In the Current of the Revolution 7 



udiced observer with the equally prejudiced, but 

 golden instead of sombre hued, reminiscences of 

 frontier life, over which the pioneers lovingly lin- 

 gered in their old age. To these old men the long- 

 vanished stockades seemed to have held a band of 

 brothers, who were ever generous, hospitable, cour- 

 teous, and fearless, always ready to help one another, 

 never envious, never flinching from any foe. 7 

 Neither account is accurate; but the last is quite 

 as near the truth as the first. On the border, as 

 elsewhere, but with the different qualities in even 

 bolder contrast, there was much both of good and 

 bad, of shiftless viciousness and resolute honesty. 

 Many of the hunters were mere restless wanderers, 

 who soon surrendered their clearings to small farm- 

 ing squatters, but a degree less shiftless than them- 

 selves; the latter brought the ground a little more 

 under cultivation, and then likewise left it and 

 wandered onward, giving place to the third set of 

 frontiersmen, the steady men who had come to stay. 

 But often the first hunters themselves stayed and 

 grew up as farmers and landed proprietors. 8 Many 

 of the earliest pioneers, including most of their lead- 

 ers, founded families, which took root in the land 

 and flourish to this day, the children, grandchildren, 

 and great-grandchildren of the old-time Indian fight- 

 ers becoming Congressmen and judges, and officers 

 in the regular army and in the Federal and Confed- 

 erate forces during the Civil War. 9 In fact, the 



7 McAfee MSS. 8 Do. 



9 Such was the case with the Clarks, Booties, Seviers, 

 Shelbys, Robertsons, Logans, Cockes, Crocketts, etc. ; many 



