*
* This utterance of Dragging Canoe's is generally supposed to be
the origin of the descriptive phrase applied to Kentucky--"the
Dark and Bloody Ground." See Roosevelt, "The Winning of the
West," vol. I, p.229.
The purchase, finally consummated, included the country lying
between the Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers almost all the present
State of Kentucky, with the adjacent land watered by the
Cumberland River and its tributaries, except certain lands
previously leased by the Indians to the Watauga Colony. The tract
comprised about twenty million acres and extended into Tennessee.
Daniel Boone's work was to cut out a road for the wagons of the
Transylvania Company's colonists to pass over. This was to be
done by slashing away the briers and underbrush hedging the
narrow Warriors' Path that made a direct northward line from
Cumberland Gap to the Ohio bank, opposite the mouth of the Scioto
River. Just prior to the conference Boone and "thirty guns" had
set forth from the Holston to prepare the road and to build a
fort on whatever site he should select.
By April, Henderson and his first group of tenants were on the
trail. In Powell's Valley they came up with a party of Virginians
Kentucky bound, led by Benjamin Logan; and the two bands joined
together for the march.
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