Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the ambition of years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a second paradise." The reports of his extended explorations, which he made to Judge Henderson, were soon communicated to the other partners of the land company; and their letters of this period, to one another, bristle with glowing and minute descriptions of the country, as detailed by their agent. Boone was immediately engaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the Cherokees confidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or sell the beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. The high hopes of Henderson and his associates at last gave promise of brilliant realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions of Kentucky excited in their minds, says a gifted early chronicler, the "spirit of an enterprise which in point of magnitude and peril, as well as constancy and heroism displayed in its execution, has never been paralleled in the history of America."



CHAPTER XI. The Regulators

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, but if he has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one cow to give a little milk for his children, they must all go to raise money which is not to be had. And lastly if his personal estate (sold at one tenth of its value) will not do, then his lands (which perhaps has cost him many years of toil and labour) must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungry caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a very short time.—George Sims: A Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer .... and some necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier explorations in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel Boone anticipated speedy removal to the West. Indeed, in the very year of his first tour in their interest, Daniel and his wife Rebeckah sold all their property in North Carolina, consisting of their home and six hundred and forty acres of land, and after several removals established themselves upon the upper Yadkin. This removal and the later western explorations just outlined were due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery. Three other causes also were at work. In the first place there was the scarcity of game. For fifteen years the shipments of deerskins from Bethabara to Charleston steadily increased; and the number of skins bought by Gammern, the Moravian storekeeper, ran so high that in spite of the large purchases made at the store by the hunters he would sometimes run entirely out of money. Tireless in the chase, the far roaming Boone was among "the hunters, who brought in their skins from as far away as the Indian lands"; and the beautiful upland pastures and mountain forests, still teeming with deer and bear, doubtless lured him to the upper Yadkin, where for a time in the immediate neighborhood of his home abundance of game fell before his unerring rifle. Certainly the deer and other game, which were being killed in enormous numbers to satisfy the insatiable demand of the traders at Salisbury, the Forks, and Bethabara, became scarcer and scarcer; and the wild game that was left gradually fled to the westward. Terrible indeed was the havoc wrought among the elk; and it was reported that the last elk was killed in western North Carolina as early as 1781.

Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope in the back country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguised outlawry, similar to that found on the western plains of a later era. This ruthless brigand age arose as the result of the unsettled state of the country and the exposed condition of the settlements due to the Indian alarms. When rude borderers, demoralized by the enforced idleness attendant upon fort life during the dark days of Indian invasion, sallied forth upon forays against the Indians, they found much valuable property—horses, cattle, and stock—left by their owners when hurriedly fleeing to the protection of the frontier stockades. The temptations thus afforded were too great to resist; and the wilder spirits of the backwoods, with hazy notions of private rights, seized the property which they found, slaughtered the cattle, sold the horses, and appropriated to their own use the temporarily abandoned household goods and plantation tools. The stealing of horses, which were needed for the cultivation of the soil and useful for quickly carrying unknown thieves beyond the reach of the owner and the law, became a common practice; and was carried on by bands of outlaws living remote from one another and acting in collusive concert.

Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon the New River settlements in Virginia had frightened away all the families at the Town Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, a man of Welsh stock, who had settled in the spring of 1752 in the upper Yadkin near the Mulberry Fields, was suspected of having robbed the storekeeper on the Meho. Not long afterward a band of outlaws who plundered the exposed cabins in their owners' absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain region in the rear of the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their ill-gotten plunder and made themselves secure from attack. Other members of the band dwelt in the settlements, where they concealed their robber friends by day and aided them by night in their nefarious projects of theft and rapine.

The entire community was finally aroused by the bold depredations of the outlaws; and the most worthy settlers of the Yadkin country organized under the name of Regulators to break up the outlaw band. When it was discovered that Owen, who was well known at Bethabara, had allied himself with the highwaymen, one of the justices summoned one hundred men; and seventy, who answered the call, set forth on December 26, 1755, to seek out the outlaws and to destroy their fortress. Emboldened by their success, the latter upon one occasion had carried off a young girl of the settlements. Daniel Boone placed himself at the head of one of the parties, which included the young girl's father, to go to her rescue; and they fortunately succeeded in effecting the release of the frightened maiden. One of the robbers was apprehended and brought to Salisbury, where he was thrown into prison for his crimes. Meanwhile a large amount of plunder had been discovered at the house of one Cornelius Howard; and the evidences of his guilt so multiplied against him that he finally confessed his connection with the outlaw band and agreed to point out their fort in the mountains.

Daniel Boone and George Boone joined the party of seventy men, sent out by the colonial authorities under the guidance of Howard, to attack the stronghold of the bandits. Boone afterward related that the robbers' fort was situated in the most fitly chosen place for such a purpose that he could imagine—beneath an overhanging cliff of rock, with a large natural chimney, and a considerable area in front well stockaded. The frontiersmen surrounded the fort, captured five women and eleven children, and then burned the fort to the ground. Owen and his wife, Cumberland, and several others were ultimately made prisoners; but Harman and the remainder of the band escaped by flight. Owen and his fellow captives were then borne to Salisbury, incarcerated in the prison there, and finally (May, 1756) condemned to the gallows. Owen sent word to the Moravians, petitioning them to adopt his two boys and to apprentice one to a tailor, the other to a carpenter. But so infuriated was Owen's wife by Howard's treachery that she branded him as a second Judas; and this at once fixed upon him the sobriquet "Judas" Howard-a sobriquet he did not live long to bear, for about a year later he was ambushed and shot from his horse at the crossing of a stream. He thus paid the penalty of his betrayal of the outlaw band. For a number of years, the Regulators continued to wage war against the remaining outlaws, who from time to time committed murders as well as thefts. As late as January, 1768, the Regulators caught a horse thief in the Hollows of Surry County and brought him to Bethabara, whence Richter and Spach took him to the jail at Salisbury. After this year, the outlaws were heard of no more; and peace reigned in the settlements.

Colonel Edmund Fanning—of whom more anon—declared that the Regulation began in Anson County which bordered upon South Carolina. Certain it is that the upper country of that province was kept in an uproar by civil disturbances during this early period. Owing to the absence of courts in this section, so remote from Charleston, the inhabitants found it necessary, for the protection of property and the punishment of outlaws, to form an association called, like the North Carolina society, the Regulation. Against this association the horse thieves and other criminals made common cause, and received tacit support from certain more reputable persons who condemned "the irregularity of the Regulators." The Regulation which had been thus organized in upper South Carolina as early as 1764 led to tumultuous risings of the settlers; and finally in the effort to suppress these disorders, the governor, Lord Charles Montagu, appointed one Scovil, an utterly unworthy representative, to carry out his commands. After various disorders, which became ever more unendurable to the law-abiding, matters came to a crisis (1769) as the result of the high-handed proceedings of Scovil, who promiscuously seized and flung into prison all the Regulators he could lay hands on. In the month of March the back country rose in revolt against Scovil and a strong body of the settlers was on the point of attacking the force under his command when an eleventh-hour letter arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil from office. Thus was happily averted, by the narrowest of margins, a threatened precursor of the fight at Alamance in 1771 (see Chapter XII). As the result of the petition of the Calhouns and others, courts were established in 1760, though not opened until four years later. Many horse thieves were apprehended, tried, and punished. Justice once more held full sway.

Another important cause for Boone's removal from the neighborhood of Salisbury into the mountain fastnesses was the oppressive administration of the law by corrupt sheriffs, clerks, and tax-gatherers, and the dissatisfaction of the frontier squatters with the owners of the soil. At the close of the year 1764 reports reached the town of Wilmington, after the adjournment of the assembly in November, of serious disturbances in Orange County, due, it was alleged, to the exorbitant exactions of the clerks, registers, and some of the attorneys. As a result of this disturbing news, Governor Dobbs issued a proclamation forbidding any officer to take illegal fees. Troubles had been brewing in the adjacent county of Granville ever since the outbreak of the citizens against Francis Corbin, Lord Granville's agent (January 24, 1759), and the issuance of the petition of Reuben Searcy and others (March 23d) protesting against the alleged excessive fees taken and injustices practised by Robert (Robin) Jones, the famous lawyer. These disturbances were cumulative in their effect; and the people at last (1765 ) found in George Sims, of Granville, a fit spokesman of their cause and a doughty champion of popular rights. In his "Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer ... and some necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation," recently brought to light, he presents a crushing indictment of the clerk of the county court, Samuel Benton, the grandfather of Thomas Hart Benton. After describing in detail the system of semi-peonage created by the merciless exactions of lawyers and petty court officials, and the insatiable greed of "these cursed hungry caterpillars," Sims with rude eloquence calls upon the people to pull them down from their nests for the salvation of the Commonwealth.

Other abuses were also recorded. So exorbitant was the charge for a marriage-license, for instance, that an early chronicler records "The consequence was that some of the inhabitants on the head-waters of the Yadkin took a short cut. They took each other for better or for worse; and considered themselves as married without further ceremony." The extraordinary scarcity of currency throughout the colony, especially in the back country, was another great hardship and a perpetual source of vexation. All these conditions gradually became intolerable to the uncultured but free spirited men of the back country. Events were slowly converging toward a crisis in government and society. Independent in spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted not only against excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and extortionate fees, but also against the rapacious practices of the agents of Lord Granville. These agents industriously picked flaws in the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary upon which the poorer settlers were seated; and compelled them to pay for the land if they had not already done so, or else to pay the fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only remedy of the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the proprietary agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close bargains for the lands or else to eject those who held them, Henry Eustace McCulloh, in February, 1765, went into the county to call a reckoning. The settlers, many of whom had located without deeds, indignantly retorted by offering to buy only at their own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out the holdings when this smaller price was declined. They not only terrorized into acquiescence those among them who were willing to pay the amount charged for the lands, but also openly declared that they would resist by force any sheriff in ejectment proceedings. On May 7th an outbreak occurred; and a mob, led by Thomas Polk, set upon John Frohock, Abraham Alexander, and others, as they were about to survey a parcel of land, and gave them a severe thrashing, even threatening the young McCulloh with death.

The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement with Francis Bacon, considered revenge as a sort of wild justice. Especial objects of their animosity were the brothers Frohock, John and Thomas, the latter clerk of the court at Salisbury, and Edmund Fanning, a cultured gentleman-adventurer, associate justice of the superior court. So rapacious and extortionate were these vultures of the courts who preyed upon the vitals of the common people, that they were savagely lampooned by Rednap Howell, the backwoods poet-laureate of the Regulation. The temper of the back country is well caught in Howell's lines anent this early American "grafter", the favorite of the royal governor:

When Fanning first to Orange came, He looked both pale and wan; An old patched coat was on his back, An old mare he rode on.

Both man and mare wan't worth five pounds, As I've been often told; But by his civil robberies, He's laced his coat with gold.

The germs of the great westward migration in the coming decade were thus working among the people of the back country. If the tense nervous energy of the American people is the transmitted characteristic of the border settlers, who often slept with loaded rifle in hand in grim expectation of being awakened by the hideous yells, the deadly tomahawk, and the lurid firebrand of the savage, the very buoyancy of the national character is in equal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded on a freehold inheritance of land." The desire for free land was the fundamental factor in the development of the American democracy. No colony exhibited this tendency more signally than did North Carolina in the turbulent days of the Regulation. The North Carolina frontiersmen resented the obligation to pay quit-rents and firmly believed that the first occupant of the soil had an indefeasible right to the land which he had won with his rifle and rendered productive by the implements of toil. Preferring the dangers of the free wilderness to the paying of tribute to absentee landlords and officials of an intolerant colonial government, the frontiersman found title in his trusty rifle rather than in a piece of parchment, and was prone to pay his obligations to the owner of the soil in lead rather than in gold.



CHAPTER XII. Watauga—Haven of Liberty

The Regulators despaired of seeing better times and therefore quitted the Province. It is said 1,500 departed since the Battle of Alamance and to my knowledge a great many more are only waiting to dispose of their plantations in order to follow them.—Reverend Morgan Edwards, 1772.

The five years (1766-1771) which saw the rise, development, and ultimate defeat of the popular movement known as the Regulation, constitute a period not only of extraordinary significance in North Carolina but also of fruitful consequences in the larger movements of westward expansion. With the resolute intention of having their rulers "give account of their stewardship," to employ their own words, the Sandy Creek Association of Baptists (organized in 1758), in a series of papers known as Regulators' Advertisements (1766-8) proceeded to mature, through popular gatherings, a rough form of initiative and referendum. At length, discouraged in its efforts, and particularly in the attempt to bring county officials to book for charging illegal fees, this association ceased actively to function. It was the precursor of a movement of much more drastic character and formidable proportions, chiefly directed against Colonel Edmund Fanning and his associates. This movement doubtless took its name, "the Regulation," from the bands of men already described who were organized first in North Carolina and later in South Carolina, to put down highwaymen and to correct many abuses in the back country, such as the tyrannies of Scovil and his henchmen. Failing to secure redress of their grievances through legal channels, the Regulators finally made such a powerful demonstration in support of their refusal to pay taxes that Governor William Tryon of North Carolina, in 1768, called out the provincial militia, and by marching with great show of force through the disaffected regions, succeeded temporarily in overawing the people and thus inducing them to pay their assessments.

The suits which had been brought by the Regulators against Edmund Fanning, register, and Francis Nash, clerk, of Orange County, resulted in both being "found guilty of taking too high fees." Fanning immediately resigned his commission as register; while Nash, who in conjunction with Fanning had fairly offered in 1766 to refund to any one aggrieved any fee charged by him which the Superior Court might hold excessive, gave bond for his appearance at the next court. Similar suits for extortion against the three Froliocks in Rowan County in 1769 met with failure, however; and this outcome aroused the bitter resentment of the Regulators, as recorded by Herman Husband in his "Impartial Relation." During this whole period the insurrectionary spirit of the people, who felt themselves deeply aggrieved but recognized their inability to secure redress, took the form of driving local justices from the bench and threatening court officials with violence.

At the session of the Superior Court at Hillsborough, September 22, 1770, an elaborate petition prepared by the Regulators, demanding unprejudiced juries and the public accounting for taxes by the sheriffs, was handed to the presiding justice by James Hunter, a leading Regulator. This justice was our acquaintance, Judge Richard Henderson, of Granville County, the sole high officer in the provincial government from the entire western section of the colony. In this petition occur these trenchant words: "As we are serious and in good earnest and the cause respects the whole body of the people it would be loss of time to enter into arguments on particular points for though there are a few men who have the gift and art of reasoning, yet every man has a feeling and knows when he has justice done him as well as the most learned." On the following Monday (September 24th), upon convening of court, some one hundred and fifty Regulators, led by James Hunter, Herman Husband, Rednap Howell, and others, armed with clubs, whips, and cudgels, surged into the court-room and through their spokesman, Jeremiah Fields, presented a statement of their grievances. "I found myself," says Judge Henderson, "under a necessity of attempting to soften and turn away the fury of these mad people, in the best manner in my power, and as such could well be, pacify their rage and at the same time preserve the little remaining dignity of the court."

During an interim, in which the Regulators retired for consultation, they fell without warning upon Fanning and gave him such rough treatment that he narrowly escaped with his life. The mob, now past control, horsewhipped a number of leading lawyers and citizens gathered there at court, and treated others, notably the courtly Mr. Hooper of Boston, "with every mark of contempt and insult." Judge Henderson was assured by Fields that no harm should come to him provided he would conduct the court in accordance with the behest of the Regulators: namely, that no lawyer, save the King's Attorney, should be admitted to the court, and that the Regulators' cases should be tried with new jurors chosen by the Regulators. With the entire little village terrorized by this campaign of "frightfulness," and the court wholly unprotected, Judge Henderson reluctantly acknowledged to himself that "the power of the judiciary was exhausted." Nevertheless, he says, "I made every effort in my power consistent with my office and the duty the public is entitled to claim to preserve peace and good order." Agreeing under duress to resume the session the following day, the judge ordered an adjournment. But being unwilling, on mature reflection, to permit a mockery of the court and a travesty of justice to be staged under threat and intimidation, he returned that night to his home in Granville and left the court adjourned in course. Enraged by the judge's escape, the Regulators took possession of the court room the following morning, called over the cases, and in futile protest against the conditions they were powerless to remedy, made profane entries which may still be seen on the record: "Damned rogues," "Fanning pays cost but loses nothing," "Negroes not worth a damn, Cost exceeds the whole," "Hogan pays and be damned," and, in a case of slander, "Nonsense, let them argue for Ferrell has gone hellward."

The uprising of these bold and resolute, simple and imperfectly educated people, which had begun as a constitutional struggle to secure justice and to prevent their own exploitation by dishonest lawyers of the county courts, now gave place to open anarchy and secret incendiarism. In the dead of night, November 12th and 14th, Judge Henderson's barn, stables, and dwelling house were fired by the Regulators and went up in flames. Glowing with a sense of wrong, these misguided people, led on by fanatical agitators, thus vented their indiscriminate rage, not only upon their op pressors, but also upon men wholly innocent of injuring them—men of the stamp of William Hooper, afterward signer of the Declaration of Independence, Alexander Martin, afterward governor and United States Senator, and Richard Henderson, popular representative of the back country and a firm champion of due process of law. It is perhaps not surprising in view of these events that Governor Tryon and the ruling class, lacking a sympathy broad enough to ensure justice to the oppressed people, seemed to be chiefly impressed with the fact that a widespread insurrection was in progress, threatening not only life and property, but also civil government itself. The governor called out the militia of the province and led an army of well nigh one thousand men and officers against the Regulators, who had assembled at Alamance to the number of two thousand. Tryon stood firm upon the demands that the people should submit to government and disperse at a designated hour. The Regulators, on their side, hoped to secure the reforms they desired by intimidating the governor with a great display of force. The battle was a tragic fiasco for the Regulators, who fought bravely, but without adequate arms or real leadership. With the conclusion of this desultory action, a fight lasting about two hours (May 16, 1771), the power of the Regulators was completely broken."

Among these insurgents there was a remarkable element, an element whose influence upon the course of American history has been but imperfectly understood which now looms into prominence as the vanguard of the army of westward expansion. There were some of the Regulators who, though law-abiding and conservative, were deeply imbued with ideas of liberty, personal independence, and the freedom of the soil. Through the influence of Benjamin Franklin, with whom one of the leaders of the group, Herman Husband, was in constant correspondence, the patriotic ideas then rapidly maturing into revolutionary sentiments furnished the inspiration to action. As early as 1766, the Sandy Creek leaders, referred to earlier in this chapter, issued a call to each neighborhood to send delegates to a gathering for the purpose of investigating the question "whether the free men of this country labor under any abuses of power or not." The close connection between the Sandy Creek men and the Sons of Liberty is amply demonstrated in this paper wherein the Sons of Liberty in connection with the "stamp law" are praised: for "redeeming us from Tyranny" and for having "withstood the lords in Parliament in behalf of true liberty." Upon the records of the Dutchman's Creek Church, of "regular" Baptists, at the Forks of the Yadkin, to which Daniel Boone's family belonged, may be found this memorable entry, recognizing the "American Cause" well-nigh a year before the declaration of independence at Philadelphia: "At the monthly meeting it was agreed upon concerning the American Cause, if any of the brethren see cause to join it they have the liberty to do it without being called to an account by the church. But whether they join or do not join they should be used with brotherly love.

The fundamental reasons underlying the approaching westward hegira are found in the remarkable petition of the Regulators of An son County (October 9, 1769), who request that "Benjamin Franklin or some other known PATRIOT" be appointed agent of the province in London to seek redress at the source. They exposed the basic evil in the situation by pointing out that, in violation of the law restricting the amount of land that might be granted to each person to six hundred and forty acres, much of the most fertile territory in the province had been distributed in large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "great numbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in the cultivation of the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist." It was these poor people, "thereby deprived of His Majesties liberality and Bounty," who soon turned their gaze to the westward and crossed the mountains in search of the rich, free lands of the trans-Alleghany region.

This feverish popular longing for freedom, stimulated by the economic pressure of thousands of pioneers who were annually entering North Carolina, set in motion a wave of migration across the mountains in 1769. Long before Alamance, many of the true Americans, distraught by apparently irremediable injustices, plunged fearlessly into the wilderness, seeking beyond the mountains a new birth of liberty, lands of their own selection free of cost or quit-rents, and a government of their own choosing and control."' The glad news of the rich valleys beyond the mountains early lured such adventurous pioneers as Andrew Greer and Julius Caesar Dugger to the Watauga country. The glowing stories, told by Boone, and disseminated in the back country by Henderson, Williams, and the Harts, seemed to give promise to men of this stamp that the West afforded relief from oppressions suffered in North Carolina. During the winter of 1768-9 there was also a great rush of settlers from Virginia into the valley of the Holston. A party from Augusta County, led by men who had been delighted with the country viewed seven years before when they were serving under Colonel William Byrd against the Cherokees, found that this region, a wilderness on their outward passage in 1768, was dotted with cabins on every spot where the grazing was good, upon their return the following year. Writing to Hillsborough on October 18, 1770, concerning the "many hundred families" in the region from Green River to the branches of the Holston, who refused to comply with the royal proclamation of 1763, Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia reports that "very little if any Quit Rents have been received for His Majesty's use from that Quarter for some time past"—the people claiming that "His Majesty hath been pleased to withdraw his protection from them since 1763."

In the spring of 1770, with the express intention of discovering suitable locations for homes for himself and a number of others, who wished to escape the accumulating evils of the times, James Robertson of Orange County, North Carolina, made an arduous journey to the pleasing valley of the Watauga. Robertson, who was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, June 28, 1742, of excellent Scotch-Irish ancestry, was a noteworthy figure of a certain type—quiet, reflective, conservative, wise, a firm believer in the basic principles of civil Liberty and the right of local self-government. Robertson spent some time with a man named Honeycut in the Watauga region, raised a crop of corn, and chose for himself and his friends suitable locations for settlement. Lost upon his return in seeking the mountain defiles traversed by him on the outward journey, Robertson probably escaped death from starvation only through the chance passing of two hunters who succored him and set him upon the right path. On arriving in Orange he found political and social conditions there much worse than before, many of the colonists declining to take the obligatory oath of allegiance to the British Crown after the Battle of Alamance, preferring to carve out for themselves new homes along the western waters. Some sixteen families of this stamp, indignant at the injustices and oppressions of British rule, and stirred by Robertson's description of the richness and beauty of the western country, accompanied him to Watauga shortly after the battle.

This vanguard of the army of westward advance, independent Americans in spirit with a negligible sprinkling of Loyalists, now swept in a great tide into the northeastern section of Tennessee. The men of Sandy Creek, actuated by independent principles but out of sympathy with the anarchic side of the Regulation, left the colony almost to a man. "After the defeat of the Regulators," says the historian of the Sandy Creek Association, "thousands of the oppressed, seeing no hope of redress for their grievances, moved into and settled east Tennessee. A large proportion of these were of the Baptist population. Sandy Creek Church which some time previous to 1771, numbered 606, was afterward reduced to fourteen members!" This movement exerted powerful influence in stimulating westward expansion. Indeed, it was from men of Regulating principles—Boone, Robertson, and the Searcys—who vehemently condemned the anarchy and incendiarism of 1770, that Judge Henderson received powerful cooperation in the opening up of Kentucky and Tennessee.

The several treaties concerning the western boundary of white settlement, concluded in close succession by North Carolina, Virginia, and the Crown with the Southern and Northern Indians, had an important bearing upon the settlement of Watauga. The Cherokee boundary line, as fixed by Governor Tryon (1767) and by John Stuart (1768), ran from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain, thence straight to Chiswell's Mine, and thence direct to the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. By the treaty at Fort Stanwix (November 5, 1768), in the negotiation of which Virginia was represented by Dr. Thomas Walker and Major Andrew Lewis, the Six Nations sold to the Crown their shadowy claim to a vast tract of western country, including in particular all the land between the Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers. The news of the cession resulted in a strong southwestward thrust of population, from the neighborhood of Abingdon, in the direction of the Holston Valley. Recognizing that hundreds of these settlers were beyond the line negotiated by Stuart, but on lands not yet surveyed, Governor Botetourt instructed the Virginia commissioners to press for further negotiations, through Stuart, with the Cherokees. Accordingly, on October 18, 1770, a new treaty was made at Lochaber, South Carolina, by which a new line back of Virginia was established, beginning at the intersection of the North Carolina-Cherokee line (a point some seventy odd miles east of Long Island), running thence in a west course to a point six miles east of Long Island, and thence in a direct course to the confluence of the Great Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. At the time of the treaty, it was agreed that the Holston River, from its intersection with the North Carolina-Virginia line, and down the course of the same, should be a temporary southern boundary of Virginia until the line should be ascertained by actual survey. A strong influx of population into the immense new triangle thus released for settlement brought powerful pressure to bear upon northern Tennessee, the point of least resistance along the western barrier. Singularly enough, this advance was not opposed by the Cherokees, whose towns were strung across the extreme southeast corner of Tennessee.

When Colonel John Donelson ran the line in the latter part of 1771, The Little Carpenter, who with other Indian chiefs accompanied the surveying party, urged that the line agreed upon at Lochaber should break off at the head of the Louisa River, and should run thence to the mouth thereof, and thence up the Ohio to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. For this increase in the territory of Virginia they of course expected additional payment. As a representative of Virginia, Donelson agreed to the proposed alteration in the boundary line; and accordingly promised to send the Cherokees, in the following spring, a sum alleged by them to have been fixed at five hundred pounds, in compensation for the additional area. This informal agreement, it is believed, was never ratified by Virginia; nor was the promised compensation ever paid the Cherokees.

Under the belief that the land belonged to Virginia, Jacob Brown with one or two families from North Carolina settled in 1771 upon a tract of land on the northern bank of the Nonachunheh (corruption, Nolichucky) River. During the same year, an experimental line run westward from Steep Rock and Beaver Creek by Anthony Bledsoe showed that upon the extension of the boundary line, these settlers would fall within the bounds of North Carolina. Although thus informally warned of the situation, the settlers made no move to vacate the lands. But in the following year, after the running of Donelson's line, Alexander Cameron, Stuart's deputy, required "all persons who had made settlements beyond the said line to relinquish them." Thus officially warned, Brown and his companions removed to Watauga. Cameron's order did not apply, however, to the settlement, to the settlement north of the Holston River, south and east of Long Island; and the settlement in Carter's Valley, although lying without the Virginia boundary, strangely enough remained unmolested. The order was directed at the Watauga settlers, who were seated south of the Holston River in the Watauga Valley.

The plight in which the Watauga settlers now found themselves was truly desperate; and the way in which they surmounted this apparently insuperable difficulty is one of the most striking and characteristic events in the pre-Revolutionary history of the Old Southwest. It exhibits the indomitable will and fertile resource of the American character at the margin of desperation. The momentous influence of the Watauga settlers, inadequately reckoned hitherto by historians, was soon to make itself powerfully felt in the first epochal movement of westward expansion.



CHAPTER XIII. Opening the Gateway—Dunmore's War

Virginia, we conceive, can claim this Country [Kentucky] with the greatest justice and propriety, its within the Limits of their Charter. They Fought and bled for it. And had it not been for the memorable Battle, at the Great Kanaway those vast regions had yet continued inaccessable.—The Harrodsburg Petition. June 7-15, 1776.

It was fortunate for the Watauga settlers that the Indians and the whites were on the most peaceful terms with each other at the time the Watauga Valley was shown, by the running of the boundary line, to lie within the Indian reservation. With true American self reliance, the settlers met together for deliberation and counsel, and deputed James Robertson and John Been, as stated by Tennessee's first historian, "to treat with their landlords, and agree upon articles of accommodation and friendship. The attempt succeeded. For though the Indians refused to give up the land gratuitously, they consented, for a stipulated amount of merchandise, muskets, and other articles of convenience, to lease all the country on the waters of the Watauga." In addition to the land thus leased for ten years, several other tracts were purchased from the Indians by Jacob Brown, who reoccupied his former location on the Nolichucky.

In taking this daring step, the Watauga settlers moved into the spotlight of national history. For the inevitable consequence of leasing the territory was the organization of a form of government for the infant settlement. Through his familiarity with the North Carolina type of "association," in which the settlers had organized for the purpose of "regulating" abuses, and his acquaintance with the contents of the "Impartial Relation," in which Husband fully expounded the principles and practices of this association, Robertson was peculiarly fitted for leadership in organizing this new government. The convention at which Articles of Association, unfortunately lost, were drawn up, is noteworthy as the first governmental assemblage of free-born American citizens ever held west of the Alleghanies. The government then established was the first free and independent government, democratic in spirit, representative in form, ever organized upon the American continent. In describing this mimic republic, the royal Governor of Virginia says: "They appointed magistrates, and framed laws for their present occasion, and to all intents and purposes, erected themselves into, though an inconsiderable, yet a separate State." The most daring spirit in this little state was the young John Sevier, of French Huguenot family (originally spelled Xavier), born in Augusta County, Virginia, on September 23, 1745. It was from Millerstown in Shenandoah County where he was living the uneventful life of a small farmer, that he emigrated (December, 1773) to the Watauga region. With his arrival there begins one of the most fascinating and romantic careers recorded in the varied arid stirring annals of the Old Southwest. In this daring and impetuous young fellow, fair-haired, blue-eyed, magnetic, debonair—of powerful build, splendid proportions, and athletic skill—we hold the gallant exemplar of the truly heroic life of the border. The story of his life, thrilling in the extreme, is rich in all the multi-colored elements which impart romance to the arduous struggle of American civilization in the opening years of the republic.

The creative impulses in the Watauga commonwealth are hinted at by Dunmore, who serves, in the letter above quoted, that Watauga "sets a dangerous example to the people America, of forming governments distinct from and independent of his Majesty's authority."

It is true that the experiment was somewhat limited. The organization of the Watauga association, which constituted a temporary expedient to meet a crisis in the affairs of a frontier community cut off by forest wilderness and mountain barriers from the reach of the arm of royal or provincial government, is not to be compared with the revolutionary assemblage at Boonesborough, May 23, 1775, or with the extraordinary demands for inde pendence in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the same month. Nevertheless the Watauga settlers defied both North Carolina and the Crown, by adopting the laws of Virginia and by ignoring Governor Josiah Martin's proclamation (March 26, 1774) "requiring the said settlers immediately to retire from the Indian Territories." Moreover, Watauga really was the parent of a series of mimic republics in the Old Southwest, gradually tending toward higher forms of organization, with a larger measure of individual liberty. Watauga, Transylvania, Cumberland, Franklin represent the evolving political genius of a free people under the creative leadership of three constructive minds—James Robertson, John Sevier, and Richard Henderson. Indeed, Watauga furnished to Judge Henderson precisely the "dangerous example" of which Dunmore prophetically speaks.

Immediately upon his return in 1771 from the extended exploration of Kentucky, Daniel Boone as already noted was engaged as secret agent, to treat with the Cherokees for the lease or purchase of the trans-Alleghany region, on behalf of Judge Henderson and his associates. Embroiled in the exciting issues of the Regulation and absorbed by his confining duties as colonial judge, Henderson was unable to put his bold design into execution until after the expiration of the court itself which ceased to exist in 1773. Disregarding the royal proclamation of 1763 and Locke's Fundamental Constitutions for the Carolinas, which forbade private parties to purchase lands from the Indians, Judge Henderson applied to the highest judicial authorities in England to know if there was any law in existence forbidding purchase of lands from the Indian tribes. Lord Mansfield gave Judge Henderson the "sanction of his great authority in favor of the purchase." Lord Chancellor Camden and Mr. Yorke had officially advised the King in 1757, in regard to the petition of the East Indian Company, "that in respect to such territories as have been, or shall be acquired by treaty or grant from the Great Mogul, or any of the Indian princes or governments, your Majesty's letters patent are NOT NECESSARY; the property of the soil vesting in the company by the Indian grant subject only to your Majesties right of sovereignty over the settlements, as English settlements, and over the inhabitants, as English subjects, who carry with them your Majesties laws wherever they form colonies, and receive your Majesties protection by virtue of your royal charters." This opinion, with virtually no change, was rendered in regard to the Indian tribes of North America by the same two authorities, certainly as early as 1769; and a true copy, made in London, April 1, 1772, was transmitted to Judge Henderson. Armed with the legal opinions received from England, Judge Henderson was fully persuaded that there was no legal bar whatsoever to his seeking to acquire by purchase from the Cherokees the vast domain of the trans-Alleghany. A golden dream of empire, with its promise of an independent republic in the form of a proprietary colony, casts him under the spell of its alluring glamour.

In the meantime, the restless Boone, impatient over the delay in the consummation of Judge Henderson's plans, resolved to establish himself in Kentucky upon his own responsibility. Heedless of the question of title and the certain hazards incident to invading the territory of hostile savages, Boone designated a rendezvous in Powell's Valley where he and his party of five families were to be met by a band under the leadership of his connections, the Bryans, and another company led by Captain William Russell, a daring pioneer of the Clinch Valley. A small detachment of Boone's party was fiercely attacked by Shawanoes in Powell's Valley on October 10, 1773, and almost all were killed, including sons of Boone and Russell, and young John and Richard Mendenhall of Guilford County, North Carolina. As the result of this bloody repulse, Boone's attempt to settle in Kentucky at this time was definitely abandoned. His failure to effect a settlement in Kentucky was due to that characteristic disregard of the territorial rights of the Indians which was all too common among the borderers of that period.

This failure was portentous of the coming storm. The reign of the Long Hunters was over. Dawning upon the horizon was the day of stern adventurers, fixed in the desperate and lawless resolve to invade the trans-Alleghany country and to battle savagely with the red man for its possession. More successful than Boone was the McAfee party, five in number, from Botetourt County, Virginia, who between May 10th and September 1, 1773, safely accomplished a journey through Kentucky and carefully marked well-chosen sites for future location." An ominous incident of the time was the veiled warning which Cornstalk, the great Shawanoe chieftain, gave to Captain Thomas Bullitt, head of a party of royal surveyors, sent out by Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia. Cornstalk at Chillicothe, June 7, 1773, warned Bullitt concerning the encroachments of the whites, "designed to deprive us," he said, "of the hunting of the country, as usual ... the hunting we stand in need of to buy our clothing." During the preceding summer, George Rogers Clark, an aggressive young Virginian, with a small party, had descended the Ohio as low as Fish Creek, where he built a cabin; and in this region for many months various parties of surveyors were busily engaged in locating and surveying lands covered by military grants. Most significant of the ruthless determination of the pioneers to occupy by force the Kentucky area was the action of the large party from Monongahela, some forty in number, led by Captain James Harrod, who penetrated to the present Miller County, where in June, 1774, they made improvements and actually laid out a town.

A significant, secretly conducted movement, of which historians have taken but little account, was now in progress under the manipulation of Virginia's royal governor. As early as 1770 Dr. John Connolly proposed the establishment of an extensive colony south of the Ohio; and the design of securing such territory from the Indians found lodgment in the mind of Lord Dunmore. But this design was for the moment thwarted when on October 28, 1773, an order was issued from the Privy Council chamber in Whitehall granting an immense territory, including all of the present West Virginia and the land alienated to Virginia by Donelson's agreement with the Cherokees (1772), to a company including Thomas Walpole, Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin, and others. This new colony, to be named "Vandalia," seemed assured. A clash between Dunmore and the royal authorities was imminent; for Virginia under her sea-to-sea charter claimed the vast middle region of the continent, extending without known limit to west and northwest. Moreover, Dunmore was interested in great land speculations on his own account; and while overtly vindicating Virginia's claim to the trans-Alleghany by despatching parties of surveyors to the western wilderness to locate and survey lands covered by military grants, he with the collusion of certain members of the "Honourable Board," his council, as charged by Washington, was more than "lukewarm," secretly restricting as rigorously as he dared the extent and number of the soldiers' allotments. According to the famous Virginia Remonstrance, he was in league with "men of great influence in some of the neighboring states" to secure, under cover of purchases from the Indians, large tracts of country between the Ohio and the Mississippi." In shaping his plans Dunmore had the shrewd legal counsel of Patrick Henry, who was equally intent upon making for himself a private purchase from the Cherokees. It was Henry's legal opinion that the Indiana purchase from the Six Nations by the Pennsylvania traders at Fort Stanwix (November 5, 1768) was valid; and that purchase by private individuals from the Indians gave full and ample title. In consequence of these facts, William Murray, in behalf of himself and his associates of the Illinois Land Company, and on the strength of the Camden Yorke decision, purchased two large tracts, on the Illinois and Ohio respectively, from the Illinois Indians (July 5, 1773); and in order to win the support of Dunmore, who was ambitious to make a fortune in land speculation, organized a second company, the Wabash (Ouabache) Land Company, with the governor as the chief share-holder. In response to Murray's petition on behalf of the Illinois Land Company, Dunmore (May, 1774) recommended it to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and urged that it be granted; and in a later letter he disingenuously disclaimed any personal interest in the Illinois speculation.

The party of surveyors sent out under the direction of Colonel William Preston, on the request of Washington and other leading eastern men, in 1774 located lands covered by military grants on the Ohio and in the Kentucky area for prominent Virginians, including Washington, Patrick Henry, William Byrd, William Preston, Arthur Campbell, William Fleming, and Andrew Lewis, among others, and also a large tract for Dr. Connolly. Certain of these grants fell within the Vandalia area; and in his reply (September 10, 1774) to Dunmore's letter, Lord Dartmouth sternly censured Dunmore for allowing these grants, and accused the white settlers of having brought on, by such unwarrantable aggressions, the war then raging with the Indians. This charge lay at the door of Dunmore himself; and there is strong evidence that Dunmore personally fomented the war, ostensibly in support of Virginia's charter rights, but actually in order to further his own speculative designs." Dunmore's agent, Dr. Connolly, heading a party posing as Virginia militia, fired without provocation upon a delegation of Shawanoe chiefs assembled at Fort Pitt (January, 1774). Taking advantage of the alarming situation created by the conflict of the claims of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Connolly, inspired by Dunmore without doubt, then issued an incendiary circular (April 21, 1774), declaring a state of war to exist. Just two weeks before the Battle of the Great Kanawha, Patrick Henry categorically stated, in conversation with Thomas Wharton:

"that he was at Williamsburg with Ld. D. when Dr. Conolly first came there, that Conolly is a chatty, sensible man, and informed Ld. Dunmore of the extreme richness of the lands which lay on both sides of the Ohio; that the prohibitory orders which had been sent him relative to the land on the hither side (or Vandalia) had caused him to turn his thoughts to the opposite shore, and that as his Lordship was determined to settle his family in America he was really pursueing this war, in order to obtain by purchase or treaty from the natives a tract of territory on that side; he then told me that he was convinced from every authority that the law knew, that a purchase from the natives was as full and ample a title as could be obtained, that they had Lord Camden and Mr. York's opinion on that head, which opinion with some others that Ld. Dunmore had consulted, and with the knowledge Conolly had given him of the quality of the country and his determined resolution to settle his family on this continent, were the real motives or springs of the present expedition."

At this very time, Patrick Henry, in conjunction with William Byrd 3d and others, was negotiating for a private purchase of lands from the Cherokees; and when Wharton, after answering Henry's inquiry as to where he might buy Indian goods, remarked: "It's not possible you mean to enter the Indian trade at this period," Henry laughingly replied: "The wish-world is my hobby horse." "From whence I conclude," adds Wharton, "he has some prospect of making a purchase of the natives, but where I know not."

The war, thus promulgated, we believe, at Dunmore's secret instigation and heralded by a series of ghastly atrocities, came on apace. After the inhuman murder of the family of Logan, the Indian chieftain, by one Greathouse and his drunken companions (April 30th), Logan, who contrary to romantic views was a blackhearted and vengeful savage, harried the Tennessee and Virginia borders, burning and slaughtering. Unable to arouse the Cherokees, owing to the opposition of Atta-kulla-kulla, Logan as late as July 21st said in a letter to the whites: "The Indians are not angry, only myself," and not until then did Dunmore begin to give full execution to his warlike plans. The best woodsmen of the border, Daniel Boone and the German scout Michael Stoner, having been despatched on July 27th by Colonel William Preston to warn the surveyors of the trans-Alleghany, made a remarkable journey on foot of eight hundred miles in sixty-one days. Harrod's company at Harrodsburg, a company of surveyors at Fontainebleau, Floyd's party on the Kentucky, and the surveyors at Mann's Lick, this warned, hurried in to the settlements and were saved. Meanwhile, Dunmore, in command of the Virginia forces, invaded territory guaranteed to the Indians by the royal proclamation of 1763 and recently (1774) added to the province of Quebec, a fact of which he was not aware, conducted a vigorous campaign, and fortified Camp Charlotte, near Old Chillicothe. Andrew Lewis, however, in charge of the other division of Dunmore's army, was the one destined to bear the real brunt and burden of the campaign. His division, recruited from the very flower of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, was the most representative body of borderers of this region that up to this time had assembled to measure strength with the red men. It was an army of the true stalwarts of the frontier, with fringed leggings and hunting-capes, rifles and powder-horns, hunting-knives and tomahawks.

The Battle of the Great Kanawha, at Point Pleasant, was fought on October 10, 1774, between Lewis's force, eleven hundred strong, and the Indians, under Cornstalk, somewhat inferior in numbers. It was a desultory action, over a greatly extended front and in very brushy country between Crooked Creek and the Ohio. Throughout the long day, the Indians fought with rare craft and stubborn bravery—loudly cursing the white men, cleverly picking off their leaders, and derisively inquiring, in regard to the absence of the fifes: "Where are your whistles now?" Slowly retreating, they sought to draw the whites into an ambuscade and at a favorable moment to "drive the Long Knives like bullocks into the river." No marked success was achieved on either side until near sunset, when a flank movement directed by young Isaac Shelby alarmed the Indians, who mistook this party for the expected reinforcement under Christian, and retired across the Ohio. In the morning the whites were amazed to discover that the Indians, who the preceding day so splendidly heeded the echoing call of Cornstalk, "Be strong! Be strong!", had quit the battlefield and left the victory with the whites.

The peace negotiated by Dunmore was durable. The governor had accomplished his purpose, defied the authority of the crown, and vindicated the claim of Virginia, to the enthusiastic satisfaction of the backwoodsmen. While tendering their thanks to him and avowing their allegiance to George III, at the close of the campaign, the borderers proclaimed their resolution to exert all their powers "for the defense of American liberty, and for the support of her just rights and privileges, not in any precipitous, riotous or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen." Dunmore's War is epochal, in that it procured for the nonce a state of peace with the Indians, which made possible the advance of Judge Henderson over the Transylvania Trail in 1775, and, through his establishment of the Transylvania Fort at Boonesborough, the ultimate acquisition by the American Confederation of the imperial domain of the trans-Alleghany.



CHAPTER XIV. Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company

I happened to fall in company, and have a great deal of conversation with one of the most singular and extraordinary persons and excentric geniuses in America, and perhaps in the world. His name is Richard Henderson.—J. F. D. Smyth: A Tour in the United States of America.

Early in 1774, chastened by his own disastrous failure the preceding autumn, Boone advised Judge Henderson that the time was auspicious for opening negotiations with the Cherokees for purchasing the trans-Alleghany region." In organizing a company for this purpose, Henderson chose men of action and resource, leaders in the colony, ready for any hazard of life and fortune in this gigantic scheme of colonization and promotion. The new men included, in addition to the partners in the organization known as Richard Henderson and Company, were Colonel John Luttrell, destined to win laurels in the Revolution, and William Johnston, a native of Scotland, the leading merchant of Hillsborough.

Meeting in Hillsborough on August 27, 1774, these men organized the new company under the name of the Louisa Company. In the articles then drawn up they agreed to "rent or purchase" a tract of land from the Indian owners of the soil for the express purpose of "settling the country." Each partner obligated himself to "furnish his Quota of Expenses necessary towards procuring the grant." In full anticipation of the grave dangers to be encountered, they solemnly bound themselves, as "equal sharers in the property," to "support each other with our lives and fortunes." Negotiations with the Indians were begun at once. Accompanied by Colonel Nathaniel Hart and guided by the experienced Indian-trader, Thomas Price, Judge Henderson visited the Cherokee chieftains at the Otari towns. After elaborate consultations, the latter deputed the old chieftain, Atta-kulla-kulla, a young buck, and a squaw, "to attend the said Henderson and Hart to North Carolina, and there examine the Goods and Merchandize which had been by them offered as the Consideration of the purchase." The goods purchased at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville, North Carolina), in which the Louisa Company "had embarked a large amount," met the entire approval of the Indians—the squaw in particular shrewdly examining the goods in the interest of the women of the tribe.

On January 6, 1775, the company was again enlarged, and given the name of the Transylvania Company-the three new partners being David Hart, brother to Thomas and Nathaniel, Leonard Henley Bullock, a prominent citizen of Granville, and James Hogg, of Hillsborough, a native Scotchman and one of the most influential men in the colony. In the elaborate agreement drawn up reference is explicitly made to the contingency of "settling and voting as a proprietor and giving Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants etc." Hillsborough was the actual starting-point for the westward movement, the first emigrants, traveling thence to the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga. In speaking of the departure of the settlers, the first movement of extended and permanent westward migration, an eye-witness quaintly says: "At this place [Hillsborough] I saw the first party of emigrant families that moved to Kentucky under the auspices of Judge Henderson. They marched out of the town with considerable solemnity, and to many their destination seemed as remote as if it had been to the South Sea Islands." Meanwhile, the "Proposals for the encouragement of settling the lands etc.," issued on Christmas Day, 1774, were quickly spread broadcast through the colony and along the border." It was the greatest sensation North Carolina had known since Alamance; and Archibald Neilson, deputy-auditor and naval officer of the colony, inquired with quizzical anxiety: "Pray, is Dick Henderson out of his head?" The most liberal terms, proffered by one quite in possession of his head, were embodied in these proposals. Land at twenty shillings per hundred acres was offered to each emigrant settling within the territory and raising a crop of corn before September 1, 1775, the emigrant being permitted to take up as much as five hundred acres for him self and two hundred and fifty acres for each tithable person under him. In these "Proposals" there was no indication that the low terms at which the lands were offered would be maintained after September 1, 1775. In a letter to Governor Dunmore (January, 1775), Colonel William Preston, county surveyor of Fincastle County, Virginia, says "The low price he [Henderson] proposes to sell at, together with some further encouragement he offers, will I am apprehensive induce a great many families to remove from this County (Fincastle) & Carolina and settle there." Joseph Martin, states his son, "was appointed entry-Taker and agent for the Powell Valley portion" of the Transylvania Purchase on January 20, 1775; and "he (Joseph Martin) and others went on in the early part of the year 1775 and made their stand at the very spot where he had made corn several years before. In speaking of the startling design, unmasked by Henderson, of establishing an independent government, Colonel Preston writes to George Washington of the contemplated "large Purchase by one Col. Henderson of North Carolina from the Cherokees.... I hear that Henderson talks with great Freedom & Indecency of the Governor of Virginia, sets the Government at Defiance & says if he once had five hundred good Fellows settled in that Country he would not Value Virginia."

Early in 1775 runners were sent off to the Cherokee towns to summon the Indians to the treaty ground at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga; and Boone, after his return from a hunt in Kentucky in January, was summoned by Judge Henderson to aid in the negotiations preliminary to the actual treaty. The dominating figure in the remarkable assemblage at the treaty ground, consisting of twelve hundred Indians and several hundred whites, was Richard Henderson, "comely in person, of a benign and social disposition," with countenance betokening the man of strenuous action" noble forehead, prominent nose, projecting chin, firm-set jaw, with kindness and openness of expression." Gathered about him, picturesque in garb and striking in appearance, were many of the buckskin-clad leaders of the border—James Robertson, John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, William Bailey Smith, and their compeers—as well as his Carolina friends John Williams, Thomas and Nathaniel Hart, Nathaniel Henderson, Jesse Benton, and Valentine Searcy.

Little was accomplished on the first day of the treaty (March 14th); but on the next day, the Cherokees offered to sell the section bargained for by Donelson acting as agent for Virginia in 1771. Although the Indians pointed out that Virginia had never paid the promised compensation of five hundred pounds and had therefore forfeited her rights, Henderson flatly refused to entertain the idea of purchasing territory to which Virginia had the prior claim. Angered by Henderson's refusal, The Dragging Canoe, leaping into the circle of the seated savages, made an impassioned speech touched with the romantic imagination peculiar to the American Indian. With pathetic eloquence he dwelt upon the insatiable land-greed of the white men, and predicted the extinction of his race if they committed the insensate folly of selling their beloved hunting-grounds. Roused to a high pitch of oratorical fervor, the savage with uplifted arm fiercely exhorted his people to resist further encroachments at all hazards—and left the treaty ground. This incident brought the conference to a startling and abrupt conclusion. On the following day, however, the savages proved more tractable, agreeing to sell the land as far as the Cumberland River. In order to secure the additional territory watered by the tributaries of the Cumberland, Henderson agreed to pay an additional sum of two thousand pounds. Upon this day there originated the ominous phrase descriptive of Kentucky when The Dragging Canoe, dramatically pointing toward the west, declared that a DARK Cloud hung over that land, which was known as the BLOODY GROUND.

On the last day, March 17th, the negotiations were opened with the signing of the "Great Grant." The area purchased, some twenty millions of acres, included almost all the present state of Kentucky, and an immense tract in Tennessee, comprising all the territory watered by the Cumberland River and all its tributaries. For "two thousand weight of leather in goods" Henderson purchased "the lands lying down Holston and between the Watauga lease, Colonel Donelson's line and Powell's Mountain" as a pathway to Kentucky—the deed for which was known as the "Path Deed." By special arrangement, Carter's Valley in this tract went to Carter and Lucas; two days later, for two thousand pounds, Charles Robertson on behalf of the Watauga Association purchased a large tract in the valleys of the Holston, Watauga, and New Rivers; and eight days later Jacob Brown purchased two large areas, including the Nolichucky Valley. This historic treaty, which heralds the opening of the West, was conducted with absolute justice and fairness by Judge Henderson and his associates. No liquor was permitted at the treaty ground; and Thomas Price, the ablest of the Cherokee traders, deposed that "he at that time understood the Cherokee language, so as to comprehend everything which was said and to know that what was observed on either side was fairly and truly translated; that the Cherokees perfectly understood, what Lands were the subject of the Treaty...." The amount paid by the Transylvania Company for the imperial domain was ten thousand pounds sterling, in money and in goods.

Although Daniel Boone doubtless assisted in the proceedings prior to the negotiation of the treaty, his name nowhere appears in the voluminous records of the conference. Indeed, he was not then present; for a fortnight before the conclusion of the treaty he was commissioned by Judge Henderson to form a party of competent woodmen to blaze a passage through the wilderness. On March 10th this party of thirty ax-men, under the leadership of Boone, started from the rendezvous, the Long Island of Holston, to engage in the arduous labor of cutting out the Transylvania Trail.

Henderson, the empire-builder, now faced with courage and resolution the hazardous task of occupying the purchased territory and establishing an independent government. No mere financial promoter of a vast speculative enterprise, he was one of the heroic figures of the Old Southwest; and it was his dauntless courage, his unwavering resolve to go forward in the face of all dangers, which carried through the armed "trek" to a successful conclusion. At Martin's Station, where Henderson and his party tarried to build a house in which to store their wagons, as the road could be cleared no further, they were joined by another party, of five adventurers from Prince William County, Virginia." In Henderson's party were some forty men and boys, with forty packhorses and a small amount of powder, lead, salt, and garden-seeds. The warning freely given by Joseph Martin of the perils of the path was soon confirmed, as appears from the following entry in Henderson's diary:

"Friday the 7th. [April] About Brake of Day began to snow. About 11 O'Clock received a letter from Mr. Luttrells camp that were five persons killd on the road to the Cantuckie by Indians. Capt. [Nathaniel] Hart, uppon the receipt of this News Retreated back with his Company, & determined to Settle in the Valley to make Corn for the Cantucky people. The same Day Received a Letter from Dan. Boone, that his Company was fired uppon by Indians, Kill'd Two of his men—tho he kept the ground & saved the Baggage &c."

The following historic letter, which reveals alike the dogged resolution of Boone and his reliance upon Henderson and his company in this black hour of disaster, addressed "Colonel Richard Henderson—these with care," is eloquent in its simplicity

"Dear Colonel: After my compliments to you, I shall acquaint you of our misfortunes. On March the 25 a party of Indians fired on my Company about half an hour before day, and killed Mr. Twitty and his negro, and wounded Mr. Walker very deeply, but I hope he will recover.

"On March the 28 as we were hunting for provisions, we found Samuel Tate's son, who gave us an account that the Indians fired on their camp on the 27th day. My brother and I went down and found two men killed and sculped, Thomas McDowell and Jeremiah McFeters. I have sent a man down to all the lower companies in order to gather them all at the mouth of Otter Creek.

"My advice to you, Sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to flusterate their [the Indians'] intentions, and keep the country, whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case. This day we start from the battle ground, for the mouth of Otter Creek, where we shall immediately erect a Fort, which will be done before you can come or send, then we can send ten men to meet you, if you send for them.

"I am, Sir, your most obedient Omble Sarvent Daniel Boone.

"N.B. We stood on the ground and guarded our baggage till day, and lost nothing. We have about fifteen miles to Cantuck [Kentucky River] at Otter Creek."

This dread intelligence caused the hearts of strong men to quail and induced some to turn back, but Henderson, the jurist-pioneer, was made of sterner stuff. At once (April 8th) he despatched an urgent letter in hot haste to the proprietors of Transylvania, enclosing Boone's letter, informing them of Boone's plight and urging them to send him immediately a large quantity of powder and lead, as he had been compelled to abandon his supply of saltpeter at Martin's Station. "We are all in high spirits," he assures the proprietors, "and on thorns to fly to Boone's assistance, and join him in defense of so fine and valuable a country."

Laconically eloquent is this simple entry in his diary: "Saturday the 8th. Started abt. 10 oClock Crossed Cumberland Gap about 4 miles met about 40 persons Returning from the Cantucky, on Acct. of the Late Murders by the Indians could prevail on one only to return. Memo Several Virginians who were with us return'd."

There is no more crucial moment in early Western history than this, in which we see the towering form of Henderson, clad in the picturesque garb of the pioneer, with outstretched arm resolutely pointing forward to the "dark and bloody ground," and in impassioned but futile eloquence pleading with the pale and panic-stricken fugitives to turn about, to join his company, and to face once more the mortal dangers of pioneer conquest. Significant indeed are the lines:

Some to endure, and many to fail, Some to conquer, and many to quail, Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

The spirit of the pioneer knight-errant inspires Henderson's words: "In this situation, some few, of genuine courage and undaunted resolution, served to inspire the rest; by the help of whose example, assisted by a little pride and some ostentation, we made a shift to march on with all the appearance of gallantry, and, cavalier like, treated every insinuation of danger with the utmost contempt."

Fearing that Boone, who did not even know that Henderson's cavalcade was on the road, would be unable to hold out, Henderson realized the imperative necessity for sending him a message of encouragement. The bold young Virginian, William Cocke, volunteered to brave alone the dangers of the murder-haunted trail to undertake a ride more truly memorable and hazardous than that of Revere. "This offer, extraordinary as it was, we could by no means refuse," remarks Henderson, who shed tears of gratitude as he proffered his sincere thanks and wrung the brave messenger's hand. Equipped with "a good Queen Anne's musket, plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, a large cuttoe knife [French, couteau], a Dutch blanket, and no small quantity of jerked beef," Cocke on April 10th rode off "to the Cantuckey to Inform Capt Boone that we were on the road." The fearful apprehensions felt for Cocke's safety were later relieved, when along the road were discovered his letters in forming Henderson of his arrival and of his having been joined on the way by Page Portwood of Rowan. On his arrival at Otter Creek, Cocke found Boone and his men, and on relating his adventures, "came in for his share of applause." Boone at once despatched the master woodman, Michael Stoner, with pack-horses to assist Henderson's party, which he met on April 18th at their encampment "in the Eye of the Rich Land." Along with "Excellent Beef in plenty," Stoner brought the story of Boone's determined stand and an account of the erection of a rude little fortification which they had hurriedly thrown up to resist attack. With laconic significance Henderson pays the following tribute to Boone which deserves to be perpetuated in national annals: "It was owing to Boone's confidence in us, and the people's in him, that a stand was ever attempted in order to wait for our coming."

In the course of their journey over the mountains and through the wilderness, the pioneers forgot the trials of the trail in the face of the surpassing beauties of the country. The Cumberlands were covered with rich undergrowth of the red and white rhododendron, the delicate laurel, the mountain ivy, the flameazalea, the spicewood, and the cane; while the white stars of the dogwood and the carmine blossoms of the red-bud, strewn across the verdant background of the forest, gleamed in the eager air of spring. "To enter uppon a detail of the Beuty & Goodness of our Country," writes Nathaniel Henderson, "would be a task too arduous.... Let it suffice to tell you it far exceeds any country I ever saw or herd off. I am conscious its out of the power of any man to make you clearly sensible of the great Beuty and Richness of Kentucky." Young Felix Walker, endowed with more vivid powers of description, says with a touch of native eloquence:

"Perhaps no Adventurer Since the days of donquicksotte or before ever felt So Cheerful & Ilated in prospect, every heart abounded with Joy & excitement ... & exclusive of the Novelties of the Journey the advantages & accumalations arising on the Settlement of a new Country was a dazzling object with many of our Company.... As the Cain ceased, we began to discover the pleasing & Rapturous appearance of the plains of Kentucky, a New Sky & Strange Earth to be presented to our view.... So Rich a Soil we had never Saw before, Covered with Clover in full Bloom. the Woods alive abounding in wild Game, turkeys so numerous that it might be said there appeared but one flock Universally Scattered in the woods ... it appeared that Nature in the profusion of her Bounties, had Spread a feast for all that lives, both for the Animal & Rational World, a Sight so delightful to our View and grateful to our feelings almost Induced us, in Immitation of Columbus in Transport to Kiss the Soil of Kentucky, as he haild & Saluted the sand on his first setting his foot on the Shores of America."

On the journey Henderson was joined in Powell's Valley by Benjamin Logan, afterward so famous in Kentucky annals, and a companion, William Galaspy. At the Crab Orchard they left Henderson's party; and turning their course westward finally pitched camp in the present Lincoln County, where Logan subsequently built a fort. On Sunday, April 16th, on Scaggs's Creek, Henderson records: "About 12 oClock Met James McAfee with 18 other persons Returning from Cantucky." They advised Henderson of the "troublesomeness and danger" of the Indians, says Robert McAfee junior: "but Henderson assured them that he had purchased the whole country from the Indians, that it belonged to him, and he had named it Transylvania.... Robt, Samuel, and William McAfee and 3 others were inclined to return, but James opposed it, alleging that Henderson had no right to the land, and that Virginia had previously bought it. The former (6) returned with Henderson to Boonesborough." Among those who had joined Henderson's party was Abraham Hanks from Virginia, the maternal grandfather of Abraham Lincoln; but alarmed by the stories brought by Stewart and his party of fugitives, Hanks and Drake, as recorded by William Calk on that day (April 13th), turned back.

At last the founder of Kentucky with his little band reached the destined goal of their arduous journeyings. Henderson's record on his birthday runs: "Thursday the 20th [April] Arrived at Fort Boone on the Mouth of Oter Creek Cantuckey River where we were Saluted by a running fire of about 25 Guns; all that was then at Fort.... The men appeared in high spirits & much rejoiced in our arrival." It is a coincidence of historic interest that just one day after the embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord "fired the shots heard round the world," the echoing shots of Boone and his sturdy backwoodsmen rang out to announce the arrival of the proprietor of Transylvania and the birth of the American West.



CHAPTER XV. Transylvania—A wilderness Commonwealth

You are about a work of the utmost importance to the well-being of this country in general, in which the interest and security of each and every individual are inseparably connected .... Our peculiar circumstances in this remote country, surrounded on all sides with difficulties, and equally subject to one common danger, which threatens our common overthrow, must, I think, in their effects, secure to us an union of interests, and, consequently, that harmony in opinion, so essential to the forming good, wise and wholesome laws.—Judge Richard Henderson: Address to the Legislature of Transylvania, May 23, 1775.

The independent spirit displayed by the Transylvania Company, and Henderson's procedure in open defiance of the royal governors of both North Carolina and Virginia, naturally aroused grave alarm throughout these colonies and South Carolina. "This in my Opinion," says Preston in a letter to George Washington (January 31, 1775), "will soon become a serious Affair, & highly deserves the Attention of the Government. For it is certain that a vast Number of People are preparing to go out and settle on this Purchase; and if once they get fixed there, it will be next to impossible to remove them or reduce them to Obedience; as they are so far from the Seat of Government. Indeed it may be the Cherokees will support them." Governor Martin of North Carolina, already deeply disturbed in anticipation of the coming revolutionary cataclysm, thundered in what was generally regarded as a forcible-feeble proclamation (February 19, 1775) against "Richard Henderson and his Confederates" in their "daring, unjust and unwarrantable proceedings." In a letter to Dartmouth he denounces "Henderson the famous invader" and dubs the Transylvania Company "an infamous Company of land Pyrates."

Officials who were themselves eager for land naturally opposed Henderson's plans. Lord Dunmore, who in 1774, as we have seen, was heavily interested in the Wabash Land Company engineered by William Murray, took the ground that the Wabash purchase was valid under the Camden-Yorke decision. This is so stated in the records of the Illinois Company. Likewise under Murray's control. But although the "Ouabache Company," of which Dunmore was a leading member, was initiated as early as May 16, 1774, the purchase of the territory was not formally effected until October 18, 1775—too late to benefit Dunmore, then deeply embroiled in the preliminaries to the Revolution. Under the cover of his agent's name, it is believed, Dunmore, with his "passion for land and fees," illegally entered tracts aggregating thousands of acres of land surveyed by the royal surveyors in the summer of 1774 for Dr. John Connolly. Early in this same year, Patrick Henry, who, as already pointed out, had entered large tracts in Kentucky in violation of Virginia's treaty obligations with the Cherokees, united with William Byrd 3d, John Page, Ralph Wormley, Samuel Overton, and William Christian, in the effort to purchase from the Cherokees a tract of land west of Donelson's line, being firmly persuaded of the validity of the Camden-Yorke opinion. Their agent, William Kenedy, considerably later in the year, went on a mission to the Cherokee towns, and upon his return reported that the Indians might be induced to sell. When it became known that Judge Henderson had organized the Transylvania Company and anticipated Patrick Henry and his associates, Colonel Arthur Campbell, as he himself states, applied to several of the partners of the Transylvania Company on behalf of Patrick Henry, requesting that Henry be taken in as a partner. It was afterward stated, as commonly understood among the Transylvania proprietors, that both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson desired to become members of the company; but that Colonel Richard Henderson was instrumental in preventing their admission "lest they should supplant the Colonel [Henderson] as the guiding spirit of the company."

Fully informed by Preston's elaborate communication on the gravity of the situation, Dunmore acted energetically, though tardily, to prevent the execution of Henderson's designs. On March 21st Dunmore sent flying through the back country a proclamation, demanding the immediate relinquishment of the territory by "one Richard Henderson and other disorderly persons, his associates," and "in case of refusal, and of violently detaining such possession, that he or they be immediately fined and imprisoned. This proclamation, says a peppery old chronicler, may well rank with the one excepting those arch traitors and rebels, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, from the mercy of the British monarch. In view of Dunmore's confidence in the validity of the Camden-Yorke decision, it is noteworthy that no mention of the royal proclamation of 1763 occurs in his broadside; and that he bases his objection to the Transylvania purchase upon the king's instructions that all vacant lands "within this colony" be laid off in tracts, from one hundred to one thousand acres in extent, and sold at public auction. This proclamation which was enclosed, oddly enough, in a letter of official instructions to Preston warning him not to survey any lands "beyond the line run by Colonel Donaldson," proved utterly ineffective. At the same time, Dunmore despatched a pointed letter to Oconostota, Atta-kulla-kulla, Judge's Friend, and other Cherokee chieftains, notifying them that the sale of the great tract of land below the Kentucky was illegal and threatening them with the king's displeasure if they did not repudiate the sale.

News of the plans which Henderson had already matured for establishing an independent colony in the trans-Alleghany wilderness, now ran like wild-fire through Virginia. In a letter to George Washington (April 9, 1775), Preston ruefully says: "Henderson I hear has made the Purchase & got a Conveyance of the great and Valluable Country below the Kentucky from the Cherokees. He and about 300 adventurers are gone out to take Possession, who it is said intends to set up an independent Government & form a Code of Laws for themselves. How this may be I cant say, but I am affraid the steps taken by the Government have been too late. Before the Purchase was made had the Governor interfered it is believed the Indians would not have sold."

Meanwhile Judge Henderson, with strenuous energy, had begun to erect a large stockaded fort according to plans of his own. Captain James Harrod with forty-two men was stationed at the settlement he had made the preceding year, having arrived there before the McAfees started back to Virginia; and there were small groups of settlers at Boiling Spring, six miles southeast of Harrods settlement, and at St. Asaph's, a mile west of the present Stanford. A representative government for Transylvania was then planned. When the frank and gallant Floyd arrived at the Transylvania Fort on May 3d, he "expressed great satisfaction," says Judge Henderson, "on being informed of the plan we proposed for Legislation & sayd he must most heartily concur in that & every other measure we should adopt for the well Govern'g or good of the Community in Gen'l." In reference to a conversation with Captain James Harrod and Colonel Thomas Slaughter of Virginia, Henderson notes in his diary (May 8th): "Our plan of Legislation, the evils pointed out—the remedies to be applyed &c &c &c were Acceeded to without Hesitation. The plann was plain & Simple—'twas nothing novel in its essence a thousand years ago it was in use, and found by every year's experience since to be unexceptionable. We were in four distinct settlem'ts. Members or delegates from every place by free choice of Individuals they first having entered into writings solemnly binding themselves to obey and carry into Execution Such Laws as representatives should from time to time make, Concurred with, by A Majority of the Proprietors present in the Country."

In reply to inquiries of the settlers, Judge Henderson gave as his reason for this assembling of a Transylvania Legislature that "all power was derived from the people." Six days before the prophetic arrival of the news of the Battle of Lexington and eight days before the revolutionary committee of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, promulgated their memorable Resolves establishing laws for independent government, the pioneers assembled on the green beneath the mighty plane-tree at the Transylvania Fort. In his wise and statesmanlike address to this picturesque convention of free Americans (May 23, 1775), an address which Felix Walker described as being "considered equal to any of like kind ever delivered to any deliberate body in that day and time," Judge Henderson used these memorable words:

"You, perhaps, are fixing the palladium, or placing the first corner stone of an edifice, the height and magnificence of whose superstructure ... can only become great in proportion to the excellence of its foundation.... If any doubt remain amongst you with respect to the force or efficiency of whatever laws you now, or hereafter make, be pleased to consider that ALL POWER IS ORIGINALLY IN THE PEOPLE; MAKE AND THEIR INTEREST, THEREFORE, BY IMPARTIAL AND BENEFICENT LAWS, AND YOU MAY BE SURE OF THEIR INCLINATION TO SEE THEM ENFORCED."

An early writer, in speaking of the full blooded democracy of these "advanced" sentiments, quaintly comments: "If Jeremy Bentham had been in existence of manhood, he would have sent his compliments to the President of Transylvania." This, the first representative body of American freemen which ever convened west of the Alleghanies, is surely the most unique colonial government ever set up on this continent. The proceedings of this backwoods legislature—the democratic leader ship of the principal proprietor; the prudence exhibited in the laws for protecting game, breeding horses, etc.; the tolerance shown in the granting of full religious liberty—all display the acumen and practical wisdom of these pioneer law-givers. As the result of Henderson's tactfulness, the proprietary form of government, thoroughly democratized in tone, was complacently accepted by the backwoods men. From one who, though still under royal rule, vehemently asserted that the source of all political power was the people, and that "laws derive force and efficiency from our mutual consent," Western democracy thus born in the wilderness was "taking its first political lesson." In their answer to Henderson's assertion of freedom from alien authority the pioneers unhesitatingly declared: "That we have an absolute right, as a political body, without giving umbrage to Great Britain, or any of the colonies, to form rules for the government of our little society, cannot be doubted by any sensible mind and being without the jurisdiction of, and not answerable to any of his Majesty's courts, the constituting tribunals of justice shall be a matter of our first contemplation...." In the establishment of a constitution for the new colony, Henderson with paternalistic wisdom induced the people to adopt a legal code based on the laws of England. Out of a sense of self-protection he reserved for the proprietors only one prerogative not granted them by the people, the right of veto. He clearly realized that if this power were given up, the delegates to any convention that might be held after the first would be able to assume the claims and rights of the proprietors.

A land-office was formally opened, deeds were issued, and a store was established which supplied the colonists with powder, lead, salt, osnaburgs, blankets, and other chief necessities of pioneer existence. Writing to his brother Jonathan from Leestown, the bold young George Rogers Clark, soon to plot the downfall of Transylvania, enthusiastically says (July 6, 1775): "A richer and more Beautifull Cuntry than this I believe has never been seen in America yet. Col. Henderson is hear and Claims all ye Country below Kentucke. If his Claim Should be good, land may be got Reasonable Enough and as good as any in ye World." Those who settled on the south side of Kentucky River acknowledged the validity of the Transylvania purchase; and Clark in his Memoir says: "the Proprietors at first took great pains to Ingratiate themselves in the fav'r of the people."

In regard to the designs of Lord Dunmore, who, as noted above, had illegally entered the Connolly grant on the Ohio and sought to outlaw Henderson, and of Colonel William Byrd 3d, who, after being balked in Patrick Henry's plan to anticipate the Transylvania Company in effecting a purchase from the Cherokees, was supposed to have tried to persuade the Cherokees to repudiate the "Great Treaty," Henderson defiantly says: "Whether Lord Dunmore and Colonel Byrd have interfered with the Indians or not, Richard Henderson is equally ignorant and indifferent. The utmost result of their efforts can only serve to convince them of the futility of their schemes and possibly frighten some few faint-hearted persons, naturally prone to reverence great names and fancy everything must shrink at the magic of a splendid title."

Prompted by Henderson's desire to petition the Continental Congress then in session for recognition as the fourteenth colony, the Transylvania legislature met again on the first Thursday in September and elected Richard Henderson and John Williams, among others, as delegates to the gathering at Philadelphia. Shortly afterward the Proprietors of Transylvania held a meeting at Oxford, North Carolina (September 25, 1775), elected Williams as the agent of the colony, and directed him to proceed to Boonesborough there to reside until April, 1776. James Hogg, of Hillsborough, chosen as Delegate to represent the Colony in the Continental Congress, was despatched to Philadelphia, bearing with him an elaborate memorial prepared by the President, Judge Henderson, petitioning the Congress "to take the infant Colony of Transylvania into their protection."

Almost immediately upon his arrival in Philadelphia, James Hogg was presented to "the famous Samuel and John Adams." The latter warned Hogg, in view of the efforts then making toward reconciliation between the colonies and the king, that "the taking under our protection a body of people who have acted in defiance of the King's proclamation, will be looked on as a confirmation of that independent spirit with which we are daily reproached." Jefferson said that if his advice were followed, all the use the Virginians should make of their charter would be "to prevent any arbitrary or oppressive government to be established within the boundaries of it"; and that it was his wish "to see a free government established at the back of theirs [Virginia's] properly united with them." He would not consent, however, that Congress should acknowledge the colony of Transylvania, until it had the approbation of the Virginia Convention. The quit-rents imposed by the company were denounced in Congress as a mark of vassalage; and many advised a law against the employment of negroes in the colony. "They even threatened us with their opposition," says Hogg, with precise veracity, "if we do not act upon liberal principles when we have it so much in our power to render ourselves immortal."



CHAPTER XVI. The Repulse of the Red Men

To this short war may be properly attributed all the kind feelings and fidelity to treaty stipulations manifested by the Cherokees ever afterwards. General Rutherford instilled into the Indians so great a fear of the whites, that never afterwards were they disposed to engage in any cruelty, or destroy any of the property of our frontier men.—David L. Swain: The Indian War of 1776.

During the summer of 1775 the proprietors of Transylvania were confronted with two stupendous tasks—that of winning the favor and support of the frontiersmen and that of rallying the rapidly dwindling forces in Kentucky in defense of the settlements. Recognizing the difficulty of including Martin's Station, because of its remoteness, with the government provided for Transylvania, Judge Henderson prepared a plan of government for the group of settlers located in Powell's Valley. In a letter to Martin (July 30th), in regard to the recent energetic defense of the settlers at that point against the Indians, Henderson says: "Your spirited conduct gives me much pleasure.... Keep your men in heart if possible, NOW IS OUR TIME, THE INDIANS MUST NOT DRIVE US." The gloom which had been occasioned by the almost complete desertion of the stations at Harrodsburg, the Boiling Spring, and the Transylvania Fort or Boonesborough was dispelled with the return of Boone, accompanied by some thirty persons, on September 8th, and of Richard Callaway with a considerable party on September 26th. The crisis was now passed; and the colony began for the first time really to flourish. The people on the south side of the Kentucky River universally accepted proprietary rule for the time being. But the seeds of dissension were soon to be sown among those who settled north of the river, as well as among men of the stamp of James Harrod, who, having preceded Henderson in the establishment of a settlement in Kentucky, naturally resented holding lands under the Transylvania Company.

The great liberality of this organization toward incoming settlers had resulted in immense quantities of land being taken up through their land-office. The ranging, hunting, and road-building were paid for by the company; and the entire settlement was furnished with powder, lead, and supplies, wholly on credit, for this and the succeeding year. "Five hundred and sixty thousand acres of land are now entered," reports Floyd on December 1st, "and most of the people waiting to have it run out." After Dunmore, having lost his hold upon the situation, escaped to the protection of a British vessel, the Fowey, Colonel Preston continued to prevent surveys for officers' grants within the Transylvania territory; and his original hostility to Judge Henderson gave place to friendship and support. On December 1st, Colonel John Williams, resident agent of the Transylvania Company, announced at Boonesborough the long-contemplated and widely advertised advance in price of the lands, from twenty to fifty shillings per hundred acres, with surveying fees of four dollars for tracts not exceeding six hundred and forty acres. At a meeting of the Transylvania legislature, convened on December 21st, John Floyd was chosen surveyor general of the colony, Nathaniel Henderson was placed in charge of the Entering Office, and Richard Harrison given the post of secretary. At this meeting of the legislature, the first open expression of discontent was voiced in the "Harrodsburg Remonstrance," questioning the validity of the proprietors' title, and protesting against any increase in the price of lands, as well as the taking up by the proprietors and a few other gentlemen of the best lands at the Falls of the Ohio. Every effort was made to accommodate the remonstrants, who were led by Abraham Hite. Office fees were abolished, and the payment of quit-rents was deferred until January 1, 1780. Despite these efforts at accommodation, grave doubts were implanted by this Harrodsburg Remonstrance in the minds of the people; and much discussion and discontent ensued.