The Conquest of the Old Southwest; the romantic story of the early pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790
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Title: The Conquest of the Old Southwest; the romantic story of the early pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790
Author: Archibald Henderson
Release date: November 1, 2000 [eBook #2390]
Most recently updated: March 31, 2023
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST; THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE EARLY PIONEERS INTO VIRGINIA, THE CAROLINAS, TENNESSEE, AND KENTUCKY, 1740-1790 ***
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 the
pleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add the
rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can the world offer for
the loss of so glorious a prospect?
--Richard Henderson.
The established Authority of any government in America, and the policy
of Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain the
Americans.... They acquire no attachment to Place: But wandering about
Seems engrafted in their Nature; and it is a weakness incident to it,
that they Should for ever immagine the Lands further off, are Still
better than those upon which they are already settled.
--Lord Dunmore,
to the Earl of Dartmouth.
INTRODUCTION
The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward migration
of successive waves of transplanted European peoples throughout the
entire course of the eighteenth century is the history of the growth and
evolution of American democracy. Upon the American continent was wrought
out, through almost superhuman daring, incredible hardship, and
surpassing endurance, the formation of a new society. The European
rudely confronted with the pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon
discovered that his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned
upon his individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting
himself to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the
age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened civilization, is
traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the course of half a century.
A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing the
successive episodes in the history of a single family as it wended its
way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely repulsed the sudden
attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up the granite slopes of the
Appalachians, and pitched down into the transmontane wilderness upon the
western waters, would give to the spectator a vivid conception, in
miniature, of the westward movement. But certain basic elements in the
grand procession, revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would
perhaps escape 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 and
economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the group into
the community; the community into a new society. In this clear
perspective of historic development the spectacular hero at first sight
seems to diminish; but the mass, the movement, the social force which he
epitomizes and interprets, gain in impressiveness and dignity. [1]
As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever southward and
westward, seeking room for expansion and economic independence, a series
of frontiers was gradually thrust out toward the wilderness in
successive waves of irregular indentation. The true leader in this
westward advance, to whom less than his deserts has been accorded by the
historian, is the drab and mercenary trader with the Indians. The story
of his enterprise and of his adventures begins with the planting of
European civilization upon American soil. In the mind of the aborigines
he created the passion for the fruits, both good and evil, of the white
man's civilization, and he was welcomed by the Indian because he also
brought the means for repelling the further advance of that
civilization. The trader was of incalculable service to the pioneer in
first spying out the land and charting the trackless wilderness. The
trail rudely marked by the buffalo became in time the Indian path and
the trader's "trace"; and the pioneers upon the westward march,
following the line of least resistance, cut out their roads along these
very routes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the
trader--brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty,
unscrupulous, and immoral--the expansionist movement upon the American
continent would have been greatly retarded.
So scattered and ramified were the enterprises and expeditions of the
traders with the Indians that the frontier which they established was at
best both shifting and unstable. Following far in the wake of these
advance agents of the civilization which they so often disgraced, came
the cattle-herder or rancher, who took advantage of the extensive
pastures and ranges along the uplands and foot-hills to raise immense
herds of cattle. Thus was formed what might be called a rancher's
frontier, thrust out in advance of the ordinary farming settlements and
serving as the first serious barrier against the Indian invasion. The
westward movement of population is in this respect a direct advance from
the coast. Years before the influx into the Old Southwest of the tides
of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurous struck straight
westward in the wake of the fur-trader, and here and there erected the
cattle-ranges beyond the farming frontier of the piedmont region. The
wild horses and cattle which roamed at will through the upland barrens
and pea-vine pastures were herded in and driven for sale to the city
markets of the East.
The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau constituted the real
backbone of western settlement. The pioneering farmers, with the
adventurous instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plunged deeper and
ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the prospect of free and
still richer lands in the dim interior. Settlements quickly sprang up in
the neighborhood of military posts or rude forts established to serve as
safeguards against hostile attack; and trade soon flourished between
these settlements and the eastern centers, following the trails of the
trader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The bolder settlers who
ventured farthest to the westward were held in communication with the
East through their dependence upon salt and other necessities of life;
and the search for salt-springs in the virgin wilderness was an
inevitable consequence of the desire of the pioneer to shake off his
dependence upon the coast.
The prime determinative principle of the progressive American
civilization of the eighteenth century was the passion for the
acquisition of land. The struggle for economic independence developed
the germ of American liberty and became the differentiating principle of
American character. Here was a vast unappropriated region in the
interior of the continent to be had for the seeking, which served as
lure and inspiration to the man daring enough to risk his all in its
acquisition. It was in accordance with human nature and the principles
of political economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited
transmontane land, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility,
should excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials
alike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody there has his
eye fixed on this country." [2] Groups of wealthy or well-to-do
individuals organized themselves into land companies for the
colonization and exploitation of the West. The pioneer promoter was a
powerful creative force in westward expansion; and the activities of the
early land companies were decisive factors in the colonization of the
wilderness. Whether acting under the authority of a crown grant or
proceeding on their own authority, the land companies tended to give
stability and permanence to settlements otherwise hazardous and
insecure.
The second determinative impulse of the pioneer civilization was
wanderlust--the passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter, the
traveler, and the explorer. This restless class of nomadic wanderers was
responsible in part for the royal proclamation of 1763, a secondary
object of which, according to Edmund Burke, was the limitation of the
colonies on the West, as "the charters of many of our old colonies give
them, with few exceptions, no bounds to the westward but the South Sea."
The Long Hunters, taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth
to a fabled hunter's paradise in the far-away wilderness, because they
were driven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or a De Soto
to find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond.
But the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of the chase and
of discovery; he was intent also upon collecting the furs and skins of
wild animals for lucrative barter and sale in the centers of trade. He
was quick to make "tomahawk claims" and to assert "corn rights" as he
spied out the rich virgin land for future location and cultivation. Free
land and no taxes appealed to the backwoodsman, tired of paying
quit-rents to the agents of wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the
settler speedily followed in the hunter's wake. In his wake also went
many rude and lawless characters of the border, horse thieves and
criminals of different sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in
the merciful liberality of the wilderness. For the most part, however,
it was the salutary instinct of the home-builder--the man with the ax,
who made a little clearing in the forest and built there a rude cabin
that he bravely defended at all risks against continued assaults--which,
in defiance of every restraint, irresistibly thrust westward the thin
and jagged line of the frontier. The ax and the surveyor's chain, along
with the rifle and the hunting-knife, constituted the armorial bearings
of the pioneer. With individual as with corporation, with explorer as
with landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse of the era.
The various desires which stimulated and promoted westward expansion
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 rich furs and costly peltries; yet
he was often a hunter himself and collected great stores of peltries as
the result of his solitary and protracted hunting-expeditions. The
rancher and the herder sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh
and upland, the cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring
need for fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer
to the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward
advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new region, the
alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for the cultivation of
his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet in the intervals between
the tasks of farm life he scoured the wilderness in search of game and
spied out new lands for future settlement.
This restless and nomadic race, says the keenly observant Francis Baily,
"delight much to live on the frontiers, where they can enjoy
undisturbed, and free from the control of any laws, the blessings which
nature has bestowed upon them." [3] Independence of spirit, impatience
of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the nomadic temperament--these
are the strains in the American character of the eighteenth century
which ultimately blended to create a typical democracy. The rolling of
wave after wave of settlement westward across the American continent,
with a reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest
frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each
successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the eastern
coast, exemplifies from one aspect the history of the American people
during two centuries. [4] This era, constituting the first stage in our
national existence, and productive of a buoyant national character
shaped in democracy upon a free soil, closed only yesterday with the
exhaustion of cultivable free land, the disappearance of the last
frontier, and the recent death of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid
inauguration of the period, in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia,
Tennessee, and Kentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth
century, is the theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old
Southwest.
CONTENTS
Introduction
I. The Migration of the Peoples 3
II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion 19
III. The Back Country and the Border 32
IV. The Indian War 49
V. In Defense of Civilization 64
VI. Crushing the Cherokees 78
VII. The Land Companies 96
VIII. The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone 116
IX. Daniel Boone and Wilderness Exploration 130
X. Daniel Boone in Kentucky 144
XI. The Regulators 160
XII. Watauga--Haven of Liberty 175
XIII. Opening the Gateway--Dunmore's War 196
XIV. Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company 216
XV. Transylvania--A Wilderness Commonwealth 237
XVI. The Repulse of the Red Men 252
XVII. The Colonization of the Cumberland 269
XVIII. King's Mountain 289
XIX. The State of Franklin 306
XX. The Lure of Spain--The Haven of Statehood 327
List of Notes 351
Bibliographical Notes 363
Index 371
THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST
CHAPTER I.
The Migration of the Peoples
Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania and other parts
of America, who are over-stocked with people and some directly from
Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards the West, and have got
near the mountains.
--Gabriel Johnston, Governor of North Carolina, to the Secretary of the
Board of Trade, February 15, 1751.
At the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of population had
swept inland to the "fall line," the westward boundary of the
established settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced by the
more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the Blue Ridge. So
rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in the interval 1717-32
the population quadrupled in numbers. A map of the colonial settlements
in 1725 reveals a narrow strip of populated land along the Atlantic
coast, of irregular indentation, with occasional isolated nuclei of
settlements further in the interior. The civilization thus established
continued to maintain a close and unbroken communication with England
and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economic reasons, clung
to the coast, they reacted but slowly to the transforming influences of
the frontier. Within a triangle of continental altitude with its apex in
New England, bounded on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the
Appalachian range, lay the settlements, divided into two
zones--tidewater and piedmont. As no break occurred in the great
mountain system south of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the difficulties
of cutting a passage through the towering wall of living green long
proved an effective obstacle to the crossing of the grim mountain
barrier.
In the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward from the
coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking form around such
natural centers of attraction as areas of fertile soil, frontier posts,
mines, salt-springs, and stretches of upland favorable for grazing.
After a time a second advance of settlement was begun in New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland, running in a southwesterly direction along
the broad terraces to the east of the Appalachian Range, which in North
Carolina lies as far as two hundred and fifty miles from the sea. The
Blue Ridge in Virginia and a belt of pine barrens in North Carolina were
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 in spirit and in tendency from
their more aristocratic and complacent neighbors to the east.
These settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolina piedmont
region--English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and a few
French--were the first pioneers of the Old Southwest. From the joint
efforts of two strata of population, geographically, socially, and
economically distinct--tidewater and piedmont, Old South and New
South--originated and flowered the third and greatest movement of
westward expansion, opening with the surmounting of the mountain barrier
and ending in the occupation and assumption of the vast medial valley of
the continent.
Synchronous with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, significantly
enough, was the first planting of Ulster with the English and Scotch.
Emigrants from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimes as many as four thousand a
year (1625), continued throughout the century 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 and Scotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians and
phanatiques, lusty, able-bodied, hardy and stout men, where one may see
three or four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday, and all the
North of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the popular place of
all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and greedy after land."
During the quarter of a century after the English Revolution of 1688 and
the Jacobite uprising in Ireland, which ended in 1691 with the complete
submission of Ireland to William and Mary, not less than fifty thousand
Scotch, according to Archbishop Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the
beginning of the eighteenth century there was no considerable emigration
to America; and it was first set up as a consequence of English
interference with trade and religion. Repressive measures passed by the
English parliament (1665-1699), prohibiting the exportation from Ireland
to England and Scotland of cattle, beef, pork, dairy products, etc., and
to any country whatever of manufactured wool, had aroused deep
resentment among the Scotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce.
This discontent was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious
disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having to pay
tithes for the support of the established church, were excluded from all
civil and military office (1704), while their ministers were made liable
to penalties for celebrating marriages.
This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in an
exodus to the New World. The principal ports by which the Ulsterites
entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware), Philadelphia and
Boston. The streams of immigration steadily flowed up the Delaware
Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began to arrive in Bucks County. So
rapid was the rate of increase in immigration that the number of
arrivals soon mounted from a few hundred to upward of six thousand, in a
single year (1729); and within a few years this number was doubled.
According to the meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a
very small element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one
fourth of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350,000) in
1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of the
Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the disputed
Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers, saying as their
excuse when challenged for titles, that we had solicited for colonists
and they had come accordingly." The spirit of these defiant squatters is
succinctly expressed in their statement to Logan that it "was against
the laws of God and nature that so much land should be idle while so
many Christians wanted it to work on and to raise their bread."
The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from ten
pounds and two shillings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719 to fifteen
pounds ten shillings per hundred acres with a quit-rent of a halfpenny
per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes of the thrifty Scotch-Irish
settlers southward and southwestward. In Maryland in 1738 lands were
offered at five pounds sterling per hundred acres. Simultaneously, in
the Valley of Virginia free grants of a thousand acres per family were
being made. In the North Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord
Granville, through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands
to settlers at the rate of three shillings proclamation money for six
hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and was also making
large free grants on the condition of seating a certain proportion of
settlers. "Lord Carteret's land in Carolina," says North Carolina's
first American historian, "where the soil was cheap, presented a
tempting residence to people of every denomination. Emigrants from the
north of Ireland, by the way of Pennsylvania, flocked to that country;
and a considerable part of North Carolina ... is inhabited by those
people or their descendants." [5] From 1740 onward, attracted by the
rich lure of cheap and even free lands in Virginia and North Carolina, a
tide of immigration swept ceaselessly into the valleys of the
Shenandoah, the Yadkin, and the Catawba. The immensity of this mobile,
drifting mass, which sometimes brought "more than 400 families with
horse waggons and cattle" into North Carolina in a single year (1752-3),
is attested by the fact that from 1732 to 1754, mainly as the result of
the Scotch-Irish inundation, the population of North Carolina more than
doubled.
The second important racial stream of population in the settlement of
the same region was composed of Germans, attracted to this country from
the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly colored stories of the commercial
agents for promoting immigration--the "newlanders," who were thoroughly
unscrupulous in their methods and extravagant in their
representations--a migration from Germany began in the second decade of
the eighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions.
Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great number
were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who in order to pay for
their transportation were compelled to pledge themselves to several
years of servitude. This economic condition caused the German immigrant,
wherever he went, to become a settler of the back country, necessity
compelling him to pass by the more expensive lands near the coast.
For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of various
sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen hundred a year
into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed, Pennsylvania, one
third of whose population at the beginning of the Revolution was German,
early became the great distributing center for the Germans as well as
for the Scotch-Irish. Certainly by 1727 Adam Müller and his fellow
Germans had established the first permanent white settlement in the
Valley of Virginia. [6] By 1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen
families, came from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon
River, in the neighborhood of the present Winchester. [7] There is no
longer any doubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley sloping to
the north was almost entirely settled by Germans."
It was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of the Old
Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty Pennsylvania Germans
(who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch" from the incorrect
translation of Pennsylvänische Deutsche), began to pour into the
piedmont region of North Carolina. In the autumn, after the harvest was
in, these ambitious Pennsylvania pioneers would pack up their belongings
in wagons and on beasts of burden and head for the southwest, trekking
down in the manner of the Boers of South Africa. This movement into the
fertile valley lands of the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabated
throughout the entire third quarter of the century. Owing to their
unfamiliarity with the English language and the solidarity of their
instincts, the German settlers at first had little share in government.
But they devotedly played their part in the defense of the exposed
settlements and often bore the brunt of Indian attack. [8]
The bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionaries sent
out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of Count Zinzendorf
(1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), are mirrored in the
numerous diaries, written in German, happily preserved to posterity in
religious archives of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. These simple,
earnest crusaders, animated by pure and unselfish motives, would visit
on a single tour of a thousand miles the principal German settlements in
Maryland and Virginia (including the present West Virginia). Sometimes
they would make an extended circuit through North Carolina, South
Carolina, and even Georgia, everywhere bearing witness to the truth of
the gospel and seeking to carry the most elemental forms of the
Christian religion, preaching and prayer, to the primitive frontiersmen
marooned along the outer fringe of white settlements. These arduous
journeys in the cause of piety place this type of pioneer of the Old
Southwest in alleviating contrast to the often relentless and
bloodthirsty figure of the rude borderer.
Noteworthy among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journey of
Brothers Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmüller (October 12 to December
12, 1749). [9] At the last outpost of civilization, the scattered
settlements in Bath and Alleghany counties, these courageous
missionaries--feasting the while solely on bear meat, for there was no
bread--encountered conditions of almost primitive savagery, of which
they give this graphic picture: "Then we came to a house, where we had
to lie on bear skins around the fire like the rest.... The clothes of
the people consist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes, deer and
bear meat. A kind of white people are found here, who live like savages.
Hunting is their chief occupation." Into the valley of the Yadkin in
December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg and a party of Moravians,
accompanied by a surveyor and two guides, for the purpose of locating
the one hundred thousand acres of land which had been offered them on
easy terms the preceding year by Lord Granville. This journey was
remarkable as an illustration of sacrifices willingly made and extreme
hardships uncomplainingly endured for the sake of the Moravian
brotherhood. In the back country of North Carolina near the Mulberry
Fields they found the whole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in
hunting. A beautiful site for the projected settlement met their
delighted gaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that
it had already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's future father-in-law,
Morgan Bryan.
On October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by the Rev.
Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to trek down
to the new-found haven in the Carolina hinterland--"a corner which the
Lord has reserved for the Brethren"--in Anson County. [10] Following for
the most part the great highway extending from Philadelphia to the
Yadkin, over which passed the great throng sweeping into the back
country of North Carolina--through the Valley of Virginia and past
Robert Luhny's mill on the James River--they encountered many hardships
along the way. Because of their "long wagon," they had much difficulty
in crossing one steep mountain; and of this experience Brother Grube,
with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had told us that this
hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcely be able to cross it,
for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel this way, had to take the wheels
off his wagon and carry it piecemeal to the top, and had been three
months on the journey from the Shanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin
[Yadkin]."
These men were the highest type of the pioneers of the Old Southwest,
inspired with the instinct of home-makers in a land where, if idle rumor
were to be credited, "the people lived like wild men, never hearing of
God or His Word." In one hand they bore the implement of agriculture, in
the other the book of the gospel of Jesus Christ. True faith shines
forth in the simply eloquent words: "We thanked our Saviour that he had
so graciously led us hither, and had helped us through all the hard
places, for no matter how dangerous it looked, nor how little we saw how
we could win through, everything always went better than seemed
possible." The promise of a new day--the dawn of the heroic age--rings
out in the pious carol of camaraderie at their journey'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 hundred fighting men there
is now at least three thousand for the most part Irish Protestants and
Germans and dailey increasing.
--Matthew Rowan, President of the North Carolina Council, to the Board
of Trade, June 28, 1753.
The conquest of the West is usually attributed to the ready initiative,
the stern self-reliance, and the libertarian instinct of the expert
backwoodsmen. These bold, nomadic spirits were animated by an
unquenchable desire to plunge into the wilderness in search of an El
Dorado at the outer verge of civilization, free of taxation, quit-rents,
and the law's restraint. They longed to build homes for themselves and
their descendants in a limitless, free domain; or else to fare deeper
and deeper into the trackless forests in search of adventure. Yet one
must not overlook the fact that behind Boone and pioneers of his stamp
were men of conspicuous civil and military genius, constructive in
purpose and creative in imagination, who devoted their best gifts to
actual conquest and colonization. These men of large intellectual
mold--themselves surveyors, hunters, and pioneers--were inspired with
the larger vision of the expansionist. Whether colonizers, soldiers, or
speculators on the grand scale, they sought to open at one great stroke
the vast trans-Alleghany regions as a peaceful abode for mankind.
Two distinct classes of society were gradually drawing apart from each
other in North Carolina and later in Virginia--the pioneer democracy of
the back country and the upland, and the planter aristocracy of the
lowland and the tide-water region. From the frontier came the pioneer
explorers whose individual enterprise and initiative were such potent
factors in the exploitation of the wilderness. From the border counties
still in contact with the East came a number of leaders. Thus in the
heart of the Old Southwest the two determinative principles already
referred to, the inquisitive and the acquisitive instincts, found a
fortunate conjunction. The exploratory passion of the pioneer, directed
in the interest of commercial enterprise, prepared the way for the great
westward migration. The warlike disposition of the hardy backwoodsman,
controlled by the exercise of military strategy, accomplished the
conquest of the trans-Alleghany country.
Fleeing from the traditional bonds of caste and aristocracy in England
and Europe, from economic boycott and civil oppression, from religious
persecution and favoritism, many worthy members of society in the first
quarter of the eighteenth century sought a haven of refuge in the
"Quackerthal" of William Penn, with its trustworthy guarantees of free
tolerance in religious faith and the benefits of representative
self-government. From East Devonshire in England came George Boone, the
grandfather of the great pioneer, and from Wales came Edward Morgan,
whose daughter Sarah became the wife of Squire Boone, Daniel's father.
These were conspicuous representatives of the Society of Friends, drawn
thither by the roseate representations of the great Quaker, William
Penn, and by his advanced views on popular government and religious
toleration. [11] Hither, too, from Ireland, whither he had gone from
Denmark, came Morgan Bryan, settling in Chester County, prior to 1719;
and his children, William, Joseph, James, and Morgan, who more than half
a century later gave the name to Bryan's Station in Kentucky, were
destined to play important rôles in the drama of westward migration.
[12] In September, 1734, Michael Finley from County Armagh, Ireland,
presumably accompanied by his brother Archibald Finley, settled in Bucks
County, Pennsylvania. According to the best authorities, Archibald
Finley was the father of John Finley, or Findlay as he signed himself,
Boone's guide and companion in his exploration of Kentucky in 1769-71.
[13] To Pennsylvania also came Mordecai Lincoln, great-grandson of
Samuel Lincoln, who had emigrated from England to Hingham,
Massachusetts, as early as 1637. This Mordecai Lincoln, who in 1720
settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the great-great-grandfather of
President Lincoln, was the father of Sarah Lincoln, who was wedded to
William Boone, and of Abraham Lincoln, who married Anne Boone, William's
first cousin. Early settlers in Pennsylvania were members of the Hanks
family, one of whom was the maternal grandfather of President Lincoln.
[14]
No one race or breed of men can lay claim to exclusive credit for
leadership in the hinterland movement and the conquest of the West. Yet
one particular stock of people, the Ulster Scots, exhibited with most
completeness and picturesqueness a group of conspicuous qualities and
attitudes which we now recognize to be typical of the American character
as molded by the conditions of frontier life. Cautious, wary, and
reserved, these Scots concealed beneath a cool and calculating manner a
relentlessness in reasoning power and an intensity of conviction which
glowed and burned with almost fanatical ardor. Strict in religious
observance and deep in spiritual fervor, they never lost sight of the
main chance, combining a shrewd practicality with a wealth of devotion.
It has been happily said of them that they kept the Sabbath and
everything else they could lay their hands on. In the polity of these
men religion and education went hand in hand; and they habitually
settled together in communities in order that they might have teachers
and preachers of their own choice and persuasion.
In little-known letters and diaries of travelers and itinerant ministers
may be found many quaint descriptions and faithful characterizations of
the frontier settlers in their habits of life and of the scenes amidst
which they labored. In a letter to Edmund Fanning, the cultured Robin
Jones, agent of Lord Granville and Attorney-General of North Carolina,
summons to view a piquant image of the western border and borderers:
"The inhabitants are hospitable in their way, live in plenty and dirt,
are stout, of great prowess in manly athletics; and, in private
conversation, bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after the
Indian manner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and fruitful of
strategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid as the ancient
Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiors even in their own
way of fighting.... [The land] may be truly called the land of the
mountains, for they are so numerous that when you have reached the
summit of one of them, you may see thousands of every shape that the
imagination can suggest, seeming to vie with each other which should
raise his lofty head to touch the clouds.... It seems to me that nature
has been wanton in bestowing her blessings on that country." [15]
An excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditions in the
backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlers in the middle
of the century, exhibits in all their barren cheerlessness the hardships
and limitations of life in the wilderness. The father of William Few,
the narrator, had trekked down from Maryland and settled in Orange
County, some miles east of the little hamlet of Hillsborough. "In that
country at that time there were no schools, no churches or parsons, or
doctors or lawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns, nor do I recollect
during the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical, civil or
military, except a justice of the peace, a constable and two or three
itinerant preachers.... These people had few wants, and fewer
temptations to vice than those who lived in more refined society, though
ignorant. They were more virtuous and more happy.... A schoolmaster
appeared and offered his services to teach the children of the
neighborhood for twenty shillings each per year.... In that simple state
of society money was but little known; the schoolmaster was the welcome
guest of his pupil, fed at the bountiful table and clothed from the
domestic loom.... In that country at that time there was great scarcity
of books." [16]
The journals of itinerant ministers through the Valley of Virginia and
the Carolina piedmont zone yield precious mementoes of the people, their
longing after the things of the spirit, and their 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 remote places and preaching the gospel beneath the trees
of the forest. In his journal (1755-6), the Rev. Hugh McAden, born in
Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, a graduate of Nassau Hall
(1753), makes the unconsciously humorous observation that wherever he
found Presbyterians he found people who "seemed highly pleased, and very
desirous to hear the word"; whilst elsewhere he found either dissension
and defection to Baptist principles, or "no appearance of the life of
religion." In the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlements in what is now
Mecklenburg County, the cradle of American liberty, he found "pretty
serious, judicious people" of the stamp of Moses, William, and James
Alexander. While traveling in the upper country of South Carolina, he
relates with gusto the story of "an old gentleman who said to the
Governor of South Carolina, when he was in those parts, in treaty with
the Cherokee Indians that 'he had never seen a shirt, been in a fair,
heard a sermon, or seen a minister in all his life.' Upon which the
governor promised to send him up a minister, that he might hear one
sermon before he died." The minister came and preached; and this was all
the preaching that had been heard in the upper part of South Carolina
before Mr. McAden's visit. [17]
Such, then, were the rude and simple people in the back country of the
Old Southwest--the deliberate and self-controlled English, the
aggressive, land-mongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh, the thrifty
Germans, the debonair French, the impetuous Irish, and the calculating
Scotch. The lives they led were marked by independence of spirit,
democratic instincts, and a forthright simplicity. In describing the
condition of the English settlers in the backwoods of Virginia, one of
their number, Doddridge, says: "Most of the articles were of domestic
manufacture. There might have been incidentally a few things brought to
the country for sale in a primitive way, but there was no store for
general supply. The table furniture usually consisted of wooden vessels,
either turned or coopered. Iron forks, tin cups, etc., were articles of
rare and delicate luxury. The food was of the most wholesome and
primitive kind. The richest meat, the finest butter, and best meal that
ever delighted man's palate were here eaten with a relish which health
and labor only know. The hospitality of the people was profuse and
proverbial."
The circumstances of their lives compelled the pioneers to become
self-sustaining. Every immigrant was an adept at many trades. He built
his own house, forged his own tools, and made his own clothes. At a very
early date rifles were manufactured at the High Shoals of the Yadkin;
Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, was an expert gunsmith. The difficulty
of securing food for the settlements forced every man to become a hunter
and to scour the forest for wild game. Thus the pioneer, through force
of sheer necessity, became a dead shot--which stood him in good stead in
the days of Indian incursions and bloody retaliatory raids. Primitive in
their games, recreations, and amusements, which not infrequently
degenerated into contests of savage brutality, the pioneers always set
the highest premium upon personal bravery, physical prowess, and skill
in manly sports. At all public gatherings, general musters, "vendues" or
auctions, and even funerals, whisky flowed with extraordinary freedom.
It is worthy of record that among the effects of the Rev. Alexander
Craighead, the famous teacher and organizer of Presbyterianism in
Mecklenburg 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 the basis of the
American character. The single-handed and successful struggle with
nature in the tense solitude of the forest developed a spirit of
individualism, restive under control. On the other hand, the sense of
sharing with others the arduous tasks and dangers of conquering the
wilderness gave birth to a strong sense of solidarity and of human
sympathy. With the lure of free lands ever before them, the pioneers
developed a restlessness and a nervous energy, blended with a buoyancy
of spirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet this same untrammeled
freedom occasioned a disregard for law and a defiance of established
government which have exhibited themselves throughout 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 a certain fine idealism, genial human sympathy, and a high
romantic strain--are the traits of the American national type as it
emerged from the Old Southwest.
CHAPTER III.
The Back Country and the Border
Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful
climate, and richest soil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded
with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes; lofty mountains, transparent
streams, falls of water, rich valleys, and majestic woods; the whole
interspersed with an infinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute
the landscape surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are
generally robust; and live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want
and acquainted with but few vices. Their inexperience of the elegancies
of life precludes any regret that they possess not the means of enjoying
them, but they possess what many princes would give half their dominion
for, health, content, and tranquillity of mind.
--Andrew Burnaby: Travels Through North America.
The two streams of Ulstermen, the greater through Philadelphia, the
lesser through Charleston, which poured into the Carolinas toward the
middle of the century, quickly flooded the back country. The former
occupied the Yadkin Valley and the region to the westward, the latter
the Waxhaws and the Anson County region to the northwest. The first
settlers were known as the "Pennsylvania Irish," because they had first
settled in Pennsylvania after migrating from the north of Ireland; while
those who came by way of Charleston were known as the "Scotch-Irish."
The former, who had resided in Pennsylvania long enough to be good
judges of land, shrewdly made their settlements along the rivers and
creeks. The latter, new arrivals and less experienced, settled on
thinner land toward the heads of creeks and water courses. [18]
Shortly prior to 1735, Morgan Bryan, his wife Martha, and eight
children, together with other families of Quakers from Pennsylvania,
settled upon a large tract of land on the northwest side of the Opeckon
River near Winchester. [19] A few years later they removed up the
Virginia Valley to the Big Lick in the present Roanoke County, intent
upon pushing westward to the very outskirts of civilization. In the
autumn of 1748, leaving behind his brother William, who had followed him
to Roanoke County, Morgan Bryan removed with his family to the Forks of
the Yadkin River. [20] The Morgans, with the exception of Richard, who
emigrated to Virginia, remained in Pennsylvania, spreading over
Philadelphia and Bucks counties; while the Hanks and Lincoln families
found homes in Virginia--Mordecai Lincoln's son, John, the
great-grandfather of President Lincoln, removing from Berks to the
Shenandoah Valley in 1765. On May 1, 1750, Squire Boone, his wife Sarah
(Morgan), and their eleven children--a veritable caravan, traveling like
the patriarchs of old--started south; and tarried for a space, according
to reliable tradition, on Linville Creek in the Virginia Valley. In 1752
they removed to the Forks of the Yadkin, and the following year received
from Lord Granville three tracts of land, all situated in Rowan County.
[21] About the hamlet of Salisbury, which in 1755 consisted of seven or
eight log houses and the court house, there now rapidly gathered a
settlement of people marked by strong individuality, sturdy
independence, and virile self-reliance. The Boones and the Bryans
quickly accommodated themselves to frontier conditions and immediately
began to take an active part in the local affairs of the county. Upon
the organization of the county court Squire Boone was chosen justice of
the peace; and Morgan Bryan was soon appearing as foreman of juries and
director in road improvements.
The Great Trading Path, leading from Virginia to the towns of the
Catawbas and other Southern Indians, crossed the Yadkin at the Trading
Ford and passed a mile southeast of Salisbury. Above Sapona Town near
the Trading Ford was Swearing Creek, which, according to constant and
picturesque tradition, was the spot where the traders stopped to take a
solemn oath never to reveal any unlawful proceedings that might occur
during their sojourn among the Indians. [22] In his divertingly
satirical "History of the Dividing Line" William Byrd in 1728 thus
speaks of this locality: "The Soil is exceedingly rich on both sides the
Yadkin, abounding in rank Grass and prodigiously large Trees; and for
plenty of Fish, Fowl and Venison, is inferior to No Part of the Northern
Continent. There the Traders commonly lie Still for some days, to
recruit their Horses' Flesh as well as to recover their own spirits." In
this beautiful country happily chosen for settlement by Squire
Boone--who erected his cabin on the east side of the Yadkin about a mile
and a quarter from Alleman's, now Boone's, Ford--wild game abounded.
Buffaloes were encountered in eastern North Carolina by Byrd while
running the dividing line; and in the upper country of South Carolina
three or four men with their dogs could kill fourteen to twenty
buffaloes in a single day. [23] Deer and bears fell an easy prey to the
hunter; wild turkeys filled 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 the
veracious 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 come near) give us such
music of six different cornets the like of wh. I have never heard in my
life." [24] So plentiful was the game that the wild deer mingled with
the cattle grazing over the wide stretches of luxuriant grass.
In the midst of this sylvan paradise grew up Squire Boone's son, Daniel
Boone, a Pennsylvania youth of English stock, Quaker persuasion, and
Baptist proclivities. [25] Seen through a glorifying halo after the
lapse of a century and three quarters, he rises before us a romantic
figure, poised and resolute, simple, benign--as naïve and shy as some
wild thing of the primeval forest--five feet eight inches in height,
with broad chest and shoulders, dark locks, genial blue eyes arched with
fair eyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of slightly Roman cast,
and fair, ruddy countenance. Farming was irksome to this restless,
nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse would exchange the plow and
the grubbing-hoe for the long rifle and keen-edged hunting-knife. In a
single day during the autumn season he would kill four or five deer; or
as many bears as would make from two to three thousand pounds weight of
bear-bacon. Fascinated with the forest, he soon found profit as well as
pleasure in the pursuit of game; and at excellent fixed prices he sold
his peltries, most often at Salisbury, some thirteen miles away,
sometimes at the store of the old "Dutchman," George Hartman, on the
Yadkin, and occasionally at Bethabara, the Moravian town sixty-odd miles
distant. Skins were in such demand that they soon came to replace hard
money, which was incredibly scarce in the back country, as a medium of
exchange. Upon one occasion a caravan from Bethabara hauled three
thousand pounds, upon another four thousand pounds, of dressed deerskins
to Charleston. [26] So immense was this trade that the year after
Boone's arrival at the Forks of Yadkin thirty thousand deerskins were
exported from the province of North Carolina. We like to think that the
young Daniel Boone was one of that band of whom Brother Joseph, 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 without much work." [27]
In this very class of professional hunters, living like Indians, was
thus bred the spirit of individual initiative and strenuous leadership
in the great westward expansionist movement of the coming decade. An
English traveler gives the following minute picture of the dress and
accoutrement of the Carolina backwoodsman:
Their whole dress is very singular, and not very materially different
from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt, somewhat resembling a
waggoner's frock, ornamented with a great many fringes, tied round the
middle with a broad belt, much decorated also, in which is fastened a
tomahawk, an instrument that serves every purpose of defence and
convenience; being a hammer at one side and a sharp hatchet at the
other; the shot bag and powder-horn, carved with a variety of whimsical
figures and devices, hang from their necks over one shoulder; and on
their heads a flapped hat, of a reddish hue, proceeding from the
intensely 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 coarse
woollen cloth, that either are wrapped round loosely and tied with
garters, or laced upon the outside, and always come better than 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 as for gloves or
breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over the toe, and lacing from
thence round to the fore part of the middle of the ancle, without a seam
in them, yet fitting close to the feet, and are indeed perfectly easy
and pliant.
Their hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a variety of
colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wear them quite
white. [28]
No less unique and bizarre, though less picturesque, was the dress of
the women of the region--in particular of Surry County, North Carolina,
as described by General William Lenoir:
The women wore linsey [flax] petticoats and 'bed-gowns' [like a
dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had
bonnets and bed-gowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some
of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly clubbed. Once, at a
large meeting, I noticed there but two women that had on long gowns. One
of these was laced genteelly, and the body of the other was open, and
the tail thereof drawn up and tucked in her apron or coat-string. [29]
While Daniel Boone was quietly engaged in the pleasant pursuits of the
chase, a vast world-struggle of which he little dreamed was rapidly
approaching a crisis. For three quarters of a century this titanic
contest between France and England for the interior of the continent had
been waged with slowly accumulating force. The irrepressible conflict
had been formally inaugurated at Sault Ste. Marie in 1671, when Daumont
de Saint Lusson, swinging aloft his sword, proclaimed the sovereignty of
France over "all countries, rivers, lakes, and streams ... both those
which have been discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter,
in all their length and breadth, bounded on the one side by the seas of
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 in behalf of the English
crown, had crossed the Appalachian divide; and upon the banks of a
stream whose waters slipped into the Ohio to join the Mississippi and
the Gulf of Mexico, had carved the royal insignia upon the blazed trunk
of a giant of the forest, the while crying: "Long live Charles the
Second, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland
and Virginia and of the territories thereunto belonging."
La Salle's dream of a New France in the heart of America was blotted out
in his tragic death upon the banks of the River Trinity (1687). Yet his
mantle was to fall in turn upon the square shoulders of Le Moyne
d'Iberville and of his brother--the good, the constant Bienville, who
after countless and arduous struggles laid firm the foundations of New
Orleans. In the precious treasury of Margry we learn that on reaching
Rochelle after his first voyage in 1699 Iberville in these prophetic
words voices his faith: "If France does not immediately seize this part
of America which is the most beautiful, and establish a colony which is
strong enough to resist any which England may have, the English colonies
(already considerable in Carolina) will so thrive that in less than a
hundred years they will be strong enough to seize all America." [30] But
the world-weary Louis Quatorze, nearing his end, quickly tired of that
remote and unproductive colony upon the shores of the gulf, so
industriously described in Paris as a "terrestrial paradise"; and the
"paternal providence of Versailles" willingly yielded place to the
monumental speculation of the great financier Antoine Crozat. In this
Paris of prolific promotion and amazed credulity, ripe for the colossal
scheme of Law, soon to blow to bursting-point the bubble of the
Mississippi, the very songs in the street echoed flamboyant,
half-satiric panegyrics upon the new Utopia, this Mississippi Land 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. [31]
Interest in the new colony led to a great development of southwesterly
trade from New France. Already the French coureurs de bois were
following the water route from the Illinois to South Carolina. Jean
Couture, a deserter from the service in New France, journeyed over the
Ohio and Tennessee rivers to that colony, and was known as "the greatest
Trader and Traveller amongst the Indians for more than Twenty years." In
1714 young Charles Charleville accompanied an old trader from Crozat's
colony on the gulf to the great salt-springs on the Cumberland, where a
post for trading with the Shawanoes had already been established by the
French. [32] But the British were preparing to capture this trade as
early as 1694, when Tonti warned Villermont that Carolinians were
already established on a branch of the Ohio. Four years later,
Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, was urging trade with the Indians of
the interior in the effort to displace the French. At an early date the
coast colonies began to trade with the Indian tribes of the back
country: the Catawbas of the Yadkin Valley; the Cherokees, whose towns
were scattered through Tennessee; the Chickasaws, to the westward in
northern Mississippi; and the Choctaws farther to the southward. Even
before the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the South Carolina
settlements extended scarcely twenty miles from the coast, English
traders had established posts among the Indian tribes four hundred miles
to the west of Charleston. Following the sporadic trading of individuals
from Virginia with the inland Indians, the heavily laden caravans of
William Byrd were soon regularly passing along the Great Trading Path
from Virginia to the towns of the Catawbas and other interior tribes of
the Carolinas, delighting the easily captivated fancy and provoking the
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, Brass Rings and other
Trinkets." [33] In Pennsylvania, George Croghan, the guileful diplomat,
who was emissary from the Council to the Ohio Indians (1748), had
induced "all-most all the Ingans in the Woods" to declare against the
French; and was described by Christopher Gist as a "meer idol among his
countrymen, the Irish traders."
Against these advances of British trade and civilization, the French for
four decades had artfully struggled, projecting tours of exploration
into the vast medial valley of the continent and constructing a chain of
forts and trading-posts designed to establish their claims to the
country and to hold in check the threatened English thrust from the
east. Soon the wilderness ambassador of empire, Céloron de Bienville,
was despatched by the far-visioned Galissonière at Quebec to sow
broadcast with ceremonial pomp in the heart of America the seeds of
empire, grandiosely graven plates of lasting lead, in defiant yet futile
symbol of the asserted sovereignty of France. Thus threatened in the
vindication of the rights of their colonial sea-to-sea charters, the
English threw off the lethargy with which they had failed to protect
their traders, and in grants to the Ohio and Loyal land companies began
resolutely to form plans looking to the occupation of the interior. But
the French seized the English trading-house at Venango which they
converted into a fort; and Virginia's protest, conveyed by a calm and
judicious young man, a surveyor, George Washington, availed not to
prevent the French from seizing Captain Trent's hastily erected military
post at the forks of the Ohio and constructing there a formidable work,
named Fort Duquesne. Washington, with his expeditionary force sent to
garrison Captain Trent's fort, defeated Jumonville and his small force
near Great Meadows (May, 1754); but soon after he was forced to
surrender Fort Necessity to Coulon de Villiers.
The titanic struggle, fittingly precipitated in the backwoods of the Old
Southwest, was now on--a struggle in which the resolute pioneers of
these backwoods first seriously measured their strength with the French
and their copper-hued allies, and learned to surpass the latter in their
own mode of warfare. The portentous conflict, destined to assure the
eastern half of the continent to Great Britain, is a grim, prophetic
harbinger of the mighty movement of the next quarter of a century into
the twilight zone of the trans-Alleghany territory.
CHAPTER IV.
The Indian War
All met in companies with their wives and children, and set about
building little fortifications, to defend themselves from such barbarian
and inhuman enemies, whom they concluded would be let loose upon them at
pleasure.
--The Reverend Hugh McAden: Diary, July, 1755.
Long before the actual outbreak of hostilities powerful forces were
gradually converging to produce a clash between the aggressive colonials
and the crafty Indians. As the settlers pressed farther westward into
the domain of the red men, arrogantly grazing their stock over the
cherished hunting-grounds of the Cherokees, the savages, who were
already well disposed toward the French, began to manifest a deep
indignation against the British colonists because of this callous
encroachment upon their territory. During the sporadic forays by
scattered bands of Northern Indians upon the Catawbas and other tribes
friendly to the pioneers the isolated settlements at the back part of
the Carolinas suffered rude and sanguinary onslaughts. In the summer of
1753 a party of northern Indians warring in the French interest made
their appearance in Rowan County, which had just been organized, and
committed various depredations upon the scattered settlements. To repel
these attacks a band of the Catawbas sallied forth, encountered a
detached party of the enemy, and slew five of their number. Among the
spoils, significantly enough, were silver crucifixes, beads,
looking-glasses, tomahawks and other implements of war, all of French
manufacture. [34]
Intense rivalry for the good will of the near-by southern tribes existed
between Virginia and South Carolina. In strong remonstrance against the
alleged attempt of Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia to alienate the
Cherokees, Catawbas, Muscogees, and Chickasaws from South Carolina and
to attach them to Virginia, Governor Glen of South Carolina made pungent
observations to Dinwiddie: "South Carolina is a weak frontier colony,
and in case of invasion by the French would be their first object of
attack. We have not much to fear, however, while we retain the affection
of the Indians around us; but should we forfeit that by any
mismanagement on our part, or by the superior address of the French, we
are in a miserable situation. The Cherokees alone have several thousand
gunmen well acquainted with every inch of the province ... their country
is the key to Carolina." By a treaty concluded at Saluda (November 24,
1753), Glen promised to build the Cherokees a fort near the lower towns,
for the protection of themselves and their allies; and the Cherokees on
their part agreed to become the subjects of the King of Great Britain
and hold their lands under him. [35] This fort, erected this same year
on the headwaters of the Savannah, within gunshot distance of the
important Indian town of Keowee, was named Fort Prince George. "It is a
square," says the founder of the fort (Governor Glen to the Board of
Trade, August 26, 1754), "with regular Bastions and four Ravelins it is
near Two hundred foot from Salient Angle to Salient Angle and is made of
Earth taken out of the Ditch, secured with fachines and well rammed with
a banquet on the Inside for the men to stand upon when they fire over,
the Ravelins are made of Posts of Lightwood which is very durable, they
are ten foot in length sharp pointed three foot and a half in the
ground." [36] The dire need for such a fort in the back country was
tragically illustrated by the sudden onslaught upon the "House of John
Gutry & James Anshers" in York County by a party of sixty French Indians
(December 16, 1754), who brutally murdered sixteen of the twenty-one
persons present, and carried off as captives the remaining five. [37]
At the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 North Carolina
voted twelve thousand pounds for the raising of troops and several
thousand pounds additional for the construction of forts--a sum
considerably larger than that voted by Virginia. A regiment of two
hundred and fifty men was placed under the command of Colonel James
Innes of the Cape Fear section; and the ablest officer under him was the
young Irishman from the same section, Lieutenant Hugh Waddell. On June
3, 1754, Dinwiddie appointed Innes, his close friend, commander-in-chief
of all the forces against the French; and immediately after the disaster
at Great Meadows (July, 1754), Innes took command. Within two months the
supplies for the North Carolina troops were exhausted; and as Virginia
then failed to furnish additional supplies, Colonel Innes had no
recourse but to disband his troops and permit them to return home.
Appointed governor of Fort Cumberland by General Braddock, he was in
command there while Braddock advanced on his disastrous march.
The lesson of Braddock's defeat (July 9, 1755) was memorable in the
history of the Old Southwest. Well might Braddock exclaim with his last
breath: "Who would have thought it? ... We shall know better how to deal
with them another time." Led on by the reckless and fiery Beaujeu,
wearing an Indian gorget about his neck, the savages from the protection
of trees and rough defenses, a prepared ambuscade, poured a galling fire
into the compact divisions of the English, whose scarlet coats furnished
ideal targets. The obstinacy of the British commanders in refusing to
permit their troops to fight Indian fashion was suicidal; for as Herman
Alrichs wrote Governor Morris of Pennsylvania (July 22, 1755): "... the
French and Indians had cast an Intrenchment across the road before our
Army which they Discovered not Untill the [y] came Close up to it, from
thence and both sides of the road the enemy kept a constant fireing on
them, our Army being so confused, they could not fight, and they would
not be admitted by the Genl or Sir John St. Clair, to break thro' their
Ranks and Take behind trees." [38] Daniel Boone, who went from North
Carolina as a wagoner in the company commanded by Edward Brice Dobbs,
was on the battle-field; but Dobbs's company at the time was scouting in
the woods. When the fierce attack fell upon the baggage train, Boone
succeeded in effecting his escape only by cutting the traces of his team
and fleeing on one of the horses. To his dying day Boone continued to
censure Braddock's conduct, and reprehended especially his fatal neglect
to employ strong flank-guards and a sufficient number of Provincial
scouts thoroughly acquainted with the wilderness and all the wiles and
strategies of savage warfare.
For a number of months following Braddock's defeat there was a great
rush of the frightened people southward. In a letter to Dinwiddie,
Washington expresses the apprehension that Augusta, Frederick, and
Hampshire County will soon be depopulated, as the whole back country is
in motion toward the southern colonies. During this same summer Governor
Arthur Dobbs of North Carolina made a tour of exploration through the
western part of the colony, seeking a site for a fort to guard the
frontier. [39] The frontier company of fifty men which was to garrison
the projected fort was placed under the command of Hugh Waddell, now
promoted to the rank of captain, though only twenty-one years old. In
addition to Waddell's company, armed patrols were required for the
protection of the Rowan County frontier; and during the summer Indian
alarms were frequent at the Moravian village of Bethabara, whose
inhabitants had heard with distress on March 31st of the slaughter of
eleven Moravians on the Mahoni and of the ruin of Gnadenhütten. Many of
the settlers in the outlying districts of Rowan fled for safety to the
refuge of the little village; and frequently every available house,
every place of temporary abode was filled with panic-stricken refugees.
So persistent were the depredations of the Indians and so alarmed were
the scattered Rowan settlers by the news of the murders and the
destruction of Vaux's Fort in Virginia (June 25, 1756) that at a
conference on July 5th the Moravians "decided to protect our houses with
palisades, and make them safe before the enemy should invade our tract
or attack us, for if the people were all going to retreat we would be
the last left on the frontier and the first point of attack." By July
23d, they had constructed a strong defense for their settlement,
afterward called the "Dutch Fort" by the Indians. The principal
structure was a stockade, triangular in plan, some three hundred feet on
a side, enclosing the principal buildings of the settlement; and the
gateway was guarded by an observation tower. The other defense was a
stockade embracing eight houses at the mill some distance away, around
which a small settlement had sprung up. [40]
During the same year the fort planned by Dobbs was erected upon the site
he had chosen--between Third and Fourth creeks; and the commissioners
Richard Caswell and Francis Brown, sent out to inspect the fort, made
the following picturesque report to the Assembly (December 21, 1756):
That they had likewise viewed the State of Fort Dobbs, and found it to
be a good and Substantial Building of the Dimentions following (that is
to say) The Oblong Square fifty three feet by forty, the opposite Angles
Twenty four feet and Twenty-Two In Height Twenty four and a half feet as
by the Plan annexed Appears, The Thickness of the Walls which are made
of Oak Logs regularly Diminished from sixteen Inches to Six, it contains
three floors and there may be discharged from each floor at one and the
same time about one hundred Musketts the same is beautifully scituated
in the fork of Fourth Creek a Branch of the Yadkin River. And that they
also found under Command of Capt Hugh Waddel Forty six Effective men
Officers and Soldiers ... the said Officers and Soldiers Appearing well
and in good Spirits. [41]
As to the erection of a fort on the Tennessee, promised the Cherokees by
South Carolina, difficulties between the governor of that province and
of Virginia in regard to matters of policy and the proportionate share
of expenses made effective coöperation between the two colonies
well-nigh impossible. Glen, as we have seen, had resented Dinwiddie's
efforts to win the South Carolina Indians over to Virginia's interest.
And Dinwiddie had been very indignant when the force promised him by the
Indians to aid General Braddock did not arrive, attributing this
defection in part to Glen's negotiations for a meeting with the
chieftains and in part to the influence of the South Carolina traders,
who kept the Indians away by hiring them to go on long hunts for furs
and skins. But there was no such contention between Virginia and North
Carolina. Dinwiddie and Dobbs arranged (November 6, 1755) to send a
commission from these colonies to treat with the Cherokees and the
Catawbas. Virginia sent two commissioners, Colonel William Byrd, third
of that name, and Colonel Peter Randolph; while North Carolina sent one,
Captain Hugh Waddell. Salisbury, North Carolina, was the place of
rendezvous. The treaty with the Catawbas was made at the Catawba Town,
presumably the village opposite the mouth of Sugaw Creek, in York
County, South Carolina, on February 20-21, 1756; that with the Cherokees
on Broad River, North Carolina, March 13-17. As a result of the
negotiations and after the receipt of a present of goods, the Catawbas
agreed to send forty warriors to aid Virginia within forty days; and the
Cherokees, in return for presents and Virginia's promise to contribute
her proportion toward the erection of a strong fort, undertook to send
four hundred warriors within forty days, "as soon as the said fort shall
be built." Virginia and North Carolina thus wisely coöperated to
"straighten the path" and "brighten the chain" between the white and the
red men, in important treaties which have largely escaped the attention
of historians. [42]
On May 25, 1756, a conference was held at Salisbury between King Heygler
and warriors of the Catawba nation on the one side and Chief Justice
Henley, doubtless attended by Captain Waddell and his frontier company,
on the other. King Heygler, following the lead set by the Cherokees,
petitioned the Governor of North Carolina to send the Catawbas some
ammunition and to "build us a fort for securing our old men, women and
children when we turn out to fight the Enemy on their coming." The chief
justice assured the King that the Catawbas would receive a necessary
supply of ammunition (one hundred pounds of gunpowder and four hundred
pounds of lead were later sent them) and promised to urge with the
governor their request to have a fort built as soon as possible. Pathos
not unmixed with dry humor tinges the eloquent appeal of good old King
Heygler, ever the loyal friend of the whites, at this conference:
I desire a stop may be put to the selling of strong Liquors by the White
people to my people especially near the Indian nation. If the White
people make strong drink, let them sell it to one another, or drink it
in their own families. This will avoid a great deal of mischief which
otherwise will happen from my people getting drunk and quarrelling with
the White people. I have no strong prisons like you to confine them for
it. Our only way is to put them under ground and all these (pointing
proudly to his Warriors) will be ready to do that to those who shall
deserve it. [43]
In response to this request, the sum of four thousand pounds was
appropriated by the North Carolina Assembly for the erection of "a Fort
on our western frontier to protect and secure the Catawbas" and for the
support of two companies of fifty men each to garrison this and another
fort building on the sea coast. The commissioners appointed for the
purpose recommended (December 21, 1756) a site for the fort "near the
Catawba nation"; and on January 20, 1757, Governor Dobbs reported: "We
are now building a Fort in the midst of their towns at their own
Request." The fort thereupon begun must have stood near the mouth of the
South Fork of the Catawba River, as Dobbs says it was in the "midst" of
their towns, which are situated a "few miles north and south of 38°" and
might properly be included within a circle of thirty miles radius. [44]
During the succeeding months many depredations were committed by the
Indians upon the exposed and scattered settlements. Had it not been for
the protection afforded by all these forts, by the militia companies
under Alexander Osborne of Rowan and Nathaniel Alexander of Anson, and
by a special company of patrollers under Green and Moore, the back
settlers who had been so outrageously "pilfered" by the Indians would
have "retired from the Frontier into the inner settlements." [45]
CHAPTER V.
In Defense of Civilization
We give thanks and praise for the safety and peace vouchsafed us by our
Heavenly Father in these times of war. Many of our neighbors, driven
hither and yon like deer before wild beasts, came to us for shelter, yet
the accustomed order of our congregation life was not disturbed, no, not
even by the more than 150 Indians who at sundry times passed by,
stopping for a day 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 engagements conjointly made by
the two colonies with the Cherokees and the Catawbas in the spring and
summer of 1756. Enlisting sixty men, "most of them Artificers, with
Tools and Provisions," Major Andrew Lewis proceeded in the late spring
to Echota in the Cherokee country. Here during the hot summer months
they erected the Virginia Fort on the path from Virginia, upon the
northern bank of the Little Tennessee, nearly opposite the Indian town
of Echota and about twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville. [46] While
the fort was in process of construction, the Cherokees were incessantly
tampered with by emissaries from the Nuntewees and the Savannahs in the
French interest, and from the French themselves at the Alibamu Fort. So
effective were these machinations, supported by extravagant promises and
doubtless rich bribes, that the Cherokees soon were outspokenly
expressing their desire for a French fort at Great Tellico.
Dinwiddie welcomed the departure from America of Governor Glen of South
Carolina, who in his opinion had always acted contrary to the king's
interest. From the new governor, William Henry Lyttelton, who arrived in
Charleston on June 1, 1756, he hoped to secure effective coöperation in
dealing with the Cherokees and the Catawbas. This hope was based upon
Lyttelton's recognition, as stated in Dinwiddie's words, of the
"Necessity of strict Union between the whole Colonies, with't any of
them considering their particular Interest separate from the general
Good of the whole." After constructing the fort "with't the least
assistance from South Carolina," Major Lewis happened by accident upon a
grand council being held in Echota in September. At that time he
discovered to his great alarm that the machinations of the French had
already produced the greatest imaginable change in the sentiment of the
Cherokees. Captain Raymond Demere of the Provincials, with two hundred
English troops, had arrived to garrison the fort; but the head men of
all the Upper Towns were secretly influenced to agree to write a letter
to Captain Demere, ordering him to return immediately to Charleston with
all the troops under his command. At the grand council,
Atta-kulla-kulla, the great Cherokee chieftain, passionately declared to
the head men, who listened approvingly, that "as to the few soldiers of
Captain Demere that was there, he would take their Guns, and give them
to his young men to hunt with and as to their clothes they would soon be
worn out and their skins would be tanned, and be of the same colour as
theirs, and that they should live among them as slaves." With impressive
dignity Major Lewis rose and earnestly pleaded for the observance of the
terms of the treaty solemnly negotiated the preceding March. In
response, the crafty and treacherous chieftains desired Lewis to tell
the Governor of Virginia that "they had taken up the Hatchet against all
Nations that were Enemies to the English"; but Lewis, an astute student
of Indian Psychology, rightly surmised that all their glib professions
of friendship and assistance were "only to put a gloss on their
knavery." [47] So it proved; for instead of the four hundred warriors
promised under the treaty for service in Virginia, the Cherokees sent
only seven warriors, accompanied by three women. Although the Cherokees
petitioned Virginia for a number of men to garrison the Virginia fort,
Dinwiddie postponed sending the fifty men provided for by the Virginia
Assembly until he could reassure himself in regard to the "Behaviour and
Intention" of the treacherous Indian allies. This proved to be a prudent
decision; for not long after its erection the Virginia fort was
destroyed by the Indians.
Whether on account of the dissatisfaction expressed by the Cherokees
over the erection of the Virginia fort or because of a recognition of
the mistaken policy of garrisoning a work erected by Virginia with
troops sent from Charleston, South Carolina immediately proceeded to
build another stronghold on the southern bank of the Tennessee at the
mouth of Tellico River, some seven miles from the site of the Virginia
fort; and here were posted twelve great guns, brought thither at immense
labor through the wilderness. [48] To this fort, named Fort Loudoun in
honor of Lord Loudoun, then commander-in-chief of all the English forces
in America, the Indians allured artisans by donations of land; and
during the next three or four years a little settlement sprang up there.
The frontiers of Virginia suffered most from the incursions of hostile
Indians during the fourteen months following May 1, 1755. In July, the
Rev. Hugh McAden records that he preached in Virginia on a day set apart
for fasting and prayer "on account of the wars and many murders,
committed by the savage Indians on the back inhabitants." On July 30th a
large party of Shawano Indians fell 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.
[49] The following summer (June 25, 1756), Fort Vaux on the headwaters
of the Roanoke, under the command of Captain John Smith, was captured by
about one hundred French and Indians, who burnt the fort, killed John
Smith junior, John Robinson, John Tracey and John Ingles, wounded four
men, and captured twenty-two men, women, and children. Among the
captured was the famous Mrs. Mary Ingles, whose husband, John Ingles,
was killed; but after being "carried away into Captivity, amongst whom
she was barbarously treated," according to her own statement, she
finally escaped and returned to Virginia. [50] The frontier continued to
be infested by marauding bands of French and Indians; and Dinwiddie
gloomily confessed to Dobbs (July 22d): "I apprehend that we shall
always be harrass'd with fly'g Parties of these Banditti unless we form
an Expedit'n ag'st them, to attack 'em in y'r Towns." [51] Such an
expedition, known as the Sandy River Expedition, had been sent out in
February to avenge the massacre of the New River settlers; but the
enterprise engaged in by about four hundred Virginians and Cherokees
under Major Andrew Lewis and Captain Richard Pearis, proved a disastrous
failure. Not a single Indian was seen; and the party suffered
extraordinary hardships and narrowly escaped starvation. [52]
In conformity with his treaty obligations with the Catawbas, Governor
Dobbs commissioned Captain Hugh Waddell to erect the fort promised the
Catawbas at the spot chosen by the commissioners near the mouth of the
South Fork of the Catawba River. This fort, for which four thousand
pounds had been appropriated, was for the most part completed by
midsummer, 1757. But owing, it appears, both to the machinations of the
French and to the intermeddling of the South Carolina traders, who
desired to 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 of construction and
that no fort be built except by South Carolina. Accordingly, Governor
Dobbs ordered Captain Waddell to discharge the workmen (August 11,
1757); [53] and every effort was made for many months thereafter to
conciliate the Catawbas, erstwhile friends of North Carolina. The
Catawba fort erected by North Carolina was never 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, built for them a fort [54] at the mouth of Line
Creek on the east bank of the Catawba River.
In the spring and summer of 1757 the long-expected Indian allies arrived
in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May--Cherokees, Catawbas,
Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was wholly unable to use them
effectively; and in order to provide amusement for them, he directed
that they should go "a scalping" with the whites--"a barbarous method of
war," frankly acknowledged the governor, "introduced by the French,
which we are oblidged to follow in our own defense." Most of the Indian
allies discontentedly returned home before the end of the year, but the
remainder waited until the next year, to take part in the campaign
against Fort Duquesne. Three North Carolina companies, composed of
trained soldiers and hardy frontiersmen, went through this 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 this arduous service, being fertile in
expedient and skilful in the employment of Indian tactics. With true
provincial pride Governor Dobbs records that Waddell "had great honor
done him, being employed in all reconnoitring parties, and dressed and
acted as an Indian; and his sergeant, Rogers, took the only Indian
prisoner, who gave Mr. Forbes certain intelligence of the forces in Fort
Duquesne, upon which they resolved to proceed." This apparently trivial
incident is remarkable, in that it proved to be the decisive factor in a
campaign that was about to be abandoned. The information in regard to
the state of the garrison at Fort Duquesne, secured from the Indian, for
the capture of whom two leading officers had offered a reward of two
hundred and fifty pounds, emboldened Forbes to advance rather than to
retire. Upon reaching the fort (November 25th), he found it abandoned by
the enemy. Sergeant Rogers never received the reward promised by General
Forbes and the other English officer; but some time afterward he was
compensated by a modest sum from the colony of North Carolina. [55]
A series of unfortunate occurrences, chiefly the fault of the whites,
soon resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indian outbreak. A
party of Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758, seized some stray
horses on the frontier of Virginia--never dreaming of any wrong, says an
old historian, as they saw it frequently done by the whites. The owners
of the horses, hastily forming a party, went in pursuit of the Indians
and killed twelve or fourteen of the number. The relatives of the slain
Indians, greatly incensed, vowed vengeance upon the whites. [56] Nor was
the tactless conduct of Forbes calculated to quiet this resentment; for
when Atta-kulla-kulla and nine other chieftains deserted in disgust at
the treatment accorded them, they were pursued by Forbes's orders,
apprehended and disarmed. [57] This rude treatment, coupled with the
brutal and wanton murder of some Cherokee hunters a little earlier, by
an irresponsible band of Virginians under Captain Robert Wade, still
further aggravated the Indians. [58]
Incited by the French, who had fled to the southward after the fall of
Fort Duquesne, parties of bloodthirsty young Indians rushed down upon
the settlements and left in their path death and desolation along the
frontiers of the Carolinas. [59] On the upper branch of the Yadkin and
below the South Yadkin near Fort Dobbs twenty-two whites fell in swift
succession before the secret onslaughts of the savages from the lower
Cherokee towns. [60] Many of the settlers along the Yadkin fled to the
Carolina Fort at Bethabara and the stockade at the mill; and the sheriff
of Rowan County suffered siege by the Cherokees, in his home, until
rescued by a detachment under Brother Loesch from Bethabara. While many
families took refuge in Fort Dobbs, frontiersmen under Captain Morgan
Bryan ranged through the mountains to the west of Salisbury and guarded
the settlements from the hostile incursions of the savages. So gravely
alarmed were the Rowan settlers, compelled by the Indians to desert
their planting and crops, that Colonel Harris was despatched post-haste
for aid to Cape Fear, arriving there on July 1st. With strenuous energy
Captain Waddell, then stationed in the east, rushed two companies of
thirty men each to the rescue, sending by water-carriage six swivel guns
and ammunition on before him; and these reinforcements brought relief at
last to the harassed Rowan frontiers. [61] During the remainder of the
year, the borders were kept clear by bold and tireless rangers--under
the leadership of expert Indian fighters of the stamp of Griffith
Rutherford and Morgan Bryan.
When the Cherokee warriors who had wrought havoc along the North
Carolina border in April arrived at their town of Settiquo, they proudly
displayed the twenty-two scalps of the slain Rowan settlers. Upon the
demand for these scalps by Captain Demere at Fort Loudon and under
direction of Atta-kulla-kulla, the Settiquo warriors surrendered eleven
of the scalps to Captain Demere who, according to custom in time of
peace, buried them. New murders on Pacolet and along the Virginia Path,
which occurred shortly afterward, caused gloomy forebodings; and it was
plain, says a contemporary gazette, that "the lower Cherokees were not
satisfied with the murder of the Rowan settlers, but intended further
mischief." [62] On October 1st and again on October 31st, Governor Dobbs
received urgent requests from Governor Lyttelton, asking that the North
Carolina provincials and militia coöperate to bring him assistance.
Although there was no law requiring the troops to march out of the
province and the exposed frontiers of North Carolina sorely needed
protection, Waddell, now commissioned colonel, assembled a force of five
small companies and marched to the aid of Governor Lyttelton. But early
in January, 1760, while on the march, Waddell received a letter from
Lyttelton, informing him that the assistance was not needed and that a
treaty of peace had been negotiated with the Cherokees. [63]
CHAPTER VI.
Crushing the Cherokees
Thus ended the Cherokee war, which was among the last humbling strokes
given to the expiring power of France in North America.
--Hewatt: An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies
of South Carolina and Georgia. 1779.
Governor Lyttelton's treaty of "peace," negotiated with the Cherokees at
the close of 1759, was worse than a crime: it was a crass and hideous
blunder. His domineering attitude and tyrannical treatment of these
Indians had aroused the bitterest animosity. Yet he did not realize that
it was no longer safe to trust their word. No sooner did the governor
withdraw his army from the borders than the cunning Cherokees, whose
passions had been inflamed by what may fairly be called the treacherous
conduct of Lyttelton, rushed down with merciless ferocity upon the
innocent and defenseless families on the frontier. On February 1, 1760,
while a large party (including the family of Patrick Calhoun), numbering
in all about one hundred and fifty persons, were removing from the Long
Cane settlement to Augusta, they were suddenly attacked by a hundred
mounted Cherokees, who slaughtered about fifty of them. After the
massacre, many of the children were found helplessly wandering in the
woods. One man alone carried to Augusta no less than nine of the pitiful
innocents, some horribly mutilated with the tomahawk, others scalped,
and all yet alive.
Atrocities defying description continued to be committed, and many
people were slain. The Cherokees, under the leadership of Si-lou-ee, or
the Young Warrior of Estatoe, the Round O, Tiftoe, and others, were
baffled in their persistent efforts to capture Fort Prince George. On
February 16th the crafty Oconostota appeared before the fort and under
the pretext of desiring some white man to accompany him on a visit to
the governor on urgent business, lured the commander, Lieutenant
Coytomore, and two attendants to a conference outside the gates. At a
preconceived signal a volley of shots rang out; the two attendants were
wounded, and Lieutenant Coytomore, riddled with bullets, fell dead.
Enraged by this act of treachery, the garrison put to death the Indian
hostages within. During the abortive attack upon the fort, Oconostota,
unaware of the murder of the hostages, was heard shouting above the din
of battle: "Fight strong, and you shall be relieved." [64]
Now began the dark days along the Rowan border, which were so sorely to
test human endurance. Many refugees fortified themselves in the
different stockades; and Colonel Hugh Waddell with his redoubtable
frontier company of Indian-fighters awaited the onslaught of the
savages, who were reported to have passed through the mountain defiles
and to be approaching along the foot-hills. The story of the investment
of Fort Dobbs and the splendidly daring sortie of Waddell and Bailey is
best told in Waddell's report to Governor Dobbs (February 29, 1760):
For several Days I observed a small party of Indians were constantly
about the fort, I sent out several parties after them to no purpose, the
Evening before last between 8 & 9 o'clock I found by the Dogs making an
uncommon Noise there must be a party nigh a Spring which we sometimes
use. As my Garrison is but small, and I was apprehensive it might be a
scheme to draw out the Garrison, I took our Capt. Bailie who with myself
and party made up ten: We had not marched 300 yds. from the fort when we
were attacked by at least 60 or 70 Indians. I had given my party Orders
not to fire until I gave the word, which they punctually observed: We
recd the Indians' fire: When I perceived they had almost all fired, I
ordered my party to fire which We did not further than 12 steps each
loaded with a Bullet and 7 Buck Shot, they had nothing to cover them as
they were advancing either to tomahawk us or make us Prisoners: They
found the fire very hot from so small a Number which a good deal
confused them: I then ordered my party to retreat, as I found the
Instant our skirmish began another party had attacked the fort, upon our
reinforcing the garrison the Indians were soon repulsed with I am sure a
considerable Loss, from what I myself saw as well as those I can confide
in they cou'd not have less than 10 or 12 killed and wounded; The next
Morning we found a great deal of Blood and one dead whom I suppose they
cou'd not find in the night. On my side I had 2 Men wounded one of whom
I am afraid will die as he is scalped, the other is in way of Recovery,
and one boy killed near the fort whom they durst not advance to scalp. I
expected they would have paid me another visit last night, as they
attack all Fortifications by Night, but find they did not like their
Reception. [65]
Alarmed by Waddell's "offensive-defensive," the Indians abandoned the
siege. Robert Campbell, Waddell's ranger, who was scalped in this
engagement, subsequently recovered from his wounds and was recompensed
by the colony with the sum of twenty pounds. [66]
In addition to the frontier militia, four independent companies were now
placed under Waddell's command. Companies of volunteers scoured the
woods in search of the lurking Indian foe. These rangers, who were clad
in hunting-shirts and buckskin leggings, and who employed Indian tactics
in fighting, were captained by such hardy leaders as the veteran Morgan
Bryan, the intrepid Griffith Rutherford, the German partisan, Martin
Phifer (Pfeiffer), and Anthony Hampton, the father of General Wade
Hampton. They visited periodically a chain of "forest castles" erected
by the settlers--extending all the way from Fort Dobbs and the Moravian
fortifications in the Wachau to Samuel Stalnaker's stockade on the
Middle Fork of the Holston in Virginia. About the middle of March,
thirty volunteer Rowan County rangers encountered a band of forty
Cherokees, who fortified themselves in a deserted house near the Catawba
River. The famous scout and hunter, John Perkins, assisted by one of his
bolder companions, crept up to the house and flung lighted torches upon
the roof. One of the Indians, as the smoke became suffocating and the
flames burned hotter, exclaimed: "Better for one to die bravely than for
all to perish miserably in the flames," and darting forth, dashed
rapidly hither and thither, in order to draw as many shots as possible.
This act of superb self-sacrifice was successful; and while the rifles
of the whites, who riddled the brave Indian with balls, were empty, the
other savages made a wild dash for liberty. Seven fell thus under the
deadly rain of bullets; but many escaped. Ten of the Indians, all told,
lost their scalps, for which the volunteer rangers were subsequently
paid one hundred pounds by the colony of North Carolina. [67]
Beaten back from Fort Dobbs, sorely defeated along the Catawba, hotly
pursued by the rangers, the Cherokees continued to lurk in the shadows
of the dense forests, and at every opportunity to fall suddenly upon
wayfaring settlers and isolated cabins remote from any stronghold. On
March 8th William Fish, his son, and Thompson, a companion, were riding
along the "trace," in search of provisions for a group of families
fortified on the Yadkin, when a flight of arrows hurtled from the
cane-brake, and Fish and his son fell dead. Although pierced with two
arrows, one in the hip and one clean through his body, Thompson escaped
upon his fleet horse; and after a night of ghastly suffering finally
reached the Carolina Fort at Bethabara. The good Dr. Bonn, by skilfully
extracting the barbed shafts from his body, saved Thompson's life. The
pious Moravians rejoiced over the recovery of the brave messenger, whose
sensational arrival gave them timely warning of the close proximity of
the Indians. While feeding their cattle, settlers were shot from ambush
by the lurking foe; and on March 11th, a family barricaded within a
burning house, which they were defending with desperate courage, were
rescued in the nick of time by the militia. No episode from Fenimore
Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales surpasses in melancholy interest Harry
Hicks's heroic defense of his little fort on Bean Island Creek.
Surrounded by the Indians, Hicks and his family took refuge within the
small outer palisade around his humble home. Fighting desperately
against terrific odds, he was finally driven from his yard into his log
cabin, which he continued to defend with dauntless courage. With every
shot he tried to send a redskin to the happy hunting-grounds; and it was
only after his powder was exhausted that he fell, fighting to the last,
beneath the deadly tomahawk. So impressed were the Indians by his
bravery that they spared the life of his wife and his little son; and
these were afterward rescued by Waddell when he marched to the Cherokee
towns in 1761. [68]
The kindly Moravians had always entertained with generous hospitality
the roving bands of Cherokees, who accordingly held them in much esteem
and spoke of Bethabara as "the Dutch Fort, where there are good people
and much bread." But now, in these dread days, the truth of their daily
text was brought forcibly home to the Moravians: "Neither Nehemiah nor
his brethren put off their clothes, but prayed as they watched." With
Bible in one hand and rifle in the other, the inhabitant of Wachovia
sternly marched to religious worship. No Puritan of bleak New England
ever showed more resolute courage or greater will to defend the hard-won
outpost of civilization than did the pious Moravian of the Wachau. At
the new settlement of Bethania on Easter Day, more than four hundred
souls, including sixty rangers, listened devoutly to the eloquent sermon
of Bishop Spangenberg concerning the way of salvation--the while their
arms, stacked without the Gemein Haus, were guarded by the watchful
sentinel. On March 14th the watchmen at Bethania with well-aimed shots
repelled the Indians, whose hideous yells of baffled rage sounded down
the wind like "the howling of a hundred wolves." Religion was no
protection against the savages; for three ministers journeying to the
present site of Salem were set upon by the red men--one escaping,
another suffering capture, and the third, a Baptist, losing his life. A
little later word came to Fort Dobbs that John Long and Robert Gillespie
of Salisbury had been shot from ambush and scalped--Long having been
pierced with eight bullets and Gillespie with seven. [69]
There is one beautiful incident recorded by the Moravians, which has a
truly symbolic significance. While the war was at its height, a strong
party of Cherokees, who had lost their chief, planned in retaliation to
attack Bethabara. "When they went home," sets forth the Moravian Diary,
"they said they had been to a great town, where there were a great many
people, where the bells rang often, and during the night, time after
time, a horn was blown, so that they feared to attack the town and had
taken no prisoners." The trumpet of the watchman, announcing the passing
of the hour, had convinced the Indians that their plans for attack were
discovered; and the regular evening bell, summoning the pious to prayer,
rang in the stricken ears of the red men like the clamant call to arms.
Following the retirement from office of Governor Lyttelton,
Lieutenant-Governor Bull proceeded to prosecute the war with vigor. On
April 1, 1760, twelve hundred men under Colonel Archibald Montgomerie
arrived at Charleston, with instructions to strike an immediate blow and
to relieve Fort Loudon, then invested by the Cherokees. With his own
force, two hundred and ninety-five South Carolina Rangers, forty picked
men of the new "levies," and "a good number of guides," Montgomerie
moved from Fort Ninety-Six on May 28th. On the first of June, crossing
Twelve-Mile River, Montgomerie began the campaign in earnest,
devastating and burning every Indian village in the Valley of Keowee,
killing and capturing more than a hundred of the Cherokees, and
destroying immense stores of corn. Receiving no reply to his summons to
the Cherokees of the Middle and Upper Towns to make peace or suffer like
treatment, Montgomerie took up his march from Fort Prince George on June
24th, resolved to carry out his threat. On the morning of the 27th, he
was drawn into an ambuscade within six miles of Et-chow-ee, eight miles
south of the present Franklin, North Carolina, a mile and a half below
Smith's Bridge, and was vigorously attacked from dense cover by some six
hundred and thirty warriors led by Si-lou-ee. Fighting with Indian
tactics, the Provincial Rangers under Patrick Calhoun particularly
distinguished themselves; and the blood-curdling yells of the painted
savages were responded to by the wild huzzas of the kilted Highlanders
who, waving their Scotch bonnets, impetuously charged the redskins and
drove them again and again from their lurking-places. Nevertheless
Montgomerie lost from eighty to one hundred in killed and wounded, while
the loss of the Indians was supposed to be about half the loss of the
whites. Unable to care for his wounded and lacking the means of removing
his baggage, Montgomerie silently withdrew his forces. In so doing, he
acknowledged defeat, since he was compelled to abandon his original
intention of relieving the beleaguered garrison of Fort Loudon.
Captain Demere and his devoted little band, who had been resolutely
holding out, were now left to their tragic fate. After the bread was
exhausted, the garrison was reduced to the necessity of eating dogs and
horses; and the loyal aid of the Indian wives of some of the garrison,
who secretly brought them supplies of food daily, enabled them to hold
out still longer. Realizing at last the futility of prolonging the
hopeless contest, Captain Demere surrendered the fort on August 8, 1760.
At daylight the next morning, while on the march to Fort Prince George,
the soldiers were set upon by the treacherous Cherokees, who at the
first onset killed Captain Demere and twenty-nine others. A humane
chieftain, Outassitus, says one of the gazettes of the day, "went around
the field calling upon the Indians to desist, and making such
representations to them as stopped the further progress and effects of
their barbarous and brutal rage," which expressed itself in scalping and
hacking off the arms and legs of the defenseless whites.
Atta-kulla-kulla, who was friendly to the whites, claimed Captain
Stuart, the second officer, as his captive, and bore him away by
stealth. After nine days' journey through the wilderness they
encountered an advance party under Major Andrew Lewis, sent out by
Colonel Byrd, head of a relieving army, to rescue and succor any of the
garrison who might effect their escape. Thus Stuart was restored to his
friends. This abortive and tragic campaign, in which the victory lay
conclusively with the Indians, ended when Byrd disbanded his new levies
and Montgomerie sailed from Charleston for the north (August, 1760).
During the remainder of the year, the province of North Carolina
remained free of further alarms from the Indians. But the view was
generally entertained that one more joint effort of North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Virginia would have to be made in order to humble
the Cherokees. At the sessions of the North Carolina Assembly in
November and again in December, matters in dispute between Governor
Dobbs and the representatives of the people made impossible the passage
of a proposed aid bill, providing for five hundred men to coöperate with
Virginia and South Carolina. Nevertheless volunteers in large numbers
patriotically marched from North Carolina to Charleston and the Congaree
(December, 1760, to April, 1761), to enlist in the famous regiment being
organized by Colonel Thomas Middleton. [70] On March 31, 1761, Governor
Dobbs called together the Assembly to act upon a letter received from
General Amherst, outlining a more vigorous plan of campaign appropriate
to the succession of a young and vigorous sovereign, George III. An aid
bill was passed, providing twenty thousand pounds for men and supplies;
and one regiment of five companies of one hundred men each, under the
command of Colonel Hugh Waddell, was mustered into service for seven
months' duty, beginning May 1, 1761. [71]
On July 7, 1761, Colonel James Grant, detached from the main army in
command of a force of twenty-six hundred men, took up his march from
Fort Prince George. Attacked on June 10th two miles south of the spot
where Montgomerie was engaged the preceding year, Grant's army, after a
vigorous engagement lasting several hours, drove off the Indians. The
army then proceeded at leisure to lay waste the fifteen towns of the
Middle Settlements; and, after this work of systematic devastation was
over, returned to Fort Prince George. Peace was concluded in September
as the result of this campaign; and in consequence the frontier was
pushed seventy miles farther to the west.
Meantime, Colonel Waddell with his force of five hundred North
Carolinians had acted in concert with Colonel William Byrd, commanding
the Virginia detachment. The combined forces went into camp at Captain
Samuel Stalnaker's old place on the Middle Fork of Holston. Because of
his deliberately dilatory policy, Byrd was superseded in the command by
Colonel Adam Stephen. Marching their forces to the Long Island of
Holston, Stephen and Waddell erected there Fort Robinson, in compliance
with the instructions of Governor Fauquier, of Virginia. The Cherokees,
heartily tired of the war, now sued for peace, which was concluded,
independent of the treaty at Charleston, on November 19, 1761.
The successful termination of this campaign had an effect of signal
importance in the development of the expansionist spirit. The rich and
beautiful lands which fell under the eye of the North Carolina and
Virginia pioneers under Waddell, Byrd, and Stephen, lured them
irresistibly on to wider casts for fortune and bolder explorations into
the unknown, beckoning West.
CHAPTER VII.
The Land Companies
It was thought good policy to settle those lands as fast as possible,
and that the granting them to men of the first consequence who were
likeliest and best able to procure large bodies of people to settle on
them was the most probable means of effecting the end proposed.
--Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia to the Earl of Hillsborough: 1770.
Although for several decades the Virginia traders had been passing over
the Great Trading Path to the towns of the Cherokees and the Catawbas,
it was not until the early years of the eighteenth century that
Virginians of imaginative vision directed their eyes to the westward,
intent upon crossing the mountains and locating settlements as a firm
barrier against the imperialistic designs of France. Acting upon his
oft-expressed conviction that once the English settlers had established
themselves at the source of the James River "it would not be in the
power of the French to dislodge them," Governor Alexander Spotswood in
1716, animated with the spirit of the pioneer, led an expedition of
fifty men and a train of pack-horses to the mountains, arduously
ascended to the summit of the Blue Ridge, and claimed the country by
right of discovery in behalf of his sovereign. In the journal of John
Fontaine this vivacious account is given of the historic episode: "I
graved my name on a tree by the river side; and the Governor buried a
bottle with a paper enclosed on which he writ that he took possession of
this place in the name and for King George the First of England. We had
a good dinner, and after it we got the men together and loaded all their
arms and we drank the King's health in Burgundy and fired a volley, and
all the rest of the Royal Family in claret and a volley. We drank the
Governor's health and fired another volley."
By this jovial picnic, which the governor afterward commemorated by
presenting to each of the gentlemen who accompanied him a golden
horseshoe, inscribed with the legend, Sic juvat transcendere montes,
Alexander Spotswood anticipated by a third of a century the more
ambitious expedition on behalf of France by Cèloron de Bienville (see
Chapter III), and gave a memorable object-lesson in the true spirit of
westward expansion. During the ensuing years it began to dawn upon the
minds of men of the stamp of William Byrd and Joshua Gee that there was
imperative need for the establishment of a chain of settlements in the
trans-Alleghany, a great human wall to withstand the advancing wave of
French influence and occupation. By the fifth decade of the century, as
we have seen, the Virginia settlers, with their squatter's claims and
tomahawk rights, had pushed on to the mountains; and great pressure was
brought to bear upon the council to issue grants for vast tracts of land
in the uncharted wilderness of the interior.
At this period the English ministry adopted the aggressive policy
already mentioned in connection with the French and Indian war,
indicative of a determination to contest with France the right to occupy
the interior of the continent. This policy had been inaugurated by
Virginia with the express purpose of stimulating the adoption of a
similar policy by North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Two land companies,
organized almost simultaneously, actively promoted the preliminaries
necessary to settlement, despatching parties under expert leadership to
discover the passes through the mountains and to locate the best land in
the trans-Alleghany.
In June, 1749, a great corporation, the Loyal Land Company of Virginia,
received a grant of eight hundred thousand acres above the North
Carolina line and west of the mountains. Dr. Thomas Walker, an expert
surveyor, who in company with several other gentlemen had made a tour of
exploration through eastern Tennessee and the Holston region in 1748,
was chosen as the agent of 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
absent four months and one week. On this journey, which carried the
party as far west as the Rockcastle River (May 11th) and as far north as
the present Paintsville, Kentucky, they named many natural objects, such
as mountains and rivers, after members of the party. Their two principal
achievements were the erection of the first house built by white men
between the Cumberland Mountains and the Ohio River--a feat, however,
which led to no important developments; and the discovery of the
wonderful gap in the Alleghanies to which Walker gave the name
Cumberland, in honor 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, of Virginia and
Maryland. In their petition for five hundred thousand acres, one of the
declared objects of the company was "to anticipate the French by taking
possession of that country southward of the Lakes to which the French
had no right...." By the royal order of May 19, 1749, the company was
awarded two hundred thousand acres, free of quit-rent for ten years; and
the promise was made of an additional award of the remainder petitioned
for, on condition of seating a hundred families upon the original grant
and the building and maintaining of a fort. Christopher Gist, summoned
from his remote home on the Yadkin in North Carolina, was instructed "to
search out and discover the Lands upon the river Ohio & other adjoining
branches of the Mississippi down as low as the great Falls thereof." In
this journey, which began at Colonel Thomas Cresap's, in Maryland, in
October, 1750, and ended at Gist's home on May 18, 1751, Gist visited
the Lower Shawnee Town and the Lower Blue Licks, ascended Pilot Knob
almost two decades before Findlay and Boone, from the same eminence,
"saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky," intersected
Walker's route at two points, and crossed Cumberland Mountain at Pound
Gap on the return journey. This was a far more extended journey than
Walker's, enabling Gist to explore the fertile valleys of the Muskingum,
Scioto, and Miami rivers and to gain a view of the beautiful meadows of
Kentucky. [72]
It is eminently significant of the spirit of the age, which was
inaugurating an era of land-hunger unparalleled in American history,
that the first authentic records of the trans-Alleghany were made by
surveyors who visited the country as the agents of great land companies.
The outbreak of the French and Indian War so soon afterward delayed for
a decade and more any important colonization of the West. Indeed, the
explorations and findings of Walker and Gist were almost unknown, even
to the companies they represented. But the conclusion of peace in 1763,
which gave all the region between the mountains and the Mississippi to
the British, heralded the true beginning of the westward expansionist
movement in the Old Southwest, and inaugurated the constructive
leadership of North Carolina in the occupation and colonization of the
imperial domain of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.
In the middle years of the century many families of Virginia gentry
removed to the back country of North Carolina in the fertile region
ranging from Williamsborough on the east to Hillsborough on the west.
[73] There soon arose in this section of the colony a society marked by
intellectual distinction, social graces, and the leisured dignity of the
landlord and the large planter. So conspicuous for means, intellect,
culture, and refinement were the people of this group, having "abundance
of wealth and leisure for enjoyment," that Governor Josiah Martin, in
passing through this region some years later, significantly observes:
"They have great pre-eminence, as well with respect to soil and
cultivation, as to the manners and condition of the inhabitants, in
which last respect the difference is so great that one would be led to
think them people of another region." [74] This new wealthy class which
was now turning its gaze toward the unoccupied lands along the frontier
was "dominated by the democratic ideals of pioneers rather than by the
aristocratic tendencies of slave-holding planters." [75] From the
cross-fertilization of the ideas of two social groups--this back-country
gentry, of innate qualities of leadership, democratic instincts,
economic independence, and expansive tendencies, and the primitive
pioneer society of the frontier, frugal in taste, responsive to
leadership, bold, ready, and thorough in execution--there evolved the
militant American expansion in the Old Southwest.
A conspicuous figure in this society of Virginia emigrants was a young
man named Richard Henderson, whose father had removed with his family
from Hanover County, Virginia, to Bute, afterward Granville County,
North Carolina, in 1742. [76] Educated at home by a private tutor, he
began his career as assistant of his father, Samuel Henderson, the High
Sheriff of Granville County; and after receiving a law-license, quickly
acquired an extensive practice. "Even in the superior courts where
oratory and eloquence are as brilliant and powerful as in
Westminster-hall," records an English acquaintance, "he soon became
distinguished and eminent, and his superior genius shone forth with
great splendour, and universal applause." This young attorney, wedded to
the daughter of 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 his solitary
wanderings across the dark green mountains to the sun-lit valleys and
boundless hunting-grounds beyond, Henderson was from time to time
regaled with bizarre and fascinating tales of western exploration; and
Boone, in his dark hour of poverty and distress, when he was heavily
involved financially, turned for aid to this friend and his partner, who
composed the law-firm of Williams and Henderson. [77]
Boone's vivid descriptions of the paradise of the West stimulated
Henderson's imaginative mind and attracted his attention to the rich
possibilities of unoccupied lands there. While the Board of Trade in
drafting the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763, forbade the granting
of lands in the vast interior, which was specifically reserved to the
Indians, it was clearly not their intention to set permanent western
limits to the colonies. [78] The prevailing opinion among the shrewdest
men of the period was well expressed by George Washington, who wrote his
agent for preëmpting western lands: "I can never look upon that
proclamation in any other light (but I say this between ourselves) than
as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians." And again
in 1767: "It [the proclamation of 1763] must fall, of course, in a few
years, especially when those Indians consent to our occupying the lands.
Any person, therefore, who neglects the present opportunity of hunting
out good lands, and in some measure marking out and distinguishing them
for his own, in order to keep others from settling them, will never
regain it." Washington had added greatly to his holdings of bounty lands
in the West by purchasing at trivial prices the claims of many of the
officers and soldiers. Three years later we find him surveying extensive
tracts along the Ohio and the Great Kanawha, and, with the vision of the
expansionist, making large plans for the establishment of a colony to be
seated upon his own lands. Henderson, too, recognized the importance of
the great country west of the Appalachians. He agreed with the opinion
of Benjamin Franklin, who in 1756 called it "one of the finest in North
America for the extreme richness and fertility of the land, the healthy
temperature of the air and the mildness of the climate, the plenty of
hunting, fishing and fowling, the facility of trade with the Indians and
the vast convenience of inland navigation or water carriage." [79]
Henderson therefore proceeded to organize a land company for the purpose
of acquiring and colonizing a large domain in the West. This
partnership, which was entitled Richard Henderson and Company, was
composed of a few associates, including Richard Henderson, his uncle and
law-partner, John Williams, and, in all probability, their close friends
Thomas and Nathaniel Hart of Orange County, North Carolina, immigrants
from Hanover County, Virginia.
Seizing the opportunity presented just after the conclusion of peace,
the company engaged Daniel Boone as scout and surveyor. He was
instructed, while hunting and trapping on his own account, to examine,
with respect to their location and fertility, the lands which he
visited, and to report his findings upon his return. The secret
expedition must have been transacted with commendable circumspection;
for although in after years it became common knowledge among his friends
that he had acted as the company's agent, Boone himself consistently
refrained from betraying the confidence of his employers. [80] Upon a
similar mission, Gist had carefully concealed from the suspicious
Indians the fact that he carried a compass, which they wittily termed
"land stealer"; and Washington likewise imposed secrecy upon his land
agent Crawford, insisting that the operation be carried on under the
guise of hunting game. [81] The discreet Boone, taciturn and given to
keeping his own counsel, in one instance at least deemed it advantageous
to communicate the purpose of his mission to some hunters, well known to
him, in order to secure the results of their information in regard to
the best lands they had encountered in the course of their hunting
expedition. Boone came among the hunters, known as the "Blevens
connection," at one of their Tennessee station camps on their return
from a long hunt in Kentucky, in order, as expressed in the quaint
phraseology of the period, to be "informed of the geography and
locography of these woods, saying that he was employed to explore them
by Henderson & Company." [82] The acquaintance which Boone on this
occasion formed with a member of the party, Henry Scaggs, the skilled
hunter and explorer, was soon to bear fruit; for shortly afterward
Scaggs was employed as prospector by the same land company. In 1764
Scaggs had passed through Cumberland Gap and hunted for the season on
the Cumberland; and accordingly the following year, as the agent of
Richard Henderson and Company, he was despatched on an extended
exploration to the lower Cumberland, fixing his station at the salt lick
afterward known as Mansker's Lick. [83]
Richard Henderson thus, it appears, "enlisted the Harts and others in an
enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal
acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several
hunters to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just
why Henderson and his associates did not act sooner upon the reports
brought back by the hunters--Boone and Scaggs and Callaway, who
accompanied Boone in 1764 in the interest of the land company--is not
known; [84] but in all probability the fragmentary nature of these
reports, however glowing and enthusiastic, was sufficient cause for the
delay of five years before the land company, through the agency of Boone
and Findlay, succeeded in having a thorough exploration made of the
Kentucky region. Delay was also caused by rival claims to the territory.
In the Virginia Gazette of December 1, 1768, Henderson must have read
with astonishment not unmixed with dismay that "the Six Nations and all
their tributaries have granted a vast extent of country to his majesty,
and the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania, and settled an advantageous
boundary line between their hunting country and this, and the other
colonies to the Southward as far as the Cherokee River, for which they
received the most valuable present in goods and dollars that was ever
given at any conference since the settlement of America." The news was
now bruited about through the colony of North Carolina that the
Cherokees were hot in their resentment because the Northern Indians, the
inveterate foes of the Cherokees and the perpetual disputants for the
vast Middle Ground of Kentucky, had received at the Treaty of Fort
Stanwix, November 5, 1768, an immense compensation from the crown for
the territory which they, the Cherokees, claimed from time immemorial.
[85] Only three weeks before, John Stuart, Superintendent for Indian
Affairs in the Southern Department, had negotiated with the Cherokees
the Treaty of Hard Labor, South Carolina (October 14th), by which
Governor Tryon's line of 1767, from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain, was
continued direct to Colonel Chiswell's mine, the present Wytheville,
Virginia, and thence in a straight line to the mouth of the Great
Kanawha. [86] Thus at the close of the year 1768 the crown through both
royal governor and superintendent of Indian affairs acknowledged in fair
and open treaty the right of the Cherokees, whose Tennessee villages
guarded the gateway, to the valley lands east of the mountain barrier as
well as to the dim mid-region of Kentucky. In the very act of
negotiating the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, Sir William Johnson privately
acknowledged that possession of the trans-Alleghany could be legally
obtained only by extinguishing the title of the Cherokees. [87]
These conflicting claims soon led to collisions between the Indians and
the company's settlers. In the spring of 1769 occurred one of those
incidents in the westward advance which, though slight in itself, was to
have a definite bearing upon the course of events in later years. In
pursuance of his policy, as agent of the Loyal Land Company, of
promoting settlement upon the company's lands, Dr. Thomas Walker, who
had visited Powell's Valley the preceding year and come into possession
of a very large tract there, simultaneously made proposals to one party
of men including the Kirtleys, Captain Rucker, and others, and to
another party led by Joseph Martin, trader of Orange County, Virginia,
afterward a striking figure in the Old Southwest. The fevered race by
these bands of eighteenth-century "sooners" for possession of an early
"Cherokee Strip" was won by the latter band, who at once took possession
and began to clear; so that when the Kirtleys arrived, Martin coolly
handed them "a letter from Dr. Walker that informed them that if we got
to the valley first, we were to have 21,000 acres of land, and they were
not to interfere with us." Martin and his companions were delighted with
the beautiful valley at the base of the Cumberland, quickly "eat and
destroyed 23 deer--15 bears--2 buffaloes and a great quantity of
turkeys," and entertained gentlemen from Virginia and Maryland who
desired to settle more than a hundred families there. The company
reckoned, however, without their hosts, the Cherokees, who, fortified by
the treaty of Hard Labor (1768) which left this country within the
Indian reservation, were determined to drive Martin and his company out.
While hunting on the Cumberland River, northwest of Cumberland Gap,
Martin and his company were surrounded and disarmed by a party of
Cherokees who said they had orders from Cameron, the royal agent, to rob
all white men hunting on their lands. When Martin and his party arrived
at their station in Powell's Valley, they found it broken up and their
goods stolen by the Indians, which left them no recourse but to return
to the settlements in Virginia. It was not until six years later that
Martin, under the stable influence of the Transylvania Company, was
enabled to return to this spot and erect there the station which was to
play an integral part in the progress of westward expansion. [88]
Before going on to relate Boone's explorations of Kentucky under the
auspices of the land company, it will be convenient to turn back for a
moment and give some account of other hunters and explorers who visited
that territory between the time of its discovery 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 of Virginia
& North Carolina on New River & Holston River, and when they intended to
make a long Hunt (as they calld it) they Collected near the head of
Holston near whare Abingdon now stands....
--General William Hall.
Before the coming of Walker and Gist in 1750 and 1751 respectively, the
region now called Kentucky had, as far as we know, been twice visited by
the French, once in 1729 when Chaussegros de Léry and his party visited
the Big Bone Lick, and again in the summer of 1749 when the Baron de
Longueuil with four hundred and fifty-two Frenchmen and Indians, going
to join Bienville in an expedition against "the Cherickees and other
Indians lying at the back of Carolina and Georgia," doubtless encamped
on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio. Kentucky was also traversed by John
Peter Salling with his three adventurous companions in their journey
through the Middle West in 1742. But all these early visits, including
the memorable expeditions of Walker and Gist, were so little known to
the general public that when John Filson wrote the history of Kentucky
in 1784 he attributed its discovery to James McBride in 1754. More
influential upon the course of westward expansion was an adventure which
occurred in 1752, the very year in which the Boones settled down in
their Yadkin home.
In the autumn of 1752, a Pennsylvania trader, John Findlay, with three
or four companions, descended the Ohio River in a canoe as far as the
falls at the present Louisville, Kentucky, and accompanied a party of
Shawanoes to their town of Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, eleven miles east of
what is now Winchester. This was the site of the "Indian Old Corn
Field," the Iroquois name for which ("the place of many fields," or
"prairie") was Ken-ta-ke, whence came the name of the state. Five miles
east of this spot, where still may be seen a mound and an ellipse
showing the outline of the stockade, is the famous Pilot Knob, from the
summit of which the fields surrounding the town lie visible in their
smooth expanse. During Findlay's stay at the Indian town other traders
from Pennsylvania and Virginia, who reported that they were "on their
return from trading with the Cuttawas (Catawbas), a nation who live in
the Territories of Carolina," assembled in the vicinity in January,
1753. Here, as the result of disputes arising from their barter, they
were set upon and captured by a large party of straggling Indians
(Coghnawagas from Montreal) on January 26th; but Findlay and another
trader named James Lowry were so fortunate as to escape and return
through the wilderness to the Pennsylvania settlements. [89] The
incident is of important historic significance; for it was from these
traders, who must have followed the Great Warriors' Path to the country
of the Catawbas, that Findlay learned of the Ouasioto (Cumberland) Gap
traversed by the Indian path. His reminiscences--of this gateway to
Kentucky, of the site of the old Indian town on Lulbegrud Creek, a
tributary of the Red River, and of the Pilot Knob--were sixteen years
later to fire Boone to his great tour of exploration in behalf of the
Transylvania Company.
During the next two decades, largely because of the hostility of the
savage tribes, only a few traders and hunters from the east ranged
through the trans-Alleghany. But in 1761, a party of hunters led by a
rough frontiersman, Elisha Walden, penetrated into Powell's Valley,
followed the Indian trail through Cumberland Gap, explored the
Cumberland River, and finally reached the Laurel Mountain where,
encountering a party of Indians, they deemed it expedient to return.
With Walden went Henry Scaggs, afterward explorer for the Henderson Land
Company, William Blevens and Charles Cox, the famous Virginia hunters,
one Newman, and some fifteen other stout pioneers. Their itinerary may
be traced from the names given to natural objects in honor of members 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, the English proceeded to occupy the
territory which they had won. In 1765 George Croghan with a small party,
on the way to prepare the inhabitants of the Illinois country for
transfer to English sovereignty, visited the Great Bone Licks of
Kentucky (May 30th, 31st); and a year later Captain Harry Gordon, chief
engineer in the Western Department in North America, visited and
minutely described the same licks and the falls. But these, and numerous
other water-journeys and expeditions of which no records were kept,
though interesting enough in themselves, had little bearing upon the
larger phases of westward expansion and colonization.
The decade opening with the year 1765 is the epoch of bold and ever
bolder exploration--the more adventurous frontiersmen of the border
pushing deep into the wilderness in search of game, lured on by the
excitements of the chase and the profit to be derived from the sale of
peltries. In midsummer, 1766, Captain James Smith, Joshua Horton, Uriah
Stone, William Baker, and a young mulatto slave passed through
Cumberland Gap, hunted through the country south of the Cherokee and
along the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, and as Smith reports "found
no vestige of any white man." During the same year a party of five
hunters from South Carolina, led by Isaac Lindsey, penetrated the
Kentucky wilderness to the tributary of the Cumberland, named Stone's
River by the former party, for one of their number. Here they
encountered two men, who were among the greatest of the western
pioneers, and were destined to leave their names in historic association
with the early settlement of Kentucky--James Harrod and Michael Stoner,
a German, both of whom had descended the Ohio from Fort Pitt. With the
year 1769 began those longer and more extended excursions into the
interior which were to result in conveying at last to the outside world
graphic and detailed information concerning "the wonderful new country
of Cantucky." In the late spring of this year Hancock and Richard Taylor
(the latter the father of President Zachary Taylor), Abraham
Hempinstall, and one Barbour, all true-blue frontiersmen, left their
homes in Orange County, Virginia, and hunted extensively in Kentucky and
Arkansas. Two of the party traveled through Georgia and East and West
Florida; while the other two hunted on the Washita during the winter of
1770-1. Explorations of this type became increasingly hazardous as the
animosity of the Indians increased; and from this time onward for a
number of years almost all the parties of roving hunters suffered
capture or attack by the crafty red men. In this same year Major John
McCulloch, living on the south branch of the Potomac, set out
accompanied by a white man-servant and a negro, to explore the western
country. While passing down the Ohio from Pittsburgh McCulloch was
captured by the Indians near the mouth of the Wabash and carried to the
present site of Terre Haute, Indiana. Set free after four or five
months, he journeyed in company with some French voyageurs first to
Natchez and then to New Orleans, whence he made the sea voyage to
Philadelphia. Somewhat later, Benjamin Cleveland (afterward famous in
the Revolution), attended by four companions, set out from his home on
the upper Yadkin to explore the Kentucky wilderness. After passing
through Cumberland Gap, they encountered a band of Cherokees who
plundered them of everything they had, even to their hats and shoes, and
ordered them to leave the Indian hunting-grounds. On their return
journey they almost starved, and Cleveland, who was reluctantly forced
to kill his faithful little hunting-dog, was wont to declare in after
years that it was the sweetest meat he ever ate.
Fired to adventure by the glowing accounts brought back by Uriah Stone,
a much more formidable band than any that had hitherto ventured
westward--including Uriah Stone as pilot, Gasper Mansker, John Rains,
the Bledsoes, and a dozen others--assembled in June, 1769, in the New
River region. "Each Man carried two horses," says an early pioneer in
describing one of these parties, "traps, a large supply of powder and
led, and a small hand vise and bellows, files and screw plate for the
purpose of fixing the guns if any of them should get out of fix."
Passing through Cumberland Gap, they continued their long journey until
they reached Price's Meadow, in the present Wayne County, Kentucky,
where they established their encampment. In the course of their
explorations, during which they gave various names to prominent natural
features, they established their "station camp" on a creek in Sumner
County, Tennessee, whence originated the name of Station Camp Creek.
Isaac Bledsoe and Gasper Mansker, agreeing to travel from here in
opposite directions along a buffalo trace passing near the camp, each
succeeded in discovering the famous salt-lick which bears his
name--namely Bledsoe'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 with buffelows
in every direction--not hundreds but thousands." As he sat on his horse,
he shot down two deer in the lick; but the buffaloes blindly trod them
in the mud. They did not mind him and his horse except when the wind
blew the scent in their nostrils, when they would break and run in
droves. Indians often lurked in the neighbourhood of these
hunters--plundering their camp, robbing them, and even shooting down one
of their number, Robert Crockett, from ambush. After many trials and
vicissitudes, which included a journey to the Spanish Natchez and the
loss of a great mass of peltries when they were plundered by Piomingo
and a war party of Chickasaws, they finally reached home in the late
spring of 1770. [90]
The most notable expedition of this period, projected under the auspices
of two bold leaders extraordinarily skilled in woodcraft, Joseph Drake
and Henry Scaggs, was organized in the early autumn of 1770. This
imposing band of stalwart hunters from the New River and Holston
country, some forty in number, garbed in hunting shirts, leggings, and
moccasins, with three pack-horses to each man, rifles, ammunition,
traps, dogs, blankets, and salt, pushed boldly through Cumberland Gap
into the heart 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
on game." From the duration of their absence from home, they received
the name of the Long Hunters--the romantic appellation by which they are
known in the pioneer history of the Old Southwest. Many natural objects
were named by this party--in particular Dick's River, after the noted
Cherokee hunter, Captain Dick, who, pleased to be recognized by Charles
Scaggs, told the Long Hunters that on his river, pointing it out, they
would find meat plenty--adding with laconic significance: "Kill it and
go home." From the Knob Lick, in Lincoln County, as reported by a member
of the party, "they beheld largely over a thousand animals, including
buffaloe, elk, bear, and deer, with many wild turkies scattered among
them; all quite restless, some playing, and others busily employed in
licking the earth.... The buffaloe and other animals had so eaten away
the soil, that they could, in places, go entirely underground." Upon the
return of a detachment to Virginia, fourteen fearless hunters chose to
remain; and one day, during the absence of some of the band upon a long
exploring trip, the camp was attacked by a straggling party of Indians
under Will Emery, a half-breed Cherokee. Two of the hunters were carried
into captivity and never heard of again; a third managed to escape. In
embittered commemoration of the plunder of the camp and the destruction
of the peltries, they inscribed upon a poplar, which had lost its bark,
this emphatic record, followed by their names:
2300 Deer Skins lost Ruination by God [91]
Undismayed by this depressing stroke of fortune, they continued their
hunt in the direction of the lick which Bledsoe had discovered the
preceding year. Shortly after this discovery, a French voyageur from the
Illinois who had hunted and traded in this region for a decade, Timothé
de Monbreun, subsequently famous in the history of Tennessee, had
visited the lick and killed an enormous number of buffaloes for their
tallow and tongues with which he and his companion loaded a keel boat
and descended the Cumberland. An early pioneer, William Hall, learned
from Isaac Bledsoe that when "the long hunters Crossed the ridge and
came down on Bledsoe's Creek in four or five miles of the Lick the Cane
had grown up so thick in the woods that they thought they had mistaken
the place until they Came to the Lick and saw what had been done.... One
could walk for several hundred yards a round the Lick and in the lick on
buffellows Skuls, & bones and the whole flat round the Lick was bleached
with buffellows bones, and they found out the Cause of the Canes growing
up so suddenly a few miles around the Lick which was in Consequence of
so many buffellows being killed."
This expedition was of genuine importance, opening the eyes of the
frontiersmen to the charms of the country and influencing many to settle
subsequently in the West--some in Tennessee, some in Kentucky. The
elaborate and detailed information brought back by Henry Scaggs exerted
an appreciable influence, no doubt, in accelerating the plans of Richard
Henderson and Company for the acquisition and colonization of the
trans-Alleghany. But while the "Long Hunters" were in Tennessee and
Kentucky the same region was being more extensively and systematically
explored by Daniel Boone. To his life, character, and attainments, as
the typical "long hunter" and the most influential pioneer we may now
turn our 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 the distressed,
sounded in our ears, we now hear the praises and adorations of our
Creator; where wretched wigwams stood, the miserable abodes of savages,
we behold the foundations of cities laid, that, in all probability, will
equal the glory of the greatest upon earth.
--Daniel Boone, 1784.
The wandering life of a border Nimrod in a surpassingly beautiful
country teeming with game was the ideal of the frontiersman of the
eighteenth century. As early as 1728, while running the dividing line
between North Carolina and Virginia, William Byrd encountered along the
North Carolina frontier the typical figure of the professional hunter:
"a famous Woodsman, call'd Epaphroditus Bainton. This Forester Spends
all his time in ranging the Woods, and is said to make great Havock
among the Deer, and other Inhabitants of the Forest, not much wilder
than himself." By the middle of the century, as he was threading his way
through the Carolina piedmont zone, the hunter's paradise of the Yadkin
and Catawba country, Bishop Spangenberg found ranging there many
hunters, living like Indians, who killed thousands of deer each year and
sold the skins in the local markets or to the fur-traders from Virginia
whose heavy pack-trains with their tinkling bells constantly traversed
the course of the Great Trading Path.
The superlative skill of one of these hunters, both as woodsman and
marksman, was proverbial along the border. The name of Daniel Boone
became synonymous with expert huntsmanship and almost uncanny wisdom in
forest lore. The bottoms of the creek near the Boone home, three miles
west of present Mocksville, contained a heavy growth of beech, which
dropped large quantities of its rich nuts or mast, greatly relished by
bears; and this creek received its name, Bear Creek, because Daniel and
his father killed in its rich bottoms ninety-nine bears in a single
hunting-season. After living for a time with his young wife, Rebecca
Bryan, in a cabin in his father's yard, Daniel built a home of his own
upon a tract of land, purchased from his father on October 12, 1759, and
lying on Sugar Tree, a tributary of Dutchman's Creek. Here he dwelt for
the next five years, with the exception of the period of his temporary
removal to Virginia during the terrible era of the Indian war. Most of
his time during the autumn and winter, when he was not engaged in
wagoning or farming, he spent in long hunting-journeys into the
mountains to the west and northwest. During the hunting-season of 1760
he struck deeper than ever before into the western mountain region and
encamped in a natural rocky shelter amidst fine hunting-grounds, in what
is now Washington County in east Tennessee. Of the scores of
inscriptions commemorative of his hunting-feats, which Boone with
pardonable pride was accustomed throughout his life-time to engrave with
his hunting-knife upon trees and rocks, the earliest known is found upon
a leaning beech tree, only recently fallen, near his camp and the creek
which since that day has borne his name. This is a characteristic and
enduring 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 the command
of the noted Indian-fighter of the border, Colonel Hugh Waddell, in his
campaign against the Cherokees. From the lips of Waddell, who was
outspoken in his condemnation of Byrd's futile delays in road-cutting
and fort-building, Boone learned the true secret of success in Indian
warfare, which was lost upon Braddock, Forbes, and later St. Clair: that
the art of defeating red men was to deal them a sudden and unexpected
blow, before they had time either to learn the strength of the force
employed against them or to lay with subtle craft their artful
ambuscade.
In the late autumn of 1761, Daniel Boone and Nathaniel Gist, the son of
Washington's famous guide, who were both serving under Waddell,
temporarily detached themselves from his command and led a small party
on a "long hunt" in the Valley of the Holston. While encamping near the
site of Black's Fort, subsequently built, they were violently assailed
by a pack of fierce wolves which they had considerable difficulty in
beating off; and from this incident the locality became known as Wolf
Hills (now Abingdon, Virginia). [92]
From this time forward Boone's roving instincts had full sway. For many
months each year he threaded his way through that marvelously beautiful
country of western North Carolina felicitously described as the
Switzerland of America. Boone's love of solitude and the murmuring
forest was surely inspired by the phenomenal beauties of the country
through which he roamed at will. Blowing Rock on one arm of a great
horseshoe of mountains and Tryon Mountain upon the other arm, overlooked
an enormous, primeval bowl, studded by a thousand emerald-clad
eminences. There was the Pilot Mountain, the towering and isolated pile
which from time immemorial had served the aborigines as a guide in their
forest wanderings; there was the dizzy height of the Roan on the border;
there was Mt. Mitchell, portentous in its grandeur, the tallest peak on
the continent east of the Rockies; and there was the Grandfather, the
oldest mountain on earth according to geologists, of which it has been
written:
Oldest of all terrestrial things--still holding
Thy wrinkled forehead high;
Whose every seam, 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 the luxuriant
vegetation and lavish profusion of the gorgeous flowers upon the
mountain slopes, radiant rhododendron, rosebay, and laurel, and the
azalea rising like flame; or the rare beauties of the water--the
cataract of Linville, taking its shimmering leap into the gorge, and
that romantic river poetically celebrated in the 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 western North
Carolina and eastern Tennessee enabled him to explore every nook and
corner of the rugged and beautiful mountain region. Among the companions
and contemporaries with whom he hunted and explored the country were his
little son James and his brother Jesse; the Linville who gave the name
to the beautiful falls; Julius Cæsar Dugger, whose rock house stood near
the head of Elk Creek; and Nathaniel Gist, who described for him the
lofty gateway to Kentucky, through which Christopher Gist had passed in
1751. Boone had already heard of this gateway, from Findlay, and it was
one of the secret and cherished ambitions of his life to scale the
mountain wall of the Appalachians and to reach that high portal of the
Cumberland which beckoned to the mysterious new Eden beyond. Although
hunting was an endless delight to Boone he was haunted in the midst of
this pleasure, as was Kipling's Explorer, by the lure of the
undiscovered:
Till a voice as bad as conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting whisper day and night repeated--so:
'Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges--
'Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go.'
Of Boone's preliminary explorations for the land company known as
Richard Henderson and Company, an account has already been given; and
the delay in following them up has been touched on and in part
explained. Meanwhile Boone transferred his efforts for a time to another
field. Toward the close of the summer of 1765 a party consisting of
Major John Field, William Hill, one Slaughter, and two others, all from
Culpeper County, Virginia, visited Boone and induced him to accompany
them on the "long Journey" to Florida, whither they were attracted by
the liberal offer of Colonel James Grant, governor of the eastern
section, the Florida of to-day. On this long and arduous expedition they
suffered many hardships and endured many privations, found little game,
and on one occasion narrowly escaped starvation. They explored Florida
from St. Augustine to Pensacola; and Boone, who relished fresh scenes
and a new environment, purchased a house and lot in Pensacola in
anticipation of removal thither. But upon his return home, finding his
wife unwilling to go, Boone once more turned his eager eye toward the
West, that mysterious and alluring region beyond the great range, the
fabled paradise of Kentucky.
The following year four young men from the Yadkin, Benjamin Cutbird,
John Stewart (Boone's brother-in-law who afterwards accompanied him to
Kentucky), John Baker, and James Ward made a remarkable journey to the
westward, crossing the Appalachian mountain chain over some unknown
route, and finally reaching the Mississippi. The significance of the
journey, in its bearing upon westward expansion, inheres in the fact
that while for more than half a century the English traders from South
Carolina had been winning their way to the Mississippi along the lower
routes and Indian trails, this was the first party from either of the
Carolinas, as far as is known, that ever reached the Mississippi by
crossing the great mountain barrier. When Cutbird, a superb woodsman and
veritable Leatherstocking, narrated to Boone the story of his
adventures, it only confirmed Boone in his determination to find the
passage through the mountain chain leading to the Mesopotamia of
Kentucky.
Such an enterprise was attended by terrible dangers. During 1766 and
1767 the steady encroachments of the white settlers upon the ancestral
domain which the Indians reserved for their imperial hunting-preserve
aroused bitter feelings of resentment among the red men. Bloody reprisal
was often the sequel to such encroachment. The vast region of Tennessee
and the trans-Alleghany was a twilight zone, through which the savages
roamed at will. From time to time war parties of northern Indians, the
inveterate foes of the Cherokees, scouted through this no-man's land and
even penetrated into the western region of North Carolina, committing
murders and depredations upon the Cherokees and the whites
indiscriminately. During the summer of 1766, while Boone's friend and
close connection, Captain William Linville, his son John, and another
young man, named John Williams, were in camp some ten miles below
Linville Falls, they were unexpectedly fired upon by a hostile band of
Northern Indians, and before they had time to fire a shot, a second
volley killed both the Linvilles and severely wounded Williams, who
after extraordinary sufferings finally reached the settlements. [93] In
May, 1767, four traders and a half-breed child of one of them were
killed in the Cherokee country. In the summer of this year Governor
William Tryon of North Carolina laid out the boundary line of the
Cherokees, and upon his return issued a proclamation forbidding any
purchase of land from the Indians and any issuance of grants for land
within one mile of the boundary line. Despite this wise precaution,
seven North Carolina hunters who during the following September had
lawlessly ventured into the mountain region some sixty miles beyond the
boundary were fired upon, and several of them killed, by the resentful
Cherokees. [94]
Undismayed by these signs of impending danger, undeterred even by the
tragic fate of the Linvilles, Daniel Boone, with the determination of
the indomitable pioneer, never dreamed of relinquishing his
long-cherished design. Discouraged by the steady disappearance of game
under the ruthless attack of innumerable hunters, Boone continued to
direct his thoughts toward the project of exploring the fair region of
Kentucky. The adventurous William Hill, to whom Boone communicated his
purpose, readily consented to go with him; and in the autumn of 1767
Boone and Hill, accompanied, it is believed, by Squire Boone, Daniel's
brother, set forth upon their almost inconceivably hazardous expedition.
They crossed the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, the Holston and Clinch
rivers near their sources, and finally reached the head waters of the
West Fork of the Big Sandy. Surmising from its course that this stream
must flow into the Ohio, they pushed on a hundred miles to the westward
and finally, by following a buffalo path, reached a salt-spring in what
is now Floyd County, in the extreme eastern section of Kentucky. Here
Boone beheld great droves of buffalo that visited the salt-spring to
drink the water or lick the brackish soil. After spending the winter in
hunting and trapping, the Boones and Hill, discouraged by the forbidding
aspect of the hilly country which with its dense growth of laurel was
exceedingly difficult to penetrate, abandoned all hope of finding
Kentucky by this route and wended their arduous way back to the Yadkin.
The account of Boone's subsequent accomplishment of his purpose must be
postponed to the next chapter.
CHAPTER X.
Daniel Boone in Kentucky
He felt very much as Columbus did, gazing from his caravel on San
Salvador; as Cortes, looking down from the crest of Ahualco, on the
Valley of Mexico; or Vasco Nuñez, standing alone on the peak of Darien,
and stretching his eyes over the hitherto undiscovered waters of the
Pacific.
--William Gilmore Simms: Views and Reviews.
A chance acquaintance formed by Daniel Boone, during the French and
Indian War, with the Irish lover of adventure, John Findlay, [95] was
the origin of Boone's cherished longing to reach the El Dorado of the
West. In this slight incident we may discern the initial inspiration for
the epochal movement of westward expansion. Findlay was a trader and
horse peddler, who had early migrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had
been licensed a trader with the Indians in 1747. During the same year he
was married to Elizabeth Harris, daughter of John Harris, the
Indian-trader at Harris's Ferry on the Susquehanna River, after whom
Harrisburg was named. During the next eight years Findlay carried on his
business of trading in the interior. Upon the opening of the French and
Indian War he was probably among "the young men about Paxtang who
enlisted immediately," and served as a waggoner in Braddock's
expedition. Over the camp-fires, during the ensuing campaign in 1765,
young Boone was an eager listener to Findlay's stirring narrative of his
adventures in the Ohio Valley and on the wonderfully beautiful levels of
Kentucky in 1752. The fancies aroused in his brooding mind by Findlay's
moving recital and his description of an ancient passage through the
Ouasioto or Cumberland Gap and along the course of the Warrior's Path,
inspired him with an irrepressible longing to reach that alluring
promised land which was the perfect realization of the hunter's
paradise.
Thirteen years later, while engaged in selling pins, needles, thread,
and Irish linens in the Yadkin country, Findlay learned from the
Pennsylvania settlers at Salisbury or at the Forks of the Yadkin of
Boone's removal to the waters of the upper Yadkin. At Boone's rustic
home, in the winter of 1768-9, Findlay visited his old comrade-in-arms
of Braddock's campaign. On learning of Boone's failure during the
preceding year to reach the Kentucky levels by way of the inhospitable
Sandy region, Findlay again described to him the route through the
Ouasioto Gap traversed sixteen years before by Pennsylvania traders in
their traffic with the Catawbas. Boone, as we have seen, knew that
Christopher Gist, who had formerly lived near him on the upper Yadkin,
had found some passage through the lofty mountain defiles; but he had
never been able to discover the passage. Findlay's renewed descriptions
of the immense herds of buffaloes he had seen in Kentucky, the great
salt-licks where they congregated, the abundance of bears, deer, and elk
with which the country teemed, the innumerable flocks of wild turkeys,
geese, and ducks, aroused in Boone the hunter's passion for the chase;
while the beauty of the lands, as mirrored in the vivid fancy of the
Irishman, inspired him with a new longing to explore the famous country
which had, as John Filson records, "greatly engaged Mr. Findlay's
attention."
In the comprehensive designs of Henderson, now a judge, for securing a
graphic report of the trans-Alleghany region in behalf of his land
company, Boone divined the means of securing the financial backing for
an expedition of considerable size and ample equipment. [96] In numerous
suits for debt, aggregating hundreds of dollars, which had been
instituted against Boone by some of the leading citizens of Rowan,
Williams and Henderson had acted as Boone's attorneys. In order to
collect their legal fees, they likewise brought suit against Boone; but
not wishing to press the action against the kindly scout who had
hitherto acted as their agent in western exploration, they continued the
litigation from court to court, in lieu of certain "conditions
performed" on behalf of Boone, during his unbroken absence, by his
attorney in this suit, Alexander Martin. [97] Summoned to appear in 1769
at the March term of court at Salisbury, Boone seized upon the occasion
to lay before Judge Henderson the designs for a renewed and extended
exploration of Kentucky suggested by the golden opportunity of securing
the services of Findlay as guide. Shortly after March 6th, when Judge
Henderson reached Salisbury, the conference, doubtless attended by John
Stewart, Boone's brother-in-law, John Findlay, and Boone, who were all
present at this term of court, must have been held, for the purpose of
devising ways and means for the expedition. Peck, the only reliable
contemporary biographer of the pioneer, who derived many facts from
Boone himself and his intimate acquaintances, draws the conclusion
(1847): "Daniel Boone was engaged as the master spirit of this
exploration, because in his judgment and fidelity entire confidence
could be reposed.... He was known to Henderson and encouraged by him to
make the exploration, and to examine particularly the whole country
south of the Kentucky--or as then called the Louisa River." [98] As
confidential agent of the land company, Boone carried with him letters
and instructions for his guidance upon this extended tour of
exploration. [99]
On May 1, 1769, with Findlay as guide, and accompanied by four of his
neighbors, John Stewart, a skilled woodsman, Joseph Holden, James
Mooney, and William Cooley, Boone left his "peaceable habitation" on the
upper Yadkin and began his historic journey "in quest of the country of
Kentucky." Already heavily burdened with debts, Boone must have incurred
considerable further financial obligations to Judge Henderson and
Colonel Williams, acting for the land company, in order to obtain the
large amount of supplies requisite for so prolonged an expedition. Each
of the adventurers rode a good horse of strength and endurance; and
behind him were securely strapped the blanket, ammunition, salt, and
cooking-utensils so indispensable for a long sojourn in the wilderness.
In Powell's Valley they doubtless encountered the party led thither by
Joseph Martin (see Chapter VII), and there fell into the "Hunter's
Trail" commented on in a letter written by Martin only a fortnight
before the passing of Boone's cavalcade. Crossing the mountain at the
Ouasioto Gap, they made their first "station camp" in Kentucky on the
creek, still named after that circumstance, on the Red Lick Fork. After
a preliminary journey for the purpose of locating the spot, Findlay led
the party to his old trading-camp at Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, where then
(June 7, 1769) remained but charred embers of the Indian huts, with some
of the stockading and the gate-posts still standing. In Boone's own
words, he and Findlay at once "proceeded to take a more thorough survey
of the country"; and during the autumn and early winter, encountering on
every hand apparently inexhaustible stocks of wild game and noting the
ever-changing beauties of the country, the various members of the party
made many hunting and exploring journeys from their "station camp" as
base. On December 22, 1769, while engaged in a hunt, Boone and Stewart
were surprised and captured by a large party of Shawanoes, led by
Captain Will, who were returning from the autumn hunt on Green River to
their villages north of the Ohio. Boone and Stewart were forced to pilot
the Indians to their main camp, where the savages, after robbing them of
all their peltries and supplies and leaving them inferior guns and
little ammunition, set off to the northward. They left, on parting, this
menacing admonition to the white intruders: "Now, brothers, go home and
stay there. Don't come here any more, for this is the Indians'
hunting-ground, and all the animals, skins, and furs are ours. If you
are so foolish as to venture here again, you may be sure the wasps and
yellow jackets will sting you severely."
Chagrined particularly by the loss of the horses, Boone and Stewart for
two days pursued the Indians in hot haste. Finally approaching the
Indians' camp by stealth in the dead of night, they secured two of the
horses, upon which they fled at top speed. In turn they were immediately
pursued by a detachment of the Indians, mounted upon their fleetest
horses; and suffered the humiliation of recapture two days later.
Indulging in wild hilarity over the capture of the crestfallen whites,
the Indians took a bell from one of the horses and, fastening it about
Boone's neck, compelled him under the threat of brandished tomahawks to
caper about and jingle the bell, jeering at him the while with the
derisive query, uttered in broken English: "Steal horse, eh?" With as
good grace as they could summon--wry smiles at best--Boone and Stewart
patiently endured these humiliations, following the Indians as captives.
Some days later (about January 4, 1770), while the vigilance of the
Indians was momentarily relaxed, the captives suddenly plunged into a
dense cane-brake and in the subsequent confusion succeeded in effecting
their escape. Finding their camp deserted upon their return, Boone and
Stewart hastened on and finally overtook their companions. Here Boone
was both surprised and delighted to encounter his brother Squire, loaded
down with supplies. Having heard nothing from Boone, the partners of the
land company had surmised that he and his party must have run short of
ammunition, flour, salt, and other things sorely needed in the
wilderness; and because of their desire that the party should remain, in
order to make an exhaustive exploration of the country, Squire Boone had
been sent to him with supplies. [100] Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and
Cooley returned to the settlements; but Stewart, Squire Boone, and
Alexander Neely, who had accompanied Squire, threw in their lot with the
intrepid Daniel, and fared forth once more to the stirring and bracing
adventures of the Kentucky wilderness. In Daniel Boone's own words, he
expected "from the furs and peltries they had an opportunity of taking
... to recruit his shattered circumstances; discharge the debts he had
contracted by the adventure; and shortly return under better auspices,
to settle the newly discovered country." [101]
Boone and his party now stationed themselves near the mouth of the Red
River, and soon provided themselves, against the hardships of the long
winter, with jerk, bear's oil, buffalo tallow, dried buffalo tongues,
fresh meat, and marrow-bones as food, and buffalo robes and bearskins as
shelter from the inclement weather. Neely had brought with him, to while
away dull hours, a copy of "Gulliver's Travels"; and in describing
Neely's successful hunt for buffalo one day, Boone in after years
amusingly deposed: "In the year 1770 I encamped on Red River with five
other men, and we had with us for our amusement the History of Samuel
Gulliver's Travels, wherein he gave an account of his young master,
Glumdelick, careing him on market day for a show to a town called
Lulbegrud. A young man of our company called Alexander Neely came to
camp and told us he had been that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two
Brobdignags in their capital." [102] Far from unlettered were pioneers
who indulged together in such literary chat and gave to the near-by
creek the name (after Dean Swift's Lorbrulgrud) of Lulbegrud which name,
first seen on Filson's map of Kentucky (1784), it bears to this day.
From one of his long, solitary hunts Stewart never returned; and it was
not until five years later, while cutting out the Transylvania Trail,
that Boone and his companions discovered, near the old crossing at
Rockcastle, Stewart's remains in a standing hollow sycamore. The
wilderness never gave up its tragic secret.
The close of the winter and most of the spring were passed by the
Boones, after Neely's return to the settlements, in exploration,
hunting, and trapping beaver and otter, in which sport Daniel
particularly excelled. Owing to the drain upon their ammunition, Squire
was at length compelled to return to the settlements for supplies; and
Daniel, who remained alone in the wilderness to complete his
explorations for the land company, must often have shared the feelings
of Balboa as, from lofty knob or towering ridge, he gazed over the waste
of forest which spread from the dim outlines of the Alleghanies to the
distant waters of the Mississippi. He now proceeded to make those
remarkable solitary explorations of Kentucky which have given him
immortality--through the valley of the Kentucky and the Licking, and
along the "Belle Rivière" (Ohio) as low as the falls. He visited the Big
Bone Lick and examined the wonderful fossil remains of the mammoth found
there. Along the great buffalo roads, worn several feet below the
surface of the ground, which led to the Blue Licks, he saw with
amazement and delight thousands of huge shaggy buffalo gamboling,
bellowing, and making the earth rumble beneath the trampling of their
hooves. One day, while upon a cliff near the junction of the Kentucky
and Dick's Rivers, he suddenly found himself hemmed in by a party of
Indians. Seizing his only chance of escape, he leaped into the top of a
maple tree growing beneath the cliffs and, sliding to safety full sixty
feet below, made his escape, pursued by the sound of a chorus of
guttural "Ughs" from the dumbfounded savages.
Finally making his way back to the old camp, Daniel was rejoined there
by Squire on July 27, 1770. During the succeeding months, much of their
time was spent in hunting and prospecting in Jessamine County, where two
caves are still known as Boone's caves. Eventually, when ammunition and
supplies had once more run low, Squire was compelled a second time to
return to the settlements. Perturbed after a time by Squire's failure to
rejoin him at the appointed time, Daniel started toward the settlements,
in search of him; and by a stroke of good fortune encountered him along
the trail. Overjoyed at this meeting (December, 1770) the indomitable
Boones once more plunged into the wilderness, determined to conclude
their explorations by examining the regions watered by the Green and
Cumberland rivers and their tributaries. In after years, Gasper Mansker,
the old German scout, was accustomed to describe with comic effect the
consternation created among the Long Hunters, while hunting one day on
Green River, by a singular noise which they could not explain.
Stealthily slipping from tree to tree, Mansker finally beheld with
mingled surprise and amusement a hunter, bare-headed, 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 his favorite songs of the border. In
March, 1771, after spending some time in company with the Long Hunters,
the Boones, their horses laden with furs, set their faces homeward. On
their return journey, near Cumberland Gap, they had the misfortune to be
surrounded by a party of Indians who robbed them of their guns and all
their peltries. With this humiliating conclusion to his memorable tour
of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he himself says, "once more reached
home after experiencing hardships which would defy credulity in the
recital." [103]
Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the ambition of
years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a second paradise." The
reports of his extended explorations, which he made to Judge Henderson,
were soon communicated to the other partners of the land company; and
their letters of this period, to one another, bristle with glowing and
minute descriptions of the country, as detailed by their agent. Boone
was immediately engaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the
Cherokees confidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or
sell the beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. [104] The
high hopes of Henderson and his associates at last gave promise of
brilliant realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions of Kentucky
excited in their minds, says a gifted early chronicler, the "spirit of
an enterprise which in point of magnitude and peril, as well as
constancy and heroism displayed in its execution, 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, but if he
has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one cow to give a
little milk for his children, they must all go to raise money which is
not to be had. And lastly if his personal estate (sold at one tenth of
its value) will not do, then his lands (which perhaps has cost him many
years of toil and labour) must go the same way to satisfy these cursed
hungry caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our
Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a very
short time.
--George Sims: A Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County,
containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer ... and some
necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.
It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier explorations
in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel Boone anticipated
speedy removal to the West. Indeed, in the very year of his first tour
in their interest, Daniel and his wife Rebeckah sold all their property
in North Carolina, consisting of their home and six hundred and forty
acres of land, and after several removals established themselves upon
the upper Yadkin. This removal and the later western explorations just
outlined were due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery.
Three other causes also were at work. In the first place there was the
scarcity of game. For fifteen years the shipments of deerskins from
Bethabara to Charleston steadily increased; and the number of skins
bought by Gammern, the Moravian storekeeper, ran so high that in spite
of the large purchases made at the store by the hunters he would
sometimes run entirely out of money. Tireless in the chase, the
far-roaming Boone was among "the hunters, who brought in their skins
from as far away as the Indian lands"; and the beautiful upland pastures
and mountain forests, still teeming with deer and bear, doubtless lured
him to the upper Yadkin, where for a time in the immediate neighborhood
of his home abundance of game fell before his unerring rifle. Certainly
the deer and other game, which were being killed in enormous numbers to
satisfy the insatiable demand of the traders at Salisbury, the Forks,
and Bethabara, became scarcer and scarcer; and the wild game that was
left gradually fled to the westward. Terrible indeed was the havoc
wrought among the elk; and it was reported that the last elk was killed
in western North Carolina as early as 1781.
Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope in the back
country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguised outlawry,
similar to that found on the western plains of a later era. This
ruthless brigandage arose as the result of the unsettled state of the
country and the exposed condition of the settlements due to the Indian
alarms. When rude borderers, demoralized by the enforced idleness
attendant upon fort life during the dark days of Indian invasion,
sallied forth upon forays against the Indians, they found much valuable
property--horses, cattle, and stock--left by their owners when hurriedly
fleeing to the protection of the frontier stockades. The temptations
thus afforded were too great to resist; and the wilder spirits of the
backwoods, with hazy notions of private rights, seized the property
which they found, slaughtered the cattle, sold the horses, and
appropriated to their own use the temporarily abandoned household goods
and plantation tools. The stealing of horses, which were needed for the
cultivation of the soil and useful for quickly carrying unknown thieves
beyond the reach of the owner and the law, became a common practice; and
was carried on by bands of outlaws living remote from one another and
acting in collusive concert.
Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon the New
River settlements in Virginia had frightened away all the families at
the Town Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, a man of Welsh stock,
who had settled in the spring of 1752 in the upper Yadkin near the
Mulberry Fields, was suspected of having robbed the storekeeper on the
Meho. Not long afterward a band of outlaws who plundered the exposed
cabins in their owners' absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain
region in the rear of the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their
ill-gotten plunder and made themselves secure from attack. Other members
of the band dwelt in the settlements, where they concealed their robber
friends by day and aided them by night in their nefarious projects of
theft and rapine.
The entire community was finally aroused by the bold depredations of the
outlaws; and the most worthy settlers of the Yadkin country organized
under the name of Regulators to break up the outlaw band. When it was
discovered that Owen, who was well known at Bethabara, had allied
himself with the highwaymen, one of the justices summoned one hundred
men; and seventy, who answered the call, set forth on December 26, 1755,
to seek out the outlaws and to destroy their fortress. Emboldened by
their success, the latter upon one occasion had carried off a young girl
of the settlements. Daniel Boone placed himself at the head of one of
the parties, which included the young girl's father, to go to her
rescue; and they fortunately succeeded in effecting the release of the
frightened maiden. One of the robbers was apprehended and brought to
Salisbury, where he was thrown into prison for his crimes. Meanwhile a
large amount of plunder had been discovered at the house of one
Cornelius Howard; and the evidences of his guilt so multiplied against
him that he finally confessed his connection with the outlaw band and
agreed to point out their fort in the mountains.
Daniel Boone and George Boone joined the party of seventy men, sent out
by the colonial authorities, under the guidance of Howard, to attack the
stronghold of the bandits. Boone afterward related that the robbers'
fort was situated in the most fitly chosen place for such a purpose that
he could imagine--beneath an overhanging cliff of rock, with a large
natural chimney, and a considerable area in front well stockaded. The
frontiersmen surrounded the fort, captured five women and eleven
children, and then 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. Owen and 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 a tailor, the other to a carpenter. But so infuriated
was Owen's wife by Howard's treachery that she branded him as a second
Judas; and this at once fixed upon him the sobriquet "Judas" Howard--a
sobriquet he did not live long to bear, for about a year later he was
ambushed and shot from his horse at the crossing of a stream. He thus
paid the penalty of his betrayal of the outlaw band. For a number of
years, the Regulators continued to wage war against the remaining
outlaws, who from time to time committed murders as well as thefts. As
late as January, 1768, the Regulators caught a horse thief in the
Hollows of Surry County and brought him to Bethabara, whence Richter and
Spach took him to the jail at Salisbury. After this year, the outlaws
were heard of no more; and peace reigned in the settlements.
Colonel Edmund Fanning--of whom more anon--declared that the Regulation
began in Anson County which bordered upon South Carolina. [105] Certain
it is that the upper country of that province was kept in an uproar by
civil disturbances during this early period. Owing to the absence of
courts in this section, so remote from Charleston, the inhabitants found
it necessary, for the protection of property and the punishment of
outlaws, to form an association called, like the North Carolina society,
the Regulation. Against this association the horse thieves and other
criminals made common cause, and received tacit support from certain
more reputable persons who condemned "the irregularity of the
Regulators." The Regulation which had been thus organized in upper South
Carolina as early as 1764 led to tumultuous risings of the settlers; and
finally in the effort to suppress these disorders, the governor, Lord
Charles Montagu, appointed one Scovil, an utterly unworthy
representative, to carry out his commands. After various disorders,
which became ever more unendurable to the law-abiding, matters came to a
crisis (1769) as the result of the high-handed proceedings of Scovil,
who promiscuously seized and flung into prison all the Regulators he
could lay hands on. In the month of March the back country rose in
revolt against Scovil and a strong body of the settlers was on the point
of attacking the force under his command when an eleventh-hour letter
arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil from office. Thus was happily
averted, by the narrowest of margins, a threatened precursor of the
fight at Alamance in 1771 (see Chapter XII). As the result of the
petition of the Calhouns and others, courts were established in 1760,
though not opened until four years later. Many horse thieves were
apprehended, tried, and punished. Justice once more held full sway.
Another important cause for Boone's removal from the neighborhood of
Salisbury into the mountain fastnesses was the oppressive administration
of the law by corrupt sheriffs, clerks, and tax-gatherers, and the
dissatisfaction of the frontier squatters with the owners of the soil.
At the close of the year 1764 reports reached the town of Wilmington,
after the adjournment of the assembly in November, of serious
disturbances in Orange County, due, it was alleged, to the exorbitant
exactions of the clerks, registers, and some of the attorneys. [106] As
a result of this disturbing news, Governor Dobbs issued a proclamation
forbidding any officer to take illegal fees. Troubles had been brewing
in the adjacent county of Granville ever since the outbreak of the
citizens against Francis Corbin, Lord Granville's agent (January 24,
1759), and the issuance of the petition of Reuben Searcy and others
(March 23d) protesting against the alleged excessive fees taken and
injustices practised by Robert (Robin) Jones, the famous lawyer. These
disturbances were cumulative in their effect; and the people at last
(1765) found in George Sims, of Granville, a fit spokesman of their
cause and a doughty champion of popular rights. In his "Serious Address
to the Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our
deplorable Situation we suffer ... and some necessary Hints with Respect
to a Reformation," recently brought to light, he presents a crushing
indictment of the clerk of the county court, Samuel Benton, the
grandfather of Thomas Hart Benton. After describing in detail the system
of semi-peonage created by the merciless exactions of lawyers and petty
court officials, and the insatiable greed of "these cursed hungry
caterpillars," Sims with rude eloquence calls upon the people to pull
them down from their nests for the salvation of the Commonwealth. [107]
Other abuses were also recorded. So exorbitant was the charge for a
marriage-license, for instance, that an early chronicler records: "The
consequence was that some of the inhabitants on the head-waters of the
Yadkin took a short cut. They took each other for better or for worse;
and considered themselves as married without further ceremony." The
extraordinary scarcity of currency throughout the colony, especially in
the back country, was another great hardship and a perpetual source of
vexation. All these conditions gradually became intolerable to the
uncultured but free-spirited men of the back country. Events were slowly
converging toward a crisis in government and society. Independent in
spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted not only against
excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and extortionate fees, but also
against the rapacious practices of the agents of Lord Granville. These
agents industriously picked flaws in the titles to the lands in
Granville's proprietary upon which the poorer settlers were seated; and
compelled them to pay for the land if they had not already done so, or
else to pay the fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only
remedy of the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the
spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the proprietary
agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close bargains for the
lands or else to eject those who held them, Henry Eustace McCulloh, in
February, 1765, went into the county to call a reckoning. The settlers,
many of whom had located without deeds, indignantly retorted by offering
to buy only at their own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out
the holdings when this smaller price was declined. They not only
terrorized into acquiescence those among them who were willing to pay
the amount charged for the lands, but also openly declared that they
would resist by force any sheriff in ejectment proceedings. On May 7th
an outbreak occurred; and a mob, led by Thomas Polk, set upon John
Frohock, Abraham Alexander, and others, as they were about to survey a
parcel of land, and gave them a severe thrashing, even threatening the
young McCulloh with death. [108]
The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement with Francis
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, and Edmund Fanning, a cultured
gentleman-adventurer, associate justice of the superior court. So
rapacious and extortionate were these vultures of the courts who preyed
upon the vitals of the common people, that they were savagely lampooned
by Rednap Howell, the backwoods poet-laureate of the Regulation. The
temper of the back country is well caught in Howell's lines anent this
early 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. [109]
The germs of the great westward migration in the coming decade were thus
working among the people of the back country. If the tense nervous
energy of the American people is the transmitted characteristic of the
border settlers, who often slept with loaded rifle in hand in grim
expectation of being awakened by the hideous yells, the deadly tomahawk,
and the lurid firebrand of the savage, the very buoyancy of the national
character is in equal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded
on a freehold inheritance of land." The desire for free land was the
fundamental factor in the development of the American democracy. No
colony exhibited this tendency more signally than did North Carolina in
the turbulent days of the Regulation. The North Carolina frontiersmen
resented the obligation to pay quit-rents and firmly believed that the
first occupant of the soil had an indefeasible right to the land which
he had won with his rifle and rendered productive by the implements of
toil. Preferring the dangers of the free wilderness to the paying of
tribute to absentee landlords and officials of an intolerant colonial
government, the frontiersman found title in his trusty rifle rather than
in a piece of parchment, and was prone to pay his obligations 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 therefore quitted
the Province. It is said 1,500 departed since the Battle of Alamance and
to my knowledge a great many more are only waiting to dispose of their
plantations in order to follow them.
--Reverend Morgan Edwards, 1772.
The five years (1766-1771) which saw the rise, development, and ultimate
defeat of the popular movement known as the Regulation, constitute a
period not only of extraordinary significance in North Carolina but also
of fruitful consequences in the larger movements of westward expansion.
With the resolute intention of having their rulers "give account of
their stewardship," to employ 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
popular gatherings, a rough form of initiative and referendum. At
length, discouraged in its efforts, and particularly in the attempt to
bring county officials to book for charging illegal fees, this
association ceased actively to function. It was the precursor of a
movement of much more drastic character and formidable proportions,
chiefly directed against Colonel Edmund Fanning and his associates. This
movement doubtless took its name, "the Regulation," from the bands of
men already described who were organized first in North Carolina and
later in South Carolina, to put down highwaymen and to correct many
abuses in the back country, such as the tyrannies of Scovil and his
henchmen. Failing to secure redress of their grievances through legal
channels, the Regulators finally made such a powerful demonstration in
support of their refusal to pay taxes that Governor William Tryon of
North Carolina, in 1768, called out the provincial militia, and by
marching with great show of force through the disaffected regions,
succeeded temporarily in overawing the people and thus inducing them to
pay their assessments. [110]
The suits which had been brought by the Regulators against Edmund
Fanning, register, and Francis Nash, clerk, of Orange County, resulted
in both being "found guilty of taking too high fees." [111] Fanning
immediately resigned his commission as register; while Nash, who in
conjunction with Fanning had fairly offered in 1766 to refund to any one
aggrieved any fee charged by him which the Superior Court might hold
excessive, gave bond for his appearance at the next court. Similar suits
for extortion against the three Frohocks in Rowan County in 1769 met
with failure, however; and this outcome aroused the bitter resentment of
the Regulators, as recorded by Herman Husband in his "Impartial
Relation." During this whole period the insurrectionary spirit of the
people, who felt themselves deeply aggrieved but recognized their
inability to secure redress, took the form of driving local justices
from the bench and threatening court officials with violence.
An Impartial
RELATION
of the
First Rise and Cause
of the
Recent DIFFERENCES,
in
Publick AFFAIRS,
In the Province of North-Carolina; and of the past Tumults and Riots
that lately happened in that Province.
Containing most of the true and genuine Copies of Letters, Messages and
Remonstrances, between the Parties contending:------By which any
impartial Man may easily gather and see the true Ground and Reasons of
the dissatisfaction that universally reigns all over said Province in
more or less Degree.
Printed for the Compiler, 1770.
At the session of the Superior Court at Hillsborough, September 22,
1770, an elaborate petition prepared by the Regulators, demanding
unprejudiced juries and the public accounting for taxes by the sheriffs,
was handed to the presiding justice by James Hunter, a leading
Regulator. This justice was our acquaintance, Judge Richard Henderson,
of Granville County, the sole high officer in the provincial government
from the entire western section of the colony. In this petition occur
these trenchant words: "As we are serious and in good earnest and the
cause respects the whole body of the people it would be loss of time to
enter into arguments on particular points for though there are a few men
who have the gift and art of reasoning, yet every man has a feeling and
knows when he has justice done him as well as the most learned." [112]
On the following Monday (September 24th), upon convening of court, some
one hundred and fifty Regulators, led by James Hunter, Herman Husband,
Rednap Howell, and others, armed with clubs, whips, and cudgels, surged
into the court-room and through their spokesman, Jeremiah Fields,
presented a statement of their grievances. "I found myself," says Judge
Henderson, "under a necessity of attempting to soften and turn away the
fury of these mad people, in the best manner in my power, and as such
could well be, pacify their rage and at the same time preserve the
little remaining dignity of the court." [113]
During an interim, in which the Regulators retired for consultation,
they fell without warning upon Fanning and gave him such rough treatment
that he narrowly escaped with his life. The mob, now past control,
horsewhipped a number of leading lawyers and citizens gathered there at
court, and treated others, notably the courtly Mr. Hooper of Boston,
"with every mark of contempt and insult." Judge Henderson was assured by
Fields that no harm should come to him provided he would conduct the
court in accordance with the behest of the Regulators: namely, that no
lawyer, save the King's Attorney, should be admitted to the court, and
that the Regulators' cases should be tried with new jurors chosen by the
Regulators. With the entire little village terrorized by this campaign
of "frightfulness," and the court wholly unprotected, Judge Henderson
reluctantly acknowledged to himself that "the power of the judiciary was
exhausted." Nevertheless, he says, "I made every effort in my power
consistent with my office and the duty the public is entitled to claim
to preserve peace and good order." [114] Agreeing under duress to resume
the session the following day, the judge ordered an adjournment. But
being unwilling, on mature reflection, to permit a mockery of the court
and a travesty of justice to be staged under threat and intimidation, he
returned that night to his home in Granville and left the court
adjourned in course. Enraged by the judge's escape, the Regulators took
possession of the court-room the following morning, called over the
cases, and in futile protest 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," "Negroes not
worth a damn, Cost exceeds the whole," "Hogan pays and be damned," and,
in a case of slander, "Nonsense, let them argue for Ferrell has gone
hellward." [115]
The uprising of these bold and resolute, simple and imperfectly educated
people, which had begun as a constitutional struggle to secure justice
and to prevent their own exploitation by dishonest lawyers of the county
courts, now gave place to open anarchy and secret incendiarism. [116] In
the dead of night, November 12th and 14th, Judge Henderson's barn,
stables, and dwelling house were fired by the Regulators and went up in
flames. Glowing with a sense of wrong, these misguided people, led on by
fanatical agitators, thus vented their indiscriminate rage, not only
upon their oppressors, but also upon men wholly innocent of injuring
them--men of the stamp of William Hooper, afterward signer of the
Declaration of Independence, Alexander Martin, afterward governor and
United States Senator, and Richard Henderson, popular representative of
the back country and a firm champion of due process of law. It is
perhaps not surprising in view of these events that Governor Tryon and
the ruling class, lacking a sympathy broad enough to ensure justice to
the oppressed people, seemed to be chiefly impressed with the fact that
a widespread insurrection was in progress, threatening not only life and
property, but also civil government itself. The governor called out the
militia of the province and led an army of well-nigh one thousand men
and officers against the Regulators, who had assembled at Alamance to
the number of two thousand. Tryon stood firm upon the demands that the
people should submit to government and disperse at a designated hour.
The Regulators, on their side, hoped to secure the reforms they desired
by intimidating the governor with a great display of force. The battle
was a tragic fiasco for the Regulators, who fought bravely, but without
adequate arms or real leadership. With the conclusion of this desultory
action, a fight lasting about two hours (May 16, 1771), the power of the
Regulators was completely broken. [117]
Among these insurgents there was a remarkable element--an element whose
influence upon the course of American history has been but imperfectly
understood--which now looms into prominence as the vanguard of the army
of westward expansion. There were some of the Regulators who, though
law-abiding and conservative, were deeply imbued with ideas of liberty,
personal independence, and the freedom of the soil. Through the
influence of Benjamin Franklin, with whom one of the leaders of the
group, Herman Husband, was in constant correspondence, the patriotic
ideas then rapidly maturing into revolutionary sentiments furnished the
inspiration to action. As early as 1766, the Sandy Creek leaders,
referred to earlier in this chapter, issued a call to each neighborhood
to send delegates to a gathering for the purpose of investigating the
question "whether the free men of this country labor under any abuses of
power or not." The close connection between the Sandy Creek men and the
Sons of Liberty is amply demonstrated in this paper wherein the Sons of
Liberty in connection with the "stamp law" are praised for "redeeming us
from Tyranny" and for having "withstood the lords in Parliament in
behalf of true liberty." [118] Upon the records of the Dutchman's Creek
Church, of "regular" Baptists, at the Forks of the Yadkin, to which
Daniel Boone's family belonged, may be found this memorable entry,
recognizing the "American Cause" well-nigh a year before the declaration
of independence at Philadelphia: "At the monthly meeting it was agreed
upon concerning the American Cause, if any of the brethren see cause to
join it they have the liberty to do it without being called to an
account by the church. But whether they join or do not join they should
be used with brotherly love." [119]
The fundamental reasons underlying the approaching westward hegira are
found in the remarkable petition of the Regulators of Anson County
(October 9, 1769), who request that "Benjamin Franklin or some other
known patriot" be appointed agent of the province in London to seek
redress at the source. They exposed the basic evil in the situation by
pointing out that, in violation of the law restricting the amount of
land that might be granted to each person to six hundred and forty
acres, much of the most fertile territory in the province had been
distributed in large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "great
numbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in the cultivation of
the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist." [120] It was these poor
people, "thereby deprived of His Majesties liberality and Bounty," who
soon turned their gaze to the westward and crossed the mountains in
search of the rich, free lands of the trans-Alleghany region.
This feverish popular longing for freedom, stimulated by the economic
pressure of thousands of pioneers who were annually
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