Notes
Prologue
Rebecca Boone noticed: Martha McCorkle (as “Mrs. Samuel Scott”), 1840s, Draper Manuscript Collection (DM) 11CC225–226, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
Jemima carried the lesson: Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, vol. 1 (New York: Putnam, 1889), 326; Stephen Railton, introduction to The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), xii; John Alexander McClung, Sketches of Western Adventure (Cincinnati: U. P. James, 1839), 40.
Chapter 1: Duck
Jemima strolled the banks: Will. M. Bransford, “The Capture and the Rescue, Part 1,” Southern Lady’s Companion 2, no. 8 (Nov. 1848): 170 (though a romanticized account, this contains information provided by the Callaway family); George W. Ranck, Boonesborough (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1901), 41.
Late the previous year: Harry G. Enoch and Anne Crabb, African Americans at Fort Boonesborough, 1775–1784 (Richmond, KY: Fort Boonesborough Foundation, 2019), 30–31.
With summer blazing: Eudocia Estill, 1852, DM 24C31; Richard French, 1840s, DM 12CC203; Nathan and Olive Boone, 1851, DM 6S94; Daniel Boone Bryan, 1844, DM 22C14(10).
The Boones had led: Jerry E. Clark, The Shawnee (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 52–53.
“Now, brothers”: Lyman C. Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, ed. Ted Franklin Belue (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998), 216; Maureen Hancock Ward, The Hancock Brothers from Virginia (Richfield, ID: Hancock Family Organization, 1992), 11.
Boone’s early, temporary excursions: John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 83; Anna M. Cartlidge, “Colonel John Floyd: Reluctant Adventurer,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 66, no. 4 (1968): 326; Neal O. Hammon, “The Fincastle Surveyors in the Bluegrass, 1774,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 70, no. 4 (Oct. 1972): 283, 286, 292.
Fanciful notions: John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (Wilmington, KY: James Adams, 1784), 46; Felix Walker, “Narrative of an Adventure in Kentucky in the Year 1775,” DeBow’s Review 16, no. 2 (Feb. 1854): 150–55; William Pitt Palmer, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, 1652–1781, vol. 1 (Richmond: R. F. Walker, 1875), 282ff; Ranck, ix; Joseph McCormick, 1870, DM 30C110–113.
Another pioneer: (Richard Callaway’s birth year has been in dispute. Possibilities include 1717, 1722, and 1724.) Charles W. Bryan Jr., “Richard Callaway, Kentucky Pioneer,” Filson Club History Quarterly 9 (Jan. 1935): 35–50.
The settlers took pains to appear fair: Stan Hoig, The Cherokees and Their Chiefs: In the Wake of Empire (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 58; Palmer, ed., 282.
Dragging Canoe, part of the: Neal O. Hammon and Richard Taylor, Virginia’s Western War, 1775–1786 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), 3; Palmer, ed., 283, 292.
Years earlier, the British had forbidden: “Proclamation Respecting New Governments in America,” Gentleman’s Magazine 33 (1763): 479; Ranck, 149, 181.
Such brewing controversies: Draper, Life, 363, note t; Delinda Boone Craig, 1866, DM 30C47; Faragher, 91.
Before beginning her own journey: Draper, Life, 363, note s; Ranck, 5.
Boone’s thirty-person advance party: Neal O. Hammon, “The First Trip to Boonesborough,” Filson Club History Quarterly 45 (July 1971): 249–63; Ranck, 192.
“Delightful beyond conception”: Willard Rouse Jillson, Tales of the Dark and Bloody Ground (Louisville: C. T. Dearing, 1930), 73; Ranck, 166.
“A new sky and strange earth”: Walker, 152; Harry G. Enoch, Pioneer Voices (Winchester, KY: 2012), 3.
Conceiving of themselves as versions of Columbus: Draper, Life, 337–38; Hammon and Taylor, Virginia’s Western War, 7.
Boone wrote weeks later: Walker, 154; Ranck, 169, 183.
Into these combustible circumstances: Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 55 (New York: Macmillan, 1898), 102–3; John Ferdinand Smyth, A Tour in the United States, vol. 1 (London: G. Robinson, 1784), 331; Ranck, 32–33; Wilbur H. Siebert, “Kentucky’s Struggle with Its Loyalist Proprietors,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 7, no. 2 (Sept. 1920): 114–15.
The far bank of the Kentucky River: Stephen Hempstead, 1863, DM 16C76; Moses Boone, c. 1846, DM 19C48; S. Paul Jones, 1889, DM 21C8(3); William Phelps, 1868, DM 24C57; Willis A. Bush, 1853, DM 24C59(4); Estill, DM 24C31; Samuel Dixon, 1852, DM 24C30; Evisa Coshow, 1885, DM 21C28; Daniel Boone Bryan, DM 22C14(10).
Changes had swept the region: Ranck, 31–32.
A figure thrashed: French, DM 12CC204; Ranck, 180; Enoch and Crabb, African Americans at Fort Boonesborough, 62–63.
“Simon! How you scared me!”: Nathaniel Hart Jr., c. 1843, DM 17CC192; Daniel Boone Bryan, 1843, DM 22C5(9); Bush, DM 24C59(4); Nathan and Olive Boone, DM 6S94; Craig, DM 30C47.
Chapter 2: Bloody Ground
During that same era: Henry Timberlake, The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake (London: J. Ridley, 1765), 33, 112.
Most of their exchange: Robert S. Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies (Toronto: Dundurn, 1993), 41; Delinda Boone Craig, 1866, DM 30C78.
That pattern played itself out: Reuben Gold Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg, eds., Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 1774 (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1905), 12; Robert G. Parkinson, “From Indian Killer to Worthy Citizen: The Revolutionary Transformation of Michael Cresap,” William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 1 (Jan. 2006): 100–101; Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, part 4 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854), 624; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 357.
Soon after that: Peter C. Mancall, “‘The Bewitching Tyranny of Custom’: The Social Costs of Indian Drinking in Colonial America” in American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500–1850, eds. Peter C. Mancall and James H. Merrell (New York: Routledge, 2000), 194–215; James H. Perkins, Annals of the West (St. Louis: James R. Albach, 1851), 142.
According to one account: Colin G. Calloway, The Shawnees and the War for America (New York: Viking, 2007), 51.
When the dust settled: Thwaites and Kellogg, Documentary History, 433; Jerry E. Clark, The Shawnee (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 56–57; Samuel Hazard, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: Joseph Severns, 1853), 497.
Whatever resistance Cornstalk put up: Joseph C. Jefferds, Captain Matthew Arbuckle: A Documentary Biography (Charleston, WV: Education Foundation, 1981), 62; Harry G. Enoch, Captain Billy Bush and the Bush Settlement (Winchester, KY: 2015), 14; Edward Eggleston and...