Volume I Part 22 (2/2)
Though obliged to be very careful and to keep their families in forts, and in spite of a number of them being killed by the savages,[19] the settlers in 1776 were able to wander about and explore the country thoroughly,[20] making little clearings as the basis of ”cabin claims,”
and now and then gathering into stations which were for the most part broken up by the Indians and abandoned.[21] What was much more important, the permanent settlers in the well-established stations proceeded to organize a civil government.
They by this time felt little but contempt for the Henderson or Transylvania government. Having sent a pet.i.tion against it to the provincial authorities, they were confident that what faint shadow of power it still retained would soon vanish; so they turned their attention to securing a representation in the Virginia convention. All Kentucky was still considered as a part of Fincastle County, and the inhabitants were therefore unrepresented at the capital. They determined to remedy this; and after due proclamation, gathered together at Harrodstown early in June, 1776. During five days an election was held, and two delegates were chosen to go to Williamsburg, then the seat of government.
This was done at the suggestion of Clark, who, having spent the winter in Virginia had returned to Kentucky in the spring. He came out alone and on foot, and by his sudden appearance surprised the settlers not a little. The first to meet him was a young lad,[22] who had gone a few miles out of Harrodstown to turn some horses on the range. The boy had killed a teal duck that was feeding in a spring, and was roasting it nicely at a small fire, when he was startled by the approach of a fine soldierly man, who hailed him: ”How do you do my little fellow? What is your name? Ar'n't you afraid of being in the woods by yourself?” The stranger was evidently hungry, for on being invited to eat he speedily finished the entire duck; and when the boy asked his name he answered that it was Clark, and that he had come out to see what the brave fellows in Kentucky were doing, and to help them if there was need. He took up his temporary abode at Harrodstown--visiting all the forts, however, and being much in the woods by himself,--and his commanding mind and daring, adventurous temper speedily made him, what for ten critical years he remained, the leader among all the bold ”hunters of Kentucky”--as the early settlers loved to call themselves.
He had advised against delegates to the convention being chosen, thinking that instead the Kentuckians should send accredited agents to treat with the Virginian government. If their terms were not agreed to, he declared that they ought to establish forthwith an independent state; an interesting example of how early the separatist spirit showed itself in Kentucky. But the rest of the people were unwilling to go quite as far. They elected two delegates, Clark of course being one. With them they sent a pet.i.tion for admission as a separate county. They were primarily farmers, hunters, Indian fighters--not scholars; and their pet.i.tion was couched in English that was at times a little crooked; but the idea at any rate was perfectly straight, and could not be misunderstood. They announced that if they were admitted they would cheerfully cooperate in every measure to secure the public peace and safety, and at the same time pointed out with marked emphasis ”how impolitical it would be to suffer such a Respectable Body of Prime Riflemen to remain in a state of neutrality” during the then existing revolutionary struggle.[23]
Armed with this doc.u.ment and their credentials, Clark and his companion set off across the desolate and Indian-haunted mountains. They travelled very fast, the season was extremely wet, and they did not dare to kindle fires for fear of the Indians; in consequence they suffered torments from cold, hunger, and especially from ”scalded” feet. Yet they hurried on, and presented their pet.i.tion to the Governor[24] and Council--the Legislature having adjourned. Clark also asked for five hundred-weight of gunpowder, of which the Kentucky settlement stood in sore and pressing need. This the Council at first refused to give; whereupon Clark informed them that if the country was not worth defending, it was not worth claiming, making it plain that if the request was not granted, and if Kentucky was forced to a.s.sume the burdens of independence, she would likewise a.s.sume its privileges. After this plain statement the Council yielded. Clark took the powder down the Ohio River, and got it safely through to Kentucky; though a party sent under John Todd to convey it overland from the Limestone Creek was met at the Licking and defeated by the Indians, Clark's fellow delegate being among the killed.
Before returning Clark had attended the fall meeting of the Virginia Legislature, and in spite of the opposition of Henderson, who was likewise present, he procured the admission of Kentucky as a separate county, with boundaries corresponding to those of the present State.
Early in the ensuing year, 1777, the county was accordingly organized; Harrodstown, or Harrodsburg, as it was now beginning to be called, was made the county seat, having by this time supplanted Boonsborough in importance. The court was composed of the six or eight men whom the governor of Virginia had commissioned as justices of the peace; they were empowered to meet monthly to transact necessary business, and had a sheriff and clerk.[25] These took care of the internal concerns of the settlers. To provide for their defence a county lieutenant was created, with the rank of colonel,[26] who forthwith organized a militia regiment, placing all the citizens, whether permanent residents or not, into companies and battalions. Finally, two burgesses were chosen to represent the county in the General a.s.sembly of Virginia.[27] In later years Daniel Boon himself served as a Kentucky burgess in the Virginia Legislature;[28] a very different body from the little Transylvanian parliament in which he began his career as a law-maker. The old backwoods hero led a strange life: varying his long wanderings and explorations, his endless campaigns against savage men and savage beasts, by serving as road-maker, town-builder, and commonwealth-founder, sometimes organizing the frontiersmen for foreign war, and again doing his share in devising the laws under which they were to live and prosper.
But the pioneers were speedily drawn into a life-and-death struggle which engrossed their whole attention to the exclusion of all merely civil matters; a struggle in which their land became in truth what the Indians called it--a dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground, a land with blood-stained rivers.[29]
It was impossible long to keep peace on the border between the ever-encroaching whites and their fickle and blood-thirsty foes. The hard, reckless, often brutalized frontiersmen, greedy of land and embittered by the memories of untold injuries, regarded all Indians with sullen enmity, and could not be persuaded to distinguish between the good and the bad.[30] The central government was as powerless to restrain as to protect these far-off and unruly citizens. On the other hand, the Indians were as treacherous as they were ferocious; Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, and all.[31] While deceiving the commandants of the posts by peaceful protestations, they would steadily continue their ravages and murders; and while it was easy to persuade a number of the chiefs and warriors of a tribe to enter into a treaty, it was impossible to make the remainder respect it.[32] The chiefs might be for peace, but the young braves were always for war, and could not be kept back.[33]
In July, 1776, the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingo chiefs a.s.sembled at Fort Pitt and declared for neutrality;[34] the Iroquois amba.s.sadors, who were likewise present, haughtily announced that their tribes would permit neither the British nor the Americans to march an army through their territory. They disclaimed any responsibility for what might be done by a few wayward young men; and requested the Delawares and Shawnees to do as they had promised, and to distribute the Iroquois ”talk” among their people. After the Indian fas.h.i.+on, they emphasized each point which they wished kept in mind by the presentation of a string of wampum.[35]
Yet at this very time a party of Mingos tried to kill the American Indian agents, and were only prevented by Cornstalk, whose n.o.ble and faithful conduct was so soon to be rewarded by his own brutal murder.
Moreover, while the Shawnee chief was doing this, some of his warriors journeyed down to the Cherokees and gave them the war belt, a.s.suring them that the Wyandots and Mingos would support them, and that they themselves had been promised ammunition by the French traders of Detroit and the Illinois.[36] On their return home this party of Shawnees scalped two men in Kentucky near the Big Bone Lick, and captured a woman; but they were pursued by the Kentucky settlers, two were killed and the woman retaken.[37]
Throughout the year the outlook continued to grow more and more threatening. Parties of young men kept making inroads on the settlements, especially in Kentucky; not only did the Shawnees, Wyandots, Mingos, and Iroquois[38] act thus, but they were even joined by bands of Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and Chippewas from the lakes, who thus attacked the white settlers long ere the latter had either the will or the chance to hurt them.
Until the spring of 1777[39] the outbreak was not general, and it was supposed that only some three or four hundred warriors had taken up the tomahawk.[40] Yet the outlying settlers were all the time obliged to keep as sharp a look-out as if engaged in open war. Throughout the summer of 1776 the Kentucky settlers were continually hara.s.sed. Small parties of Indians were constantly lurking round the forts, to shoot down the men as they hunted or worked in the fields, and to carry off the women. There was a constant and monotonous succession of unimportant forays and skirmishes.
One band of painted marauders carried off Boon's daughter. She was in a canoe with two other girls on the river near Boonsborough when they were pounced on by five Indians.[41] As soon as he heard the news Boon went in pursuit with a party of seven men from the fort, including the three lovers of the captured girls. After following the trail all of one day and the greater part of two nights, the pursuers came up with the savages, and, rus.h.i.+ng in, scattered or slew them before they could either make resistance or kill their captives. The rescuing party then returned in triumph to the fort.
Thus for two years the pioneers worked in the wilderness, hara.s.sed by unending individual warfare, but not threatened by any formidable attempt to oust them from the lands that they had won. During this breathing spell they established civil government, explored the country, planted crops, and built strongholds. Then came the inevitable struggle.
When in 1777 the snows began to melt before the lengthening spring days, the riflemen who guarded the log forts were called on to make head against a series of resolute efforts to drive them from Kentucky.
1. Imlay, p. 55, estimated that from natural increase the population of Kentucky doubled every fifteen years,--probably an exaggeration.
2. Hale's ”Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” p. 251.
3. ”Pioneer Life in Kentucky,” Daniel Drake, Cincinnati, 1870, p. 196 (an invaluable work).
4. MS. autobiography of Rev. William Hickman. He was born in Virginia, February 4, 1747. A copy in Col. Durrett's library at Louisville, Ky.
5. There were at least three such ”Crab-Orchard” stations in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The settlers used the word ”crab” precisely as Shakespeare does.
6. A Mr. Finley. Hickman MS.
7. McAfee MSS.
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