Caruso Dr. John A. - The Appalachian Frontier

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Text originally published in 1957 under the same title.

Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE APPALACHIAN FRONTIER

BY

JOHN A. CARUSO

Contents

For my daughters

JOHANNA and CAMILLE

and their GRANDFATHER

ALIDOR HOUCKE-COLLART

three addicts of Western lore

Come my tan-faced children

Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,

Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?

Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,

We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,

So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the fore-most,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

WALT WHITMAN

THE COLONIZATION OF NORTH AMERICA, AFTER THE FIRST AGE OF discovery and exploration, pitted England, France and Spain against one another in a struggle for supremacy. England ultimately won control of most of the continent, only to lose the territory south of Canada and east of the Mississippi to her rebellious colonies in the Revolutionary War.

This book details the phase of this colonization and conquest controlled by the highland barrier of the Appalachians which separated the Eastern colonies from the interior of the continent where the waters ran westward. The author vividly presents the westward sweep of the pioneers along buffalo and Indian trails across the mountain barrier into the fat lands of the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi basins. These hardy traders, hunters, adventurers and homeseekers encountered not only hardships and terrors in the unknown wilderness but also stubborn and resentful Indian tribes who resisted the ruthless advance of the white men into their forest domains.

The author concentrates his recital of these events primarily within the period between 1750 and 1800. He sketches background episodes in the first explorations west of the mountains and the decisive French and Indian War to explain in fuller detail the development of a distinct citizenry in the back-country settlements in contrast to the wealthier and more stable colonial civilization east of the Appalachians. He follows the bold frontiersmen of English, Scotch-Irish, German and French Huguenot descent in their epic struggle to establish homes and settlements in the western reaches of the mother colonies.

Heroic leaders familiar in the annals of this western migration come alive in this book. Daniel Boone, greatest of the Long Hunters and trail blazers; Richard Henderson, ambitious to build an empire of his own; George Rogers Clark, defender of the frontier and conqueror of Kaskaskia and Vincennes; John Sevier, Indian fighter, diplomat and statesman; James Robertson, the father of the state of Tennessee; William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory; and James Wilkinson, wily conspirator who for his own selfish ends would have surrendered Kentucky to Spainthese and many others are given full treatment in this portrayal of the rapidly shifting events on the frontier. Eastern leaders of the young nation were apparently unaware and unappreciative of the hardships, dangers and political ferment which plagued their western constituents. It was only after Kentucky and Tennessee were accepted as new states that stability and orderly development became assured.

The new Republic was on its way. The Appalachian barrier was hurdled. The Mississippi basin became the home of a dominant, resourceful people who gave to American life the bone and sinew of greatness.

ROBERT L. KINCAID

The Appalachian Frontier

Americas First Surge Westward

The French and Indian War

Land of the Long Hunters

North Carolina, 1766

The Wataugans and the Cherokee

Lord Dunmores War

Transylvania

Kentucky Settlements

Kings Mountain

Cumberland Settlements

Eastern Tennessee

IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY STREAM AFTER stream of German and Scotch-Irish immigrants poured into the frontier known as the Old West. Here, in the back country of New England, the Great Valley of south-eastern Pennsylvania, central and western Maryland, the Piedmont of Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Valley of Virginia, they had to adopt a pattern of life entirely isolated from European influences. Here they formed the first pioneer society with characteristics which are regarded as typically American.

The southern section of the Old West, where the first settlements were made, had singular geographic features, as though it were a stage especially set for actors about to begin some unique and fascinating drama. It started at the Fall Line where navigation on coastal rivers halted before cataracts and, south of the Roanoke, before pine barrens that rose hundreds of feet above the level countryside. Beyond these barriers spread the Piedmont of Virginia and the Carolinas. Its rich soil, its swift streams, its mild climate and its boundless forests were irresistible attractions to the farm-loving Germans and to the adventurous, land-hungry Scotch-Irish. In the west rose the Blue Ridge Mountains. The pioneers, pressing their advance in this new land of Canaan, passed through gaps in the mountains to emerge on the Great Valley of the Appalachians where they cleared the wilderness and raised their humble cabins. In the far distance the jagged peaks of the Allegheny Front ended the Old West and temporarily shut in the pioneers from the rich and mysterious country of Kentucky and Tennessee beyond.

White explorers, hunters and fur traders had tramped into the Old West a full century before the German and Scotch-Irish immigrants appeared. The first exploration of the Old West goes back to the middle of the seventeenth century when that Frontenac of Virginia, Captain Abraham Wood, commanded Fort Henry at the Falls of the Appomattox on the present site of Petersburg. Fort Henry was one of several strategic points built to protect white settlements against possible Indian depredations. But though their immediate purpose was defensive, they were to the Tidewater, as the Virginia plain was called, what St. Louis and Chicago later became to the Great Plains: points of departure for traders and explorers into the interior. In Woods day, Fort Henry was a combination of frontier town and military and trading post, much like Chicago in the early nineteenth century. Just across the river lay the principal village of the Appomattox Indians, who furnished Wood with messengers, hunters, porters, and courageous and faithful guides. The Indians bartered furs for such articles as guns, powder, bullets, tomahawks, kettles, blankets, cutlery, brass rings and other trinkets.