The Pioneer of Kentucky

While the events of the Revolutionary War and of the succeeding period were taking place on the seaboard of America, the interior was the seat of interesting incidents of which some description is desirable. The colonists of America had dispossessed the original tenants of the soil from the Atlantic region, or reduced them to a state of hopeless submission, with the exception of the Iroquois tribes of New York, who were too warlike and well organized to be easily overcome. But in the interior, beyond the mountain-barrier of the Alleghanies, the savages were yet numerous and their spirit unbroken. The Cherokees had become peaceful, but the Northern tribes were vigorous and warlike, and viewed with jealous hostility the spread of pioneer invasion into their territory. This feeling was encouraged by the art of British emissaries, who, during the war, roused the savages to acts of horrible cruelty and devastation.

The first movements of the whites westward had been made by way of the great lakes and the Mississippi, along which the French had early established trading-stations. The next movement of the French was southward from the lakes to the Ohio, while at the same time the English were pushing westward through Pennsylvania to the same region. The conflicts arising from this, with the final triumph of the English, we have considered. But the victors had another foe to deal with, in the savages of the Ohio territory, and not till they had defeated Pontiac and his warriors, and broken the spirit of the hostile tribes, were they secure in their possession of the vast and fertile region which they had thus appropriated.

There is another movement of emigration now to consider, which opened a new and extensive territory to European settlers, and gave rise to historical events of interest and importance. In a preceding article it was remarked that the news of the battle of Lexington reached the ears of a party of hunters in the interior of Kentucky, and that they gave the name of Lexington to the locality of their camp. The movement in this direction was instigated and led by the celebrated pioneer and hunter Daniel Boone, whose adventurous life has so long been a source of interest and enjoyment to readers. The story of the discovery, conquest, and settlement of Kentucky belongs to the era of the Revolutionary War, and had reached its most interesting phase at the period when the seaboard colonists were first taking arms against British aggression. Its consequences, however, reached far into the succeeding period, and a description of it is properly in place here.

Kentucky was first discovered in 1767, by a bold hunter named John Finley, who, with some companions, in that year crossed the Alleghanies and entered this unknown land. It was no easy enterprise. There was a mountain-region nearly fifty miles in width to cross, traversed by parallel ridges, all rugged, and some almost impassable. Yet the beautiful and fertile expanse which they beheld from the western slope repaid the hardy pioneers for their toil, and for months they wandered in this new Eden, which was full of game, and pleasantly salubrious in its climate, while unclaimed by those savage tenants whose presence filled with peril all other regions of the country. No Indians possessed the country. It was the hunting and battle region of Northern, Western, and Southern tribes, who frequently crossed its soil, yet never made it their home. Yet here desperate battles frequently took place, and the name of "the dark and bloody ground," which it subsequently received, was always appropriate.

The story told by Finley on his return was eagerly heard by Daniel Boone, a noted hunter of North Carolina, whither his parents had emigrated from Pennsylvania. In 1769 a party under the leadership of Boone crossed the mountains, and entered Kentucky by way of Cumberland Gap. His adventures in this region for several years succeeding were numerous and exciting. He acquired the reputation of a mighty hunter, became dreaded by the Indians, and, though on several occasions taken prisoner, always managed to escape from their hands. During this interval the Indian war known as Lord Dunmore's War broke out, through the assassination, by white fiends, of the family of the renowned Indian chief Logan. The borders of the Virginia frontier were terribly raided, and it needed an army of three thousand men to subdue the savages. In the final battle, which was desperately contested, two hundred and fifteen Virginians and several hundred Indian warriors were killed and wounded. The repulsed tribes fled in terror, and their whole country was devastated by the victors.