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The Romantic Story of the Early

A >> Archibald Henderson >> The Romantic Story of the Early



THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST: THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE
EARLY PIONEERS INTO VIRGINIA, THE CAROLINAS, TENNESSEE, AND
KENTUCKY 1740-1790

BY ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, Ph.D., D.C.L.

Some to endure and many to fail,
Some to conquer and many to quail
Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1920

TO THE HISTORIAN OF
OLD WEST AND NEW WEST
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER
WITH ADMIRATION AND REGARD

The country might invite a prince from his palace, merely for the
pleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add
the rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can the
world offer for the loss of so glorious a prospect?--Richard
Henderson.

The established Authority of any government in America, and the
policy of Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain
the Americans . . . . They acquire no attachment to Place: But
wandering about Seems engrafted in their Nature; and it is a
weakness incident to it, that they Should for ever imagine the
Lands further off, are Still better than those upon which they
are already settled.--Lord Dunmore, to the Earl of Dartmouth.


INTRODUCTION

The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward
migration of successive waves of transplanted European peoples
throughout the entire course of the eighteenth century is the
history of the growth and evolution of American democracy. Upon
the American continent was wrought out, through almost superhuman
daring, incredible hardship, and surpassing endurance, the
formation of a new society. The European rudely confronted with
the pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon discovered that
his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his
individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himself
to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the
age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened
civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the
course of half a century.

A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing
the successive episodes in the history of a single family as it
wended its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely
repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up
the granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the
transmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give to
the spectator a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westward
movement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession,
revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhaps
escape his scrutiny. Back of the individual, back of the family,
even, lurk the creative and formative impulses of colonization,
expansion, and government. In the recognition of these social and
economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the
group into the community; the community into a new society. In
this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular
hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the
movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets,
gain in impressiveness and dignity.

As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever
southward and westward, seeking room for expansion and economic
independence, a series of frontiers was gradually thrust out
toward the wilderness in successive waves of irregular
indentation. The true leader in this westward advance, to whom
less than his deserts has been accorded by the historian, is the
drab and mercenary trader with the Indians. The story of his
enterprise and of his adventures begins with the planting of
European civilization upon American soil. In the mind of the
aborigines he created the passion for the fruits, both good and
evil, of the white man's civilization, and he was welcomed by the
Indian because he also brought the means for repelling the
further advance of that civilization. The trader was of
incalculable service to the pioneer in first spying out the land
and charting the trackless wilderness. The trail rudely marked by
the buffalo became in time the Indian path and the trader's
"trace"; and the pioneers upon the westward march, following the
line of least resistance, cut out their, roads along these very
routes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the
trader--brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty,
unscrupulous, and immoral--the expansionist movement upon the
American continent would have been greatly retarded.

So scattered and ramified were the enterprises and expeditions of
the traders with the Indians that the frontier which they
established was at best both shifting and unstable. Following far
in the wake of these advance agents of the civilization which
they so often disgraced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, who
took advantage of the extensive pastures and ranges along the
uplands and foot-hills to raise immense herds of cattle. Thus was
formed what might be called a rancher's frontier, thrust out in
advance of the ordinary farming settlements and serving as the
first serious barrier against the Indian invasion. The westward
movement of population is in this respect a direct advance from
the coast. Years before the influx into the Old Southwest of the
tides of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurous
struck straight westward in the wake of the fur-trader, and here
and there erected the cattle-ranges beyond the farming frontier
of the piedmont region. The wild horses and cattle which roamed
at will through the upland barrens and pea-vine pastures were
herded in and driven for sale to the city markets of the East.

The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau constituted the real
backbone of western settlement. The pioneering farmers, with the
adventurous instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plunged
deeper and ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the
prospect of free and still richer lands in the dim interior.
Settlements quickly sprang up in the neighborhood of military
posts or rude forts established to serve as safeguards against
hostile attack; and trade soon flourished between these
settlements and the eastern centers, following the trails of the
trader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The bolder
settlers who ventured farthest to the westward were held in
communication with the East through their dependence upon salt
and other necessities of life; and the search for salt-springs in
the virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence of the desire
of the pioneer to shake off his dependence upon the coast.

The prime determinative principle of the progressive American
civilization of the eighteenth century was the passion for the
acquisition of land. The struggle for economic independence
developed the germ of American liberty and became the
differentiating principle of American character. Here was a vast
unappropriated region in the interior of the continent to be had
for the seeking, which served as lure and inspiration to the man
daring enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It was in
accordance with human nature and the principles of political
economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited transmontane
land, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility, should
excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials
alike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody there
has his eye fixed on this country." Groups of wealthy or
well-to-do individuals organized themselves into land companies
for the colonization and exploitation of the West. The pioneer
promoter was a powerful creative force in westward expansion; and
the activities of the early land companies were decisive factors
in the colonization of the wilderness. Whether acting under the
authority of a crown grant or proceeding on their own authority,
the land companies tended to give stability and permanence to
settlements otherwise hazardous and insecure.

The second determinative impulse of the pioneer civilization was
wanderlust--the passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter,
the traveler, and the explorer. This restless class of nomadic
wanderers was responsible in part for the royal proclamation of
1763, a secondary object of which, according to Edmund Burke, was
the limitation of the colonies on the West, as "the charters of
many of our old colonies give them, with few exceptions, no
bounds to the westward but the South Sea." The Long Hunters,
taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth to a fabled
hunter's paradise in the far-away wilderness, because they were
driven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or a De Soto
to find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond.

But the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of the
chase and of discovery; he was intent also upon collecting the
furs and skins of wild animals for lucrative barter and sale in
the centers of trade. He was quick to make "tomahawk claims" and
to assert "corn rights" as he spied out the rich virgin land for
future location and cultivation. Free land and no taxes appealed
to the backwoodsman, tired of paying quit-rents to the agents of
wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the settler speedily followed
in the hunter's wake. In his wake also went many rude and lawless
characters of the border, horse thieves and criminals of
different sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in the
merciful liberality of the wilderness. For the most part,
however, it was the salutary instinct of the homebuilder--the man
with the ax, who made a little clearing in the forest and built
there a rude cabin that he bravely defended at all risks against
continued assaults--which, in defiance of every restraint,
irresistibly thrust westward the thin and jagged line of the
frontier. The ax and the surveyor's chain, along with the rifle
and the hunting-knife, constituted the armorial bearings of the
pioneer. With individual as with corporation, with explorer as
with landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse of the era.

The various desires which stimulated and promoted westward
expansion were, to be sure, often found in complete conjunction.
The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage,
selling him whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich
furs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and
collected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitary
and protracted hunting-expeditions. The rancher and the herder
sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the
cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for
fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to
the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward
advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new
region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for
the cultivation of his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet
in the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured the
wilderness in search of game "and spied out new lands for future
settlement".

This restless and nomadic race, says the keenly observant Francis
Baily, "delight much to live on the frontiers, where they can
enjoy undisturbed, and free from the control of any laws, the
blessings which nature has bestowed upon them." Independence of
spirit, impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the
nomadic temperament--these are the strains in the American
character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to
create a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of
settlement westward across the American continent, with a
reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest
frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each
successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the
eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the history of the
American people during two centuries. This era, constituting the
first stage in our national existence, and productive of a
buoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free soil,
closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cultivable free
land, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recent
death of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid inauguration of the period,
in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth century, is
the theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest.


CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I THE MIGRATION OF THE PEOPLES

II THE CRADLE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION

III THE BACK COUNTRY AND THE BORDER

IV THE INDIAN WAR

V IN DEFENSE OF CIVILIZATION

VI CRUSHING THE CHEROKEES

VII THE LAND COMPANIES

VIII THE LONG HUNTERS IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE

IX DANIEL BOONE AND WILDERNESS EXPLORATION

X DANIEL BOONE IN KENTUCKY

XI THE REGULATORS

XII WATAUGA--HAVEN OF LIBERTY

XIII OPENING THE GATEWAY--DUNMORE'S WAR

XIV RICHARD HENDERSON AND THE TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY

XV TRANSYLVANIA--A WILDERNESS COMMONWEALTH

XVI THE REPULSE OF THE RED MEN

XVII THE COLONIZATION OF THE CUMBERLAND

XVIII KING'S MOUNTAIN

XIX THE STATE OF FRANKLIN

XX THE LURE OF SPAIN--THE HAVEN OF STATEHOOD



THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST

Chapter I. The Migration of the Peoples

Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania and
other parts of America, who are over-stocked with people and Mike
directly from Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards the
West, and have got near the mountains.--Gabriel Johnston,
Governor of North Carolina, to the Secretary of the Board of
Trade, February 15, 1751.


At the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of population
had swept inland to the "fall line", the westward boundary of the
established settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced by
the more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the Blue
Ridge. So rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in the
interval 1717-32 the population quadrupled in numbers. A map of
the colonial settlements in 1725 reveals a narrow strip of
populated land along the Atlantic coast, of irregular
indentation, with occasional isolated nuclei of settlements
further in the interior. The civilization thus established
continued to maintain a close and unbroken communication with
England and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economic
reasons, clung to the coast, they reacted but slowly to the
transforming influences of the frontier.. Within a triangle of
continental altitude with its apex in New England, bounded on the
east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Appalachian range,
lay the settlements, divided into two zones--tidewater and
piedmont. As no break occurred in the great mountain system south
of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the difficulties of cutting a
passage through the towering wall of living green long proved an
effective obstacle to the crossing of the grim mountain barrier.

In the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward from
the coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking form
around such natural centers of attraction as areas of fertile
soil, frontier posts, mines, salt-springs, and stretches of
upland favorable for grazing. After a time a second advance of
settlement was begun in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland,
running in a southwesterly direction along the broad terraces to
the east of the Appalachian Range, which in North Carolina lies
as far as two hundred and fifty miles from the sea. The Blue
Ridge in Virginia and a belt of pine barrens in North Carolina
were hindrances to this advance, but did not entirely check it.
This second streaming of the population thrust into the long,
narrow wedge of the piedmont zone a class of people differing in
spirit and in tendency from their more aristocratic and
complacent neighbors to the east.

These settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolina
piedmont region--English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish,
Welsh, and a few French--were the first pioneers of the Old
Southwest. From the joint efforts of two strata of population,
geographically, socially, and economically distinct--tidewater
and piedmont, Old South and New South--originated and flowered
the third and greatest movement of westward expansion, opening
with the surmounting of the mountain barrier and ending in the
occupation and assumption of the vast medial valley of the
continent.

Synchronous with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia,
significantly enough, was the first planting of Ulster with the
English and Scotch. Emigrants from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimes
as many as four thousand a year (1625), continued throughout the
century to pour into Ulster. "Those of the North of Ireland . .
.," as pungently described in 1679 by the Secretary of State,
Leoline Jenkins, to the Duke of Ormond, "are most Scotch and
Scotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians and phanatiques,
lusty, able bodied, hardy and stout men, where one may see three
or four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday, and all the
North of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the popular
place of all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and greedy
after land." During the quarter of a century after the English
Revolution of 1688 and the Jacobite uprising in Ireland, which
ended in 1691 with the complete submission of Ireland to William
and Mary, not less than fifty thousand Scotch, according to
Archbishop Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the beginning of the
eighteenth century there was no considerable emigration to
America; and it was first set up as a consequence of English
interference with trade and religion. Repressive measures passed
by the English parliament (1665 1699), prohibiting the
exportation from Ire land to England and Scotland of cattle,
beef, pork, dairy products, etc., and to any country whatever of
manufactured wool, had aroused deep resentment among the
Scotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce. This discontent
was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious
disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having
to pay tithes for the support of the established church, were
excluded from all civil and military office (1704), while their
ministers were made liable to penalties for celebrating
marriages.

This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in
an exodus to the New World. The principal ports by which the
Ulsterites entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware),
Philadelphia and Boston. The streams of immigration steadily
flowed up the Delaware Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began
to arrive in Bucks County. So rapid was the rate of increase in
immigration that the number of arrivals soon mounted from a few
hundred to upward of six thousand, in a single year (1729); and
within a few years this number was doubled. According to the
meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a very small
element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one fourth
of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350,000) in
1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of the
Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the
disputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers,
saying as their excuse when challenged for titles, that we had
solicited for colonists and they had come accordingly." The
spirit of these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed in
their statement to Logan that it "was against the laws of God and
nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians
wanted it to work on and to raise their bread."

The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from
ten pounds and two shillings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719
to fifteen pounds ten shillings per hundred acres with a
quit-rent of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes
of the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward.
In Maryland in 1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterling
per hundred acres. Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia free
grants of a thousand acres per family were being made. In the
North Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord Granville,
through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands to
settlers at the rate of three shillings proclamation money for
six hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and was
also making large free grants on the condition of seating a
certain proportion of settlers. "Lord Carteret's land in
Carolina," says North Carolina's first American historian, "where
the soil was cheap, presented a tempting residence to people of
every denomination. Emigrants from the north of Ireland, by the
way of Pennsylvania, flocked to that country; and a considerable
part of North Carolina . . . is inhabited by those people or
their descendants." From 1740 onward, attracted by the rich lure
of cheap and even free lands in Virginia and North Carolina, a
tide of immigration swept ceaselessly into the valleys of the
Shenandoah, the Yadkin, and the Catawba. The immensity of this
mobile, drifting mass, which sometimes brought "more than 400
families with horse waggons and cattle" into North Carolina in a
single year (1752-3), is attested by the fact that from 1732 to
1754, mainly as the result of the Scotch-Irish inundation, the
population of North Carolina more than doubled.

The second important racial stream of population in the
settlement of the same region was composed of Germans, attracted
to this country from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly
colored stories of the commercial agents for promoting
immigration--the "newlanders," who were thoroughly unscrupulous
in their methods and extravagant in their representations--a
migration from Germany began in the second decade of the
eighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions.
Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great
number were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who in order
to pay for their transportation were compelled to pledge
themselves to several years of servitude. This economic condition
caused the German immigrant, wherever he went, to become a
settler of the back country, necessity compelling him to pass by
the more expensive lands near the coast.

For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of
various sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen
hundred a year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed,
Pennsylvania, one third of whose population at the beginning of
the Revolution was German, early became the great distributing
center for the Germans as well as for the Scotch-Irish. Certainly
by 1727 Adam Miller and his fellow Germans had established the
first permanent white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. By
1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen families, came from York,
Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon River, in the
neighborhood of the present Winchester. There is no longer any
doubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley sloping to the
north was almost entirely settled by Germans."

It was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of the
Old Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty Pennsylvania
Germans (who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch"
from the incorrect translation of Pennsylvanische Deutsche),
began to pour into the piedmont region of North Carolina. In the
autumn, after the harvest was in, these ambitious Pennsylvania
pioneers would pack up their belongings in wagons and on beasts
of burden and head for the southwest, trekking down in the manner
of the Boers of South Africa. This movement into the fertile
valley lands of the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabated
throughout the entire third quarter of the century. Owing to
their unfamiliarity with the English language and the solidarity
of their instincts, the German settlers at first had little share
in government. But they devotedly played their part in the
defense of the exposed settlements and often bore the brunt of
Indian attack.

The bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionaries
sent out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of Count
Zinzendorf (1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), are
mirrored in the numerous diaries, written in German, happily
preserved to posterity in religious archives of Pennsylvania and
North Carolina. These simple, earnest crusaders, animated by pure
and unselfish motives, would visit on a single tour of a thousand
miles the principal German settlements in Maryland and Virginia
(including the present West Virginia). Sometimes they would make
an extended circuit through North Carolina, South Carolina, and
even Georgia, everywhere bearing witness to the truth of the
gospel and seeking to carry the most elemental forms of the
Christian religion, preaching and prayer, to the primitive
frontiersmen marooned along the outer fringe of white
settlements. These arduous journeys in the cause of piety place
this type of pioneer of the Old Southwest in alleviating contrast
to the often relentless and bloodthirsty figure of the rude
borderer.

Noteworthy among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journey
of Brothers Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmuller (October 12 to
December 12, 1749). At the last outpost of civilization, the
scattered settlements in Bath and Alleghany counties, these
courageous missionaries--feasting the while solely on bear meat,
for there was no bread--encountered conditions of almost
primitive savagery, of which they give this graphic picture:
"Then we came to a house, where we had to lie on bear skins
around the fire like the rest . . . . The clothes of the people
consist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes, deer and bear
meat. A kind of white people are found here, who live like
savages. Hunting is their chief occupation." Into the valley of
the Yadkin in December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg and a party
of Moravians, accompanied by a surveyor and two guides, for the
purpose of locating the one hundred thousand acres of land which
had been offered them on easy terms the preceding year by Lord
Granville. This journey was remarkable as an illustration of
sacrifices willingly made and extreme hardships uncomplainingly
endured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood. In the back
country of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found the
whole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting. A
beautiful site for the projected settlement met their delighted
gaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that it
had already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's future
father-in-law, Morgan Bryan.

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