CHAPTER V

KENTUCKY REACHED AT LAST

When Daniel Boone returned from tidewater Virginia to the Yadkin region is not now known. It is probable that the monotony of hauling tobacco to market at a time when his old neighbors were living in a state of panic palled upon a man who loved excitement and had had a taste of Indian warfare. It has been surmised that he served with the Rowan rangers upon Lyttleton's campaign, alluded to in the previous chapter, and possibly aided in defending Fort Dobbs, or served with Waddell under Montgomery. That he was, some time in 1760, in the mountains west of the Yadkin upon either a hunt or a scout, or both, appears to be well established; for up to a few years ago there was still standing upon the banks of Boone's Creek, a small tributary of the Watauga in eastern Tennessee, a tree upon whose smooth bark had been rudely carved this characteristic legend, undoubtedly by the great hunter himself: "D Boon cilled A BAR on this tree year 1760."[7]

We have already seen that he accompanied Waddell in 1761, when that popular frontier leader reenforced Colonel Byrd's expedition against the Cherokees. Upon Waddell's return to North Carolina his leather-shirted followers dispersed to their homes, and Boone was again enabled to undertake a protracted hunt, no longer disturbed by fear that in his absence Indians might raid the settlement; for hunting was now his chief occupation, his wife and children conducting the farm, which held second place in his affections. Thus we see how close the borderers came to the savage life wherein men are the warriors and hunters and women the crop-gatherers and housekeepers. Organizing a party of kindred spirits--a goodly portion of the Yadkin settlers were more hunters than farmers--Boone crossed the mountains and roamed through the valleys of southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee, being especially delighted with the Valley of the Holston, where game was found to be unusually abundant. At about the same time another party of nineteen hunters went upon a similar expedition into the hills and valleys westward of the Yadkin, penetrating well into Tennessee, and being absent for eighteen months.

[Illustration: A BOONE TREE. Tree on Boone's Creek, Tenn., bearing Daniel Boone's autograph. (See pp. 55, 56.)]

We must not conclude, from the passionate devotion to hunting exhibited by these backwoodsmen of the eighteenth century, that they led the same shiftless, aimless lives as are followed by the "poor whites" found in some of the river-bottom communities of our own day, who are in turn farmers, fishermen, or hunters, as fancy or the seasons dictate. It must be remembered that farming upon the Virginia and Carolina uplands was, in the pioneer period, crude as to methods and insignificant as to crops. The principal wealth of the well-to-do was in herds of horses and cattle which grazed in wild meadows, and in droves of long-nosed swine feeding upon the roots and acorns of the hillside forests. Among the outlying settlers much of the family food came from the woods, and often months would pass without bread being seen inside the cabin walls. Besides the live stock of the richer folk, whose herds were driven to market, annual caravans to tidewater towns carried furs and skins won by the real backwoodsmen, who lived on the fringe of the wilderness. For lack of money accounts were kept in pelts, and with these were purchased rifles, ammunition, iron, and salt. It was, then, to the forests that the borderers largely looked for their sustenance. Hence those long hunts, from which the men of the Yadkin, unerring marksmen, would come back laden with great packs of pelts for the markets, and dried venison, bear's meat, and bear's oil for their family larders. Naturally, this wandering, adventurous life, spiced with excitement in many forms, strongly appealed to the rough, hardy borderers, and unfitted them for other occupations. Under such conditions farming methods were not likely to improve, nor the arts of civilization to prosper; for the hunter not only best loved the wilderness, but settlement narrowed his hunting-grounds. Thus it was that the frontiersman of the Daniel Boone type, Indian hater as he was, had at heart much the same interests as the savage whom he was seeking to supplant. It was simply a question as to which hunter, red or white, should occupy the forest; to neither was settlement welcome.

With the opening of 1762 the southwest border began to be reoccupied. The abandoned log cabins once more had fires lighted upon their hearths, at the base of the great outside chimneys of stones and mud-plastered boughs; the deserted clearings, which had become choked with weeds and underbrush in the five years of Indian warfare, were again cultivated by their reassured owners. Among the returned refugees were Daniel's parents, Squire and Sarah Boone, who had ridden on horseback overland all the way from Maryland. Three years later Squire Boone died, one of the most highly esteemed men in the valley.

The Yadkin country was more favored than some other portions of the backwoods of North Carolina. Pontiac's uprising (1763) against the English, who had now supplanted the French in Canada and in the wilderness between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, led some of the Southern tribes again to attack the frontiers of the Southwest; but they were defeated before the Yadkin was affected by this fresh panic.

The Indian wars had lasted so long that the entire border had become demoralized. Of course not all the people in the backwoods were of good character. Not a few of them had been driven out from the more thickly settled parts of the country because of crimes or of bad reputation; and some of the fur-traders who lived upon the edge of the settlement were sorry rogues. When the panic-stricken people were crowded within the narrow walls of the forts they could not work. Many of them found this life of enforced idleness to their liking, and fell into the habit of making secret expeditions to plunder abandoned houses and to steal uncared-for live stock. When peace came these marauders had acquired a distaste for honest labor; leaving the forts, they pillaged right and left, and horse-stealing became an especially prevalent frontier vice.

Justice on the border was as yet insufficiently organized. Some of the Virginia and Carolina magistrates were themselves rascals, whose decisions could be purchased by criminals. Many of the best citizens, therefore, formed associations whose members were called "regulators." They bound themselves to pursue, arrest, and try criminals, and to punish them by whipping, also by expulsion from the neighborhood. The law-breakers, on the other hand, organized in defense, and popular opinion was divided between the two elements; for there were some good people who did not like the arbitrary methods of the regulators, and insisted upon every man being given a regular trial by jury. In South Carolina, particularly, the settlers were much exercised on this question, and arrayed themselves into opposing bands, armed to carry out their respective views. For a time civil war was feared; but finally, after five years of disturbance, an agreement was reached, efficient courts were established, and justice triumphed.

Affairs did not reach so serious a stage in North Carolina. Nevertheless there were several bands of vicious and indolent men, who, entrenched in the hills, long defied the regulators. One of these parties built a rude stockaded fort beneath an overhanging cliff in the mountains back of the Yadkin settlements. They stole horses, cattle, farming utensils; in fact, anything that they could lay their hands upon. One day they grew so bold as to kidnap a girl. The settlers, now roused to action, organized attacking companies, one of them headed by Daniel Boone, and carried the log fortress of the bandits by storm. The culprits were taken to Salisbury jail and the clan broken up.

The rapid growth of the country soon made game scarce in Boone's neighborhood. Not only did the ever-widening area of cleared fields destroy the cover, but there were, of course, more hunters than before. Thus our Nimrod, who in his early manhood cared for nothing smaller than deer, was compelled to take extended trips in his search for less-frequented places. It was not long before he had explored all the mountains and valleys within easy reach, and become familiar with the views from every peak in the region, many of them five and six thousand feet in height.

As early as 1764-65 Boone was in the habit of taking with him, upon these trips near home, his little son James, then seven or eight years of age. This was partly for company, but mainly for the lad's education as a hunter. Frequently they would spend several days together in the woods during the autumn and early winter--the deer-hunting season--and often, when in "open" camps, were overtaken by snow-storms. On such occasions the father would keep the boy warm by clasping him to his bosom as they lay with feet toward the glowing camp-fire. As the well-taught lad grew into early manhood these two companions would be absent from home for two and three months together, always returning well laden with the spoils of the chase.

Hunters in Boone's day had two kinds of camp--"open" when upon the move, which meant sleeping in their blankets upon the ground wherever darkness or weariness overtook them; "closed" where remaining for some time in a locality. A closed camp consisted of a rude hut of logs or poles, the front entirely open, the sides closely chinked with moss, and the roof covered with blankets, boughs, or bark, sloping down to a back-log. In times when the Indians were not feared a fire was kept up throughout the night, in front, in order to warm the enclosure. Upon a bed of hemlock boughs or of dried leaves the hunters lay with heads to the back-log and stockinged feet to the blaze, for their spongy moccasins were hung to dry.[8] Such a camp, often called a "half-faced cabin," was carefully placed so that it might be sheltered by neighboring hills from the cold north and west winds. It was fairly successful as a protection from rain and snow, and sometimes served a party of hunters throughout several successive seasons; but it was ill-fitted for the coldest weather. Boone frequently occupied a shelter of this kind in the woods of Kentucky.

During the last four months of 1765 Boone and seven companions went on horseback to the new colony of Florida with a view to moving thither if they found it suited to their tastes. Wherever possible, they stopped overnight at borderers' cabins upon the frontiers of the Carolinas and Georgia. But such opportunities did not always occur; they often suffered from hunger, and once they might have died from starvation but for the timely succor of a roving band of Seminole Indians. They explored Florida all the way from St. Augustine to Pensacola, and appear to have had a rather wretched time of it. The trails were miry from frequent rains, the number and extent of the swamps appalled them, and there was not game enough to satisfy a man like Boone, who scorned alligators. Pensacola, however, so pleased him that he determined to settle there, and purchased a house and lot which he might in due time occupy. Upon their return Boone told his wife of his Pensacola venture, but this sturdy woman of the frontier spurned the idea of moving to a gameless land. So the town lot was left to take care of itself, and henceforth the dutiful husband looked only to the West as his model of a perfect country.

At the close of the French and Indian War there arrived in the Boone settlement a Scotch-Irishman named Benjamin Cutbirth, aged about twenty-three years. He was a man of good character and a fine hunter. Marrying Elizabeth Wilcoxen, a niece of Daniel Boone, he and Boone went upon long hunts together, and attained that degree of comradeship which joint life in a wilderness camp is almost certain to produce.

In 1766 several families from North Carolina went to Louisiana, apparently by sea to New Orleans, and founded an English settlement above Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River. The news of this event gave rise to a general desire for exploring the country between the mountains and the great river. The year following, Cutbirth, John Stuart, John Baker, and John Ward, all of them young married men on the Yadkin, and excellent hunters, resolved to perform this feat, and if possible to discover a region superior to their own valley. They crossed the mountain range and eventually saw the Mississippi, being, so far as we know from contemporary documents, the first party of white men to succeed in this overland enterprise. Possibly fur-traders may have done so before them, but they left no record to prove it.

Cutbirth and his friends spent a year or two upon the river. In the autumn they ascended the stream for a considerable distance, also one of its tributaries, made a stationary camp for the winter, and in the spring descended to New Orleans, where they sold at good prices their skins, furs, bear-bacon, bear's oil, buffalo "jerk" (dried meat), tallow, and dried venison hams. Their expedition down the river was performed at great risks, for they had many hairbreadth escapes from snags, river banks shelving in, whirlpools, wind-storms, and Indians. Their reward, says a chronicler of the day, was "quite a respectable property;" but while upon their return homeward, overland, they were set upon by Choctaws, who robbed them of their all.

Meanwhile, Daniel Boone was slow in making up his mind to leave home and the wife and family whom he dearly loved for so long and perilous a trip as a journey into the now much-talked-of land of Kentucky. Perhaps, despite his longings, he might never have gone had affairs upon the Yadkin remained satisfactory to him. But game, his chief reliance, was year by year becoming harder to obtain. And the rascally agents of Earl Granville, the principal landholder of the region, from whom the Boones had purchased, were pretending to find flaws in the land-titles and insisting upon the necessity for new deeds, for which large fees were exacted.

This gave rise to great popular discontent. Boone's protest consisted in leaving the Sugar Tree settlement and moving northwest for sixty-five miles toward the head of the Yadkin. His new cabin, a primitive shell of logs, could still be seen, a few years ago, at the foot of a range of hills some seven and a half miles above Wilkesboro, in Wilkes County. After a time, dissatisfied with this location, he moved five miles farther up the river and about half a mile up Beaver Creek. Again he changed his mind, choosing his final home on the upper Yadkin, just above the mouth of Beaver. It was from this beautiful region among the Alleghany foot-hills, where game and fish were plenty and his swine and cattle had good range, that Boone, crowded out by advancing civilization, eventually moved to Kentucky.

In the spring and early summer of 1767 there were fresh outbreaks on the part of the Indians. Governor Tryon had run a boundary-line between the back settlements of the Carolinas and the Cherokee hunting-grounds. But hunters and traders would persist in wandering to the west of this line, and sometimes they were killed.

In the autumn of that year Daniel Boone and a warm friend, William Hill, and possibly Squire Boone, determined to seek Kentucky, of which Finley had told him twelve years before. They crossed the mountain wall, were in the valleys of the Holston and the Clinch, and reached the head waters of the West Fork of the Big Sandy. Following down this river for a hundred miles, determined to find the Ohio, they appear to have struck a buffalo-path, along which they traveled as far as a salt-lick ten miles west of the present town of Prestonburg, on a tributary of the West (or Louisa) Fork of the Sandy, within Floyd County, in the extreme eastern part of Kentucky.

Caught in a severe snow-storm, they were compelled to camp at this lick for the entire winter. It proved to be the most profitable station that they could have selected, for buffaloes and other animals came in large numbers to lick the brackish soil, and all the hunters had to do was to "rise, kill, and eat."

Although now considerably west of the Cumberland Mountains, the explorers were not aware that they were within the famed Kentucky; and as the country was very hilly, covered with briers which annoyed them greatly, and altogether forbidding, they despaired of reaching the promised land by this path, and in the spring returned to the Yadkin.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Boone had a strong fancy for carving his name and hunting feats upon trees. His wanderings have very largely been traced by this means.

[8] When Indians were about, moccasins were always tied to the guns so as to be ready to slip on in case of a night alarm.

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