The Westward Movement

by Unknown

The frequency of the departure of such companies suggests the great amount of travel on Boone's Road. As early as 1788 parties were advertised to leave Crab Orchard May 5, May 15, May 26, June 4 and June 16. Nor does it seem that there was much abatement during the more inclement months; in the fall of the year companies were advertised to depart November 19, December 9 and December 19. Yet at this season the Indians were often out waylaying travelers—driven, no doubt, by hunger to deeds of desperation. The sufferings of such red-skinned marauders have found little place in history; but they are, nevertheless, suggestive. One story is to the point.

In the winter of 1787-88 a party on Boone's Road was attacked by Indians not far from the Kentucky border. Their horses were plundered of goods, but the travelers escaped. Hurrying in to the settlement a company was raised to make a pursuit. By their tracks in the snow the Indians were accurately followed. They were overtaken at a camp where they were drying their blankets before a great fire. At the first charge, the savages, completely surprised, took to their heels—stark naked. Not satisfied with recovering their goods, the Kentuckians pursued the fugitives into the mountains, where the awful fate of the savages is unquestionable.

Before Richard Henderson arrived in Kentucky Daniel Boone wrote him: "My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to frustrate the intentions of the Indians, and keep the country whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will be ever the case."

This letter shows plainly how the best informed man in Kentucky regarded the situation.

What it meant to the American Colonies during the Revolution to have a brave band of pioneers in Kentucky at that crucial epoch, is an important chapter in the history of Boone's Road.

It is interesting to note that the leaders of civilization in the West were true Americans—American born and American bred. It was a race of Americanized Britons who pressed from Virginia to the West. Hardly a name among them but was pure Norman or Saxon. Of the twenty-five members of the Political Club at Danville, Kentucky, which discussed with ability the Federal Constitution, all but two were descendants of colonists from Great Britain and Ireland. Of forty-five members of the convention which framed Kentucky's first constitution, only three could claim Continental ancestry.

This race gave to the West its real heroes. In frontier cabins they were bred to a free life in a free land—worthy successors to Washington and his school, worthy men to subdue and rule the empire of which they began the conquest. In the form of these sturdy colonizers the American republic stretched its arm across the Appalachian Mountain system and took in its grasp the richest river valley in the world at the end of Boone's Wilderness Road.

Yet the road itself was only what Boone made it—a blazed footpath westward. It was but the merest footpath from 1774 to 1792, while thousands floundered over its uncertain track to lay the rude foundations of civilization in the land to which it led. There was probably not a more desperate pioneer road in America than this. The mountains to be crossed, the rivers and swamps to be encountered, were as difficult as any on Braddock's Road; and Boone's Road was very much longer.

A vivid description of what a journey over it meant in the year 1779 has been left by Chief-Justice Robertson in an address given half a century ago:

"During the fall and winter of that year came an unexampled tide of emigrants, who, exchanging all the comforts of their native society and homes for settlements for themselves and their children here, came like pilgrims to a wilderness to be made secure by their arms and habitable by the toil of their lives. Through privations incredible and perils thick, thousands of men, women and children came in successive caravans, forming continuous streams of human beings, horses, cattle and other domestic animals all moving onward along a lonely and houseless path to a wild and cheerless land. Cast your eyes back on that long procession of missionaries in the cause of civilization; behold the men on foot with their trusty guns on their shoulders, driving stock and leading pack-horses; and the women, some walking with pails on their heads, others riding with children in their laps, and other children swung in baskets on horses, fastened to the tails of others going before; see them encamped at night expecting to be massacred by Indians; behold them in the month of December, in that ever-memorable season of unprecedented cold, called the 'hard winter,' traveling two or three miles a day, frequently in danger of being frozen or killed by the falling of horses on the icy and almost impassable trace, and subsisting on stinted allowances of stale bread and meat; but now lastly look at them at the destined fort, perhaps on the eve of merry Christmas, when met by the hearty welcome of friends who had come before, and cheered by fresh buffalo meat and parched corn, they rejoice at their deliverance and resolve to be contented with their lot.