The Winning of the West, Volume 1: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 1: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
1. The first permanent settlement was Harrodsburg, then called
Harrodstown, founded in 1774, but soon abandoned, and only permanently
occupied on March 18, 1775, a fortnight before Boon began the erection
of his fort.
2. The whole account of this treaty is taken from the Jefferson MSS.,
5th Series, Vol. VIII.; "a copy of the proceedings of the Virginia
Convention, from June 15 to November 19, 1777, in relation to the
Memorial of Richard Henderson, and others"; especially from the
depositions of James Robertson, Isaac Shelby, Charles Robertson,
Nathaniel Gist, and Thomas Price, who were all present. There is much
interesting matter aside from the treaty; Simon Girty makes depositions
as to Braddock's defeat and Bouquet's fight; Lewis, Croghan, and others
show the utter vagueness and conflict of the Indian titles to Kentucky,
etc., etc. Though the Cherokees spoke of the land as a "dark" or
"bloody" place or ground, it does not seem that by either of these terms
they referred to the actual meaning of the name Kentucky. One or two of
the witnesses tried to make out that the treaty was unfairly made; but
the bulk of the evidence is overwhelmingly the other way.
Haywood gives a long speech made by Oconostota against the treaty; but
this original report shows that Oconostota favored the treaty from the
outset, and that it was Dragging Canoe who spoke against it. Haywood
wrote fifty years after the event, and gathered many of his facts from
tradition; probably tradition had become confused, and reversed the
position of the two chiefs. Haywood purports to give almost the exact
language Oconostota used; but when he is in error even as to who made
the speech, he is exceedingly unlikely to be correct in any thing more
than its general tenor.
3. Then sometimes called the Louisa; a name given it at first by the
English explorers, but by great good-fortune not retained.
4. Collins, II., 498. Letter of Daniel Boon, April 1, 1775. Collins has
done good work for Kentucky history, having collected a perfect mass of
materials of every sort. But he does not discriminate between facts of
undoubted authenticity, and tales resting on the idlest legend; so that
he must be used with caution, and he is, of course, not to be trusted
where he is biassed by the extreme rancor of his political prejudices.
Of the Kentucky historians, Marshall is by far the most brilliant, and
Mann Butler the most trustworthy and impartial. Both are much better
than Collins.
5. Benjamin Logan; there were many of the family in Kentucky. It was a
common name along the border; the Indian chief Logan had been named
after one of the Pennsylvania branch.
6. McAfee MSS.
7. Boon's letter.
8. Richard Henderson's "Journal of an Expedition to Cantucky in 1775"
(Collins).
9. April 5th.
10. It is printed in the Filson Club publications; see "The Wilderness
Road," by Thomas Speed, Louisville, Ky., 1886; one of the best of an
excellent series.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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