United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He set out in February, 1779, accompanied by his brother, Mark Robertson, several other white men, and a negro, to select a site for settlement and to plant corn. Meanwhile another small party led by Gaspar Mansker had arrived.
Mansker lay close, hoping that he would not be noticed; but the Indian advanced directly towards him until not fifteen paces off. There being no alternative, Mansker cocked his piece, and shot the Indian through the body. The Indian screamed, threw down his gun, and ran towards camp; passing it he pitched headlong down the bluff, dead, into the river.
A few days after their arrival they were joined by another batch of hunter-settlers, who had come out under the leadership of Kasper Mansker. This act gives an insight into at least some of the motives that influenced the adventurers. But another and most powerful spring of action was the desire to gain land not merely land for settlement, but land for speculative purposes.
After perfecting arrangements with Clark for securing "cabin rights" should the land prove to lie in Virginia, Robertson returned to Watauga to take command of the migration. Toward the end of the year two parties set out, one by land, the other by water, for the wonderful new country on the Cumberland of which Boone and Scaggs and Mansker had brought back such glowing descriptions.
Often in dealing with the adventures of one of these old-time border warriors Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, Mansker, Castleman, all we can say is that some given feat was commonly attributed to him, but may have been performed by somebody else, or indeed may only have been the kind of feat which might at any time have been performed by men of his stamp.
However, as it turned out, he might have spared himself the journey, for the settlement proved to be well within the Carolina boundary. Many Settlers Join Him. In the fall very many men came out to the new settlement, guided thither by Robertson and Mansker; the former persuading a number who were bound to Kentucky to come to the Cumberland instead.
Having perfect confidence in his rifle, and knowing that the Indians rarely fired except at close range partly because they were poor shots, partly because they loaded their guns too lightly he made no attempt to hide. Feigning to pass to the Indian's right, the latter, as he expected, tried to follow him; reaching an opening in a glade, Mansker suddenly wheeled and killed his foe.
At the end of the year some of the adventurers returned home; others went north into the Kentucky country, where they hunted for several months before recrossing the mountains; while the remainder, led by an old hunter named Kasper Mansker, built two boats and hollowed out of logs two pirogues or dugouts clumsier but tougher craft than the light birch-bark canoes and started down the Cumberland.
They feared to tarry longer unless they knew something of their foes, and Mansker set forth to explore, and turned towards Red River, where, from the sign, he thought to find the camp. Travelling some twenty miles, he perceived by the sycamore trees in view that he was near the river. Advancing a few steps farther he suddenly found himself within eighty or ninety yards of the camp.
The frontiersmen, however, took a much more just and generous view of the affair. Mansker and a number of the best fighters in the Cumberland district marched to the assistance of the Chickasaws; and the frontier militia generally showed grateful appreciation of the way both the Upper Cherokees and the Chickasaws helped them put a stop to the hostilities of the Chickamaugas and Creeks.
Word Of The Day