I am sir, your most obedient,
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 at Otter Creek.
The road began “at the settlements,” which were probably in what are now Sullivan and Hawkins counties. Tennessee, but mostly along the Watauga River, then thought to be a part of Virginia. The road was a continuation of the Cherokee trail through the mountains. This trail served the great migration following the Revolutionary War in Tennessee and Kentucky. From the settlements there is a westerly course to the Holston River at Long Island near the site of old Long Island Fort constructed by Colonel Bird to winter his army during the French and Indian War in 1758. At this place he received some reinforcements and then continued in a generally westward direction through country he was more or less familiar with to the Clinch River, then across the ridge to the Powell River, and finally to Cumberland Gap, through which he entered the land of “Kentucke.” Here he arrived at the Warrior’s Trail leading northward, so called because Kentucky had been a sort of neutral hunting grounds of the Indians from the North, the Miamis, Shawnees, Wyandots, and others and of the Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, and others, from the South. Nevertheless the Indians from the South habitually crossed over and fought those from the North and vice versa, hence a large and much frequented trail.
MAP SHOWING MAIN HIGHWAYS AND WATERWAYS IN UNITED STATES ABOUT 1830
When the Railroads Entered the Industrial Arena, the Country Was Being Covered With a Net Work of Highways. (Based on Tanner’s Map of 1825 and Turner in “American Nation,” Vol. XIV.)
Boone appropriated this native route for a distance of about 50 miles to near the present town of Manchester in Clay County. Here he found a “street” made by the buffalo, which were wont to travel through the cane-brakes about five or six abreast, thus with their thousands of hoofs breaking and hardening a way wide enough for a team and wagon. Turning west he followed the bisons’ street to Rock Castle River, then turned northward again to the Kentucky River and the site of Boonesborough. A fort was here erected by placing stout log cabins with heavy stockades between about a rectangular space some 150 x 260 feet. A pair of strong wooden gates furnished ingress and egress. Several times was this fort attacked by Indians, the last time in 1778, by nearly 500 warriors, but always, because of the block houses at the corners with their loop-holes and the heavy barricades, also with loop holes, they were able to withstand the attacks and finally repulse the Indians.
The first legislature of the Transylvania Republic, as Henderson’s scheme came to be known, was held here. Boone was a member, as was Harrod from Harrodstown, and other early settlers of Kentucky.
There is no doubt but that this highway and blockhouse fort were of great assistance in settling and developing the country of Kentucke.