HKK-Chapter 1

Source: "A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians, Volume 1, Pages 1 - 4"
Author; E. Polk Johnson

Published THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO - NEW YORK
1912

Submitted by: Charlie Vines

La Salle Discovers Kentucky Shores—"Rapids" of the Ohio—Capt. Batts "Tracing a Pathway"—Through Cumberland Gap—Penetrating the Interior—First Kentucky Dwelling—Gist and the Ohio Company—Dinwiddie Halts the French—Washington on the Scene—Indians' "Happy Hunting Ground"—Origin of the Name, Kentucky.

The dominant desire of the Anglo-Saxon has been from immemorial time the acquisition of land and following the "Star of Empire," his course has been ever to the westward. Not the Anglo-Saxon alone has felt this impulse, but the men of all civilized lands, though the former has been most persistent and therefore, most fortunate.

When Kentucky was an unknown land, men of the old world were discussing and some of them were seeking a waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific which they imagined lay across what we now know to be the wide prairies and lofty mountains of our western domain. The search for a western passage to the Pacific and all that lay beyond, led the Chevalier Robert de La Salle, an adventurous Frenchman, to lead an expedition westward and so far as records exist, he was the first white man to pass down the Ohio river which he entered from the Allegheny. He is believed to have been the first man of the white race to see the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. Col. Reuben T. Durrett, whose very name spells Kentucky history, and to whom the state owes more than to all other of her sons, the collecting and preserving of the records of her beginning and her progress, says of La Salle in the "Centenary of Kentucky:" "In making the long journey he was the discoverer of Kentucky from the Big Sandy to the Rapids of the Ohio, and was the first white man whose eyes looked eastward from the beautiful river to the Blue Grass land, which forms the Garden Spot of the state."

It will be noted that Col. Durrett writes of the "Rapids of the Ohio," rather than of the more commonly accepted term "The Falls of the Ohio," thus even in minor matters evincing the devotion to exact description that has characterized his historical researches and statements. The term "falls" denotes a condition that is not fairly descriptive of the interruption to the steady flow of the Ohio at
Louisville, while the word "rapids" is not only exact but strictly correct. The "Falls of the Ohio" have, however, been so long accepted, and Louisville so widely known as the "Falls City,' that it were vain to seek a change in phraseology. Even the more modern and strictly correct term of "Gateway to the South' bestowed by former President Roosevelt, has not served to displace the ancient designation hallowed by long usage. Whether one accept the old or the new designation, none can deny that as falls or rapids the settlement thereabout played a leading part in the drama which culminated in the winning of the west and giving to the Union an imperial domain which at times, it seemed had been destined to become either French or English territory.

There is a tradition that Capt. Thomas Batts was once sent from Virginia by General Abram Wood to search for the supposed river which flowed to the Pacific, but it is not known that he reached Kentucky. McElroy in the latest historical sketch of Kentucky, gives Batts credit for "at least tracing the pathway from the old settlements of Virginia to the trackless wilderness beyond the mountains." This would seem to have brought him very near to Kentucky, if not within its boundary; but no practical results from his exploration beyond "tracing a pathway" are apparent in the history of that early day.

The first organized effort to locate lands in Kentucky was probably made by a company led by Dr. Thomas Walker, who in March, 1750, left their homes in Virginia and, reaching a pass in the Appalachian range of mountains, came into Kentucky, giving to the pass the name of Cumberland Gap, by which it has since been known and under which name it finds its place in the history of the War between the States—having been variously occupied by Federal and Confederate troops as one of the chief gateways between the warring sections.

Hitherto, adventurers into the unknown land of Kentucky had confined themselves to the vicinity of the Ohio river and Captain Walker and his associates were, so far as history and tradition extend, the first white men to penetrate the interior of the new land. Those with Walker were, according to one authority, Ambrose Powell, William Tomlinson, Colby Chew, Henry Lawless and John Hughes; but Col. Durrett in the "Centenary of Kentucky" omits the names of Lawless and Hughes, adding that only the names of Powell, Chew and Tomlinson have been preserved.

With a strong predilection in favor of the correctness of all of Col. Durrett's statements, it is not vitally material in this instance that all the names of Walker's followers should be stated. It is indisputable that Walker was the leader, and that is the important fact. This party cleared a body of land near where the town of Barboursville in Knox county is now located, and built there a log cabin, the first dwelling for white men ever
erected in what is now.Kentucky. The date of construction of this historic cabin was April 25, 1750. Five days afterward, the cabin appears to have been deserted, owing to fear of the Indians whose hunting parties
swarmed in the wilderness about them. The party is believed to have immediately returned to Virginia, without practical results following their visit other than having marked an epoch by having erected the first habitation for civilized man in what was later to become the populous state of Kentucky.

Christopher Gist, another adventurous character, as agent for the "Ohio Company," next led an expedition, the objective point of which was the territory which is now Ohio, setting out from the Potomac October 3, 1750. After scouting through the lands north of the Ohio river, he came finally to that stream which he descended to within fifteen miles of the present site of Louisville. Discovering there signs of large bodies of Indians, Gist turned back to the mouth of the Kentucky river. Under many difficulties Gist and his party continued their retreat and on May I, 1751. first came in sight of the beautiful Kanawha river plunging over rapids and through mountain gorges on its tempestuous way to the sea. Gist finally reached his home in safety after traversing the most beautiful section of the future Kentucky, which he found without inhabitants and temporarily peopled only by bands of Indians intent upon the chase and these, in the main, confined their operations to points near the Ohio river north of which stream they lived.

Irving in his life of Washington says of Gist: "From the top of a mountain in eastern Kentucky near the Kentucky river, he had a view of the southward as far as the eye could reach over a vast wooded country in the fresh garniture of Spring and watered by abundant streams, but as yet only the hunting ground of savage tribes and the scene of their sanguinary conflicts. In a word, Kentucky lay spread out before him in all its wild magnificence. For six weeks was this hardy pioneer making his toilsome way up the valley of the Cuttawa or Kentucky river, to the banks of the Blue Stone; often checked by precipices and obliged to seek fords at the head of tributary streams, and happy when he could find a buffalo-path broken through the tangled forests or worn into the everlasting rocks."

When Gist reported to the Ohio Company what he had seen it must have impressed them with the belief that fortune was in their grasp, and lay to the westward, as fortune has ever laid to the Anglo-Saxon. Robert Dinwiddie, one of the twenty stockholders of the Ohio Company and lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1752, impressed by the reports of Gist, developed a strong interest in the movements of the French in the Ohio valley to all parts which they had asserted a claim, setting up tablets at the mouth of each river reached by them in support of these claims.

A protest against such procedure by a foreign power was an immediate necessity, and there seems to have been a special Providence in the selection by Dinwiddie of a messenger to the French commander bearing a message of warning against further encroachments. He chose as this messenger a youthful Virginian, one George Washington, a half-brother of Augustine Washington, president of the Ohio Company, and Lawrence Washington, one of its stockholders. That young Virginian, piloted by Christopher Gist in this expedition, took that first step which was to lead him ever forward and upward to the highest position in the affairs of men. It was the step which led to the French and Indian war, the greatest contest known to this western continent until the day when the War of the Revolution claimed Washington as its leader and under his splendid guidance, preclaimed "liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." Some authorities claim that Washington came with Gist to Kentucky; but there seems no foundation for this claim,
as it does not authoritatively appear that Washington came further west than the mouth of the Kanawha river in what is now West Virginia.

Kentucky does not seem to have been the permanent home of the Indians, though often occupied by them on their hunting trips or warlike forays. It was their "happy hunting ground" and, on occasion, their battle ground, before the coming of the white man when they came in contact with their enemies of other tribes. North of the Ohio river were the powerful Iroquois, who claimed the territory as their own. To the South were the Cherokees, who fewer in number, were equally warlike, and who likewise claimed Kentucky as their own, with the result that when the hunting parties of these tribes met they became war parties and there was some beautiful fighting all along the savage lines. Having thus to struggle for their prolific hunting grounds, it is not strange that the Indians should have bitterly resented the coming of the white man to possess the land and that his coming meant the writing of blood-red chapters in the history of the first occupancy of the state. The Indian knew the bountiful land to be worth fighting for, and used all his savage strategy to retain its possession. The white man found the land not alone worth fighting for, but, if need be, dying for, and set out to possess it and with his rifle filed a deed of possession with the result known to all the world—the Indian was overcome and driven towards the western sun, while the white man remained to make a garden spot where he had found a wilderness, albeit a beauteous and bountiful wilderness.

There are several accounts given as to the origin of the name of Kentucky. John Filson says the Delaware and Shawnee Indians called the vast undefined tract of land south of the Ohio river "Kuttawa," meaning the "Great Wilderness." This name was long used interchangeably with "Kantake;" meaning "the place of meadows," or the "Hunting Grounds." Filson also referred to it as "The Middle Ground." McElroy, in "Kentucky in the Nation's History," says that another origin of the name is given by John Johnson who for years resided among the Shawnees. He declares that Kentucky is a Shawnee word meaning "at the head of the river." Marshall, however, declares that the name was derived from "a deep channeled and clifty river called by the Indians Ken-tuck-kee," which they pronounced with a strong emphasis. He adds that in consequence of frequent combats between the savages upon Kentucky soil—the country being thickly wooded and deeply shaded—was also called in their expressive language "The Dark and Bloody Ground." There is doubtless something that in other matters would be called poetic license in this statement of Marshall—more of license than historic accuracy, perhaps, but the expression has taken so firm a hold upon the public mind that it cannot be broken. Whatever the actual facts relative to the derivation of the name may be, the state has passed into history and song as "The Dark and Bloody Ground," and there it will remain, protest as one may. To all good citizens of the state it is a matter for the deepest regret, that in recent years in a few sections of the State there have been such occurrences brought about by lawless and misguided men, as have seemed to justify the term as not only truly descriptive but just. It is a gratifying reflection that the confines of a prison and the narrower confines of certain graves render it improbable that further acts of the kind referred to will again darken the history of the state. The fires of a more complete civilization light the darkness of the land of the feud and where the minister of God and the schoolmaster carry their banners, murder will find none to excuse it.

Kentucky

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