302 The Winning of the West 



After Henderson's main treaty was concluded, 

 the Watauga Association entered into another, by 

 which they secured from the Cherokees, for 2,000 

 pounds sterling, the lands they had already leased. 



As soon as it became evident that the Indians 

 would consent to the treaty, Henderson sent Boone 

 ahead with a company of thirty men to clear a 

 trail from the Holston to the Kentucky. 3 This, the 

 first regular path opened into the wilderness, was 

 long called Boone's trace, and became forever 

 famous in Kentucky history as the Wilderness Road, 

 the track along which so many tens of thousands 

 traveled while journeying to their hoped for homes 

 in the bountiful West. Boone started on March 

 loth with his sturdy band of rifle-bearing axemen, 

 and chopped out a narrow bridle-path a pony trail, 

 as it would now be called in the West. It led over 

 Cumberland Gap, and crossed Cumberland, Laurel, 

 and Rockcastle rivers at fords that were swimming 

 deep in the time of freshets. Where it went 

 through tall, open timber, it was marked by blazes 



Haywood gives a long speech made by Oconostota against 

 the treaty; but this original report shows that Oconostota 

 favored the treaty from the outset, and that it was Dragging 

 Canoe who spoke against it. Haywood wrote fifty years after 

 the event, and gathered many of his facts from tradition; 

 probably tradition had become confused, and reversed the 

 position of the two chiefs. Haywood purports to give almost 

 the exact language Oconostota used ; but when he is in error 

 even as to who made the speech, he is exceedingly unlikely to 

 be correct in anything more than its general tenor. 



3 Then sometimes called the Louisa; a name given it at 

 first by the English explorers, but by great good-fortune not 

 retained. 



