The
Regulators were now in conflict with the authorities, because the
frontier folk were suffering through excessive taxes,
extortionate fees, dishonest land titles, and the corruption of
the courts. In May, 1771, the conflict lost its quasi-civil
nature. The Regulators resorted to arms and were defeated by the
forces under Governor Tryon in the Battle of the Alamance.
The Regulation Movement, which we shall follow in more detail
further on, was a culmination of those causes of unrest which
turned men westward. To escape from oppression and to acquire
land beyond the bounds of tyranny became the earnest desire of
independent spirits throughout the Back Country. But there was
another and more potent reason why the country east of the
mountains no longer contented Boone. Hunting and trapping were
Boone's chief means of livelihood. In those days, deerskins sold
for a dollar a skin to the traders at the Forks or in
Hillsborough; beaver at about two dollars and a half, and otter
at from three to five dollars. A pack-horse could carry a load of
one hundred dressed deerskins, and, as currency was scarce, a
hundred dollars was wealth. Game was fast disappearing from the
Yadkin. To Boone above all men, then, Kentucky beckoned. When he
returned in the spring of 1771 from his explorations, it was with
the resolve to take his family at once into the great game
country and to persuade some of his friends to join in this
hazard of new fortunes.
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