y any single man. No keen-eyed
statesman planned the movement, nor was it carried out by any great
military leader; it was the work of a whole people, of whom each man was
impelled mainly by sheer love of adventure; it was the outcome of the
ceaseless strivings of all the dauntless, restless backwoods folk to win
homes for their descendants and to each penetrate deeper than his
neighbors into the remote forest hunting-grounds where the perilous
pleasures of the chase and of war could be best enjoyed. We owe the
conquest of the west to all the backwoodsmen, not to any solitary
individual among them; where all alike were strong and daring there was
no chance for any single man to rise to unquestioned preeminence.

In the summer of 1769 a large band of hunters[18] crossed the mountains
to make a long hunt in the western wilderness, the men clad in
hunting-shirts, moccasins, and leggings, with traps, rifles, and dogs,
and each bringing with him two or three horses. They made their way over
the mountains, forded or swam the rapid, timber-choked streams, and went
down the Cumberland, till at last they broke out of the forest and came
upon great barrens of tall grass. One of their number was killed by a
small party of Indians; but they saw no signs of human habitations. Yet
they came across mounds and graves and other remains of an ancient
people who had once lived in the land, but had died out of it long ages
before the incoming of the white men.[19]

The hunters made a permanent camp in one place, and returned to it at
intervals to deposit their skins and peltries. Between times they
scattered out singly or in small bands. They hunted all through the
year, killing vast quantities of every kind of game. Most of it they got
by fair still-hunting, but some by methods we do not now consider
legitimate, such as calling up a doe by imitating the bleat of a fawn,
and shooting deer from a scaffold when they came to the salt licks at
night. Nevertheless, most of the hunters did not approve of "crusting"
the game--that is, of running it down on snow-shoes in the deep
mid-winter snows.

At the end of the year some of the adventurers returned home; others[20]
went north into the Kentucky country, where they hunted for several
months before recrossing the mountains; while the remainder, led by an
old hunter named Kasper Mansker,[21] built two boats and hollowed out of
logs two pirogues or dugouts--clumsier but tougher craft than the li