Part 1
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TO MY CHILDREN
EWART, LA VERNE, AND LOIS
WHO HAVE EVER BEEN MY
INSPIRING AUDIENCE
STORIES OF OLD KENTUCKY
BY MARTHA GRASSHAM PURCELL
AUTHOR OF "SETTLEMENTS AND CESSIONS OF LOUISIANA"
MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION PADUCAH, KENTUCKY
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY MARTHA GRASSHAM PURCELL.
COPYRIGHT, 1915, IN GREAT BRITAIN.
STORIES OF OLD KENTUCKY. E.P.
PREFACE
To be easily assimilated, our mental food, like our physical food, should be carefully chosen and attractively served.
The history of the "Dark and Bloody Ground" teems with adventure and patriotism. Its pages are filled with the great achievements, the heroic deeds, and the inspiring examples of the explorers, the settlers, and the founders of our state. In the belief that a knowledge of their struggles and conquests is food that is both instructive and inspiring, and with a knowledge that a text on history does not always attract, the author sets before the youth of Kentucky these stories of some of her great men.
This book is intended as both a supplementary reader and a text, for, though in story form, the chapters are arranged chronologically, and every fact recorded has been verified.
Thanks are due to the many friends who have granted access to papers of historical value, to many others who have assisted in making this book a reality, and especially to my husband, Dr. Clyde Edison Purcell, for his valuable suggestions, careful criticisms, and untiring coöperation.
MARTHA GRASSHAM PURCELL.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WHEN THE OCEAN COVERED KENTUCKY 9
THE ABORIGINES OF KENTUCKY 10
SOME PREHISTORIC REMAINS 16
THE DISCOVERY OF KENTUCKY 18
INDIAN CLAIMS IN KENTUCKY 22
SCOUWA 23
THE GRAVEYARD OF THE MAMMOTHS 27
THE DRUID OF KENTUCKY 28
A PIONEER NOBLEMAN 33
EARLY KENTUCKY CUSTOMS 37
BOONE'S ILLUSTRIOUS PEER 41
BOONE'S TRACE 49
BOONE IN CAPTIVITY 52
BOONESBOROUGH'S BRAVE DEFENSE 56
THE LOST BABY 61
THE FIRST ROMANCE IN KENTUCKY 64
A WEDDING IN THE WILDERNESS 67
PIONEER CHILDREN 70
HOW THE PIONEERS MADE CHANGE 72
A WOMAN'S WILL 73
WHEN THE WOMEN BROUGHT THE WATER 76
THE RESULT OF ONE RASH ACT 83
TWO KENTUCKY HEROES 86
THE BATTLE OF THE BOARDS 89
THE FAITHFUL SLAVE AND HIS REWARD 91
THE DOUBLE SHOT 94
A MAN OF STRATEGY AND SAGACITY 96
THE KIND-HEARTED INDIAN 100
SAVED BY THE HUG OF A BEAR 101
A KENTUCKIAN DEFEATED THE BRITISH 105
A FAMOUS MARCH 110
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS PARTY 113
FORT JEFFERSON 115
"THE HARD WINTER" 118
WILDCAT MCKINNEY 119
HOW KENTUCKY WAS FORMED 122
KENTUCKY IN THE REVOLUTION 123
KENTUCKY'S PIONEER HISTORIAN 125
SPANISH CONSPIRACY 128
A KENTUCKY INVENTOR 135
OTHER KENTUCKY INVENTIONS 138
THE MAN WHO KNEW ABOUT BIRDS 140
A HERO OF HONOR 143
THE "PRIDE OF THE PENNYRILE" 150
LUCY JEFFERSON LEWIS 153
NATURAL CURIOSITIES IN KENTUCKY 155
THE WORLD'S GREATEST NATURAL WONDER 159
HOW REELFOOT LAKE WAS FORMED 161
KENTUCKY VALOR IN 1812-1815 163
A TRIUMVIRATE OF ELOQUENCE 166
KENTUCKIANS IN TEXAS AND MEXICO 167
CLAY, THE GREAT COMMONER 169
KENTUCKY IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES 171
WHY SOME CITIES WERE SO NAMED 175
KENTUCKY IN THE FIELD OF SCIENCE 179
"BESSEMER STEEL" IN KENTUCKY 182
KENTUCKY ARTISTS 184
KENTUCKY IN THE FIELD OF LETTERS 187
KENTUCKIANS IN HISTORY 190
A LIST OF BOOKS ABOUT KENTUCKY
AUDUBON, LUCY: "Life and Journals of John James Audubon." Putnam.
COLLINS, R.H.: "History of Kentucky." Collins & Co.
EGGLESTON, E.: "Stories of American Life and Adventure." "Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans." American Book Co.
HULBERT, A.B.: "Boone's Wilderness Road." Arthur H. Clark Co.
JOHNSON, E.P.: "History of Kentucky and Kentuckians." Lewis Publishing Co.
KINKEAD, E.S.: "History of Kentucky." American Book Co.
MARSHALL, H.: "History of Kentucky." Frankfort.
OTIS, JAMES: "Hannah of Kentucky." American Book Co.
PRICE, S.W.: "Old Masters of the Blue Grass." Morton & Co.
SHALER, N.S.: "Kentucky." Houghton Mifflin Co.
SMITH, H.I.: "Prehistoric Ethnology of a Kentucky Site." Amer. Museum of Nat. Hist.
SMITH, Z.F.: "History of Kentucky." Courier-Journal Co.
STOCKTON, F.R.: "Stories of New Jersey." American Book Co.
THOMPSON, E.P.: "A Young People's History of Kentucky." A.R. Fleming Publishing Co.
TOWNSEND, J.W.: "Kentuckians in History and Literature." Neale Publishing Co. "Kentucky in American Letters." Torch Press.
YOUNG, B.H.: "Prehistoric Men of Kentucky." Filson Club.
STORIES OF OLD KENTUCKY
WHEN THE OCEAN COVERED KENTUCKY
Facts are stranger than fiction; and when we read the great volume of Nature, we find it more intensely interesting, instructive, and exciting than any "tale" told by our master minds.
It is difficult enough for the youth of to-day to realize there was ever a time when Kentucky did not have a place on the map and in the march of events. Still more difficult is it for them to realize that there was a time when the ocean covered our state. Geological annals show that the surface of Kentucky was once the bed of the sea. This primitive ocean is supposed to have covered a large part of North America to the depth of several thousand feet. As we read the record in the soil and as we study the strata, we find evidence of a gradual retreat of the briny waters without proofs of any very violent or sudden disruptions of the ocean. The creation or appearance of sea animals, fishes, polyps, and the formation of limestone, sandstone, slate, grit, and pebble, are parts of the story here recorded.
The retreat of the briny waters continued and continued for ages, until finally the Cumberland or Wasioto Mountains emerged, followed by the Black, Laurel, Pine, Long, and Galico Mountains; other lower elevations then rose until only an inland sea, surrounded by sandy hills, remained. Then the grasses, reeds, and mosses left their impress; land animals, insects, birds, and reptiles appeared; vegetation increased, and trees and shrubs grew.
Still the waters receded; marshes, muddy swamps, licks, small lakes, ponds, clay and marl deposits were left; sinks and caves were formed; and land plants and animals increased.
As the waters still slowly but surely receded, creeks, rivers, and valleys received their present shape, the ocean reached its actual level, and the American continent assumed its shape. The huge animals--the big bears, buffaloes, jaguars, elephants, and mastodons--roamed over what is now Kentucky, and left their impress at Big Bone Lick, Drennon's Lick, and other points where the savage, the settler, and the man of science have successively meditated and marveled over their prehistoric remains.
THE ABORIGINES OF KENTUCKY
When but a little girl one of my greatest delights was to sit at the feet of my maternal grandfather and listen to the tales of the olden times. Grandfathers and grandmothers always love to tell stories, and boys and girls love to hear them. Our grandparents were not the only ones that enjoyed telling stories of the great past; Indians also related many things to their children of what had happened in the long ago. But as the red men had no books in which to record these happenings, some of their stories may be of real incidents and a great deal may be purely imaginary, for we know the Indian was always very superstitious.
There is a story told by the Lenni-Lenape Indians, who lived in eastern United States, that their ancestors in the very earliest times were mere animals living underground. One of them accidentally found a hole by which he came to the surface of the ground, and soon the whole tribe followed. These Indians believed that they gradually became human beings; so in remembrance of their ancestors, they chose such names as "Black Bear," "Black Hawk," "Red Horse," and "Sitting Bull." Some of the tribes believing in this tradition would not eat any underground animals like the rabbit, ground hog, and ground squirrel, for fear they would be eating their kinsmen.
Another very interesting tradition told by these Lenni-Lenape, or Delawares, is that these ancestors came from west of the Mississippi and that when they tried to cross this stream the right of passage was disputed by a powerful force called the Alligewi, from whose name we get the word Allegheny. Being determined to cross this mighty stream and move eastward, the Lenni-Lenape joined with the Mengwe (Iroquois) in a war upon the Alligewi, overcame them, and almost exterminating them, drove the remnant of their tribe entirely from the country.
General G.R. Clark, Colonel McKee, and Colonel James Moore at different times and places were told by Indians, among them the noted chiefs "Cornstalk" and "Tobacco," that before the red men came to Kentucky--named from Ken-tuck-ee, meaning in Indian language, "the river of Blood"--a white race, superior in many arts and crafts unknown to the red men, the builders of the many forts, and the inhabitants of the vast burying grounds, had been besieged by the early Indians in a great battle near the Falls of the Ohio. The remnant was driven into a small island below these rapids, where the entire race was "cut to pieces."
In confirmation of this, there was found on Sandy Island, a vast burying ground and "a multitude of human bones was discovered." This traditional testimony has been in many instances confirmed by unmistakable traces of a terrible conflict throughout the Ohio Valley. The story of these bloody battles, handed down for generations, very probably caused the Indians to name this place the "Dark and Bloody Ground." Believing it to be filled with ghosts of its primitive people, it is no small wonder that this race, full of imagination and superstition, should use it so little as a permanent home.
But who was this primitive race? Whence did they come and what did they accomplish? The works they built have lived after them, and from these silent memorials the people have been called Mound Builders. Beyond the bounds of memory, into the land of mystery we go when we strive to learn of them. They have left their imprint in the valleys of the Licking, the Kentucky, the Ohio, and the Cumberland. Their many mounds vary in size, shape, structure, location, contents, and use. Some cover only a small area, while others have a diameter of over one hundred feet and one covers fifteen acres. They display a considerable knowledge of geometry, engineering, and military skill.
Because some have supposed these ancient people to have been sun worshipers, the "high places" for ceremonial worship are called temple mounds. The fact that these are more numerous in Kentucky than elsewhere, may have given rise to the expressions "sacred soil" or "God's country." Within or near these inclosures are mounds containing altars of stone or burned clay, known as altar mounds; the burial places, called mounds of sepulture, are isolated and contain human remains which shed more light on the character and achievements of this prehistoric race than any others. The military mounds, or works of defense, are usually near a waterway, often on a precipitous height, in a commanding position, and with an extension ditch or moat; the skill, the foresight, and the complete system shown by these would prove that there were fierce foes to be resisted and a vast population to be defended.
It is possible that all agricultural work was done with "digging sticks." Fishing and hunting were accomplished by arrows, knives, and spears, chipped from stone or rubbed out of antlers, by fishhooks of bone, and by nets. There were also "animal calls" made from small mammal bones, and the hollow bones of the birds. The knives were probably chipped stone points, clamshells, or bear teeth; there were also awls of bones, strainers of pottery, hammerstones, whetstones, chisels of bone, and needles from bones of small animals. Modeling, impressing, twisting, knitting, painting, and sculpture were carried on; personal ornaments, rattles, whistles, and pipes were made. Moccasins, beads of pottery, bone, shell, teeth, and copper, and pottery of various sizes, shapes, and decoration were and sometimes are still found all along the streams of the state.
We know that they were an agricultural class because in some mounds were found remains of Indian corn and beans, also hickory nuts, butternuts, walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and pawpaw seeds.
While in some instances the graves were more or less surrounded by limestone slabs, in other places the dead were laid on skins or on the bare ground, and covered with skins and soil heaped above. As this soil had to be carried in baskets or skins, these immense mounds stand as mute memorials of their love for one another.
SOME PREHISTORIC REMAINS
There are many curious natural formations in Kentucky; yet the many artificial mounds also have added interest to the topography, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish where nature ends and art begins.
The noted scientist, C.S. Rafinesque, claimed to have discovered one hundred and forty-eight ancient sites and over five hundred monuments in this state.
The greater number of the mounds were small cone-like structures from five to ten or sometimes forty feet in height; in several counties those of pyramid shape were found, and other counties contained unusual structures.
In Bourbon were found several sites, forty-six monuments, a circus of fourteen hundred and fifty feet, and a town whose stretch of walls measured four thousand six hundred and seventy-five feet.
Hickman County had a teocalli, or temple, ten feet high, thirty feet wide, and four hundred and fifty feet long.
Livingston with several sites and monuments had also an octagon whose walls measured twenty-eight hundred and fifty-two feet in length.
In McCracken was found a teocalli fourteen feet high and twelve hundred feet long.
Rockcastle had a stone grave three feet high, five feet wide, and two hundred feet long.
Warren claimed a ditched town, octagonal in shape, measuring in perimeter one thousand three hundred and eighty-five feet.
In Trigg was found a walled town with a circumference of seven thousand five hundred feet.
A mound more than twenty feet high with a diameter of over one hundred feet was located in Montgomery.
In Estill was located one fifteen feet high, one hundred and ninety-two feet in diameter, and surrounded by a moat ten feet deep and thirty-five feet wide.
A horseshoe-shaped fort of about ten acres in area was found in Caldwell. Its curve was bordered by a perpendicular bluff of sixty feet, and the two points of the shoe were connected by a stone wall ten feet high and six hundred feet long, with a gateway eight feet wide.
In Hickman, O'Bryan's fort; in Madison, a stone fort containing four or five hundred acres; and in Greenup, an effigy mound representing a bear, "leaning forward, measuring fifty-three feet from the top of the back to the end of the fore leg and one hundred five and one half feet from the tip of the nose to the rear of the hind foot," with those already mentioned, give a faint idea of the variety of mounds in shape, size, and structure. Yet these are only a few of the many ancient remains in Kentucky of the Mound Builders who have left their imprint throughout our great central valley and whose wide range has left in the same mound "the mica of the Alleghenies, the obsidian of Mexico, the copper of the Great Lakes, and shells from the Gulf of the Southland."
Since the location of these remains the plowshare has leveled many mounds, but several can yet be traced.
THE DISCOVERY OF KENTUCKY
Do you ever feel, when reading of the deeds of the early European navigators, who braved the perils of the trackless deep only to find on this shore a tangled "forest primeval," that our own beloved Kentucky is in every way far removed historically from them?
Since it is so interesting and edifying to find ourselves related to some noted personage, let us see if we can connect the "Dark and Bloody Ground" with the discoveries that opened up a new world.
We must go back many, many years, yes, even to the Middle Ages, if we would see how and why we are at least a small link in the great chain of events that gradually gave to the western world one of its proudest commonwealths. Some one has said, "Westward the course of empire takes its way," but for centuries the people of Europe concerned themselves not with what lay to the west of them but with the people and problems of the East. This is easy to understand when we learn that the copper, lead, tin, and manufactures of Europe were carried by traders, partly by sea and partly by land, to Constantinople or to Egypt, where they were exchanged for the luxuries that Asia had sent by vessels or camels. India and the Spice Islands sent cloves, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, mace, nutmeg, camphor, musk, aloes, and sandalwood, also diamonds and pearls. Cathay (China) sent silks, while Cipango, the island of mystery, in the great ocean east of Cathay that no one had seen, was believed to be the richest of all.
In 1453, while this exchange was at its height, the Turks conquered Constantinople, seized the caravan routes, and ruined the trade. Gold and pearls, ivory and diamonds, spices and silks, could no longer be secured unless a waterway could be found to the East.
Prince Henry the Navigator, a Portuguese, though many of his captains thought that in the torrid zone the ocean was boiling and that flames filled the air, succeeded in reaching almost to the equator before his death in 1460. In 1487, Diaz continued the work to the Cape of Good Hope. Christopher Columbus, believing the earth a sphere, thought that by sailing due westward only two thousand five hundred miles he would reach China and India. So in August, 1492, after seeking aid in vain from Portugal, England, and his own country, he braved the "Sea of Darkness" in a Spanish ship. Though some Portuguese sailors had said, "You might as well expect to find land in the sky as in that waste of waters," in October of the same year he made the discovery that gave to the world a new continent.
Then the spirit of adventure and aggrandizement dominated the Spanish race. Ponce de León, Fernando Cortez, Pizarro, and Fernando de Soto continued the work until June, 1543. Luis de Moscoso, the successor of de Soto, with a remnant of his once proud force, now reduced to about three hundred men, in boats descended the Mississippi River to its mouth; from the boats they were the first white men to behold the land that is now Kentucky.
England, so far, had been very quiet and conservative about discovering, exploring, or settling. Finally, English fishermen came to Newfoundland. Sir John Hawkins traded negroes for hides and pearls, and Sir Francis Drake ravaged the Caribbean coast and in 1577-1580 sailed around the world. Soon Sir Humphrey Gilbert attempted colonization, which was taken up by his half brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, who sent two ships under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who discovered the coast of North Carolina. Upon their return, Queen Elizabeth named it Virginia. Kentucky was included in the charter of this first colony, which was settled at Jamestown, 1607.
The first Englishman to view what is now Kentucky was Colonel Wood, who in 1654, for commerce and not conquest, explored the northern boundary of Kentucky as far as the Mississippi River, then called the Meschacebe. Captain Bolt (or Batt) of Virginia in 1670 came from that state into what is now Kentucky. In 1673 Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, in company with Luis Joliet and five other Frenchmen in two canoes passed down the Mississippi along the western border of Kentucky and spent several days at the mouth of the Ohio, where Cairo, then called Ouabouskigou, now stands. Again in February, 1682, Robert de la Salle and his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, in company with several other Frenchmen, descended the Illinois River, and passed down the Mississippi, or Colbert, to its mouth, claiming the country on both sides for the French king, Louis the Great, in whose honor they called this vast tract Louisiana.
It was as a prisoner among the Indians in 1730 that the first white native American, John Sailing of Virginia, was taken to Kentucky. In 1750 a party of Virginians, among them Dr. Thomas Walker, came by way of Powell's Valley through a gap in Laurel Mountain, into central Kentucky. He named both the mountain and the river (formerly the Shawnee) for England's "Bloody Duke" of Cumberland who defeated the Scottish forces at Culloden. Some say that near where they entered what is now the state of Kentucky these men built a rude cabin.
But it was left for John Finley and party, 1767, to learn and love this wonderland of fertile soil, towering forests, luxuriant vegetation, and boundless supply of game. When he returned to North Carolina with such glowing accounts of this wilderness beyond the mountains, many were ready to leave the comforts of civilization for the dangers and privations of this land of promise.
INDIAN CLAIMS IN KENTUCKY
Though the Indians at the time of the coming of the white men used Kentucky mainly as a hunting ground instead of a home, various tribes laid claim to it by prior possession.
In 1768, at Fort Stanwix--now Rome, New York--the English government purchased the title to all the lands lying between the Ohio and Tennessee rivers from the tribes of Indians called the Six Nations. This tract included the present state of Kentucky.
Shortly after the battle of Point Pleasant, 1774, the Shawnees entered into a treaty with Governor Dunmore of Virginia whereby they gave up all title to the lands south of the Ohio River.
At the Sycamore Shoals, of the Watauga River, 1775, Colonel Richard Henderson, acting for the Transylvania Company, purchased the title of the Cherokees to this "hunting ground" for ten thousand pounds sterling. This purchase was afterwards declared null and void by the states of Virginia and North Carolina.