CHAPTER XIII

KENTUCKY'S PATH OF THORNS

The preliminary articles of peace between the United States and Great Britain had been signed on the thirtieth of November, 1782; but it was not until the following spring that the news reached Kentucky. The northern tribes had information of the peace quite as early; and discouraged at apparently losing their British allies, who had fed, clothed, armed, and paid them from headquarters in Detroit, for a time suspended their organized raids into Kentucky. This welcome respite caused immigration to increase rapidly.

We have seen how the old system of making preemptions and surveys led to the overlapping of claims, the commission of many acts of injustice, and wide-spread confusion in titles. Late in 1782, Colonel Thomas Marshall, the surveyor of Fayette County, arrived from Virginia, and began to attempt a straightening of the land conflict. Boone was now not only the surveyor's deputy, but both sheriff and county lieutenant of Fayette, a combination of offices which he held until his departure from Kentucky. It was his duty as commandant to provide an escort for Marshall through the woods to the Falls of the Ohio, where was now the land-office. The following order which he issued for this guard has been preserved; it is a characteristic sample of the many scores of letters and other documents which have come down to us from the old hero, who fought better than he spelled:

"Orders to Capt. Hazelrigg--your are amedetly to order on Duty 3 of your Company as goude [guard] to scorte Col Marshshall to the falls of ohigho you will call on those who was Exicused from the Shone [Shawnese] Expedistion and those who Come into the County after the army Marched they are to meet at Lexinton on Sunday next with out fale given under my hand this 6 Day of Janury 1783.

"DNL BOONE"

Another specimen document of the time has reference to the scouting which it was necessary to maintain throughout much of the year; for small straggling bands of the enemy were still lurking about, eager to capture occasional scalps, the proudest trophies which a warrior could obtain. It also is apparently addressed to Hazelrigg:

"orders the 15th feberry 1783

"Sir you are amedetly to Call on Duty one thurd of our melitia as will mounted on horse as poseble and Eight Days purvistion to take a touere as follows Commanded by Leut Col patison and Rendevues at Strod [Strode's Station] on thusday the 20th from there to March to Colkes [Calk's] Cabin thence an Este Corse till the gat 10 miles above the uper Blew Licks then Down to Lickes thence to Limestown and if no Sine [is] found a stright Corse to Eagel Crick 10 miles from the head from then home if Sine be found the Commander to act as he thinks most prudent as you will be the Best Judge when on the Spot. You will first Call on all who [were] Excused from the Expedistion Except those that went to the falls with Col. Marshall and then Call them off as they Stand on the List here in faile not. given und my hand

"DANIEL BOONE C Lt."

In March the Virginia legislature united the three counties into the District of Kentucky, with complete legal and military machinery; in the latter, Benjamin Logan ranked as senior colonel and district lieutenant. It will be remembered that when the over-mountain country was detached from Fincastle, it was styled the County of Kentucky; then the name of Kentucky was obliterated by its division into three counties; and now the name was revived by the creation of the district, which in due time was to become a State. The log-built town of Danville was named as the capital.

It is estimated that during the few years immediately following the close of the Revolutionary War several thousand persons came each year to Kentucky from the seaboard States, although many of these returned to their homes either disillusioned or because of Indian scares. In addition to the actual settlers, who cared for no more land than they could use, there were merchants who saw great profits in taking boat-loads of goods down the Ohio or by pack-trains over the mountains; lawyers and other young professional men who wished to make a start in new communities; and speculators who hoped to make fortunes in obtaining for a song extensive tracts of fertile wild land, which they vainly imagined would soon be salable at large prices for farms and town sites. Many of the towns, although ill-kept and far from prosperous in appearance, were fast extending beyond their lines of palisade and boasting of stores, law-offices, market-places, and regular streets; Louisville had now grown to a village of three hundred inhabitants, of whom over a third were fighting-men. Besides Americans, there were among the newcomers many Germans, Scotch, and Irish, thrifty in the order named.

At last Kentucky was raising produce more than sufficient to feed her own people, and an export trade had sprung up. Crops were being diversified: Indian corn still remained the staple, but there were also melons, pumpkins, tobacco, and orchards; besides, great droves of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, branded or otherwise marked, ranged at large over the country, as in old days on the Virginia and Carolina foot-hills. Away from the settlements buffaloes still yielded much beef, bacon was made from bears, and venison was a staple commodity.

The fur trade was chiefly carried on by French trappers; but American hunters, like the Boones and Kenton, still gathered peltries from the streams and forests, and took or sent them to the East, either up the Ohio in bateaux or on packhorses over the mountains--paths still continually beset by savage assailants. Large quantities of ginseng were also shipped to the towns on the seaboard. Of late there had likewise developed a considerable trade with New Orleans and other Spanish towns down the Mississippi River. Traders with flatboats laden with Kentucky produce--bacon, beef, salt, and tobacco--would descend the great waterway, both of whose banks were audaciously claimed by Spain as far up as the mouth of the Ohio, and take great risks from Indian attack or from corrupt Spanish custom-house officials, whom it was necessary to bribe freely that they might not confiscate boat and cargo. This commerce was always uncertain, often ending in disaster, but immensely profitable to the unprincipled men who managed to ingratiate themselves with the Spanish authorities.

Boone was now in frequent demand as a pilot and surveyor by capitalists who relied upon his unrivaled knowledge of the country to help them find desirable tracts of land; often he was engaged to meet incoming parties of immigrants over the Wilderness Road, with a band of riflemen to guard them against Indians, to furnish them with wild meat--for the newcomers at first were inexpert in killing buffaloes--and to show them the way to their claims. He was prominent as a pioneer; as county lieutenant he summoned his faithful men-at-arms to repel or avenge savage attacks; and his fame as hunter and explorer had by this time not only become general throughout the United States but had even reached Europe.

His reputation was largely increased by the appearance in 1784 of the so-called "autobiography." We have seen that, although capable of roughly expressing himself on paper, and of making records of his rude surveys, he was in no sense a scholar. Yet this autobiography, although signed by himself, is pedantic in form, and deals in words as large and sonorous as though uttered by the great Doctor Samuel Johnson. As a matter of fact, it is the production of John Filson, the first historian of Kentucky and one of the pioneers of Cincinnati. Filson was a schoolmaster, quite devoid of humor, and with a strong penchant for learned phrases. In setting down the story of Boone's life, as related to him by the great hunter, he made the latter talk in the first person, in a stilted manner quite foreign to the hardy but unlettered folk of whom Boone was a type. Wherever Boone's memory failed, Filson appears to have filled in the gaps from tradition and his own imagination; thus the autobiography is often wrong as to facts, and possesses but minor value as historical material. The little book was, however, widely circulated both at home and abroad, and gave Boone a notoriety excelled by few men of his day. Some years later Byron wrote some indifferent lines upon "General Boone of Kentucky;" the public journals of the time had accounts of his prowess, often grossly exaggerated; and English travelers into the interior of America eagerly sought the hero and told of him in their books.

Yet it must be confessed that he had now ceased to be a real leader in the affairs of Kentucky. A kindly, simple-hearted, modest, silent man, he had lived so long by himself alone in the woods that he was ill fitted to cope with the horde of speculators and other self-seekers who were now despoiling the old hunting-grounds to which Finley had piloted him only fifteen years before. Of great use to the frontier settlements as explorer, hunter, pilot, land-seeker, surveyor, Indian fighter, and sheriff--and, indeed, as magistrate and legislator so long as Kentucky was a community of riflemen--he had small capacity for the economic and political sides of commonwealth-building. For this reason we find him hereafter, although still in middle life, taking but slight part in the making of Kentucky; none the less did his career continue to be adventurous, picturesque, and in a measure typical of the rapidly expanding West.

Probably in the early spring of 1786 Boone left the neighborhood of the Kentucky River, and for some three years dwelt at Maysville (Limestone), still the chief gateway to Kentucky for the crowds of immigrants who came by water. He was there a tavern-keeper--probably Mrs. Boone was the actual hostess--and small river merchant. He still frequently worked at surveying, of course hunted and trapped as of old, and traded up and down the Ohio River between Maysville and Point Pleasant--the last-named occupation a far from peaceful one, for in those troublous times navigation of the Ohio was akin to running the gauntlet; savages haunted the banks, and by dint of both strategy and open attack wrought a heavy mortality among luckless travelers and tradesmen. The goods which he bartered to the Kentuckians for furs, skins, and ginseng were obtained in Maryland, whither he and his sons went with laden pack-animals, often driving before them loose horses for sale in the Eastern markets. Sometimes they followed some familiar mountain road, at others struck out over new paths, for no longer was the Wilderness Road the only overland highway to the West.

Kentucky was now pursuing a path strewn with thorns. Northward, the British still held the military posts on the upper lakes, owing to the non-fulfilment of certain stipulations in the treaty of peace. Between these and the settlements south of the Ohio lay a wide area populated by powerful and hostile tribes of Indians, late allies of the British, deadly enemies of Kentucky, and still aided and abetted by military agents of the king. To the South, Spain controlled the Mississippi, the commercial highway of the West; jealous of American growth, she harshly denied to Kentuckians the freedom of the river, and was accused of turning against them and their neighbors of Tennessee the fierce warriors of the Creek and Cherokee tribes. On their part, the Kentuckians looked with hungry eyes upon the rich lands held by Spain.

Not least of Kentucky's trials was the political discontent among her own people, which for many years lay like a blight upon her happiness and prosperity. Virginia's home necessities had prevented that commonwealth from giving much aid to the West during the Revolution, and at its conclusion her policy toward the Indians lacked the aggressive vigor for which Kentuckians pleaded. This was sufficient cause for dissatisfaction; but to this was added another of still greater importance. To gain the free navigation of the Mississippi, and thus to have an outlet to the sea, long appeared to be essential to Western progress. At first the Eastern men in Congress failed to realize this need, thereby greatly exasperating the over-mountain men. All manner of schemes were in the air, varying with men's temperaments and ambitions. Some, like Clark--who, by this time had, under the influence of intemperance, greatly fallen in popular esteem, although not without followers--favored a filibustering expedition against the Spanish; and later (1788), when this did not appear practicable, were willing to join hands with Spain herself in the development of the continental interior; and later still (1793-94), to help France oust Spain from Louisiana. Others wished Kentucky to be an independent State, free to conduct her own affairs and make such foreign alliances as were needful; but Virginia and Congress did not release her.

Interwoven with this more or less secret agitation for separating the West from the East were the corrupt intrigues of Spain, which might have been more successful had she pursued a persistent policy. Her agents--among whom were some Western pioneers who later found difficulty in explaining their conduct--craftily fanned the embers of discontent, spread reports that Congress intended to sacrifice to Spain the navigation rights of the West, distributed bribes, and were even accused of advising Spain to arm the Southern Indians in order to increase popular uneasiness over existing conditions. Spain also offered large land grants to prominent American borderers who should lead colonies to settle beyond the Mississippi and become her subjects--a proposition which Clark once offered to accept, but did not; but of which we shall see that Daniel Boone, in his days of discontent, took advantage, as did also a few other Kentucky pioneers. Ultimately Congress resolved never to abandon its claim to the Mississippi (1787); and when the United States became strong, and the advantages of union were more clearly seen in the West, Kentucky became a member of the sisterhood of States (1792).

It is estimated that, between 1783 and 1790, fully fifteen hundred Kentuckians were massacred by Indians or taken captive to the savage towns; and the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania furnished their full quota to the long roll of victims. It is impossible in so small a volume as this to mention all of even the principal incidents in the catalogue of assaults, heroic defenses, murders, burnings, torturings, escapes, reprisals, and ambushes which constitute the lurid annals of this protracted border warfare. The reader who has followed thus far this story of a strenuous life, will understand what these meant; to what deeds of daring they gave rise on the part of the men and women of the border; what privation and anguish they entailed. But let us not forget that neither race could claim, in this titanic struggle for the mastery of the hunting-grounds, a monopoly of courage or of cowardice, of brutality or of mercy. The Indians suffered quite as keenly as the whites in the burning of their villages, crops, and supplies, and by the loss of life either in battle, by stealthy attack, or by treachery. The frontiersmen learned from the red men the lessons of forest warfare, and often outdid their tutors in ferocity. The contest between civilization and savagery is, in the nature of things, unavoidable; the result also is foreordained. It is well for our peace of mind that, in the dark story of the Juggernaut car, we do not inquire too closely into details.

In 1785, goaded by numerous attacks on settlers and immigrants, Clark led a thousand men against the tribes on the Wabash; but by this time he had lost control of the situation, and cowardice on the part of his troops, combined with lack of provisions, led to the practical failure of the expedition, although the Indians were much frightened.

At the same time, Logan was more successful in an attack on the Shawnese of the Scioto Valley, who lost heavily in killed and prisoners. In neither of these expeditions does Boone appear to have taken part.

The year 1787 was chiefly notable, in the history of the West, for the adoption by Congress of the Ordinance for the government of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, wherein there dwelt perhaps seven thousand whites, mostly unprogressive French-Canadians, in small settlements flanking the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and in the Wabash Valley. Along the Ohio were scattered a few American hamlets, chiefly in Kentucky. In the same year the Indian war reached a height of fury which produced a panic throughout the border, and frantic appeals to Virginia, which brought insufficient aid. Boone, now a town trustee of Maysville, was sent to the legislature that autumn, and occupied his seat at Richmond from October until January. While there, we find him strongly complaining that the arms sent out to Kentucky by the State during the year were unfit for use, the swords being without scabbards, and the rifles without cartridge-boxes or flints.

A child of the wilderness, Boone was law-abiding and loved peace, but he chafed at legal forms. He had, in various parts of Kentucky, preempted much land in the crude fashion of his day, both under the Transylvania Company and the later statutes of Virginia--how much, it would now be difficult to ascertain. In his old survey-books, still preserved in the Wisconsin State Historical Library, one finds numerous claim entries for himself, ranging from four hundred to ten thousand acres each--a tract which he called "Stockfield," near Boonesborough; on Cartwright's Creek, a branch of Beech Fork of Salt River; on the Licking, Elkhorn, Boone's Creek, and elsewhere. The following is a specimen entry, dated "Aperel the 22 1785," recording a claim made "on the Bank of Cantuckey"; it illustrates the loose surveying methods of the time: "Survayd for Dal Boone 5000 acres begin at Robert Camels N E Corner at 2 White ashes and Buckeyes S 1200 p[oles] to 3 Shuger trees Ealm and walnut E 666 p to 6 Shuger trees and ash N 1200 p to a poplar and beech W 666 p to the begining."

It did not occur to our easy-going hero that any one would question his right to as much land as he cared to hold in a wilderness which he had done so much to bring to the attention of the world. But claim-jumpers were no respecters of persons. It was discovered that Boone had carelessly failed to make any of his preemptions according to the letter of the law, leaving it open for any adventurer to reenter the choice claims which he had selected with the care of an expert, and to treat him as an interloper. Suits of ejectment followed one by one (1785-98), until in the end his acres were taken from him by the courts, and the good-hearted, simple fellow was sent adrift in the world absolutely landless.

At first, when his broad acres began to melt away, the great hunter, careless of his possessions, appeared to exhibit no concern; but the accumulation of his disasters, together with the rapid growth of settlement upon the hunting-grounds, and doubtless some domestic nagging, developed within him an intensity of depression which led him to abandon his long-beloved Kentucky and vow never again to dwell within her limits. In the autumn of 1788, before his disasters were quite complete, this resolution was carried into effect; with wife and family, and what few worldly goods he possessed, he removed to Point Pleasant, at the junction of the Great Kanawha and the Ohio--in our day a quaint little court-house town in West Virginia.

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