Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 159 



debatable ground between the Northern and the 

 Southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein, 1 

 but both used it as their hunting-grounds; and it 

 was traversed from end to end by the well marked 

 war traces 2 which they followed when they invaded 

 each other's territory. The whites, on trying to 

 break through the barrier which hemmed them in 

 from the western lands, naturally succeeded best 

 when pressing along the line of least resistance ; and 

 so their first great advance was made in this debata- 

 ble land, where the uncertainly defined hunting- 

 grounds of the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw 

 marched upon those of Northern Algonquin and 

 Wyandot. 



Unknown and unnamed hunters and Indian trad- 

 ers had from time to time pushed some little way 

 into the wilderness ; and they had been followed by 

 others of whom we do indeed know the names, 

 but little more. One explorer had found and named 

 the Cumberland river and mountains, and the great 

 pass called Cumberland Gap. 3 Others had gone far 



1 This is true as a whole; but along the Mississippi, in the 

 extreme west of the present Kentucky and Tennessee, the 

 Chickasaws held possession. There was a Shawnee town 

 south of the Ohio, and Cherokee villages in southeastern 

 Tennessee. 



2 The backwoodsmen generally used "trace," where West- 

 ern frontiersmen would now say "trail." 



8 Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia. He named them after 

 the Duke of Cumberland. Walker was a genuine explorer 

 and surveyor, a man of mark as a pioneer. The journal of 

 his trip across the Cumberland to the headwaters of the Ken- 

 tucky in 1750 has been preserved, and has just been published 

 by William Cabell Rives (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.). It 



