Seedtime on the Cumberland

11. Indians

223 CHAPTER 11 Indians If on the evening of January 15, 1781, one could, by some magic, have been lifted high above the Mississippi Valley, and through some still greater magic have been able to see the whole sweep of country, it would, at first glance, have seemed an uninhabited stretch of grass or forest land, cut by rivers glittering in the moonlight, for the moon was bright that night, at least by the Cumberland in Middle Tennessee.1 Given the microscopically seeing, many-faceted eye of some peculiar fly, unable to see the Indian’s cabin or long bark house, but only the white man’s dwelling and the lights that marked it, one could, on looking closer, have seen here and there a few flickering lights from flames of hearth fire, candle, pine knot, or grease lamp. These pin-points of light would have made a little glow down by New Orleans and Natchez. Nearby, one would have seen fields, many old and stumpless, long cleared for sugar cane or corn. Almost due north, between two of the Great Lakes, there were a few more lights and several fields, some old enough for apple orchards. These were around Detroit, which, though getting on toward a hundred years old, was still little more than a fort on the frontier. South and west on the Wabash, the Kaskaskia, and the upper Mississippi were other old fields, and a few frame houses, but there was about these an air of neglect, almost of desolation, for the settlements in the Illinois were less flourishing than fifteen years ago, before first the British, and then the Americans came. Eastward on the western flanks of the Appalachians the scattered fields were newer, resembling less neat squares of snow-covered earth than the forest itself, for many were filled with deadened but still-standing trees. The white man’s home and fields had come to Fort Pitt, and there were scattering settlements along the upper tributaries of the Ohio, but north of the river the villages were of the Indian instead of the white man. Cabins and clearings on 224| Chapter 11 the Holston had pushed south and west. The Blue Grass of Kentucky was dotted with cabins and girdled trees, spread thinly to The Falls. The Cumberland was another story; the upper river including the Rockcastle region and everything down to the mouth of the Big South Fork lay uncleared and tenantless as when Dr. Walker visited it in 1750. Only the roads had widened and along them were signs of many travelers’ camp fires with here and there a fresh grave, marking the hasty burial of some scalped traveler. Clearings had spread along the Big South Fork, and those on Pittmans Creek, Price’s Meadows and down the river were still there, with the trail that crossed the Cumberland at Smith Shoals showing more sign of use. The settlements in this region, remote as they were, stood less than a hundred miles or so from others in East Tennessee; those in Central Kentucky were even closer, but across the Cumberland, over the hills, and in another world.2 More than three hundred miles down the crooked Cumberland, were the loneliest of all outposts in the young west, four little stations, three near the river, and all more than a hundred miles overland from any other white settlement. The casual observer glancing down through the moonlight would at first have thought that once again the Indians had made it plain no man should live on the Cumberland, for the region as a whole spoke more of death and failure than of life. The Red River settlements where the Renfroes and others had built the previous spring were no more than embers among weed- and brush-choked fields with here and there a grave, sixteen dead,3 but not necessarily that many graves. Clover Bottom where Hugh Rogan had worked in the corn, Mary Purnell Donelson had borne her first baby, and Nathaniel Hart’s Negroes had built cabins, stood weed-grown and deserted, as were the clearings and cabins of most other settlers, such as John Rains and William Neely. However, the stations built in 1779–80 by those who came overland were still standing. Eaton’s, like the other three, held more people than before, for all those not dead or gone away had had to take refuge in a station. Mansker’s, twelve miles north of Eaton’s now held about a...