Kentucky -- History; Roads -- United States; Wilderness Road
After the treaty at the close of Dunmore's War, Virginia had two
quit-claim deeds to her western empire: one from the Iroquois, who
boasted their possession of it, and one from the Shawanese, who had
disputed the settlement. There was yet another claimant to deal with,
the Cherokees of the South. In the year following the battle of Point
Pleasant (1774) a land company headed by Colonel Richard Henderson
purchased from the Cherokees the land between the Ohio, Kentucky, and
Cumberland Rivers. This purchase was achieved at Fort Watauga through
the agency of Daniel Boone. This private purchase from the Indians was
afterward annulled by both Virginia and North Carolina, but so far as
the Indian claims to Kentucky were concerned it had passed into the
possession of the white man. Every inch of soil had been fairly obtained
from each and every claimant who had made it a "dark and bloody ground"
through their battles for it, since the earliest period of recorded
history. But at the time of the Cherokee purchase, an old Indian chief
said to Boone: "Brother, we have given you a fine land, but I believe
you will have much trouble in settling it." Perhaps the Cherokees knew
what Shawanese quit-claim deeds were worth!
After making this purchase for Colonel Henderson, Boone engaged to mark
out a road through Cumberland Gap to the center of the newly acquired
territory. Following the old trail through the Gap, Boone's Road ended
at a new settlement at the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River
named Boonesborough, in his honor. Fort Boonesborough was completed July
14, 1775. Colonel Logan and party came westward through the Gap at the
same time but diverged from Boone's Road on Rockcastle Creek, and
opened the more important branch of the road toward Louisville by way of
Crab Orchard and Danville, and erected Fort Logan one mile west of
Standford, in what is now Lincoln County, Kentucky. Harrod's, Logan's,
and Boone's forts were the important early "stations" in the West. To
them the thousands wended their tedious way over the "Wilderness Road,"
as both branches (Logan's and Boone's) were fitly called, or down the
Ohio from Pittsburg. And along these lines of western movement cabins
and clearings made their rapid appearance despite the era of bloodshed
which began almost simultaneously with the opening of the Revolutionary
War in the East.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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