xt7sf7664m46 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7sf7664m46/data/mets.xml Bruce, Henry Addington Bayley 1910  books b92bb644b2009 English The Macmillan company : New York Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820 Wilderness Road Daniel Boone and the Wilderness road text Daniel Boone and the Wilderness road 1910 2009 true xt7sf7664m46 section xt7sf7664m46 
    
    
    
    
   DANIEL BOONE AND THE WILDERNESS ROAD 
    
   Daniel Boone

From painting by Chester Harding, owned by Colonel Reuben t. Durrett, of Louisville, Kentucky 
    
   DANIEL BOONE AND THE WILDERNESS ROAD

BY

H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

author  of  "the  romance  of american expansion," etc.

ILLUSTRATED

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910

All rights reserved 
   Copyright, 1910, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped.   Published May, 1910.

Norwood Press J. S. Cusbing Co.     Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
    
    
   PREFACE

In his old age, though in no spirit of boastfulness, Daniel Boone declared that "the history of the western country has been my history." Undoubtedly, of all the men who took part in the winning of the early West, none played so conspicuous a role as Boone, or a role of such extensive usefulness. His services to his country began in the bitter struggle of the French and Indian War, that colossal conflict which definitely eliminated France as a factor in New World colonization. It was he, more than any other man, who made England's colonists acquainted with the beauty and fertility of the vast and well-nigh unoccupied region between the Alle-ghanies and the Mississippi. To his bold pioneering the United States owes one of its greatest highways of empire     the famous Wilderness Road, along which so many thousands of home-seekers passed in the first peopling of the West. Throughout the stormy years of the Revolution, he was preeminent in the defence of the infant settlements which he had

vii 
   viii

Preface

done so much to plant in the country beyond the mountains. And, finally, after the Revolution, when the American people had begun to take possession of the new territory gained and held for them by him and his fellow-pioneers, Boone once more entered upon his self-imposed mission of pointing the way for his countrymen to the land of the setting sun; and, having crossed the Mississippi, died as he had lived     in the very forefront of civilization.

The attempt, therefore, to write such a book as the present     which is intended to serve the double purpose of a biography of Daniel Boone and a study of the first phase of the territorial growth of the United States   finds ample justification in the facts of Boone's career. On the biographical side the effort has been made not only to give as complete and accurate an account of Boone's life as is now possible, but also to estimate and make clear his specific contributions to the progress of the nation ; while on the historical side my chief aim has been to describe the process of expansion in its military, political, economic, and social aspects. This has necessitated a somewhat detailed examination of the characteristics of the people who won the West, and the measures they took     notably in the organization of the Watauga, Transylvania, and Cumberland 
   Preface

ix

settlements     to establish the institutions of civilized society in their isolated wilderness communities. But I have endeavored to accomplish this portion of my task without causing the reader to lose sight of the great central figure of the narrative. In any event, I believe that only by gaining an understanding of the life and spirit and ideals of the sturdy folk of the frontier, is it possible to appreciate Boone's place in history and the bearing of the early westward movement on the subsequent development of the United States.

I am, of course, under obligations to previous writers, particularly to Boone's leading biographers, Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites and Dr. John M. Peck ; to the distinguished author of " The Winning of the West"; to the early historians of Kentucky and Tennessee; to the contributors to the excellent Filson Club publications; and to Professor A. B. Hulbert, author of the " Historic Highways of America " series of monographs. I am further indebted to Dr. Thwaites for helpful advice, as also to Professors Edward Channing and Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard University, and Colonels Reuben T. Durrett and Bennett H. Young, of Louisville, Kentucky. I would also thank Captain Edward M. Drane, of Frankfort, Kentucky, for assistance 
   X

Preface

in illustrating my book, and Mr. T. Gilbert White, of New York, for permission to reproduce his two beautiful paintings now in the Kentucky State Capitol. Much valuable material to which I could not otherwise have had access     especially in the way of rare copies of early Western newspapers     has been placed at my disposal by the authorities of Harvard University Library, for whose sympathetic cooperation I desire to express sincere gratitude. And, as in all my undertakings, I owe much to the wise counsel and aid of my wife.

H. ADDINGTON BRUCE.

Cambridge, Mass., April 4, 191 o. 
   CONTENTS

page

Preface ......... vii

chapter

I. The Youth of Daniel Boone      .       .       . i

II. Boone's First Campaign       .       .       . .17

III. Dark Days on the Border .... 36

IV. Boone's Explorations in Kentucky       . . 49 V. The People who followed Boone        .       . 68

VI. Westward Ho !  .       .       .       .       . .84

VII. The Building of the Wilderness Road.       .    101

VIII. Boone as a Law-maker        .       .       . .112

IX. The Passing of Transylvania       .       . 133

X. War-time in Kentucky       .       .       . .153

XI. The Campaigning of George Rogers Clark . 173

XII. Boone among the Indians    .       .       . .199

XIII. The Last Years of the War      . . .221

XIV. Pioneering in Watauga .... 247 XV. From Watauga to the Cumberland     .       . 264

XVI. Annals of the Wilderness Road . . .281

XVII. Kentucky after the Revolution . . .301 XVIII. Boone's Last Years    .       .       .       . -325

Index.........343

xi 
    
   ILLUSTRATIONS

Daniel Boone ......	. Frontispiece

	page

Boone's First Glimpse of Kentucky	    54

James Robertson        .       . .	. 78

The Sycamore Shoals Treaty	. 98

Relics of Daniel Boone ....	126

Simon Kenton ......	162

George Rogers Clark .....	. 186

Memorial Wall to Heroines of Bryan's Station .	. 238

John Sevier ......	. 256

Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Road	292

Site of Boonesborough .....	    3  4

Boone's Cabin in Missouri ....	    336

Map of the Early West ....	    3+i

xiii 
    
   Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

CHAPTER I

the youth of daniel boone

DANIEL BOONE, as every schoolboy knows, is the typical American backwoodsman. He was never so much at home as when treading the pathless wilderness, rifle in hand, in quest of game or of the pioneer's mortal foe, the wily Indian. Always Boone kept in the forefront of civilization, pointing the way for its advance but never allowing it quite to overtake him. Not city streets, but the mountain, the forest, and the prairie were his habitat. And he came honestly by his unquenchable passion for the wild and open life of the backwoods and the border.

He was born in a log-cabin, remote from the refinements and allurements of civilization; and he had for parents plain, simple country folk, accustomed to hardships and at all times preferring the freedom of the frontier to the crowded, hurried, 
   2     Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

worried existence of the town. His mother was the daughter of an unassuming Welsh Quaker, John Morgan. His father, who bore the odd name of Squire, was an Englishman by birth, a native of the obscure Devonshire village of Bradninch. Although bred a Quaker, Squire Boone seems to have had in his veins a touch of the longing for excitement and adventure that sent Hawkins and Drake and those other old-time sea-dogs of Devon on their epoch-making voyages. At all events, when scarcely in his teens, he became profoundly interested in reports of the Quaker paradise said to have been established by William Penn on the other side of the Atlantic.

It was unfortunately the case that in England, and even in New England, Quakers were subject to bitter and bloody persecution, and many of them led most wretched lives. In Penn's dominions, on the contrary, according to the story which in time found its way to the farthest corners of the old country, not only were Quaker refugees absolutely free from molestation by religious bigots, but they were on the friendliest of terms with the native Indians, were making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and were in every way living amid the most delightful surroundings.

His curiosity roused to a high pitch, young Boone one fine day took ship for Philadelphia, in company 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone

3

with a brother, George, and a sister, Sarah. Their immediate object was to verify the rumors they had heard, and to determine for themselves the fitness of Pennsylvania as a place of residence for the entire family, their father having signified his willingness to emigrate if the outlook seemed promising.

To us of to-day this sailing of Squire Boone     whose American-born son was to serve as guide to the American people in the first stage of the wonderful westward march that has carried them to the shore of the Pacific and beyond     cannot but seem a most noteworthy occurrence. Yet history is silent concerning it. The ship that carried the youthful Boones was not a Mayflower or a Susan Constant. It was simply one of many others employed in the emigrant trade, and even its name and the port of its departure have long since passed into oblivion. Whether the crossing was smooth or rough, whether the Boones enjoyed it or regretted ever having set foot aboard, it is impossible to say. The probability is that they were herded together in unpleasant quarters with a small army of fellow-emigrants,     for people were already flocking to Pennsylvania,     and that they were heartily glad when they saw the low, thin, blue line indicating land ahead. At an uncertain date in the years 1712, 1713, or 1714 their ship swung in between the capes of the Delaware, proceeded up the river, on whose 
   Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

banks were still visible the ruins of Sweden's ill-fated experiment in colonization three-quarters of a century before, and eventually landed the ardent, hopeful Boones in Philadelphia.

It needed only a few months of travel and exploration to convince them that rumor had not unduly exaggerated the beauties and riches and advantages of Pennsylvania. In high good humor brother George hurried back to bring out their father and mother and the younger children; sister Sarah gave a favorable ear to the advances of a matrimonially inclined German, and, as Mrs. Jacob Stover, became the mistress of a rude but perpetually neat cabin home in what is to-day Berks County; while Squire Boone, for his part, roamed with all the restlessness of youth through the country about Philadelphia, eventually choosing for his home the frontier hamlet of North Wales, and settling down to the hard life of a Pennsylvania backwoodsman.

It was in North Wales that he met Sarah Morgan, and it was on the 23d of July, 1720, that they were married in a Quaker meeting-house and in accordance with the simple Quaker ceremony. A family tradition, quoted by Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, Daniel Boone's latest and best biographer, pictures Squire Boone as "a man of rather small stature, fair complexion, red hair, and gray eyes"; while his wife was "a woman something over the 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone

5

common size, strong and active, with black hair and

99

eyes.

There was no honeymoon     merely the rough and boisterous yet sincere rejoicings after the backwoods fashion, and then the young couple laid aside their wedding garments, and plunged once more into the business of life. Very poor they were, yet very happy, and their happiness was soon increased     as likewise their cares and responsibilities     by the advent of children, four of whom were born to them during the dozen years they remained in the North Wales country.

At the end of that time Squire Boone had saved enough money to buy a farm of his own, and he decided to remove to Oley Township     in the modern Berks County     where now lived not only his sister Sarah but his parents and several younger brothers and sisters. The Boones, indeed, were sufficiently numerous in that part of Berks to give the name of Exeter to one of its townships, in honor of the ancient Devonshire city that stood only a few miles from their native village.

In Oley Township, then, in the beautiful valley of the Schuylkill, and for what would seem to us a ridiculously small sum, Squire Boone became the owner of a tract of two hundred and fifty acres. Most of it was in woodland,     that is to say, the hardest sort of work would be necessary to make 
   6     Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

it fit for cultivation,     but Boone's arms were strong and his heart courageous, and with right good-will he began to make a clearing. Erelong the smoke from another cabin was rising above the trees of Oley Township, a token to all who saw it that one more pioneer family had joined in the labor of conquering that portion of the Pennsylvania wilderness.

In this cabin, Nov. 2, 1734, Daniel Boone made his initial appearance on the stage of life. Had he been a first-born his arrival might have been accounted an event, and something made of it. But being only a sixth child,     another had been born since the departure from North Wales,     he was regarded from so distinctly matter-of-fact a point of view that nothing whatever is known with respect to his infancy. It may safely be taken for granted, though, that he was left pretty much to shift for himself as soon as he was able to go about on hands and knees. This was a way pioneer mothers had, and that it was not a bad way is clearly evidenced by the sturdiness of their deer-stalking, Indian-fighting sons.

It may also be reasonably conjectured that the little Daniel's infantile amusements included playing with his father's powder-horn, tugging at his father's rifle as it lay carelessly thrown on a settee after the return from a hunt, or staring fixedly and eagerly at it when it reposed in its accustomed place 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone

7

against the wall. If, as is said, the child is father of the man, these and similar toys must have held Daniel Boone's attention at an unusually early age.

Certainly, he was still a very small boy when he began to give indications of the remarkable fondness for hunting which was characteristic of him even in extreme old age. It is difficult to realize that his ^ birthplace, only a few miles south of the progressive city of Reading, and in the heart of one of Pennsylvania's most populous counties, boasting, as it does, close upon one hundred and seventy-five thousand inhabitants, was in the days of Boone's boyhood a grim, sparsely settled frontier region, abounding in game of every description. Against the smaller sort of creatures     squirrels and chipmunks and birds     he soon declared war, tracking them in imitation of a veteran huntsman, and slaying them with a knob-rooted sapling, which he learned to hurl with remarkable dexterity.

This, too, when he was not more than ten years old. A little later     to be precise, at the age of twelve     his father surprised and delighted him with the gift of a light rifle. Gone forever was the knob-rooted sapling, thrown aside in the exuberance of his joy at this wonderful present. He was a man now, a man full grown, he told himself, for did he not carry the weapon of a man ? And he patted its stock fondly, and peered eagerly through the under- 
   8     Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

growth in search of some fierce beast of prey to overcome.

In point of sheer fact, for all his feelings of bigness and self-importance, he was just a freckled, barefoot, ragged little urchin, who frequently gave his parents a great deal of trouble by neglecting his duties as herd-boy in order to play Nimrod in the surrounding forest. He, they knew, could take care of himself, but the cattle required attention, and it sometimes was no easy matter to ascertain where they had strayed. But it was impossible long to be angry with him, so intensely earnest was he in his hunting expeditions; and, recognizing this, his parents, instead of scolding him, turned his fondness for hunting to good account by commissioning him to provide the wild meat for the family table. They could have found no occupation more congenial to him, and none better calculated to train him for his life-work. He became an unerring shot, an expert woodsman, acquainted with the ways of furred and feathered life, and schooling himself admirably in many another text-book of nature.

Of schooling as most boys know it, however, he had next to none. The majority of his biographers assert that he went for a time to an "old field" school, where he acquired the rudiments of "book learning" in the form of easy lessons in the spelling-book and Psalter, together with some slight instruc- 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone 9

tion in writing and arithmetic. One author even goes so far as to give imaginary details of his school life, including an obviously fanciful account of a singular and reprehensible trick played by Boone and some fellow-pupils on their schoolmaster, who is described as a worthless drunkard. Of course Virtue, as typified in . these fascinating juvenile vagabonds, triumphed over Vice, the learned but dissolute pedagogue.

The truth seems to be that, at all events in the role of scholar, Boone never saw the inside of a schoolroom; but was indebted for such education as he received to his mother and a young sister-in-law, the wife of his much older brother Samuel. Both of these devoted instructors, although they must have found in the restless, nature-loving, active boy a most difficult pupil, took pains enough, as we shall see, to enable him in after-life to write interesting, if badly spelled letters; and to earn his living as a surveyor.

He also received some manual training of a useful sort. His great-grandfather on the paternal side had been a blacksmith, his grandfather     who died in Berks County when Daniel was in his tenth year     a weaver; and both of these occupations were followed by his father as soon as the farm was sufficiently cleared to permit of his devoting some part of his attention to interests other than agricultural. He 
   io   Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

kept half a dozen looms at work making "homespun" for his neighbors and for the Philadelphia market, and the cheery blaze of his forge was a welcome sight to tired travellers after a day's journey through the forest. As between the two     the loom and the forge     Daniel infinitely preferred the latter; but, we are told, only because it enabled him to repair broken rifles and traps. Everything was subordinated to his zeal for the life out doors, and each succeeding year he awaited with growing impatience the approach of winter as the happy season when he would be free to give full rein to his passion for the chase.

For, from the time he was thirteen he made it his custom to spend every winter hunting. All through Berks County, and far into the forests and mountains beyond, he wandered, exploring the country so thoroughly that for miles roundabout there was scarcely a foot of territory unknown to him. The Blue Mountain and South Mountain ranges became as familiar to him as the undulating hills of his father's Oley farm. Many a day he climbed Penn's Mount, near the site of Reading, and from its summit beheld the snow-laden clouds gather over the far-extending valleys. Sometimes, laden with furs, he journeyed down the Schuylkill to Philadelphia, then a most picturesque little city, with its Tudor cottages, its orchards, its gardens, and its bustling 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone

11

water-front, where ships were constantly coming and going, bringing in all manner of strange people from foreign parts, and taking out the rich produce of the New World.

Thus his life passed until he reached his sixteenth year     an irresponsible, roaming, care-free life, but in its own way stimulating to ambition and not devoid of achievement. At sixteen there was no better woodsman in all eastern Pennsylvania than Daniel Boone. Thanks to the wise policy of William Penn and his Quaker successors in the governing of Pennsylvania, it had not been necessary for him, while thus serving his apprenticeship in the forest, to match his wits against those of the Indian, as would have been the case had his boyhood been spent in almost any other part of the frontier. He saw plenty of Indians, but they were always friendly. Nevertheless, as though with an instinctive forewarning of what the future had in store for him, he gave himself to a most careful study of their traits and habits.

This     like the pursuit of the deer, the bear, and the wolf    meant hours of patient trailing and of hawk-like watching from the concealment afforded by thicket, log, and stump. It was a fascinating game,     this mimic hunt of unsuspecting warriors,     and it aided immeasurably both in the success that Boone afterwards won as an Indian fighter, and in 
   12    Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

the formation of his character. It developed in him remarkable powers of observation, it increased his self-confidence and self-reliance, and it accustomed him to the exercise of great self-control.

Still more, it awoke a desire to penetrate to those distant wilds whence the Indians emerged, as by magic, whenever they came to visit the Pennsylvania settlements. To spur the same desire was the knowledge that the game which he was so fond of hunting was rapidly disappearing from Berks County before the advance of civilized man. It is easy, therefore, to understand the satisfaction with which Boone one day heard his father announce his intention of disposing of his Pennsylvania lands and removing to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, five hundred miles and more to the southwest, one of the richest farming sections of the colonial South, and, at that time, a veritable paradise for game.

Just why Squire Boone should wish to abandon the pleasant home which he had built up with such painful effort, does not appear.1   Nor is there any-

1 It is suggested by Dr. Thwaites that possibly Squire Boone moved from Pennsylvania because "the choicest lands of eastern Pennsylvania had at last been located," and "the outlook for the younger Boones, who soon would need homesteads, did not appear encouraging." But this seems scarcely an adequate explanation, particularly in view of the great fertility of the Schuylkill Valley, 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone

13

thing to show why he chose the distant Yadkin Valley as his future place of abode. But to us these are matters of comparative unimportance. The great point is that the removal was determined on, and that its outcome, in due course of time, was to give Daniel Boone an unsurpassed opportunity to distinguish himself as an explorer and path-finder of the wilderness     an opportunity which it may safely be said would never have been his had he remained in Berks.

Some time in the spring of 1750 the start for North Carolina was made, the caravan of canvas-covered wagons that carried the family of Squire Boone pushing on as rapidly as possible to Harper's Ferry and the Valley of Virginia, that magnificent tableland which extends for three hundred miles between the

which Squire Boone would ordinarily be reluctant to abandon even for the sake of the "younger Boones." Perhaps the inrush of "foreign" immigrants, of the non-English-speaking Dunkards and Mennonites and Schwenckfelders, who flocked into Berks County between the years 1720 and 1750, may have had something to do with his removal. Or there may have been some connection between the removal and the fact that both Squire Boone and his son Israel were "disowned" by the Society of Friends     Squire in 1748, or but two years before his departure to North Carolina. There was by no means a general Boone exodus from the vicinity. I have seen a list of Exeter Township taxables for 1759, and in it occur the names of Joseph, James, William, Benjamin, and John Boone. 
   14    Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies from the Potomac to the Iron Mountains in the extreme southwest section of the State after which the valley is named. Few details of the journey have been preserved, but it is known that Boone acted as hunter and scout for the caravan, and that the valley's charms proved so attractive that all thoughts of haste were laid aside. There is a story, though based only on tradition, that the travellers camped for many months, perhaps even for a year, on Linnville Creek, near Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, Virginia. Wherever they lingered, it was not until the late autumn of 1751 that they crossed the Blue Ridge near the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina and found themselves within striking distance of their destination.

This was reached when they arrived at the forks of the Yadkin, in Davie County, North Carolina. Here, as Squire Boone's practised eye at once perceived, a region of splendid possibilities from a farming standpoint offered itself to all comers; and casting about, he soon selected a claim where Dutchman's Creek empties its waters into the North Yadkin, and once more began the arduous task of conquering the forest and transforming weedy wastes into profitable fields.

As for young Daniel, we may feel confident that whenever the opportunity offered, he would steal 
   The Youth of Daniel Boone 15

away from the wood-chopping and the ploughing to enjoy a day's hunt. Although a century and a half has elapsed since the crack of his rifle first woke the echoes of the Carolina mountains, the Old North State can still offer attractions to the hunter of big game. At the time of Boone's coming it teemed, from the Piedmont region westward, with beasts and birds of every description. The buffalo, the elk, the Virginia deer, the bear, the panther, the wildcat, wolf, and fox wandered through the meadows and cane-brakes about its rivers, or took their repose amid the cool shades of its rocky heights. Here, in truth, as Boone enthusiastically told his father and his more phlegmatic brothers, was hunting worth the name.

In imagination it is no difficult matter to see him, his five foot ten of sinewy, buck-skinned manhood stretched at full length behind a fallen log, finger on trigger, ear alert, blue eyes gleaming, thin lips doggedly compressed, a healthy glow on his cheek. Or, it may be, cutting his way through a tangle of undergrowth, leaping silently from rock to rock across the bed of a fast-running mountain stream, and buoyantly clambering from ridge to ridge of some bristling mountain wall. Never, they say, was there such a hunter on the Yadkin, or one who so enjoyed the hunter's life. Young, ardent, tireless, burdened with few cares and carrying them 
   16    Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

lightly, Daniel Boone found these first years in North Carolina pleasant indeed.

But the time for a rude awakening was drawing near. All too soon he would have the realities of life thrust upon him, would discover that it is made up of something besides the hunt, the feast, and the frolic. For, while he was light-heartedly tracking the sullen bear to its lair, and merrily dressing the freshly slain venison, the clouds of a terrible war were steadily gathering to sweep at last in a bloody storm along the entire frontier. 
   CHAPTER II

boone's first campaign

LATE in the summer of 1754, or about the time Squire Boone and his family were beginning to feel at home in their new surroundings, startling news reached the settlers of the Yadkin Valley. The French, it seemed, had come down from Canada into the Ohio country, and had built forts there, notwithstanding that England laid claim to all that territory. Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, the colony most interested in sustaining the English claim,     since, indeed, it had a claim of its own to the Ohio country, based on the terms of its ancient charter,       - had sent troops under a young Virginia officer, George Washington, to build forts for England and dislodge any Frenchmen that might be found. There had been a short but spirited conflict. First Washington had surprised, attacked, and defeated a French force. Then he, in turn, had been attacked, overwhelmed by numbers, and compelled to capitulate, being permitted, however, to march his men back to Virginia. To the Yadkin Valley people, and to the English colonists generally,

this sounded very much as though war were inevitable.

c 17 
   18    Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

The prospect was not altogether displeasing to the younger and more reckless and adventurous settlers. But those of mature experience, and particularly the dwellers along the border, viewed it with undisguised alarm. They knew only too well the horrors of a war with the French and their Indian allies     the night attack, the sanguinary raid, the scalpings, the torturings, the burnings. And, as the graybeards among them whispered to one another, the chances were that the impending struggle would outdo in bitterness and violence everything that had preceded it. For it would mean more, far more, than the determination of ownership of the Ohio Valley     it would determine whether England or France was to be the arbiter of the destinies of America, and whether the colonists of England were to remain forever cooped up in the narrow strip of territory between the mountains and the sea, or should be free to pass the mountains and possess themselves of the glorious and almost unoccupied country that lay beyond.

This was the question at issue, a question of peculiar interest to us, studying, as we are, the first phase in the territorial expansion of the American people. When young George Washington fired that first shot of the French and Indian War in the gloomy depths of the trans-Alleghany glades, he rang the curtain up on the last act of one of the most 
   Boone's First Campaign

J9

fascinating and tragic dramas of world-history, and a drama that had been in progress long before Washington or any other colonist of Washington's time had seen the light of day. Its opening act     or, more accurately, the prologue to its opening act     dated as far back as the first settlement of America by Englishmen and Frenchmen, and its plot was conditioned from the outset by the radically different motives that brought the English and the French into the New World.

The English, in the vast majority of cases, had crossed the ocean to win homes for themselves in a country where they would be free from the crushing disabilities     the religious persecutions, political discriminations, and economic inequalities     under which they had labored in their native land. The French had been inspired scarcely at all by the home-building spirit. Desire to amass wealth, love of adventure, and missionary zeal were their great motives. As a consequence, the two peoples acted very differently when they reached America. The English established themselves in compact settlements along the coast, and began industriously to till the soil. The French gave themselves to exploring and fur-trading, and dispersed far and wide, making friends of the Indians, trafficking with them, and Christianizing them.

In less than a decade after the founding of Quebec, 
   20    Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

a French missionary friar of the Recollet order was laboring among the Lake Huron savages. Only a few years more, and the daring young Norman, Jean Nicolet, had penetrated as far west as Wisconsin. A little later, and before the close of the first half of the seventeenth century, the black-gowned Jesuits were planting the Cross among the Indians of Sault Ste. Marie. In a word, France was rapidly establishing a title to the ownership of the vast interior region of the North American continent.

All this time the English colonists had made next to no progress so far as territorial expansion was concerned, their "farthest west" as lat