The land excitement was, however, less intense in North Carolina than in the Valley of Virginia and other mountain troughs to the north and northeast. At Boone's home there was unrest of a more serious character. The tax-gatherers were arousing great popular discontent because of unlawful and extortionate demands, and in some cases Governor Tryon had come to blows with the regulators who stood for the people's rights.
For two and a half years after his return Boone quietly conducted his little farm, and, as of old, made long hunting trips in autumn and winter, occasionally venturing—sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two companions—far west into Kentucky, once visiting French Lick, on the Cumberland, where he found several French hunters. There is reason to believe that in 1772 he moved to the Watauga Valley, but after living there for a time went back to the Yadkin. Early in the following year he accompanied Benjamin Cutbirth and others as far as the present Jessamine County, Ky., and from this trip returned fired with quickened zeal for making a settlement in the new country.
The spring and summer were spent in active preparations. He enlisted the cooperation of Captain William Russell, the principal pioneer in the Clinch Valley; several of the Bryans, whose settlement was now sixty-five miles distant, also agreed to join him; and five other families in his own neighborhood engaged to join the expedition. The Bryan party, numbering forty men, some of them from the Valley of Virginia and Powell's Valley, were not to be accompanied by their families, as they preferred to go in advance and prepare homes before making a final move. But Boone and the other men of the upper Yadkin took with them their wives and children; most of them sold their farms, as did Boone, thus burning their bridges behind them. Arranging to meet the Bryan contingent in Powell's Valley, Boone's party left for the West upon the twenty-fifth of September, 1773—fifty-six years after old George Boone had departed from England for the Pennsylvania frontier near Philadelphia, and twenty-three after the family had set out for the new southwest frontier on the Yadkin.
Reaching Powell's, Boone went into camp to await the rear party, his riding and packhorses hoppled and belled, after the custom of such caravans, and their small herd of cattle properly guarded in a meadow. His eldest son, James, now a boy of sixteen years, was sent with two men, with pack-animals, across country to notify Russell and to secure some flour and farming tools. They were returning laden, in company with Russell's son Henry, a year older than James, two of Russell's negro slaves, and two or three white workpeople, when, missing their path, they went into camp for the night only three miles from Boone's quarters. At daybreak they were attacked by a Shawnese war party and all killed except a white laborer and a negro. This pathetic tragedy created such consternation among the movers that, despite Boone's entreaties to go forward, all of them returned to Virginia and Carolina. Daniel and his family, no longer having a home on the Yadkin, would not retreat, and took up their quarters in an empty cabin upon the farm of Captain David Gass, seven or eight miles from Russell's, upon Clinch River. Throughout this sorrowful winter the Boones were supported from their stock of cattle and by means of Daniel's unerring rifle.
It was long before the intrepid pioneers could again take up their line of march. Ever since the Bouquet treaty of 1764 there had been more or less disturbance upon the frontiers. During all these years, although there was no open warfare between whites and reds, many scores of lives had been lost. Indians had wantonly plundered and murdered white men, and the latter had been quite as merciless toward the savages. Whenever a member of one race met a man of the other the rifle was apt to be at once brought into play. Meanwhile, armed parties of surveyors and land speculators were swarming into Kentucky, notching the trees for landmarks, and giving evidence to apprehensive tribesmen that the hordes of civilization were upon them. In 1773 George Rogers Clark, afterward the most famous of border leaders, had staked a claim at the mouth of Fishing Creek, on the Ohio; Washington had, this summer, descended the river to the same point; while at the Falls of the Ohio, and upon interior waters of the Kentucky wilderness, other parties were laying ambitious plans for the capitals of new colonies.
In the following spring the Cherokees and Shawnese, now wrought to a high pitch of ill temper, combined for onslaughts on the advancing frontiersmen. The wanton murder by border ruffians of Chief John Logan's family, near Mingo Junction, on the Ohio, was the match which, in early summer, fired the tinder. The Mingos, ablaze with the fire of vengeance, carried the war-pipe through the neighboring villages; runners were sent in every direction to rouse the tribes; tomahawks were unearthed, war-posts were planted; messages of defiance were sent to the "Virginians," as all frontiersmen were generally called by the Western Indians; and in a few days the border war to which history has given the name of Lord Dunmore, then governor of Virginia, was in full swing from Cumberland Gap to Fort Pitt, from the Alleghanies to the Wabash.
Its isolation at first protected the Valley of the Clinch. The commandant of the southwest militia—which comprised every boy or man capable of bearing arms—was Colonel William Preston; under him was Major Arthur Campbell; the principal man in the Clinch Valley was Boone's friend, Russell. When, in June, the border captains were notified by Lord Dunmore that the war was now on, forts were erected in each of the mountain valleys, and scouts sent out along the trails and streams to ascertain the whereabouts of the enemy.
There were in Kentucky, at this time, several surveying parties which could not obtain news by way of the Ohio because of the blockade maintained by the Shawnese. It became necessary to notify them overland, and advise their retreat to the settlements by way of Cumberland Gap. Russell having been ordered by Preston to employ "two faithful woodsmen" for this purpose, chose Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner. "If they are alive," wrote Russell to his colonel, "it is indisputable but Boone must find them." Leaving the Clinch on June twenty-seventh, the two envoys were at Harrodsburg before July eighth. There they found James Harrod and thirty-four other men laying off a large town,[9] in which they proposed to give each inhabitant a half-acre in-lot and a ten-acre out-lot. Boone, who had small capacity for business, but in land was something of a speculator, registered as a settler, and in company with a neighbor put up a cabin for his future occupancy. This done, he and Stoner hurried on down the Kentucky River to its mouth, and thence to the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville), notifying several bands of surveyors and town-builders of their danger. After an absence of sixty-one days they were back again upon the Clinch, having traveled eight hundred miles through a practically unbroken forest, experienced many dangers from Indians, and overcome natural difficulties almost without number.
Meanwhile Lord Dunmore, personally unpopular but an energetic and competent military manager, had sent out an army of nearly three thousand backwoodsmen against the Shawnese north of the Ohio. One wing of this army, led by the governor himself, went by way of Fort Pitt and descended the Ohio; among its members was George Rogers Clark. The other wing, commanded by General Andrew Lewis, included the men of the Southwest, eleven hundred strong; they were to descend the Great Kanawha and rendezvous with the northern wing at Point Pleasant, at the junction of the Kanawha and the Ohio.
When Boone arrived upon the Clinch he found that Russell and most of the other militiamen of the district had departed upon the campaign. With a party of recruits, the great hunter started out to overtake the expedition, but was met by orders to return and aid in defending his own valley; for the drawing off of the militia by Dunmore had left the southwest frontiers in weak condition. During September the settlers upon the Clinch suffered much apprehension; the depredations of the tribesmen were not numerous, but several men were either wounded or captured.