ght
birch-bark canoes--and started down the Cumberland. At the French Lick,
where Nashville now stands, they saw enormous quantities of buffalo,
elk, and other game, more than they had ever seen before in any one
place. Some of their goods were taken by a party of Indians they met,
but some French traders whom they likewise encountered, treated them
well and gave them salt, flour, tobacco, and taffia, the last being
especially prized, as they had had no spirits for a year. They went down
to Natchez, sold their furs, hides, oil, and tallow, and some returned
by sea, while others, including Mansker, came overland with a drove of
horses that was being taken through the Indian nations to Georgia. From
the length of time all these men, as well as Boon and his companions,
were absent, they were known as the Long Hunters, and the fame of their
hunting and exploring spread all along the border and greatly excited
the young men.[22]

In 1771 many hunters crossed over the mountains and penetrated far into
the wilderness, to work huge havoc among the herds of game. Some of them
came in bands, and others singly, and many of the mountains, lakes,
rivers, and creeks of Tennessee are either called after the leaders
among these old hunters and wanderers, or else by their names perpetuate
the memory of some incident of their hunting trips.[23]

Mansker himself came back, a leader among his comrades, and hunted many
years in the woods alone or with others of his kind, and saw and did
many strange things. One winter he and those who were with him built a
skin house from the hides of game, and when their ammunition gave out
they left three of their number and all of their dogs at the skin house
and went to the settlements for powder and lead. When they returned they
found that two of the men had been killed and the other chased away by
the Indians, who, however, had not found the camp. The dogs, having seen
no human face for three months, were very wild, yet in a few days became
as tame and well trained as ever. They killed such enormous quantities
of buffalo, elk, and especially deer, that they could not pack the hides
into camp, and one of the party, during an idle moment and in a spirit
of protest against fate,[24] carved on the peeled trunk of a fallen
poplar, where it long remained, the sentence: "2300 deer skins lost;
ruination by God!" The soul of this thrifty hunter must have been
further grieved when a party of Cherokees visited