The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 105 



money. 23 In Kentucky, while much land was taken 

 up under Treasury warrants, much was also allotted 

 to the officers of the Continental army; and the re 

 tired officers of the Continental line were the best 

 of all possible immigrants. A class of gentle-folks 

 soon sprang up in the land, whose members were not 

 so separated from other citizens as to be in any 

 way alien to them, and who yet stood sufficiently 

 above the mass to be recognized as the natural lead 

 ers, social and political, of their sturdy fellow-free 

 men. These men by degrees built themselves com 

 fortable, roomy houses, and their lives were very 

 pleasant ; at a little later period Clark, having aban 

 doned war and politics, describes himself as living a 

 retired life with, as his chief amusements, reading, 

 hunting, fishing, fowling, and corresponding with 

 a few chosen friends. 24 Game was still' very plen 

 tiful: buffalo and elk abounded north of the Ohio, 

 while bear and deer, turkey, swans, and geese, 25 not 

 to speak of ducks and prairie fowl, swarmed in the 

 immediate neighborhood of the settlements. 



The gentry offered to strangers the usual open- 

 handed hospitality characteristic of the frontier, 

 with much more than the average frontier refine 

 ment; a hospitality, moreover, which was never 

 marred or interfered with by the frontier suspi- 

 ciousness of strangers which sometimes made the 



23 Draper MSS. G. R. Clark to Jonathan Clark, April 20, 

 1788. 



54 Do., letter of Sept 2, 1791. 



25 "Magazine of American History," I. Letters of Lau 

 rence Butler from Kentucky, Nov. 20, 1786, etc. 



