CHAPTER X
TWO YEARS OF DARKNESS
With the opening of the year 1776 Daniel and Squire Boone were employed for several weeks as hunters or assistants to a party of surveyors sent by the Transylvania Company to the Falls of the Ohio, in the vicinity of which Henderson and his friends had taken up seventy thousand acres of land. They met no Indians and saw plenty of game; but returned to find that the settlers were indignant because of this wholesale preemption by the proprietors of the colony in a neighborhood where it was now felt the chief city in Kentucky was sure to be planted. In response to this clamor Henderson promised that hereafter, in that locality, only small tracts should be granted to individuals, and that a town should at once be laid out at the Falls; but the scanty supply of powder and provisions, and the company's growing troubles with the Virginia Assembly, prevented the execution of this project.
In the spring newcomers everywhere appeared. In order to please the people of Harrodsburg, now the largest settlement, who were disposed to be critical, the company's land-office was moved thither, and it at once entered upon a flourishing business. Not only did many Virginians and Carolinians come in on horseback over the "Wilderness Road," as the route through Cumberland Gap was now styled, but hundreds also descended the Ohio in boats from the new settlements on the Monongahela, and from those farther east in Pennsylvania.
While the horsemen of the Wilderness Road generally settled in Transylvania, those journeying by boat were chiefly interested in the crown lands north of the Kentucky; through these they ranged at will, building rude pens, half-faced cabins, and log huts, as convenience dictated, and planting small crops of corn in order to preempt their claims. The majority, however, after making sometimes as many as twenty such claims each, often upon land already surveyed on militia officers' warrants, returned home at the close of the season, seeking to sell their fictitious holdings to actual settlers. Of course the unscrupulous conduct of these "claim-jumping" speculators led to numerous quarrels. John Todd, of Harrodsburg, wrote to a friend: "I am afraid to lose sight of my house lest some invader should take possession."
It was difficult, even for those who came to settle, to get down to hard work during those earliest years. Never was there a more beautiful region than the Kentucky wilderness. Both old and new settlers were fond of roaming through this wonderland of forests and glades and winding rivers, where the nights were cool and refreshing and the days filled with harmonies of sound and sight and smell. Hill and valley, timberland and thicket, meadow and prairie, grasslands and cane-brake—these abounded on every hand, in happy distribution of light and shadow. The soil was extremely fertile; there were many open spots fitted for immediate cultivation; the cattle-ranges were of the best, for nowhere was cane more abundant; game was more plentiful than men's hopes had ever before conceived—of turkeys, bears, deer, and buffaloes it seemed, for a time, as if the supply must always far excelled any possible demand. It is small wonder that the imaginations of the pioneers were fired with dreams of the future, that they saw in fancy great cities springing up in this new world of the West, and wealth pouring into the laps of those who could first obtain a foothold. Thus, in that beautiful spring of 1776, did Kentuckians revel in the pleasures of hope, and cast to the winds all thought of the peril and toil by which alone can man conquer a savage-haunted wilderness.
But the "dark cloud" foretold at the Watauga treaty soon settled upon the land. Incited by British agents—for the Revolution was now on—the Cherokees on the south and the Shawnese and Mingos on the north declared war upon the American borderers. The Kentuckians were promptly warned by messengers from the East. The "cabiners," as claim speculators were called by actual settlers; the wandering fur-traders, most of whom were shabby rascals, whose example corrupted the savages, and whose conduct often led to outbreaks of race hostility; and the irresponsible hunters, who were recklessly killing or frightening off the herds of game—all of these classes began, with the mutterings of conflict, to draw closer to the settlements; while many hurried back to their old homes, carrying exaggerated reports of the situation.
Meanwhile, opposition to the Transylvania proprietors was fast developing. The settlers in the Harrodsburg neighborhood held a convention in June and sent Colonel George Rogers Clark and Captain John Gabriel Jones as delegates to the Virginia Convention with a petition to that body to make Kentucky a county of Virginia. This project was bitterly opposed by Henderson; but upon the adoption by Congress, in July, of the Declaration of Independence, there was small chance left for the recognition of any proprietary government. When the new Virginia legislature met in the autumn, the petition of the "inhabitants of Kentuckie" was granted, and a county government organized.[13] David Robinson was appointed county lieutenant, John Bowman colonel, Anthony Bledsoe and George Rogers Clark majors, and Daniel Boone, James Harrod, John Todd, and Benjamin Logan captains.
It was not until July that the Kentuckians fully realized the existence of an Indian war. During that month several hunters, surveyors, and travelers were killed in various parts of the district. The situation promised so badly that Colonel William Russell, of the Holston Valley, commandant of the southwestern Virginia militia, advised the immediate abandonment of Kentucky. Such advice fell upon unheeding ears in the case of men like Boone and his companions, although many of the less valorous were quick to retire beyond the mountains.
On Sunday, the seventeenth of July, an incident occurred at Boonesborough which created wide-spread consternation. Jemima, the second daughter of Daniel Boone, aged fourteen years, together with two girl friends, Betsey and Fanny Calloway, sixteen and fourteen respectively, were paddling in a canoe upon the Kentucky. Losing control of their craft in the swift current, not over a quarter of a mile from the settlement, they were swept near the north bank, when five Shawnese braves, hiding in the bushes, waded out and captured them. The screams of the girls alarmed the settlers, who sallied forth in hot pursuit of the kidnappers.