Life of Daniel Boone, The Great Western Hunter and Pioneer | Page 8

of the unparalleled beauty
and fertility of the western interior. These reports, highly colored and
amplified, were soon received and known upon the frontier. Besides,
persons engaged in the interior traffic with the south-western Indian
tribes had, in times of peace, penetrated their territories--traded with
and resided amongst the natives--and upon their return to the white
settlements, confirmed what had been previously reported in favor of
the distant countries they had seen. As early as 1690, Doherty, a trader
from Virginia, had visited the Cherokees and afterward lived among
them a number of years. In 1730, Adair, from South Carolina, had
traveled, not only through the towns of this tribe, but had extended his
tour to most of the nations south and west of them. He was not only an
enterprising trader but an intelligent tourist. To his observations upon
the several tribes which he visited, we are indebted for most that is
known of their earlier history. They were published in London in 1775.
"In 1740 other traders went among the Cherokees from Virginia. They
employed Mr Vaughan as a packman, to transport their goods. West of
Amelia County, the country was then thinly inhabited; the last hunter's
cabin that he saw was on Otter River, a branch of the Staunton, now in
Bedford County, Va. The route pursued was along the Great Path to the
centre of the Cherokee nation. The traders and pack-men generally
confined themselves to this path till it crossed the Little Tennessee
River, then spreading themselves out among the several Cherokee
villages west of the mountain, continued their traffic as low down the
Great Tennessee as the Indian settlements upon Occochappo or Bear

Creek, below the Muscle Shoals, and there encountered the competition
of other traders, who were supplied from New Orleans and Mobile.
They returned heavily laden with peltries, to Charleston, or the more
northern markets, where they were sold at highly remunerating prices.
A hatchet, a pocket looking-glass, a piece of scarlet cloth, a trinket, and
other articles of little value, which at Williamsburg could be bought for
a few shillings, would command from an Indian hunter on the Hiwasse
or Tennessee peltries amounting in value to double the number of
pounds sterling. Exchanges were necessarily slow, but the profits
realized from the operation were immensely large. In times of peace
this traffic attracted the attention of many adventurous traders. It
became mutually advantageous to the Indian not less than to the white
man. The trap and the rifle, thus bartered for, procured, in one day,
more game to the Cherokee hunter than his bow and arrow and his
dead-fall would have secured during a month of toilsome hunting.
Other advantages resulted from it to the whites. They became thus
acquainted with the great avenues leading through the hunting grounds
and to the occupied country of the neighboring tribes--an important
circumstance in the condition of either war or peace. Further, the
traders were an exact thermometer of the pacific or hostile intention
and feelings of the Indians with whom they traded. Generally, they
were foreigners, most frequently Scotchmen, who had not been long in
the country, or upon the frontier, who, having experienced none of the
cruelties, depredation or aggressions of the Indians, cherished none of
the resentment and spirit of retaliation born with, and everywhere
manifested, by the American settler. Thus, free from animosity against
the aborigines, the trader was allowed to remain in the village where he
traded unmolested, even when its warriors were singing the war song or
brandishing the war club, preparatory to an invasion or massacre of the
whites. Timely warning was thus often given by a returning packman to
a feeble and unsuspecting settlement, of the perfidy and cruelty
meditated against it.
"This gainful commerce was, for a time, engrossed by the traders; but
the monopoly was not allowed to continue long. Their rapid
accumulations soon excited the cupidity of another class of adventurers;
and the hunter, in his turn, became a co-pioneer with the trader, in the

march of civilization to the wilds of the West. As the agricultural
population approached the eastern base of the Alleghanies, the game
became scarce, and was to be found by severe toil in almost
inaccessible recesses and coves of the mountain. Packmen, returning
from their trading expeditions, carried with them evidences, not only of
the abundance of game across the mountains, but of the facility with
which it was procured. Hunters began to accompany the traders to the
Indian towns; but, unable to brook the tedious delay of procuring
peltries by traffic, and impatient of restraint, they struck boldly into the
wilderness, and western-like, to use a western phrase, set up for
themselves. The reports of their return, and of their successful
enterprise, stimulated other adventurers to a similar undertaking.