Pioneers of the Old Southwest [38]
We know who swung out along the trail to provide for that little band, "dressed in deerskins colored black, and his hair plaited and bobbed up." It was Daniel Boone--now, by popular demand, Captain Boone--just "discharged from Service," since the valley forts needed him no longer. Once more only a hunter, he went his way over Walden Mountain--past his son's grave marking the place where HE had been turned back--to serve the men who had opened the gates.
Chapter VII. The Dark And Bloody Ground
With the coming of spring Daniel Boone's desire, so long cherished and deferred, to make a way for his neighbors through the wilderness was to be fulfilled at last. But ere his ax could slash the thickets from the homeseekers' path, more than two hundred settlers had entered Kentucky by the northern waterways. Eighty or more of these settled at Harrodsburg, where Harrod was laying out his town on a generous plan, with "in-lots" of half an acre and "out-lots" of larger size. Among those associated with Harrod was George Rogers Clark, who had surveyed claims for himself during the year before the war.
While over two hundred colonists were picking out home sites wherever their pleasure or prudence dictated, a gigantic land promotion scheme--involving the very tracts where they were sowing their first corn--was being set afoot in North Carolina by a body of men who figure in the early history of Kentucky as the Transylvania Company. The leader of this organization was Judge Richard Henderson.* Judge Henderson dreamed a big dream. His castle in the air had imperial proportions. He resolved, in short, to purchase from the Cherokee Indians the larger part of Kentucky and to establish there a colony after the manner and the economic form of the English Lords Proprietors, whose day in America was so nearly done. Though in the light of history the plan loses none of its dramatic features, it shows the practical defects that must surely have prevented its realization. Like many another Caesar hungering for empire and staking all to win it, the prospective lord of Kentucky, as we shall see, had left the human equation out of his calculations.
* Richard Henderson (1734-1785) was the son of the High Sheriff of Granville County. At first an assistant to his father, he studied law and soon achieved a reputation by the brilliance of his mind and the magnetism of his personality. As presiding Judge at Hillsborough he had come into conflict with the violent element among the Regulators, who had driven him from the court and burned his house and barns. For some time prior to his elevation to the bench, he had been engaged in land speculations. One of Boone's biographers suggests that Boone may have been secretly acting as Henderson's agent during his first lonely explorations of Kentucky. However this may be, it does not appear that Boone and his Yadkin neighbors were acting with Henderson when in September, 1773, they made their first attempt to enter Kentucky as settlers.
Richard Henderson had known Daniel Boone on the Yadkin; and it was Boone's detailed reports of the marvelous richness and beauty of Kentucky which had inspired him to formulate his gigantic scheme and had enabled him also to win to his support several men of prominence in the Back Country. To sound the Cherokees regarding the purchase and to arrange, if possible, for a conference, Henderson dispatched Boone to the Indian towns in the early days of 1775.
Since we have just learned that Dunmore's War compelled the Shawanoes and their allies to relinquish their right to Kentucky, that, both before and after that event, government surveyors were in the territory surveying for the soldiers' claims, and that private individuals had already laid out town sites and staked holdings, it may be asked what right of ownership the Cherokees possessed in Kentucky, that Henderson desired to purchase it of them. The Indian title to Kentucky seems to have been hardly less vague to the red men than it was to the whites. Several of the nations had laid claim to the territory. As
Chapter VII. The Dark And Bloody Ground
With the coming of spring Daniel Boone's desire, so long cherished and deferred, to make a way for his neighbors through the wilderness was to be fulfilled at last. But ere his ax could slash the thickets from the homeseekers' path, more than two hundred settlers had entered Kentucky by the northern waterways. Eighty or more of these settled at Harrodsburg, where Harrod was laying out his town on a generous plan, with "in-lots" of half an acre and "out-lots" of larger size. Among those associated with Harrod was George Rogers Clark, who had surveyed claims for himself during the year before the war.
While over two hundred colonists were picking out home sites wherever their pleasure or prudence dictated, a gigantic land promotion scheme--involving the very tracts where they were sowing their first corn--was being set afoot in North Carolina by a body of men who figure in the early history of Kentucky as the Transylvania Company. The leader of this organization was Judge Richard Henderson.* Judge Henderson dreamed a big dream. His castle in the air had imperial proportions. He resolved, in short, to purchase from the Cherokee Indians the larger part of Kentucky and to establish there a colony after the manner and the economic form of the English Lords Proprietors, whose day in America was so nearly done. Though in the light of history the plan loses none of its dramatic features, it shows the practical defects that must surely have prevented its realization. Like many another Caesar hungering for empire and staking all to win it, the prospective lord of Kentucky, as we shall see, had left the human equation out of his calculations.
* Richard Henderson (1734-1785) was the son of the High Sheriff of Granville County. At first an assistant to his father, he studied law and soon achieved a reputation by the brilliance of his mind and the magnetism of his personality. As presiding Judge at Hillsborough he had come into conflict with the violent element among the Regulators, who had driven him from the court and burned his house and barns. For some time prior to his elevation to the bench, he had been engaged in land speculations. One of Boone's biographers suggests that Boone may have been secretly acting as Henderson's agent during his first lonely explorations of Kentucky. However this may be, it does not appear that Boone and his Yadkin neighbors were acting with Henderson when in September, 1773, they made their first attempt to enter Kentucky as settlers.
Richard Henderson had known Daniel Boone on the Yadkin; and it was Boone's detailed reports of the marvelous richness and beauty of Kentucky which had inspired him to formulate his gigantic scheme and had enabled him also to win to his support several men of prominence in the Back Country. To sound the Cherokees regarding the purchase and to arrange, if possible, for a conference, Henderson dispatched Boone to the Indian towns in the early days of 1775.
Since we have just learned that Dunmore's War compelled the Shawanoes and their allies to relinquish their right to Kentucky, that, both before and after that event, government surveyors were in the territory surveying for the soldiers' claims, and that private individuals had already laid out town sites and staked holdings, it may be asked what right of ownership the Cherokees possessed in Kentucky, that Henderson desired to purchase it of them. The Indian title to Kentucky seems to have been hardly less vague to the red men than it was to the whites. Several of the nations had laid claim to the territory. As