Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman

by C. H. Forbes-Lindsay

When Boone reported the result of his observations to Colonel Henderson and his associates, who now called themselves the Transylvania Company, it was determined to entrust him with a task calling for qualities of a different nature from those exercised in his exploration. It was proposed by the Company to purchase from the Cherokees the land which they decided on Boone’s recommendation to settle, and to him was entrusted the matter of opening negotiations.

It should be understood that the Cherokees had no better title to the territory in question than had the Choctaws, Shawnees, or Iroquois. In fact, the last named had some few years previous transferred to the British Crown all the lands lying between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. However, the Company felt that its position would be strengthened by securing some title, however shadowy, from an Indian tribe, and the Cherokees were selected because they commanded the path that would be followed by the settlers from the South in going to the new country.

As usual, Boone accomplished his errand and in March brought twelve hundred Cherokees to the Sycamore Shoals, on the Watauga River, where the promoters met them and after considerable bickering struck a bargain. It was agreed that in consideration of the payment of fifty thousand dollars, the tribe should cede to Henderson and his partners in the Transylvania Company all the land lying between the Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers, and should allow them a free road to the region through Powell’s Valley and the Cumberland Gap.

According to the general practice of the time, the purchase price was paid in merchandise, consisting of cloth, clothing, guns, ammunition, cooking utensils, hatchets, and ornaments. The goods filled a large cabin but when it came to distributing them, each warrior’s share proved to be small. One brave, to whom was allotted a deerskin hunting-shirt, expressed his disgust in no uncertain terms. What a fool he had been, he said, to sell for such an article his hunting-grounds, where in a single day he could kill deer enough to make half a dozen such garments.

Thus, at the outset, the arrangement met with the dissatisfaction of the Indians. Indeed, before the meeting broke up one of the chiefs warned Boone that he must not expect to effect the settlement of the region without trouble. He pointed out, truthfully enough, that the Indian chiefs could no more control their young men than the frontier leaders could the hot-heads among themselves. The Cherokees as a nation might, he said, be at peace with the Virginians—they called all frontiersmen “Virginians”—and a few individuals on either side wantonly commit some act that would bring on war. The chiefs could not, he declared, guarantee the safety of emigrants upon the promised path, much less of settlers in Kentucky itself.

This was not very promising, but it did not daunt the promoters, for they had expected nothing better. All they had looked for from the agreement was something that would give them a moral right to fight for the possession of the land and entitle them to the countenance of the Crown authorities. In this hope they were, however, immediately disappointed; for the Governors of North Carolina and Virginia denounced the transaction as soon as knowledge of it reached them.

By this time the colonists, and especially those on the borders, had begun to treat the representatives of King George with scant respect, and the Transylvania Company was in no measure deterred from the prosecution of its enterprise by the proclamations issued against it by Governors Martin and Dunmore. Boone counselled immediate action, reasoning that the Indians might be expected to observe the treaty for a few months and that by driving the entering wedge home before they should awake to active opposition, much would be gained. In this view the promoters concurred and again they relied upon their trusty agent to carry out their designs.

In his expedition of the preceding January, Boone had marked a spot for the first settlement of the Transylvania Company, and now it was arranged that he should go out at the head of a body of thirty picked backwoodsmen to mark a path through the wilderness to the place selected. The party started immediately after the conclusion of the meeting on the Watauga and arrived at their destination on the sixth day of April. They encountered many difficulties on the way and were more than once attacked by Indians, several of their number being killed and wounded.

The point at which it was decided to locate the capital town of Transylvania, as the colony was to be called, was Big Lick, just below Otter Creek on the Kentucky River. The site was a plain on the south side of the river, and as the pioneers approached it they were confronted with a sight which to most of them was entirely novel. Hundreds of buffalo occupied the destined ground, where they were engaged in licking the earth for the salt with which it was impregnated. As the men advanced, the huge beasts scattered in every direction, some running, some walking, others loping carelessly along with young calves skipping and bounding at their sides. Such a sight was common enough in Kentucky at that time, but soon after the advent of white men the great herds of bison moved westward.

The pioneers immediately commenced the erection of a fort and raised a few cabins along the river bank, but it was long before the stockade of Boonesborough, as the settlement was named, was completed. In the absence of women, it was hard to induce the backwoodsmen to devote themselves to measures of defence while such tempting opportunities for hunting presented themselves. They were a self-confident and somewhat reckless lot. Their first thought was to mark off a claim by a rude method of surveying which entailed endless after trouble. Their second, to pursue the game which abounded in a plenteousness far surpassing anything in their past experience.