Part 14

=Study Questions.= _1._ Give an account of John Paul's boyhood. _2._ What of his first visit to America? _3._ How did Paul happen, at so early an age, to have full charge of a vessel? _4._ Why did he go to Virginia a second time? _5._ Why did he hasten to Congress as soon as war began? _6._ How did Paul Jones prove his right to be captain? _7._ Tell the story of the battle between the _Drake_ and the _Ranger_. _8._ Picture the battle between the _Bon Homme Richard_ and the _Serapis_. _9._ What rewards came to Paul Jones? _10._ Where is he buried? _11._ Give an account of John Barry's youth. _12._ When the war came, what was Barry's action? _13._ What was the first victory on the part of the navy? _14._ What was the outcome of the battle on the _Raleigh_? _15._ What were Barry's experiences in the _Alliance_? Picture Barry's last battle.

=Suggested Readings.= PAUL JONES: Beebe, _Four American Naval Heroes_, 17-68; Abbot, _Blue Jackets of '76_, 83-154; Frothingham, _Sea Fighters_, 226-266; Hart, _Camps and Firesides of the American Revolution_, 285-289; Hart, _How Our Grandfathers Lived_, 217-219; Seawell, _Paul Jones_.

JOHN BARRY: Griffin, _Commodore John Barry_, 1-96.

THE MEN WHO CROSSED THE MOUNTAINS, DEFEATED THE INDIANS AND BRITISH, AND MADE THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER THE FIRST WESTERN BOUNDARY OF THE UNITED STATES

DANIEL BOONE, THE HUNTER AND PIONEER OF KENTUCKY

[Sidenote: =Boone born in Pennsylvania=]

=105. A Famous Frontier Hero.= Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1735. He was only three years younger than Washington. While yet a boy he loved the woods, and often spent days deep in the forest with no companion but his rifle and dog.

[Sidenote: =Moved to the Yadkin=]

Boone's parents moved to North Carolina, and settled on the Yadkin River. There he married at the early age of twenty, and, pioneer-like, moved farther into the forest, where people were scarcer and game more plentiful. He built a log cabin for his bride, and made a "clearing" for raising corn and vegetables. But his trusty rifle furnished their table with all kinds of wild meat, such as bear, deer, squirrel, and turkey.

[Sidenote: =Crossed the mountains in 1760=]

In 1760 Boone with a friend crossed the mountains to the Watauga in east Tennessee, on a hunting expedition, where he killed a bear, and cut the date of the event on a beech tree, which still stands on Boone's Creek in east Tennessee.

[Sidenote: =News from across the Cumberland=]

One of Boone's hunter friends came back from a journey across the Cumberland Mountains and told of the beauty of the land beyond--its hills and valleys, its forests and canebrakes, full of game. Boone was anxious to go. Too many people were settling near him. But Kentucky was a dangerous country, even if beautiful. It was called "No-man's-land," because not even Indians lived there, and also the "dark and bloody ground," because the tribes from the north and from the south met there in deadly conflict.

[Sidenote: =Boone and companions go to Kentucky=]

=106. Boone Goes to the Land of Canebrakes and Blue Grass.= While the people along the seacoast were disputing with the king, Boone and five companions, after climbing over mountains, fording rivers, and making their way through pathless forests, reached Kentucky, the land of salt springs, canebrakes, and blue grass.

[Sidenote: =Danger from animals=]

They built a log camp and spent several months enjoying the wild life so dear to the hunter. But it was full of danger. Sometimes it was a battle with a father and a mother bear fighting for their little ones. The sneaking panther or the lurking wildcat threatened their lives. Now and then, hundreds of buffaloes came rushing through the canebrakes.

[Sidenote: =Danger from Indians ever present=]

But danger from the Indians was present every moment. Day and night, sleeping in their camp or tramping through the woods, the hunters had to be ready for the death grapple. One day Boone and a companion named Stewart were off their guard. The Indians rushed upon them and captured them.

[Sidenote: =Captured but escapes=]

Boone and his companion understood the ways of the Indians, and won their confidence. One night, as the savages slept around the camp fire, Boone arose and quietly awoke Stewart. They stole silently from the camp and hastened by night and day back to their old camp, only to find it destroyed and their comrades gone.

[Sidenote: =News from the old home=]

One day Daniel Boone saw his brother coming through the woods. What a happy meeting five hundred miles from home! The brother brought good news from kindred and friends.

[Sidenote: =His brother returns home for supplies=]

Stewart was shot by the Indians, but Boone and his brother remained all winter in Kentucky. Powder, lead, and salt were growing scarce. What should be done? Boone's brother returned home for supplies, but Daniel remained without even a dog for a companion. He very seldom slept twice in the same place for fear of the Indians.

He wandered to the banks of the Ohio, and was charmed with all he saw. He then decided that some day he would make Kentucky his home.

[Sidenote: =Brings supplies and both go home=]

Boone's brother returned in the spring, bringing supplies on two pack horses. After further explorations the two brothers returned to their home on the Yadkin and told their neighbors of the wonders of the new land.

[Sidenote: =An Indian attack=]

In the fall of 1773 several families, with cattle and horses, bade farewell to their friends and started for Kentucky, a "second Paradise," as Boone called it. Before they reached the new land Indians fell upon them and killed six. Among the killed was Boone's eldest son. The party returned for a time to a settlement in Virginia.

[Sidenote: =Making the "Wilderness Road"=]

Richard Henderson, a rich planter, claimed a great tract of land in Kentucky, and put Boone at the head of thirty brave men to cut and blaze a road from the Holston River over the mountains, through Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River. The result was the famous "Wilderness Road," the first road across the mountains, and over which hundreds of pack horses and thousands of settlers made their way.

[Sidenote: =Fort Boonesboro=]

When the road was finished to the banks of the Kentucky River, Daniel Boone built Fort Boonesboro. The fort was about two hundred sixty feet long, and one hundred fifty feet wide. At each corner of it stood a two-story blockhouse with loopholes, through which the settlers could shoot at Indians. Cabins with loopholes were built along the sides of the fort. Between the cabins a high fence was made by sinking log posts into the ground. Two heavy gates were built on opposite sides of the fort. Every night the horses and cattle were driven inside the fort.

[Sidenote: =His family in the "second Paradise"=]

=107. Boone Takes His Family to Kentucky.= When the fort was finished Boone brought his family, and several others, over the mountains to his "second Paradise." Other settlers came, and Boonesboro began to grow. Some of the bolder settlers built cabins outside of the fort, where they cut away and burned the trees to raise corn and vegetables.

[Sidenote: =Three girl prisoners=]

To the Indian all this seemed to threaten his hunting ground. The red men were anxious, therefore, to kill and scalp these brave pioneers. One day Boone's daughter and two girl friends were out late in a boat near the shore opposite the fort when the Indians suddenly seized the girls and hastened away with them. The people heard their screams for help, but too late to risk crossing the river.

[Sidenote: =The chase and the capture=]

What sorrow in the fort that night! Had the Indians scalped the girls, or were they hastening to cross the Ohio with them? The next day Boone with eight men seized their guns, found the Indian trail, and marched with all speed. What if the Indians should see the white men first! On the second day Boone's party came upon the Indians building a fire, and fired before they were seen. Two of the Indians fell, and the others ran away, leaving the girls behind, unharmed, but badly frightened.

[Sidenote: =Kentucky in the War of the Revolution=]

The War of the Revolution was already raging east of the mountains, and the Indians were taking the side of the British. In April, 1777, a small army of Indians crossed the Ohio and attacked Boonesboro. The little fort made a bold fight. The Indians retreated, but returned on the Fourth of July in large numbers, to destroy the fort and scalp the settlers. For two days and nights the battle went on. The fierce war cry of the Indians filled the woods around the fort. The white men took deadly aim. The women aided by melting lead into bullets. The Indians again failed, and finally retreated.

[Sidenote: =The prize prisoner=]

While making salt at the "Blue Licks," Boone and twenty-seven of his men were captured by the Indians and marched all the way to Detroit, the headquarters of the British army in the Northwest. The British offered the Indians five hundred dollars for Boone, but the savages were too proud of their great prisoner, and marched him back to their towns in what is now Ohio.

[Sidenote: =Adopted by an Indian family=]

Here he was adopted by an Indian chief. They plucked out all of Boone's hair except a "scalp lock," which they ornamented with feathers. They painted and dressed him like an Indian. His new parents were quite proud of their son. Sometimes he went hunting alone, but the Indians counted his bullets and measured his powder. But Boone was too shrewd for them. He cut the bullets in two, and used half charges of powder.

[Sidenote: =Steals away to Boonesboro=]

One day he saw four hundred fifty painted warriors getting ready to march against Boonesboro. He went hunting that day, but he did not come back. What excitement in that Indian town! Soon the woods were full of Indians hunting for Boone. In five days--with but one meal--he reached Boonesboro.

All hands fell to repairing the fort. The horses, cattle, and provisions were brought inside the fort, and water was brought from the river.

The Indians came, and Boone's Indian "father" called on him to surrender. Boone asked for two days to think about it, but he used this time in getting ready to fight. At the end of the two days Boone told him that his men would fight to the last.

[Sidenote: =An Indian trick spoiled=]

The Indians then proposed that twelve from each side meet to make a treaty of peace. Boone took his strongest men. While parleying, each Indian suddenly seized a white man. The white men broke away, and ran for the fort. Boone's riflemen were ready, and poured a hot fire into the Indians.

[Sidenote: =The Indians cannot capture Boone's fort=]

The Indians climbed into trees to shoot down into the fort. They tried to set the fort on fire, but failed. They then tried to dig a tunnel under the fort, but failed in that also.

After nine days of failure, and after losing many warriors, the Indians gave up the fight and recrossed the Ohio. Although the settlers had to keep a daily watch for Indians, and had to fight them in other parts of Kentucky, they never attacked Boonesboro again.

[Sidenote: =Boone's reason for again moving west=]

During the Revolutionary War other brave men came as pioneers into Kentucky, and built forts, and defended their settlements against the Indians. As the settlements grew thicker, game grew scarcer. Boone resolved once more to move farther west. When asked why, he replied: "Too much crowded. I want more elbow room."

[Sidenote: =Moves to Missouri=]

At the age of sixty, while Washington was still president, and after he had seen Kentucky become a state, Daniel Boone and his faithful wife made the long journey to the region beyond the Mississippi, into what is now Missouri. There he lived and hunted. He saw this region pass from Spain to France, and from France to the United States (1803). He was still a hunter at eighty-two, and saw Missouri preparing to enter the Union as the twenty-fourth state.

[Sidenote: =Died in 1820=]

He died in 1820 at the age of eighty-six. Years afterward, remembering the noble deeds of the great pioneer, Kentucky brought his body to the capital city and buried it with great honors.

[Sidenote: =The Louisiana country and the French=]

=108. Life in the Mississippi Valley.= When Boone led his brave men into Kentucky, white men had been living for years in the Mississippi Valley, farther west. These were the French of Louisiana, as they called their country. Their chief settlement was St. Louis.

These people came at first to dig lead from the old Indian mines of southern Missouri and to trade for furs. They were a quiet people who knew little and cared less about the rest of the world. They did not work hard, and they loved good times. A traveler who visited them says they were "the happiest people on the globe."

JOHN SEVIER, "NOLICHUCKY JACK"

[Sidenote: =Sevier born in Virginia=]

[Sidenote: =Early life in the Shenandoah=]

=109. A Famous Indian Fighter.= John Sevier was born in the Shenandoah Valley in 1745. His mother taught him to read, but he obtained most of his schooling in Washington's old school town, Fredericksburg. He quit school at sixteen. He built a storehouse on the Shenandoah and called it Newmarket. He lived there, selling goods and fighting Indians, until, at the early age of twenty-six, he was a wealthy man. He had already made such a name as an Indian fighter that the governor made him captain in the militia of which George Washington was then colonel.

[Sidenote: =Fine looking=]

Sevier was a fine-looking man. He was tall, slender, erect, graceful in action, fair skinned, blue eyed, and had pleasing manners, which had come to him from his French parents. He charmed everybody who met him, from backwoodsmen up to the king's governor at Williamsburg.

[Sidenote: =He goes to the Watauga=]

A most promising future opened before him in Virginia. But hearing of a band of pioneers on the Watauga, he rode over one day to see them and resolved to cast in his lot with them.

[Sidenote: =Tennessee in the Revolution=]

During the Revolutionary War, British agents went among the Cherokee Indians and gave them guns and ammunition. Indian-like, they planned to take Fort Watauga by surprise. They came creeping up to the fort one morning just at daybreak. Forty deadly rifles suddenly blazed from portholes and drove them back to the woods. During the siege of three weeks, food grew scarce at the fort, and the men became tired of being cooped up so long. Some of them ventured out and were shot or had very narrow escapes from death.

[Sidenote: =The story of Jack Sevier and Kate Sherrill=]

The story is told that Sevier, during the siege, fell in love with the beautiful, tall, brown-haired Kate Sherrill. One day she ventured out of the fort. It was a daring act, for four men had lost their lives in this way. The Indians tried to catch the girl, for they did not want to kill her. But she could run like a deer, and almost flew to the fort. Sevier was watching, and shot the Indian nearest her. The gate was closed, but she jumped with all her might, seized the top of the stockade, drew herself up, and sprang over into the arms of Sevier. Not long after she became his wife.

[Sidenote: =Sevier acts quickly=]

In 1778 Sevier heard that the Indians were coming again. He quickly called his men together, took boats, and paddled rapidly down the Tennessee to the Indian towns. He burned the towns, captured their store of hides, and marched home on foot. How surprised the Indians were when they returned!

[Sidenote: =Moves to the Nolichucky=]

=110. Nolichucky Jack.= The Watauga Settlement was growing in numbers, and Sevier went to live on the Nolichucky, a branch of the French Broad River. There he built a large log house, or rather two houses, and joined them by a covered porch. Outside were large verandas, while inside were great stone fireplaces.

[Sidenote: =Welcomes rich and poor=]

Here Sevier gave hearty welcome to friend and stranger, no matter how poor, if they were honest. The settlers far and wide, and new settlers from over the mountains, partook of his cider, hominy, corn bread, and of wild meat of many kinds. Sometimes he invited them with their families to a barbecue. Whether people came for advice or to call him to arms against the Indians, no one was turned away. "Nolichucky Jack," as his neighbors loved to call him, held a warm place in every settler's heart.

[Sidenote: =British challenge=]

In 1780 Cornwallis, then victorious in South Carolina, sent Colonel Ferguson with one thousand British soldiers into western North Carolina to punish the backwoodsmen. Ferguson grew bold, and sent word across the mountains, threatening to punish Sevier and his brave riflemen. This was enough. Colonel Shelby of Kentucky and Sevier resolved to rouse the frontiersmen, cross the mountains, and teach Colonel Ferguson a lesson. Colonel Campbell with his men from the Holston, in Virginia, joined them. A thousand well-mounted backwoodsmen, with their long rifles, fringed hunting shirts, and coonskin caps, began the march from the Watauga across the mountains. Once across they were joined by several hundred Carolinians. Ferguson retreated to Kings Mountain, too steep on one side to be climbed. He felt safe behind his thousand gleaming bayonets.

[Sidenote: =The plan of battle=]

[Sidenote: =Battle of Kings Mountain=]

The backwoodsmen picked nine hundred men to make the charge up the mountain in face of the bayonets, although among themselves there was not a bayonet. Three divisions, one for each side, marched up the mountain. Down the mountain side came the flashing bayonets. The backwoodsmen in the center retreated from tree to tree, firing steadily all the time. The British, now shot at from both sides as well as in front, turned and charged at one side. Then one division fired into their backs and the other on their side. What could bayonets do in the midst of trees?

[Sidenote: =The result=]

The backwoodsmen kept to the trees and their rifles seldom missed their aim. The British retreated to the top of the mountain. Colonel Ferguson was killed and his entire army was killed or captured. This victory caused great rejoicing among the Americans and prepared the way for the work of Greene and Morgan.

[Sidenote: =A deadly blow=]

Sevier and Campbell hastened back over the mountains, for the Indians were scalping and burning again. With seven hundred riflemen, they marched against the Indian towns and burned a thousand cabins and fifty thousand bushels of corn. This was a hard blow, but the Indians kept fighting several years longer.

Sevier, in all, fought thirty-five battles. He was the most famous Indian fighter of his time.

[Sidenote: =Governor of Tennessee many times=]

[Sidenote: =Indians trusted him=]

When Tennessee became a state the people elected him governor. They reëlected him till he had held the office for twelve years. The people of Tennessee almost worshiped the bold pioneer. He had spent all his time and all his wealth in their service. And while he was governor, and living in Knoxville, the early capital, one or more of his old riflemen were always living at his home. Even the Indian chiefs often came to visit him. When the people of Tennessee were debating questions of great importance, they always asked: "What says the good old governor?"

[Sidenote: =The boy's disappointment=]

One Sunday, when all the people of a backwoods settlement were at the country church, a bareheaded runner rushed in and shouted, "Nolichucky Jack's a-coming!" The people rushed out to see their governor. As he came near, he greeted one of his old riflemen, put his hand upon the head of the old soldier's son, spoke a kindly word, and rode on. The boy looked up at his father and said: "Why, father, 'Chucky Jack' is only a man!"

[Sidenote: =Died in 1815=]

Sevier died in 1815, while acting as an officer in marking the boundary line between Georgia and the Indian lands. Only a few soldiers and Indians were present. There he lies, with only the name "John Sevier" cut on a simple slab. But for generations the children of the pioneers went on repeating to their children the story of the courage and goodness of "Nolichucky Jack." His name is yet a household word among the people of eastern Tennessee. Their children are taught the story of his life. In the courthouse yard at Knoxville stands a monument erected to his memory.

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK, THE HERO OF VINCENNES

[Sidenote: =Clark born in Virginia=]

[Sidenote: =A surveyor=]

=111. A Successful Leader against the Indians and the British.= George Rogers Clark was born in Virginia in 1752. From childhood Clark liked to roam the woods. He became a surveyor and an Indian fighter at the age of twenty-one. Like Washington, with chain and compass, and with ax and rifle, he made his way far into the wild and lonely forests of the upper Ohio.

[Sidenote: =A scout=]

Clark was a scout for the governor of Virginia in the expedition which defeated the great Shawnee chief Cornstalk at the mouth of the Kanawha.

Two years later Clark made his way alone over the mountains and became a leader in Kentucky, along with Boone. The Kentucky hunters chose Clark to go to Virginia as their lawmaker.

[Sidenote: =In Kentucky=]

He told Governor Patrick Henry that if Kentucky was not worth defending against the Indians, it was not worth having. At this the Virginian lawmakers made Kentucky into a Virginia county and gave Clark five hundred pounds of powder, which he carried down the Ohio River to Kentucky.

[Sidenote: =Life at Harrodsburg=]

Clark lived at Harrodsburg where, for more than a year, he was kept busy helping the settlers fight off the Indians. This was the very time when Boonesboro and other settlements were so often surrounded by Indians who had been aroused by the British officers at Detroit. These officers paid a certain sum for each scalp of an American the Indians brought them.

[Sidenote: =Turns to Patrick Henry in time of need=]

After having seen brave men and women scalped by the Indians, Clark decided to strike a blow at the British across the Ohio. But where could he find money and men for an army? Kentucky did not have men enough. Clark thought of that noble patriot across the mountains, Patrick Henry. He mounted his horse and guided some settlers back to Virginia, but kept his secret. In Virginia he heard the good news that Burgoyne had surrendered.