Brown of Danville, Kentucky, to give warning of the Indian war that seemed imminent; "The stroke, if it falls at all, will probably fall upon your country," he wrote.[27] And the Indian War of 1790 was precipitated because of Indian marauds along the Kentucky border--not because of attacks upon the settlements along the upper Ohio. The Kentuckians had played a preëminent part in driving the Indians back to the head of the Wabash and the mouth of the Maumee, in the two decades preceding the Indian War which opened in 1790, and during that war they were to the American armies what the English were to the allies at Waterloo. Local histories and local historians have created the impression that Ohio was conquered largely by Ohioans. Nothing could be more misleading. 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. During the few important years of its existence Boone's Road was only what Boone made it--a blazed foot-path westward. It was but the merest foot-path from 1774 to 1792, while thousands floundered over its uncertain track to lay the rude foundations of civilization in the land to which it led. "There are roads that make a man lose faith," writes Mr. Allen; "It is known that the more pious companies [of pioneers] as they traveled along, would now and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers said before they could go farther." There was probably not a more desperate pioneer road in America than this. The mountains to be crossed, the rivers and swamps the traveler encountered, were as difficult to overcome as any on Braddock's Road; and Boone's Road was very much longer, even if measured from its technical starting-point--the Watauga settlement. As early as 1779 the Virginia Assembly took up the subject of a western highway, and commissioners were appointed to explore the region on both sides of the mountains, to choose a course for a roadway, clear and open the route, and render a report upon the advisability of making a wagon road. Yet no improvement followed. The narrow path--rough, treacherous, almost impassable--remained the only course. A vivid description of what a journey over it meant in this year, 1779, has been left us by Chief-justice Robertson in an address given at Camp Madison, Franklin County, Kentucky, half a century ago: