KENTUCKY IN THE NATION'S

HISTORY

CHAPTER I

THE VANGUARD OF THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT

For almost two hundred years after the first voyage of Columbus the interior of the North American continent remained a trackless wilderness. The adventurous Spaniards in the South, in their mad search for gold, had indeed discovered the Mississippi River, and had buried within its mysterious waters the body of their heroic leader, De Soto, but of the sources of that river, and of the great valley drained by it, the world was almost as ignorant in 1692 as it had been two hundred years earlier. Those two centuries had been centuries of such

rapid progress in geographical discovery that it had been quite impossible for even the educated classes to assimilate the geographical knowledge laid before them, and it is in no wise remarkable that, even after the permanent colonization of the Atlantic seaboard was well under way, men should have followed with eagerness every strip of water extending westward, in the hope that it would lead them into the great South Sea which Balboa had discovered and Magellan had been the first to cross. It is quite natural also that among the instructions sent by the Virginia Company (1608) to Captain John Smith and his fellow colonists at Jamestown, was the command to dis

cover a passage to the South Sea,1 and that Henry Hudson should have followed, with the same hope, the course of the mighty river which bears his name.2

What was true of these men was true of many who followed them. It took an enormous amount of investigation to convince the world that the continent of North America was a vast mainland, through which it was vain to seek a passage by water to the Pacific, and it should not astonish us, therefore, to find that the two men who, at almost the same time, discovered the Kentucky region were engaged in this search.

Of these the first was no less a personage than the famous explorer, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, a native of Rouen in France, who at the age of twenty-three had migrated to Canada and was soon deeply involved in studying this problem. His faith in the existence of such a stream was strengthened from time to time by Indian tales, those uncertain guides which had led many a gallant explorer to his death. Entering the Allegheny near its source, he passed down the Ohio, until he came to the Falls where the city of Louisville now stands.3

"In making this long journey," says Colonel Durrett, "he was the discoverer of Kentucky from the Big Sandy to the Rapids of the Ohio, and was the first white man whose eyes looked Eastward from the beautiful river to

1 J. A. Doyle, "The English in America," p. 165; J. E. Cooke, “Virginia," P. 45.

* Fiske, "Discovery of America," II, p. 546.

3 I purposely omit the somewhat doubtful claim that Louis de Moscoso in 1543 passed along the southern boundary line of Kentucky with his forlorn band of Spanish adventurers. Collins, I, 14 and 509. Durrett's "Filson," p. 32, accepts the story. "Encyclopædia Britannica," La Salle.

• Durrett's "Centenary of Kentucky," p. 15.

the Bluegrass Land which forms the Garden Spot of the State."

Only two years after La Salle's visit, there came into the Kentucky region the representative of the race which was soon to dispute with France the possession of the district. In 1671, General Abraham Wood, by the authority of the testy old Tory Governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, sent out Captain Thomas Batts with a party in search of the river which would lead to the Pacific Ocean.1 Whether or not Batts actually crossed the Big Sandy and entered the territory now comprised in the State of Kentucky, it is quite impossible to determine from his journal, but he at least traced the pathway from the old settlements of Virginia to the trackless wilderness beyond the mountains.2

For almost half a century after the Batts expedition, we have no record or tradition of visits of white men to the wilderness of Kentucky. And when we again come, with the year 1730, to brief records of such visits they tell us

1 Cf. Durrett's "Centenary of Kentucky," p. 13. Colonel Durrett has in his collection a MS. copy of Captain Batts' "Journal." It is published in Vol. III of the "Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York," pp. 193-197.

2 This is probably the journey which Daniel Coxe had in mind when, in his "Description of the English Province of Carolana," he tells of a certain Colonel Wood of Virginia, who had discovered various branches of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Durrett's "Centenary of Kentucky," p. 12; Butler's Kentucky, 2d Ed., p. 499; Collins, I, p. 14; Long's "Expedition," I, p. 236; Albach's "Western Annals," p. 94, repeat the story.

3 In 1730, however, a certain John Salling of Williamsburg, Va., was captured near the James River by a band of Cherokee Indians and carried as far as the Salt Licks of Kentucky. Here he made his escape, but was again captured by a band of Illinois Indians and taken on to Kaskaskia, whence, having escaped a second time, he returned to Virginia, probably by way of the Cumberland Gap. "The Annals of Kentucky" (Collins, I, p. 15) state that Salling was ransomed at Kaskaskia and returned to Virginia by way of Canada. Cf. also Wither's "Border Warfare," p. 43; Butler's "Kentucky," 2d Ed., p. 21.

still only of chance wanderings in the region, and give very little beyond the bare statement of personal hardships and dangers.1

The knowledge of the western wilderness which the reports of such casual visitors gave to the people of Virginia, and of the other settlements east of the mountains, must have been extremely vague, but in spite of their ignorance concerning the district lying beyond the western mountains the people of Virginia, as early as 1749, had begun to cast wistful glances in that direction, suspecting that the day was soon to come when this country would be of value, and questioning how they could best secure those lands, whose ownership the French were already preparing to dispute with them. Following the precedent set by England in her efforts to colonize the Atlantic seaboard, some of her leading citizens organized land companies with a view to buying up vast tracts of this western wilderness, inducing settlers to migrate thither by giving them grants of land, and thus causing the rest to rise in value so as to repay the expenses of the venture.

The most important of these companies, from the standpoint of Kentucky history, were the so-called “Loyal Company" and the "Ohio Company." Of these the former was the first to act, and Dr. Thomas Walker of Albemarle County, Virginia, was selected to take charge of the task of locating lands granted it by Virginia. Late

1 In 1739 Longueil descended the Ohio from Canada and discovered the famous Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, and the same year the hostile attitude of the Chickasaw Indians caused the French authorities in Canada to send troops down the Ohio to punish them. "Annals," Collins, I, p. 15.

Durrett's "Filson," pp. 31-32; De Hass, "Western Virginia," p. 48, note; for description of visit of John Howard, in 1742, which served as one of the grounds for the English claim to the Ohio Valley. Collins, I, p. 15, note.