north was separated from the American metropolis of the West, Pittsburg, and from the first fortresses built in Kentucky, by leagues of forests, dark as when Bouquet pierced them; and filled with sullen Indian nations, awed for the time being by Dunmore's invasion, but silently biding their time to avenge themselves for the loss of the meadow lands of Ken-ta-kee.
Such was the condition of affairs when, in April 1775, the open struggle for independence of the American colonies was roughly precipitated at Lexington. It might seem to the casual observer that the colonists, who were now hastening by way of Boone's Wilderness Road into the Virginian Kentucky, could not feel the intense jealousy for American interests which was felt by the patriots in the East. On the contrary, there is evidence that these first pioneers into the West had a profound knowledge of the situation; and a sympathy for the struggling patriots, which was enhanced even by the distance which separated them, and the hardships they had endured. Not a few of them, too, had known personally of the plundering British
