For over twelve thousand years Native Americans hunted and settled in Kentucky. The Paleo-Indian period was followed by the Archaic, Woodland, and late Prehistoric era to 1750. Entering Kentucky from all directions they made their presence known through mounds and villages. The frequent clashes for its control resulted in the sobriquet a “dark and bloody ground.”

Almost from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607, the vast expanse of land lying beyond the Appalachian Mountains, including Kentucky, enticed pioneers westward. Life on the American frontier often met English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s characterization of “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” but like a lodestone, Kentucky drew easterners from their leached soil to its fertile soil, great waterways and abundant resources of game and timber.

Here an imperial rivalry was played out between France and England. The English in Virginia looked to the frontier arbitrarily drawn far to the west. By 1678 Gabriel Arthur had brought the first accounts of Kentucky to Jamestown fostering a desire for its exploration. In the eighteenth century, the French explorer Bienville reasserted the French claim by leading an expedition from Quebec through the Ohio Valley in order to connect Canada with its settlements in Louisiana. In the trans-montane region both French and English traders interacted with Native Americans for their furs and allegiances. The consequence was a series of international wars to determine the fate of the west.

It was recognized that the headwaters of the Ohio River were crucial to controlling the valley and hence trading rights. When in 1748 Bienville moved to secure the French claim to the Ohio River Valley the English responded by building a fort there. In April 1754, the French seized and renamed it Fort Duquesne. The event precipitated the great French and Indian War or Seven Years’ War (1754-1763). At its conclusion the greatly outnumbered French were forced to cede to Great Britain their North American territory, including Kentucky.

The French presence removed, Virginia looked to its frontier with renewed interest. Recognizing no western boundary, there lay Kentucky whose name may have been uncertain but not its appeal. It was an appeal long known to many tribes but mainly the Shawnee and Cherokee. While none resided in Kentucky at the war’s end they continued to use it for transitory settlements and seasonal hunting. In order to placate them and secure trading rights, in 1763 King George III issued a proclamation that drew a line down the crest of the Appalachians and denied western settlement until some imperial plan could be devised.

Almost from the beginning continual pressure to move the line westward was exerted by Virginia and other colonies. This was usually accomplished through treaties signed with Native American tribes. With the end of Pontiac’s conspiracy, the Treaty of Hard Labor negotiated a new boundary with the Cherokee. In the 1768 treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Six Nations of the Iroquois ceded their Kentucky lands. However, the Shawnee, Delaware and other tribes did not acquiesce in the treaty. With new land in hand, grants could be acquired but only through the British Crown. But Virginia saw it differently. With the Iroquois removed the land seemed ready for immediate settlement. The question now was how to settle it–by individuals and small independent parties seeking modest homesteads or by land companies controlled by nonresident speculators? The later were corporate ventures with money to acquire large acreage for resale to individual settlers. Kentucky would be settled by both, although individual and small parties would prove more successful.

The Loyal Land Company, supported by a group of Virginians, was granted 800,000 acres partly in southeast Kentucky. It hired Dr. Thomas Walker, a known frontiersman, to explore its holdings. Entering Kentucky in 1750 through Sand Gap (later Cumberland Gap) he built a cabin near present-day Barbourville. Walker failed to find the rich meadowlands of the bluegrass and the company did not settle Kentucky. Later, the Ohio Company would settle the area but this was not until long after it sent Christopher Gist to explore it more thoroughly in the 1750s. Gist explored from the Ohio River into the bluegrass but was discouraged when he saw Native Americans aligning with the French. These disappointing reports delayed Kentucky’s settlement. It would be others who appreciated what Daniel Boone described, as “a country wonderful in its beauty to behold. “

While early land companies met with disappointment the same could not be said for individuals (known as “long hunters”) who in the 1760s and 1770s penetrated the Kentucky wilderness. They faced obstacles both human and natural but overcame them all. Filled with wanderlust these mostly young men came in fall and winter to hunt deer, elk, and bison and trap for furs. Alone or in small groups they ranged far and wide across the Kentucky region learning the topography as they began naming places. Their wanton slaughter of the game displeased Native Americans who often seized their catch of furs and issued a warning to leave Kentucky. The Cherokee relieved Daniel Boone of two years of furs but not his enthusiasm for Kentucky. He returned home with stories to tell of how he “found everywhere abundance of wild beasts of every sort, through this vast forest. The buffalo were more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlement, browsing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on those extensive plains.” These stories, if not the furs, in time morphed into a firm determination to settle here one way or another. The Rev. David Rice spoke for them when he said, “The spirit of speculation was flowing in such a torrent that it would bear down every obstacle that stood in its way.” One could say that the future of the British Empire was being shaped by the interactions of these hunters as they penetrated far beyond the proclamation line into the Kentucky wilderness.

By 1772 Virginia was prepared to protect its western investment in Kentucky and extended its authority, declaring the area a part of newly created Fincastle County. Attention could now be paid to actual settlements and the claims that came with them. While Virginia permitted such claims even before surveying a more orderly manner of settlement came with surveyors. Often incompetent, they would lay out the land in the traditional metes and bounds method of Virginia resulting in many overlaid claims. Their work would be made safer at the conclusion of Lord Dunmore’s War (May-October 1774). One cause of that war had been the attacks on long hunters. On October 10, 1774, at Point Pleasant a long battle resulted in the defeat of the Shawnee, which discouraged them from waging a large-scale war against Kentucky’s early settlements, although their claims remained.

Among the early surveyors was Thomas Bullitt sent by Governor Dunmore in 1773. Cognizant of Shawnee claims, he procured from Chief Corn Stalk the right to settle in northern Kentucky. Not all Shawnee agreed with this concession, and the tribe’s division was but another factor in its eventual loss of land south of the Ohio River. At the falls of that river Bullitt surveyed and claimed land that is now Louisville. Among those accompanying Bullitt was James Harrod. Seeing the rich meadowland of the bluegrass, he later gathered a small band of men and set about founding Kentucky’s first permanent settlement. In June 1774 they established Harrodstown (now Harrodsburg). Forced to abandon the settlement due to native incursions they left in October but would return in March 1775 and begin construction of a fort. The Society of Colonial Wars has recognized this event with historical markers one for Harrod and a second for the fort.

Kentucky’s settlement could not have come at less opportune time. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in April 1775, the very month and year of Boonesborough’s founding, Kentucky was battle born as the British and their Native American allies aligned to push the settlers back across the mountains. Hence forts played an indispensable role in their defense. Along with Fort Harrod and Fort Boonesborough was Fort Logan or St. Asaph. In May 1775, when Governor Dunmore ordered troops to leave the western regions, frontier families abandoned their cabins or stations and moved into the forts. Historian Stephen Aron said a frontier settler was seven times as likely to be killed as an eastern American. These stations were little more than defensible residential structures and varied in size and numbers. By the time of Kentucky statehood in 1792 most were abandoned. That frontier pioneers were cognizant of coming war was evident when in June 1775 those gathered around McConnell Springs and hearing of a battle in faraway Massachusetts, named their settlement Lexington. A historical marker, placed by the Society of Colonial Wars, honors this event as well as another at Georgetown founded on July 7, 1774, by surveyor John Floyd and also at a spring.

Meanwhile, filled with the wanderlust, Daniel Boone had fallen under the spell of this unexplored land. No name is more synonymous with Kentucky than Boone’s, and the spell was fueled by stories of a heavenly paradise—or so said John Findley who had explored Kentucky as early as the 1750s. Findley visited the site of Big Bone Lick as had the French before him. The result was the discovery of Pleistocene fossils which intrigued scientists here and abroad and increased contemporary interest in Kentucky. However it was not fossils but game and land, important in an increasingly materialistic colonial society that caused Boone to join Findley and others on a hunting-exploring party in 1769. The party entered through Cumberland Gap, which was one of two doors into Kentucky (the other being the Ohio River). While each held its dangers, in time thousands of pioneers would use them to lay claims and settle. By then Boone was well acquainted with Kentucky; he returned home after a long delay, knowing more about its geography and dangers than any other individual.

What Boone saw in those years so pleased him that in 1773 he attempted a settlement with family and friends before all the good lands were gone. The attempt was thwarted when the party was attacked by Delaware and several killed. But his chance of settlement was revived with the formation of yet another land company. Enter individual negotiator Richard Henderson of North Carolina. Having formed the Transylvania Company, he purchased present-day western and central Kentucky from the Cherokee at Sycamore Shoals in March 1775. To settle and then sell the land he hired Boone who opened a wilderness road to the Kentucky River. There on April 1, 1775, although the settlers were more interested in land claims than defense, he began construction of what became Fort Boonesborough. Henderson’s attempt to establish a feudal control over much of Kentucky was met with opposition from an anti-proprietary group including Governor Dunmore who denounced him as a land pirate. His land claim was to be short lived.

Another denouncing Henderson was George Rogers Clark who identified with the settlers of Harrodstown. Like others, he quickly fell under the spell of Kentucky claiming, “[a] richer and more beautiful country than this I believe I have never seen in America yet.” He prevailed upon Virginia to create Kentucky County on December 31, 1776, transferring the Transylvania Company’s lands to the Virginia assembly. Virginia was now responsible for both the administration and protection of its western settlements. Prior to that Clark and others made known the dangers. He knew that Henry Hamilton, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the region, had appealed to the Shawnee to attack the Kentucky settlements – which they did. By the end of 1775 Kentucky seemed to be forgotten by all but Clark. It could truly be said that its future then lay in his hands as he developed a plan for its defense by forcing the British out of their posts north of the Ohio River. With Lord Dunmore gone, Virginia’s Patriot Governor Patrick Henry approved and as a result pressure would be taken off the Kentucky settlements, but that took time. By July 4, 1776, conditions on the frontier were desperate as a broader war was poised to begin. If the estimated 200 or so Kentucky settlers were to hold out against overwhelming numbers of enemies it was in the hands of men such as Clark and Simon Kenton who came to the defense of Fort Boonesborough. Through their efforts and that of other pioneer men and women Kentucky would endure to see the end of colonization, the creation of the United States and a fifteenth star in that firmament on June 1, 1792.

John E. Kleber, one of Kentucky’s most distinguished historians, is professor emeritus of history at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, where he taught from 1968 to 1996. A native of Louisville, he graduated from Bellarmine University (1963), received graduate degrees from the University of Kentucky (MA 1965; Ph.D. 1969), and did post-graduate work at the University of California, Irvine. He is the editor of six books: The Public Papers of Lawrence W. Wetherby (University Press of Kentucky 1983), The Kentucky Encyclopedia (University Press of Kentucky 1992), The Encyclopedia of Louisville (University Press of Kentucky 2001), A Home for Children: A History of Brooklawn (Montage Publishing 2001), The New History of Shelby County, Kentucky (Harmony House Publishing 2003), and Thomas D. Clark of Kentucky: An Uncommon Life in the Commonwealth (University Press of Kentucky 2003). The Society of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Kentucky is delighted that Professor Kleber agreed to write this overview of Kentucky’s Colonial history for our website.

FURTHER READING

ABERNETHY, THOMAS PERKINS. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New York: Russell and Russell, 1959.

ARON, STEPHEN. How the West Was Lost. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

CHINN, GEORGE M. Settlements and Statehood, 1750-1800. Frankfort: The Kentucky Historical Society, 1975

CLARK, THOMAS D. A History of Kentucky. Ashland: The Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1992.

CLARK, THOMAS D. Three American Frontiers. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1968.

ECKERT, ALLAN W. The Frontiersmen: A Narrative. Ashland: The Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2001.

FARAGHER, JOHN MACK. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Holt, 1992.

FRIEND, CRAIG THOMPSON. Kentucky’s Frontiers. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010.

HARRISON, LOWELL H., and JAMES C. KLOTTER. The New History of Kentucky. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

HUDSON, CHARLES. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1989.

KLEBER, JOHN E. ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992.

VAN EVERY, DALE. Forth to the Wilderness: The First American Frontier (1754-1774). New York: William Morrow and Company, 1961.