Volume I Part 22 (1/2)

70. These two events took place on September 26th and 29th; ”Am.

Archives,” 5th Series, Vol. II., p. 540. Ramsey is thus wrong in saying no white was killed on this expedition.

71. McAfee MSS.; one of the McAfees went along and preserved a rough diary of dates.

72. ”History of Virginia,” John Burke (continued by L. H. Girardin), Petersburg, 1816, p. 176.

73. After camping a few days at Double Springs, the head-waters of Lick Creek, to let all the Watauga men come up.

74. They sent spies in advance. The trail led through forests and marshy canebrakes; across Nolichucky, up Long Creek and down Dunplin Creek to the French Broad. Haywood and Ramsey.

75. McAfee MSS.

76. Nov. 5th. _Do._

77. Nov. 8th. _Do._

78. The boundary then established between the Cherokees and Watauga people was known as Brown's Line.

79. As a very rough guess after a careful examination of all the authorities, it may be said that in this war somewhat less than two hundred Indians were slain, all warriors. The loss of the whites in war was probably no greater; but it included about as many more women and children. So that perhaps two or three times as many whites as Indians were killed, counting in every one.

CHAPTER XII.

GROWTH AND CIVIL ORGANIZATION OF KENTUCKY, 1776.

By the end of 1775 Kentucky had been occupied by those who were permanently to hold it. Stouthearted men, able to keep what they had grasped moved in, and took with them their wives and children. There was also of course a large s.h.i.+fting element, composing, indeed, the bulk of the population: hunters who came out for the season; ”cabinners,” or men who merely came out to build a cabin and partially clear a spot of ground, so as to gain a right to it under the law; surveyors, and those adventurers always to be found in a new country, who are too restless, or too timid, or too irresolute to remain.

The men with families and the young men who intended to make permanent homes formed the heart of the community, the only part worth taking into account. There was a steady though thin stream of such immigrants, and they rapidly built up around them a life not very unlike that which they had left behind with their old homes. Even in 1776 there was marrying and giving in marriage, and children were born in Kentucky. The new-comers had to settle in forts, where the young men and maidens had many chances for courts.h.i.+p. They married early, and were as fruitful as they were hardy.[1] Most of these marriages were civil contracts, but some may have been solemnized by clergymen, for the commonwealth received from the outset occasional visits from ministers.

These ministers belonged to different denominations, but all were sure of a hearing. The backwoodsmen were forced by their surroundings to exercise a grudging charity towards the various forms of religious belief entertained among themselves--though they hated and despised French and Spanish Catholics. When off in the wilderness they were obliged to take a man for what he did, not for what he thought. Of course there were instances to the contrary, and there is an amusing and authentic story of two hunters, living alone and far from any settlement, who quarrelled because one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant. The seceder took up his abode in a hollow tree within speaking distance of his companion's cabin. Every day on arising they bade each other good-morning; but not another word pa.s.sed between them for the many months during which they saw no other white face.[2] There was a single serious and important, albeit only partial, exception to this general rule of charity. After the outbreak of the Revolution, the Kentuckians, in common with other backwoodsmen, grew to thoroughly dislike one religious body which they already distrusted; this was the Church of England, the Episcopal Church. They long regarded it as merely the persecuting ecclesiastical arm of the British Government. Such of them as had been brought up in any faith at all had for the most part originally professed some form of Calvinism; they had very probably learnt their letters from a primer which in one of its rude cuts represented John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and seven children, and in their after lives they were more familiar with the ”Pilgrim's Progress” than with any other book save the Bible; so that it was natural for them to distrust the successors of those who had persecuted Rogers and Bunyan.[3] Still, the border communities were, as times then went very tolerant in religious matters; and of course most of the men had no chance to display, or indeed to feel, sectarianism of any kind, for they had no issue to join, and rarely a church about which to rally.

By the time Kentucky was settled the Baptists had begun to make headway on the frontier, at the expense of the Presbyterians. The rough democracy of the border welcomed a sect which was itself essentially democratic. To many of the backwoodsmen's prejudices, notably their sullen and narrow hostility towards all rank, whether or not based on merit and learning, the Baptists' creed appealed strongly. Where their preachers obtained foothold, it was made a matter of reproach to the Presbyterian clergymen that they had been educated in early life for the ministry as for a profession. The love of liberty, and the defiant a.s.sertion of equality, so universal in the backwoods, and so excellent in themselves, sometimes took very warped and twisted forms, notably when they betrayed the backwoodsmen into the belief that the true democratic spirit forbade any exclusive and special training for the professions that produce soldiers, statesmen, or ministers.

The fact that the Baptist preachers were men exactly similar to their fellows in all their habits of life, not only gave them a good standing at once, but likewise enabled them very early to visit the farthest settlements, travelling precisely like other backwoodsmen; and once there, each preacher, each earnest professor, doing bold and fearless missionary work, became the nucleus round which a little knot of true believers gathered. Two or three of them made short visits to Kentucky during the first few years of its existence. One, who went thither in the early spring of 1776, kept a journal of his trip.[4] He travelled over the Wilderness Road with eight other men. Three of them were Baptists like himself, who prayed every night; and their companions, though they did not take part in the praying, did not interrupt it.

Their journey through the melancholy and silent wilderness resembled in its incidents the countless other similar journeys that were made at that time and later.

They suffered from cold and hunger and lack of shelter; they became footsore and weary, and worn out with driving the pack-horses. On the top of the lonely c.u.mberland Mountains they came upon the wolf-eaten remains of a previous traveller, who had recently been killed by Indians. At another place they met four men returning--cowards, whose hearts had failed them when in sight of the promised land. While on the great Indian war-trail they killed a buffalo, and thenceforth lived on its jerked meat. One night the wolves smelt the flesh, and came up to the camp-fire; the strong hunting-dogs rushed out with clamorous barking to drive them away, and the sudden alarm for a moment made the sleepy wayfarers think that roving Indians had attacked them. When they reached Crab Orchard their dangers were for the moment past; all travellers grew to regard with affection the station by this little grove of wild apple-trees. It is worthy of note that the early settlers loved to build their homes near these natural orchards, moved by the fragrance and beauty of the bloom in spring.[5]

The tired Baptist was not overpleased with Harrodstown, though he there listened to the preaching of one of his own sect.[6] He remarked ”a poor town it was in those days,” a couple of rows of smoky cabins, tenanted by dirty women and ragged children, while the tall, unkempt frontiersmen lounged about in greasy hunting-s.h.i.+rts, breech-clouts, leggings, and moccasins. There was little or no corn until the crops were gathered, and, like the rest, he had to learn to eat wild meat without salt. The settlers,--as is always the case in frontier towns where the people are wrapped up in their own pursuits and rivalries, and are obliged to talk of one another for lack of outside interests,--were divided by bickering, gossiping jealousies; and at this time they were quarrelling as to whether the Virginian cabin-rights or Henderson's land-grants would prove valid. As usual, the zealous Baptist preacher found that the women were the first to ”get religion,” as he phrased it. Sometimes their husbands likewise came in with them; at other times they remained indifferent. Often they savagely resented their wives and daughters being converted, visiting on the head of the preacher an anger that did not always find vent in mere words; for the backwoodsmen had strong, simple natures, powerfully excited for good or evil, and those who were not G.o.d-fearing usually became active and furious opponents of all religion.

It is curious to compare the description of life in a frontier fort as given by this undoubtedly prejudiced observer with the equally prejudiced, but golden- instead of sombre-hued, reminiscences of frontier life, over which the pioneers lovingly lingered in their old age. To these old men the long-vanished stockades seemed to have held a band of brothers, who were ever generous, hospitable, courteous, and fearless, always ready to help one another, never envious, never flinching from any foe.[7] Neither account is accurate; but the last is quite as near the truth as the first. On the border, as elsewhere, but with the different qualities in even bolder contrast, there was much both of good and bad, of s.h.i.+ftless viciousness and resolute honesty.

Many of the hunters were mere restless wanderers, who soon surrendered their clearings to small farming squatters, but a degree less s.h.i.+ftless than themselves; the latter brought the ground a little more under cultivation, and then likewise left it and wandered onwards, giving place to the third set of frontiersmen, the steady men who had come to stay. But often the first hunters themselves stayed and grew up as farmers and landed proprietors.[8] Many of the earliest pioneers, including most of their leaders, founded families, which took root in the land and flourish to this day, the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the old-time Indian fighters becoming Congressmen and judges, and officers in the regular army and in the Federal and Confederate forces during the civil war.[9] In fact the very first comers to a wild and dangerous country are apt to be men with fine qualities of heart and head; it is not until they have partly tamed the land that the sc.u.m of the frontier drifts into it.[10]

In 1776, as in after years, there were three routes that were taken by immigrants to Kentucky. One led by backwoods trails to the Greenbriar settlements, and thence down the Kanawha to the Ohio;[11] but the travel over this was insignificant compared to that along the others. The two really important routes were the Wilderness Road, and that by water, from Fort Pitt down the Ohio River. Those who chose the latter way embarked in roughly built little flat-boats at Fort Pitt, if they came from Pennsylvania, or else at the old Redstone Fort on the Monongahela, if from Maryland or Virginia, and drifted down with the current. Though this was the easiest method, yet the danger from Indians was so very great that most immigrants, the Pennsylvanians as well as the Marylanders, Virginians, and North Carolinians,[12] usually went overland by the Wilderness Road. This was the trace marked out by Boon, which to the present day remains a monument to his skill as a practical surveyor and engineer. Those going along it went on foot, driving their horses and cattle. At the last important frontier town they fitted themselves out with pack-saddles; for in such places two of the leading industries were always those of the pack-saddle maker and the artisan in deer leather. When there was need, the pioneer could of course make a rough pack-saddle for himself, working it up from two forked branches of a tree. If several families were together, they moved slowly in true patriarchal style. The elder boys drove the cattle, which usually headed the caravan; while the younger children were packed in crates of hickory withes and slung across the backs of the old quiet horses, or else were seated safely between the great rolls of bedding that were carried in similar fas.h.i.+on. The women sometimes rode and sometimes walked, carrying the babies. The men, rifle on shoulder, drove the pack-train, while some of them walked spread out in front, flank, and rear, to guard against the savages.[13] A tent or brush lean-to gave cover at night. Each morning the men packed the animals while the women cooked breakfast and made ready the children. Special care had to be taken not to let the loaded animals brush against the yellow-jacket nests, which were always plentiful along the trail in the fall of the year; for in such a case the vicious swarms attacked man and beast, producing an immediate stampede, to the great detriment of the packs.[14] In winter the fords and mountains often became impa.s.sable, and trains were kept in one place for weeks at a time, escaping starvation only by killing the lean cattle; for few deer at that season remained in the mountains.

Both the water route and the wilderness road were infested by the savages at all times, and whenever there was open war the spa.r.s.ely settled regions from which they started were likewise harried. When the northwestern tribes threatened Fort Pitt and Fort Henry--or Pittsburg and Wheeling, as they were getting to be called,--they threatened one of the two localities which served to cover the communications with Kentucky; but it was far more serious when the Holston region was menaced, because the land travel was at first much the more important.

The early settlers of course had to suffer great hards.h.i.+p even when they reached Kentucky. The only two implements the men invariably carried were the axe and rifle, for they were almost equally proud of their skill as warriors, hunters, and wood-choppers. Next in importance came the sickle or scythe. The first three tasks of the pioneer farmer were to build a cabin, to make a clearing--burning the brush, cutting down the small trees, and girdling the large--and to plant corn. Until the crop ripened he hunted steadily, and his family lived on the abundant game, save for which it would have been wholly impossible to have settled Kentucky so early. If it was winter-time, however, all the wild meat was very lean and poor eating, unless by chance a bear was found in a hollow tree, when there was a royal feast, the breast of the wild turkey serving as a subst.i.tute for bread.[15] If the men were suddenly called away by an Indian inroad, their families sometimes had to live for days on boiled tops of green nettles.[16] Naturally the children watched the growth of the ta.s.selled corn with hungry eagerness until the milky ears were fit for roasting. When they hardened, the grains were pounded into hominy in the hominy-block, or else ground into meal in the rough hand-mill, made of two limestones in a hollow sycamore log. Until flax could be grown the women were obliged to be content with lint made from the bark of dead nettles. This was gathered in the spring-time by all the people of a station acting together, a portion of the men standing guard while the rest, with the women and children, plucked the dead stalks. The smart girls of Irish ancestry spun many dozen cuts of linen from this lint, which was as fine as flax but not so strong.[17]

Neither hards.h.i.+p nor danger could render the young people downhearted, especially when several families, each containing grown-up sons and daughters, were living together in almost every fort. The chief amus.e.m.e.nts were hunting and dancing. There being no permanent ministers, even the gloomy Calvinism of some of the pioneers was relaxed. Long afterwards one of them wrote, in a spirit of quaint apology, that ”dancing was not then considered criminal,”[18] and that it kept up the spirits of the young people, and made them more healthy and happy; and recalling somewhat uneasily the merriment in the stations, in spite of the terrible and interminable Indian warfare, the old moralist felt obliged to condemn it, remarking that, owing to the lack of ministers of the gospel, the impressions made by misfortune were not improved.