xt7zw37kqj9k https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7zw37kqj9k/data/mets.xml Faris, John Thomson, 1871-1949. 1920  books b92973f228o2009 English George H. Doran company : New York Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Frontier and pioneer life --United States. Overland journeys to the Pacific. On the trail of the pioneers, romance, tragedy and triumph of the path of empire. text On the trail of the pioneers, romance, tragedy and triumph of the path of empire. 1920 2009 true xt7zw37kqj9k section xt7zw37kqj9k 
   ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

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JOHN ' T- FAR1S 
    
    
    
    
   Of the progress of the souls of men

And women along the grand roads of the universe,

All other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward, Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawing, Baffled, mad turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, Rejected by men, They go I they go!

   Walt Whitman. 
    
   //. F. Martino, Del.

"I . . . think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill these deserts.   From the ground Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn Of Sabbath worshippers.  The low of herds Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain Over the dark brown furrows.  All at once A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream, And I am in the wilderness alone."

-William Cullen Bryant. 
   ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

ROMANCE, TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF THE PATH OF EMPIRE

BY

JOHN T. FARIS

AUTHOR OF "REAL STORIES  FROM OUR HISTORY," "OLD   ROADS   OUT OF PHILADELPHIA," "HISTORIC SHRINES OF AMERICA," ETC.

illustrated

NEW

YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
    
   PREFACE

It is not the purpose of this volume to give in full detail the historical background of the successive great movements of population from the East to the country West of the Alleghenies; this ground has been covered by authors whose exhaustive books are named in the Bibliography.

"On the Trail of the Pioneers" gives glimpses of many of these great movements, the routes the emigrants took, and the sections to which they went. The endeavor is made to answer the questions, Who were the emigrants? How and where did they travel? What adventures did they have by the way? What were their impressions of the country through which they passed? What did they do when they reached their destinations? The book has been written because the author felt the need of which Claude S. Larzelere, in a paper on The Teaching of Michigan History, wrote:

We talk much in general terms in our American History classes about the westward movement of population. All too seldom do we take actual typical cases of emigrants moving to the West by way of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes, by the Cumberland Road and the Ohio River, or by other roads, bringing out the actual life on the road.

The graphic pictures of the struggles of actual emigrants emphasize as nothing else can the words of the author of A Journey on the Mississippi River:

The West is now a phrase of somewhat indefinite significance. Not very long ago it meant Pittsburgh. . . . Fifty years since,1 Cincinnati was on the verge of the white

'Written in 1847. 
   VI

PREFACE

settlements. ... Go to St. Louis . . . and you seem to be still as far from this point of the compass as you were at the beginning of your journey. Ask, as I have done, the emigrant who is trudging his weary, course across the plains more than two hundred miles from the city of Laclede where he is going; his reply is, "To the West." . . . And now, at the northern pass of the Rocky Mountains, near the 49th parallel, and at the southern pass in the same range, leading to California, the same response, the West, the everlasting West, meets the ear.

It is interesting to note not only how this resistless onrush of the pioneers gave answer to the prophecies of pessimists who declared that it was useless to think of peopling the West from the East, but also how the emigration brought about changes in the boundaries and names of new states which optimistic travelers and statesmen tried to forecast. There were those who once looked for the organization of such states as Cumberland and Transylvania in the region south of the Ohio river; but the overwhelming growth of the country led to the early organization of the single state of Kentucky. Thomas Jefferson was a member of a committee which, in 1784, recommended the division of the country north of the Ohio into states to be called Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonese, Metropotamia, Illinoisa, Saratoga, Washington, Polypo-tamia and Pelisipia, but in consequence of the emigrant tide through the Pittsburgh and Buffalo gateways and down the Ohio, the boundaries and, in most cases, the names of the states became quite different.

The fascinating story of the movements that improved on the plan of Jefferson's committee, and went a long way to justify the hyperbole of Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, "You will see independent America contemplating no other limits but those of the universe," is sketched in this volume.

Full use has been made of the records of early travelers and pioneers which are described in the Bibliography. Grateful acknowledgment is made for the use of copy- 
   PREFACE vii

righted material to Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers of American History and Its Geographic Conditions by Ellen Churchill Semple; to Little, Brown and Company, publishers of The California and Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman; to Lois Kimball Matthews, author of The Erie Canal and the Settlement of the West; to Yale University Press, publishers of A Journey to Ohio in 1810, by Margaret Dwight; to Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of The Making of the Ohio Valley States, by Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Audubon and His Journals, by Maria R. Audubon; to Princeton University Press, publishers of The New Purchase, by Robert Carlton; to G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers of The Winning of the West, by Theodore Roosevelt.

John T. Faris.

Philadelphia, 1920. 
    
   CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP TO KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE

PAGE

I  Preparing the Way............IS

II   Through the Great Wilderness........28

III   The Adventures of Three Travelers.......38

CHAPTER TWO:  THROUGH THE PITTSBURGH AND WHEELING GATEWAYS

I Braddock's Road and the National Road.....51

II  Struggles with the Alleghenies........58

III   By Stage, by Emigrant Wagon, and on Foot.....79

CHAPTER THREE:   FLOATING DOWN THE OHIO AND THE MISSISSIPPI

I   In Perils of Waters............97

II  By Flatboat and Keelboat..........110

III  From Ark to Steamboat...........125

CHAPTER FOUR:   FROM NORTHERN NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND TO THE WEST

I  The Long Road to the Western Reserve......139

II   From Land to Water............ 153

III  All the Way to the Mississippi.........163

CHAPTER FIVE:   THE SANTA FE TRAIL

I  The Lure of Gain.............183

II Facing Famine and Fighting Indians.......189

III  When the Trail was in Its Glory........197

ix 
   CONTENTS

I

II

III

IV

I II

I II III

1   CHAPTER SIX: THE OREGON TRAIL

PAGE

The Wagon Wheels of Whitman    .   ....... 205

"Travel!  Travel!!  Travel!!!"........ 218

With Francis Parkman in the West....... 229

Learning by Bitter Experience......... 236

CHAPTER SEVEN:  ACROSS THE PLAINS > TO CALIFORNIA

A Tragedy of the Trail........... 251

Across the Desert in Safety......... 262

CHAPTER EIGHT: TOILING UP THE MISSOURI

With Lewis and Clark........... 275

By Means of Cordelle and Bridle........ 283

Early Steamboating on the Missouri....... 294

Bibliography.............. 305

Index................. 313 
   ILLUSTRATIONS

"I . . . Think I Hear The Sound of that Advancing Multitude

Which Soon Shall Fill These Deserts." Frontispiece

PAGE

On the Road in Early Days .......... 32

Evansville, Indiana, in Early Days........ 32

The Old Fort at Lexington, Built in 1782...... 33

Cumberland Gap, Tennessee........... 33

The First Portrait of Washington........ 64

Pittsburg in 1790.............. 64

Marker on the Wilderness Road......... 64

Tablet at the Home of Major Arthur St. Clair, Near Greens-burg, Pennsylvania............ 65

Old Fort Guddis, Near Uniontown, Pennsylvania .... 65

Henry Clay Monument at Elm Grove, West Virginia   .   . 65

Floating Down the River........... 112

General Putnam Landing at Marietta....... 112

Two Sections of the Ohio River......... 112

Ohio River from the Summit of Grave Creek Mound    .   . 113

Wabash River, Near Vincennes, Indiana ...... 113

McColloch's Dam, Near Wheeling, 1777....... 113

On the Scent of the Emigrants......... 113

Forty Fort in 1778 .............. 160

On a New York Waterway........... 160

Old Fort Van Rensselaer, Canajoharie, New York .   .   . 161

Chicago in 1820............... 161

The Battle of the Alamo........... 192

Marker on the Santa Fe Trail......... 192

Wagons Parked for the Night.......   .   . 193

Near Fort Defiance, New Mexico......... 193

Caravan on the March............ 224

xi 
   xii ILLU STRATIONS

PAGE

Wagon Train Stampeded by Wild Horses...... 224

Crossing the Plains............. 225

Donner Monument, Donner Lake, California..... 256

Inscription on Rock of Hell Roaring Canyon, Utah .   .   . 256

San Francisco in November, 1848......... 257

San Francisco in November, 1849......... 257

Buffalo on the Prairie............ 288

Indians Hunting the Buffalo.......... 288

The Last of the Buffalo............ 289

"Madam Cuff" Again Appeared.......... 289 
    
    
    
   m

I 
   PREPARING THE WAY

Fair elbow-room for men to thrive in!

Wide elbow-room for work or play! If cities follow, racing our footsteps,

Ever to westward shall point our way! Rude though our life, it suits our spirit,

And new-born States in future years Shall own us founders of a nation,

And bless the hardy pioneers.

   Charles Mackay.

There is nothing more romantic in the story of the development of the United States than the records of the opening up of the great country between the western boundaries of North Carolina and Virginia and the Mississippi river. Inspiring tales of the adventures of daring explorers and picturesque stories of the struggles and triumphs of hardy emigrants clamor for the attention of those who delve into the early history of Kentucky and Tennessee. Yet the pioneers from whose journals and letters most of these narratives are gleaned, told them in such a matter-of-fact manner that sometimes more than one reading is necessary to appreciate the magnificent meaning of what to them was a commonplace story. The pioneers had been trained in such a hard school that they did not falter in the face of obstacles which, to the average man of to-day, would seem overwhelming. They had heard from their fathers and grandfathers of the conquest of the wilderness near the Atlantic seaboard, and they cast eager eyes to the region beyond the mountains whose mysteries they longed to explore, in whose fastnesses they dreamed of carving out a home.

The first men to respond to the appeal of the unknown

15 
   16      "ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

lived in Virginia and North Carolina. At a time when New York had made little growth westward, when in Pennsylvania there was yet much land to be possessed east of the Alleghenies, the sturdy men of the Old Dominion and their neighbors to the south of them were groaning under the necessity of obeying the proclamation of King George, made in 1763, forbidding surveys or patents of land located beyond the headwaters of streams running to the Atlantic. It was his thought that the surest way of retaining the good will of the Indians beyond the mountains was to leave them in undisturbed possession of their hunting grounds.

The Virginians and the Carolinians thought that the king's stand was too cautious; they were sure they could make such treaties with the Indians that peaceful emigration would be possible and desirable. But they held themselves in check until 1768, when some of them joined with representatives of colonies farther north in making the treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois by which the Indians yielded their rights to the region that corresponds, roughly, to the present state of Kentucky.

Little time was lost in taking advantage of this treaty, which, it was felt, annulled the restrictive proclamation of the king, so far as these lands were concerned. In 1769 a few emigrants found their way down the valley between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny mountains and into the interior wilderness. To Joseph Martin and his companions belongs the distinction of being the first of the vast company of emigrants that made homes in the hunting grounds of the Indians. Their settlement was made in Powell's Valley, between the Cumberland and Powell mountains.

Some of this venturesome advance guard soon paid the price so often exacted of the pioneer; Indians fell on the camp and made known their anger because of the settlers' failure to observe the pledge of the king as to settlements in their domain. These Indians were Cherokees, who refused to recognize the Fort Stanwix treaty because they claimed a portion of the lands ceded by the Iroquois.

1 W. 
   THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP

17

This last hindrance to settlement was removed on October 18, 1770, when Virginia made a treaty with the Cherokees, gaining their recognition of the right of emigrants to settle in the region in dispute.

The year before this treaty was made, Daniel Boone, the most picturesque character of pioneer days in Kentucky, was one of a company of six who made an exploring expedition into the new land.

This was not Boone's first experience of the Kentucky wilderness, however. His interest in the region dated from his meeting with John Finley, when the two men were on their way with Braddock to Fort Du Quesne. Finley told Boone of his hunting experiences in the lands south of the Ohio. His tales of Kentucky fired Boone's imagination, and the two men planned to go there as soon as the trip to Fort Du Quesne was ended. Finley explained how easy it would be to travel from North Carolina to Kentucky along an Indian trail that led to Cumberland Gap, and then into the desired land.

But it was not until 1760 that Boone was able to go to what is now western Tennessee. Here, on the banks of what is known as Boone's Creek, there stood until a few years ago a beech tree on whose bark was the inscription, evidently cut by the hunting knife of the pioneer, "D Boon cilled a bar on this tree in the year 1760."

The trip of 1769 was made in company with John Finley, according to the program mapped out years before. The journey of the six men who made up the party was completed in safety. Then one day the men were taken captive by the Indians, and their camp was plundered of a large store of furs, provisions and ammunition. Their horses also were taken. Before the hunters were released they were warned to keep away from the Indians' land on pain of death.

Boone and his brother-in-law stole back into the Indians' camp and secured four horses, but they were pursued and captured.  Seven days later the two men managed to escape 
   18

ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

while their captors were asleep. A little later they overtook their companions, who had turned homeward.

In the meantime Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, had come from Virginia, according to previous arrangement, with fresh horses, provisions and ammunition. Daniel at once proposed to take this new equipment and return to Kentucky. Several of the company volunteered to go with him, but others decided to go back across the mountains.

Boone and his companions continued their explorations and their hunting until one of the four was killed by Indians, and another left for North Carolina. When provisions were low Squire Boone took the furs they had gathered and returned home, while Daniel pushed on as far as the Falls of the Ohio, at the present site of Louisville. He hoped to find a place to take his family.

But before Boone was able to return with his family to Kentucky other settlers, attracted by the stories told by him, pushed on across the mountains. The character of the reports that enticed them may be judged by this extract from Boone's autobiography, which, while it must have been edited vigorously, is clearly a true representation of the Kentucky hunter's enthusiastic utterances:

We found every where abundance of wild beasts of all sorts, through this vast forest. The buffalo were more frequent than I have ever seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on those extensive plains, fearless, because ignorant of the violence of man. Nature was here a series of wonders and a fund of delight. Here she displayed her ingenuity and industry in a variety of flowers and fruits, beautifully colored, elegantly shaped and charmingly flavored; and we were diverted with innumerable animals presenting themselves perpetually to our view.

At another point he wrote:

Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired . . . not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf.   I had gained the 
   THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP 19

summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking around with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tract below. On the other hand I surveyed the famous Ohio that rolled in silent dignity. ... At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable brows and penetrate the clouds.

The objection has been made that it would be difficult to see the Ohio and the mountains at the same time, but probably Boone allowed himself a poet's license when he made some of his descriptions!

One of those who were lured by such reports was Jacob Brown, who, in 1771, settled on the Nolichucky, a branch of the Holston. The same year James Robertson took sixteen families to the Watauga, another branch of the Holston. In 1772 Robertson was instrumental in combining the settlers of the Watauga, Carter's, and the Nolichucky valleys, into the Watauga Association, organized for self-government, with written articles of agreement. In 1776 the association asked to be taken under the care of North Carolina, as the District of Washington.

Their hopes of benefits to be received from North Carolina were not realized, and in 1784 the people organized a government of their own. In 1785 they asked Congress for permission to set up an independent state, covering a large part of Kentucky.

Greenville was selected as a capital, and an assembly met there in a log cabin. The delegates, representing, it is thought, about twenty-five thousand people, chose a governor, made arrangements for a currency of fox and mink skins, and decided to ask Congress for recognition as a state. Benjamin Franklin was asked if they might adopt his name. Congress considered this a secession of a part of the parent state, and the petition for recognition was not granted.

There followed a period when the little would-be commonwealth was torn by factions, but it did not come to 
   20

ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

its disappointing end until it had continued for a number of years to be a little republic beyond the mountains and had paved the way for the greater commonwealth that was to receive the recognition of the United States.

Two years after the settlement on the Nolichucky of Jacob Brown, which became a part of the sturdy Watauga Association, Daniel Boone made a further attempt to enter Kentucky.   Of this he wrote as follows:

I sold my farm on the Yadkin and what goods we could not carry with us, and on the twenty-fifth day of September, 1773, bade a farewell to our friends and proceeded on our journey to Kentucky, in company with five families more, and forty men that joined us in Powell's Valley, which is one hundred and fifty miles from the now settled parts of Kentucky. The promising beginning was soon overcast with a cloud of adversity, for on the tenth day of October the rear of our company was attacked by a number of Indians, who killed six, and wounded one more. Of these my eldest son was one that fell in the action. Though we defended ourselves, and repulsed the enemy, yet this unhappy affair scattered our cattle, brought us into extereme difficulty, and so discouraged the whole company that we retreated to settlements on the Clinch river.

Boone, chafing at the inaction, welcomed the call of the governor of Virginia for two good woodsmen who would dash into Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap route, to warn several surveying parties to be on their guard against Indians who were rising to prevent the passage of settlers to the West. In company with Michael Stoner he penetrated far into Kentucky in July, 1774. Two months later the men returned, having done their work.

Boone's next great opportunity came when, on March 17, 1775, at Sycamore Shoals, on the Watauga, Colonel Richard Henderson and a number of friends from North Carolina made a treaty with the Cherokees for the possession of the lands bounded by the Kentucky, Holston, Cumberland 
   THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP 21

and Ohio rivers. Merchandise valued at ten thousand pounds was exchanged for eighteen million acres of land.

Steps were taken at once to make easier the settlement of the country thus secured, which Colonel Henderson and his companions called Transylvania. The pioneers realized the truth of the words spoken to Boone by a chief of the Cherokees, "Brother, we have given you a fair land, but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it."

No time was lost by the new owners of Transylvania in giving to Boone the commission to open a road for the emigrants who would be attracted to the country. Boone accepted the tremendous commission with no more anxiety than a carpenter would show over an order to build a wooden sidewalk. He knew the ways the buffaloes took in their migration, and he had followed the paths of the Indians. Equipped with this knowledge and his own unerring instinct, and accompanied by thirty hardy companions, he made a way back to Cumberland Gap, then on through the wilderness. The men cut the trees, they burned the undergrowth, and they fought the Indians as they went.

From the Gap the road led along the Warriors' Path, a mere trace used by the Indians in their journeys from their towns on the Ohio and the Scioto to their hunting grounds in the South. After following this path for some fifty miles, the roadmakers turned to the left and went on along a buffalo trace. At length they reached their goal, on the Kentucky river, and began the erection of a group of cabins for the accommodation of the settlers who were to come later under Henderson's leadership.

An admirer who, in 1916, went over the route taken by Boone, said in appreciation of him:

He took his life in his hands and literally laid it at the feet of his fellows. Boone dared the frowning menace of great Pinnacle Rock, the most forbidding, somber mass of rock east of the Rockies; he forded the treacherous Rockcastle, all the while in danger of attacks from the red- 
   22       ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

skinned allies of England, and westward by hard-won miles until at last he made the wonderful, fertile blue-grass lands more accessible to the emigrant.

A Kentucky historian says of the achievement:

The road marked out was at best but a trace. No vehicle of any sort passed over it before it was made a wagon road by action of the state legislature in 1795. The location of the road, however, is a monument to the skill of Boone as a practical engineer and surveyor. It required a mind of far more than ordinary caliber to locate through more than two hundred miles of mountain wilderness a way of travel which, for a hundred years, has remained practically unchanged, and upon which the state has stamped its approval by the expenditure of vast sums of money.

The following year Colonel Henderson and Richard Logan, with many others, went along the Wilderness Road and saw for themselves what good work Boone had done. After the party had passed Cumberland Gap, Henderson and Logan had a disagreement, and there separated. Henderson went on with his followers to Boonesborough, while Logan turned to the left to the Crab Orchard and on to the site of what is now Danville, on the road to the Falls of the Ohio. He was not cutting a new road, however, for Boone had gone this way in 177^, when he went to the Ohio for the governor of Virginia after his family party had been halted by the attack of the Indians.

Before long, representatives of three other settlements in the Transylvania territory gathered at Boonesborough and formed a House of Delegates for the government of the new colony. Laws were made, and the future of the Company looked bright. It was even thought that Transylvania might be admitted as the fourteenth colony in the Revolutionary Union. But the opposition of Virginia and North Carolina, which claimed the land bought from the Cher-okees by the Company, the reluctance of Congress to sanction the pretensions of the Company, and internal dissen- 
   THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP

23

sions among the immigrants who found fault with what they called the avarice of Henderson and his associates, wrecked the company.

While the vain attempt to secure Congressional action was being made, George Rogers Clark, who conducted the brilliant campaign of 1777 against Kaskaskia and Vin-cennes, was serving as a surveyor for the Ohio Company. He had not been in Kentucky long when he felt that something should be done about the Transylvania Company's claim. Emigrants who were coming into the country by way of the Ohio were perplexed to know to whom the lands to the south of the Kentucky river belonged. Had they a real right to the country, or did Virginia intend to exercise control over the region? On June 6, 1776, Clark called a meeting of the citizens of Harrodsburg, to consider what should be done, and was appointed one of two delegates to the Virginia Legislature to present the matter.

The journey to Williamsburg was difficult. The season was unusually wet, the roads were muddy, and there was constant danger from Indians. After a time one of the horses was lost, and Clark walked until his feet were blistered and sore. Years later he said he suffered more torment on this trip than he had suffered before or since.

Finally the two men reached Williamsburg, rejoicing that they could soon perform their errand. But, to their dismay, they learned that the legislature had adjourned.

Clark sought an interview with the governor, Patrick Henry, and asked for a grant of five hundred pounds to buy powder for the use of the settlers in Kentucky in defending themselves against the Indians. When there was delay in furnishing the powder, he urged that "a country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming." These words proved effective, for Virginia intended to assert the right to Kentucky, against the Transylvania Company and all other claimants.

At the next session of the legislature, Clark and his associates brought about the organization of Kentucky as a 
   24

ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

county of Virginia. Henderson's title to the lands bought from the Indians was denied, but in recognition of his services in promoting settlement and opening the Wilderness Road he was given a tract of two hundred thousand acres at the mouth of Green river.

Boone, the real hero of the Wildernes Road, became a leader in the fight to save the Kentucky settlers from _the Indians, who were encouraged in their attacks by the British, the holders of the forts at St. Louis, Kaskaskia, Vin-cennes and Detroit. The Indians attacked the fort at Boonesborough several times in 1776 and 1777, but were repulsed.

In February, 1778, the defenders of the fort were deprived of their leader for a season. With thirty settlers Boone had gone to the lower Blue Lick to gather a supply of salt sufficient to last during a possible siege. The party was about to return to the fort when a warband of Shawnees captured Boone.

His captors took him to their camp, where he found a large party of warriors. The demand was made that he lead them to his companions. Naturally he did not wish to do this, but when he learned that the party was on the way to attack Boonesborough, he decided to comply with the demand. He understood savage nature well enough to foresee that if they had thirty captives, they would postpone their attack on the settlement until they could take their men in triumph to Detroit and secure the liberal reward offered by the British. Later he was tried by court-martial for this betrayal of his companions, but the court approved his defense that it was better that thirty men should go into captivity than that a settlement should be destroyed.

The journey to Detroit in the depth of winter proved difficult and dangerous. Intense cold and heavy snows interfered with game supplies. Finally some of the horses and dogs were killed for food. Later many were eager to kill the prisoners by torture.  Fifty-nine Shawnees voted to

1 
   THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP 25

burn the captives at the stake, but fortunately sixty-one voted to save them for the reward.

During the journey the Indians became so fond of Boone that they told him they wished to adopt him into the tribe. In vain Governor Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, offered one hundred pounds for Boone's release; he wished to use him as a scout. Boone was taken to the Shawnee village at Chillicothe, in Ohio, and there adopted by Chief Black Fish.

He pretended to like the life at the Indian camp, but he was only waiting for a chance to escape. The Shawnees, fearing that he might leave them, were determined that he should not secure a supply of powder and bullets; they know that he would not dare to enter the trackless forest unarmed. Careful account was kept of the ammunition furnished him when he went on hunting expeditions, and he was compelled to return all for which he could not give account. His cunning was greater than that of the Indians, for he managed to cut bullets in half and use small charges of powder when after small game. In this manner he laid by a small store of lead and powder.

When he had been a prisoner for four months, his curiosity was aroused by the coming into camp of hundreds of savages in war-paint. By this time he understood more of the Shawnee language than he was willing to own, so he had little difficulty in learning the purposes of the war party. They were planning an immediate attack on Boonesborough.

He did not hesitate an instant in making his decision. His people must be warned at once, and no one could carry the warning but himself. He knew that recapture was almost certain, yet he was willing to run the risk.

The story of the journey of one hundred and sixty miles to Boonesborough is one of the most thrilling tales of pioneer days. Early on the morning of June 16, 1778, he asked leave to spend the day in hunting. As soon as he was out of sight of camp, he turned toward Kentucky. All 
   26       ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS

his woodcraft was called into play to deceive those whom he knew would soon be on his track. He did not dare to shoot game, lest he betray his whereabouts.

At last he reached the Ohio. Unfortunately the river was in flood, and he was not a good swimmer. Discovering an old canoe, he crossed the stream. Then he renewed his precautions. He could not use his gun, for he feared to betray himself to possible pursuers. For three days he lived on roots and raw meat, but on the third day he ven-turned to shoot a buffalo. A day or two later he entered Boonesborough, torn and bleeding, and looking the specter the people took him for.

Two months later he led in the defense of the fort against four hundred and fifty Indians. Thus he cooperated in the saving of Kentucky with George Rogers Clark, who led the successful expedition against Kaskaskia and Vincennes.

After the Revolutionary war he moved on farther into the wilderness. Later he went to Maysville, where he opened a tavern and store. Still later, when he moved to Point Pleasant, in western Virginia, he was elected to the Virginia Assembly for the third time, having previously been a member from Boonesborough and from Maysville.

In 1796, when the Kentucky Legislature proposed to improve the Wilderness Road for wagon travel, Boone wrote to Governor Shelby:

Sir, after my best Respts to your Excellency and famyly, I wish to inform you that I have sum intention of undertaking this New Rode that