The War in the Northwest 63 



their own sakes, they are still more important as 

 types of the men who surrounded them. 



The individualism of the backwoodsmen, how 

 ever, was tempered by a sound common-sense, and 

 capacity for combination. The first hunters might 

 come alone or in couples, but the actual coloniza 

 tion was done not by individuals, but by groups 

 of individuals. The settlers brought their families 

 and belongings either on pack-horses along the for 

 est trails, or in scows down the streams; they set 

 tled in palisaded villages, and immediately took 

 steps to provide both a civil and military organi 

 zation. They were men of facts, not theories; and 

 they showed their usual hard common-sense in mak 

 ing a government. They did not try to invent a 

 new system; they simply took that under which 

 they had grown up, and applied it to their altered 

 conditions. They were most familiar with the gov 

 ernment of the county; and therefore they adopted 

 this for the frame-work of their little independent, 

 self-governing commonwealths of Watauga, Cum 

 berland, and Transylvania. 11 



ony to the Cumberland but a few days before old Mansker 

 led another; and though without Robertson the settlements 

 would have been temporarily abandoned, they would surely 

 have been reoccupied. If Henderson had not helped Boone 

 found Kentucky, then Hart or some other of Henderson's 

 associates would doubtless have done so; and if Boone had 

 been lacking, his place would probably have been taken by 

 some such man as Logan. The loss of these men would 

 have been very serious, but of no one of them can it be said, 

 as of Clark, that he alone could have done the work he actu 

 ally did. 

 11 The last of these was the most pretentious and short- 



