Pioneers of the Old Southwest [46]
Virginia State Papers," vol. III, p. 487.
Clark had spent all his own substance and all else he could beg, borrow--or appropriate--in the conquest of Illinois and the defense of Kentucky. His only reward from Virginia was a grant of land from which he realized nothing, and dismissal from her service when she needed him no longer.
All that Clark had asked for himself was a commission in the Continental Army. This was denied him, as it appears now, not through his own errors, which had not at that time taken hold on him, but through the influence of powerful enemies. It is said that both Spain and England, seeing a great soldier without service for his sword, made him offers, which he refused. As long as any acreage remained to him on which to raise money, he continued to pay the debts he had contracted to finance his expeditions, and in this course he had the assistance of his youngest brother, William, to whom he assigned his Indiana grant.
His health impaired by hardship and exposure and his heart broken by his country's indifference, Clark sank into alcoholic excesses. In his sixtieth year, just six years before his death, and when he was a helpless paralytic, he was granted a pension of four hundred dollars. There is a ring of bitter irony in the words with which he accepted the sword sent him by Virginia in his crippled old age: "When Virginia needed a sword I gave her one." He died near Louisville on February 13, 1818.
Kentucky was admitted to the Union in 1792. But even before Kentucky became a State her affairs, particularly as to land, were arranged, let us say, on a practical business basis. Then it was discovered that Daniel Boone had no legal claim to any foot of ground in Kentucky. Daniel owned nothing but the clothes he wore; and for those--as well as for much powder, lead, food, and such trifles--he was heavily in debt.
So, in 1788, Daniel Boone put the list of his debts in his wallet, gathered his wife and his younger sons about him, and, shouldering his hunter's rifle, once more turned towards the wilds. The country of the Great Kanawha in West Virginia was still a wilderness, and a hunter and trapper might, in some years, earn enough to pay his debts. For others, now, the paths he had hewn and made safe; for Boone once more the wilderness road.
Chapter VIII. Tennessee
Indian law, tradition, and even superstition had shaped the conditions which the pioneers faced when they crossed the mountains. This savage inheritance had decreed that Kentucky should be a dark and bloody ground, fostering no life but that of four-footed beasts, its fertile sod never to stir with the green push of the corn. And so the white men who went into Kentucky to build and to plant went as warriors go, and for every cabin they erected they battled as warriors to hold a fort. In the first years they planted little corn and reaped less, for it may be said that their rifles were never out of their hands. We have seen how stations were built and abandoned until but two stood. Untiring vigilance and ceaseless warfare were the price paid by the first Kentuckians ere they turned the Indian's place of desolation and death into a land productive and a living habitation.
Herein lies the difference, slight apparently, yet significant, between the first Kentucky and the first Tennessee* colonies. Within the memory of the Indians only one tribe had ever attempted to make their home in Kentucky--a tribe of the fighting Shawanoes--and they had been terribly chastised for their temerity. But Tennessee was the home of the Cherokees, and at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis) began the southward trail to the principal towns of the Chickasaws. By the red man's fiat, then, human life might abide in Tennessee, though not in Kentucky, and it followed that in seasons of peace the frontiersmen might settle in Tennessee. So it was that as early as 1757, before the great Cherokee war, a company of Virginians under Andrew Lewis had, on an invitation from the Indians, erected Fort Loudon near Great Telliko, the Cherokees' principal town,
Clark had spent all his own substance and all else he could beg, borrow--or appropriate--in the conquest of Illinois and the defense of Kentucky. His only reward from Virginia was a grant of land from which he realized nothing, and dismissal from her service when she needed him no longer.
All that Clark had asked for himself was a commission in the Continental Army. This was denied him, as it appears now, not through his own errors, which had not at that time taken hold on him, but through the influence of powerful enemies. It is said that both Spain and England, seeing a great soldier without service for his sword, made him offers, which he refused. As long as any acreage remained to him on which to raise money, he continued to pay the debts he had contracted to finance his expeditions, and in this course he had the assistance of his youngest brother, William, to whom he assigned his Indiana grant.
His health impaired by hardship and exposure and his heart broken by his country's indifference, Clark sank into alcoholic excesses. In his sixtieth year, just six years before his death, and when he was a helpless paralytic, he was granted a pension of four hundred dollars. There is a ring of bitter irony in the words with which he accepted the sword sent him by Virginia in his crippled old age: "When Virginia needed a sword I gave her one." He died near Louisville on February 13, 1818.
Kentucky was admitted to the Union in 1792. But even before Kentucky became a State her affairs, particularly as to land, were arranged, let us say, on a practical business basis. Then it was discovered that Daniel Boone had no legal claim to any foot of ground in Kentucky. Daniel owned nothing but the clothes he wore; and for those--as well as for much powder, lead, food, and such trifles--he was heavily in debt.
So, in 1788, Daniel Boone put the list of his debts in his wallet, gathered his wife and his younger sons about him, and, shouldering his hunter's rifle, once more turned towards the wilds. The country of the Great Kanawha in West Virginia was still a wilderness, and a hunter and trapper might, in some years, earn enough to pay his debts. For others, now, the paths he had hewn and made safe; for Boone once more the wilderness road.
Chapter VIII. Tennessee
Indian law, tradition, and even superstition had shaped the conditions which the pioneers faced when they crossed the mountains. This savage inheritance had decreed that Kentucky should be a dark and bloody ground, fostering no life but that of four-footed beasts, its fertile sod never to stir with the green push of the corn. And so the white men who went into Kentucky to build and to plant went as warriors go, and for every cabin they erected they battled as warriors to hold a fort. In the first years they planted little corn and reaped less, for it may be said that their rifles were never out of their hands. We have seen how stations were built and abandoned until but two stood. Untiring vigilance and ceaseless warfare were the price paid by the first Kentuckians ere they turned the Indian's place of desolation and death into a land productive and a living habitation.
Herein lies the difference, slight apparently, yet significant, between the first Kentucky and the first Tennessee* colonies. Within the memory of the Indians only one tribe had ever attempted to make their home in Kentucky--a tribe of the fighting Shawanoes--and they had been terribly chastised for their temerity. But Tennessee was the home of the Cherokees, and at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis) began the southward trail to the principal towns of the Chickasaws. By the red man's fiat, then, human life might abide in Tennessee, though not in Kentucky, and it followed that in seasons of peace the frontiersmen might settle in Tennessee. So it was that as early as 1757, before the great Cherokee war, a company of Virginians under Andrew Lewis had, on an invitation from the Indians, erected Fort Loudon near Great Telliko, the Cherokees' principal town,