University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

A PECULIARLY romantic interest has ever been
attached to the name and history of Kentucky,—
the first region of the great ultramontane Wilderness
penetrated by the Saggenah, or Englishman,—the
first torn from its aboriginal possessors,
and converted from a desert hunting-ground into
the home of civilized men. The ramblings of the
solitary Boone, in whose woodland adventures we
recognise the influence of the wild passion, as
common on the American frontier as in the poet's
closet,—

and the fierce strife of those who followed in his
paths, with the lords of the forest, are chapters
in its annals, which, if they be not themselves
poetry, are productive of all its effects on the
minds of the dreamy and imaginative.

But apart from the charm the history of Kentucky
possesses for the romantic, it has an interest
scarcely inferior for the grave and reflecting.
This is derived from a consideration of the character
of the men by whom—in the midst of difficulties

and dangers as numerous and urgent,—
perhaps more so than ever attended the establishing
any colony in North America,—were laid,
upon a basis as firm as if planned by the subtlest
and wisest spirits of the age, the foundations of a
great and powerful State. They were, with but
few exceptions, men drawn from what, in our
vanity, we call the humbler spheres of life,—farmers
and hunters, the mountaineers of Virginia
and the Carolinas,—men “born,” to use the words
of their own historian, “in indigence, and nurtured
in ignorance, thrown upon the world without
a ray of science to guide, or even the rudiments
by which it was to be obtained,” but who, under
all these disadvantages, without the influence of
any great and experienced mind to impel, direct,
or counsel, succeeded in their vast enterprise,
wrested from the savage the garden-land of his
domain, and secured to their conquest all the
benefits of civil government and laws. Their
success may be considered a phenomenon in history:
but the philosophic examiner will perhaps
find in it an illustration of the efficacy of the republican
principle in enlarging the mind, and
awaking the energies, of men whom the influence
of another code of political faith would have kept
in the darkness and insignificance to which they
were born. It is not to be denied that men of
education and refinement were to be found among
the earlier settlers of Kentucky: but the most
prominent and distinguished founders, the commanders
of the Stations, the leaders of the military
forces,—those who are, and must continue to
be, recollected as the true fathers of the State,
were such persons as we have described, ignorant
but ardent, unpolished and unpretending, yet
brave, sagacious, and energetic,—the very men,
in fact, for the time and the occasion.

These remarks will serve as an explanation,
and, if it be necessary, an apology for some of the
characters that figure in the following pages, particularly
that of the honest Colonel of militia. In
a story written to illustrate the early period in
which those men were busily engaged strengthening
and securing their little State,—a period the
darkest and stormiest in the annals of the Indian
border,—it was both fitting and necessary that
some representative of the race should appear.
The outlines may be ruder than was proper or
just; but they will be the better foil to the generous
qualities of spirit, common, at that day, to
all the men of Bruce's class.

An objection of the same kind may perhaps
apply to the character of Ralph Stackpole. But
that, we beg the reader to understand, is no portrait
drawn from imagination. The history of
this wild scape-gallows, his prowess in the pin-fold
and the battle-field, his adventure on the
beech-tree, and his escape from the meshes of the
law, with other characteristic events not included

in our relation, are recollections still cherished in
some parts of Kentucky, and made the theme of
many a gleesome story.

The story of Wandering Nathan has a similar
foundation in truth; but its origin belongs to one
of the Western counties of Pennsylvania.

We owe, perhaps, some apology for the hues
we have thrown around the Indian portraits in
our picture,—hues darker than are usually employed
by the painters of such figures. But, we
confess, the North American savage has never
appeared to us the gallant and heroic personage
he seems to others. The single fact that he wages
war—systematic war—upon beings incapable of
resistance or defence,—upon women and children,
whom all other races in the world, no matter
how barbarous, consent to spare,—has hitherto
been, and we suppose, to the end of our days
will remain, a stumbling-block to our imagination:
we look into the woods for the mighty
warrior, `the feather-cinctured chief,' rushing to
meet his foe, and behold him retiring, laden with
the scalps of miserable squaws and their babes.—
Heroical? Hoc verbum quid valeat, non vident.