Analysis of Dr. Thomas Walker’s Kentucky Expedition Journal
This article is companion to the video below. Want to skip directly to the analysis so you can follow along? Click to the 52:00 timestamp.
Parts of Walker’s journal might have seemed bland, but taken all together, it leaves us with a lot to review. Let’s run it from the top.
The first thing of intrigue is that Walker records the date he leaves as “the Sixth day of March, at ten o'clock, 1749-50,” and that’s stylized as 1749 DASH 1750: a little more research led to my finding that Walker and the rest of the American colonists would have celebrated New Year on March 25th. It wasn’t until 1752, which is after Walker’s return, that Great Britain adopts January 1 as the start to the New Year. The new year starting during a month -- not March 1, or March 31 -- meant that when dating documents pre 1752 some people would include both years, since it was technically: strictly speaking of the month: march of two different years. Unfortunately this is a hiccup that leads some amateur historians -- at first glance -- to believe that Walker and his crew were gone for an extra year -- but of course, as we just read, it wasn’t that long, and he was making daily entries all the while.
I want to point out the time of year that Walker is leaving during, too: he hits the road in March. Its still cold enough to snow, but he’s putting the entire calendar year in front of him: before winter comes around again. I’m not sure how long he expected to be gone, but regardless, he starts at the right time of year: he’s got a long, long time before the fall comes with consistent cold weather. Winter not only brings cold, but it also means the waterways freeze, making them useless for travel -- and as we read, he does hop in a canoe from time to time.
Along those lines, another benefit to going in the spring is that snowmelt would have the waterways at peak flow: that’s both good and bad: sometimes they are paddling around on those waterways, and sometimes they have a hard time finding a ford to cross.
Heading out in March also means heightened visibility in the woods. Without leaves on the trees you can see the topography better and keep a better eye on things in and around camp: all these benefits may have been coincidental, but you can be sure that on a journey into the frontier of uncertain length, they chose spring to stave off that winter cold.
And one more point along those lines: I doubt Walker expected to be gone until fall or winter: but what happens if somebody gets injured or too sick to travel? He’s a doctor. A surgeon. No doubt he was thinking of those things; in fact its probably some small motivator in the crew building a nice little house and planting some legitimate food. They make an investment of time and resources into setting up a cabin -- their own little outpost in the back country -- and then they promptly leave it: but it must have been a huge boost in security knowing that if they failed, they’d always have a place to fall.
Getting back to his journey, Walker arrives at a place called the Great Lick on March 15th. Today, that’s known as the city of Roanoke. I’m not going to map every one of his stops to the present day but if you’re interested in development it is a remarkable thing to consider how every single one of these little settlements he’s stopping at are actual cities where people live and work and raise families today; and knowing appalachia, its not out of the question that some of those family names are still living in those same spots.
In that same entry Walker mentions buffalo for the first time in his journal: he says that the salt licks would be a better resource for the locals if they still attracted buffalo: and he mentions the buffalo in true, american fashion: he’s mourning their loss. The loss of the buffalo on this continent has been a concern for more than 250 years: Already, in 1749, buffalo have been overhunted in appalachia. And note that he doesn’t say there MIGHT have been buffalo around: he’s certain: They were there. Virginia, on contact with europeans, had more buffalo than any other atlantic colony! They used to live in florida! They were all across the continent: and as we’re seeing here, it doesn’t take long before their loss is already a sort of folk tragedy. It won’t be long after Walker that Boone and others are recording enormous buffalo herds on the other side of the blue ridge: as we know, they’ll get hunted out, all the way across the great plains: but another really interesting thing about buffalo was how they had impacted the land over thousands of years. Wherever buffalo migrated seasonally, they carved out what Walker is going to refer to as “buffalo roads” -- which become known more dominantly as buffalo traces as exploration continues: and many of our roadways today, including interstate 75, which runs from the northernmost tip of michigan’s upper peninsula down to the southernmost parts of Florida -- those interstates, where billions of dollars in commerce and millions of people move today, they follow those same traces: rivers aside, they really were the original roadways into the continent. Funny that the buffalo created the very roadways that their killers would use to pursue them to near extinction.
The next entry of interest is about the Brotherhood of the Euphrates: just sounds like a strange lifestyle of worship to me, but apparently they were a sect of the German Baptist church who got their name from the shenandoah river, which had originally been named the euphrates back in 1716. Not much more to say about that, but I do want to point out the way Walker comments on the sabbath. Its a given that he and the crew aren’t traveling on sunday. It seems they do a little hunting on sundays, but they really are just taking time to rest. On a journey like theirs I imagine that really was a welcome break: and furthermore -- that rest would have been a rest from travel, I’m sure -- but you’d expect them to be doing camp tasks, probably things that they put off to the sabbath to work on: mending gear, caring for their horses and dogs, maybe loosely taking inventory of their supplies: all that good stuff.
Along that line, its also worth noting that Walker himself had a really strong faith. He was a leader in his church, and supposedly he once said that that role as a vestryman was his proudest accomplishment. Serving in the church during that time was fully a level of local government. Walker would have supervised charitable efforts, organized social events, and carried respect from a community the same way that a deacon -- or more maybe even closer, a school board or city council member might, today. In any case it represented a serious devotion of time and resources to his community.
Now up to this point, we’ve gotten a lot of insights out of this text: and I want to share a point about historical preservation and restoration: the first 10 pages of Walker’s journal were lost for a time, and apparently were kept by William Cambell Rives, who had purchased Walker’s estate and was living there in the early 19th century. Rives was contacted by a historical organization -- the Filson Club -- who wanted to reprint the journal in its entirety. Imagine if we had never gotten our hands on those first 10 pages. They could have rotted away, and we’d be out on a lot of really valuable insights about the FIRST documented expedition into Kentucky: the last two names of the crew, lawless and hughes, apparently weren’t known in modern times until those 10 pages were recovered. The first page also broke a tie between two groups in the earlier 1800’s: people who thought the journey had taken place in 1758, and people who thought correctly: 1750. Even funnier is that there was a period when Walker’s place -- Castle Hill -- was better known for an entirely different event: in 1781, Tarleton, the british officer that loosely informs the fictional charater William Tavington in the movie The Patriot -- was on his way through there en route to capture Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the Governor and others -- but he stopped for breakfast and so allowed a lone rider to cover 40 miles and warn Virginia’s leaders that he was coming. No doubt there was a little intentional stalling done at Castle Hill: it was an event akin to Paul Revere’s midnight ride, and for a time that story overshadowed any of Walker’s accomplishments. It could have been that Castle Hill, and its next owner Rives, were entered into history as the place that slowed Tarleton -- and Walker’s story could have been overshadowed -- all that, potentially, if not for a private historical society reaching out and restoring the Walker account.
It really is so important to put together and preserve all the pieces when it comes to history, and even once material is recovered, it can easily be preserved in fragmented ways; different pieces stored here and there in connection with different people and different parts of their lives: which is why research like this commentary is of so much value: I’ve pulled together dozens of sources, many primary, in writing this commentary. So far as I can tell this piece of media is the first time some of these stories have all been included under the same work. I expect others -- you -- to carry the torch and keep on building on this. I’m sure there is still more of Walker’s story to be told.
On the 19th Walker’s crew loses their horses: I just want to point out how important those horses are: without them, they aren’t moving; and I also want to point out that guys were rarely running around the frontier on foot like I do today in my video content. Horses or canoes were it -- and those instances of horses becoming ill throughout are so bizarre: one chokes on reeds after “eating them too greedily” -- its goofy -- but the reliance and relationship with animals would forge Kentucky: later, daniel boone himself proposes legislation to encourage the breeding of horses, and today, Kentucky exports the world’s best horses all over the globe. They were critical then and they remain critical to plenty of folks in kentucky today.
Eventually, Walker makes it around to the Stalnaker camp, where he and the crew help Stalnaker put up his first house, and he mentions having met Stalnaker before a few years earlier. This guy Stalnaker was a little more frontier than Walker was: if walker is predecessor to daniel boone, I suppose Stalnaker is predecessor to walker: this guy was an EARLY settler out in the farthest western reaches of virginia: he would have been a trader among the cherokee, and its thought that whatever Walker knew of the cumberland gap region, he would have gotten by way of acquaintance from Stalnaker. Notably, just a few years after Walker passes through, Stalnaker is operating a trading post, a tavern, and an inn -- but that wouldn’t tie him to civilization too much because after another few years he surfaces in history again as a captive among the shawnee after a venture of his own into Kentucky during the french and indian war. When he escapes, he ends up traveling 460 miles alone back to williamsburg to warn the settlements of french plans of attack. I’m not going to build out the stories of every one of these side characters but I just elaborate on Stalnaker to say that every single name mentioned in this account has a main-character-worthy story of their own. I really encourage you to go down the paths for each, there are some real gems to be found.
In mentioning Stalnaker, Walker brings up the Cherokee: you could spend a lifetime studying the Cherokee, but they aren’t the focus of this account -- but generally you should know that they were mortal enemies of the Shawnee, and that both the Cherokee and Shawnee hunted in Kentucky, which frequently caused confrontations that boiled over into violence. The buffalo trace that connected both regions to Kentucky was known as the warrior’s path because its primary traffic were warriors from both tribes going to avenge blood feuds and make right on oaths of violence: the Cherokee were generally friendly to European settlers until the french and indian war picked up. Eventually both tribes allied against the Americans during the revolution: they never made peace, but Tecumseh, the famed leader among the Shawnee, notably spent time among the Chickamauga Cherokee -- it seems peace may have slowly evolved between the two tribes as more of a one-off relationship building type of deal.
On the 26th, Walker mentions leaving the “inhabitans” which is to say inhabitANTS: as in, he is leaving all the permanent settlements behind: this is where stuff gets more exciting: Walker’s crew is truly off into the frontier now. Self-sufficient, with little context, and totally reliant on one another: this seems like a good place to break down this crew, because these guys were some meat eaters, for sure: I’m just, really, really fast going to run down Powell and Tomlinson’s resumes -- please do look into the others, too:
First, Ambrose Powell: you might recognize the name: Ambrose Powell was a prominent citizen, like Walker: you should look him up and spend a few minutes there: but the name might sound familiar because his son, also named Ambrose Powell, will be an officer in the revolution, and his GRANDson is Ambrose Powell Hill -- AP Hill, the confederate general: who, among other things, led his third corps in pickett’s charge at gettysburg.
William Tomlinson was one of the first settlers at Bryan’s Station, he’ll be there for the siege in August of 1782: Joseph Bryan would later take Tomlinson’s account of the journey that ended up in Lyman Draper’s papers: Tomlinson sheds a little more light on some of the harder times that Walker apparently saw fit to exclude, like the party having to eat one of their precious dogs: we’ll get to that later.
Colby chew was a member of a big time family in Orange County virginia. He ends up a scout and has a journal and some correspondence with George Washington that can be found in the public domain: unfortunately he is killed near For Duquesne in Major James Grant’s raid on September 14th, 1758: apparently he had been shot and tumbled into a river and drowned. This means he doesn’t live more than a decade after Walker’s expedition, but no doubt he would have been a larger part of history had he lived on.
Little is known of Henry Lawless: apparently he was also killed by american indians on the Jackson River in August County Virginia: that would have been on May 14, 1757. His genealogy is well documented, but besides that, it may be that Walker naming Lawlesses River is one of the only remaining testaments to the man.
The same can be said for John Hughes: his descendents, if he has any, must know more of him, but little can be found in the public record as of the time of this publishing. Hughes did get a river named after him: it is undoubtedly his greatest memorial today.
Walker talks about his uneasy dogs on the 29th -- I think its wildly unlikely that walker doesn’t directly bump into any american indians during his trip: in fact, its probably one reason he doesn’t make it famous like daniel boone: its a pretty innocent journey: no gunfights, long shots, hiding in caves, or any of the drama that Boone will get later on: Walker just goes out there and comes back without much issue -- or at least without writing about too much. Walker will continue to come upon signs of American Indians, even sheltering in an abandoned village, as we read about -- just interesting that he doesn’t actually bump into them in person. This isn’t to say he would have been attacked if he had met any american indians: this was generally a time of peace: but it still makes me wonder if native hunters or warriors knew he was there, or even followed at a distance, observing, and deciding to let him move on. I imagine Walker was easy to track: he makes no mention of concealing his trail, and his crew LITERALLY builds a house and plants some food at one point. If he was being watched, he must not have appeared to be much of a threat… I don’t picture him just bumbling around all over the place, he was a competent guy, but it doesn’t seem like he was stealth camping the way Boone would be later on when tensions were much higher.
Now once Walker gets down around the Clinch River he mentions that that’s what the hunters call it: that a hunter named Clinch had been there to name it. This is strong evidence that this land -- and remember, he’s still east of the cumberland gap -- but its evidence that this land had been hunted and explored. He’s not naming new landmarks yet, he’s still looking for landmarks named by others.
On the April 5th it sounds like he forces a bunch of water down his horses’ throat to clear some reeds, which is just another bizarre example of this relationship with those horses -- it calls to mind some medieval accounts of knights, who rode into battle on their horses -- and afterward would wash and pamper them, and frequently recorded their horses playing stupid practical jokes and stuff on them -- nibbling their hair, taking up and hiding their equipment in the straw, and then acting sheepish about it or prancing around in excitement: we really have, as a species, had a mutually caring relationship with horses for thousands of years: if you’ve never really interacted with horses you can still get a good dose of this on youtube -- look up horses pranking humans or anything to that effect, its funny.
And then there’s man’s BEST friend: we love our dogs. On April 7th one gets mauled by a bear and the crew takes it up on horseback until its healed enough to walk on its own. I point that out to say also that these guys are in bear country -- its just a reminder that they aren’t always the hunters.
On the 13th, Walker passes through the Cumberland Gap: but he doesn’t actually call it that in his journal: in fact, he calls it Cave Gap: but according to Walker’s nextdoor neighbor’s son, Colonel William Martin -- who writes a letter that gets sucked up in to the Draper papers: Walker had used the group’s remaining rum to toast to the Duke of Cumberland’s health when the crew reached the gap. Once he pushes through and out into Kentucky, he finds a river and names it the cumberland; its not until after the journey that Walker retroactively also labels the gap the cumberland gap: both the river and eventually the gap, and then the whole segment of the appalachian range will bear the name cumberland after Prince William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland, who crushed the jacobite rebellion in 1745 just a few years earlier. The point is: on April 13, 1750, Dr Thomas Walker becomes the first Euro-American to go actively document his having gone through the gap: but we have to be very precise here: for the sake of clarity here is what he is NOT the first person to do:
First of all, he is not the first person to go through it. The Shawnee, Cherokee, and others -- and the prehistoric ancestors thereof -- for 10,000 years or more -- had most certainly explored that region.
Second: Walker was not the first person to NAME the Gap: just the first to do it in English. The Cherokee called the gap “Ouasioto” which translated to “mountain gap;” it was a name applied to other places. The Shawnee referred to the entire buffalo trace that made up the path to the Cherokee, which included the gap, as the Athowominee, which is translated as “Path of the Armed Ones” or “The Great Warrior’s Path.” Settlers came to know that trace as the Warrior’s path, too -- and eventually, daniel boone would expand on it, connecting and renaming it to the wilderness road. But I’d like to backtrack to the fact that the cherokee and shawnee didn’t have specific names for the gap itself. They probably appreciated its importance, but it wasn’t momentous enough to have a common name: its position, to them, would have been convenient, but it seems it was not as important as it was to the Euro-Americans: a people coiled up on the east side of the continent, ready to explode across the west.
Third, Walker is not the first WHITE man to go through the gap -- at least not technically speaking. In 1673, Shawnee warriors captured a young man named Gabriel Arthur. That guy has a wild, really fantastic life story: I’d highly recommend you dig into that name as well: its Gabriel Arthur if you need to write it down -- you’ll be glad you did. Before our boy Gabriel was released, he became the first white settler known to have crossed through the gap using the Shawnee access to the Warrior’s Path trail system.
Walker was: and like I said, we have to be precise about this: the first white man, or Euro-American as some say, to actively record himself passing through the gap. The first person to do it with certainty and a deliberate knowledge of what he was doing, who knew how to write: and who recorded the entire event in detail, down to the date, and down to commentary about which waterways could support a mill.. For THIS level of irrefutability, he bears the title of the first white man to pass through. But its very well possible that Stalnaker, his hunting and trading buddy that he had just seen a little while before had also done it. Both men -- and Walker’s whole crew: and the stakeholders of the Loyal Land Company, for that matter, were probably well aware of Gabriel Arthur’s story.
Now, if what all I just shared kind of popped the bubble for you, and ruined the romance, I want to point out that Walker himself admits he isnt first. He admits it by not blaring all over in his journal about being first through the gap -- and he admits it by saying that there are markings on the trees: he writes of “trees marked with crosses, other blazed and several figures on them” -- crosses could be Euro-americans, but a “cross” could also refer to an X shape, which wouldnt carry any European religious iconographic context: it could just be a simple shape drawn by the Shawnee or Cherokee with straight lines and right angles that sets it apart from all things naturally occuring. Its also unclear what the figures are depicting: if they are american indian symbols or not: but the gold nugget here is the phrase “other blazed.” This means that at least one other tree was “blazed,” and you’ll note that throughout his journal, Walker says he is blazing trees: later, daniel boone will blaze the wilderness road: blazing is, so far as I have found, a uniquely english term for the mark that a white man makes on a tree to convey direction to those who will follow.
Walker carves his own name into a tree, and later, when he comes back through the gap in 1779 with Isaac Shelby, he walks right up to the tree and proudly shows Shelby: there’s his name, just like he wrote about. Other big time frontier figures will go on to record seeing Walker’s name carved into trees throughout the next generation.
Now, fully outside of all the semantics, Walker finds a really cool cave, which is why he names the gap Cave Gap: he says that above a spring is a “small Entrance to a Large Cave, which the spring runs through, and there is a constant stream of cool air issuing out.” -- today this is known as Gap Cave, and you can take a two hour tour in there with national park rangers. Walker might not have explored the cave much but he sure was right when he said it was big: about 18 miles have been explored so far, and scientists still aren’t sure how big the rest is: only half a mile is open to the public. The cave is just one of the land features that make the Cumberlxand Gap a really fascinating place: I won’t go off into that story now, but if you’re taking an interest in all this I really highly recommend that you dig into the formation of the cumberland gap. Its more than tectonic plates and stuff -- there is a meteor strike, ancient seabeds -- a lot of cool stuff to read about.
Now over the next leg of the journey Walker is going to be following waterways: remember, he’s in totally unknown wilderness, and those waterways are really meaningful navigational points: they flow a certain direction, you can map them and their banks… plus, you need water to drink as do yous horses, and the game animals come to drink the water which makes it a good to hunt: Walker will keep on coming into contact with the Warrior’s Path -- that ancient buffalo trace -- as different waterways zigzag through it, but from his limited visibility he never puts together that its one path that runs through the gap and connects to the Holston Valley, where Stalnaker had been hanging out before.
Of note to living historians is his move from regular shoes to “indian shoes,” or moccasins, which he does call them later -- on April 16: at this point its been 41 days and he’s spent most of that time on horseback, so when he says his shoes were bad he really must have meant it. That’s no time at all.
On the 19th his crewmember Powell gets bit in the knee by a bear.. That’s all Walker tells us, but I’m sure there’s a fantastic story there: the crew will get vengeance for that injury, though, because they’ll end up killing a total of 53 bears throughout the trip.
On April 21st the group makes a canoe, the description of which could be of note to those of you that practice living history; but maybe most interesting out of this section is Walker splitting the group, during which time the other crew guys throw up an 8x12 cabin: the first cabin ever built in Kentucky.
I already mentioned the idea that this was a place to fall back to in case the journey go to be too difficult: but no doubt, its primary purpose was to establish some added legitimacy to the land claim and to be a destination for future settlers and guests of the company. Now, interestingly enough -- the exact site of this place was found later on. It stood as a cabin for a while, and was recorded as being occupied off and on until 1835 -- but in more modern times, there were chimney ruins there, along with an old tomahawk and some other artifacts. Today there is a replica cabin in the area.
Once again, on the 24th -- I’m harping on two old topics, but Walker is concerned for the horses health and notes further American Indian sign -- he apparently tries to overtake the larger party of american indians but can’t catch up -- its worth noting, here, that the tribes were generally at peace with white settlers until the French and Indian War breaks out -- at that point there will be some irreversible violence done and we really start to see the warrior’s reputation take shape against white settlers in this part of the continent. Besides concens about nutrition, the horses keep on getting bit by rattle snakes. Bear oil seems to help… so, i guess, tuck that away… in case you’re ever in the kentucky backwoods with a snake-bit horse… one really notable injury from the whole journey is when powell -- who’s one knee was already bitten by a bear, sprains his good knee on May 1st. On May 10th they use elk hide to make moccasins again: and on the 14th they talk about having lost all their awls and needing to make new ones from whatever they have on hand: all you leatherworkers out there might really geta kick out of making an awl like these -- I know I’d like one made out of a horseshoe nail or a fish hook.
Apparently its during this time, that according to William Tomlinson, recounting the story to Joseph Bryan well after the fact -- and Bryan won’t commit it to paper until 1843 at age 86: but nonetheless, he writes and Draper receives Tomlinson’s account as written by Bryan -- that here, having crossed the Laurel or Cumberland Mountain and falling into the Greenbriar county, the crew “almost straved to death; they were obliged to eat their dog to keep from famishing”. This is the more dramatic stuff that boone seems to retell openly, later on: maybe that’s what helps give rise to his story: but Walker was maybe a little more civilized, maybe a little more discreet: his journal could be read in polite company. Used primarily as a record of the topography, in a true surveyor’s fashion…
Now to that point, we once again moving through a segment of a lot of topography and naming waterways. It can be a slog reading through all that; and if this period was as awful as Tomlinson makes it out to be later to Bryan, as recorded and passed on to historian Lyman Draper, then we can see why Walker is recording bare-bones statements: they’re struggling a lot, and maybe he doesn't want to enter that into the record… But among the litany of topography and landmarks, one name sticks out: Hunting Creek. This is the same creek that Boone will live all along in 1770 while his brother Squire makes a run home for supplies, and together, the two will spend the winter there. They’ll name it Station Camp Creek, which it still bears today.
On the 26th, Ambrose, now with two wounded knees, loses his dog named Tumbler to a big buck elk… I’m taking notes now to name my next dog Tumbler: it also came to mind that Powell might have named the dog for the tumbler in a flintlock: the piece of the lock that holds and releases the tension in the mainspring. It always pays to ask yourself why: why everything: when you’re reading period material.
Things pretty well keep up as usual for the remainder of the trip. Of note, Walker identifies a “mossing place,” which is where elk choose to spend the winter: its usually an area of dense moss and lichens that they can feed on. The group has two separate run-ins with wolf pups: Walker keeps naming things after the Duke of Cumberland, like the waterway Louisa, the Duke’s sister… the men get their camp ransacked by a nasty storm, come into even more impassable wilderness, and lose a tomahawk in a flood.
Now this really is an interesting sidebar, because that tomahawk is found almost 100 years later with “T Walker” clearly carved into the haft: apparently it washed up onto a high rock shelf, dried out, and went pretty well undisturbed with little damage until it was found again by a kid named Stopher; it became a treasured heirloom in the walker family for many years -- I wasn’t able to determine where it is today as of the time of this publishing. Also found with the tomahawk was a leather shot pouch, a powder horn which had somewhat decayed, and a, quote: “indian pipe”. Now the fact that those items were all found togethe raises an interesting point from a living history perspective: and I’m going to proceed here given honesty from this kid Stopher that finds the stuff -- he could have fabricated or manipulated the evidence, I know -- but let’s say it is real. If this stuff was found TOGETHER, having been washed away in a flood, then it had to have been attached. That tomahawk, the pipe; those things would undoubeteldy have sunken to the bottom of the river, not floated along: but the horn and shot pouch: well, its conceivable that they could have floated, at least a ways: so this, to me, if the evidence is authentic: would seem to suggest that Walker was carrying a shot pouch with a horn attached, and possibly with the, quote, “indian pipe” inside, or else tucked into the holes in the strap where you would adjust the buckle: and the tomahawk must have been attached to the shot pouch as well, maybe fixed to the front or back or somewhere along the strap. Just something to ponder for all you bag makers and accessorizers out there; you can draw your own conclusions based on your faith in this kid Stopher.
Also during this period the crew will hear a mysterious gunshot, presumably from another white man; they almost get charged by a buffalo, and they exhaust their horses to the point that everybody has to walk, they have to strip to cross the New River; all of these behaviors could be of note to living historians: but a special passage to me is when Walker mentions the group shaving and shifting into new clothes to pretty up before going into civilization again. This would necessitate them carrying a razor. I was on the phone with Wallace Gusler once, the famed gunsmith of williamsburg -- and I asked him whether I should include a razor in my kit. he about quoted that passage from Walker from memory: the man is a true master of 18th century knowledge: and its because of this quote that I still have a razor in my gear today. Its one of the only times shaving is explicitly mentioned in an 18th-century frontier account.
The journal closes on a truly wild two sentences: Walker says the crew had killed, in total, 13 Buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deer, 4 wild Geese, and about 150 Turkeys, besides small game, and Walker adds that they might have killed three times as much meat if they had wanted it.
Things brings me to a list that I’ve been keeping on the side throughout my study of this material. I’ve been working on better documenting my food supplies, so I noted that Walker, throughout his journal, describes:
Meal,
Homony,
corn,
Turkey
Deer
Elk
Wild geese
Sheldrake: a large migratory duck
Bear
“Peach stones”
Fish: “Shad in their reason [I presume to be SEASon], Carp, Rocks, Fat-Backs which I suppose to be Tench, Perch, Mullets etc. /// perch, mullets, carp, catfish”
With general references to:
“Small game” and
“grains and roots,”
To conclude this whole analysis, I’d like to take us back to where we started: Walker marries into the Merriweather family, his in-laws end up as business partners in the Loyal Land Company, and about 50 years later its Merriweather Lewis exploring the american west with his buddy Clark -- doing what Walker had been dreaming about when he was about their age. Exploring the Missouri River was a generational goal, passed down in the Merriweather family… but it was generational for Walker, too: his mentee, his brother Peter’s son, Thomas Jefferson, would be the one to convince congress to fund the lewis and clark expedition: and two years later -- in November of 1806, after lewis and clark were thought by some to be long dead -- Merriweather Lewis crossed the threshold back into settled land and started moving east to deliver the expedition’s maps, journals, and specimens to Washington DC… and on his way there… Merriweather Lewis -- descendent of Walker’s original Loyal Land Company shareholders, on his way to report to the president of the united states: Thomas Jefferson, Walker’s political mentee: on his way to DC to connect this generational legacy… Merriweather Lewis walks.. Through.. The cumberland gap. With all his findings from the Missouri river expedition in tow.
What a fantastic legacy. Truly. And unfortunately, Walker is little known -- and those who do know him -- tragically -- have heard his name merely as a precursor to Daniel Boone. And that’s another point for consideration -- … and this really is my last point -- but Walker was a literal trail: blazer; no doubt boone walked right past Walker’s initials carved into the tree in the Cumberland Gap, to be followed by more than a quarter million Americans afterward. In America we like to trace our ancestry to the Mayflower; but exponentially more of us can trace our ancestry through the Cumberland Gap -- and even if you can’t trace your lineage through there, the history made on the west side of that gap has shaped our american psyche-ey: … and in that way, Walker’s legacy is a piece of all of our legacies as well.
It took Walker to do it first. Or at least to document it first. But the one who does it first doesn’t always get it right. Walker entirely misses the most fertile, most beautiful region of Kentucky on this journey. He encounters all the hard stuff: the impassable mountains, the wickedly dense forests: according to tomlinson they face starvation and eat a dog: Boone, 17 years later, in 1767, would pass through the cumberland gap, walking on the same trails, camping on the same creeks, and sustaining himself by harvesting the descendants of the same game animals that Walker had hunted. He got the hard stuff too: but the difference is -- and the reason for Boone’s fame -- was that Boone did make it to the bluegrass. Once he made it out there, he fell in love with it -- its not entirely clear that Walker was in love with the land he found -- he looped through some tough country, even today -- and it’ll be Boone’s relationship with the land -- his love for it, his willingness to stake all upon it -- that ushers in the settlement of his generation. I love Boone, and I think Walker’s story only adds to his -- the two compliment each other magnificently.
Walker didn’t get into the bluegrass. He just got what he called BEARgrass in his account. So he doesn’t get the same level of fame. Maybe he shouldn’t. But there is something unique about Walker. His motivation. Boone was a little younger, a little more desperate: he was in debt: he had 10 children, 5 of which had been born by the time he starts to break into Kentucky, and at times Rebecca, at home, would care for as many as 8 other children who were relatives of the family: he didn’t have much ability to provide for them in the civilized world; he could put food on the table with his rifle, sure, but in 1775 he escapes arrest becasue of his debts by leaving for Kentucky: now don’t get me wrong, I love boone. Love his accounts. Love his ruggedness. I love the fact that he’s the real longhunter stereotype: he really checks that box for a full year: the lone longhunter in Kentucky -- which didn’t happen much, most guys were in groups: if only of two or three -- I don’t tear him down, not a bit, I just mention his financial standing to say that Boone was a LITTLE more desperate: his back was against the wall, at least moreso than Walker. If Boone stayed behind he could have faced serious consequences as a debtor. If Walker stayed behind he could have hung out and enjoyed life on his 15,000 acre estate: he’s not boone, trying to outrun -- or maybe outexplore -- some debt -- and he’s not simon kenton, running from a supposed murder: Walker is different. Walker had a choice. He was already successful. He had no debt. There wasn’t necessarily a PRESSING responsibility to provide for the people he loved: he was already pretty secure. Walker had something to lose, something more than his life -- a legacy that he had already started to build before going to Kentucky. Boone’s presence there is out of a more immediate need to provide for his family: Walker’s is of a more intellectual curiosity in the land: He chose to go out there, in the face of mortal danger, and kentucky wasn’t enough, remember he wanted to go all the way to the Pacific as soon as he got back! Boone faces more adversity. He’s out there in a tougher, more tense, more violent times: The scope of Boone’s story is a little grander. He gets that payoff. Hunts the bluegrass. But what I’m trying to say, is that it strikes me, that he didn’t always choose it: or else it was his only realistic choice: sometimes the unknown -- Kentucky -- WAS his only way forward: maybe that does resonate better… maybe its more american. Back against the wall, Underdog becomes a hero, I respect and appreciate that like anybody else. Like I said, I love Boone. But I am, at MINIMUM, equally impressed by Walker. Walker chose it.
