Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the ElephantHolt, Mathew Joseph
History
Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant
Holt, Mathew Joseph
Kentucky -- Fiction; Kentucky -- History
The road had been marked off by Daniel Boone in 1774-5, some said at the
direction of Lord Dunmore and others at the direction of Colonel Richard
Henderson, as a highway to his colony of Transylvania; a vast boundary
mostly in Kentucky, which he had purchased from the Cherokees at the
Council of Sycamore Falls.
The road after crossing Cumberland Gap, as shown by John Filson’s map of
“Kentucke,” forked at Flat Lick; the Indian trail known as the
“Warrior’s Path,” passing north across the Ohio River to old
Shauane-Town and to the chief settlement of the Mingo Nation on the
“Sciotha” River. The other fork, Boone’s or the Wilderness Road, from
Flat Lick followed a southwest course to Rock Castle River, where the
road again forked, the right to Blue Licks and Boonesboro, the left on
to the head of Dick’s River, to Logan Station or St. Asaph’s Plantation,
then forks to Danville, to Lexington and to the Green River Settlements.
It was little more than a bridle path, being intended for pack horses
and foot travelers, though it was possible to follow it in a wagon.
After 1780, quite a few came through carrying their heavy household
effects in wagons; and a few of the aristocrats drove through their
family carriages, the tops of which were usually torn off by trailing
vines from the trees or overhanging limbs.
Along a good portion of the road at intervals of the average day’s
journey, were “stations” or taverns where travelers usually passed the
night; but if these were not reached they used well-known camp grounds
cleared of underbrush and near a good spring, where they bivouaced
around a great open fire and slept under awnings or in their wagons.
The caravan led by Colonel Campbell, used to frontier life, preferred
the camping grounds. The taverns or stations had a bad name, as
headquarters for bandits who frequently robbed and murdered travelers
and then spread the rumor of an Indian raid.
The four families, with their slaves, servants and three Indian guides
made a total of thirty-two persons. There were eight wagons, two
carriages, thirty horses, six oxen, more than eighty head of beef and
milk cattle, a small flock of sheep and on the back of each wagon,
resting on the tail gate, was either a coop of chickens or a crate of
pigs. The camp outfits were carried on pack horses so as not to disturb
the loaded wagons. The five negro slaves with their three children,
driving the three ox wagons and bringing up the rear, whistling, singing
and laughing, were the boisterous ones of the party. The three Indians,
Colonel Campbell and Richard Cameron took the lead, and John, when he
was not driving the Fairfax carriage, rode with them, conversing with
his Indian friends. The Indians were the watchful, silent leaders by
day, and one of them with a white companion, the guard by night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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