Genealogy/Books/Kentucky/Michaux 1805

Link: https://archive.org/details/travelstowestwa00michgoog

Author: François André Michaux

Year: 1805

Title: Travels to the Westward of the Allegany Mountains: In the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Return to Charlestown, Through the Upper Carolinas

Chapter XII

Quote from Chapter XII:

The excellent quality of the land, which is reported to be more fertile than the banks of the Ohio, and which the Spanish government, at the time, distributed gratis; the multitude of beavers, elks, and, more particularly, of bisons, were the motives which induced him to emigrate into these distant countries; from whence, when he had determined on a convenient spot to settle in with his family, he had to return, and seek them on the banks of the Ohio, which obliged him to make a voyage of fourteen or fifteen hundred miles, three times. His dress, like that of all the American hunters, consisted of a round waistcoat with sleeves, a pair of pantaloons, and a broad woolen girdle, of a red and yellow color. A carbine, a tomahawk, a small hatchet used by the Indians to cut wood, and to complete the death of their enemies, two beaver traps, and a large knife hanging to his girdle, composed his hunting equipment. One blanket was all his baggage. Every evening he encamped on the banks of the river, or passed the night by a fire, and when he judged the spot to be favourable to the chase, he penetrated into the woods for several days; and, from the produce of his hunting, procured the means of subsistence, and obtained fresh supplies with the skins of the animals he had killed.

Such were the first inhabitants of Kentucky and Tennessee, of whom very few are now left. It was them who began to clear these fertile countries, and wrested them from the savages, who obstinately disputed the possession of them; it was them who finally secured the property in them, after five or six years of bloody war: but long habituated to a wandering and unemployed life, they were unable to enjoy the fruits of their toil, or to benefit by the extraordinary value to which they had raised these lands in a short time, they have emigrated into more remote countries, where they are forming new establishments. It will be the same with the greater part of those who now inhabit the banks of the Ohio. The same disposition which brought them there will cause them to emigrate from thence. To these, new emigrants will succeed, coming also from the Atlantic states, who will abandon their possessions to seek a milder temperature, and a more fertile soil. The price which they will obtain for them will be enough to pay for their new acquisitions, the peaceable enjoyment of which will be secured by a numerous population. These last comers, instead of log-houses, with which the present possessors are content, will build houses of planks; they will clear a greater quantity of the land, and will be as active and persevering in improving their new possessions, as the first were in following their passion for the chase. To the culture of maize, they will add that of what, tobacco, and hemp. Rich pastures will feed numerous flocks, and an advantageous market for all the products of the country will be secured to them by the Ohio.

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"More than half of those who inhabit the banks of the Ohio are also the first inhabitants, or, as they are called in the United States, first settlers, a kind of men who are unable to stop on the soil which they have cleared...

I was alone on the banks of the Monongahela, when, for the first time, I observed five or six of these boats floating down the river. I could not conceive what these large square boxes were, which, abandoned to the current, presented by turns their ends, their sides, and their corners. As they approached, I heard a confused noise, but the height of their sides prevented me from distinguishing anything. By getting on the bank of the river, I at length discovered several families in these boats, which also conveyed their horses, their cows, their poultry, their dismounted carriages, their plows, their harnesses, their beds, their agricultural tools, in fact everything which is required for furnishing a farm house, and cultivating the land. These people abandoned themselves in this manner for several hundred miles to the current of the river, probably without knowing the place where they might stop, and enjoy in tranquility the fruits of their industry, under one of the best governments existing in the World.

- Michaux, "Travels Westward, etc., 1802"