Conquest of the Old Southwest - Chapters VIII-XI



CHAPTER VIII.
THE LONG HUNTERS IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE

The long Hunters principally resided in the upper countries of Virginia & 
North Carolina on New River & Holston River, and when they intended to 
make a long Hunt (as they calls it) they Collected near the head of 
Holston near whare Abingdon now stands. . . .
--General William Hall.

Before the coming of Walker and Gist in 1750 and 1751 respectively, the 
region now called Kentucky had, as far as we know, been twice visited by 
the French, once in 1729 when Chaussegros de Lery and his party visited 
the Big Bone Lick, and again in the summer of 1749 when the Baron de 
Longueuil with four hundred and fifty-two Frenchmen and Indians, going to 
join Bienville in an expedition against "the Cherickees and other Indians 
lying at the back of Carolina and Georgia," doubtless encamped on the 
Kentucky shore of the Ohio. Kentucky was also traversed by John Peter 
Salling with his three adventurous companions in their journey through the 
Middle West in 1742. But all these early visits, including the memorable 
expeditions of Walker and Gist, were so little known to the general public 
that when John Filson wrote the history of Kentucky in 1784 he attributed 
its discovery to James McBride in 1754. More influential upon the course 
of westward expansion was an adventure which occurred in 1752, the very 
year in which the Boones settled down in their Vadkin home.

In the autumn of 1752, a Pennsylvania trader, John Findlay, with three or 
four companions, descended the Ohio River in a canoe as far as the falls 
at the present Louisville, Kentucky, and accompanied a party of Shawnees 
to their town of Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, eleven miles east of what is now 
Winchester.

This was the site of the "Indian Old Corn Field," the Iroquois name for 
which ("the place of many fields," or "prairie") was Ken -ta-ke, whence 
came the name of the state.

Five miles east of this spot, where still may be seen a mound and an 
ellipse showing the outline of the stockade, is the famous Pilot Knob, 
from the summit of which the fields surrounding the town lie visible in 
their smooth expanse. During Findlay's stay at the Indian town other 
traders from Pennsylvania and Virginia, who reported that they were "on 
their return from trading with the Cuttawas (Catawbas), a nation who live 
in the Territories of Carolina," assembled in the vicinity in January, 
1753. Here, as the result of disputes arising from their barter, they were 
set upon and captured by a large party of straggling Indians (Coghnawagas 
from Montreal) on January 26th; but Findlay and another trader named James 
Lowry were so fortunate as to escape and return through the wilderness to 
the Pennsylvania settlements." The incident is of important historic 
significance; for it was from these traders, who must have followed the 
Great Warriors' Path to the country of the Catawbas, that Findlay learned 
of the Ouasioto (Cumberland) Gap traversed by the Indian path. His 
reminiscences of this gateway to Kentucky, of the site of the old Indian 
town on Lulbegrud Creek, a tributary of the Red River, and of the Pilot 
Knobwere sixteen years later to fire Boone to his great tour of 
exploration in behalf of the Transylvania Company.

During the next two decades, largely because of the hostility of the 
savage tribes, only a few traders and hunters from the east ranged through 
the trans-Alleghany. But in 1761, a party of hunters led by a rough 
frontiersman, Elisha Walden, penetrated into Powell's Valley, followed the 
Indian trail through Cumberland Gap, explored the Cumberland River, and 
finally reached the Laurel Mountain where, encountering a party of 
Indians, they deemed it expedient to return. With Walden went Henry 
Scaggs, afterward explorer for the Henderson Land Company, William Elevens 
and Charles Cox, the famous Virginia hunters, one Newman, and some fifteen 
other stout pioneers. Their itinerary may be traced from the names given 
to natural objects in honor of members of the party--Walden's Mountain and 
Walden's Creek, Scaggs' Ridge and Newman's Ridge. Following the peace of 
1763, which made travel in this region moderately safe once more, the 
English proceeded to occupy the territory which they had won. In 1765 
George Croghan with a small party, on the way to prepare the inhabitants 
of the Illinois country for transfer to English sovereignty, visited the 
Great Bone Licks of Kentucky (May 30th, 31st); and a year later Captain 
Harry Gordon, chief engineer in the Western Department in North America, 
visited and minutely described the same licks and the falls. But these, 
and numerous other water-journeys and expeditions of which no records were 
kept, though interesting enough in themselves, had little bearing upon the 
larger phases of westward expansion and colonization.

The decade opening with the year 1765 is the epoch of bold and ever bolder 
exploration--the more adventurous frontiersmen of the border pushing deep 
into the wilderness in search of game, lured on by the excitements of the 
chase and the profit to be derived from the sale of peltries. In 
midsummer, 1766, Captain James Smith, Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William 
Baker, and a young mulatto slave passed through Cumberland Gap, hunted 
through the country south of the Cherokee and along the Cumberland and 
Tennessee rivers, and as Smith reports "found no vestige of any white 
man." During the same year a party of five hunters from South Carolina, 
led by Isaac Lindsey, penetrated the Kentucky wilderness to the tributary 
of the Cumberland, named Stone's River by the former party, for one of 
their number. Here they encountered two men, who were among the greatest 
of the western pioneers, and were destined to leave their names in 
historic association with the early settlement of Kentucky, James Harrod 
and Michael Stoner, a German, both of whom had descended the Ohio from 
Fort Pitt. With the year 1769 began those longer and more extended 
excursions into the interior which were to result in conveying at last to 
the outside world graphic and detailed information concerning "the 
wonderful new country of Cantucky." In the late spring of this year 
Hancock and Richard Taylor (the latter the father of President Zachary 
Taylor), Abraham Hempinstall, and one Barbour, all true-blue frontiersmen, 
left their homes in Orange County, Virginia, and hunted extensively in 
Kentucky and Arkansas. Two of the party traveled through Georgia and East 
and West Florida; while the other two hunted on the Washita during the 
winter of 1770-1. Explorations of this type became increasingly hazardous 
as the animosity of the Indians increased; and from this time onward for a 
number of years almost all the parties of roving hunters suffered capture 
or attack by the crafty red men. In this same year Major John McCulloch, 
living on the south branch of the Potomac, set out accompanied by a white 
man-servant and a negro, to explore the western country. While passing 
down the Ohio from Pittsburgh McCulloch was captured by the Indians near 
the mouth of the Wabash and carried to the present site of Terre Haute, 
Indiana. Set free after four or five months, he journeyed in company with 
some French voyageurs first to Natchez and then to New Orleans, whence he 
made the sea voyage to Philadelphia. Somewhat later, Benjamin Cleveland 
(afterward famous in the Revolution), attended by four companions, set out 
from his home on the upper Yadkin to explore the Kentucky wilderness. 
After passing through Cumberland Gap, they encountered a band of Cherokees 
who plundered them of everything they had, even to their hats and shoes, 
and ordered them to leave the Indian hunting-grounds. On their return 
journey they almost starved, and Cleveland, who was reluctantly forced to 
kill his faithful little hunting-dog, was wont to declare in after years 
that it was the sweetest meat he ever ate.

Fired to adventure by the glowing accounts brought back by Uriah Stone, a 
much more formidable band than any that had hitherto ventured westward--
including Uriah Stone as pilot, Gasper Mansker, John Rains, Isaac Bledsoe, 
and a dozen others--assembled in June, 1769, in the New River region. 
"Each Man carried two horses," says an early pioneer in describing one of 
these parties, "traps, a large supply of powder and led, and a small hand 
vise and bellows, files and screw plate for the purpose of fixing the guns 
if any of them should get out of fix." Passing through Cumberland Gap, 
they continued their long journey until they reached Price's Meadow, in 
the present Wayne County, Kentucky, where they established their 
encampment. In the course of their explorations, during which they gave 
various names to prominent natural features, they established their 
"station camp" on a creek in Sumner County, Tennessee, whence originated 
the name of Station Camp Creek. Isaac Bledsoe and Gasper Mansker, agreeing 
to travel from here in opposite directions along a buffalo trace passing 
near the camp, each succeeded in discovering the famous salt-lick which 
bears his name--namely Bledsoe's Lick and Mansker's Lick. The flat 
surrounding the lick, about one hundred acres in extent, discovered by 
Bledsoe, according to his own statement "was principally Covered with 
buffelows in every direction--not hundreds but thousands." As he sat on 
his horse, he shot down two deer in the lick; but the buffaloes blindly 
trod them in the mud. They did not mind him and his horse except when the 
wind blew the scent in their nostrils, when they would break and run in 
droves. Indians often lurked in the neighbourhood of these hunters -
plundering their camp, robbing them, and even shooting down one of their 
number, Robert Crockett, from ambush. After many trials and vicissitudes, 
which included a journey to the Spanish Natchez and the loss of a great 
mass of peltries when they were plundered by Piomingo and a war party of 
Chickasaws, they finilly reached home in the late spring of 1770."

The most notable expedition of this period, projected under the auspices 
of two bold leaders extraordinarily skilled in woodcraft, Joseph Drake and 
Henry Scaggs, was organized in the early autumn of 1770. This imposing 
band of stalwart hunters from the New River and Holston country, some 
forty in number, garbed in hunting shirts, leggings, and moccasins, with 
three pack-horses to each man, rifles, ammunition, traps, dogs, blankets, 
and salt, pushed boldly through Cumberland Gap into the heart of what was 
later justly named the "Dark and Bloody Ground" (see Chapter XIV)--"not 
doubting," says an old border chronicler, "that they were to be 
encountered by Indians, and to subsist on game." From the duration of 
their absence from home, they received the name of the Long Hunters--the 
romantic appellation by which they are known in the pioneer history of the 
Old Southwest. Many natural objects were named by this party--in 
particular Dick's River, after the noted Cherokee hunter, Captain Dick, 
who, pleased to be recognized by Charles Scaggs, told the Long Hunters 
that on HIS river, pointing it out, they would find meat plenty--adding 
with laconic signifigance: "Kill it and go home." From the Knob Lick, in 
Lincoln County, as reported by a member of the party, "they beheld largely 
over a thousand animals, including buffaloe, elk, bear, and deer, with 
many wild turkies scattered among them; all quite restless, some playing, 
and others busily employed in licking the earth . . . . The buffaloe and 
other animals had so eaten away the soil, that they could, in places, go 
entirely underground." Upon the return of a detachment to Virginia, 
fourteen fearless hunters chose to remain; and one day, during the absence 
of some of the band upon a long exploring trip, the camp was attacked by a 
straggling party of Indians under Will Emery, a halfbreed Cherokee. Two of 
the hunters were carried into captivity and never heard of again; a third 
managed to escape. In embittered commemoration of the plunder of the camp 
and the destruction of the peltries, they inscribed upon a poplar, which 
had lost its bark, this emphatic record, followed by their names:

2300 Deer Skins lost Ruination by God 

Undismayed by this depressing stroke of fortune, they continued their hunt 
in the direction of the lick which Bledsoe had discovered the preceding 
year. Shortly after this discovery, a French voyageur from the Illinois 
who had hunted and traded in this region for a decade, Timothe de 
Monbreun, subsequently famous in the history of Tennessee, had visited the 
lick and killed an enormous number of buffaloes for their tallow and 
tongues with which he and his companion loaded a keel boat and descended 
the Cumberland. An early pioneer, William Hall, learned from Isaac Bledsoe 
that when "the long hunters Crossed the ridge and came down on Bledsoe's 
Creek in four or five miles of the Lick the Cane had grown up so thick in 
the woods that they thought they had mistaken the place until they Came to 
the Lick and saw what had been done . . . . One could walk for several 
hundred yards a round the Lick and in the lick on buffellows Skuls, & 
bones and the whole flat round the Lick was bleached with buffellows 
bones, and they found out the Cause of the Canes growing up so suddenly a 
few miles around the Lick which was in Consequence of so many buffellows 
being killed."

This expedition was of genuine importance, opening the eyes of the 
frontiersmen to the charms of the country and influencing many to settle 
subsequently in the West, some in Tennessee, some in Kentucky. The 
elaborate and detailed information brought back by Henry Scaggs exerted an 
appreciable influence, no doubt, in accelerating the plans of Richard 
Henderson and Company for the acquisition and colonization of the trans-
Alleghany. But while the "Long Hunters" were in Tennessee and Kentucky the 
same region was being more extensively and systematically explored by 
Daniel Boone. To his life, character, and attainments, as the typical 
"long hunter" and the most influential pioneer we may now turn our 
particular attention.



CHAPTER IX.
DANIEL BOONE AND WILDERNESS EXPLORATION

Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent; where the 
horrid yells of the savages, and the groans of the distressed, sounded in 
our ears, we now hear the praises and adorations of our Creator; where 
wretched wigwams stood, the miserable abodes of savages, we behold the 
foundations of cities laid, that, in all probability, will equal the glory 
of the greatest upon earth.
--Daniel Boone, 1781.

The wandering life of a border Nimrod in a surpassingly beautiful country 
teeming with game was the ideal of the frontiersman of the eighteenth 
century. AS early as 1728, while running the dividing line between North 
Carolina and Virginia, William Byrd encountered along the North Carolina 
frontier the typical figure of the professional hunter: "a famous 
Woodsman, call'd Epaphroditus Bainton. This Forester Spends all his time 
in ranging the Woods, and is said to make great Havock among the Deer, and 
other Inhabitants of the Forest, not much wilder than himself." By the 
middle of the century, as he was threading his way through the Carolina 
piedmont zone, the hunter's paradise of the Yadkin and Catawba country, 
Bishop Spangenberg found ranging there many hunters, living like Indians, 
who killed thousands of deer each year and sold the skins in the local 
markets or to the fur-traders from Virginia whose heavy pack-trains with 
their tinkling bells constantly traversed the course of the Great Trading 
Path. The superlative skill of one of these hunters, both as woodsman and 
marksman, was proverbial along the border. The name of Daniel Boone became 
synonymous with expert huntsmanship and almost uncanny wisdom in forest 
lore. The bottoms of the creek near the Boone home, three miles west of 
present Mocksville, contained a heavy growth of beech, which dropped large 
quantities of its rich nuts or mast, greatly relished by bears; and this 
creek received its name, Bear Creek, because Daniel and his father killed 
in its rich bottoms ninety-nine bears in a single hunting-season. After 
living for a time with his young wife, Rebecca Bryan, in a cabin in his 
father's yard, Daniel built a home of his own upon a tract of land, 
purchased from his father on October 12, 1759, and lying on Sugar Tree, a 
tributary of Dutchman's Creek. Here he dwelt for the next five years, with 
the exception of the period of his temporary removal to Virginia during 
the terrible era of the Indian war. Most of his time during the autumn and 
winter, when he was not engaged in wagoning or farming, he spent in long 
hunting-journeys into the mountains to the west and northwest. During the 
hunting-season of 1760 he struck deeper than ever before into the western 
mountain region and encamped in a natural rocky shelter amidst fine 
hunting-grounds, in what is now Washington County in east Tennessee. Of 
the scores of inscriptions commemorative of his hunting-feats, which Boone 
with pardonable pride was accustomed throughout his life time to engrave 
with his hunting-knife upon trees and rocks, the earliest known is found 
upon a leaning beech tree, only recently fallen, near his camp and the 
creek which since that day has borne his name. This is a characteristic 
and enduring record in the history of American exploration

D. Boon CillED A. BAR On          Tree  in
The        yEAR           1760

Late in the summer of the following year Boone marched under the command 
of the noted Indian-fighter of the border, Colonel Hugh Waddell, in his 
campaign against the Cherokees. From the lips of Waddell, who was 
outspoken in his condemnation of Byrd's futile delays in road-cutting and 
fort-building, Boone learned the true secret of success in Indian warfare, 
which was lost upon Braddock, Forbes, and later St. Clair: that the art of 
defeating red men was to deal them a sudden and unexpected blow, before 
they had time either to learn the strength of the force employed against 
them or to lay with subtle craft their artful ambuscade.

In the late autumn of 1761, Daniel Boone and Nathaniel Gist, the son of 
Washington's famous guide, who were both serving under Waddell, 
temporarily detached themselves from his command and led a small party on 
a "long hunt" in the Valley of the Holston, While encamping near the site 
of Black's Fort, subsequently built, they were violently assailed by a 
pack of fierce wolves which they had considerable difficulty in beating 
off; and from this incident the locality became known as Wolf Hills (now 
Abingdon, Virginia). 

From this time forward Boone's roving instincts had full sway. For many 
months each year he threaded his way through that marvelously beautiful 
country of western North Carolina felicitously described as the 
Switzerland of America. Boone's love of solitude and the murmuring forest 
was surely inspired by the phenomenal beauties of the country' through 
which he roamed at will. Blowing Rock on one arm of a great horseshoe of 
mountains and Tryon Mountain upon the other arm, overlooked an enormous, 
primeval bowl, studded by a thousand emerald-clad eminences. There was the 
Pilot Mountain, the towering and isolated pile which from time immemorial 
had served the aborigines as a guide in their forest wanderings; there was 
the dizzy height of the Roan on the border; there was Mt. Mitchell, 
portentous in its grandeur, the tallest peak on the continent east of the 
Rockies; and there was the Grandfather, the oldest mountain on earth 
according to geologists, of which it has been written:

Oldest of all terrestrial things--still holding Thy wrinkled forehead 
high; Whose every scam, earth's history enfolding, Grim science doth defy!

Thou caught'st the far faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space 
first was hurled The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, This atom, 
called the World!

What more gratifying to the eye of the wanderer than the luxuriant 
vegetation and lavish profusion of the gorgeous flowers upon the mountain 
slopes, radiant rhododendron, rosebay, and laurel, and the azalea rising 
like flame; or the rare beauties of the water--the cataract of Linville, 
taking its shimmering leap into the gorge, and that romantic river 
poetically celebrated in the lines:

Swannanoa, nymph of beauty, I would woo thee in my rhyme, Wildest, 
brightest, loveliest river Of our sunny Southern clime.    * * * Gone 
forever from the borders But immortal in thy name, Are the Red Men of the 
forest Be thou keeper of their fame! Paler races dwell beside thee, Celt 
and Saxon till thy lands Wedding use unto thy beauty Linking over thee 
their hands.

The long rambling excursions which Boone made through western North 
Carolina and eastern Tennessee enabled him to explore every nook and 
corner of the rugged and beautiful mountain region. Among the companions 
and contemporaries with whom he hunted and explored the country were his 
little son James and his brother Jesse; the Linville who gave the name to 
the beautiful falls; Julius Caesar Dugger, whose rock house stood near the 
head of Elk Creek; and Nathaniel Gist, who described for him the lofty 
gateway to Kentucky, through which Christopher Gist had passed in 1751. 
Boone had already heard of this gateway, from Findlay, and it was one of 
the secret and cherished ambitions of his life to scale the mountain wall 
of the Appalachians and to reach that high portal of the Cumberland which 
beckoned to the mysterious new Eden beyond. Although hunting was an 
endless delight to Boone he was haunted in the midst of this pleasure, as 
was Kipling's Explorer, by the lure of the undiscovered:

Till a voice as bad as conscience, rang interminable changes On one 
everlasting whisper day and night repeated--so: 'Something hidden. Go and 
find it. Go and look behind the ranges- 'Something lost behind the ranges. 
Lost and waiting for you. Go.'

Of Boone's preliminary explorations for the land company known as Richard 
Henderson and Company, an account has already been given; and the delay in 
following them up has been touched on and in part explained. Meanwhile 
Boone transferred his efforts for a time to another field. Toward the 
close of the summer of 1765 a party consisting of Major John Field, 
William Hill, one Slaughter, and two others, all from Culpeper County, 
Virginia, visited Boone and induced him to accompany them on the "long 
Journey" to Florida, whither they were attracted by the liberal offer of 
Colonel James Grant, governor of the eastern section, the Florida of to-
day. On this long and arduous expedition they suffered many hardships and 
endured many privations, found little game, and on one occasion narrowly 
escaped starvation. They explored Florida from St. Augustine to Pensacola; 
and Boone, who relished fresh scenes and a new environment, purchased a 
house and lot in Pensacola in anticipation of removal thither. But upon 
his return home, finding his wife unwilling to go, Boone once more turned 
his eager eye toward the West, that mysterious and alluring region beyond 
the great range, the fabled paradise of Kentucky.

The following year four young men from the Yadkin, Benjamin Cutbird, John 
Stewart (Boone's brother-in-law who afterwards accompanied him to 
Kentucky), John Baker, and James Ward made a remarkable journey to the 
westward, crossing the Appalachian mountain chain over some unknown route, 
and finally reaching the Mississippi. The significance of the journey, in 
its bearing upon westward expansion, inheres in the fact that while for 
more than half a century the English traders from South Carolina had been 
winning their way to the Mississippi along the lower routes and Indian 
trails, this was the first party from either of the Carolinas, as far as 
is known, that ever reached the Mississippi by crossing the great mountain 
barrier. When Cutbird, a superb woodsman and veritable Leather stocking, 
narrated to Boone the story of his adventures, it only confirmed Boone in 
his determination to find the passage through the mountain chain leading 
to the Mesopotamia of Kentucky.

Such an enterprise was attended by terrible dangers. During 1766 and 1767 
the steady encroachments of the white settlers upon the ancestral domain 
which the Indians reserved for their imperial hunting-preserve aroused 
bitter feelings of resentment among the red men. Bloody reprisal was often 
the sequel to such encroachment. The vast region of Tennessee and the 
trans-Alleghany was a twilight zone, through which the savages roamed at 
will. From time to time war parties of northern Indians, the inveterate 
foes of the Cherokees, scouted through this no-man's land and even 
penetrated into the western region of North Carolina, committing murders 
and depredations upon the Cherokees and the whites indiscriminately. 
During the summer of 1766, while Boone's friend and close connection, 
Captain William Linville, his son John, and another young man, named John 
Williams, were in camp some ten miles below Linville Falls, they were 
unexpectedly fired upon by a hostile band of Northern Indians, and before 
they had time to fire a shot, a second volley killed both the Linvilles 
and severely wounded Williams, who after extraordinary sufferings finally 
reached the settlements." In May, 1767, four traders and a half-breed 
child of one of them were killed in the Cherokee country. In the summer of 
this year Governor William Tryon of North Carolina laid out the boundary 
line of the Cherokees, and upon his return issued a proclamation 
forbidding any purchase of land from the Indians and any issuance of 
grants for land within one mile of the boundary line. Despite this wise 
precaution, seven North Carolina hunters who during the following 
September had lawlessly ventured into the mountain region some sixty miles 
beyond the boundary were fired upon, and several of them killed, by the 
resentful Cherokees Undismayed by these signs of impending danger, 
undeterred even by the tragic fate of the Linvilles, Daniel Boone, with 
the determination of the indomitable pioneer, never dreamed of 
relinquishing his long-cherished design. Discouraged by the steady 
disappearance of game under the ruthless attack of innumerable hunters, 
Boone continued to direct his thoughts toward the project of exploring the 
fair region of Kentucky. The adventurous William Hill, to whom Boone 
communicated his purpose, readily consented to go with him; and in the 
autumn of 1768 Boone and Hill, accompanied, it is believed, by Squire 
Boone, Daniel's brother, set forth upon their almost inconceivably 
hazardous expedition. They crossed the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, the 
Holston and Clinch rivers near their sources, and finally reached the head 
waters of the West Fork of the Big Sand. Surmising from its course that 
this stream must flow into the Ohio, they pushed on a hundred miles to the 
westward and finally, by following a buffalo path, reached a salt-spring 
in what is now Floyd County, in the extreme eastern section of Kentucky. 
Here Boone beheld great droves of buffalo that visited the salt-spring to 
drink the water or lick the brackish soil. After spending the winter in 
hunting and trapping, the Boones and Hill, discouraged by the forbidding 
aspect of the hill-country which with its dense growth of laurel was 
exceedingly difficult to penetrate, abandoned all hope of finding Kentucky 
by this route and wended their arduous way back to the Yadkin.

The account of Boone's subsequent accomplishment of his purpose must be 
postponed to the next chapter.



CHAPTER X.
DANIEL BOONE IN KENTUCKY

He felt very much as Columbus did, gazing from his caravel on San 
Salvador; as Cortes, looking down, from the crest of Ahualco, on the 
Valley of Mexico; or Vasco Nunez, standing alone on the peak of Darien, 
and stretching his eyes over the hitherto undiscovered waters of the 
Pacific.
---William Gilmore Simms: Views and Reviews.



A chance acquaintance formed by Daniel Boone, during the French and Indian 
War, with the Irish lover of adventure, John Findlay, was the origin of 
Boone's cherished longing to reach the El Dorado of the West. In this 
slight incident we may discern the initial inspiration for the epochal 
movement of westward expansion. Findlay was a trader and horse peddler, 
who had early migrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had been licensed a 
trader with the Indians in 1747. During the same year he was married to 
Elizabeth Harris, daughter of John Harris, the Indian-trader at Harris's 
Ferry on the Susquehanna River, after whom Harrisburg was named. During 
the next eight years Findlay carried on his business of trading in the 
interior. Upon the opening of the French and Indian War he was probably 
among "the young men about Paxtang who enlisted immediately," and served 
as a waggoner in Braddock's expedition. Over the campfires, during the 
ensuing campaign in 1765, young Boone was an eager listener to Findlay's 
stirring narrative of his adventures in the Ohio Valley and on the 
wonderfully beautiful levels of Kentucky in 1752. The fancies aroused in 
his brooding mind by Findlay's moving recital and his description of an 
ancient passage through the Ouasioto or Cumberland Gap and along the 
course of the Warrior's Path, inspired him with an irrepressible longing 
to reach that alluring promised land which was the perfect realization of 
the hunter's paradise.

Thirteen years later, while engaged in selling pins, needles, thread, and 
Irish linens in the Yadkin country, Findlay learned from the Pennsylvania 
settlers at Salisbury or at the Forks of the Yadkin of Boone's removal to 
the waters of the upper Yadkin. At Boone's rustic home, in the winter of 
1768-9, Findlay visited his old comrade-in-arms of Braddock's campaign. On 
learning of Boone's failure during the preceding year to reach the 
Kentucky levels by way of the inhospitable Sandy region, Findlay again 
described to him the route through the Ouasioto Gap traversed sixteen 
years before by Pennsylvania traders in their traffic with the Catawbas. 
Boone, as we have seen, knew that Christopher Gist, who had formerly lived 
near him on the upper Yadkin, had found some passage through the lofty 
mountain defiles; but he had never been able to discover the passage. 
Findlay's renewed descriptions of the immense herds of buffaloes he had 
seen in Kentucky, the great salt-licks where they congregated, the 
abundance of bears, deer, and elk with which the country teemed, the 
innumerable flocks of wild turkeys, geese, and ducks, aroused in Boone the 
hunter's passion for the chase; while the beauty of the lands, as mirrored 
in the vivid fancy of the Irishman, inspired him with a new longing to 
explore the famous country which had, as John Filson records, "greatly 
engaged Mr. Findlay's attention."

In the comprehensive designs of Henderson, now a judge, for securing a 
"graphic report of the trans-Alleghany region in behalf of his land 
company", Boone divined the means of securing the financial backing for an 
expedition of considerable size and ample equipment. In numerous suits for 
debt, aggregating hundreds of dollars, which had been instituted against 
Boone by some of the leading citizens of Rowan, Williams and Henderson had 
acted as Boone's attorneys. In order to collect their legal fees, they 
likewise brought suit against Boone; but not wishing to press the action 
against the kindly scout who had hitherto acted as their agent in western 
exploration, they continued the litigation from court to court, in lieu of 
certain "conditions performed" on behalf of Boone, during his unbroken 
absence, by his attorney in this suit, Alexander Martin. Summoned to 
appear in 1769 at the March term of court at Salisbury, Boone seized upon 
the occasion to lay before Judge Henderson the designs for a renewed and 
extended exploration of Kentucky suggested by the golden opportunity of 
securing the services of Findlay as guide. Shortly after March 6th, when 
Judge Henderson reached Salisbury, the conference, doubtless attended by 
John Stewart, Boone's brother-in-law, John Findlay, and Boone, who were 
all present at this term of court, must have been held, for the purpose of 
devising ways and means for the expedition. Peck, the only reliable 
contemporary biographer of the pioneer, who derived many facts from Boone 
himself and his intimate acquaintances, draws the conclusion (1847): 
"Daniel Boone was engaged as the master spirit of this exploration, 
because in his judgment and fidelity entire confidence could be reposed . 
. . . He was known to Henderson and encouraged by him to make the 
exploration, and to examine particularly the whole country south of the 
Kentucky--or as then called the Louisa River." As confidential agent of 
the land company, Boone carried with him letters and instructions for his 
guidance upon this extended tour of exploration."

On May 1, 1769, with Findlay as guide, and accompanied by four of his 
neighbors, John Stewart, a skilled woodsman, Joseph Holden, James Mooney, 
and William Cooley, Boone left his "peaceable habitation" on the upper 
Yadkin and began his historic journey "in quest of the country of 
Kentucky." Already heavily burdened with debts, Boone must have incurred 
considerable further financial obligations to Judge Henderson and Colonel 
Williams, acting for the land company, in order to obtain the large amount 
of supplies requisite for so prolonged an expedition. Each of the 
adventurers rode a good horse of strength and endurance; and behind him 
were securely strapped the blanket, ammunition, salt, and cooking-utensils 
so indispensable for a long sojourn in the wilderness. In Powell's Valley 
they doubtless encountered the party led thither by Joseph Martin (see 
Chapter VII), and there fell into the "Hunter's Trail" commented on in a 
letter written by Martin only a fortnight before the passing of Boone's 
cavalcade. Crossing the mountain at the Ouasioto Gap, they made their 
first "station camp" in Kentucky on the creek, still named after that 
circumstance, on the Red Lick Fork. After a preliminary journey for the 
purpose of locating the spot, Findlay led the party to his old trading-
camp at Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki, where then (June 7, 1769) remained but 
charred embers of the Indian huts, with some of the stockading and the 
gate-posts still standing. In Boone's own words, he and Findlay at once 
"proceeded to take a more thorough survey of the country;" and during the 
autumn and early winter, encountering on every hand apparently 
inexhaustible stocks of wild game and noting the ever-changing beauties of 
the country, the various members of the party made many hunting and 
exploring journeys from their "station camp" as base. On December 22, 
1769, while engaged in a hunt, Boone and Stewart were surprised and 
captured by a large party of Shawanoes, led by Captain Will, who were 
returning from the autumn hunt on Green River to their villages north of 
the Ohio. Boone and Stewart were forced to pilot the Indians to their main 
camp, where the savages, after robbing them of all their peltries and 
supplies and leaving them inferior guns and little ammunition, set off to 
the northward. They left, on parting, this menacing admonition to the 
white intruders: "Now, brothers, go home and stay there. Don't come here 
any more, for this is the Indians' hunting-ground, and all the animals, 
skins, and furs are ours. If you are so foolish as to venture here again, 
you may be sure the wasps and yellow jackets will sting you severely."

Chagrined particularly by the loss of the horses, Boone and Stewart for 
two days pursued the Indians in hot haste. Finally approaching the 
Indians' camp by stealth in the dead of night, they secured two of the 
horses, upon which they fled at top speed. In turn they were immediately 
pursued by a detachment of the Indians, mounted upon their fleetest 
horses; and suffered the humiliation of recapture two days later. 
Indulging in wild hilarity over the capture of the crestfallen whites, the 
Indians took a bell from one of the horses and, fastening it about Boone's 
neck, compelled him under the threat of brandished tomahawks to caper 
about and jingle the bell, jeering at him the while with the derisive 
query, uttered in broken English: "Steal horse, eh?" With as good grace as 
they could summon--wry smiles at best--Boone and Stewart patiently endured 
these humiliations, following the Indians as captives. Some days later 
(about January 4, 1770), while the vigilance of the Indians was 
momentarily relaxed, the captives suddenly plunged into a dense canebrake 
and in the subsequent confusion succeeded in effecting their escape. 
Finding their camp deserted upon their return, Boone and Stewart hastened 
on and finally overtook their companions. Here Boone was both surprised 
and delighted to encounter his brother Squire, loaded down with supplies. 
Having heard nothing from Boone, the partners of the land company had 
surmised that he and his party must have run short of ammunition, flour, 
salt, and other things sorely needed in the wilderness; and because of 
their desire that the party should remain, in order to make an exhaustive 
exploration of the country, Squire Boone had been sent to him with 
supplies. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley returned to the settlements; 
but Stewart, Squire Boone, and Alexander Neely, who had accompanied 
Squire, threw in their lot with the intrepid Daniel, and fared forth once 
more to the stirring and bracing adventures of the Kentucky wilderness. In 
Daniel Boone's own words, he expected "from the furs and peltries they had 
an opportunity of taking . . . to recruit his shattered circumstances; 
discharge the debts he had contracted by the adventure; and shortly return 
under better auspices, to settle the newly discovered country." 

Boone and his party now stationed themselves near the mouth of the Red 
River, and soon provided themselves, against the hard. ships of the long 
winter, with jerk, bear's oil, buffalo tallow, dried buffalo tongues, 
fresh meat, and marrow-bones as food, and buffalo robes and bearskins as 
shelter from the inclement weather. Neely had brought with him, to while 
away dull hours, a copy of "Gulliver's Travels"; and in describing Neely's 
successful hunt for buffalo one day, Boone in after years amusingly 
deposed: "In the year 1770 I encamped on Red River with five other men, 
and we had with us for our amusement the History of Samuel Gulliver's 
Travels, wherein he gave an account of his young master, Glumdelick, 
careing him on market day for a show to a town called Lulbegrud. A young 
man of our company called Alexander Neely came to camp and told us he had 
been that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their 
capital." Far from unlettered were pioneers who indulged together in such 
literary chat and gave to the near-by creek the name (after Dean Swift's 
Lorbrugrud) of Lulbegrud which name, first seen on Filson's map of 
Kentucky (1784), it bears to this day. From one of his long, solitary 
hunts Stewart never returned; and it was not until five years later, while 
cutting out the Transylvania Trail, that Boone and his companions 
discovered, near the old crossing at Rockcastle, Stewart's remains in a 
standing hollow sycamore. The wilderness never gave up its tragic secret.

The close of the winter and most of the spring were passed by the Boones, 
after Neely's return to the settlements, in exploration, hunting, and 
trapping beaver and otter, in which sport Daniel particularly excelled. 
Owing to the drain upon their ammunition, Squire was at length compelled 
to return to the settlements for supplies; and Daniel, who remained alone 
in the wilderness to complete his explorations for the land company, must 
often have shared the feelings of Balboa as, from lofty knob or towering 
ridge, he gazed over the waste of forest which spread from the dim out 
lines of the Alleghanies to the distant waters of the Mississippi. He now 
proceeded to make those remarkable solitary explorations of Kentucky which 
have given him immortality--through the valley of the Kentucky and the 
Licking, and along the "Belle Riviere" (Ohio) as low as the falls. He 
visited the Big Bone Lick and examined the wonderful fossil remains of the 
mammoth found there. Along the great buffalo roads, worn several feet 
below the surface of the ground, which led to the Blue Licks, he saw with 
amazement and delight thousands of huge shaggy buffalo gamboling, 
bellowing, and making the earth rumble beneath the trampling of their 
hooves. One day, while upon a cliff near the junction of the Kentucky and 
Dick's Rivers, he suddenly found himself hemmed in by a party of Indians. 
Seizing his only chance of escape, he leaped into the top of a maple tree 
growing beneath the cliffs and, sliding to safety full sixty feet below, 
made his escape, pursued by the sound of a chorus of guttural "Ughs" from 
the dumbfounded savages.

Finally making his way back to the old camp, Daniel was rejoined there by 
Squire on July 27, 1770. During the succeeding months, much of their time 
was spent in hunting and prospecting in Jessamine County, where two caves 
are still known as Boone's caves. Eventually, when ammunition and supplies 
had once more run low, Squire was compelled a second time to return to the 
settlements. Perturbed after a time by Squire's failure to rejoin him at 
the appointed time, Daniel started toward the settlements, in search of 
him; and by a stroke of good fortune encountered him along the trail. 
Overjoyed at this meeting (December, 1770) the indomitable Boones once 
more plunged into the wilderness, determined to conclude their 
explorations by examining the regions watered by the Green and Cumberland 
rivers and their tributaries. In after years, Gasper Mansker, the old 
German scout, was accustomed to describe with comic effect the 
consternation created among the Long Hunters, while hunting one day on 
Green River, by a singular noise which they could not explain. Stealthily 
slipping from tree to tree, Mansker finally beheld with mingled surprise 
and amusement a hunter, bareheaded, stretched flat upon his back on a 
deerskin spread on the ground, singing merrily at the top of his voice! It 
was Daniel Boone, joyously whiling away the solitary hours in singing one 
of his favorite songs of the border. In March, 1771, after spending some 
time in company with the Long Hunters, the Boones, their horses laden with 
furs, set their faces homeward. On their return journey, near Cumberland 
Gap, they had the misfortune to be surrounded by a party of Indians who 
robbed them of their guns and all their peltries. With this humiliating 
conclusion to his memorable tour of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he 
himself says, "once more reached home after experiencing hardships which 
would defy credulity in the recital."

Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the ambition of 
years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a second paradise." The 
reports of his extended explorations, which he made to Judge Henderson, 
were soon communicated to the other partners of the land company; and 
their letters of this period, to one another, bristle with glowing and 
minute descriptions of the country, as detailed by their agent. Boone was 
immediately engaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the Cherokees 
confidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or sell the 
beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. The high hopes of 
Henderson and his associates at last gave promise of brilliant 
realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions of Kentucky excited in 
their minds, says a gifted early chronicler, the "spirit of an enterprise 
which in point of magnitude and peril, as well as constancy and heroism 
displayed in its execution, has never been paralleled in the history of 
America."



CHAPTER XI.
THE REGULATORS

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, but if he 
has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one cow to give a 
little milk for his children, they must all go to raise money which is not 
to be had. And lastly if his personal estate (sold at one tenth of its 
value) will not do, then his lands (which perhaps has cost him many years 
of toil and labour) must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungry 
caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our 
Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a very short 
time.
--George Sims: A Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County, 
containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer .... and some 
necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier explorations in 
behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel Boone anticipated speedy 
removal to the West. Indeed, in the very year of his first tour in their 
interest, Daniel and his wife Rebeckah sold all their property in North 
Carolina, consisting of their home and six hundred and forty acres of 
land, and after several removals established themselves upon the upper 
Yadkin. This removal and the later western explorations just outlined were 
due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery. Three other 
causes also were at work. In the first place there was the scarcity of 
game. For fifteen years the shipments of deerskins from Bethabara to 
Charleston steadily increased; and the number of skins bought by Gammern, 
the Moravian storekeeper, ran so high that in spite of the large purchases 
made at the store by the hunters he would sometimes run entirely out of 
money. Tireless in the chase, the far roaming Boone was among "the 
hunters, who brought in their skins from as far away as the Indian lands"; 
and the beautiful upland pastures and mountain forests, still teeming with 
deer and bear, doubtless lured him to the upper Yadkin, where for a time 
in the immediate neighborhood of his home abundance of game fell before 
his unerring rifle. Certainly the deer and other game, which were being 
killed in enormous numbers to satisfy the insatiable demand of the traders 
at Salisbury, the Forks, and Bethabara, became scarcer and scarcer; and 
the wild game that was left gradually fled to the westward. Terrible 
indeed was the havoc wrought among the elk; and it was reported that the 
last elk was killed in western North Carolina as early as 1781.

Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope in the back 
country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguised outlawry, similar 
to that found on the western plains of a later era. This ruthless brigand 
age arose as the result of the unsettled state of the country and the 
exposed condition of the settlements due to the Indian alarms. When rude 
borderers, demoralized by the enforced idleness attendant upon fort life 
during the dark days of Indian invasion, sallied forth upon forays against 
the Indians, they found much valuable property--horses, cattle, and stock--
left by their owners when hurriedly fleeing to the protection of the 
frontier stockades. The temptations thus afforded were too great to 
resist; and the wilder spirits of the backwoods, with hazy notions of 
private rights, seized the property which they found, slaughtered the 
cattle, sold the horses, and appropriated to their own use the temporarily 
abandoned household goods and plantation tools. The stealing of horses, 
which were needed for the cultivation of the soil and useful for quickly 
carrying unknown thieves beyond the reach of the owner and the law, became 
a common practice; and was carried on by bands of outlaws living remote 
from one another and acting in collusive concert.

Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon the New River 
settlements in Virginia had frightened away all the families at the Town 
Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, a man of Welsh stock, who had 
settled in the spring of 1752 in the upper Yadkin near the Mulberry 
Fields, was suspected of having robbed the storekeeper on the Meho. Not 
long afterward a band of outlaws who plundered the exposed cabins in their 
owners' absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain region in the rear of 
the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their ill-gotten plunder and 
made themselves secure from attack. Other members of the band dwelt in the 
settlements, where they concealed their robber friends by day and aided 
them by night in their nefarious projects of theft and rapine.

The entire community was finally aroused by the bold depredations of the 
outlaws; and the most worthy settlers of the Yadkin country organized 
under the name of Regulators to break up the outlaw band. When it was 
discovered that Owen, who was well known at Bethabara, had allied himself 
with the highwaymen, one of the justices summoned one hundred men; and 
seventy, who answered the call, set forth on December 26, 1755, to seek 
out the outlaws and to destroy their fortress. Emboldened by their 
success, the latter upon one occasion had carried off a young girl of the 
settlements. Daniel Boone placed himself at the head of one of the 
parties, which included the young girl's father, to go to her rescue; and 
they fortunately succeeded in effecting the release of the frightened 
maiden. One of the robbers was apprehended and brought to Salisbury, where 
he was thrown into prison for his crimes. Meanwhile a large amount of 
plunder had been discovered at the house of one Cornelius Howard; and the 
evidences of his guilt so multiplied against him that he finally confessed 
his connection with the outlaw band and agreed to point out their fort in 
the mountains.

Daniel Boone and George Boone joined the party of seventy men, sent out by 
the colonial authorities under the guidance of Howard, to attack the 
stronghold of the bandits. Boone afterward related that the robbers' fort 
was situated in the most fitly chosen place for such a purpose that he 
could imagine--beneath an overhanging cliff of rock, with a large natural 
chimney, and a considerable area in front well stockaded. The frontiersmen 
surrounded the fort, captured five women and eleven children, and then 
burned the fort to the ground. Owen and his wife, Cumberland, and several 
others were ultimately made prisoners; but Harman and the remainder of the 
band escaped by flight. Owen and his fellow captives were then borne to 
Salisbury, incarcerated in the prison there, and finally (May, 1756) 
condemned to the gallows. Owen sent word to the Moravians, petitioning 
them to adopt his two boys and to apprentice one to a tailor, the other to 
a carpenter. But so infuriated was Owen's wife by Howard's treachery that 
she branded him as a second Judas; and this at once fixed upon him the 
sobriquet "Judas" Howard-a sobriquet he did not live long to bear, for 
about a year later he was ambushed and shot from his horse at the crossing 
of a stream. He thus paid the penalty of his betrayal of the outlaw band. 
For a number of years, the Regulators continued to wage war against the 
remaining outlaws, who from time to time committed murders as well as 
thefts. As late as January, 1768, the Regulators caught a horse thief in 
the Hollows of Surry County and brought him to Bethabara, whence Richter 
and Spach took him to the jail at Salisbury. After this year, the outlaws 
were heard of no more; and peace reigned in the settlements.

Colonel Edmund Fanning--of whom more anon--declared that the Regulation 
began in Anson County which bordered upon South Carolina. Certain it is 
that the upper country of that province was kept in an uproar by civil 
disturbances during this early period. Owing to the absence of courts in 
this section, so remote from Charleston, the inhabitants found it 
necessary, for the protection of property and the punishment of outlaws, 
to form an association called, like the North Carolina society, the 
Regulation. Against this association the horse thieves and other criminals 
made common cause, and received tacit support from certain more reputable 
persons who condemned "the irregularity of the Regulators." The Regulation 
which had been thus organized in upper South Carolina as early as 1764 led 
to tumultuous risings of the settlers; and finally in the effort to 
suppress these disorders, the governor, Lord Charles Montagu, appointed 
one Scovil, an utterly unworthy representative, to carry out his commands. 
After various disorders, which became ever more unendurable to the law-
abiding, matters came to a crisis (1769) as the result of the high-handed 
proceedings of Scovil, who promiscuously seized and flung into prison all 
the Regulators he could lay hands on. In the month of March the back 
country rose in revolt against Scovil and a strong body of the settlers 
was on the point of attacking the force under his command when an eleventh-
hour letter arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil from office. Thus was 
happily averted, by the narrowest of margins, a threatened precursor of 
the fight at Alamance in 1771 (see Chapter XII). As the result of the 
petition of the Calhouns and others, courts were established in 1760, 
though not opened until four years later. Many horse thieves were 
apprehended, tried, and punished. Justice once more held full sway.

Another important cause for Boone's removal from the neighborhood of 
Salisbury into the mountain fastnesses was the oppressive administration 
of the law by corrupt sheriffs, clerks, and tax-gatherers, and the 
dissatisfaction of the frontier squatters with the owners of the soil. At 
the close of the year 1764 reports reached the town of Wilmington, after 
the adjournment of the assembly in November, of serious disturbances in 
Orange County, due, it was alleged, to the exorbitant exactions of the 
clerks, registers, and some of the attorneys. As a result of this 
disturbing news, Governor Dobbs issued a proclamation forbidding any 
officer to take illegal fees. Troubles had been brewing in the adjacent 
county of Granville ever since the outbreak of the citizens against 
Francis Corbin, Lord Granville's agent (January 24, 1759), and the 
issuance of the petition of Reuben Searcy and others (March 23d) 
protesting against the alleged excessive fees taken and injustices 
practised by Robert (Robin) Jones, the famous lawyer. These disturbances 
were cumulative in their effect; and the people at last (1765 ) found in 
George Sims, of Granville, a fit spokesman of their cause and a doughty 
champion of popular rights. In his "Serious Address to the Inhabitants of 
Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we 
suffer . . . and some necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation," 
recently brought to light, he presents a crushing indictment of the clerk 
of the county court, Samuel Benton, the grandfather of Thomas Hart Benton. 
After describing in detail the system of semi-peonage created by the 
merciless exactions of lawyers and petty court officials, and the 
insatiable greed of "these cursed hungry caterpillars," Sims with rude 
eloquence calls upon the people to pull them down from their nests for the 
salvation of the Commonwealth. 

Other abuses were also recorded. So exorbitant was the charge for a 
marriage-license, for instance, that an early chronicler records "The 
consequence was that some of the inhabitants on the head-waters of the 
Yadkin took a short cut. They took each other for better or for worse; and 
considered themselves as married without further ceremony." The 
extraordinary scarcity of currency throughout the colony, especially in 
the back country, was another great hardship and a perpetual source of 
vexation. All these conditions gradually became intolerable to the 
uncultured but free spirited men of the back country. Events were slowly 
converging toward a crisis in government and society. Independent in 
spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted not only against 
excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and extortionate fees, but also 
against the rapacious practices of the agents of Lord Granville. These 
agents industriously picked flaws in the titles to the lands in 
Granville's proprietary upon which the poorer settlers were seated; and 
compelled them to pay for the land if they had not already done so, or 
else to pay the fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only 
remedy of the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the 
spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the proprietary 
agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close bargains for the 
lands or else to eject those who held them, Henry Eustace McCulloh, in 
February, 1765, went into the county to call a reckoning. The settlers, 
many of whom had located without deeds, indignantly retorted by offering 
to buy only at their own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out the 
holdings when this smaller price was declined. They not only terrorized 
into acquiescence those among them who were willing to pay the amount 
charged for the lands, but also openly declared that they would resist by 
force any sheriff in ejectment proceedings. On May 7th an outbreak 
occurred; and a mob, led by Thomas Polk, set upon John Frohock, Abraham 
Alexander, and others, as they were about to survey a parcel of land, and 
gave them a severe thrashing, even threatening the young McCulloh with 
death.

The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement with Francis Bacon, 
considered revenge as a sort of wild justice. Especial objects of their 
animosity were the brothers Frohock, John and Thomas, the latter clerk of 
the court at Salisbury, and Edmund Fanning, a cultured gentleman-
adventurer, associate justice of the superior court. So rapacious and 
extortionate were these vultures of the courts who preyed upon the vitals 
of the common people, that they were savagely lampooned by Rednap Howell, 
the backwoods poet-laureate of the Regulation. The temper of the back 
country is well caught in Howell's lines anent this early American 
"grafter", the favorite of the royal governor:

When Fanning first to Orange came, He looked both pale and wan; An old 
patched coat was on his back, An old mare he rode on.

Both man and mare wan't worth five pounds, As I've been often told; But by 
his civil robberies, He's laced his coat with gold.

The germs of the great westward migration in the coming decade were thus 
working among the people of the back country. If the tense nervous energy 
of the American people is the transmitted characteristic of the border 
settlers, who often slept with loaded rifle in hand in grim expectation of 
being awakened by the hideous yells, the deadly tomahawk, and the lurid 
firebrand of the savage, the very buoyancy of the national character is in 
equal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded on a freehold 
inheritance of land." The desire for free land was the fundamental factor 
in the development of the American democracy. No colony exhibited this 
tendency more signally than did North Carolina in the turbulent days of 
the Regulation. The North Carolina frontiersmen resented the obligation to 
pay quit-rents and firmly believed that the first occupant of the soil had 
an indefeasible right to the land which he had won with his rifle and 
rendered productive by the implements of toil. Preferring the dangers of 
the free wilderness to the paying of tribute to absentee landlords and 
officials of an intolerant colonial government, the frontiersman found 
title in his trusty rifle rather than in a piece of parchment, and was 
prone to pay his obligations to the owner of the soil in lead rather than 
in gold.