English CHAPTER IX WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST England Gains Control of the West.-We have seen how Marquette and La Salle explored the Mississippi River and claimed its valley for France. But beyond a few mission stations and trading posts the French never made good their claim to this vast region by actual settlement. When the first settlers from the English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard began to penetrate the wilderness of the Alleghany Mountains and trespass upon land claimed by the French, the French and Indian War was fought to determine the destiny of America. When it ended, the French empire in America was a thing of the past, and England owned all the country cast of the Mississippi River. England soon found that it was one thing to win a title to the West and quite another to take possession of the country. The English troops had scarcely occupied Detroit and the Pontiac's other French posts in the northwest before they had to fight war for their lives. Pontiac, one of the most crafty Indian warriors in American history, led the tribes of that region against the English garrisons, destroyed several of them, and was defeated only after a desperate Indian war. The story of the war has been told in a fascinating way by Francis Parkman, one of our greatest American historians, in his "Conspiracy of Pontiac." settlers out The West which passed into the hands of England in 1763 was still a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and Indians. There were a few little French villages like Detroit, Green England fails Bay in Wisconsin, and Vincennes on the Wabash River, and to keep some scattered French trappers and hunters in the forests. of the West Practically, however, the whole region from the Alleghany Mountains to the Mississippi River was an Indian country, and England desired to keep it so for the present. In 1763 the British government forbade the governors of the colonies to give settlers titles for "any lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest." But it was impossible for a government three thousand miles away to keep the landhungry settlers away from the lands they coveted. The First Pioneers beyond the Mountains. As soon as the French and Indian War was over hardy frontiersmen began to cross the mountains, eager to occupy the newly won western The lands. Some of them settled in the country near the forks of westward the Ohio, where Pittsburgh was founded in 1765. Others made movement their way up the Appalachian valleys into the mountain. regions of Virginia and North Carolina. A few years later the boldest of these border settlers passed through the last gaps in the mountains, to become the pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee. Daniel Boone was the most famous pioneer of Kentucky. His life was so like that of the other settlers upon the The story of western border that the story of it will help us to understand Boone Daniel The frontiersman them. Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1734. His early life was spent upon what was then the frontier of that colony, and while still a boy he was a mighty hunter. He had little of the education that is gained from books but he knew and loved the wild woods and was skilled in all kinds of woodcraft. When Daniel was about eighteen years old the Boones, like many other frontier families, moved to the southwest, Daniel Boone following the long valleys in the mountains, and at last settled in a new home on the Yadkin River in western North Carolina. Here Daniel Boone married, established a home of his own, and until he was thirty-five years of age lived like the other hardy, rugged, frontier farmers about him. He often went on long hunting trips into the wilderness west of the settlements, and had a taste of Indian fighting during the French and Indian War. At last the tales told by a wandering fur trader about a beautiful country called Kentucky, a land of countless deer, buffaloes, and wild turkeys, led Boone and five other hunters to go in quest of it. In 1769 Daniel Boone, with his five companions, crossed the mountains and found his way through the Cumberland Boone in Gap into the valley of the Kentucky River. He spent the next Kentucky two years in Kentucky, hunting, trapping, and exploring the country. During this first long visit to Kentucky Boone had many strange and exciting adventures. Once he lived all alone in the wilderness for three months "without bread, salt, or, sugar, without company of fellow creatures, or even a horse or dog." Boone was so pleased with the beautiful Kentucky country that he resolved to bring his family to it and make it his future home. In 1773 Daniel Boone and several of his neighbors started with their families for Kentucky, but an Indian war party which killed Boone's oldest son stopped them for a time. It was not Settlement until April, 1775, less than two weeks before the fight at Lex- of Kentucky ington and Concord, that Boone and his followers reached their destination and began the settlement of Boonesborough on the bank of the Kentucky River. Harrodsburg and two or three other early Kentucky settlements were established about the same time. The leading pioneers of Kentucky were nearly all men of sturdy Scotch-Irish stock. As their numbers grew they cleared and cultivated the land, brought domestic animals from the older settlements, planted fruit trees, and slowly changed Boone's hunting ground into a land of homes and farms. The The pioneers of Tennessee were very much like those of Kentucky. The first white settler entered eastern Tennessee founders of in 1769. During the next three or four years more frontiers- Tennessee men came, and many cabins were built in the valleys of the Watauga and Holston rivers. James Robertson and John Sevier were the leaders in the Watauga Settlement, as it is called. Robertson was a quiet man of little education but of great natural ability and energy. Sevier was a handsome young Virginian of good education, eager, ambitious, and very popular. Both of them were mighty hunters, fearless explorers, and famous Indian fighters. In 1779 James Robertson moved two hundred miles farther west and founded the present city of Nashville upon the Cumberland River. He is often called the Father of Tennessee. Border Warfare in the Revolution. The first frontiersmen beyond the Alleghany Mountains lived with their rifles ever Savage foes at hand for they were in constant peril of Indian attack. For ten years after the close of Pontiac's war in 1764 there was nominal peace between the red men and the white, yet even then outbreaks between the two races were not uncommon. Two great groups of Indian tribes threatened the western border: those north of the Ohio River, among whom the Shawnees were conspicuous, and the southern Indians, of whom the Cherokees were the special foes of the pioneers in eastern Tennessee. Kentucky was the hunting ground of both the northern and the southern Indians, and many a grim fight between them had taken place in its forests. In the language of the Indians Kentucky means the "dark and bloody ground." The northern Indians looked on in alarm as the pioneers of western Pennsylvania and Virginia began to cut down the Dunmore's forests and destroy the game of their hunting grounds. In 1774 their war parties began to harry the settlements in this region with fire and slaughter. Some of the settlers were killed, while others fled east of the mountains or gathered in the log forts which they had built for defense. Governor Dunmore of Virginia promptly made war upon the Indians, who were defeated in a fierce fight upon the Great Kanawha River and forced to make peace. It was just after Dunmore's war ended that the first settlements in Kentucky were planted. war The southern border Soon after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War the British began to incite the Indians to attack the American frontiersmen. The tribes in the South were the first to strike. Early in 1776 war bands of Cherokees fell upon the outlying |