Pioneers of the Old Southwest

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n after 1680 they were to be found in several of the colonies. It was not long, indeed, before they were entering in numbers at the port of Philadelphia and were making Pennsylvania the chief center of their activities in the New World. By 1726 they had established settlements in several counties behind Philadelphia. Ten years later they h

phrase is current wherever Scots dwell. They had contested in Parliament and with arms for their own form of worship and for their civil rights. They were already frontiersmen, trained in the hardihood and craft of border warfare through years of guerrilla fighting with the Irish Celts. They had pitted and proved their strength against a wilderness; they had reclaimed the North of Ireland from desolation. For the time, many of them were educated men; under the regulations of the Presbyterian Church every child was taught to read at an early age, since no person could be admitted to the privileges of the Church

ealm the Reformation, though proclaimed by royal authority, had never been accomplished; and Henry's more famous daughter, Elizabeth, had conceived the plan, later to be carried out by James, of planting colonies of Protestants in Ireland to promote loyalty in that rebellious land. Six counties, comprisin

at Ireland in 1666 through its cattle trade, by prohibiting the exportation of beef to England and Scotland. The Navigation Acts, excluding Ireland from direct trade with the

ound a loyal province in the midst of the King's enemies, they had done their work too well and had waxed too powerful for the comfort of later monarchs. The first attacks upon them struck at their religion; but the subsequent legislative acts which successively ruined the woolen trade, barred n

Thanks to his persecutors, he made a religion of everything he undertook and regarded his civil rights as divine rights. Thus out of persecution emerged a type of man who was high-principled and narrow, strong

uring the five years preceding the Revolutionary War more than thirty thousand Ulstermen crossed the ocean and arrived in America just in time and in just the right frame of mind to return King George's compliment in kind, by helping to deprive him of his American estates, a domain very

Back Country of North Carolina, with its cheap and even free tracts lying far from the seat of government, must have seemed not only the Land of Promise but the Land of Last Chance. Here they must strike their roots into the sod with such interlocking strength that no cataclysm of tyranny should ever dislodge them-or they must accept the fate dealt out to them by their former persecutors and become a tribe of nomads and serfs. But to t

75. 1 However that may be, it is certain that these Mecklenburg Protestants had received special schooling in the doctrine of independence. They had in their midst for eight years (1758-66) the Reverend Alexander Craighead, a Presbyterian minister who, for his "republican doctrines" expressed in a pamphlet, had been disowned by the Penns

on of Independence; and American Arch

t would seem that their first immigration to America in small bands took place after the suppression of the Jacobite rising in 1715-when Highlanders fled in numbers also to France-for by 1729 there was a settlement of them on the Cape Fear River. We know, too, that in 1748 it was charged against Gabriel Johnston, Governor of North Carolina from 1734 to 1752, that he had shown no joy over the King's "glorious victory of Culloden" and that "he had appointed one William McGregor, who had been in the Rebellion in

d into that position until he had performed some deed of worth. They were principally herders, their chief stock being the famous small black cattle of the Highlands. Their wars with each other were cattle raids. Only in war, however, did the Gael lay hands on his neighbor's goods. There were no highwaymen and housebreakers in the Highlands. No Highland mansion, cot, or barn was ever locked. Theft and the breaking of an oath, sins against man's honor, were held in such abhorrence that no one guilty of them could remain among his clansmen in the beloved

ount of the Settlement of Sc

ly were their lives forfeit but their crops and cattle had been destroyed and the holdings on which their ancestors had lived for many centuries taken from them. The descriptions of the scenes attending their leave-taking of the hills and glens they loved with such passionate fervor are among the most pathetic in history. Strong men who had met the ravage of a brutal sword without weakenin

gligible numbers, were in the Yadkin Valley before 1730, possibly even ten years earlier. In 1739 Neil MacNeill of Kintyre brought over a shipload of Gaels to rejoin his kinsman, Hector MacNeill, called Bluff Hector from his residence near the bluffs at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville. Some of these immigrants went on to the Yadkin, we are told, to unite with others of their clan who had been for some time in that district. The exact time of the first Highlander on the

Highland arms would soon be needed by His Majesty. He knew something of Highland honor, too; for he would not let the Gaels proceed after their landing until they had bound themselves by oath to support the Government of King George. So it was that the unfortun

s and urging them on to die for honor's sake. When this Highland force was conquered by the Americans, the large majority willingly bound themselves not to fight further against the American cause and were set at liberty. Many of them felt that, by offering their

sturdy people across the ocean, during the first years of the eighteenth century, was religious persecution. By statute and by sword the Roman Catholic powers of Austria sought to wipe out the Salzburg Lutherans and the Moravian followers of John Huss. In that region of the Rhine country known in those days as the German Palatinate, now a part of Bavaria, Protestants were being massacred by the troops of Louis of France, then engaged in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) and in the zealous effort to extirpate heretics from the soil of Europe. In 1708, by proclamation, Good Qu

became the distributing center for the German race in America. By 1727, Adam Müller and his little company had established the first white settlement in the Va

nt out into the country of these bloodthirsty tribes and told them that he had come to them in their darkness to teach the love of the Christ which lighteth the world. The Indians received him suspiciously. One day while he sat in his tent writing, some Delawares drew near to slay him and were about to strike when they saw two deadly snakes crawl in from the opposite side of the tent, move directly towards the Apostle, and pass harmlessly over his body. Thereafter they regarded him as under spiritual protection. Indeed so widespread was his good fame among the tribes that for some years all Moravian settlements along the borders were unmolested. Painted

uated in the present county of Forsyth east of the Yadkin, and which is historically listed as the Wachovia Tract. In 1753, twelve Brethren left the Moravian settlements of Bethlehem and N

in Travels in the American Col

their sacrifice unto blood that free conscience and just laws might promote the progress and safeguard the intercourse of their kind. Now let us take up for a moment Brother Grube's Journal even as we welcome, per

r than his charges, and "rested well in it." Though the alarming Irishman did not disturb them, the Brethren's doubts of that race continued, for Brother Grube wrote on the 14th of October: "About four in the morning we set up our tent, going four miles beyond Carl Isles [Carlisle, seventeen miles southwest of Harrisburg] so as not to be too near the Irish Presbyterians. After breakfast the Brethren shaved and then we rested under our tent.... People who were staying at the Tavern came to see what kind of folk we were.... Br Gottlob held the evening service and th

a guess that the name he attempted to set down as it sounded to him was Sevier. And we wonder if, in his brief sojourn, he saw a lad of eight years, slim, tall, and blond, with daring and mischievous blue eyes, and a certain curve of the lips that threat

s," with Brother Gottlob as usual in his hammock. Three days later the record runs: "Toward evening we saw Jeams River, the road to it ran down so very steep a hill that we fastened a small tree to the back of our wagon, locked the wheels, and the Brethren held back by the tree with all their might." Even then the wagon went down so fast that most of the Brethren lost their footing and rolled and tumbled pell-mell. But Faith makes little of such mishaps: "No harm was done and we thanked the Lord that he had so graciously protected us, for it looked dangerous and we thought at times that it could not pos

n we held a little Lovefeast and rested our souls in the loving sacrifice of Jesus, wishi

ater. The current was very swift and the lead horses were carried down a bit with it. The water just missed running into the wagon but we came safely to the other bank, which however we coul

march. They found with joy that, as ever, the Lord had provided for them. This time the gift was a deserted cabin, "large enough th

eavens, they held their Lovefeast, while wolves padded and howled about the walls; and in that Pentacostal hour the tongue of fire descended u

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his hammock above our heads"-as was most fitting on this of all nights

se now claims our attention, for there was a lad in this family whose name and deeds were to so

children, George, Sarah, and Squire, to spy out the land. Sarah and Squire remained in Pennsylvania, while their brother returned to England with glowing reports. On August 17, 1717, George Boone, his wife, and the rest of his children journeyed to Bristol and sailed for Philadelphia, arriving there on the 10th of October. The Boones went first to Abingdon, the Quaker farmers' community. Later they moved to the northwestern frontier hamlet of North Wales, a Welsh community which, a few years previousl

ites, Daniel

Daniel Boone was born, the fourth son and sixth child of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Daniel Boone therefore was a son of the frontier. In his childhood he became familiar with hunters and with Indians, for even the red men

ows. From early spring till late autumn, mother and son lived in a rustic cabin alone on the frontier. A rude dairy house stood over a cool spring, and here Sarah Boone

d small game. When he reached his twelfth year, his father bought him a rifle; and he soon became a crack shot. A year later we find him setting off on the autumn hunt-after driving the cattle in for the winter-with all the keenness and courage of a man twice his thirteen years. Hi

re Boone's children married "worldlings"-non-Quakers-and were in consequence "disowned" by the Society. In defiance of his sect, which strove to make him sever all connection with his unruly offspring, Squire Boone refused to shut his doors on the son and the daughter who had scandalized local Quakerdom. The Society of Friend

lds dear out to larger horizons, is ahead of the line, as we picture him, ready to meet first whatever danger may assail his tribe. He is a strong wiry man of rather small stature, with ruddy complexion, red hair, and gray eyes. Somewhere in the line, together, we think, are the mother and son who have herded cattle an

It is Squire Boone's blood which shows in his ruddy face-which would be fair but for its tan-and in the English cut of feature, the straw-colored eyebrows, and the blue eyes. But his Welsh mother's legacy is seen in the black hair that hangs long and loose in the hunter's fashion to his shoulders. We can think of Daniel Boone only as exhilarated by this plunge into the Wild. He sees ahead-the