Blending Cultures

It took some years to blend the cultures in the Old Northwest and Ohio Valley region.  The Yankee scorned the Southerner and the Southerner scorned the Yankee.  The New Englanders, usually a people of education (their communities appointed a schoolmaster right away),  were pious, law-abiding and industrious.  This didn't blend well with their easy-going neighbors.  New Englanders were, however, shrewd businessmen who could drive a hard bargain with their backwoods neighbors.  "Yankee tricks" was a common term to refer to the business practices between New Englanders and Southerners, with suspicion always on the New Englanders.

In the first days of the westward migration the Cumberland Gap was the gateway to the West.  Situated at the southeastern corner of Kentucky, it was easy for the Virginians and Carolinians to pass to Cincinnati and Louisville.  A group of Virginians, Carolinians, and Kentuckians, known as the "Long Knives", were short on book learning and not known to be gentlemen.  They sought the Ohio Valley as an escape from the society that held their birth and lack of wealth at a disadvantage.  They were not pious, though religious, their houses were poorer, their villages cruder, their dress rougher.  These people, however, were brave, industrious, hospitable and generous to a fault.  They often clashed with the New Englanders.

Before the Erie Canal opened in 1825, there were just three main routes to the new western territory but they all led to the Ohio River. Some went by way of Lake Erie by boat and then land. Some took the Cumberland Gap and Wilderness Road..  And some took long, arduous journeys by land on the National Road.  They went on foot or by canvas-covered wagons (ancestors of the prairie schooners that would go West in the mid-1800s).  Heavy with possessions, these vehicles were drawn over rough, muddy roads by oxen, mules and maybe horses.  Like their later offspring, they found exposure, illness, Indian attacks and acute loneliness. 

As Morris Birkbeck who was passing on the National Road in 1817 wrote, "Old America seems to be breaking up and moving westward on this grand track toward Ohio." 

Next time...Down the Ohio
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 1, 1700, English pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of April Fool's Day by playing practical jokes on each other.  Although the day also called All Fool's Day, has been celebrated for centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.  

The Man of Legend

Famed as a hunter, wilderness explorer, Indian fighter, surveyor, negotiator, strategist, state legislator, magistrate and land speculator, folk tradition has attributed countless mythical feats to Daniel Boone.
The facts are remarkable enough...

Born November 2, 1734 to Quaker parents on a frontier farm near present day Reading, Pennsylvania, Daniel learned to read and write legibly, but never mastered grammar nor spelling.  In the woods, however, he was a master.  Indians taught Boone the art of spotting and tracking game and how to live in the wilderness. 

Boone stood 5'9", but he had an unusual strength, agility and presence of mind.  Although not the first white man in Kentucky, he was the foremost explorer.  In 1769 he explored most of central and eastern Kentucky.  In 1775 he negotiated a huge tract of land from the Cherokee along with a North Carolina land speculator, Judge Richard Henderson. 

With a company of 30 ax men, Boone cleared the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River and founded Boonesborough at the end of the road.

In 1776, the Indians captured Boone's daughter, Jemima, and two of her companions while they were boating on the Kentucky River.  Boone and a small party followed a trail of broken twigs and cloth the girls had left behind (taught no doubt by Boone), and rescued all safely. 

Boone wrote of his trip to Kentucky in 1769:
"In the midst of dangers and inconveniences, it was impossible to be melancholy.  Nothing could afford such pleasure in my mind as the beauties of nature I found here...a second paradise."

Next time...the Legend Part 2
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Today in Pioneer History: On September 21, 1779,  the Louisiana governor and Spanish military officer Bernardo de Galvez, with the aide of American troops and militia volunteers, captures the British post and garrison at Baton Rouge, located in what was then British-controlled West Florida.