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There were few good Atlantic ports in the South ; New England did not welcome the strangers; and although many went to New York, by far the greatest number were directed to the great central port of Philadelphia. The lands lying near the coast of Pennsylvania were by this time comparatively well settled, and it seems to be due largely to this fact and to the abundance of cheap territory farther west, that the newcomers pressed on to the frontier. The movement was, however, undoubtedly encouraged by the colonial authorities, as thereby a barrier was established between the seaboard settlements and the Indians. The Blue Ridge, it will be recalled, which was so formidable an obstacle to early westward expansion from the southern coast, is lost for an interval in Pennsylvania, and a natural entrance is thus afforded into the part of the Greater Appalachian Valley which lies in that state. Following along the lower courses of the Delaware and Susquehanna, and ascending their tributaries, the early immigrants pre-empted the better lands and entered the Greater Valley. They formed, in Pennsylvania, a great reservoir of population, fed by transatlantic immigration passing through the port of Philadelphia. That this reservoir, overflowing, should send its first great stream into the Southern Highlands was determined by natural causes. Extending to the southward, the Greater Appalachian Valley with its fertile limestone soil lay like a great pathway walled between highlands to east and west. Pushing on along this pathway through Maryland and what is now West Virginia, the pioneer entered the Valley of Virginia, out of which flow the waters of the Shenandoah to join thoseof the Potomac. Continuing southward up the Valley, he was moving up to the headwaters of the Shenandoah. An examination of the river systems will aid in an understanding of his further movements. Interlocking with the headwaters of the Shenandoah are those of the James, and just beyond lie those of the Roanoke — rivers which both flow diagonally southeast across the Valley, out through the Blue Ridge to the Piedmont Plateau, and thence to the Atlantic. Still beyond, to the southwest, and seeming to terminate the Valley, ridges over 3,000 feet in height separate the waters of the Roanoke from those of the New River flowing northwest to the Ohio. The southward movement of migration did not at first swell over this divide and continue across New River down the Greater Valley into Tennessee, but as though it were a veritable stream, it was deflected through the Blue Ridge to the southeast, to pour over the lower lying lands of the Carolina Piedmont. It is to be kept in mind that this movement from Pennsylvania to the Carolina Piedmont commonly involved two or three generations of pioneers, each new generation moving on a journey farther into the wilderness. So rapid was the movement, however, that the Virginia Valley, which in 1730 had few inhabitants, by 1750 was well populated; and Mathew Rowan, who in 1746 estimated that in Anson, Orange, and Rowan Counties, which at that time composed the entire section between Virginia and South Carolina, "there was not then one hundred fighting men," in 1753 wrote, "there is now at least 3,000, for the most part Irish Protestants and Germans, and dayley increasing." In 1765 alone, over a thousand immigrant wagons are reported by Governor Tryon to have passed through Salisbury, North Carolina. The "Great Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia, distant 435 miles," as indicated on Jeffrey's map,2 or, to follow it from north to south, from Philadelphia to the Yadkin, ran through Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania, to Winchester, Virginia, up the Shenandoah Valley, across the upper waters of the James to the Roanoke River, thence down the Roanoke through the Blue Ridge southward, crossing the Dan River, and still farther southward to the headwaters of the Yadkin in what is now Forsyth County, North Carolina. To the southeast of the Blue Ridge barrier, therefore, grew a second reservoir of population, fed not only from the north but from the south by later and lesser streams of transatlantic migration through the ports of Charleston and Wilmington. There had been early a seepage of settlers into western and southwestern Pennsylvania from the great reservoir in the Valley of Pennsylvania. In 1750 those who had established themselves on the upper waters of the Monongahela had to be warned back by the olonial authorities, as their presence was a provocation to the Indians, always hostile in this region. After the establishment of Fort Pitt in 1759, and the laying out of Pittsburgh in 1765, the western movement to this region began again, to be largely augmented, in the southwestern counties especially, by streams of settlers from Maryland and Virginia. Thus by the time of the Revolution, to the northwest of our territory was formed a third reservoir of population perhaps best visualized in Pittsburgh, which was to influence greatly the settlement of Kentucky and that part of Virginia now known as West Virginia. While these three reservoirs were forming, two to the north and one to the southeast of the mountain country, the Highlands south of Virginia remained an almost unbroken wilderness. In the region lying west of the Blue Ridge and extending to the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers, even Indian settlements of any size seem to have been infrequent. The country was claimed for the most part by the Cherokee Nation, but it was used as a hunting-ground by other tribes as well. The war-path of both northern and southern Indians ran the entire length of the Greater Valley, branching through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky to the Ohio, and formed the main artery for an intricate network of trails which crossed and recrossed the mountain country. Into this wilderness hunters and traders had early penetrated. Imagination pictures for us these first daring men who threaded the narrow forest trails and matched their skill against Indian cunning; but few are the records of these woodsmen, forerunners of the pioneer settlers. It is impossible to trace with any definiteness the early white settlements in this Indian territory. On Mitchell's map, published in 1755, a number are indicated, "Walker's" [1] in the neighborhood of Cumberland Gap being shown as the most western point of English occupation in 1750. A trail is also indicated across the divide in southwestern Virginia, and the region about the headwaters of the Holston is marked "Settled." While it is probable that this outpost was destroyed, as were most of those in Indian territory indicated by Mitchell, there appear to have been permanent settlers in the Holston region before 1760. From the early part of the eighteenth century a series of treaties had been made with the Indians, whereby their boundaries were pushed farther and farther west. The new lines established, however, did not prevent the encroachments of the white men, who continued to raise their cabins beyond the limits defined by the latest treaty, while a fast growing number of traders and hunters penetrated deeper into the wilderness. Suspicious and alarmed, the Indians were further aroused by the instigations of the French, to whose colonial aspirations the westward advance of the English was a constant menace. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 put an end to French pretensions east of the Mississippi ; and King George, to placate the Indians, decreed by royal proclamation that there should be no white settlement beyond the sources of streams flowing into the Atlantic. That this decree was impossible to enforce was apparent from the first, and it was generally disregarded.2 Not only had lands already been granted and purchases made in good faith to the west of this boundary, but new settlers were not to be restrained from entering in ever increasing numbers the forbidden territory. Out from among the shadowy figures of this period, whose deeds and even whose names were lost in the dark forest, emerges about this time a youth destined to descend to succeeding generations as the great pioneer of American history. Daniel Boone was born near Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1734, but in 1750 his family left for North Carolina, following the old route up the Valley of Virginia, across the Blue Ridge near the dividing line between Vir- ginia and North Carolina, and on to the forks of the Yadkin in the Carolina Piedmont. A mighty hunter even in those days of mighty hunters, young Boone was fired by the tales of a returned trader1 to make a trip of exploration into Kentucky — the first of a number of expeditions which were to result in the laying out of the Wilderness Road and the opening of that western land beyond the mountains. .... The next few years witnessed a great influx of hunters and explorers into Kentucky, despite the continued and fierce opposition of the Indians. Boone, in 1773, leading a party of six families which included the first white women and children to enter Kentucky, endeavored to make a settlement, but was attacked and forced to turn back. His eldest son and five others of the party were killed. The defeat of the Indians north of the Ohio, at the close, in 1774, of Lord Dunmore's War, secured the outposts a brief respite from Indian attack, and with the cession of lands in Kentucky opened the way for the establishment of permanent transmontane settlements. In 1775 Boone was employed by "a number of North Carolina gentlemen"1 to lay out the Wilderness Road, which offered a direct route from the Watauga Settlement to Cumberland Gap, and thence to the fertile limestone lands of Kentucky. In that same year were laid the foundations of Boonesborough and Harrodsburg. A review of the population of the Southern Highlands on the eve of the Revolution shows the Valley of Virginia northeast of the divide well populated; scattered clearings follow the valleys on the upper courses of the Greenbrier and Kanawha Rivers in what is now West Virginia, and mark the vicinity of Fort Henry, later the city of Wheeling; and in the Valley in southwestern Virginia and northeastern Tennessee are planted a sturdy group of federated settlements coming to be known as the Holston Settlements. Beyond the Highlands to the west, and separated even from Watauga by over two hundred miles of wilderness, are the feeble beginnings of the state of Kentucky. They all marked, as it were, the first rivulets from the reservoirs banked to northwest and southeast, which after the Revolution were to overflow through the Highlands to that great western country as yet scarcely discovered. The years of the Revolution were strenuous ones on the frontier. The Indians, whose services were enlisted by the British, continued to harass the whole border, and the settlers, shut away by long miles of ridges, could expect little help from east of the mountains where all were engaged in the struggle for independence. On them alone, therefore, fell the defense of the montane and transmontane settlements. [edit] Footnotes
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