A~~alachian frontier frontier AMERICA'S FIRST SURGE WESTWARD John Anthony Caruso With aNew Introduction by John C. Inscoe Maps by Francis J. Mitchell THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE PRESS I Knoxville The Appalachian Echoes series is dedicated to reviving and contextualizing clas­ sic books about Appalachia for a new generation of readers. By making available a wide spectrum ofworks-from fiction to nonfiction, from folklife and letters to history, sociology, politics, religion, and biography-the series seeks to reveal the diversity that has always characterized Appalachian writing, a diversity that prom­ ises to confront and challenge long-held stereotypes about the region. 1dp Copyright © 2003 by The University ofTennessee Press I Knoxville. All Rights Reserved. Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica. First Edition. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Caruso, John Anthony. The Appalachian frontier: America's first surge westwardl John Anthony Caruso; maps by Francis J. Mitchell; with a new introduction by John C. Inscoe.- 1st ed. p.cm.-(Appalachian echoes) Originally published: Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-57233-215-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Southwest, Old-History. 2. Appalachian Region-History. 3. Frontier and pioneer life-Southwest, Old. 4. Frontier and pioneer life-Appalachian Region. 5. Tennessee-History. 6. Kentucky-History-To 1792. 1. Title. II. Series. F396.C32 2003 976'.02-dc21 2002075984 For my daughters JOHANNA and CAMILLE and their GRANDFATHER ALIOOR HOUCKE-COLLART three addicts of Western lore Contents Forevvord IX Durvvood Dunn Introduction xiii John C. Inscoe 1. Explorers in the Back Country 13 2. The Immigrants 24 3. The French and Indian War 43 4. The Long Hunters in Kentucky 64 5. The Regulators ofNorth Carolina 83 6. The Wataugans 103 7. Lord Dunmore's War 120 8. The Wilderness Trail 143 9. Transylvania 158 10. Siege ofBoonesboro 181 11. Pattern of Life 207 12. King's Mountain 235 13. Settlements on the Cumberland 252 14. Franklin, the Lost State 280 15. Kentucky: Struggle for Statehood 311 16. Making ofTennessee 340 Notes 373 Selected Bibliography 393 Acknovvledgments 400 Index 401 Maps PAGE The Appalachian Frontier 12 America's First Surge Westward 26 The French and Indian War 44 Land of the Long Hunters 66 North Carolina, 1766 84 The Wataugans and the Cherokee 104 Lord Dunmore's War 122 Transylvania 144 Kentucky Settlements 160 King's Mountain 23 6 Cumberland Settlements 254 Eastern Tennessee 282 Foreword WHILE THE IDEA OF A CONTINUING OR STATIC FRONTIER HAS long remained an enduring staple in the stereotypes surrounding this region, not until the last twenty-five years or so have histori­ ans begun to seriously examine the actual frontier. Works such as Robert D. Mitchell's Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley (1977) and Appalachian Frontiers: Settlement, Society, and Development in the Preindustrial Era (1990), as well as other accounts, are usually focused on particu­ lar areas or topics in the region, however, and do not attempt to offer a comprehensive overview. John A. Caruso's The Appala­ chian Frontier: America's First Surge Westward, while representing an older, narrative type ofhistory, does indeed cover the entire his­ tory ofsettlement from the seventeenth century up to the advent of Tennessee's statehood in 1796. The virtue of this narrative approach, however dated, is that it combines social, political, and economic history in a single, comprehensive overview that I believe still holds great interest to both scholars and general readers. In Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth ofCon­ federate Constitutionalism, Mark E. Neely argues that East Ten­ nessee, regarded as economically and culturally "backward" in the nineteenth century, was in fact advanced politically, with very high voter participation and political leaders ofexceptional caliber. Surely some explanation ofthe sophistication oflater nineteenth­ century political parties in Tennessee must be connected with the earliest efforts ofpeople in this area to establish self-government. Caruso's analysis of the Watauga Association in 1772 and the IX x Foreword abortive "lost state" of Franklin, East Tennessee's hrst effort to establish an independent state, clearly establishes this lineage. Caruso's descriptions of Daniel Boone, the Long Hunters in Kentucky, the siege ofBoonesborough, and the perpetual battles between settlers and Indians all remind us that, at one point in the late eighteenth century, much of the region of Appalachia was indeed unified in a continuing struggle to settle new lands in what would become West Virginia, Kentucky, western North Carolina, and Tennessee. The lifestyle of most of the immigrant groups, Germans and Scots-Irish predominately, even at this early stage demonstrated a wide diversity in patterns ofreligion, settle­ ment, and customs that belie later stereotypes. Caruso also includes full descriptions of land developers, speculators such as William Blount and Richard Henderson, early industrialists, and other economic elites not commonly associated with the frontier in current misperceptions ofearly Appalachia. What really preserves the interest of Caruso's book for con­ temporary readers, however, is his frequent use ofpersonal anec­ dotes describing the varied reactions of his human characters in this drama. In one such story, Daniel Boone returns after a har­ rowing escape from Shawnee captivity to discover his wife and children have moved to another settlement during his long absence. The "poignant despair of an abandoned home," how­ ever, is broken when the family cat, also abandoned, recognizes him and jumps in his lap. Such stories, repeated countless times, served on the frontier to reaffirm settlers' common humanity. Whether they were true or not, the repetition of certain themes and the varied texture ofthe reported reactions ofthe participants offer a key to understanding how these frontiersmen viewed themselves and their relation to neighbors and family. Historian Elliott J. Gorn argues in another context, for example, that fight narratives articulated a fundamental contradiction of frontier life-how the abandonment of"civilized" ways ultimately led to an expansion ofcivilized society. Likewise, Caruso's treatment ofNative Americans is remark­ ably sympathetic, revealing their often justified anger and fre­ quent frustration at being cheated and steadily pushed off their Foreword XI own land. Caruso yet again uses anecdotes to good effect, so that individuals-NancyWard, Blackfish, Dragging Canoe-come to life and emerge with their personalities intact. At the same time, Caruso does an excellent job both explaining and showing the complex effects of the almost constant fear of sudden Indian attacks most white settlers endured. The stories ofDaniel Boone's rescue of his daughter, kidnapped by hostile Indians, and John Kirk's savage retribution for the murder of his family resonated deeply within all European settlers on this eighteenth-century frontier. It is interesting to note here that the image in the nine­ teenth-century American mind ofTennessee and Kentucky was primarily that of this earlier frontier period, replete with mythic figures such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Later pejora­ tive stereotypes ofAppalachia, imposed on the public's mind in the 1870s and 1880s by local color writers such as Mary Noailles Murfree, did not erase this earlier image. John Inscoe in his new introduction has done a superb job of contextualizing Caruso's The Appalachian Frontier, noting in par­ ticular its strengths and weaknesses in light of recent scholarship on Appalachia. His own most recent book, The Heart ofConfed­ erate Appalachia: 'Western North Carolina in the Civil war, written with Gordon McKinney, is a fine example ofthis new scholarship on Appalachian history at its best. In point of fact, this intro­ duction could stand alone as excellent historiographical analysis of the current state ofAppalachian scholarship. Finally, Caruso's book fits very well into John Alexander Williams's new interpre­ tation of Appalachian history, Appalachia: A History. Williams argues that myth is critical to understanding both the sense of place in the region and the region's own self-image within Ameri­ can national identity. Caruso's narrative of Daniel Boone, an American and Appalachian hero, illustrates in an exemplary fash­ ion this dual role of folk narrative in both defining and shaping the contextual limits ofAppalachia's history. DURWOOD DUNN Tennessee Wesleyan College Introduction THE CONCEPT OF FRONTIER HAS ALWAYS BEEN CENTRAL TO OUR understanding of preindustrial Appalachia. For modern scholars ofthe region, in fact, it has been an image far too lingering, even too central, in how the southern highlands have continued to be perceived. Long after the rest ofAmerica's eastern halfhad moved well beyond its frontier status in terms of a settled populace and a fully developed market economy, the image of frontier still clung to Appalachia. The mountain South remained in both pop­ ular and scholarly perceptions a remote, primitive, and undevel­ oped wilderness; its residents were termed "our contemporary ancestors" or "yesterday's people." Sometimes they were romanti­ cized as simple, quaint, and innocent; more often they were den­ igrated as backward, violent, ignorant, and poor. l In recent years, historians ofAppalachia have worked