—The first men to break through the mountain barriers to face the British and the Indians.
While the government of the United States was thus shaping its policy toward the Indian tribes, a new empire was building on the western waters, that was to wield a more powerful influence in the development of the western country, than all other forces combined. That empire was Kentucky.
The waters of the Ohio "moving majestically along, noiseless as the foot of time, and as resistless," sweep from the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny to the waters of the Mississippi, a distance of nine hundred miles, enclosing in their upper courses the island of Blannerhassett, below the mouth of the Little Kanawha, the island of Zane, near Wheeling, and leaping in a descent of twenty-two feet in a distance of two miles the Falls opposite the present city of Louisville. The lofty eminences which crowned its banks, the giant forests of oak and maple which everywhere approached its waters, the vines of the frost-grape that wound their sinuous arms around the topmost branches of its tallest trees, presented a spectacle that filled the soul of the traveler with awe and wonder at every graceful turn of the river. In the spring a wonderful transformation took place in the brown woods. There suddenly appeared on every hand the opening flowers of the red-bud, whose whole top appeared as one mass of red blossoms, interspersed with the white and pale-yellow blossoms of the dog-wood, or cornus florida. Thus there extended "in every direction, at the same time, red, white and yellow flowers; at a distance each tree resembling in aspect so many large bunches of flowers every where dispersed in the woods." This was the Belle Riviere, or the beautiful river of the French, which they long and valiantly sought to hold against the advancing tides of English traders and land hunters. This was that glorious gate to the west, through which floated the rafts and keel-boats of the American settlers who took possession of the great northwest.
But notwithstanding the beauty and grandeur of this stream, there was not, at the close of the French and Indian War, on the tenth of February, 1763, a single habitation of either white man or savage on either the Ohio-Indiana side, or on the Kentucky side of this river. Says General William Henry Harrison: "The beautiful Ohio rolled its 'amber tide' until it paid its tribute to the Father of Waters, through an unbroken solitude. Its banks were without a town or village, or even a single cottage, the curling smoke of whose chimney would give the promise of comfort and refreshment to a weary traveler."
The reason for this solitude is apparent. To the south of the Ohio lay the "Dark and Bloody Ground" of Kentucky; "Dark," because of its vast and almost impenetrable forests; "Bloody," because of the constant savage warfare waged within its limits by roving bands of Miamis, Shawnees, Cherokees, and other tribes who resorted thither in pursuit of game. Says Humphrey Marshall, the early historian of Kentucky: "The proud face of creation here presented itself, without the disguise of art. No wood had been felled; no field cleared; no human habitation raised; even the redman of the forest, had not put up his wigwam of poles and bark for habitation. But that mysterious Being, whose productive power, we call Nature, ever bountiful, and ever great, had not spread out this replete and luxurious pasture, without stocking it with numerous flocks and herds; nor were their ferocious attendants, who prey upon them, wanting, to fill up the circle of created beings. Here was seen the timid deer; the towering elk; the fleet stag; the surly bear; the crafty fox; the ravenous wolf; the devouring panther; the insidious wildcat; the haughty buffalo, besides innumerable other creatures, winged, four-footed, or creeping."
This was the common hunting ground of the wild men of the forest. None took exclusive possession, because none dared. The Ohio was the common highway of the Indian tribes, and while their war paths crossed it at frequent intervals, none were so bold as to attempt exclusive dominion over it.
As was once said in the senate of the United States, "You might as well inhibit the fish from swimming down the western rivers to the sea, as to prohibit the people from settling on the new lands." While the great revolution was opening, that should wrest our independence from Great Britain, the stream of "long rifles" and hunting shirt men of Virginia and Pennsylvania, who followed the valleys of the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge from north to south, suddenly broke through the western mountain barriers and flowed in diminutive rivulets into the basins of the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Cumberland; afterwards forming, as Theodore Roosevelt most strikingly says, "a shield of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the seaboard and the red warriors of the wilderness." In 1774, James Harrod built the first log cabin in Kentucky. On the 14th of June, 1775, the first fort of the white man was erected at Boonesborough.
The situation of the first pioneers of Kentucky was indeed precarious. "They were posted," says Mann Butler, "in the heart of the most favorite hunting ground of numerous and hostile tribes of Indians, on the north and on the south; a ground endeared to these tribes by its profusion of the finest game, subsisting on the luxuriant vegetation of this great natural park. * * * * It was emphatically the Eden of the red man." On the waters of the Wabash, the Miamis and the Scioto, dwelt powerful confederacies of savages who regarded their intrusion as a menace and a threat. Behind these savages stood the minions of Great Britain, urging war on non-combatants and offering bounties for scalps. It was three or four hundred miles to the nearest fort at Pittsburgh, and a wilderness of forest and mountain fully six hundred miles in extent, separated them from the capital of Virginia.
But it is to the everlasting glory of these men that they knew no fear, and valiantly held their ground. Standing as they were, on the very outskirts of civilization, they looked on the perils of the wilderness with unquailing eye, and with stout hearts and brawny arms they carried forward the standards of the republic. The thin line of skirmishers thus thrown far out beyond the western ranges, was all that stood between the grasping power of Great Britain, and the realization of her desire for absolute dominion over the western country. The ambitious projects of her rebel children must be defeated, and they must be driven back beyond the great watershed which they had crossed. The western waters were to be preserved for the red allies of England, who supplied her merchants with furs and peltries. The great "game preserve," as Roosevelt called it, must not be invaded. Years before, a royal governor of Georgia had written: "This matter, my Lords, of granting large bodies of land in the back part of any of his majesty's northern colonies, appears to me in a very serious and alarming light; and I humbly conceive, may be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my Lords, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of people from Great Britain, and I apprehend they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, who will set up for themselves; that they will soon have manufactures of their own; and in process of time they will become formidable enough to oppose his majesty's authority." This, "kind of separate and independent people," had now in fact and in reality appeared, and were evincing a most decided inclination to "set up for themselves" on the king's domain.
The task of faithfully portraying the heroic valour of this handful of men who defended their stockades and cabins, their wives and children, against British hate and savage inroad, is better left to those who have received the account from actual survivors. In 1777, the entire army of Kentucky amounted to one hundred and two men; there were twenty-two at Boonesborough, sixty-five at Harrodsburgh, and fifteen at St. Asaphs, or Logan's fort. Around these frontier stations skulked the Shawnees, hiding behind stumps of trees and in the weeds and cornfields. They waylaid the men and boys working in the fields, beset every pathway, watched every watering place, and shot down the cattle. "In the night," says Humphrey Marshall, "they will place themselves near the fort gate, ready to sacrifice the first person who shall appear in the morning; in the day, if there be any cover, such as grass, a bush, a large clod of earth, or a stone as big as a bushel, they will avail themselves of it, to approach the fort, by slipping forward on their bellies, within gun-shot, and then, whosoever appears first, gets the fire, while the assailant makes his retreat behind the smoke from the gun. At other times they approach the walls, or palisades, with the utmost audacity, and attempt to fire them, or beat down the gate. They often make feints, to draw out the garrison, on one side of the fort, and if practicable, enter it by surprise on the other. And when their stock of provisions is exhausted, this being an individual affair, they supply themselves by hunting; and again, frequently return to the siege, if by any means they hope to get a scalp." In this same year of 1777, St. Asaphs, or Logan's fort, was besieged by the savages from the twentieth of May until the month of September. "The Indians made their attack upon Logan's fort with more than their usual secrecy. While the women, guarded by a part of the men, were milking the cows outside of the fort, they were suddenly fired upon by a large body of Indians, till then concealed in the thick cane which stood about the cabin. By this fire, one man was killed and two others wounded, one mortally; the residue, with the women, got into the fort. When, having reached the protection of its walls, one of the wounded men was discovered, left alive on the ground. Captain Logan, distressed for his situation, and keenly alive to the anguish of his family, who could see him from the fort, weltering in his blood, exposed every instant to be scalped by the savages, endeavored in vain for some time to raise a party for his rescue. The garrison was, however, so small, and the danger so appalling, that he met only objection and refusal; until John Martin, stimulated by his captain, proceeded with him to the front gate. At this instant, Harrison, the wounded man, appeared to raise himself on his hands and knees, as if able to help himself, and Martin withdrew, deterred by the obvious hazard; Logan, incapable of abandoning a man under his command, was only nerved to newer and more vigorous exertions to relieve the wounded man, who, by that time, exhausted by his previous efforts, after crawling a few paces, had fallen to the ground; the generous and gallant captain took him in his arms, amidst a shower of bullets, many of which struck the palisades about his head, and brought him into the fort to his despairing family."