The reason for this solitude is apparent. To the south of the Ohio lay the "Dark and Bloody Ground" of Kentucky; "Dark," because of its vast and almost impenetrable forests; "Bloody," because of the constant savage warfare waged within its limits by roving bands of Miamis, Shawnees, Cherokees, and other tribes who resorted thither in pursuit of game. Says Humphrey Marshall, the early historian of Kentucky: "The proud face of creation here presented itself, without the disguise of art. No wood had been felled; no field cleared; no human habitation raised; even the redman of the forest, had not put up his wigwam of poles and bark for habitation. But that mysterious Being, whose productive power, we call Nature, ever bountiful, and ever great, had not spread out this replete and luxurious pasture, without stocking it with numerous flocks and herds; nor were their ferocious attendants, who prey upon them, wanting, to fill up the circle of created beings. Here was seen the timid deer; the towering elk; the fleet stag; the surly bear; the crafty fox; the ravenous wolf; the devouring panther; the insidious wildcat; the haughty buffalo, besides innumerable other creatures, winged, four-footed, or creeping." This was the common hunting ground of the wild men of the forest. None took exclusive possession, because none dared. The Ohio was the common highway of the Indian tribes, and while their war paths crossed it at frequent intervals, none were so bold as to attempt exclusive dominion over it. As was once said in the senate of the United States, "You might as well inhibit the fish from swimming down the western rivers to the sea, as to prohibit the people from settling on the new lands." While the great revolution was opening, that should wrest our independence from Great Britain, the stream of "long rifles" and hunting shirt men of Virginia and Pennsylvania, who followed the valleys of the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge from north to south, suddenly broke through the western mountain barriers and flowed in diminutive rivulets into the basins of the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Cumberland; afterwards forming, as Theodore Roosevelt most strikingly says, "a shield of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the seaboard and the red warriors of the wilderness." In 1774, James Harrod built the first log cabin in Kentucky. On the 14th of June, 1775, the first fort of the white man was erected at Boonesborough.