Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 181 



ping out its course and exploring the Kentucky 

 lands that lay beside it. 31 



Among the hunters, surveyors, and explorers 

 who came into the wilderness in 1773 was a band 

 led by three young men named McAfee, typical 

 backwoodsmen, hardy, adventurous, their frontier 

 recklessness and license tempered by the Calvinism 

 they had learned in their rough log home. They 

 were fond of hunting, but they came to spy out the 

 land and see if it could be made into homes for their 

 children; and in their party were several surveyors. 

 They descended the Ohio in dugout canoes, with 

 their rifles, blankets, tomahawks, and fishing-tackle. 

 They met some Shawnees and got on well with 

 them; but while their leader was visiting the chief, 

 Cornstalk, and listening to his fair speeches at his 

 town of Old Chilicothe, the rest of the party were 

 startled to see a band of young Shawnee braves re- 

 turning from a successful foray on the settlements, 

 driving before them the laden pack-horses they had 

 stolen. 32 



They explored part of Kentucky, and visited the 

 different licks. One, long named Big Bone Lick, 

 was famous because there were scattered about 

 it in incredible quantity the gigantic remains of the 

 extinct mastodon; the McAfees made a tent by 

 stretching their blankets over the huge fossil ribs, 



81 Collins states that in 1770 and 1772 Washington surveyed 

 small tracts in what is now northeastern Kentucky ; but this 

 is more than doubtful. 



32 All of this is taken from the McAfee MSS., in Colonel 

 Durrett's library. 



