strictly correct term of "Gateway to the South' bestowed by former President Roosevelt, has not served to displace the ancient designation hallowed by long usage. Whether one accept the old or the new designation, none can deny that as falls or rapids the settlement thereabout played a leading part in the drama which culminated in the winning of the west and giving to the Union an imperial domain which at times, it seemed had been destined to become either French or English territory.

There is a tradition that Capt. Thomas Batts was once sent from Virginia by General Abram Wood to search for the supposed river which flowed to the Pacific, but it is not known that he reached Kentucky. McElroy in the latest historical sketch of Kentucky, gives Batts credit for "at least tracing the pathway from the old settlements of Virginia to the trackless wilderness beyond the mountains." This would seem to have brought him very near to Kentucky, if not within its boundary; but no practical results from his exploration beyond "tracing a pathway" are apparent in the history of that early day.

The first organized effort to locate lands in Kentucky was probably made by a company led by Dr. Thomas Walker, who in March, 1750, left their homes in Virginia and, reaching a pass in the Appalachian range of mountains, came into Kentucky, giving to the pass the name of Cumberland Gap, by which it has since been known and under which name it finds its place in the history of the War between the States-having been variously occupied by Federal and Confederate troops as one of the chief gateways between the warring

sections.

Hitherto, adventurers into the unknown land of Kentucky had confined themselves to the vicinity of the Ohio river and Captain Walker and his associates were, so far as history and tradition extend, the first white men to penetrate the interior of the new land.

Those with Walker were, according to one authority, Ambrose Powell, William Tomlinson, Colby Chew, Henry Lawless and John Hughes; but Col. Durrett in the "Centenary of Kentucky" omits the names of Lawless and Hughes, adding that only the names of Powell, Chew and Tomlinson have been preserved.

With a strong predilection in favor of the correctness of all of Col. Durrett's statements, it is not vitally material in this instance that all the names of Walker's followers should be stated. It is indisputable that Walker was the leader, and that is the important fact. This party cleared a body of land near where the town of Barboursville in Knox county is now located, and built there a log cabin, the first dwelling for white men ever erected in what is now Kentucky. The date of construction of this historic cabin was

April 25, 1750. Five days afterward, the cabin appears to have been deserted, owing to fear of the Indians whose hunting parties swarmed in the wilderness about them. The party is believed to have immediately returned to Virginia, without practical results following their visit other than having marked an epoch by having erected the first habitation for civilized man in what was later to become the populous state of Kentucky.

Christopher Gist, another adventurous character, as agent for the "Ohio Company," next led an expedition, the objective point of which was the territory which is now Ohio, setting out from the Potomac October 3, 1750. After scouting through the lands north of the Ohio river, he came finally to that stream which he descended to within fifteen miles of the present site of Louisville. Discovering there signs of large bodies of Indians, Gist turned back to the mouth of the Kentucky river. Under many difficulties Gist and his party continued their retreat and on May 1, 1751, first came in sight of the beautiful Kanawha river plunging over rapids and through moun

tain gorges on its tempestuous way to the sea. Gist finally reached his home in safety after traversing the most beautiful section of the future Kentucky, which he found without inhabitants and temporarily peopled only by bands of Indians intent upon the chase and these, in the main, confined their operations to points near the Ohio river north of which stream they lived.

Irving in his life of Washington says of Gist: "From the top of a mountain in eastern Kentucky near the Kentucky river, he had a view of the southward as far as the eye could reach over a vast wooded country in the fresh garniture of Spring and watered by abundant streams, but as yet only the hunting ground of savage tribes and the scene of their sanguinary conflicts. In a word, Kentucky lay spread out before him in all its wild magnificence. For six weeks was this hardy pioneer making his toilsome way up the valley of the Cuttawa or Kentucky river, to the banks of the Blue Stone; often checked by precipices and obliged to seek fords at the head of tributary streams, and happy when he could find a buffalo-path broken through the tangled forests or worn into the everlasting rocks."

When Gist reported to the Ohio Company what he had seen it must have impressed them with the belief that fortune was in their grasp, and lay to the westward, as fortune has ever laid to the Anglo-Saxon. Robert Dinwiddie, one of the twenty stockholders of the Ohio Company and lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1752, impressed by the reports of Gist, developed a strong interest in the movements of the French in the Ohio valley to all parts which they had asserted a claim, setting up tablets at the mouth of each river reached by them in support of these claims.

A protest against such procedure by a foreign power was an immediate necessity, and there seems to have been a special Providence in the selection by Dinwiddie of a messenger to the French commander bearing a message

of warning against further encroachments. He chose as this messenger a youthful Virginian, one George Washington, a half-brother of Augustine Washington, president of the Ohio Company, and Lawrence Washington, one of its stockholders. That young Virginian, piloted by Christopher Gist in this expedition, took that first step which was to lead him ever forward and upward to the highest position in the affairs of men. It was the step which led to the French and Indian war, the greatest contest known to this western continent until the day when the War of the Revolution claimed Washington as its leader and under his splendid guidance, preclaimed "liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." Some authorities claim that Washington came with Gist to Kentucky; but there seems no foundation for this claim, as it does not authoritatively appear that Washington came further west than the mouth of the Kanawha river in what is now West Virginia.

Kentucky does not seem to have been the permanent home of the Indians, though often occupied by them on their hunting trips or warlike forays. It was their "happy hunting ground" and, on occasion, their battle ground, before the coming of the white man when they came in contact with their enemies of other tribes. North of the Ohio river were the powerful Iroquois, who claimed the ter ritory as their own. To the South were the Cherokees, who fewer in number, were equally warlike, and who likewise claimed Kentucky as their own, with the result that when the hunting parties of these tribes met they became war parties and there was some beautiful fighting all along the savage lines. Having thus to struggle for their prolific hunting grounds, it is not strange that the Indians should have bitterly resented the coming of the white man to possess the land and that his coming meant the writing of blood-red chapters in the history of the first occupancy of

the state. The Indian knew the bountiful land to be worth fighting for, and used all his savage strategy to retain its possession. The white man found the land not alone worth fighting for, but, if need be, dying for, and set out to possess it and with his rifle filed a deed of possession with the result known to all the world-the Indian was overcome and driven towards the western sun, while the white man remained to make a garden spot where he had found a wilderness, albeit a beauteous and bountiful wilderness.

There are several accounts given as to the origin of the name of Kentucky. John Filson says the Delaware and Shawnee Indians called. the vast undefined tract of land south of the Ohio river "Kuttawa," meaning the "Great Wilderness." This name was long used interchangeably with "Kantake;" meaning "the place of meadows," or the "Hunting Grounds." Filson also referred to it as "The Middle Ground." McElroy, in "Kentucky in the Nation's History," says that another origin of the name is given by John Johnson who for years resided among the Shawnees. He declares that Kentucky is a Shawnee word meaning "at the head of the river." Marshall, however, declares that the name was derived from "a deep channeled and clifty river called by the Indians Ken-tuck-kee," which they pronounced with a strong emphasis. He adds.

that in consequence of frequent combats between the savages upon Kentucky soil-the country being thickly wooded and deeply shaded-was also called in their expressive language "The Dark and Bloody Ground." There is doubtless something that in other matters would be called poetic license in this statement of Marshall-more of license than historic accuracy, perhaps, but the expression has taken so firm a hold upon the public mind that it cannot be broken. Whatever the actual facts relative to the derivation of the name may be, the state has passed into history and song as "The Dark and Bloody Ground," and there it will remain, protest as one may. To all good citizens of the state it is a matter for the deepest regret, that in recent years. in a few sections of the State there have been such occurrences brought about by lawless and misguided men, as have seemed to justify the term as not only truly descriptive but just. It is a gratifying reflection that the confines of a prison and the narrower confines of certain graves render it improbable that further acts of the kind referred to will again darken the history of the state. The fires of a more complete civilization light the darkness of the land of the feud and where the minister of God and the schoolmaster carry their banners, murder will find none to excuse it.

It is not the purpose of this history to follow the failures or the successes of the French and Indian war. While it had its effect upon Kentucky, there were other events of the same era that bore more particularly upon the destiny of the territory which was later to be known as Kentucky. In 1763 the Peace of Paris ended the tremendous contests between England and France for the possession of Canada and the Ohio valley, with the result that the cross of St. George waved over the hitherto disputed territory undisturbed and with none to dispute the sovereignty of England.

During the pendency of the war but little had been done in the matter of exploration in Kentucky and there are no absolutely accurate data covering that period. In the midst of wars the laws are silent and it seems to be true of this period that exploration ceased, though there are apochryphal claims made of certain expeditions of which no conclusive records have been found. It is probably true. that adventurous parties came and went in those perilous days, as no sense of danger has ever been strong enough to destroy in the Anglo-Saxon his desire to spy out the land and appropriate to himself that part of it which, to him, seemed good. But that this was done is mere harmless conjecture. There is no record of the doings of the fearless adventurer in those days.

At the close of the war in 1763, King George the Third, whom the American col

onies were to more intimately know and detest a short twelve years later, issued a proclamation which had it not been ignored in large part, would have left Kentucky for years as the mere hunting ground of the savage, and closed its teeming fields and forests to the enterprise of the sturdy pioneers, who daring all dangers, had taken their lives in their hands and pressed forward into the wilderness to make homes for themselves and theirs, and to make straight the ways for those who were to come later into the new land which so generously invited them.

King George, in this proclamation, declared that the British possessions west of the Allegheny mountains and south of Canada should be set apart as an Indian reservation, into. which white settlers should not enter. The line of demarcation between the white and Indian territories was ordered marked, the commissioners for this work being Sir William Johnson, agent for the northern district, and John Stuart, for the southern colonies. This Sir William Johnson was later to become an important factor in the affairs of the Mohawk Valley and to play a great and dangerous part with the Indians in the War of the Revolution, then but a few short years removed in point of time. But Kentucky owes a debt to Sir William Johnson, despite his future actions in favor of the British crown. McElroy says of his action in running this line: "Johnson, deliberately neglecting his instructions, ran his part of the line down the

and to this fact it is due, in no small degree, that she became the pioneer colony of the West; for in the valley of the Yadkin, in North Carolina, the prince of pioneers was waiting to head the host who were waiting to invade the 'Dark and Bloody Ground' and to make it an inhabited land."

Daniel Boone now appears on the great canvass upon which is depicted the early struggles which made Kentucky a bright jewel in the crown of the states which form the American Union. There had been, as has been shown, adventurous spirits who came into Kentucky before Boone, some of whom were later to join him in the conquest of the land

song and story of the new land none may take. Kentucky and Daniel Boone are synonymous terms in history, though he left the new land early in its history for Virginia and later, finding his holdings too much encroached upon there, with the spirit of the true pioneer, he journeyed to the westward in search of elbow room, and finally laid down the burden of his years in Missouri. Later Kentucky, mindful of its debt to the brave old pioneer, brought back his remains and those of his patient old wife and side by side they sleep in the State Cemetery at Frankfort, an appropriate and modest monument marking their last resting place.