wagon roads pointed west; and it was a generation more before the white, canvas-covered wagon (afterward familiar as the "prairie schooner") became the token of the immigrant. At best, the early Southwest had only dim and rugged trails through the forests ("traces" blazed by the hatchet on tree trunks). Along such trails, men, rifle always in hand, led pack horses loaded with young children and a few necessary supplies; while the women and older children drove the few lean cattle.

By 1772 the settlers were grouped about thirteen "stations." A "station" was a stockaded fort such as is shown on page 166. One side was formed by

The stock

aded "station

a row of log huts, facing in. The remaining sides, with a log "blockhouse" at each corner, were a close fence of hewn "pickets," considerably higher than a man's head, driven firmly into the ground and bound together. Within were supply sheds for a short siege, and sometimes a central and larger blockhouse, a sort of inner "keep." Stockade and blockhouses were loopholed at convenient intervals for rifles, and, except for surprise or fire, such a fort was impregnable against any attack without

cannon.

homes

The fort, however, was only for times of extraordinary danger. Ordinarily, the families lived apart, each in its log And the cabin upon its own farm. The holdings were usually of from four hundred to a thousand acres ; but for many years they remained forest-covered, except for a small stump-dotted "clearing," about each cabin. The clearings nearest one another were often separated by miles of dense primitive forest. At an alarm of Indians, all families of a "station" abandoned these scattered homes and sought refuge within the stockade. In more peaceful times, 'neighbors," from many miles around, gathered to a "house-raising" for a newcomer or for some one whose old home had been destroyed by fire. The two qualities that especially characterized this new West, says Theodore Roosevelt, were "capacity for self-help and capacity for combination."

66

BOONE IN KENTUCKY, 1769-1774

44 The

tion'

241

In the spring of 1772 the men of the thirteen forts gathered at Robertson's station in mass meeting, to organize a government. This meeting adopted Articles of Association, "a written constitution, the first ever Watauga adopted west of the mountains, or by a community Associaof American-born freemen." (The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut had been formed, of course, by English-nurtured men.) Manhood suffrage and absolute religious freedom were main features of this social compact,-amazing facts when we remember how far short of such democracy fell the Revolutionary constitutions of the Eastern States four or five years later. A representative convention of thirteen, one from each station, chose a "court" of five members who formed the government. This body of commissioners held regular meetings and managed affairs with little regard for legal technicalities, but with sound sense. For six years Watauga was an independent political community. Then, in 1778, when the Revolution had reformed North Carolina, Watauga recognized the authority of that State and became Washington County.

The second group of Western settlements - almost as early as Watauga - was made in Kentucky. Among the many daring hunters and Indian fighters, who, preceding Daniel settlement, had ventured from time to time into the Boone in bloody Indian hunting grounds south of the Ohio, Kentucky Daniel Boone was the most famous. As early as 1760, Boone hunted west of the mountains; and in 1769 (the year Watauga was founded) he went on a "long hunt" there with six companions. After five weeks' progress through the forest stretching continuously from the Atlantic, this little party broke through its western fringe and stood upon the verge of the vast prairies of America. They had come to the now famous "blue-grass" district of Kentucky. Hitherto (except for petty Indian clearings) American colonists had had to win homes slowly with the ax from the stubborn forest. Now before the eyes of these explorers there spread away a lovely land, where stately groves and running waters intermingled with rich open prairies and grassy meadows,

inviting the husbandman to easy possession and teeming with game for the hunter, herds of bison, elk, and deer, as well as bear and wolves and wild turkey, in abundance unguessed before by English-speaking men. The prairies proper, even when reached, did not at first attract

settlers. The lack of fuel and often of water more than made up for the difficulty of clearing forest land. But Kentucky offered a happy mixture.

In the following months, hard on the trail of the hunters, followed various small expeditions of backwoods surveyors and would-be settlers, in spite of frequent death by the scalping knife and at the stake. Very soon the colonist learned that the Woods Indian of the West-armed now almost as well as the Whites was a far more formidable foe than the weak tribes of the coast had been. But the colonist of 1770, too, was a far more effective forest fighter than the English settler of 1620, and was not affrighted. In particular, Boone returned again and again, and, in 1773, he sold his Carolina home, to settle in the new land of Lord Dun- promise. His expedition was repulsed, however, by a savage Indian attack, and the next year the opening of a great Indian War along the Virginian and Pennsylvania border drove every settler out of Kentucky.

A "BOONE TREE," on Boone's Creek,
Tennessee. The inscription reads: D.

Boon cilled A Bar on this tree year 1760.

more's
War," 1774

LORD DUNMORE'S WAR, 1774

243

This was "Lord Dunmore's War." Without provocation, a dastard White trader had murdered the helpless family of Logan, a friendly Iroquois chieftain. In horrible retaliation a mighty Indian confederacy was soon busied with torch and tomahawk on the western frontiers. Pennsylvania suffered most, and the dilatory government there did little to protect its citizens. Vir

ginia, however, acted promptly. To crush the confederacy she sent an army far beyond her line of settlement, into the distant Northwest,where she claimed jurisdiction, though parliament had just annexed the territory to Quebec (page 201). This Virginian force was composed chiefly of hardy frontier riflemen, with deerskin hunting shirts for uniform, but, by a curious contrast, it was led by an English earl, the royal governor, Lord Dunmore.

DANIEL BOONE at 85 (in 1819), when he had moved on to frontier Missouri. From a portrait by Chester Harding, now in the Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky.

Kanawha

The rear division of the army, when about to cross the Ohio at the mouth of the Kanawha, was surprised, through the splendid generalship of the Indian leader Battle of Cornstalk, by the whole force of the natives; but, the Great after a stubborn pitched battle, the frontiersmen won a decisive victory. This Battle of the Great Kanawha is as important as any conflict ever waged between Whites and Redmen. Says Theodore Roosevelt: "It so cowed the northern Indians that for two or three years they made no organized attempt to check the White advance. [It] gave opportunity for Boone to settle in Kentucky and,

therefore, for Robertson to settle Middle Tennessee, and for Clark to conquer Illinois and the Northwest. It was the first link in the chain of causes that gave us for our western boundary in 1783 the Mississippi and not the Alleghenies.'

and

Permanent settlement in central Kentucky began the next spring (1775). For a few months it had the form of a Henderson proprietary colony. A certain Henderson, a citizen of North Carolina, bought from the southern Kentucky Indians their rights to a great tract in central Kentucky and Tennessee. He named the proposed colony Transylvania, and secured Boone as his agent. In March and April, Boone and a strong company marked out the Wilderness Road1 and began to build "Boone's Fort" (p. 166). Henderson soon arrived with a considerable colony. But the Revolution ruined all prospect of English sanction for his proprietary claims, and Virginia firmly asserted her title to the territory. Henderson soon passed from the scene; and, in 1777, Kentucky, with its present bounds, was organized as a county of Virginia.

Kentucky already contained several hundred fighting men, and now it became the base from which George Rogers Clark conquered the Northwest (page 233). Before the close of the Revolution, Kentucky's population exceeded 25,000; and when peace made Indian hostility less likely, a still larger immigration began to crowd the Wilderness Road and the Ohio.

The Cum

Meanwhile Watauga had become a mother of a still more western colony. Population had increased rapidly, and some of the earlier "forts" had grown into stragberland gling villages. At the end of ten years, this settlements, region was no longer a place for frontiersmen; and, in 1779, Robertson, with some of his more restless neighbors, migrated once more to a new wilderness

1779

1 This famous Wilderness Road was for many years merely a narrow bridle path, through the more passable parts of the forest and across the easiest fords, leading two hundred miles from the Holston River (near Watauga) into central Kentucky. In the worse places the thick underbrush was cut out; but much of the time only the direction was blazed on trees.