The Prince of Jockeys

by Pellom McDaniels III

  By the middle of the eighteenth century, tensions increased between the British monarchy and the colonists. The British wanted to control the colonies’ rate of expansion, while the colonists were impatient to stake their claims in what they assumed were uninhabited lands. This was problematic, to say the least. First, the lands in the west were not uninhabited; they were the homes and traditional hunting grounds of several indigenous groups, including the Shawnee and Cherokee, both of whom were aware of the colonists’ desire to push past the mountains and forests separating their two distinct civilizations. Second, trade agreements between French traders and eastern Indian tribes had been in place since the early seventeenth century, and many of these agreements had been broken through dealings with the English. Third, the aggressive poaching of game on lands considered communal property ultimately became a theater of war between Native Americans and white Americans, the latter taking what they wanted in an effort to gain unlimited access to the resources found in the “Eden of the West.”

  These violent encounters involving frontiersmen and native peoples in the American backcountry escalated into the French and Indian War, a conflict between England and France linked to the worldwide Seven Years’ War. These confrontations set in motion a series of events that would lead to the Revolutionary War, the opening of the Kentucky territory, and the perpetuation and growth of the institution of slavery. As these conflicts among the French, the British, the Native Americans, and the colonists unfolded, the need for able-bodied men increased, and both free and enslaved black men were employed as soldiers, even though it was a “general policy in early America to exclude Negroes from militia service.”7 The tradition of excluding black men from the military was based on the fear of them rebelling against slavery (given the number of slave revolts, such as the 1739 Stono Rebellion) and a reluctance to empower even freeborn blacks who might challenge the notion of inherent black inferiority—the very basis of chattel slavery. Thus, a majority of whites were nervous about arming blacks, even in their own defense. But in 1755 General Edward Braddock of Williamsburg, Virginia, recognized the need to employ all able-bodied men, both black and white, as soldiers. Braddock did not hesitate to arm “mulattoes and free Negroes,” whom he felt could be trusted to loyally serve the causes of the colonies.8 According to one historian, in times of need, the colonists’ “fear of slave uprisings” and black rebellion subsided enough to allow the use of blacks as soldiers, albeit on a limited basis.9 This was one of those times. However, by arming those deemed inferior to defend the interests of the state, including the lucrative trade in human beings, the state was initiating its own demise. The image of the black soldier became a source of inspiration and a symbol of manliness and citizenship for African Americans. This pattern of service would become important to the revolutionary cause, the future civil war over states’ rights, the territorial conflicts with the native peoples of the Far West, and well into the twentieth century.

  After the defeated French signed the Treaty of Paris in 1763, forcing their withdrawal from lands east of the Mississippi River, south of the Ohio River, and west of the Appalachian Mountains, opportunistic colonial Americans moved quickly to capitalize on the English victory. The diplomatic agreement gave England room for expansion and greater access to exploitable natural resources in the West, most of which were still undiscovered.10 Unfortunately, the native peoples living in the Ohio River Valley had not agreed to the terms conceded by their French allies, and the French could no longer be depended on to help defend their homes or protect their rights to traditional hunting grounds there. The native peoples initially tried to defend themselves, but after several wars and tens of thousands of lives lost, Native Americans slowly gave up and conceded to the European and American development and exploitation of resources. In the end, the brutality, violence, and determination of white men to do as they pleased, disregarding the traditions and customs of those with a long history and presence in the fertile valley, would win out, leaving a swath of destruction and a legacy of pain.

  Historians have succinctly noted the transition from friendly curiosity to hostility between Native Americans and colonists from England, France, and Spain. The new Americans created an environment where skirmishes and wars were inevitable for anyone seeking to settle west of the Allegheny Mountains and deep into the Ohio River Valley.11 After the Treaty of Paris, King George III wanted these lands reserved for his Native American subjects, whom he mistakenly believed would work for the Crown, collecting furs and other resources for export to England. But King George's desire to control the destiny of his North American empire and the British Proclamation Line of 1763 did little to keep the restless colonists from carving out portions of land for themselves as they gradually moved westward. The increased population in the colonies, the limited resources available, and the gentry's desire to expand its wealth initiated a fever of excitement, and the land hungry slowly eased their way into the hardwood forests and claimed as much land as they could.12 By the 1770s, British subjects who had fought in the Seven Years’ War were desperate to sell their military bounty grants to land speculators for cash or to claim their own pieces of land and set up farms in what was then known as “Kaintuckee” by the Indians and as Fincastle County by Virginians.13

  Named after the royal governor of Virginia, John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore and Viscount of Fincastle, Virginia's westernmost county was established in 1772 to handle the increase in population. Much of the county would remain somewhat unexplored and uncultivated by white Americans into the early nineteenth century. From all accounts, colonists from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina took advantage of Fincastle County's resources due to their availability and lack of regulation. The absence of law in backwoods territories allowed unlimited hunting to supply food and resources needed for individual and communal survival. Predictably, the early trade in furs, the export of natural resources, and the developing business of land speculation escalated tensions between Indians and whites. The Indians’ traditional hunting grounds for deer and wild turkey were disrupted, and buffalo were massacred by the hundreds for their skins and fat-rich humps by wasteful hunters unwilling to carry the entire kill back home.14 (This form of ecoterrorism would be used in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the U.S. military killed off the primary sources of food for the Great Plains Indians in an effort to destroy the last vestiges of Native American resistance. In effect, the U.S. military starved Native Americans to force them to acquiesce to the demands of the Great White Father: the president of the United States.) Meanwhile, as Virginia's growing population became restless and more white men began to venture beyond the Allegheny Mountains in search of resources, they brought with them their dreams of power and their African American slaves to help them secure those dreams.

  By the spring of 1774, Lord Dunmore, serving his own self-interests, commissioned eager former soldiers from the Indian wars and colonists from Pennsylvania and Virginia to explore Indian lands in the Kaintuckee backcountry. The intent was to survey and sell parts of the region to prominent Virginians such as George Washington and Patrick Henry and to Massachusetts lawyer Samuel Adams—men whose names would resonate loudly in the coming years in the movement against British rule. Led by Pennsylvania-born James Harrod, a party of thirty or more men, including enslaved African Americans, descended the Ohio River into Kaintuckee in search of paradise.15 After paddling up the Kentucky River and traveling through dense forests and canebrakes, Harrod's party “dispersed into small squads, to select for themselves suitable settlements, and to build on such locations improvement cabins.”16 The first white settlement in Kentucky was established at Harrodsburg on June 16, 1774, by fortune-seeking men who saw the land and its resources as inexhaustible. The relative calm that greeted the party of pioneers was short lived. Native tribes resisted white settlement, challenging the philosophy of eminent domain and white supremacy espoused by explorers and adventurers supported by the white elite. Afte
r four months of trying to cultivate crops, the settlement dispersed, and those who survived returned to Pennsylvania to fight in Lord Dunmore's War against the Shawnee and Mingo Indians.

  In October 1774 Dunmore sent his Virginia militia to Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania, intending to secure the western lands for future English settlement.17 Similar to the French and Indian Wars, when “northern and southern colonies were driven to employ colored men” in the war effort, historians believe Dunmore used both free and enslaved African American men who were willing to serve to demonstrate their loyalty to the colonies and to England.18 An important point is that white men, especially the wealthy, were not as willing to serve. They often sent their able-bodied slaves as replacements for themselves or their sons. Therefore, the traditional restrictions on African Americans serving in the military and possessing guns were lifted to satisfy the needs of the colonies; at the same time, this gave blacks the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to perform as fully vested subjects of the Crown and valuable members of the colonial community. Although he did not totally disregard the concerns of slave owners, Dunmore defended the practice of having black soldiers serve the cause of the British government, calling their support a determining factor in any war that might occur between Britain and the colonists. Still, the very public political debates about freedom and the natural rights of men, and the claims being made by the Americans against the British government, created an environment in which enslaved and freed blacks recognized freedom as a more tangible concept that was within their grasp.

  At its roots, the revolutionary cause argued that freedom was a God-given right for which those held in bondage had to fight. Most important, freedom was a cause worth dying for. When the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26, 1774, Africans and African Americans paid close attention to the resolutions proposed by Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams. Each argued that the colonists’ rights as British subjects suffered due to British laws that denied them the right to representation and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Ironically, these very men who challenged the sovereign power of the king of England were slaveholders, merchants dependent on the raw materials produced by slaves, or businessmen who benefited directly or indirectly from the labor of blacks held as human chattel. In 1775 a passionate Thomas Paine asked how Americans could “complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them while they hold so many hundreds of thousands in slavery?”19 The First Continental Congress's struggles over the issue of slavery have been well documented, including Jefferson's attempt to introduce the concept of gradual emancipation into the conversation. This was rejected by a majority of the delegates, who recognized that the world they imagined for themselves was dependent on the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

  One year after the initial meeting of the colonial representatives, the Second Continental Congress ratified the second draft of the Declaration of Causes, arguing succinctly that the abuses of the Crown had deprived a free people of their right to representation and had subjected the loyal citizens of England and their posterity to a future of bondage and degradation. As the radicalized colonists rallied to promote the rebellious position of protest and action against England's “Intolerable Acts,” their ability to justify the continued denial of rights to blacks became a source of debate.20 Africans and African Americans adopted the colonists’ own language to claim that which had eluded them: freedom from oppression, abuse, and degradation for the benefit of others. By July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence not only allowed the colonists to claim freedom and extract themselves from the grips of King George but also became a source of inspiration to blacks, who now understood that it was possible to achieve freedom through revolution.

  In December 1776, Virginia was established as one of the original thirteen states, and Kentucky became the official name of that state's westernmost county, erasing the legacy of Lord Dunmore. As Virginians sought to expand into that western county and establish themselves there as farmers and planters, they realized that a substantial amount of labor would be needed. This, of course, meant the relocation and eventual importation of thousands of Africans. By the end of the Revolutionary War, enslaved African Americans were being brought into Kentucky County by families, overseers, and pioneers. They used this black labor to clear and settle the land, construct homes and storage facilities, build roads, and perform whatever other work was necessary for these former Virginians to establish their roots as Kentuckians.

  As the conflict between Britain and America continued to rage, General George Washington succumbed to pressure to open the American army to blacks. In 1777 the commonwealth of Virginia promised freedom to slaves who volunteered to serve as soldiers and fight against the British government in defense of American interests, which included the institution of slavery.21 Shrugging off their so-called inferiority, African American men defended the political philosophy that “all men are created equal” and are endowed with “certain inalienable rights,” and they claimed their freedom through their faithful service. Not be outdone, Lord Dunmore helped liberate enslaved blacks who had served on the side of the British. In 1781 he provided transportation out of New York, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia for black Loyalists, sending them to England, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa. Unfortunately, some blacks traveling with their Loyalist masters remained enslaved and were transported to parts of the West Indies, where life was much more difficult than it had been in the North American colonies. On the islands of Jamaica and St. Lucia, enslaved blacks continued to toil in the sugarcane fields and refineries.22

  Thus, slaves fought on both sides of the war in pursuit of the same outcome: freedom from bondage. Although numerous slaves who served courageously for the American cause were manumitted by their owners or by the government at the end of the war, their blackness was not erasable. The evolving American identity based on racial difference was emerging as an important part of the American credo, which helped define the philosophical language in the Declaration of Independence.

  During the Revolutionary War, momentum was building toward mass expansionism, with land-hungry opportunists busily making plans to push through the wilderness and into the West. These men were determined to stake their claims in the “Eden of the West” before anyone else could do so; then they followed James Harrod's example of creating frontier communities to attract white families.23 In the spring of 1775, Harrod led his party of adventurers and slave laborers back to the central Kentucky settlement he had established a year earlier.24 There, these resolute men constructed living accommodations and a fort from materials found in the surrounding forest; the fort was necessary to protect themselves from Native American warriors still seeking revenge for English expansion into the western territories and Lord Dunmore's War. The colonial presence in what had been traditional communal hunting grounds created tensions that could be resolved only through bloodshed. The hostile taking of resources by white colonists led to skirmishes and violent confrontations between those trying to expand into the new territory and those trying to protect their land-based traditions and identities.

  Harrod's settlement eventually attracted increasing numbers of Virginians eager to travel west and claim their piece of the virgin territory.25 Many hoped to secure a portion of the bountiful land for themselves and their families. Others came to take full advantage of whatever their wealth could buy them, including the labor necessary to clear the forest and build the required homes that would allow them to assert land claims based on the notion of preoccupancy. By 1777, blacks accounted for about 10 percent of the inhabitants of Harrod's Fort. A majority of these enslaved individuals were males with valuable skills that could be exploited by their owners as they struggled to tame the hostile wilderness. These enslaved men had young families who were most likely the property of the same masters. Of the nearly 200 inhabitants of Harrod's Fort, 19 were of African descent,
and all were designated as human chattel.26

  In the same year Harrod's Fort was established, Daniel Boone, under the direction of Judge Richard Henderson of the Transylvania Land Company, guided a party of settlers through the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River and deep into the fertile backcountry. This diverse group of settlers included enslaved blacks who were responsible for carrying provisions, guiding pack mules and hunting dogs, and constructing the rude encampments necessary to explore and eventually settle the wilderness.27 Like Harrod's, the Boonesborough community used black labor to cultivate, protect, and expand the amount of usable land in the Bluegrass region. In this fertile terrain, Kentucky's future commercial interests in hemp, tobacco, and horses would be developed—three of the state's most important commodities. Nevertheless, in this untamed and hostile environment, white settlers and enslaved blacks became codependent on each other for protection and safety, and each day proved to be a constant negotiation between life and death, the present and the future.

  Accounts of black men fighting and dying alongside their white masters to defend their communities against Native American attacks have been largely forgotten. Indeed, the degree of agency claimed by black men, many of whom played integral roles in developing and promoting the heroic frontier narrative, was influential in creating a new mode of American masculinity based on the interaction with the land and its many challenges. Clearly, for some white pioneers seeking to exploit western lands and slave labor, it became necessary to de-emphasize the courageous actions of black men and downplay their demonstrated ability to act independently, which contradicted their status as human chattel. The belief that people of African descent were inferior to whites justified their enslavement and therefore their abuse; it allowed the lowest of immigrants to inflate their own importance and gain access to power, even if it was only imaginary. As growing numbers of Americans from Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania expanded into Kentucky, Native Americans continued to assault the frontier communities with the goal of turning back efforts to colonize the West and defend their right to use the land as they always had. For the indigenous peoples of the region, white men—and, increasingly, black men—were their enemies.