Archer Butler Hulbert

“ One roadway—the Wilderness Road to Kentucky from Virginia and Tennessee, the longest, blackest, hardest road of pioneer days in America—holds the oldtime name with undiminished loyalty and is true today to every gloomy description and vile epithet that was ever written or spoken of it. It was broken open for white man's use by Daniel Boone from the Watauga settlement on the Holston River, Tennessee, to the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River in the month preceding the outbreak of open revolution at Lexington and Concord. ”

“ NO English colony in America looked upon the central West with such jealous eye as Virginia. The beautiful valley of the Oyo—the Indian exclamation for "Beautiful"—which ran southwesterly through the great forests of the continent's interior was early claimed as the sole possession of the Virginians. The other colonies were hemmed in by prescribed boundary lines, definitely outlined in their royal charters. New York was bounded by Lake Erie and the Allegheny and thought little of the West. ”

“ Our pioneer literature is full of discreditable allusions, made by the second tide of pioneers who came West, concerning the scattered ranks of first comers, their moral character, their ways of thought and living. The later blue-blood stock had not a little to say concerning the pioneers of Western Virginia and Kentucky flavored with the same spice that Dickens employed when, a little later, he jotted down his "American Notes." ”

“ The backwoodsmen were no sentimentalists; they were grim, hard, matter-of-fact men, engaged all their lives long in an unending struggle with hostile forces, both human and natural; men who in this struggle had acquired many unamiable qualities, but who had learned likewise to appreciate at their full value the inestimable virtues of courage and common-sense. ”

“ The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of traveling ants might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of the ants—the strongest in body, the strongest in will—succeeded in getting over and establishing their colony in the country far beyond. ”

“ Ascending this stream with great caution, these heroes of the day rushed from its bed upon the enemy’s flank, and the tide of the battle was turned. The Indians, though having suffered least, fell back across the Ohio to their villages to the northward. The proposed junction of the two white armies was achieved, but Lewis had already sufficiently awed the Shawanese, who came to Dunmore’s Camp Charlotte in their valley, and gave their affirmation to the Fort Stanwix Treaty, which surrendered to the whites all the territory south of the Ohio and north of the Tennessee. ”

“ Far-reaching as the influence of the little roadway through Cumberland Gap has been, its actual history is of little interest or importance. Perhaps none of our ancient roads has done so much for society in proportion to the attention paid to it. Any adjective ever applied to a roadway, if it were of a derogatory character, might have been fitly applied to portions of this old track which played an important part in giving birth to the first and most important settlement in the West. ”

“ For when all is said this track from tide water through Cumberland Gap must remain a monument to the courage and patriotism of the people of old Virginia and North Carolina.
Cumberland Gap, “that high-swung gateway through the mountain” stands as [Pg 206] “a landmark of what Nature can do when she wishes to give an opportunity to the human race in its migrations and discoveries, without surrendering control of its liberty and its fate.” ”

“ It meant very much to the East that a strong colony was holding its own on the Ohio and Mississippi during the hours when the Revolutionary struggle was in progress; and it meant even more to the East that, upon the conclusion of that struggle, thousands whose future seemed as black as the forests of the West could immediately emigrate thither and begin life anew. But for the Virginians and Kentuckians along the Ohio it is almost certain that Great Britain would have divided the eastern half of this continent with the triumphant revolutionists. ”

“ Cast your eyes back on that long procession of missionaries in the cause of civilization; behold the men on foot with their trusty guns on their shoulders, driving stock and leading packhorses; and the women, some walking with pails on their heads, others riding with children in their laps, and other children swung in baskets on horses, fastened to the tails of others going before; see them encamped at night expecting to be massacred by Indians ”

“ The awful fate of the savages is unquestionable.
Before Richard Henderson arrived in Kentucky Daniel Boone wrote him: “My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to flustrate the intentions of the Indians, and keep the country whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case.”
This letter shows plainly how the best informed man in Kentucky regarded Henderson’s settlement at Boonesborough. ”

“ As we stood in the passway, amid the deepening shadows of the twilight and the solemn repose of the mighty landscape, the Gap seemed to be crowded with two invisible and countless pageants of human life, the one passing in, the other passing out; and the air grew thick with unheard utterances—primeval sounds undistinguishable and strange, of creatures nameless and never seen by man; the wild rush and whoop of retreating and pursuing tribes; the slow steps of watchful pioneers; the wail of dying children and the songs of homeless women ”

“ It is a hard journey today, one which cannot be made without taxing even the strongest; what was it before the route was dotted with cities and hamlets, before the road had been widened and bridged, before the mountains had been graded and the swamps drained, before the fierce lurking enemies had been driven away?
Neither Walker nor Gist traversed what became the famed Wilderness Road to Kentucky. When the Shawanese raided Draper’s Meadows, near Inglis Ferry, in 1755, they took their prisoners away on the trail through Powell’s Valley toward Cumberland Gap ”

“ It was altogether fitting that among the very first to follow Boone’s blazed road to Kentucky we should find Judge Henderson and his fellow-promoters of the Transylvania Company. Nothing shows more plainly the genuineness of their purposes and the heroism of their spirit. They were not foisting on their countrymen a hazardous scheme by which they should profit, while others bore the brunt of the toil and danger. True, Henderson had, purposely or unwittingly, ignored the technicality of Virginia’s claim to the possession of the West ”

“ The whirl of politics in Kentucky during the four decades after the Revolutionary War daunts even the student of modern Kentucky politics; and of one thing we may rest assured—had the State possessed a little less of the sober sense that came from Virginia through Cumberland Gap, it is certain the story of those wild days would not be as readable to modern Kentuckians as it is. It was more than fortunate for the young Republic that at the close of the Revolution there was a goodly population of expatriated Virginians and North Carolinians on the Mississippi, ready to press its claims there. ”

“ These parties of men found that a paradise for the husbandman was to be speedily revealed to the world at the foothills of the Cumberland and Pine mountains on the great plain falling away westward to the Mississippi. At first, only the most vague description of the rich meadows of the West reached the Virginian settlements, but, meager as they were, they started a tide of immigration quite unparalleled in American history. ”

“ But for them there could never have been a better West. Who composed the armies of McIntosh, Brodhead, Crawford, Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne but these rough, wild-looking men who first entered the West? What is now western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky gave practically all the troops which conquered the land between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. ”

“ The long climbing over the almost pathless mountains, the nights spent in discomfort, the countless trials, fears, dangers of which they knew so much and told so little—all this should make a story if it never has, that could not by any means find an uninterested reader. ”

“ Their campaign against the Overhill towns was slowly formed here on the little westward pathway, and it was not until the first of October that all the contributions of men and arms from the settlements between Fort Watauga and the Virginia frontier were received. The advance, by way of Big Island of the Holston, was slow but determined—each encampment being made absolutely secure against surprise. The Indians, learning of the strength of Christian’s army, knew better than to resist. ”

“ Of the brilliant operations of Clark in Illinois we know very much, and the part played by the Kentuckians on the Mississippi and Illinois has frequently been made plain. But a singular misconception of the nature of Indian warfare has robbed the heroes of old Kentucky of much honor due them. Judged by ordinary military standards, the numerous invasions of Ohio and Indiana by Kentuckians amounted to little. Such was not the real case, many times. The Indians could ever retreat helter-skelter into the forests, avoiding more than a mere skirmish with the advancing pioneers. ”

“ Yet at this season the Indians were often out waylaying travelers—driven no doubt by hunger to deeds of desperation. The sufferings of such redskinned marauders have found little place in history; but they are, nevertheless, particularly suggestive. One story, which has not perhaps been told ad nauseam, is to the point; and would be amusing if it were not so fatally conclusive. In the winter of 1787-88 a party on Boone’s Road was attacked by Indians not far from the Kentucky border. Their horses were plundered of goods, but the travelers escaped. ”

“ At any rate Boone’s Road brought into Kentucky thousands of pioneers who probably would have refused to move westward by the Ohio River route.
As for the benefit Kentucky itself received from Boone’s Road, that is self-evident. Taking everything into consideration, no distinct movement of population in America, before or since, can compare in magnitude with the burst of immigration through Cumberland Gap between 1775 and 1790. ”

“ The opening scene of the Revolutionary War in the West was the most important phase of the war in the history of Boone’s Wilderness Road; for at the very outset the question was decided once for all whether or not that thin, long, priceless path to Kentucky through the Watauga settlement was to be held or lost. If it could not be held, there was no hope left for the brave men who had gone to found that western empire beyond the Cumberland Mountains. ”

“ He was a graduate of Oxford University, joint author with Jefferson of Fry and Jefferson’s celebrated Map of Virginia, and a commissioner for the crown in establishing the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. He was killed by being thrown from his horse while taking command of Washington’s expedition against Fort Duquesne, four years later. These statistics show plainly that the best brain and blood of Virginia was foremost in attempting to realize Virginia’s dream of conquest and expansion.
But it was a time for brave men to show themselves. ”

“ War with all its horrors had yet brought something of good, for never before had the belief that a splendidly fertile empire lay to the westward taken such a hold upon the people of Virginia. Nothing more was needed but the positive assurance of large areas of good land, and a way to reach it. ”

“ There are now no refugees and the “Refugees Road” is lost not only to sight but to the memory of most. Perhaps there is but one road in the central West which is commonly known and called by the old Indian name; this is the “Tuscarawas Path,” a modern highway in Eastern Ohio which was widened and made a white man’s road by the first white army that ever crossed the Ohio River into what is now the State of Ohio. ”