also meant "the place of many fields," and similar syno- 

 nyms in a confusing group of meanings. 



JLlie dark and bloody ground" 



Interest in colonizing the territory was intensified as 

 the result of a pow-wow Judge Richard Henderson of 

 North Carolina and a group of fellow land speculators 

 held with 1,200 Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals on the 

 Watauga River. That was in 1775. A treaty was made 

 whereby an enormous tract of "Cane-tuck-ee" was 

 bought, for £10,000 in goods. The purchase was de- 

 nounced by Governor Martin of North Carolina as one 

 concluded by "land pyrates." Lord Dunmore, governor 

 of Virginia, denied Henderson's right to hold the land, 

 and the purchase was later voided by the Virginia 

 Assembly. Henderson and his associates had named the 

 new territory Transylvania. When the issue of ownership 

 was finally settled, the Transylvania Land Company was 

 awarded a tract of 200,000 acres. 



At the time of the original transaction. Chief Dragging 

 Canoe, who had opposed it, spoke obscurely of a "dark 

 cloud" (the northern tribes) hovering over the territory. 

 Another unfriendly chief had referred to the land as 

 "bloody country." He probably had in mind the incessant 

 warfare between southern and northern Indian tribes in 

 the Kentucky hunting grounds, a warfare that had pre- 

 vented permanent Indian settlements. Whatever was 

 then said or intended, it was later stated that the Indians 

 were of the opinion that the whites had "bought a dark 

 and bloody ground. ' The phrase was long attached to 

 Kentucky. The survivors of early pioneer families who 

 were victims of murderous Indian attacks thought the 

 phrase an appropriate one. 



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