or Henderson's land-grants would prove valid. As usual, the zealous Baptist preacher found that the women were the first to "get religion," as he phrased it. Sometimes their husbands likewise came in with them; at other times they remained indifferent. Often they savagely resented their wives and daughters being converted, visiting on the head of the preacher an anger that did not always find vent in mere words; for the backwoodsmen had strong, simple natures, powerfully excited for good or evil, and those who were not God-fearing usually became active and furious opponents of all religion.
It is curious to compare the description of life in a frontier fort as given by this undoubtedly prejudiced observer with the equally prejudiced, but golden- instead of sombre-hued, reminiscences of frontier life, over which the pioneers lovingly lingered in their old age. To these old men the long-vanished stockades seemed to have held a band of brothers, who were ever generous, hospitable, courteous, and fearless, always ready to help one another, never envious, never flinching from any foe.472 Neither account is accurate; but the last is quite as near the truth as the first. On the border, as elsewhere, but with the different qualities in even bolder contrast, there was much both of good and bad, of shiftless viciousness and resolute honesty. Many of the hunters were mere restless wanderers, who soon surrendered their clearings to small farming squatters, but a degree less shiftless than themselves; the latter brought the ground a little more under cultivation, and then likewise left it and wandered onwards, giving place to the third set of frontiersmen, the steady men who had come to stay. But often the first hunters themselves stayed and grew up as farmers and landed proprietors.473 Many of the earliest pioneers, including most of their leaders, founded families, which took root in the land and flourish to this day, the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the old-time Indian fighters becoming Congressmen and judges, and officers in the regular army and in the Federal and Confederate forces during the civil war.474 In fact the very first comers to a wild and dangerous country are apt to be men with fine qualities of heart and head; it is not until they have partly tamed the land that the scum of the frontier drifts into it.475
In 1776, as in after years, there were three routes that were taken by immigrants to Kentucky. One led by backwoods trails to the Greenbriar settlements, and thence down the Kanawha to the Ohio;476 but the travel over this was insignificant compared to that along the others. The two really important routes were the Wilderness Road, and that by water, from Fort Pitt down the Ohio River. Those who chose the latter way embarked in roughly built little flat-boats at Fort Pitt, if they came from Pennsylvania, or else at the old Redstone Fort on the Monongahela, if from Maryland or Virginia, and drifted down with the current. Though this was the easiest method, yet the danger from Indians was so very great that most immigrants, the Pennsylvanians as well as the Marylanders, Virginians, and North Carolinians,477 usually went overland by the Wilderness Road. This was the trace marked out by Boon, which to the present day remains a monument to his skill as a practical surveyor and engineer. Those going along it went on foot, driving their horses and cattle. At the last important frontier town they fitted themselves out with pack-saddles; for in such places two of the leading industries were always those of the pack-saddle maker and the artisan in deer leather. When there was need, the pioneer could of course make a rough pack-saddle for himself, working it up from two forked branches of a tree. If several families were together, they moved slowly in true patriarchal style. The elder boys drove the cattle, which usually headed the caravan; while the younger children were packed in crates of hickory withes and slung across the backs of the old quiet horses, or else were seated safely between the great rolls of bedding that were carried in similar fashion. The women sometimes rode and sometimes walked, carrying the babies. The men, rifle on shoulder, drove the pack-train, while some of them walked spread out in front, flank, and rear, to guard against the savages.478 A tent or brush lean-to gave cover at night. Each morning the men packed the animals while the women cooked breakfast and made ready the children. Special care had to be taken not to let the loaded animals brush against the yellow-jacket nests, which were always plentiful along the trail in the fall of the year; for in such a case the vicious swarms attacked man and beast, producing an immediate stampede, to the great detriment of the packs.479 In winter the fords and mountains often became impassable, and trains were kept in one place for weeks at a time, escaping starvation only by killing the lean cattle; for few deer at that season remained in the mountains.
Both the water route and the wilderness road were infested by the savages at all times, and whenever there was open war the sparsely settled regions from which they started were likewise harried. When the northwestern tribes threatened Fort Pitt and Fort Henry—or Pittsburg and Wheeling, as they were getting to be called,—they threatened one of the two localities which served to cover the communications with Kentucky; but it was far more serious when the Holston region was menaced, because the land travel was at first much the more important.
The early settlers of course had to suffer great hardship even when they reached Kentucky. The only two implements the men invariably carried were the axe and rifle, for they were almost equally proud of their skill as warriors, hunters, and wood-choppers. Next in importance came the sickle or scythe. The first three tasks of the pioneer farmer were to build a cabin, to make a clearing—burning the brush, cutting down the small trees, and girdling the large—and to plant corn. Until the crop ripened he hunted steadily, and his family lived on the abundant game, save for which it would have been wholly impossible to have settled Kentucky so early. If it was winter-time, however, all the wild meat was very lean and poor eating, unless by chance a bear was found in a hollow tree, when there was a royal feast, the breast of the wild turkey serving as a substitute for bread.480 If the men were suddenly called away by an Indian inroad, their families sometimes had to live for days on boiled tops of green nettles.481 Naturally the children watched the growth of the tasselled corn with hungry eagerness until the milky ears were fit for roasting. When they hardened, the grains were pounded into hominy in the hominy-block, or else ground into meal in the rough hand-mill, made of two limestones in a hollow sycamore log. Until flax could be grown the women were obliged to be content with lint made from the bark of dead nettles. This was gathered in the spring-time by all the people of a station acting together, a portion of the men standing guard while the rest, with the women and children, plucked the dead stalks. The smart girls of Irish ancestry spun many dozen cuts of linen from this lint, which was as fine as flax but not so strong.482
Neither hardship nor danger could render the young people downhearted, especially when several families, each containing grown-up sons and daughters, were living together in almost every fort. The chief amusements were hunting and dancing. There being no permanent ministers, even the gloomy Calvinism of some of the pioneers was relaxed. Long afterwards one of them wrote, in a spirit of quaint apology, that "dancing was not then considered criminal,"483 and that it kept up the spirits of the young people, and made them more healthy and happy; and recalling somewhat uneasily the merriment in the stations, in spite of the terrible and interminable Indian warfare, the old moralist felt obliged to condemn it, remarking that, owing to the lack of ministers of the gospel, the impressions made by misfortune were not improved.
Though obliged to be very careful and to keep their families in forts, and in spite of a number of them being killed by the savages,484 the settlers in 1776 were able to wander about and explore the country thoroughly,485 making little clearings as the basis of "cabin claims," and now and then gathering into stations which were for the most part broken up by the Indians and abandoned.486 What was much more important, the permanent settlers in the well-established stations proceeded to organize a civil government.
They by this time felt little but contempt for the Henderson or Transylvania government. Having sent a petition against it to the provincial authorities, they were confident that what faint shadow of power it still retained would soon vanish; so they turned their attention to securing a representation in the Virginia convention. All Kentucky was still considered as a part of Fincastle County, and the inhabitants were therefore unrepresented at the capital. They determined to remedy this; and after due proclamation, gathered together at Harrodstown early in June, 1776. During five days an election was held, and two delegates were chosen to go to Williamsburg, then the seat of government.
This was done at the suggestion
