment. As a representative of Virginia, Donelson agreed to the proposedalteration in the boundary line; and accordingly promised to sendthe Cherokees, in the following spring, a sum alleged by them tohave been fixed at five hundred pounds, in compensation for theadditional area. This informal agreement, it is believed, wasnever ratified by Virginia; nor was the promised compensationever paid the Cherokees. 

Under the belief that the land belonged to Virginia, Jacob Brownwith one or two families from North Carolina settled in 1771 upona tract of land on the northern bank of the Nonachunheh(corruption, Nolichucky) River. During the same year, anexperimental line run westward from Steep Rock and Beaver Creekby Anthony Bledsoe showed that upon the extension of the boundaryline, these settlers would fall within the bounds of NorthCarolina. Although thus informally warned of the situation, thesettlers made no move to vacate the lands. But in the followingyear, after the running of Donelson's line, Alexander Cameron, Stuart's deputy, required "all persons who had made settlementsbeyond the said line to relinquish them. " Thus officially warned, Brown and his companions removed to Watauga. Cameron's order didnot apply, however, to the settlement, to the settlement north ofthe Holston River, south and east of Long Island; and thesettlement in Carter's Valley, although lying without theVirginia boundary, strangely enough remained unmolested. Theorder was directed at the Watauga settlers, who were seated southof the Holston River in the Watauga Valley. 

The plight in which the Watauga settlers now found themselves wastruly desperate; and the way in which they surmounted thisapparently insuperable difficulty is one of the most striking andcharacteristic events in the pre-Revolutionary history of the OldSouthwest. It exhibits the indomitable will and fertile resourceof the American character at the margin of desperation. Themomentous influence of the Watauga settlers, inadequatelyreckoned hitherto by historians, was soon to make itselfpowerfully felt in the first epochal movement of westwardexpansion. 

CHAPTER XIII. Opening the Gateway--Dunmore's War

Virginia, we conceive, can claim this Country [Kentucky] with thegreatest justice and propriety, its within the Limits of theirCharter. They Fought and bled for it. And had it not been for thememorable Battle, at the Great Kanaway those vast regions had yetcontinued inaccessable. --The Harrodsburg Petition. June 7-15, 1776. 

It was fortunate for the Watauga settlers that the Indians andthe whites were on the most peaceful terms with each other at thetime the Watauga Valley was shown, by the running of the boundaryline, to lie within the Indian reservation. With true Americanself reliance, the settlers met together for deliberation andcounsel, and deputed James Robertson and John Been, as stated byTennessee's first historian, "to treat with their landlords, andagree upon articles of accommodation and friendship. The attemptsucceeded. For though the Indians refused to give up the landgratuitously, they consented, for a stipulated amount ofmerchandise, muskets, and other articles of convenience, to leaseall the country on the waters of the Watauga. " In addition to theland thus leased for ten years, several other tracts werepurchased from the Indians by Jacob Brown, who reoccupied hisformer location on the Nolichucky. 

In taking this daring step, the Watauga settlers moved into thespotlight of national history. For the inevitable consequence ofleasing the territory was the organization of a form ofgovernment for the infant settlement. Through his familiaritywith the North Carolina type of "association, " in which thesettlers had organized for the purpose of "regulating" abuses, and his acquaintance with the contents of the "ImpartialRelation, " in which Husband fully expounded the principles andpractices of this association, Robertson was peculiarly fittedfor leadership in organizing this new government. The conventionat which Articles of Association, unfortunately lost, were drawnup, is noteworthy as the first governmental assemblage offree-born American citizens ever held west of the Alleghanies. The government then established was the first free andindependent government, democratic in spirit, representative inform, ever organized upon the American continent. In describingthis mimic republic, the royal Governor of Virginia says: "Theyappointed magistrates, and framed laws for their presentoccasion, and to all intents and purposes, erected themselvesinto, though an inconsiderable, yet a separate State. " The mostdaring spirit in this little state was the young John Sevier, ofFrench Huguenot family (originally spelled Xavier), born inAugusta County, Virginia, on September 23, 1745. It was fromMillerstown in Shenandoah County where he was living theuneventful life of a small farmer, that he emigrated (December, 1773) to the Watauga region. With his arrival there begins one ofthe most fascinating and romantic careers recorded in the variedarid stirring annals of the Old Southwest. In this daring andimpetuous young fellow, fair-haired, blue-eyed, magnetic, debonair--of powerful build, splendid proportions, and athleticskill--we hold the gallant exemplar of the truly heroic life ofthe border. The story of his life, thrilling in the extreme, isrich in all the multi-colored elements which impart romance tothe arduous struggle of American civilization in the openingyears of the republic. 

The creative impulses in the Watauga commonwealth are hinted atby Dunmore, who serves, in the letter above quoted, that Watauga"sets a dangerous example to the people America, of forminggovernments distinct from and independent of his Majesty'sauthority. "

It is true that the experiment was somewhat limited. Theorganization of the Watauga association, which constituted atemporary expedient to meet a crisis in the affairs of a frontiercommunity cut off by forest wilderness and mountain barriers fromthe reach of the arm of royal or provincial government, is not tobe compared with the revolutionary assemblage at Boonesborough, May 23, 1775, or with the extraordinary demands for inde pendencein Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the same month. Nevertheless the Watauga settlers defied both North Carolina andthe Crown, by adopting the laws of Virginia and by ignoringGovernor Josiah Martin's proclamation (March 26, 1774) "requiringthe said settlers immediately to retire from the IndianTerritories. " Moreover, Watauga really was the parent of a seriesof mimic republics in the Old Southwest, gradually tending towardhigher forms of organization, with a larger measure of individualliberty. Watauga, Transylvania, Cumberland, Franklin representthe evolving political genius of a free people under the creativeleadership of three constructive minds--James Robertson, JohnSevier, and Richard Henderson. Indeed, Watauga furnished to JudgeHenderson precisely the "dangerous example" of which Dunmoreprophetically speaks. 

Immediately upon his return in 1771 from the extended explorationof Kentucky, Daniel Boone as already noted was engaged as secretagent, to treat with the Cherokees for the lease or purchase ofthe trans-Alleghany region, on behalf of Judge Henderson and hisassociates. Embroiled in the exciting issues of the Regulationand absorbed by his confining duties as colonial judge, Hendersonwas unable to put his bold design into execution until after theexpiration of the court itself which ceased to exist in 1773. Disregarding the royal proclamation of 1763 and Locke'sFundamental Constitutions for the Carolinas, which forbadeprivate parties to purchase lands from the Indians, JudgeHenderson applied to the highest judicial authorities in Englandto know if there was any law in existence forbidding purchase oflands from the Indian tribes. Lord Mansfield gave Judge Hendersonthe "sanction of his great authority in favor of the purchase. "Lord Chancellor Camden and Mr. Yorke had officially advised theKing in 1757, in regard to the petition of the East IndianCompany, "that in respect to such territories as have been, orshall be acquired by treaty or grant from the Great Mogul, or anyof the Indian princes or governments, your Majesty's letterspatent are NOT NECESSARY; the property of the soil vesting in thecompany by the Indian grant subject only to your Majesties rightof sovereignty over the settlements, as English settlements, andover the inhabitants, as English subjects, who carry with themyour Majesties laws wherever they form colonies, and receive yourMajesties protection by virtue of your royal charters. " Thisopinion, with virtually no change, was rendered in regard to theIndian tribes of North America by the same two authorities, certainly as early as 1769; and a true copy, made in London, April 1, 1772, was transmitted to Judge Henderson. Armed with thelegal opinions received from England, Judge Henderson was fullypersuaded that there was no legal bar whatsoever to his seekingto acquire by purchase from the Cherokees the vast domain of thetrans-Alleghany. A golden dream of empire, with its promise of anindependent republic in the form of a proprietary colony, castshim under the spell of its alluring glamour. 

In the meantime, the restless Boone, impatient over the delay inthe consummation of Judge Henderson's plans, resolved toestablish himself in Kentucky upon his own responsibility. Heedless of the question of title and the certain hazardsincident to invading the territory of hostile savages, Boonedesignated a rendezvous in Powell's Valley where he and his partyof five families were to be met by a band under the leadership ofhis connections, the Bryans, and another company led by CaptainWilliam Russell, a daring pioneer of the Clinch Valley. A smalldetachment of Boone's party was fiercely attacked by Shawanoes inPowell's Valley on October 10, 1773, and almost all were killed, including sons of Boone and Russell, and young John and RichardMendenhall of Guilford County, North Carolina. As the result ofthis bloody repulse, Boone's attempt to settle in Kentucky atthis time was definitely abandoned. His failure to effect asettlement in Kentucky was due to that characteristic disregardof the territorial rights of the Indians which was all too commonamong the borderers of that period. 

This failure was portentous of the coming storm. The reign of theLong Hunters was over. Dawning upon the horizon was the day ofstern adventurers, fixed in the desperate and lawless resolve toinvade the trans-Alleghany country and to battle savagely withthe red man for its possession. More successful than Boone wasthe McAfee party, five in number, from Botetourt County, Virginia, who between May 10th and September 1, 1773, safelyaccomplished a journey through Kentucky and carefully markedwell-chosen sites for future location. " An ominous incident ofthe time was the veiled warning which Cornstalk, the greatShawanoe chieftain, gave to Captain Thomas Bullitt, head of aparty of royal surveyors, sent out by Lord Dunmore, Governor ofVirginia. Cornstalk at Chillicothe, June 7, 1773, warned Bullittconcerning the encroachments of the whites, "designed to depriveus, " he said, "of the hunting of the country, as usual . .. Thehunting we stand in need of to buy our clothing. " During thepreceding summer, George Rogers Clark, an aggressive youngVirginian, with a small party, had descended the Ohio as low asFish Creek, where he built a cabin; and in this region for manymonths various parties of surveyors were busily engaged inlocating and surveying lands covered by military grants. Mostsignificant of the ruthless determination of the pioneers tooccupy by force the Kentucky area was the action of the largeparty from Monongahela, some forty in number, led by CaptainJames Harrod, who penetrated to the present Miller County, wherein June, 1774, they made improvements and actually laid out atown. 

A significant, secretly conducted movement, of which historianshave taken but little account, was now in progress under themanipulation of Virginia's royal governor. As early as 1770 Dr. John Connolly proposed the establishment of an extensive colonysouth of the Ohio; and the design of securing such territory fromthe Indians found lodgment in the mind of Lord Dunmore. But thisdesign was for the moment thwarted when on October 28, 1773, anorder was issued from the Privy Council chamber in Whitehallgranting an immense territory, including all of the present WestVirginia and the land alienated to Virginia by Donelson'sagreement with the Cherokees (1772), to a company includingThomas Walpole, Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin, and others. This new colony, to be named "Vandalia, " seemed assured. A clashbetween Dunmore and the royal authorities was imminent; forVirginia under her sea-to-sea charter claimed the vast middleregion of the continent, extending without known limit to westand northwest. Moreover, Dunmore was interested in great landspeculations on his own account; and while overtly vindicatingVirginia's claim to the trans-Alleghany by despatching parties ofsurveyors to the western wilderness to locate and survey landscovered by military grants, he with the collusion of certainmembers of the "Honourable Board, " his council, as charged byWashington, was more than "lukewarm, " secretly restricting asrigorously as he dared the extent and number of the soldiers'allotments. According to the famous Virginia Remonstrance, he wasin league with "men of great influence in some of the neighboringstates" to secure, under cover of purchases from the Indians, large tracts of country between the Ohio and the Mississippi. " Inshaping his plans Dunmore had the shrewd legal counsel of PatrickHenry, who was equally intent upon making for himself a privatepurchase from the Cherokees. It was Henry's legal opinion thatthe Indiana purchase from the Six Nations by the Pennsylvaniatraders at Fort Stanwix (November 5, 1768) was valid; and thatpurchase by private individuals from the Indians gave full andample title. In consequence of these facts, William Murray, inbehalf of himself and his associates of the Illinois LandCompany, and on the strength of the Camden Yorke decision, purchased two large tracts, on the Illinois and Ohiorespectively, from the Illinois Indians (July 5, 1773); and inorder to win the support of Dunmore, who was ambitious to make afortune in land speculation, organized a second company, theWabash (Ouabache) Land Company, with the governor as the chiefshare-holder. In response to Murray's petition on behalf of theIllinois Land Company, Dunmore (May, 1774) recommended it to LordDartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and urged that itbe granted; and in a later letter he disingenuously disclaimedany personal interest in the Illinois speculation. 

The party of surveyors sent out under the direction of ColonelWilliam Preston, on the request of Washington and other leadingeastern men, in 1774 located lands covered by military grants onthe Ohio and in the Kentucky area for prominent Virginians, including Washington, Patrick Henry, William Byrd, WilliamPreston, Arthur Campbell, William Fleming, and Andrew Lewis, among others, and also a large tract for Dr. Connolly. Certain ofthese grants fell within the Vandalia area; and in his reply(September 10, 1774) to Dunmore's letter, Lord Dartmouth sternlycensured Dunmore for allowing these grants, and accused the whitesettlers of having brought on, by such unwarrantable aggressions, the war then raging with the Indians. This charge lay at the doorof Dunmore himself; and there is strong evidence that Dunmorepersonally fomented the war, ostensibly in support of Virginia'scharter rights, but actually in order to further his ownspeculative designs. " Dunmore's agent, Dr. Connolly, heading aparty posing as Virginia militia, fired without provocation upona delegation of Shawanoe chiefs assembled at Fort Pitt (January, 1774). Taking advantage of the alarming situation created by theconflict of the claims of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Connolly, inspired by Dunmore without doubt, then issued an incendiarycircular (April 21, 1774), declaring a state of war to exist. Just two weeks before the Battle of the Great Kanawha, PatrickHenry categorically stated, in conversation with Thomas Wharton:

"that he was at Williamsburg with Ld. D. When Dr. Conolly firstcame there, that Conolly is a chatty, sensible man, and informedLd. Dunmore of the extreme richness of the lands which lay onboth sides of the Ohio; that the prohibitory orders which hadbeen sent him relative to the land on the hither side (orVandalia) had caused him to turn his thoughts to the oppositeshore, and that as his Lordship was determined to settle hisfamily in America he was really pursueing this war, in order toobtain by purchase or treaty from the natives a tract ofterritory on that side; he then told me that he was convincedfrom every authority that the law knew, that a purchase from thenatives was as full and ample a title as could be obtained, thatthey had Lord Camden and Mr. York's opinion on that head, whichopinion with some others that Ld. Dunmore had consulted, and withthe knowledge Conolly had given him of the quality of the countryand his determined resolution to settle his family on thiscontinent, were the real motives or springs of the presentexpedition. "

At this very time, Patrick Henry, in conjunction with WilliamByrd 3d and others, was negotiating for a private purchase oflands from the Cherokees; and when Wharton, after answeringHenry's inquiry as to where he might buy Indian goods, remarked:"It's not possible you mean to enter the Indian trade at thisperiod, " Henry laughingly replied: "The wish-world is my hobbyhorse. " "From whence I conclude, " adds Wharton, "he has someprospect of making a purchase of the natives, but where I knownot. "

The war, thus promulgated, we believe, at Dunmore's secretinstigation and heralded by a series of ghastly atrocities, cameon apace. After the inhuman murder of the family of Logan, theIndian chieftain, by one Greathouse and his drunken companions(April 30th), Logan, who contrary to romantic views was ablackhearted and vengeful savage, harried the Tennessee andVirginia borders, burning and slaughtering. Unable to arouse theCherokees, owing to the opposition of Atta-kulla-kulla, Logan aslate as July 21st said in a letter to the whites: "The Indiansare not angry, only myself, " and not until then did Dunmore beginto give full execution to his warlike plans. The best woodsmen ofthe border, Daniel Boone and the German scout Michael Stoner, having been despatched on July 27th by Colonel William Preston towarn the surveyors of the trans-Alleghany, made a remarkablejourney on foot of eight hundred miles in sixty-one days. Harrod's company at Harrodsburg, a company of surveyors atFontainebleau, Floyd's party on the Kentucky, and the surveyorsat Mann's Lick, this warned, hurried in to the settlements andwere saved. Meanwhile, Dunmore, in command of the Virginiaforces, invaded territory guaranteed to the Indians by the royalproclamation of 1763 and recently (1774) added to the province ofQuebec, a fact of which he was not aware, conducted a vigorouscampaign, and fortified Camp Charlotte, near Old Chillicothe. Andrew Lewis, however, in charge of the other division ofDunmore's army, was the one destined to bear the real brunt andburden of the campaign. His division, recruited from the veryflower of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, was the mostrepresentative body of borderers of this region that up to thistime had assembled to measure strength with the red men. It wasan army of the true stalwarts of the frontier, with fringedleggings and hunting-capes, rifles and powder-horns, hunting-knives and tomahawks. 

The Battle of the Great Kanawha, at Point Pleasant, was fought onOctober 10, 1774, between Lewis's force, eleven hundred strong, and the Indians, under Cornstalk, somewhat inferior in numbers. It was a desultory action, over a greatly extended front and invery brushy country between Crooked Creek and the Ohio. Throughout the long day, the Indians fought with rare craft andstubborn bravery--loudly cursing the white men, cleverly pickingoff their leaders, and derisively inquiring, in regard to theabsence of the fifes: "Where are your whistles now?" Slowlyretreating, they sought to draw the whites into an ambuscade andat a favorable moment to "drive the Long Knives like bullocksinto the river. " No marked success was achieved on either sideuntil near sunset, when a flank movement directed by young IsaacShelby alarmed the Indians, who mistook this party for theexpected reinforcement under Christian, and retired across theOhio. In the morning the whites were amazed to discover that theIndians, who the preceding day so splendidly heeded the echoingcall of Cornstalk, "Be strong! Be strong!", had quit thebattlefield and left the victory with the whites. 

The peace negotiated by Dunmore was durable. The governor hadaccomplished his purpose, defied the authority of the crown, andvindicated the claim of Virginia, to the enthusiasticsatisfaction of the backwoodsmen. While tendering their thanks tohim and avowing their allegiance to George III, at the close ofthe campaign, the borderers proclaimed their resolution to exertall their powers "for the defense of American liberty, and forthe support of her just rights and privileges, not in anyprecipitous, riotous or tumultuous manner, but when regularlycalled forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen. " Dunmore'sWar is epochal, in that it procured for the nonce a state ofpeace with the Indians, which made possible the advance of JudgeHenderson over the Transylvania Trail in 1775, and, through hisestablishment of the Transylvania Fort at Boonesborough, theultimate acquisition by the American Confederation of theimperial domain of the trans-Alleghany. 

CHAPTER XIV. Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company

I happened to fall in company, and have a great deal ofconversation with one of the most singular and extraordinarypersons and excentric geniuses in America, and perhaps in theworld. His name is Richard Henderson. --J. F. D. Smyth: A Tour inthe United States of America. 

Early in 1774, chastened by his own disastrous failure thepreceding autumn, Boone advised Judge Henderson that the time wasauspicious for opening negotiations with the Cherokees forpurchasing the trans-Alleghany region. " In organizing a companyfor this purpose, Henderson chose men of action and resource, leaders in the colony, ready for any hazard of life and fortunein this gigantic scheme of colonization and promotion. The newmen included, in addition to the partners in the organizationknown as Richard Henderson and Company, were Colonel JohnLuttrell, destined to win laurels in the Revolution, and WilliamJohnston, a native of Scotland, the leading merchant ofHillsborough. 

Meeting in Hillsborough on August 27, 1774, these men organizedthe new company under the name of the Louisa Company. In thearticles then drawn up they agreed to "rent or purchase" a tractof land from the Indian owners of the soil for the expresspurpose of "settling the country. " Each partner obligated himselfto "furnish his Quota of Expenses necessary towards procuring thegrant. " In full anticipation of the grave dangers to beencountered, they solemnly bound themselves, as "equal sharers inthe property, " to "support each other with our lives andfortunes. " Negotiations with the Indians were begun at once. Accompanied by Colonel Nathaniel Hart and guided by theexperienced Indian-trader, Thomas Price, Judge Henderson visitedthe Cherokee chieftains at the Otari towns. After elaborateconsultations, the latter deputed the old chieftain, Atta-kulla-kulla, a young buck, and a squaw, "to attend the saidHenderson and Hart to North Carolina, and there examine the Goodsand Merchandize which had been by them offered as theConsideration of the purchase. " The goods purchased at CrossCreek (now Fayetteville, North Carolina), in which the LouisaCompany "had embarked a large amount, " met the entire approval ofthe Indians--the squaw in particular shrewdly examining the goodsin the interest of the women of the tribe. 

On January 6, 1775, the company was again enlarged, and given thename of the Transylvania Company-the three new partners beingDavid Hart, brother to Thomas and Nathaniel, Leonard HenleyBullock, a prominent citizen of Granville, and James Hogg, ofHillsborough, a native Scotchman and one of the most influentialmen in the colony. In the elaborate agreement drawn up referenceis explicitly made to the contingency of "settling and voting asa proprietor and giving Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitantsetc. " Hillsborough was the actual starting-point for the westwardmovement, the first emigrants, traveling thence to the SycamoreShoals of the Watauga. In speaking of the departure of thesettlers, the first movement of extended and permanent westwardmigration, an eye-witness quaintly says: "At this place[Hillsborough] I saw the first party of emigrant families thatmoved to Kentucky under the auspices of Judge Henderson. Theymarched out of the town with considerable solemnity, and to manytheir destination seemed as remote as if it had been to the SouthSea Islands. " Meanwhile, the "Proposals for the encouragement ofsettling the lands etc. , " issued on Christmas Day, 1774, werequickly spread broadcast through the colony and along theborder. " It was the greatest sensation North Carolina had knownsince Alamance; and Archibald Neilson, deputy-auditor and navalofficer of the colony, inquired with quizzical anxiety: "Pray, isDick Henderson out of his head?" The most liberal terms, proffered by one quite in possession of his head, were embodiedin these proposals. Land at twenty shillings per hundred acreswas offered to each emigrant settling within the territory andraising a crop of corn before September 1, 1775, the emigrantbeing permitted to take up as much as five hundred acres for himself and two hundred and fifty acres for each tithable personunder him. In these "Proposals" there was no indication that thelow terms at which the lands were offered would be maintainedafter September 1, 1775. In a letter to Governor Dunmore(January, 1775), Colonel William Preston, county surveyor ofFincastle County, Virginia, says "The low price he [Henderson]proposes to sell at, together with some further encouragement heoffers, will I am apprehensive induce a great many families toremove from this County (Fincastle) & Carolina and settle there. "Joseph Martin, states his son, "was appointed entry-Taker andagent for the Powell Valley portion" of the Transylvania Purchaseon January 20, 1775; and "he (Joseph Martin) and others went onin the early part of the year 1775 and made their stand at thevery spot where he had made corn several years before. Inspeaking of the startling design, unmasked by Henderson, ofestablishing an independent government, Colonel Preston writes toGeorge Washington of the contemplated "large Purchase by one Col. Henderson of North Carolina from the Cherokees. .. . I hearthat Henderson talks with great Freedom & Indecency of theGovernor of Virginia, sets the Government at Defiance & says ifhe once had five hundred good Fellows settled in that Country hewould not Value Virginia. "

Early in 1775 runners were sent off to the Cherokee towns tosummon the Indians to the treaty ground at the Sycamore Shoals ofthe Watauga; and Boone, after his return from a hunt in Kentuckyin January, was summoned by Judge Henderson to aid in thenegotiations preliminary to the actual treaty. The dominatingfigure in the remarkable assemblage at the treaty ground, consisting of twelve hundred Indians and several hundred whites, was Richard Henderson, "comely in person, of a benign and socialdisposition, " with countenance betokening the man of strenuousaction" noble forehead, prominent nose, projecting chin, firm-setjaw, with kindness and openness of expression. " Gathered abouthim, picturesque in garb and striking in appearance, were many ofthe buckskin-clad leaders of the border--James Robertson, JohnSevier, Isaac Shelby, William Bailey Smith, and theircompeers--as well as his Carolina friends John Williams, Thomasand Nathaniel Hart, Nathaniel Henderson, Jesse Benton, andValentine Searcy. 

Little was accomplished on the first day of the treaty (March14th); but on the next day, the Cherokees offered to sell thesection bargained for by Donelson acting as agent for Virginia in1771. Although the Indians pointed out that Virginia had neverpaid the promised compensation of five hundred pounds and hadtherefore forfeited her rights, Henderson flatly refused toentertain the idea of purchasing territory to which Virginia hadthe prior claim. Angered by Henderson's refusal, The DraggingCanoe, leaping into the circle of the seated savages, made animpassioned speech touched with the romantic imagination peculiarto the American Indian. With pathetic eloquence he dwelt upon theinsatiable land-greed of the white men, and predicted theextinction of his race if they committed the insensate folly ofselling their beloved hunting-grounds. Roused to a high pitch oforatorical fervor, the savage with uplifted arm fiercely exhortedhis people to resist further encroachments at all hazards--andleft the treaty ground. This incident brought the conference to astartling and abrupt conclusion. On the following day, however, the savages proved more tractable, agreeing to sell the land asfar as the Cumberland River. In order to secure the additionalterritory watered by the tributaries of the Cumberland, Hendersonagreed to pay an additional sum of two thousand pounds. Upon thisday there originated the ominous phrase descriptive of Kentuckywhen The Dragging Canoe, dramatically pointing toward the west, declared that a DARK Cloud hung over that land, which was knownas the BLOODY GROUND. 

On the last day, March 17th, the negotiations were opened withthe signing of the "Great Grant. " The area purchased, some twentymillions of acres, included almost all the present state ofKentucky, and an immense tract in Tennessee, comprising all theterritory watered by the Cumberland River and all itstributaries. For "two thousand weight of leather in goods"Henderson purchased "the lands lying down Holston and between theWatauga lease, Colonel Donelson's line and Powell's Mountain" asa pathway to Kentucky--the deed for which was known as the "PathDeed. " By special arrangement, Carter's Valley in this tract wentto Carter and Lucas; two days later, for two thousand pounds, Charles Robertson on behalf of the Watauga Association purchaseda large tract in the valleys of the Holston, Watauga, and NewRivers; and eight days later Jacob Brown purchased two largeareas, including the Nolichucky Valley. This historic treaty, which heralds the opening of the West, was conducted withabsolute justice and fairness by Judge Henderson and hisassociates. No liquor was permitted at the treaty ground; andThomas Price, the ablest of the Cherokee traders, deposed that"he at that time understood the Cherokee language, so as tocomprehend everything which was said and to know that what wasobserved on either side was fairly and truly translated; that theCherokees perfectly understood, what Lands were the subject ofthe Treaty. .. . " The amount paid by the Transylvania Companyfor the imperial domain was ten thousand pounds sterling, inmoney and in goods. 

Although Daniel Boone doubtless assisted in the proceedings priorto the negotiation of the treaty, his name nowhere appears in thevoluminous records of the conference. Indeed, he was not thenpresent; for a fortnight before the conclusion of the treaty hewas commissioned by Judge Henderson to form a party of competentwoodmen to blaze a passage through the wilderness. On March 10ththis party of thirty ax-men, under the leadership of Boone, started from the rendezvous, the Long Island of Holston, toengage in the arduous labor of cutting out the TransylvaniaTrail. 

Henderson, the empire-builder, now faced with courage andresolution the hazardous task of occupying the purchasedterritory and establishing an independent government. No merefinancial promoter of a vast speculative enterprise, he was oneof the heroic figures of the Old Southwest; and it was hisdauntless courage, his unwavering resolve to go forward in theface of all dangers, which carried through the armed "trek" to asuccessful conclusion. At Martin's Station, where Henderson andhis party tarried to build a house in which to store theirwagons, as the road could be cleared no further, they were joinedby another party, of five adventurers from Prince William County, Virginia. " In Henderson's party were some forty men and boys, with forty packhorses and a small amount of powder, lead, salt, and garden-seeds. The warning freely given by Joseph Martin ofthe perils of the path was soon confirmed, as appears from thefollowing entry in Henderson's diary:

"Friday the 7th. [April] About Brake of Day began to snow. About11 O'Clock received a letter from Mr. Luttrells camp that werefive persons killd on the road to the Cantuckie by Indians. Capt. [Nathaniel] Hart, uppon the receipt of this News Retreated backwith his Company, & determined to Settle in the Valley to makeCorn for the Cantucky people. The same Day Received a Letter fromDan. Boone, that his Company was fired uppon by Indians, Kill'dTwo of his men--tho he kept the ground & saved the Baggage &c. "

The following historic letter, which reveals alike the doggedresolution of Boone and his reliance upon Henderson and hiscompany in this black hour of disaster, addressed "ColonelRichard Henderson--these with care, " is eloquent in itssimplicity

"Dear Colonel: After my compliments to you, I shall acquaint youof our misfortunes. On March the 25 a party of Indians fired onmy Company about half an hour before day, and killed Mr. Twittyand his negro, and wounded Mr. Walker very deeply, but I hope hewill recover. 

"On March the 28 as we were hunting for provisions, we foundSamuel Tate's son, who gave us an account that the Indians firedon their camp on the 27th day. My brother and I went down andfound two men killed and sculped, Thomas McDowell and JeremiahMcFeters. I have sent a man down to all the lower companies inorder to gather them all at the mouth of Otter Creek. 

"My advice to you, Sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you, and nowis the time to flusterate their [the Indians'] intentions, andkeep the country, whilst we are in it. If we give way to themnow, it will ever be the case. This day we start from the battleground, for the mouth of Otter Creek, where we shall immediatelyerect a Fort, which will be done before you can come or send, then we can send ten men to meet you, if you send for them. 

"I am, Sir, your most obedient Omble SarventDaniel Boone. 

"N. B. We stood on the ground and guarded our baggage till day, and lost nothing. We have about fifteen miles to Cantuck[Kentucky River] at Otter Creek. "

This dread intelligence caused the hearts of strong men to quailand induced some to turn back, but Henderson, the jurist-pioneer, was made of sterner stuff. At once (April 8th) he despatched anurgent letter in hot haste to the proprietors of Transylvania, enclosing Boone's letter, informing them of Boone's plight andurging them to send him immediately a large quantity of powderand lead, as he had been compelled to abandon his supply ofsaltpeter at Martin's Station. "We are all in high spirits, " heassures the proprietors, "and on thorns to fly to Boone'sassistance, and join him in defense of so fine and valuable acountry. "

Laconically eloquent is this simple entry in his diary: "Saturdaythe 8th. Started abt. 10 oClock Crossed Cumberland Gap about 4miles met about 40 persons Returning from the Cantucky, on Acct. Of the Late Murders by the Indians could prevail on one only toreturn. Memo Several Virginians who were with us return'd. "

There is no more crucial moment in early Western history thanthis, in which we see the towering form of Henderson, clad in thepicturesque garb of the pioneer, with outstretched arm resolutelypointing forward to the "dark and bloody ground, " and inimpassioned but futile eloquence pleading with the pale andpanic-stricken fugitives to turn about, to join his company, andto face once more the mortal dangers of pioneer conquest. Significant indeed are the lines:

 Some to endure, and many to fail, Some to conquer, and many to quail, Toiling over the Wilderness Trail. 

The spirit of the pioneer knight-errant inspires Henderson'swords: "In this situation, some few, of genuine courage andundaunted resolution, served to inspire the rest; by the help ofwhose example, assisted by a little pride and some ostentation, we made a shift to march on with all the appearance of gallantry, and, cavalier like, treated every insinuation of danger with theutmost contempt. "

Fearing that Boone, who did not even know that Henderson'scavalcade was on the road, would be unable to hold out, Hendersonrealized the imperative necessity for sending him a message ofencouragement. The bold young Virginian, William Cocke, volunteered to brave alone the dangers of the murder-hauntedtrail to undertake a ride more truly memorable and hazardous thanthat of Revere. "This offer, extraordinary as it was, we could byno means refuse, " remarks Henderson, who shed tears of gratitudeas he proffered his sincere thanks and wrung the bravemessenger's hand. Equipped with "a good Queen Anne's musket, plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, a large cuttoe knife [French, couteau], a Dutch blanket, and no small quantity of jerked beef, "Cocke on April 10th rode off "to the Cantuckey to Inform CaptBoone that we were on the road. " The fearful apprehensions feltfor Cocke's safety were later relieved, when along the road werediscovered his letters in forming Henderson of his arrival and ofhis having been joined on the way by Page Portwood of Rowan. Onhis arrival at Otter Creek, Cocke found Boone and his men, and onrelating his adventures, "came in for his share of applause. "Boone at once despatched the master woodman, Michael Stoner, withpack-horses to assist Henderson's party, which he met on April18th at their encampment "in the Eye of the Rich Land. " Alongwith "Excellent Beef in plenty, " Stoner brought the story ofBoone's determined stand and an account of the erection of a rudelittle fortification which they had hurriedly thrown up to resistattack. With laconic significance Henderson pays the followingtribute to Boone which deserves to be perpetuated in nationalannals: "It was owing to Boone's confidence in us, and thepeople's in him, that a stand was ever attempted in order to waitfor our coming. "

In the course of their journey over the mountains and through thewilderness, the pioneers forgot the trials of the trail in theface of the surpassing beauties of the country. The Cumberlandswere covered with rich undergrowth of the red and whiterhododendron, the delicate laurel, the mountain ivy, theflameazalea, the spicewood, and the cane; while the white starsof the dogwood and the carmine blossoms of the red-bud, strewnacross the verdant background of the forest, gleamed in the eagerair of spring. "To enter uppon a detail of the Beuty & Goodnessof our Country, " writes Nathaniel Henderson, "would be a task tooarduous. .. . Let it suffice to tell you it far exceeds anycountry I ever saw or herd off. I am conscious its out of thepower of any man to make you clearly sensible of the great Beutyand Richness of Kentucky. " Young Felix Walker, endowed with morevivid powers of description, says with a touch of nativeeloquence:

"Perhaps no Adventurer Since the days of donquicksotte or beforeever felt So Cheerful & Ilated in prospect, every heart aboundedwith Joy & excitement . .. & exclusive of the Novelties of theJourney the advantages & accumalations arising on the Settlementof a new Country was a dazzling object with many of our Company. .. . As the Cain ceased, we began to discover the pleasing &Rapturous appearance of the plains of Kentucky, a New Sky &Strange Earth to be presented to our view. .. . So Rich a Soilwe had never Saw before, Covered with Clover in full Bloom. TheWoods alive abounding in wild Game, turkeys so numerous that itmight be said there appeared but one flock Universally Scatteredin the woods . .. It appeared that Nature in the profusion ofher Bounties, had Spread a feast for all that lives, both for theAnimal & Rational World, a Sight so delightful to our View andgrateful to our feelings almost Induced us, in Immitation ofColumbus in Transport to Kiss the Soil of Kentucky, as he haild &Saluted the sand on his first setting his foot on the Shores ofAmerica. "

On the journey Henderson was joined in Powell's Valley byBenjamin Logan, afterward so famous in Kentucky annals, and acompanion, William Galaspy. At the Crab Orchard they leftHenderson's party; and turning their course westward finallypitched camp in the present Lincoln County, where Logansubsequently built a fort. On Sunday, April 16th, on Scaggs'sCreek, Henderson records: "About 12 oClock Met James McAfee with18 other persons Returning from Cantucky. " They advised Hendersonof the "troublesomeness and danger" of the Indians, says RobertMcAfee junior: "but Henderson assured them that he had purchasedthe whole country from the Indians, that it belonged to him, andhe had named it Transylvania. .. . Robt, Samuel, and WilliamMcAfee and 3 others were inclined to return, but James opposedit, alleging that Henderson had no right to the land, and thatVirginia had previously bought it. The former (6) returned withHenderson to Boonesborough. " Among those who had joinedHenderson's party was Abraham Hanks from Virginia, the maternalgrandfather of Abraham Lincoln; but alarmed by the storiesbrought by Stewart and his party of fugitives, Hanks and Drake, as recorded by William Calk on that day (April 13th), turnedback. 

At last the founder of Kentucky with his little band reached thedestined goal of their arduous journeyings. Henderson's record onhis birthday runs: "Thursday the 20th [April] Arrived at FortBoone on the Mouth of Oter Creek Cantuckey River where we wereSaluted by a running fire of about 25 Guns; all that was then atFort. .. . The men appeared in high spirits & much rejoiced inour arrival. " It is a coincidence of historic interest that justone day after the embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord"fired the shots heard round the world, " the echoing shots ofBoone and his sturdy backwoodsmen rang out to announce thearrival of the proprietor of Transylvania and the birth of theAmerican West. 

CHAPTER XV. Transylvania--A wilderness Commonwealth

You are about a work of the utmost importance to the well-beingof this country in general, in which the interest and security ofeach and every individual are inseparably connected . .. . Ourpeculiar circumstances in this remote country, surrounded on allsides with difficulties, and equally subject to one commondanger, which threatens our common overthrow, must, I think, intheir effects, secure to us an union of interests, and, consequently, that harmony in opinion, so essential to theforming good, wise and wholesome laws. --Judge Richard Henderson:Address to the Legislature of Transylvania, May 23, 1775. 

The independent spirit displayed by the Transylvania Company, andHenderson's procedure in open defiance of the royal governors ofboth North Carolina and Virginia, naturally aroused grave alarmthroughout these colonies and South Carolina. "This in myOpinion, " says Preston in a letter to George Washington (January31, 1775), "will soon become a serious Affair, & highly deservesthe Attention of the Government. For it is certain that a vastNumber of People are preparing to go out and settle on thisPurchase; and if once they get fixed there, it will be next toimpossible to remove them or reduce them to Obedience; as theyare so far from the Seat of Government. Indeed it may be theCherokees will support them. " Governor Martin of North Carolina, already deeply disturbed in anticipation of the comingrevolutionary cataclysm, thundered in what was generally regardedas a forcible-feeble proclamation (February 19, 1775) against"Richard Henderson and his Confederates" in their "daring, unjustand unwarrantable proceedings. " In a letter to Dartmouth hedenounces "Henderson the famous invader" and dubs theTransylvania Company "an infamous Company of land Pyrates. "

Officials who were themselves eager for land naturally opposedHenderson's plans. Lord Dunmore, who in 1774, as we have seen, was heavily interested in the Wabash Land Company engineered byWilliam Murray, took the ground that the Wabash purchase wasvalid under the Camden-Yorke decision. This is so stated in therecords of the Illinois Company. Likewise under Murray's control. But although the "Ouabache Company, " of which Dunmore was aleading member, was initiated as early as May 16, 1774, thepurchase of the territory was not formally effected until October18, 1775--too late to benefit Dunmore, then deeply embroiled inthe preliminaries to the Revolution. Under the cover of hisagent's name, it is believed, Dunmore, with his "passion for landand fees, " illegally entered tracts aggregating thousands ofacres of land surveyed by the royal surveyors in the summer of1774 for Dr. John Connolly. Early in this same year, PatrickHenry, who, as already pointed out, had entered large tracts inKentucky in violation of Virginia's treaty obligations with theCherokees, united with William Byrd 3d, John Page, Ralph Wormley, Samuel Overton, and William Christian, in the effort to purchasefrom the Cherokees a tract of land west of Donelson's line, beingfirmly persuaded of the validity of the Camden-Yorke opinion. Their agent, William Kenedy, considerably later in the year, wenton a mission to the Cherokee towns, and upon his return reportedthat the Indians might be induced to sell. When it became knownthat Judge Henderson had organized the Transylvania Company andanticipated Patrick Henry and his associates, Colonel ArthurCampbell, as he himself states, applied to several of thepartners of the Transylvania Company on behalf of Patrick Henry, requesting that Henry be taken in as a partner. It was afterwardstated, as commonly understood among the Transylvaniaproprietors, that both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson desiredto become members of the company; but that Colonel RichardHenderson was instrumental in preventing their admission "lestthey should supplant the Colonel [Henderson] as the guidingspirit of the company. "

Fully informed by Preston's elaborate communication on thegravity of the situation, Dunmore acted energetically, thoughtardily, to prevent the execution of Henderson's designs. OnMarch 21st Dunmore sent flying through the back country aproclamation, demanding the immediate relinquishment of theterritory by "one Richard Henderson and other disorderly persons, his associates, " and "in case of refusal, and of violentlydetaining such possession, that he or they be immediately finedand imprisoned. This proclamation, says a peppery old chronicler, may well rank with the one excepting those arch traitors andrebels, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, from the mercy of theBritish monarch. In view of Dunmore's confidence in the validityof the Camden-Yorke decision, it is noteworthy that no mention ofthe royal proclamation of 1763 occurs in his broadside; and thathe bases his objection to the Transylvania purchase upon theking's instructions that all vacant lands "within this colony" belaid off in tracts, from one hundred to one thousand acres inextent, and sold at public auction. This proclamation which wasenclosed, oddly enough, in a letter of official instructions toPreston warning him not to survey any lands "beyond the line runby Colonel Donaldson, " proved utterly ineffective. At the sametime, Dunmore despatched a pointed letter to Oconostota, Atta-kulla-kulla, Judge's Friend, and other Cherokee chieftains, notifying them that the sale of the great tract of land below theKentucky was illegal and threatening them with the king'sdispleasure if they did not repudiate the sale. 

News of the plans which Henderson had already matured forestablishing an independent colony in the trans-Alleghanywilderness, now ran like wild-fire through Virginia. In a letterto George Washington (April 9, 1775), Preston ruefully says:"Henderson I hear has made the Purchase & got a Conveyance of thegreat and Valluable Country below the Kentucky from theCherokees. He and about 300 adventurers are gone out to takePossession, who it is said intends to set up an independentGovernment & form a Code of Laws for themselves. How this may beI cant say, but I am affraid the steps taken by the Governmenthave been too late. Before the Purchase was made had the Governorinterfered it is believed the Indians would not have sold. "

Meanwhile Judge Henderson, with strenuous energy, had begun toerect a large stockaded fort according to plans of his own. Captain James Harrod with forty-two men was stationed at thesettlement he had made the preceding year, having arrived therebefore the McAfees started back to Virginia; and there were smallgroups of settlers at Boiling Spring, six miles southeast ofHarrods settlement, and at St. Asaph's, a mile west of thepresent Stanford. A representative government for Transylvaniawas then planned. When the frank and gallant Floyd arrived at theTransylvania Fort on May 3d, he "expressed great satisfaction, "says Judge Henderson, "on being informed of the plan we proposedfor Legislation & sayd he must most heartily concur in that &every other measure we should adopt for the well Govern'g or goodof the Community in Gen'l. " In reference to a conversation withCaptain James Harrod and Colonel Thomas Slaughter of Virginia, Henderson notes in his diary (May 8th): "Our plan of Legislation, the evils pointed out--the remedies to be applyed &c &c &c wereAcceeded to without Hesitation. The plann was plain & Simple--'twasnothing novel in its essence a thousand years ago it wasin use, and found by every year's experience since to beunexceptionable. We were in four distinct settlem'ts. Members ordelegates from every place by free choice of Individuals theyfirst having entered into writings solemnly binding themselves toobey and carry into Execution Such Laws as representatives shouldfrom time to time make, Concurred with, by A Majority of theProprietors present in the Country. "

In reply to inquiries of the settlers, Judge Henderson gave ashis reason for this assembling of a Transylvania Legislature that"all power was derived from the people. " Six days before theprophetic arrival of the news of the Battle of Lexington andeight days before the revolutionary committee of MecklenburgCounty, North Carolina, promulgated their memorable Resolvesestablishing laws for independent government, the pioneersassembled on the green beneath the mighty plane-tree at theTransylvania Fort. In his wise and statesmanlike address to thispicturesque convention of free Americans (May 23, 1775), anaddress which Felix Walker described as being "considered equalto any of like kind ever delivered to any deliberate body in thatday and time, " Judge Henderson used these memorable words:

"You, perhaps, are fixing the palladium, or placing the firstcorner stone of an edifice, the height and magnificence of whosesuperstructure . .. Can only become great in proportion to theexcellence of its foundation. .. . If any doubt remain amongstyou with respect to the force or efficiency of whatever laws younow, or hereafter make, be pleased to consider that ALL POWER ISORIGINALLY IN THE PEOPLE; MAKE AND THEIR INTEREST, THEREFORE, BYIMPARTIAL AND BENEFICENT LAWS, AND YOU MAY BE SURE OF THEIRINCLINATION TO SEE THEM ENFORCED. "

An early writer, in speaking of the full blooded democracy ofthese "advanced" sentiments, quaintly comments: "If JeremyBentham had been in existence of manhood, he would have sent hiscompliments to the President of Transylvania. " This, the firstrepresentative body of American freemen which ever convened westof the Alleghanies, is surely the most unique colonial governmentever set up on this continent. The proceedings of this backwoodslegislature--the democratic leader ship of the principalproprietor; the prudence exhibited in the laws for protectinggame, breeding horses, etc. ; the tolerance shown in the grantingof full religious liberty--all display the acumen and practicalwisdom of these pioneer law-givers. As the result of Henderson'stactfulness, the proprietary form of government, thoroughlydemocratized in tone, was complacently accepted by the backwoodsmen. From one who, though still under royal rule, vehementlyasserted that the source of all political power was the people, and that "laws derive force and efficiency from our mutualconsent, " Western democracy thus born in the wilderness was"taking its first political lesson. " In their answer toHenderson's assertion of freedom from alien authority thepioneers unhesitatingly declared: "That we have an absoluteright, as a political body, without giving umbrage to GreatBritain, or any of the colonies, to form rules for the governmentof our little society, cannot be doubted by any sensible mind andbeing without the jurisdiction of, and not answerable to any ofhis Majesty's courts, the constituting tribunals of justice shallbe a matter of our first contemplation. .. . " In theestablishment of a constitution for the new colony, Hendersonwith paternalistic wisdom induced the people to adopt a legalcode based on the laws of England. Out of a sense ofself-protection he reserved for the proprietors only oneprerogative not granted them by the people, the right of veto. Heclearly realized that if this power were given up, the delegatesto any convention that might be held after the first would beable to assume the claims and rights of the proprietors. 

A land-office was formally opened, deeds were issued, and a storewas established which supplied the colonists with powder, lead, salt, osnaburgs, blankets, and other chief necessities of pioneerexistence. Writing to his brother Jonathan from Leestown, thebold young George Rogers Clark, soon to plot the downfall ofTransylvania, enthusiastically says (July 6, 1775): "A richer andmore Beautifull Cuntry than this I believe has never been seen inAmerica yet. Col. Henderson is hear and Claims all ye Countrybelow Kentucke. If his Claim Should be good, land may be gotReasonable Enough and as good as any in ye World. " Those whosettled on the south side of Kentucky River acknowledged thevalidity of the Transylvania purchase; and Clark in his Memoirsays: "the Proprietors at first took great pains to Ingratiatethemselves in the fav'r of the people. "

In regard to the designs of Lord Dunmore, who, as noted above, had illegally entered the Connolly grant on the Ohio and soughtto outlaw Henderson, and of Colonel William Byrd 3d, who, afterbeing balked in Patrick Henry's plan to anticipate theTransylvania Company in effecting a purchase from the Cherokees, was supposed to have tried to persuade the Cherokees to repudiatethe "Great Treaty, " Henderson defiantly says: "Whether LordDunmore and Colonel Byrd have interfered with the Indians or not, Richard Henderson is equally ignorant and indifferent. The utmostresult of their efforts can only serve to convince them of thefutility of their schemes and possibly frighten some fewfaint-hearted persons, naturally prone to reverence great namesand fancy everything must shrink at the magic of a splendidtitle. "

Prompted by Henderson's desire to petition the ContinentalCongress then in session for recognition as the fourteenthcolony, the Transylvania legislature met again on the firstThursday in September and elected Richard Henderson and JohnWilliams, among others, as delegates to the gathering atPhiladelphia. Shortly afterward the Proprietors of Transylvaniaheld a meeting at Oxford, North Carolina (September 25, 1775), elected Williams as the agent of the colony, and directed him toproceed to Boonesborough there to reside until April, 1776. JamesHogg, of Hillsborough, chosen as Delegate to represent the Colonyin the Continental Congress, was despatched to Philadelphia, bearing with him an elaborate memorial prepared by the President, Judge Henderson, petitioning the Congress "to take the infantColony of Transylvania into their protection. "

Almost immediately upon his arrival in Philadelphia, James Hoggwas presented to "the famous Samuel and John Adams. " The latterwarned Hogg, in view of the efforts then making towardreconciliation between the colonies and the king, that "thetaking under our protection a body of people who have acted indefiance of the King's proclamation, will be looked on as aconfirmation of that independent spirit with which we are dailyreproached. " Jefferson said that if his advice were followed, allthe use the Virginians should make of their charter would be "toprevent any arbitrary or oppressive government to be establishedwithin the boundaries of it"; and that it was his wish "to see afree government established at the back of theirs [Virginia's]properly united with them. " He would not consent, however, thatCongress should acknowledge the colony of Transylvania, until ithad the approbation of the Virginia Convention. The quit-rentsimposed by the company were denounced in Congress as a mark ofvassalage; and many advised a law against the employment ofnegroes in the colony. "They even threatened us with theiropposition, " says Hogg, with precise veracity, "if we do not actupon liberal principles when we have it so much in our power torender ourselves immortal. "

CHAPTER XVI. The Repulse of the Red Men

To this short war may be properly attributed all the kindfeelings and fidelity to treaty stipulations manifested by theCherokees ever afterwards. General Rutherford instilled into theIndians so great a fear of the whites, that never afterwards werethey disposed to engage in any cruelty, or destroy any of theproperty of our frontier men. --David L. Swain: The Indian War of1776. 

During the summer of 1775 the proprietors of Transylvania wereconfronted with two stupendous tasks--that of winning the favorand support of the frontiersmen and that of rallying the rapidlydwindling forces in Kentucky in defense of the settlements. Recognizing the difficulty of including Martin's Station, becauseof its remoteness, with the government provided for Transylvania, Judge Henderson prepared a plan of government for the group ofsettlers located in Powell's Valley. In a letter to Martin (July30th), in regard to the recent energetic defense of the settlersat that point against the Indians, Henderson says: "Your spiritedconduct gives me much pleasure. .. . Keep your men in heart ifpossible, NOW IS OUR TIME, THE INDIANS MUST NOT DRIVE US. " Thegloom which had been occasioned by the almost complete desertionof the stations at Harrodsburg, the Boiling Spring, and theTransylvania Fort or Boonesborough was dispelled with the returnof Boone, accompanied by some thirty persons, on September 8th, and of Richard Callaway with a considerable party on September26th. The crisis was now passed; and the colony began for thefirst time really to flourish. The people on the south side ofthe Kentucky River universally accepted proprietary rule for thetime being. But the seeds of dissension were soon to be sownamong those who settled north of the river, as well as among menof the stamp of James Harrod, who, having preceded Henderson inthe establishment of a settlement in Kentucky, naturally resentedholding lands under the Transylvania Company. 

The great liberality of this organization toward incomingsettlers had resulted in immense quantities of land being takenup through their land-office. The ranging, hunting, androad-building were paid for by the company; and the entiresettlement was furnished with powder, lead, and supplies, whollyon credit, for this and the succeeding year. "Five hundred andsixty thousand acres of land are now entered, " reports Floyd onDecember 1st, "and most of the people waiting to have it runout. " After Dunmore, having lost his hold upon the situation, escaped to the protection of a British vessel, the Fowey, ColonelPreston continued to prevent surveys for officers' grants withinthe Transylvania territory; and his original hostility to JudgeHenderson gave place to friendship and support. On December 1st, Colonel John Williams, resident agent of the TransylvaniaCompany, announced at Boonesborough the long-contemplated andwidely advertised advance in price of the lands, from twenty tofifty shillings per hundred acres, with surveying fees of fourdollars for tracts not exceeding six hundred and forty acres. Ata meeting of the Transylvania legislature, convened on December21st, John Floyd was chosen surveyor general of the colony, Nathaniel Henderson was placed in charge of the Entering Office, and Richard Harrison given the post of secretary. At this meetingof the legislature, the first open expression of discontent wasvoiced in the "Harrodsburg Remonstrance, " questioning thevalidity of the proprietors' title, and protesting against anyincrease in the price of lands, as well as the taking up by theproprietors and a few other gentlemen of the best lands at theFalls of the Ohio. Every effort was made to accommodate theremonstrants, who were led by Abraham Hite. Office fees wereabolished, and the payment of quit-rents was deferred untilJanuary 1, 1780. Despite these efforts at accommodation, gravedoubts were implanted by this Harrodsburg Remonstrance in theminds of the people; and much discussion and discontent ensued. 

By midsummer, 1775, George Rogers Clark, a remarkablyenterprising and independent young pioneer, was "engrossing allthe land he could" in Kentucky. Upon his return to Virginia, ashe relates, he "found there was various oppinions RespectingHenderson claim. Many thought it good, others douted whether ornot Virginia coud with propriety have any pretentions to thecuntrey. " Jefferson displayed a liberal attitude toward theclaims of the Transylvania proprietors; and Patrick Henry openlystated that, in his opinion, "their claim would stand good. " Butmany others, of the stamp of George Mason and George Washington, vigorously asserted Virginia's charter rights over the Westernterritory. " This sharp difference of opinion excited in Clark'smind the bold conception of seizing the leadership of the countryand making terms with Virginia under threat of secession. Withthe design of effecting some final disposition in regard to thetitle of the Transylvania proprietors, Judge Henderson andColonel Williams set off from Boonesborough about May 1st, intending first to appeal to the Virginia Convention andultimately to lay their claims before the Continental Congress. "Since they have gone, " reports Floyd to Preston, "I am told mostof the men about Harrodsburg have re-assumed their formerresolution of not complying with any of the office ruleswhatever. Jack Jones, it is said, is at the head of the party &flourishes away prodigiously. " John Gabriel Jones was the merefigurehead in the revolt. The real leader, the brains of theconspiracy, was the unscrupulous George Rogers Clark. At Clark'sinstance, an eight-day election was held at Harrodsburg (June7-15), at which time a petition to the Virginia Convention wasdrawn up; and Clark and Jones were elected delegates. Clark'splan, the scheme of a bold revolutionist, was to treat withVirginia for terms; and if they were not satisfactory, to revoltand, as he says, "Establish an Independent Government" . .. "giving away great part of the Lands and disposing of theRemainder. " In a second petition, prepared by the self-styled"Committee of West Fincastle" (June 20th), it was alleged that"if these pretended Proprietors have leave to continue to act intheir arbitrary manner out the controul of this colony [Virginia]the end must be evident to every well wisher to AmericanLiberty. "

The contest which now ensued between Richard Henderson and GeorgeRogers Clark, waged upon the floor of the convention and behindthe scenes, resulted in a conclusion that was inevitable at amoment in American history marked by the signing of theDeclaration of Independence. Virginia, under the leader ship ofher new governor, Patrick Henry, put an end to the proprietaryrule of the Transylvania Company. On December 7th such part ofTransylvania as lay within the chartered limits of Virginia waserected by the legislature of that colony into the County ofKentucky. The proprietary form of government with its "marks ofvassalage, " although liberalized with the spirit of democracy, was unendurable to the independent and lawless pioneers, alreadyintoxicated with the spirit of freedom swept in on the firstfresh breezes of the Revolution. Yet it is not to be doubted thatthe Transylvania Company, through the courage and moral influenceof its leaders, made a permanent contribution to the colonizationof the West, which, in providential timeliness and effectiveexecution, is without parallel in our early annals. 

While events were thus shaping themselves in Kentucky--eventswhich made possible Clark's spectacular and meteoric campaign inthe Northwest and ultimately resulted in the establishment of theMississippi instead of the Alleghanies as the western boundary ofthe Confederation--the pioneers of Watauga were sagaciouslylaying strong the foundations of permanent occupation. InSeptember, 1775, North Carolina, through her Provincial Congress, provided for the appointment in each district of a Committee ofSafety, to consist of a president and twelve other members. Following the lead thus set, the Watauga settlers assumed fortheir country the name of "Washington District"; and proceeded byunanimous vote of the people to choose a committee of thirteen, which included James Robertson and John Sevier. This district wasorganized "shortly after October, 1775, according to FelixWalker; and the first step taken after the election of thecommittee was the organization of a court, consisting of fivemembers. Felix Walker was elected clerk of the court thusorganized, and held the position for about four years. JamesRobertson and John Sevier, it is believed, were also members ofthis court. To James Robertson who, with the assistance of hiscolleagues, devised this primitive type of frontier rule--a truecommission form of government, on the "Watauga Plan"--is justlydue distinctive recognition for this notable inauguration of theindependent democracy of the Old Southwest. The Wataugasettlement was animated by a spirit of deepest loyalty to theAmerican cause. In a memorable petition these hardy settlersrequested the Provincial Council of North Carolina not to regardthem as a "lawless mob, " but to "annex" them to North Carolinawithout delay. "This committee (willing to become a party in thepresent unhappy contest)", states the petition, which must havebeen drafted about July 15, 1776, "resolved (which is now on ourrecords), to adhere strictly to the rules and orders of theContinental Congress, and in open committee acknowledgedthemselves indebted to the united colonies their full proportionof the Continental expense. "

While these disputes as to the government of the new communitieswere in progress an additional danger threatened the pioneers. For a whole year the British had been plying the various Indiantribes from the lakes to the gulf with presents, supplies, andammunition. In the Northwest bounties had actually been offeredfor American scalps. During the spring of 1776 plans wereconcerted, chiefly through Stuart and Cameron, British agentsamong the Southern Indians, for uniting the Loyalists and theIndians in a crushing attack upon the Tennessee settlements andthe back country of North Carolina. Already the frontier of SouthCarolina had passed through the horrors of Indian uprising; andwarning of the approaching invasion had been mercifully sent theHolston settlers by Atta-kulla-kulla's niece, Nancy Ward, the"Pocahontas of the West"--doubtless through the influence of herdaughter, who loved Joseph Martin. The settlers, flocking forrefuge into their small stockaded forts, waited in readiness forthe dreaded Indian attacks, which were made by two forcestotaling some seven hundred warriors. 

On July 20th, warned in advance of the approach of the Indians, the borderers, one hundred and seventy in all, marched in twocolumns from the rude breastwork, hastily thrown up at Eaton'sStation, to meet the Indians, double their own number, led by TheDragging Canoe. The scouts surprised one party of Indians, hastily poured in a deadly fire, and rushed upon them with suchimpetuous fury that they fled precipitately. Withdrawing nowtoward their breastwork, in anticipation of encountering there alarger force, the backwoodsmen suddenly found themselves attackedin their rear and in grave danger of being surrounded. Extendingtheir own line under the direction of Captain James Shelby, thefrontiersmen steadily met the bold attack of the Indians, who, mistaking the rapid extension of the line for a movement toretreat, incautiously made a headlong onslaught upon the whites, giving the war-whoop and shouting: "The Unakas are running!" Inthe ensuing hot conflict at close quarters, in some places handto hand, the Indians were utterly routed--The Dragging Canoebeing shot down, many warriors wounded, and thirteen left deadupon the field. 

On the day after Thompson, Cocke, Shelby, Campbell, Madison, andtheir men were thus winning the battle of the Long Island"flats, " Robertson, Sevier, and their little band of forty-twomen were engaged in repelling an attack, begun at sunrise, uponthe Watauga fort near the Sycamore Shoals. This attack, which wasled by Old Abraham, proved abortive; but as the result of theloose investment of the log fortress, maintained by the Indiansfor several weeks, a few rash venturers from the fort were killedor captured, notably a young boy who was carried to one of theIndian towns and burned at the stake, and the wife of the pioneersettler, William Been, who was rescued from a like fate by theintercession of the humane and noble Nancy Ward. It was duringthis siege, according to constant tradition, that a frontierlass, active and graceful as a young doe, was pursued to the verystockade by the fleet-footed savages. Seeing her plight, anathletic young officer mounted the stockade at a single leap, shot down the foremost of the pursuers, and leaning over, seizedthe maiden by the hands and lifted her over the stockade. Themaiden who sank breathless into the arms of the young officer, John Sevier, was "Bonnie Kate Sherrill"--who, after the fashionof true romance, afterward became the wife of her gallantrescuer. 

While the Tennessee settlements were undergoing the trials ofsiege and attack, the settlers on the frontiers of Rowan werefalling beneath the tomahawk of the merciless savage. In thefirst and second weeks of July large forces of Indians penetratedto the outlying settlements; and in two days thirty-seven personswere killed along the Catawba River. On July 13th, the bluff oldsoldier of Rowan, General Griffith Rutherford, reported to thecouncil of North Carolina that "three of our Captains are killedand one wounded"; and that he was setting out that day with whatmen he could muster to relieve Colonel McDowell, ten men, and onehundred and twenty women and children, who were "besieged in somekind of a fort. " Aroused to extraordinary exertions by thesedaring and deadly blows, the governments of North Carolina, SouthCarolina, Virginia, and Georgia instituted a joint campaignagainst the Cherokees. It was believed that, by delivering aseries of crushing blows to the Indians and so conclusivelydemonstrating the overwhelming superiority of the whites, thestate governments in the Old Southwest would convince the savagesof the futility, of any attempt ever again to oppose themseriously. 

Within less than a week after sending his despatches to thecouncil Rutherford set forth at the head of twenty-five hundredmen to protect the frontiers of North Carolina and to overwhelmthe foe. Leading the South Carolina army of more than eighteenhundred men, Colonel Andrew Williamson directed his attackagainst the lower Cherokee towns; while Colonel Samuel Jack ledtwo hundred Georgians against the Indian towns at the heads ofthe Chattahoochee and Tugaloo Rivers. Assembling a force of somesixteen hundred Virginians, Colonel William Christianrendezvoused in August at the Long Island of Holston, where hisforce was strengthened by between three and four hundred NorthCarolinians under Colonels Joseph Williams and Love, and MajorWinston. The various expeditions met with little effectiveopposition on the whole, succeeding everywhere in their design ofutterly laying waste the towns of the Cherokees. One seriousengagement occurred when the Indians resolutely challengedRutherford's advance at the gap of the Nantahala Mountains. Indian women--heroic Amazons disguised in war-paint and armedwith the weapons of warriors and the courage of despair--foughtside by side with the Indian braves in the effort to arrestRutherford's progress and compass his defeat. More than fortyfrontiersmen fell beneath the deadly shots of this truly Spartanband before the final repulse of the savages. 

The most picturesque figures in this overwhelmingly successfulcampaign were the bluff old Indian-fighter, Griffith Rutherford, wearing "a tow hunting shirt, dyed black, and trimmed with whitefringe" as a uniform; Captain Benjamin Cleveland, a rude paladinof gigantic size, strength, and courage; Lieutenant WilliamLenoir (Le Noir), the gallant and recklessly brave FrenchHuguenot, later to win a general's rank in the Revolution; andthat militant man of God, the Reverend James Hall, graduate ofNassau Hall, stalwart and manly, who carried a rifle on hisshoulder and, in the intervals between the slaughter of thesavages, preached the gospel to the vindictive and bloodthirstybackwoodsmen. Such preaching was sorely needed on that campaign--whenthe whites, maddened beyond the bounds of self-control bythe recent ghastly murders, gladly availed themselves of theSouth Carolina bounty offered for fresh Indian scalps. At timesthey exultantly displayed the reeking patches of hair above thegates of their stockades; at others, with many a bloody oath, they compelled their commanders either to sell the Indiancaptives into slavery or else see them scalped on the spot. Twenty years afterward Benjamin Hawkins relates that among Indianrefugees in extreme western Georgia the children had been soterrorized by their parents' recitals of the atrocities of theenraged borderers in the campaign of 1776, that they ranscreaming from the face of a white man. 

CHAPTER XVII. The Colonization of the Cumberland

March 31, 1760. Set out this day, and after running somedistance, met with Col. Richard Henderson, who was running theline between Virginia and North Carolina. At this meeting we weremuch rejoiced. He gave us every information we wished, andfurther informed us that he had purchased a quantity of corn inKentucky, to be shipped at the Falls of Ohio, for the use of theCumberland settlement. We are now without bread, and arecompelled to hunt the buffalo to preserve life. --John Donelson:Journal of a Voyage, intended by God's permission, in the goodboat Adventure, from Fort Patrick Henry, on Holston River, to theFrench Salt Springs on Cumberland River. 

To the settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky, which they hadseized and occupied, the pioneers held on with a tenacious gripwhich never relaxed. From these strongholds, won through sullenand desperate strokes, they pushed deeper into the wilderness, once again to meet with undimmed courage the bitter onslaughts oftheir resentful foes. The crushing of the Cherokees in 1776relieved the pressure upon the Tennessee settlers, enabling themto strengthen their hold and prepare effectively for futureeventualities; the possession of the gateway to Kentucky keptfree the passage for Western settlement; Watauga and itsdefenders continued to offer a formidable barrier to Britishinvasion of the East from Kentucky and the Northwest during theRevolution; while these Tennessee frontiersmen were destined soonto set forth again to invade a new wilderness and at frightfulcost to colonize the Cumberland. 

The little chain of stockades along the farflung frontier ofKentucky was tenaciously held by the bravest of the race, grimlyresolved that this chain must not break. The Revolutionprecipitated against this chain wave after wave of formidableIndian foes from the Northwest under British leadership. At thevery time when Grifth Rutherford set out for the relief ofMcDowell's Fort, a marauding Indian band captured by stealth nearthe Transylvania Fort, known as Boone's Fort (Boonesborough), Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, and Jemima Boone, the daughtersof Richard Callaway and Daniel Boone, and rapidly marched themaway toward the Shawanoe towns on the Ohio. A relief party, intwo divisions, headed respectively by the young girls' fathers, and composed among others of the lovers of the three girls, Samuel Henderson, John Holder, and Flanders Callaway, pursuedthem with almost incredible swiftness. Guided by broken twigs andbits of cloth surreptitiously dropped by Elizabeth Callaway, theyfinally overtook the unsuspecting savages, killed two of them, and rescued the three maidens unharmed. This romanticepisode--which gave Fenimore Cooper the theme for the mostmemorable scene in one of his Leatherstocking Tales had an evenmore romantic sequel in the subsequent marriage of the threepairs of lovers. 

This bold foray, so shrewdly executed and even more sagaciouslyfoiled, was a true precursor of the dread happenings of thecoming neighborhood of the stations; and relief was felt when theTransylvania Fort, the great stockade planned by Judge Henderson, was completed by the pioneers (July, 1776). Glad tidings arrivedonly a few days later when the Declaration of Independence, readaloud from the Virginia Gazette, was greeted with wild huzzas bythe patriotic backwoodsmen. During the ensuing months occasionalinvasions were made by savage bands; but it was not until April24, 1777, that Henderson's "big fort" received its first attack, being invested by a company of some seventy-five savages. Thetwenty-two riflemen in the fort drove off the painted warriors, but not before Michael Stoner, Daniel Boone, and several otherswere severely wounded. As he lay helpless upon the ground, hisankle shattered by a bullet, Boone was lifted by Simon Kenton andborne away upon his shoulders to the haven of the stockade amid averitable shower of balls. The stoical and taciturn Boone claspedKenton's hand and gave him the accolade of the wilderness in thebrief but heartfelt utterance; "You are a fine fellow. " On July4th of this same year the fort was again subjected to siege, whentwo hundred gaudily painted savages surrounded it for two days. But owing to the vigilance and superb markmanship of thedefenders, as well as to the lack of cannon by the besiegingforce, the Indians reluctantly abandoned the siege, after leavinga number dead upon the field. Soon afterward the arrival of twostrong bodies of prime riflemen, who had been hastily summonedfrom the frontiers of North Carolina and Virginia, once againmade firm the bulwark of white supremacy in the West. 

Kentucky's terrible year, 1778, opened with a severe disaster tothe white settlers--when Boone with thirty men, while engaged inmaking salt at the "Lower Salt Spring, " was captured in Februaryby more than a hundred Indians, sent by Governor Hamilton ofDetroit to drive the white settlers from "Kentucke. " Booneremained in captivity until early summer, when, learning that hisIndian captors were planning an attack in force upon theTransylvania Fort, he succeeded in effecting his escape. After abreak-neck journey of one hundred and sixty miles, during whichhe ate but one meal, Boone finally arrived at the big fort onJune 20th. The settlers were thus given ample time forpreparation, as the long siege did not begin until September 7th. The fort was invested by a powerful force flying the Englishflag--four hundred and forty-four savages gaudy in the vermilionand ochre of their war-paint, and eleven Frenchmen, the wholebeing commanded by the French-Canadian, Captain Dagniaux deQuindre, and the great Indian Chief, Black-fish who had adoptedBoone as a son. In the effort to gain his end de Quindre resortedto a dishonorable stratagem, by which he hoped to outwit thesettlers and capture the fort with but slight loss. "They formeda scheme to deceive us, " says Boone, "declaring it was theirorders, from Governor Hamilton, to take us captives, and not todestroy us; but if nine of us would come out and treat with them, they would immediately withdraw their forces from our walls, andreturn home peacably. " Transparent as the stratagem was, Booneincautiously agreed to a conference with the enemy; Callawayalone took the precaution to guard against Indian duplicity. After a long talk, the Indians proposed to Boone, Callaway, andthe seven or eight pioneers who accompanied them that they shakehands in token of peace and friendship. As picturesquelydescribed by Daniel Trabue:

"The Indians sayed two Indians must shake hands with one whiteman to make a Double or sure peace at this time the Indians hadhold of the white men's hands and held them. Col. Callowayobjected to this but the other Indians laid hold or tryed to layhold of the other hand but Colonel Calloway was the first thatjerked away from them but the Indians seized the men two Indiansholt of one man or it was mostly the case and did their best tohold them but while the man and Indians was a scuffling the menfrom the Fort agreeable to Col. Calloway's order fired on themthey had a dreadful skuffel but our men all got in the fort safeand the fire continued on both sides. "

During the siege Callaway, the leader of the pioneers, made awooden cannon wrapped with wagon tires, which on being fired at agroup of Indians "made them scamper perdidiously. " The secreteffort of the Indians to tunnel a way underground into the fort, being discovered by the defenders, was frustrated by acountermine. Unable to outwit, outfight, or outmaneuver theresourceful Callaway, de Quindre finally withdrew on September16th, closing the longest and severest attack that any of thefortified stations of Kentucky had ever been called upon towithstand. 

The successful defense of the Transylvania Fort, made by theseindomitable backwoodsmen who were lost sight of by theContinental Congress and left to fight alone their battles in theforests, was of national significance in its results. Had theTransylvania Fort fallen, the northern Indians in overwhelmingnumbers, directed by Hamilton and led by British officers, mightwell have swept Kentucky free of defenders and fallen withdevastating force upon the exposed settlements along the westernfrontiers of North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, Thisdefense of Boonesborough, therefore, is deserving ofcommemoration in the annals of the Revolution, along withLexington and Bunker's Hill. Coupled with Clark's meteoriccampaign in the Northwest and the subsequent struggles in thedefense of Kentucky, it may be regarded as an event basicallyresponsible for the retention of the trans-Alleghany region bythe United States. The bitter struggles, desperate sieges, andbloody reprisals of these dark years came to a close with theexpeditions of Clark and Logan in November, 1782, whichappropriately concluded the Revolution in the West by putting adefinite end to all prospect of formidable invasion of Kentucky. 

In November, 1777, "Washington District, " the delegates of whichhad been received in the preceding year by the ProvincialCongress of North Carolina, was formed by the North CarolinaGeneral Assembly into Washington County; and to it were assignedthe boundaries of the whole of the present state of Tennessee. While this immense territory was thus being definitely includedwithin the bounds of North Carolina, Judge Henderson on behalf ofthe Transylvania Company was making a vigorous effort to securethe reestablishment of its rights from the Virginia Assembly. Byorder of the Virginia legislature, an exhaustive investigation ofthe claims of the Transylvania Company was therefore made, hearings being held at various points in the back country. OnJuly 18, 1777, Judge Henderson presented to the peacecommissioners for North Carolina and Virginia at the Long Islandtreaty ground an elaborate memorial in behalf of the TransylvaniaCompany, which the commissioners unanimously refused to consider, as not coming under their jurisdiction. Finally, after a full andimpartial discussion before the Virginia House of Delegates, thatbody declared the Transylvania purchase void. But inconsideration of "the very great expense [incurred by thecompany] in making the said purchase, and in settling the saidlands, by which the commonwealth is likely to receive greatadvantage, by increasing its inhabitants, and establishing abarrier against the Indians, " the House of Delegates grantedRichard Henderson and Company two hundred thousand acres of landsituated between the Ohio and Green rivers, where the town ofHenderson, Kentucky, now stands. With this bursting of theTransylvania bubble and the vanishing of the golden dreams ofHenderson and his associates for establishing the fourteenthAmerican colony in the heart of the trans-Alleghany, a firstromantic chapter in the history of Westward expansion comes to aclose. 

But another and more feasible project immediately succeeded. Undiscouraged by Virginia's confiscation of Transylvania, anddisregarding North Carolina's action in extending her boundariesover the trans-Alleghany region lying within her charteredlimits, Henderson, in whom the genius of the colonizer and theambition of the speculative capitalist were found in strikingconjunction, was now inspired to repeat, along broader and moresolidly practical lines, the revolutionary experiment ofTransylvania. It was not his purpose, however, to found anindependent colony; for he believed that millions of acres in theTransylvania purchase lay within the bounds of North Carolina, and he wished to open for colonization, settlement, and the saleof lands, the vast wilderness of the valley of the Cumberlandsupposed to lie within those confines. But so universal was theprevailing uncertainty in regard to boundaries that it wasnecessary to prolong the North Carolina-Virginia line in order todetermine whether or not the Great French Lick, the ideallocation for settlement, lay within the chartered limits of NorthCarolina. 

Judge Henderson's comprehensive plans for the promotion of anextensive colonization of the Cumberland region soon began totake form in vigorous action. Just as in his Transylvania projectHenderson had chosen Daniel Boone, the ablest of the NorthCarolina pioneers, to spy out the land and select sites forfuture location, so now he chose as leader of the new colonizingparty the ablest of the Tennessee pioneers, James Robertson. Although he was the acknowledged leader of the Watauga settlementand held the responsible position of Indian agent for NorthCarolina, Robertson was induced by Henderson's liberal offers toleave his comparatively peaceful home and to venture his life inthis desperate hazard of new fortunes. The advance party of eightwhite men and one negro, under Robertson's leadership, set forthfrom the Holston settlement on February 6, 1779, to make apreliminary exploration and to plant corn "that bread might beprepared for the main body of emigrants in the fall. " Aftererecting a few cabins for dwellings and posts of defense, Robertson plunged alone into the wilderness and made the longjourney to Post St. Vincent in the Illinois, in order to consultwith George Rogers Clark, who had entered for himself in theVirginia Land Office several thousand acres of land at the FrenchLick. After perfecting arrangements with Clark for securing"cabin rights" should the land prove to lie in Virginia, Robertson returned to Watauga to take command of the migration. 

Toward the end of the year two parties set out, one by land, theother by water, for the wonderful new country on the Cumberlandof which Boone and Scaggs and Mansker had brought back suchglowing descriptions. During the autumn Judge Henderson and othercommissioners from North Carolina, in conjunction withcommissioners from Virginia, had been running out the boundaryline between the two states. On the very day--Christmas, 1779--that Judge Henderson reached the site of the TransylvaniaFort, now called Boonesborough, the swarm of colonists from theparent hive at Watauga, under Robertson's leadership, reached theFrench Lick and on New Year's Day, 1780, crossed the river on theice to the present site of Nashville. 

The journal of the other party, which, as has been aptly said, reads like a chapter from one of Captain Mayne Reid's fascinatingnovels of adventure, was written by Colonel John Donelson, thefather-in-law of Andrew Jackson. Setting out from Fort PatrickHenry on Holston River, December 22, 1779, with a flotillaconsisting of about thirty flatboats, dugouts, and canoes, theyencountered few difficulties until they began to run the gauntletof the Chickamauga towns on the Tennessee. Here they werefuriously attacked by the Indians, terrible in their red andblack war-paint; and a well-filled boat lagging in the rear, withsmallpox on board, was driven to shore by the Indians. Theoccupants were massacred; but the Indians at once contracted thedisease and died by the hundreds. This luckless sacrifice of"poor Stuart, his family and friends, " while a ghastly price topay, undoubtedly procured for the Cumberland settlementscomparative immunity from Indian forays until the new-comers hadfirmly established themselves in their wilderness stronghold. Eloquent of the granite endurance and courageous spirit of thetypical American pioneer in its thankfulness for sanctuary, forreunion of families and friends, and for the humble shelter of alog cabin, is the last entry in Donelson's diary (April 24, 1780):

"This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big Salt Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Capt. Robertson and hiscompany. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled torestore to him and others their families and friends, who wereintrusted to our care, and who, some time since, perhaps, despaired of ever meeting again. Though our prospects at presentare dreary, we have found a few log cabins which have been builton a cedar bluff above the Lick by Capt. Robertson and hiscompany. "

In the midst of the famine during this terrible period of the"hard winter, " Judge Henderson was sorely concerned for the fateof the new colony which he had projected, and immediatelyproceeded to purchase at huge cost a large stock of corn. OnMarch 5, 1780, this corn, which had been raised by CaptainNathaniel Hart, was "sent from Boonesborough in perogues[pettiaugers or flatboats] under the command of William BaileySmith. .. . This corn was taken down the Kentucky River, andover the Falls of Ohio, to the mouth of the Cumberland, andthence up that river to the fort at the French Lick. It isbelieved have been the only bread which the settlers had until itwas raised there in 1781. " There is genuine impressiveness inthis heroic triumphing over the obstacles of obdurate nature andthis paternalistic provision for the exposed Cumberlandsettlement--the purchase by Judge Henderson, the shipment byCaptain Hart, and the transportation by Colonel Smith, in anawful winter of bitter cold and obstructed navigation, of thisindispensable quantity of corn purchased for sixty thousanddollars in depreciated currency. 

Upon his arrival at the French Lick, shortly after the middle ofApril, Judge Henderson at once proceeded to organize a governmentfor the little community. On May 1st articles of association weredrawn up; and important additions thereto were made on May 13th, when the settlers signed the complete series. The originaldocument, still preserved, was drafted by Judge Henderson, beingwritten throughout in his own handwriting; and his name heads thelist of two hundred and fifty and more signatures. The"Cumberland Compact, " as this paper is called, is fundamentally amutual contract between the copartners of the TransylvaniaCompany and the settlers upon the lands claimed by the company. It represents the collective will of the community; and onaccount of the careful provisions safeguarding the rights of eachparty to the contract it may be called a bill of rights. Theorganization of this pure democracy was sound andadmirable--another notable early example of the commission formof government. The most remarkable feature of this backwoodsconstitution marks Judge Henderson as a pioneer in the use of thepolitical device so prominent to-day, one hundred and forty yearslater--the "recall of judges. " In the following striking clausethis innovation in government was recognized thus early inAmerican history as the most effective means of securing andsafeguarding justice in a democracy:

"As often as the people in general are dissatisfied with thedoings of the Judges or Triers so to be chosen, they may call anew selection in any of the said stations, and elect bothers intheir stead, having due respect to the number now agreed to beelected at each station, which persons so to be chosen shall havethe same power with those in whose room or place they shall ormay be chosen to act. "

A land-office was now opened, the entry-taker being appointed byJudge Henderson, in accordance with the compact; and the lands, for costs of entry, etc. , were registered for the nominal fee often dollars per thousand acres. But as the Transylvania Companywas never able to secure a "satisfactory and indisputable title, "the clause resulted in perpetual nonpayment. In 1783, followingthe lead of Virginia in the case of Transylvania, North Carolinadeclared the Transylvania Company's purchase void, but grantedthe company in compensation a tract of one hundred and ninetythousand acres in Powell's Valley. As compensation, the grants ofNorth Carolina and Virginia were quite inadequate, consideringthe value of the service in behalf of permanent westerncolonization rendered by the Transylvania company. 

James Robertson was chosen as presiding officer of the court oftwelve commissioners, and was also elected commander-in-chief ofthe military forces of the eight little associated settlements onthe Cumberland. Here for the next two years the self-reliantsettlers under Robertson's wise and able leadership successfullyrepelled the Indians in their guerrilla warfare, firmlyentrenched themselves in their forest-girt stronghold, andvindicated their claim to the territory by right of occupationand conquest. Here sprang up in later times a great and populouscity--named, strangely enough, neither for Henderson, thefounder, nor for Robertson and Donelson, the leaders of the twocolonizing parties, but for one having no association with itshistory or origins, the gallant North Carolinian, General FrancisNash, who was killed at the Battle of Germantown. 

CHAPTER XVIII. King's Mountain

With the utmost satisfaction I can acquaint you with the suddenand favorable turn of our public affairs. A few days agodestruction hung over our heads. Cornwallis with at least 1500British and Tories waited at Charlotte for the reinforcement of1000 from Broad River, which reinforcement has been entirely cutoff, 130 killed and the remainder captured. Cornwallisimmediately retreated, and is now on his way toward Charleston, with part of our army in his rear. .. . --Elizabeth MaxwellSteel: Salisbury, October 25, 1780. 

So thoroughly had the Cherokees been subdued by the devastationsof the campaign of 1776 that for several years thereafter theywere unable to organize for a new campaign against thebackwoodsmen along the frontiers of North Carolina and Tennessee. During these years the Holston settlers principally busiedthemselves in making their position secure, as well as in settingtheir house in order by severely punishing the lawless Toryelement among them. In 1779 the Chickamaugas, with whom TheDragging Canoe and his irreconcilable followers among theCherokees had joined hands after the campaign of 1776, grew sobold in their bloody forays upon small exposed settlements thatNorth Carolina and Virginia in conjunction despatched a strongexpedition against them. Embarking on April 10th at the mouth ofBig Creek near the present Rogersville, Tennessee, three hundredand fifty men led by Colonel Evan Shelby descended the Tennesseeto the fastnesses of the Chickamaugas. Meeting with no resistancefrom the astonished Indians, who fled to the shelter of thedensely wooded hills, they laid waste the Indian towns anddestroyed the immense stores of goods collected by the Britishagents for distribution among the red men. The Chickamaugas werecompletely quelled; and during the period of great stress throughwhich the Tennessee frontiersmen were soon to pass, the Cherokeeswere restrained through the wise diplomacy of Joseph Martin, Superintendent of Indian affairs for Virginia. 

The great British offensive against the Southern colonies, whichwere regarded as the vulnerable point in the AmericanConfederacy, was fully launched upon the fall of Charleston inMay, 1780. Cornwallis established his headquarters at Camden; andone of his lieutenants, the persuasive and brilliant Ferguson, soon rallied thousands of Loyalists in South Carolina to theBritish standard. When Cornwallis inaugurated his campaign forcutting Washington wholly off from the Southern colonies byinvading North Carolina, the men upon the western waters realizedthat the time had come to rise, in defense of their state and inprotection of their homes. Two hundred Tennessee riflemen fromSullivan County, under Colonel Isaac Shelby, were engaged inminor operations in South Carolina conducted by Colonel CharlesMcDowell; and conspicuous among these engagements was the affairat Musgrove's Mill on August 18th when three hundred horsemen ledby Colonel James Williams, a native of Granville County, NorthCarolina, Colonel Isaac Shelby, and Lieutenant-Colonel Clark ofGeorgia repulsed with heavy loss a British force of between fourand five hundred. 

These minor successes availed nothing in face of the disastrousdefeat of Gates by Cornwallis at Camden on August 16th and thehumiliating blow to Sumter at Rocky Mount on the following day. Ferguson hotly pursued the frontiersmen, who then retreated overthe mountains; and from his camp at Gilbert Town he despatched athreatening message to the Western leaders, declaring that ifthey did not desist from their opposition to the British arms andtake protection under his standard, he would march his army overthe mountains and lay their country waste with fire and sword. Stung to action, Shelby hastily rode off to consult with Sevierat his log castle near Jonesboro; and together they matured aplan to arouse the mountain men and attack Ferguson by surprise. In the event of failure, these wilderness free-lances planned toleave the country and find a home with the Spaniards inLouisiana. 

At the original place of rendezvous, the Sycamore Shoals of theWatauga, the overmountain men gathered on September 25th. Therean eloquent sermon was preached to them by that fiery man of God, the Reverend Samuel Doak, who concluded his discourse with astirring invocation to the sword of the Lord and of Gideon--asentiment greeted with the loud applause of the militantfrontiersmen. Here and at various places along the march theywere joined by detachments of border fighters summoned to jointhe expedition--Colonel William Campbell, who with somereluctance had abandoned his own plans in response to Shelby'surgent and repeated message, in command of four hundred hardyfrontiersmen from Washington County, Virginia; Colonel BenjaminCleveland, with the wild fighters of Wilkes known as "Cleveland'sBulldogs"; Colonel Andrew Hampton, with the stalwart riflemen ofRutherford; Major Joseph Winston, the cousin of Patrick Henry, with the flower of the citizenry of Surry; the McDowells, Charlesand Joseph, with the bold borderers of Burke; Colonels Lacy andHill, with well-trained soldiers of South Carolina; andBrigadier-General James Williams, leading the intrepid Rowanvolunteers. 

Before breaking camp at Quaker Meadows, the leading officers inconference chose Colonel William Campbell as temporary officer ofthe day, until they could secure a general officer fromheadquarters as commander-in-chief. The object of themountaineers and big-game hunters was, in their own terms, topursue Ferguson, to run him down, and to capture him. Inpursuance of this plan, the leaders on arriving at the ford ofGreen River chose out a force of six hundred men, with the bestmounts and equipment; and at daybreak on October 6th this forceof picked mounted riflemen, followed by some fifty "foot-cavalry"eager to join in the pursuit, pushed rapidly on to the Cowpens. Here a second selection took place; and Colonel Campbell, wasagain elected commander of the detachment, now numbering somenine hundred and ten horsemen and eighty odd footmen, whichdashed rapidly on in pursuit of Ferguson. 

The British commander had been apprised of the coming of theover-mountain men. Scorning to make a forced march and attempt toeffect a junction with Cornwallis at Charlotte, Ferguson chose tomake a stand and dispose once for all of the barbarian horde whomhe denounced as mongrels and the dregs of mankind. Afterdespatching to Cornwallis a message asking for aid, Ferguson tookup his camp on King's Mountain, just south of the North Carolinaborder line, in the present York County, South Carolina. Here, after his pickets had been captured in silence, he was surprisedby his opponents. At three o'clock in the afternoon of October7th the mountain hunters treed their game upon the heights. 

The battle which ensued presents an extraordinary contrast in thecharacter of the combatants and the nature of the strategy andtactics. Each party ran true to form--Ferguson repeatingBraddock's suicidal policy of opposing bayonet charges to thedeadly fusillade of riflemen, who in Indian fashion werecarefully posted behind trees and every shelter afforded by thenatural inequalities of the ground. In the army of the Carolinaand Virginia frontiersmen, composed of independent detachmentsrecruited from many sources and solicitous for their ownindividual credit, each command was directed in the battle by itsown leader. Campbell--like Cleveland, Winston, Williams, Lacey, Shelby, McDowell, Sevier, and Hambright--personally led his owndivision; but the nature of the fighting and the peculiarity ofthe terrain made it impossible for him, though the chosencommander of the expedition, actually to play that role in thebattle. The plan agreed upon in advance by the frontier leaderswas simple enough--to surround and capture Ferguson's camp on thehigh plateau. The more experienced Indian fighters, Sevier andShelby, unquestionably suggested the general scheme which in anycase would doubtless have been employed by the frontiersmen; itwas to give the British "Indian play"--namely to take covereverywhere and to fire from natural shelter. Cleveland, aHercules in strength and courage who had fought the Indians andrecognized the wisdom of Indian tactics, ordered his men, as didsome of the other leaders, to give way before a bayonet charge, but to return to the attack after the charge had spent its force. 

"My brave fellows, " said Cleveland, "every man must considerhimself an officer, and act from his own judgment. Fire as quickas you can, and stand your ground as long as you can. When youcan do no better, get behind trees, or retreat; but I beg you notto run quite off. If we are repulsed, let us make a point ofreturning and renewing the fight; perhaps we may have better luckin the second attempt than in the first. "

The plateau upon which Ferguson was encamped was the top of aneminence some six hundred yards long and about two hundred andfifty yards from one base across to the other; and its shape wasthat of an Indian paddle, varying from one hundred and twentyyards at the blade to sixty yards at the handle in width. Outcropping boulders upon the outer edge of the plateau affordedsome slight shelter for Ferguson's force; but, unsuspicious ofattack, Ferguson had made no abatis to protect his camp from theassault to which it was so vulnerable because of the protectionof the timber surrounding it on all sides. As to the dispositionof the attacking force, the center to the northeast was occupiedby Cleveland with his "Bulldogs, " Hambright with his South ForkBoys from the Catawba (now Lincoln County, North Carolina), andWinston with his Surry riflemen; to the south were the divisionsof Joseph McDowell, Sevier, and Campbell; while Lacey's SouthCarolinians, the Rowan levies under Williams, and the Wataugaborderers under Shelby were stationed upon the north side. Ferguson's forces consisted of Provincial Rangers, one hundredand fifty strong, and other well-drilled Loyalists, between eightand nine hundred in number; but his strength was seriouslyweakened by the absence of a foraging party of between one andtwo hundred who had gone off on the morning the battle occurred. Shelby's men, before getting into position, received a hot fire, the opening shots of the engagement. This inspired Campbell, whonow threw off his coat, to shout encouraging orders to his menposted on the side of the mountain opposite to Shelby's force. When Campbell's Virginians uttered a series of piercing shouts, the British officer, De Peyster, second in command, remarked tohis chief: "These things are ominous--these are the damnedyelling boys. "

The battle, which lasted some minutes short of an hour, was wagedwith terrific ferocity. The Loyalist militia, whenever possible, fired from the shelter of the rocks; while the Provincial Corps, with fixed bayonets, steadily charged the frontiersmen, who firedat close range and then rapidly withdrew to the very base of themountain. After each bayonet charge the Provincials coollywithdrew to the summit, under the accumulating fire of thereturning mountaineers, who quickly gathered in their rear. Owingto their elevated location, the British, although using therapid-fire breech-loading rifle invented by Ferguson himself, found their vision deflected, and continually fired high, thussuffering from nature's handicap, refraction. The militia, usingsharpened butcher-knives which Ferguson had taught them toutilize as bayonets, charged against the mountaineers; but theirfire, in answer to the deadly fusillade of the expert squirrel-shooters, was belated, owing to the fact that they could not firewhile the crudely improvised bayonets remained inserted in theirpieces. The Americans, continually firing upward, found readymarks for their aim in the clearly delineated outlines of theiradversaries, and felt the fierce exultation which animates thehunter who has tracked to its lair and surrounded wild game atbay. 

The leaders of the various divisions of the mountaineers borethemselves with impetuous bravery, recklessly rushing between thelines of fire and with native eloquence, interspersed withprofanity, rallying their individual commands again and again tothe attack. The valiant Campbell scaled the rugged heights, loudly encouraging his men to the ascent. Cleveland, resolutelyfacing the foe, urged on is Bulldogs with the inspiriting words:"Come, boys; let's try 'em again. We'll have better luck nexttime. " No sooner did Shelby's men reach the bottom of the hill, in retreating before a charge, than their commander, fiery andstrenuous, ardently shouted: "Now boys, quickly reload yourrifles, and let's advance upon them, and give them another hellof a fire. " The most deadly charge, led by De Peyster himself, fell upon Hambright's South Fork boys; and one of their gallantofficers, Major Chronicle, waving his military hat, was mortallywounded, the command, "Face to the hill!", dying on his lips. These veteran soldiers, unlike the mountaineers, firmly met theshock of the charge, and a number of their men were shot down ortransfixed; but the remainder, reserving their fire until thecharging column was only a few feet away, poured in a deadlyvolley before retiring. The gallant William Lenoir, whosereckless bravery made him a conspicuous target for the enemy, received several wounds and emerged from the battle with his hairand clothes torn by balls. The ranking American officer, Brigadier General James Williams, was mortally wounded while "onthe very top of the mountain, in the thickest of the fight"; andas he momentarily revived, his first words were: "For God's sake, boys, don't give up the hill. " Hambright, sorely wounded, hisboot overflowing with blood and his hat riddled with three bulletholes, declined to dismount, but pressed gallantly forward, exclaiming in his "Pennsylvania Dutch": "Huzza, my prave poys, fight on a few minutes more, and the pattle will be over!" On theBritish side, Ferguson was supremely valorous, rapidly dashingfrom one point to another, rallying his men, oblivious to alldanger. Wherever the shrill note of his silver whistle sounded, there the fighting was hottest and the British resistance themost stubborn. His officers fought with the characteristicsteadiness of the British soldier; and again and again his mencharged headlong against the wavering and fiery circle of thefrontiersmen. 

Ferguson's boast that "he was on King's Mountain, that he wasking of the Mountain, and God Almighty could not drive him fromit" was doubtless prompted, less by a belief in theimpregnability of his position, than by a desperate desire toinspire confidence in his men. His location was admirably chosenfor defense against attack by troops employing regulationtactics; but, never dreaming of the possibility of suddeninvestment, Ferguson had erected no fortifications for hisencampment. His frenzied efforts on the battlefield seem like amad rush against fate; for the place was indefensible against thepeculiar tactics of the frontiersmen. While the mountain flamedlike a volcano and resounded with the thunder of the guns, asteady stricture was in progress. The lines were drawn tighterand tighter around the trapped and frantically struggling army;and at last the fall of their commander, riddled with bullets, proved the tragic futility of further resistance. The game wascaught and bagged to a man. When Winston, with his fox-hunters ofSurry, dashed recklessly through the woods, says a chronicler ofthe battle, and the last to come into position, Flow'd in, and settling, circled all the lists, then

From all the circle of the hills death sleeted in upon thedoomed. 

The battle was decisive in its effect--shattering the plans ofCornwallis, which till then appeared certain of success. Thevictory put a full stop to the invasion of North Carolina, whichwas then well under way. Cornwallis abandoned his carefullyprepared campaign and immediately left the state. Afterruthlessly hanging nine prisoners, an action which had aneffectively deterrent effect upon future Tory murders anddepredations, the patriot force quietly disbanded. The brilliantinitiative of the buckskin-clad borderers, the strenuous energyof their pursuit, the perfection of their surprise--allreinforced by the employment of ideal tactics for meeting thegiven situation--were the controlling factors in thisoverwhelming victory of the Revolution. The pioneers of the OldSouthwest--the independent and aggressive yeomanry of NorthCarolina, Virginia, and South Carolina--had risen in their might. Without the aid or authority of blundering state governments, they had created an army of frontiersmen, Indian-fighters, andbig-game hunters which had found no parallel or equal on thecontinent since the Battle of the Great Kanawha. 

CHAPTER XIX. The State of Franklin

Designs of a more dangerous nature and deeper die seem to glarein the western revolt . .. . I have thought proper to issue thismanifesto, hereby warning all persons concerned in the saidrevolt . .. That the honour of this State has been particularlywounded, by seizing that by violence which, in time, no doubt, would have been obtained by consent, when the terms of separationwould have been explained or stipulated, to the mutualsatisfaction of the mother and new State. .. . Let yourproposals be consistent with the honour of the State to accedeto, which by your allegiance as good citizens, you cannot violateand I make no doubt but her generosity, in time, will meet yourwishes. --Governor Alexander Martin: Manifesto against the Stateof Franklin, April 25, 1785. 

To the shrewd diplomacy of Joseph Martin, who held the Cherokeesin check during the period of the King's Mountain campaign, thesettlers in the valleys of the Watauga and the Holston owed theirtemporary immunity from Indian attack. But no sooner did Sevierand his over-mountain men return from the battle-field of King'sMountain than they were called upon to join in an expeditionagainst the Cherokees, who had again gone on the war-path at theinstigation of the British. After Sevier with his command haddefeated a small party of Indians at Boyd's Creek in December, the entire force of seven hundred riflemen, under the command ofColonel Arthur Campbell, with Major Joseph Martin as subordinate, penetrated to the heart of the Indian country, burned Echota, Chilhowee, Settiquo, Hiawassee, and seven other principalvillages, and destroyed an immense amount of property andsupplies. In March, suspecting that the arch-conspirators againstthe white settlers were the Cherokees at the head waters of theLittle Tennessee, Sevier led one hundred and fifty horsementhrough the devious mountain defiles and struck the Indians aswift and unexpected blow at Tuckasegee, near the presentWebster, North Carolina. In this extraordinarily daring raid, oneof his most brilliant feats of arms, Sevier lost only one mankilled and one wounded; while upon the enemy he inflicted theloss of thirty killed, took many more prisoners, burned sixIndian towns, and captured many horses and supplies. Once hisdeadly work was done, Sevier with his bold cavaliers silentlyplunged again into the forest whence he had so suddenly emerged, and returned in triumph to the settlements. 

Disheartened though the Indians were to see the smoke of theirburning towns, they sullenly remained averse to peace; and theydid not keep the treaty made at Long Island in July, 1781. TheIndians suffered from very real grievances at the hands of thelawless white settlers who persisted in encroaching upon theIndian lands. When the Indian ravages were resumed, Sevier andAnderson, the latter from Sullivan County, led a punitiveexpedition of two hundred riflemen against the Creeks and theChickamaugas; and employing the customary tactics of laying wastethe Indian towns, administered stern and salutary chastisement tothe copper-colored marauders. 

During this same period the settlers on the Cumberland weredisplaying a grim fortitude and stoical endurance in the face ofIndian attack forever memorable in the history of the OldSouthwest. On the night of January 15, 1781, the settlers atFreeland's Station, after a desperate resistance, succeeded inbeating off the savages who attacked in force. At Nashborough onApril 2d, twenty of the settlers were lured from the stockade bythe artful wiles of the savages; and it was only after seriousloss that they finally won their way back to the protection ofthe fort. Indeed, their return was due to the fierce dogs of thesettlers, which were released at the most critical moment, andattacked the astounded Indians with such ferocity that thediversion thus created enabled the settlers to escape from thedeadly trap. During the next two years the history of theCumberland settlements is but the gruesome recital of murderafter murder of the whites, a few at a time, by the lurkingIndian foe. Robertson's dominant influence alone prevented theabandonment of the sorely harassed little stations. The arrivalof the North Carolina commissioners for the purpose of laying offbounty lands and settlers' preemptions, and the treaty of peaceconcluded at the French Lick on November 5 and 6, 1783, gavepermanence and stability to the Cumberland settlements. Thelasting friendship of the Chickasaws was won; but the Creeks forsome time continued to harass the Tennessee pioneers. Thefrontiersmen's most formidable foe, the Cherokees, stoically, heroically fighting the whites in the field, and smallpox, syphilis, and drunkenness at home, at last abandoned the unequalbattle. The treaty at Hopewell on November 28, 1785, marks theend of an era--the Spartan yet hopeless resistance of theintrepid red men to the relentless and frequently unwarrantedexpropriation by the whites of the ancient and immemorial domainof the savage. 

The skill in self-government of the isolated people beyond themountains, and the ability they had already demonstrated in theorganization of "associations, " received a strong stimulus onJune 2, 1784, when the legislature of North Carolina ceded to theCongress of the United States the title which that statepossessed to the land west of the Alleghanies. Among the terms ofthe Cession Act were these conditions: that the ceded territoryshould be formed into a separate state or states; and that ifCongress should not accept the lands thus ceded and give duenotice within two years, the act should be of no force and thelands should revert to North Carolina. No sooner did this newsreach the Western settlers than they began to mature plans forthe organization of a government during the intervening twelvemonths. Their exposed condition on the frontiers, still harassedby the Indians, and North Carolina's delay in sending goodspromised the Indians by a former treaty, both promoted Indianhostility; and these facts, combined with their remote locationbeyond the mountains, rendering them almost inaccessible tocommunication with North Carolina--all rendered the decision ofthe settlers almost inevitable. Moreover, the allurements of highoffice and the dazzling dreams of ambition were additionalmotives sufficiently human in themselves to give driving power tothe movement toward independence. 

At a convention assembled at Jonesborough on August 23, 1784, delegates from the counties of Washington, Sullivan, and Greenecharacteristically decided to organize an "Association. " Theysolemnly declared by resolution: "We have a just and undeniableright to petition to Congress to accept the session made by NorthCarolina, and for that body to countenance us for formingourselves into a separate government, and to frame either apermanent or temporary constitution, agreeably to a resolve ofCongress. .. . " Meanwhile, Governor Martin, largely as theresult of the prudent advice of North Carolina's representativein Congress, Dr. Hugh Williamson, was brought to the conclusionthat North Carolina, in the passage of the cession act, had actedprecipitately. This important step had been taken without thefull consideration of the people of the state. Among the variousarguments advanced by Williamson was the impressive contentionthat, in accordance with the procedure in the case of otherstates, the whole expense of the huge Indian expeditions in 1776and the heavy militia aids to South Carolina and Georgia shouldbe credited to North Carolina as partial fulfilment of hercontinental obligations before the cession should be irrevocablymade to the Federal government. Williamson's arguments provedconvincing; and it was thus primarily for economic reasons of farreaching national importance that the assembly of North Carolina(October 22 to November 25, 1784) repealed the cession act madethe preceding spring. 

Before the news of the repeal of the cession act could reach thewestern waters, a second convention met at Jonesborough onDecember 17th. Sentiment at this time was much divided, for anumber of the people, expecting the repeal of the cession act, genuinely desired a continued allegiance to North Carolina. Ofthese may well have been John Sevier, who afterward declared toJoseph Martin that he had been "Draged into the Franklin measuresby a large number of the people of this country. " The principalact of this convention was the adoption of a temporaryconstitution for six months and the provision for a convention tobe held within one year, at the expiration of which time thisconstitution should be altered, or adopted as the permanentconstitution of the new state. The scholars on the westernwaters, desiring to commemorate their aspirations for freedom, chose as the name of the projected new state: "Frankland"--theLand of the Free. The name finally chosen, however, perhaps forreasons of policy, was "Franklin, " in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Meanwhile, in order to meet the pressing needs for a stablegovernment along the Tennessee frontier, the North Carolinaassembly, which repealed the cession act, created out of the fourwestern counties the District of Washington, with John Haywood aspresiding judge and David Campbell as associate, and conferredupon John Sevier the rank of brigadier general of the newdistrict. The first week in December Governor Martin sent toSevier his military commission; and replying to Joseph Martin'squery (December 31, 1784, prompted by Governor Martin) as towhether, in view of the repeal of the cession act, he intended topersist in revolt or await developments, Sevier gave it outbroadcast that "we shall pursue no further measures as to a newState. "

Owing to the remoteness of the Tennessee settlements and thedifficulty of appreciating through correspondence the atmosphereof sentiment in Franklin, Governor Martin realized the necessityof sending a personal representative to discover the true stateof affairs in the disaffected region beyond the mountains. Forthe post of ambassador to the new government, Governor Martinselected a man distinguished for mentality and diplomatic skill, a pioneer of Tennessee and Kentucky, Judge Richard Henderson'sbrother, Colonel Samuel Henderson. Despite Sevier's disavowal ofany further intention to establish a new state, the governor gaveColonel Henderson elaborate written instructions, the purport ofwhich was to learn all that he could about the politicalcomplexion of the Tennessee frontiersmen, the sense of thepeople, and the agitation for a separate commonwealth. Moreover, in the hope of placating the leading chieftains of the Cherokees, who had bitterly protested against the continued aggressions andencroachments upon their lands by the lawless borderers, heinstructed Colonel Henderson also to learn the temper anddispositions of the Indians, and to investigate the case ofColonel James Hubbardt who was charged with the murder of Untoolaof Settiquo, a chief of the Cherokees. 

When Colonel Henderson arrived at Jonesborough, he found thethird Franklin legislature in session, and to this body hepresented Governor Martin's letter of February 27, 1785. Inresponse to the governor's request for an "account of the lateproceedings of the people in the western country, " an extendedreply was drafted by the new legislature; and this letter, conveyed to Governor Martin by Colonel Henderson, in settingforth in detail the reasons for the secession, made the followingsignificant statement: "We humbly thank North Carolina for everysentiment of regard she has for us, but are sorry to observe, that as it is founded upon principles of interest, as is aparentfrom the tenor of your letter, we are doubtful, when the causeceases which is the basis of that affection, we shall lose youresteem. " At the same time (March 22nd), Sevier, who had just beenchosen Governor of the State of Franklin, transmitted to GovernorMartin by Colonel Henderson a long letter, not hitherto publishedin any history of the period, in which he outspokenly says:

"It gives me great pain to think there should arise any Disputesbetween us and North Carolina, & I flatter myself when NorthCarolina states the matter in a fair light she will be fullyconvinced that necessity and self preservation have Compelled Usto the measures we Have taken, and could the people havediscovered that No. Carolina would Have protected and Govern'dthem, They would have remained where they were; but theyperceived a neglect and Coolness, and the Language of Many ofyour most leading members Convinced them they were AltogetherDisregarded. "

Following the issuance of vigorous manifestos by Martin (April25th) and Sevier (May 15th), the burden of the problem fell uponRichard Caswell, who in June succeeded Martin as Governor ofNorth Carolina. 

Meantime the legislature of the over-mountain men had given thename of Franklin to the new state, although for some time itcontinued to be called by many Frankland, and its adherentsFranks. The legislature had also established an academy namedafter Governor Martin, and had appointed (March 12th) WilliamCocke as a delegate to the Continental Congress, urging itsacceptance of the cession. In the Memorial from the Franklinlegislature to the Continental Congress, dealing in some detailwith North Carolina's failure to send the Cherokees some goodspromised them for lands acquired by treaty, it is alleged:

"She [North Carolina] immediately stoped the goods she hadpromised to give the Indians for the said land which soexasperated them that they begun to commit hostalities on ourfrontiers in this situation we were induced to a declaration ofIndependence not doubting we should be excused by Congress . .. AsNorth Carolina seemed quite regardless of our interest and theIndians daily murdering our friends and relations withoutdistinction of age or sex. "

Sympathizing with the precarious situation of the settlers, aswell as desiring the cession, Congress urged North Carolina toamend the repealing act and execute a conveyance of the westernterritory to the Union. 

Among the noteworthy features of the Franklin movement was theconstitution prepared by a committee, headed by the ReverendSamuel Houston of Washington County, and presented at the meetingof the Franklin legislature, Greeneville, November 14, 1785. Thiseccentric constitution was based in considerable part upon theNorth Carolina model; but it was "rejected in the lump" and theconstitution of North Carolina, almost unchanged, was adopted. Under this Houston constitution, the name "Frankland" was chosenfor the new state. The legislature was to consist of but a singlehouse. In a section excluding from the legislature "ministers ofthe gospel, attorneys at law, and doctors of physics, " those weredeclared ineligible for office who were of immoral character orguilty of "such flagrant enormities as drunkenness, gaming, profane swearing, lewdness, Sabbath-breaking and such like, " orwho should deny the existence of God, of heaven, and of hell, theinspiration of the Scriptures, or the existence of the Trinity. Full religious liberty and the rights of conscience wereassured--but strict orthodoxy was a condition for eligibility tooffice. No one should be chosen to office who was "not a scholarto do the business. " This remarkable document, which provided formany other curious innovations in government, was the work ofpioneer doctrinaires--Houston, Campbell, Cocke, and Tipton--anddeserves study as a bizarre reflection of the spirit and geniusof the western frontiersmen. 

The liberal policy of Martin, followed by the no lessconciliatory attitude of his successor, Caswell, for the timeproved wholly abortive. However, Martin's appointment of EvanShelby in Sevier's place as brigadier, and of Jonathan Tipton ascolonel of his county, produced disaffection among the Franks;and the influence of Joseph Martin against the new government wasa powerful obstacle to its success. At first the two sets ofmilitary, civil, and judicial officers were able to work amicablytogether; and a working-basis drawn up by Shelby and Sevier, although afterward repudiated by the Franklin legislature, smoothed over some of the rapidly accumulating difficulties. Thepersistent and quiet assertion of authority by North Carolina, without any overt act of violence against the officers ofFranklin state, revealed great diplomatic skill in GovernorsMartin and Caswell. It was doubtless the considerate policy ofthe latter, coupled with the defection from Sevier's cause of menof the stamp of Houston and Tipton, after the blundering andcavalier rejection of their singular constitution, whichundermined the foundations of Franklin. Sevier himself laterwrote with considerable bitterness: "I have been faithfull, andmy own breast acquits myself that I have acted no part but whathas been Consistent with honor and justice, tempered withClemency and mercy. How far our pretended patriots have supportedme as their pretended chiefe magistrate, I leave the world atlarge to Judge. " Arthur Campbell's plans for the formation of agreater Franklin, through the union of the people on the westernwaters of Virginia with those of North Carolina, came to noughtwhen Virginia in the autumn of 1785 with stern decisivenesspassed an act making it high treason to erect an independentgovernment within her limits unless authorized by the assembly. Sevier, however, became more fixed in his determination toestablish a free state, writing to Governor Caswell: "We shallcontinue to act independent and would rather suffer death, in allits various and frightful shapes, than conform to anything thatis disgraceful. " North Carolina, now proceeding with vigor(November, 1786), fully reassumed its sovereignty andjurisdiction over the mountain counties, but passed an act ofpardon and oblivion, and in many ways adopted moderate andconciliatory measures. 

Driven to extremities, Cocke and Sevier in turn appealed for aidand advice to Benjamin Franklin, in whose honor the new state hadbeen named. In response to Cocke, Franklin wrote (August 12, 1786): "I think you are perfectly right in resolving to submitthem [the Points in Dispute] to the Decision of Congress and toabide by their Determination. " Franklin's views change in theinterim; for when, almost a year later, Sevier asks him forcounsel, Franklin has come to the conclusion that the wisest movefor Sevier was not to appeal to Congress, but to endeavor toeffect some satisfactory compromise with North Carolina (June 30, 1787):

"There are only two Things that Humanity induces me to wish youmay succeed in: The Accomodating your Misunderstanding with theGovernment of North Carolina, by amicable Means; and the Avoidingan Indian war, by preventing Encroaching on their Lands. .. . The Inconvenience to your People attending so remote a Seat ofGovernment, and the difficulty to that Government in ruling wellso remote a People, would I think be powerful Inducements withit, to accede to any fair & reasonable Proposition it may receivefrom you towards an Accommodation. "

Despite Sevier's frenzied efforts to achieve independence--histreaty with the Indians, his sensational plan to incorporate theCherokees into the new state, his constancy to an ideal of revoltagainst others in face of the reality of revolt against himself, his struggle, equivocal and half-hearted, with the North Carolinaauthorities under Tipton--despite all these heroic efforts, thestar of Franklin swiftly declined. The vigorous measures pursuedby General Joseph Martin, and his effective influence focussedupon a movement already honey-combed with disaffection, finallyturned the scale. To the Franklin leaders he sent the urgentmessage: "Nothing will do but a submission to the laws of NorthCarolina. " Early in April, 1788, Martin wrote to GovernorRandolph of Virginia: "I returned last evening from Green Co. Washington destrict, North Carolina, after a tower through thatCo'ntry, and am happy to inform your Excellency that the lateunhappy dispute between the State of North Carolina, and thepretended State of Franklin is subsided. " Ever brave, constant, and loyal to the interest of the pioneers, Sevier had originallybeen drawn into the movement against his best judgment. Caught inthe unique trap, created by the passage of the cession act andthe sudden volte-face of its repeal, he struggled desperately toextricate himself. Alone of all the leaders, the governor ofill-starred Franklin remained recalcitrant. 

CHAPTER XX. The Lure of Spain--The Haven of Statehood

The people of this region have come to realize truly upon whatpart of the world and upon which nation their future happinessand security depend, and they immediately infer that theirinterest and prosperity depend entirely upon the protection andliberality of your government. --John Sevier to Don Diego deGardoqui, September 12, 1788. 

From the early settlements in the eastern parts of this Continentto the late & more recent settlements on the Kentucky in the Restthe same difficulties have constantly occurred which now oppressyou, but by a series of patient sufferings, manly and spiritedexertions and unconquerable perseverance, they have beenaltogether or in great measure subdued. --Governor Samuel Johnstonto James Robertson and Anthony Bledsoe, January 29, 1788. 

A strange sham-battle, staged like some scene from opera bouffe, in the bleak snow-storm of February, 1788, is really the preludeto a remarkable drama of revolt in which Sevier, Robertson, Bledsoe, and the Cumberland stalwarts play the leading roles. OnFebruary 27th, incensed beyond measure by the action of ColonelJohn Tipton in harboring some of his slaves seized by the sheriffunder an execution issued by one of the North Carolina courts, Sevier with one hundred and fifty adherents besieged Tipton witha few of his friends in his home on Sinking Creek. The siege wasraised at daybreak on February 29th by the arrival ofreinforcements under Colonel Maxwell from Sullivan County; andSevier, who was unwilling to precipitate a conflict, withdrew hisforces after some desultory firing, in which two men were killedand several wounded. Soon afterward Sevier sent word to Tiptonthat on condition his life be spared he would submit to NorthCarolina. On this note of tragi-comedy the State of Franklinappeared quietly to expire. The usually sanguine Sevier, nowthoroughly chastened, sought shelter in the distant settlements--deeplydespondent over the humiliating failure of his plans andthe even more depressing defection of his erstwhile friends andsupporters The revolutionary designs and separatist tendencieswhich he still harbored were soon to involve him in a secretconspiracy to give over the State of Franklin into the protectionof a foreign power. 

The fame of Sevier's martial exploits and of his bold stroke forindependence had long since gone abroad, astounding even sofamous an advocate of liberty as Patrick Henry and winning thesympathy of the Continental Congress. One of the most interestedobservers of the progress of affairs in the State of Franklin wasDon Diego de Gardoqui, who had come to America in the spring of1785, bearing a commission to the American Congress as Spanishcharge d'affaires (Encargados de Negocios) to the United States. In the course of his negotiations with Jay concerning the rightof navigation of the Mississippi River, which Spain denied to theAmericans, Gardoqui was not long in discovering the violentresentment of the Western frontiersmen, provoked by Jay's crassblunder in proposing that the American republic, in return forreciprocal foreign advantages offered by Spain, should waive fortwenty-five years her right to navigate the Mississippi. TheCumberland traders had already felt the heavy hand of Spain inthe confiscation of their goods at Natchez; but thus far theleaders of the Tennessee frontiersmen had prudently restrainedthe more turbulent agitators against the Spanish policy, fearinglest the spirit of retaliation, once aroused, might know nobounds. Throughout the entire region of the trans-Alleghany, afeeling of discontent and unrest prevailed--quite as much theresult of dissatisfaction with the central government whichpermitted the wholesale restraint of trade, as of resentmentagainst the domination of Spain. 

No sooner had the shrewd and watchful Gardoqui, who was eager toutilize the separatist sentiment of the western settlements inthe interest of his country, learned of Sevier's armedinsurrection against the authority of North Carolina than hedespatched an emissary to sound the leading men of Franklin andthe Cumberland settlements in regard to an alliance. This secretemissary was Dr. James White, who had been appointed by theUnited States Government as Superintendent of Indian Affairs forthe Southern Department on November 29, 1786. Reporting asinstructed to Don Estevan Miro, governor of Louisiana, White, thecorrupt tool of Spain, stated concerning his confidential missionthat the leaders of "Frankland" and "Cumberland district" had"eagerly accepted the conditions" laid down by Gardoqui: to takethe oath of allegiance to Spain, and to renounce all submissionor allegiance whatever to any other sovereign or power. Satisfiedby the secret advices received, the Spanish minister reported tothe home authorities his confident belief that the Tennesseebackwoodsmen, if diplomatically handled, would readily throw intheir lot with Spain. 

After the fiasco of his siege of Tipton's home, Sevier had seizedupon the renewal of hostilities by the Cherokees as a means ofregaining his popularity. This he counted upon doing by rallyinghis old comrades-in-arms under his standard and making one of hismeteoric, whirlwind onslaughts upon their ancient Indian foe. Thevictory of this erstwhile popular hero, the beloved "NolichuckyJack of the Border, " over the Indians at a town on the Hiwassee"so raised him in the esteem of the people on the frontier, "reports Colonel Maxwell, "that the people began [once more] toflock to his standard. " Inspirited by this good turn in hisfortunes, Sevier readily responded to Dr. White's overtures. 

Alarmed early in the year over the unprovoked depredations andmurders by the Indians in several Tennessee counties and on theKentucky road, Sevier, Robertson, and Anthony Bledsoe hadpersuaded Governor Samuel Johnston of North Carolina to addressGardoqui and request him to exert his influence to preventfurther acts of savage barbarity. In letters to GovernorJohnston, to Robertson, and to Sevier, all of date April 18th, Gardoqui expressed himself in general as being "extremelysurprised to know that there is a suspicion that the goodgovernment of Spain is encouraging these acts of barbarity. " Theletters to Robertson and Sevier, read between the lines assuggestive reinforcements of Spain's secret proposals, possessreal significance. The letter to Sevier contains this dexterouslyexpressed sentiment: "His Majesty is very favorably inclined togive the inhabitants of that region all the protection that theyask for and, on my part, I shall take very great pleasure incontributing to it on this occasion and other occasions. "

This letter, coupled with the confidential proposals of Dr. White, furnished a convenient opening for correspondence with theSpaniards; and in July Sevier wrote to Gardoqui indicating hisreadiness to accede to their proposals. After secret conferenceswith men who had supported him throughout the vicissitudes of hisill-starred state, Sevier carefully matured his plans. Theremarkable letter of great length which he wrote to Gardoqui onSeptember 12, 1788, reveals the conspiracy in all its details andpresents in vivid colors the strong separatist sentiment of theday. Sevier urgently petitions Gardoqui for the loan of a fewthousand pounds, to enable him to "make the most expedient andnecessary preparations for defense"; and offers to repay the loanwithin a short time "by sending the products of this region tothe lower ports. " Upon the vital matter of "delivering" the Stateof Franklin to Spain, he forthrightly says:

"Since my last of the 18th of July, upon consulting with theprincipal men of this country, I have been particularly happy tofind that they are equally disposed and ready as I am to acceptyour propositions and guarantees. You may be sure that thepleasing hopes and ideas which the people of this country holdwith regard to the probability of an alliance with, andcommercial concessions from, you are very ardent, and that we areunanimously determined on that score. The people of this regionhave come to realize truly upon what part of the world and uponwhich nation their future happiness and security depend, and theyimmediately infer that their interest and prosperity dependentirely upon the protection and liberality of your government. .. . Being the first from this side of the Appalachian Mountainsto resort in this way to your protection and liberality, we feelencouraged to entertain the greatest hope that we shall begranted all reasonable aid by him who is so amply able to do it, and to give the protection and help that is asked of him in thispetition. You know our delicate situation and the difficulties inwhich we are in respect to our mother State which is making useof every strategem to impede the development and prosperity ofthis country. .. . Before I conclude, it may be necessary toremind you that there will be no more favorable occasion than thepresent one to put this plan into execution. North Carolina hasrejected the Constitution and moreover it seems to me that aconsiderable time will elapse before she becomes a member of theUnion, if that event ever happens. "

Through Miro, Gardoqui was simultaneously conducting a similarcorrespondence with General James Wilkinson. The object of theSpanish conspiracy, matured as the result of this correspondence, was to seduce Kentucky from her allegiance to the United States. Despite the superficial similarity between the situation ofFranklin and Kentucky, it would be doing Sevier and his adherentsa capital injustice to place them in the category of the corruptWilkinson and the malodorous Sebastian. Moreover, thesecessionists of Franklin, as indicated in the above letter, hadthe excuse of being left virtually without a country. On thepreceding August 1st, North Carolina had rejected theConstitution of the United States; and the leaders of Franklin, who were sorely aggrieved by what they regarded as herindifference and neglect, now felt themselves more than ever outof the Union and wholly repudiated by the mother state. Again, Sevier had the embittered feeling resultant from outlawry. Because of his course in opposing the laws and government ofNorth Carolina and in the killing of several good citizens, including the sheriff of Washington County, by his forces atSinking Creek, Sevier, through the action of Governor Johnston ofNorth Carolina, had been attainted of high treason. Under theheavy burden of this grave charge, he felt his hold upon Franklinrelax. Further, an atrocity committed in the recent campaignunder Sevier's leadership--Kirk's brutal murder of Corn Tassel, anoble old Indian, and other chieftains, while under theprotection of a flag of truce--had placed a bar sinister acrossthe fair fame of this stalwart of the border. Utter desperationthus prompted Sevier's acceptance of Gardoqui's offer of theprotection of Spain. 

John Sevier's son, James, bore the letter of September 12th toGardoqui. By a strangely ironic coincidence, on the very day(October 10, 1788) that Gardoqui wrote to Miro, recommending tothe attention of Spain Dr. White and James Sevier, the emissariesof Franklin, with their plans and proposals, John Sevier wasarrested by Colonel Tipton at the Widow Brown's in WashingtonCounty, on the charge of high treason. He was handcuffed andborne off, first to Jonesborough and later to Morganton. But hisold friends and former comrades-in-arms, Charles and JosephMcDowell, gave bond for his appearance at court; and Morrison, the sheriff, who also had fought at King's Mountain, knocked theirons from his wrists and released him on parole. Soon afterwarda number of Sevier's devoted friends, indignant over his arrest, rode across the mountains to Morganton and silently bore himaway, never to be arrested again. In November an act of pardonand oblivion with respect to Franklin was passed by the NorthCarolina Assembly. Although Sevier was forbidden to hold officeunder the state, the passage of this act automatically operatedto clear him of the alleged offense of high treason. With affairsin Franklin taking this turn, it is little wonder that Gardoquiand Miro paid no further heed to Sevier's proposal to accept theprotection of Spain. Sevier's continued agitation in behalf ofthe independence of Franklin inspired Governor Johnston with thefear that he would have to be "proceeded against to the lastextremity. " But Sevier's opposition finally subsiding, he waspardoned, given a seat in the North Carolina assembly, and withextraordinary consideration honored with his former rank ofbrigadier-general. 

When Dr. White reported to Miro that the leaders of "Frankland"had eagerly accepted Gardoqui's conditions for an alliance withSpain, he categorically added: "With regard to Cumberlanddistrict, what I have said of Frankland applies to it with equalforce and truth. " James Robertson and Anthony Bledsoe had butrecently availed themselves of the good offices of GovernorJohnston of North Carolina in the effort to influence Gardoqui toquiet the Creek Indians. The sagacious and unscrupulous halfbreed Alexander McGillivray had placed the Creeks under theprotection of Spain in 1784; and shortly afterward they began tobe regularly supplied with ammunition by the Spanish authorities. At first Spain pursued the policy of secretly encouraging theseIndians to resist the encroachments of the Americans, while sheremained on outwardly friendly terms with the United States. During the period of the Spanish conspiracy, however, there isreason to believe that Miro endeavored to keep the Indians atpeace with the borderers, as a friendly service, intended to pavethe way for the establishment of intimate relations between Spainand the dwellers in the trans-Alleghany. Yet his efforts cannothave been very effective; for the Cumberland settlementscontinued to suffer from the ravages and depredations of theCreeks, who remained "totally averse to peace, notwithstandingthey have had no cause of offence"; and Robertson and Bledsoereported to Governor Caswell (June 12, 1787): "It is certain, theChickasaws inform us, that Spanish traders offer a reward forscalps of the Americans. " The Indian atrocities became sofrequent that Robertson later in the summer headed a party on thefamous Coldwater Expedition, in which he severely chastised themarauding Indians. Aroused by the loss of a number of chiefs andwarriors at the hands of Robertson's men, and instigated, as wasgenerally believed, by the Spaniards, the Creeks then prosecutedtheir attacks with renewed violence against the Cumberlandsettlements. 

Unprotected either by the mother state or by the nationalgovernment, unable to secure free passage to the Gulf for theirproducts, and sorely pressed to defend their homes, now seriouslyendangered by the incessant attacks of the Creeks, the Cumberlandleaders decided to make secret overtures to McGillivray, as wellas to communicate to Miro, through Dr. White, their favorableinclination toward the proposals of the one country whichpromised them protection. In a letter which McGillivray wrote toMiro (transmitted to Madrid, June 15, 1788) in regard to thevisit of Messrs. Hackett and Ewing, two trusty messengers sent byRobertson and Bledsoe, he reports that the two delegates from thedistrict of Cumberland had not only submitted to him proposals ofpeace but "had added that they would throw themselves into thearms of His Majesty as subjects, and that Kentucky and Cumberlandare determined to free themselves from their dependence onCongress, because that body can not protect either theirproperty, or favor their commerce, and they therefore believethat they no longer owe obedience to a power which is incapableof protecting them. " Commenting upon McGillivray's communication, Miro said in his report to Madrid (June 15, 1788): "I consider asextremely interesting the intelligence conveyed to McGillivray bythe deputies on the fermentation existing in Kentucky, withregard to a separation from the Union. Concerning the propositionmade to McGillivray by the inhabitants of Cumberland to becomethe vassals of His Majesty, I have refrained from returning anyprecise answer. "

In his long letter of reply to Robertson and Bledsoe, McGillivrayagreed to make peace between his nation, the Creeks, and theCumberland settlers. This letter was most favorably received andgiven wide circulation throughout the West. In a mostingratiating reply, offering McGillivray a fine gun and a lot inNashville, Robertson throws out the following broad suggestion, which he obviously wishes McGillivray to convey to Miro: "In allprobability we cannot long remain in our present state, and ifthe British or any commercial nation who may be in possession ofthe mouth of the Mississippi would furnish us with trade, andreceive our produce there cannot be a doubt but the people on thewest side of the Appalachian mountains will open their eyes totheir real interest. " Robertson actually had the district erectedout of the counties of Davidson, Sumner, and Tennessee given thename of "Miro" by the Assembly of North Carolina in November, 1788--a significant symbol of the desires of the Cumberlandleaders. In a letter (April 23, 1789), Miro, who had justreceived letters from Robertson (January 29th) and Daniel Smith(March 4th) postmarked "District of Miro, " observes: "The bearer, Fagot, a confidential agent of Gen. Smith, informed me that theinhabitants of Cumberland, or Miro, would ask North Carolina foran act of separation the following fall, and that as soon as thisshould be obtained other delegates would be sent from Cumberlandto New Orleans, with the object of placing that territory underthe domination of His Majesty. I replied to both in generalterms. "

Robertson, Bledsoe, and Smith were successful in keeping secrettheir correspondence with McGillivray and Miro; and few were inthe secret of Sevier's effort to deliver the State of Franklin toSpain. Joseph Martin was less successful in his negotiations; anda great sensation was created throughout the Southern colonieswhen a private letter from Joseph Martin to McGillivray (November8, 1788) was intercepted. In this letter Martin said: "I must begthat you write me by the first opportunity in answer to what I amnow going to say to you. .. . I hope to do honor to any part ofthe world I settle in, and am determined to leave the UnitedStates, for reasons that I can assign to you when we meet, butdurst not trust it to paper. " The general assembly of Georgiareferred the question of the intercepted letter to the governorof North Carolina (January 24, 1789); and the result was alegislative investigation into Martin's conduct. Eleven monthslater, the North Carolina assembly exonerated him. From thecorrespondence of Joseph Martin and Patrick Henry, it wouldappear that Martin, on Henry's advice, had acted as a spy uponthe Spaniards, in order to discover the views of McGillivray, toprotect the exposed white settlements from the Indians, and tofathom the designs of the Spaniards against the United States. 

The sensational disclosures of Martin's intercepted letter had nodeterrent effect upon James Robertson in the attempted executionof his plan for detaching the Cumberland settlements from NorthCarolina. History has taken no account of the fact that Robertsonand the inhabitants now deliberately endeavored to secure an actof separation from North Carolina. In the event of success, thenext move planned by the Cumberland leaders, as we have alreadyseen, was to send delegates to New Orleans for the purpose ofplacing the Cumberland region under the domination of Spain. 

A hitherto unknown letter, from Robertson to (Miro), datedNashville, September 2, 1789, proves that a convention of thepeople was actually held--the first overt step looking to analliance with Spain. In this letter Robertson says:

"I must beg your Excellency's permission to take this earlyopportunity of thanking you for the honor you did me in writingby Mr. White. 

"I still hope that your Government, and these Settlements, aredestined to be mutually friendly and usefull, the people here areimpressed with the necessity of it. 

"We have just held a Convention; which has agreed that ourmembers shall insist on being Seperated from North Carolina. 

"Unprotected, we are to be obedient to the new Congress of theUnited States; but we cannot but wish for a more interestingConnection. 

"The United States afford us no protection. The district of Mirois daily plundered and the inhabitants murdered by the Creeks, and Cherokees, unprovoked. 

"For my own part, I conceive highly of the advantages of yourGovernment. "

A serious obstacle to the execution of the plans of Robertson andthe other leaders of the Cumberland settlements was the promptaction of North Carolina. In actual conformity with the wishes ofthe Western people, as set forth in the petition of Robertson andHayes, their representatives, made two years earlier, thelegislature of North Carolina in December passed the second actof cession, by which the Western territory of North Carolina wasceded to the United States. Instead of securing an act ofseparation from North Carolina as the preparatory step to formingwhat Robertson calls "a more interesting connection" with Spain, Robertson and his associates now found themselves and thetransmontane region which they represented flung bodily into thearms of the United States. Despite the unequivocal offer of thecalculating and desperate Sevier to "deliver" Franklin to Spain, and the ingenious efforts of Robertson and his associates toplace the Cumberland region under the domination of Spain, theSpanish court by its temporizing policy of evasion and indecisiondefinitely relinquished the ready opportunities thereby afforded, of utilizing the powerful separatist tendencies of Tennessee forthe purpose of adding the empire upon the Western waters to theSpanish domain in America. 

The year 1790 marks the end of an era the heroic age of thepioneers of the Old Southwest. Following the acceptance of NorthCarolina's deed of cession of her Western lands to the Union(April 2, 1790) the Southwest Territory was erected on May 26th;and William Blount, a North Carolina gentleman of eminence anddistinction, was appointed on June 8th to the post of governor ofthe territory. Two years later (June 1, 1792) Kentucky wasadmitted into the Union. 

It is a remarkable and inspiring circumstance, in testimony ofthe martial instincts and unwavering loyalty of the transmontanepeople, that the two men to whom the Western country in greatmeasure owed its preservation, the inciting and flaming spiritsof the King's Mountain campaign, were the unopposed first choiceof the people as leaders in the trying experiment ofStatehood--John Sevier of Tennessee and Isaac Shelby of Kentucky. Had Franklin possessed the patient will of Kentucky, she mightwell have preceded that region into the Union. It was not, however, until June 1, 1796, that Tennessee, after a romantic andarduous struggle, finally passed through the wide-flung portalsinto the domain of national statehood.