A bird's-eye view of the southern Alleghanies shows that, while the Atlantic plain of Virginia and the Carolinas widens out, the mountain chains increase in number, fold on fold, from the Blue Ridge to the ragged ranges of the Cumberlands.Few trails led across this manifold barrier.There was a connection at Balcony Falls between the James River and the Great Kanawha; but as a trade route it was of no such value to the men of its day as the Chesapeake and Ohio system over the same course is to us.As in the North, so in the South, trade avoided obstacles by taking a roundabout, and often the longest route.In order to double the extremity of the Unakas, for instance, the trails reached down by the Valley of Virginia and New River to the uplands of the Tennessee, and here, near Elizabethton, they met the trails leading up the Broad and the Yadkin rivers from Charleston, South Carolina.
To the west rise the somber heights of Cumberland Gap.Through this portal ran the famous "Warrior's Path," known to wandering hunters, the "trail of iron" from Fort Watauga and Fort Chiswell, which Daniel Boone widened for the settlers of Kentucky.To the southwest lay the Blue Grass region of Tennessee with its various trails converging on Nashville from almost every direction.Today the Southern Railway enters the "Sapphire Country," in which Asheville lies, by practically the same route as the old Rutherfordton Trail which was used for generations by red man and pioneer from the Carolina coast.In our entire region of the Appalachians, from the Berkshire Hills southward, practically every old-time pathway from the seaboard to the trans-Alleghany country is now occupied by an important railway system, with the exception of the Warrior's Trail through Cumberland Gap to central Ohio and the Highland Trail across southern Pennsylvania.
And even Cumberland Gap is accessible by rail today, and a line across southern Pennsylvania was once planned and partially constructed only to be killed by jealous rivals.
These numerous keys to the Alleghanies were a challenge to the men of the seaboard to seize upon the rich trade of the West which had been early monopolized by the French in Canada.But the challenge brought its difficult problems.What land canoes could compete with the flotillas that brought their priceless cargoes of furs each year to Montreal and Quebec? What race of landlubbers could vie with the picturesque bands of fearless voyageurs who sang their songs on the Great Lakes, the Ohio, the Illinois, and the Mississippi?
In the solution of this problem of diverting trade probably the factor of greatest importance, next to open pathways through the mountain barriers, was the rich stock-breeding ground lying between the Delaware and the Susquehanna rivers, a region occupied by the settlers familiarly known as the Pennsylvania Dutch.In this famous belt, running from Pennsylvania into Virginia, originated the historic pack-horse trade with the "far Indians" of the Ohio Valley.Here, in the first granary of America, Germans, Scotch-Irish, and English bred horses worthy of the name."Brave fat Horses" an amazed officer under Braddock called the mounts of five Quakers who unexpectedly rode into camp as though straight "from the land of Goshen." These animals, crossed with the Indian "pony" from New Spain, produced the wise, wiry, and sturdy pack-horse, fit to transport nearly two hundred pounds of merchandise across the rough and narrow Alleghany trails.This animal and the heavy Conestoga horse from the same breeding ground revolutionized inland commerce.
The first American cow pony was not without his cowboy.Though the drivers were not all of the same type and though the proprietors, so to speak, of the trans-Alleghany pack-horse trade came generally from the older settlements, the bulk of the hard work was done by a lusty army of men not reproduced again in America until the picturesque figure of the cow-puncher appeared above the western horizon.This breed of men was nurtured on the outer confines of civilization, along the headwaters of the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, and the Broad--the country of the "Cowpens." Rough as the wilderness they occupied, made strong by their diet of meat and curds, these Tatars of the highlands played a part in the commercial history of America that has never had its historian.In their knowledge of Indian character, of horse and packsaddle lore, of the forest and its trails in every season, these men of the Cowpens were the kings of the old frontier.
An officer under Braddock has left us one of the few pictures of these people*:
* "Extracts of Letters from an Officer" (London, 1755).
"From the Heart of the Settlements we are now got into the Cow-pens; the Keepers of these are very extraordinary Kind of Fellows, they drive up their Herds on Horseback, and they had need do so, for their Cattle are near as wild as Deer; a Cow-pen generally consists of a very large Cottage or House in the Woods, with about four-score or one hundred Acres, inclosed with high Rails and divided; a small Inclosure they keep for Corn, for the family, the rest is the Pasture in which they keep their calves;but the Manner is far different from any Thing you ever saw; they may perhaps have a Stock of four or five hundred to a thousand Head of Cattle belonging to a Cow-pen, these run as they please in the Great Woods, where there are no Inclosures to stop them.
