sidered by them, as open for all who chose to
resort to them. The Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the Cataubas, and the
Chicamaugas, from the south east; and the Illinois, the Peorias, the
Delawares, the Mingoes and Shawanees from the west, claimed and
exercised equal rights and privileges within its limits. When the
tribes of those different nations would however meet there, frequent
collisions would arise between them; and so deadly were the conflicts
ensuing upon these, that, in conjunction with the gloom of its dense
forests, they acquired for it the impressive appellation of "the dark
and bloody ground." But frequent and deadly as may have been those
conflicts, they sprang from some other cause, than a claim to
exclusive property in it.

In the summer of 1769, Daniel Boone, in company with John Finley (who
had previously hunted through the country) and a few other men,
entered Kentucky, and travelled over much of its surface, without
meeting with an Indian, until the December following.[6] At this time
Boone and John Steward (one of his companions,) while on a hunting
excursion, were discovered by a party of Indians, who succeeded in
making them prisoners. After a detention of but few days, these men
effected their escape; & returning to their old camp, found that it
had been plundered, and their associates, either killed or taken into
captivity. They were shortly after joined by a brother of Daniel Boone
and another man, from North Carolina, who were so fortunate in
wandering through the wilderness, as to discover the only, though
temporary residence of civilized man within several hundred miles. But
the Indians had become alarmed for the possession of that country; and
fearing that if Boone and Steward should be suffered to escape to the
settlements, they might induce others to attempt its permanent
occupancy, they sought with vigilance to discover and murder them.
They succeeded in killing Steward; but Daniel Boone and his brother,
then the only persons left (the man who came out with the younger
Boone having been killed by a wolf,) escaped from them, and soon after
returned to North Carolina.

The Indians were not disappointed in their expectations. The
description given of the country by the Boones, soon led others to
attempt its settlement; and in 1773, six families and about forty men,
all under the guidance of Daniel Boone, commenced their journey [110]
to Kentucky with a view of remaining there. Before they p