One Man's Idea Of Who/What a Longhunter Was.

WHO WERE THE LONG HUNTERS

The term “Long Hunter” is a product of Manifest Destiny historians,
and is used today to describe the woodsmen who hunted for extended periods of
time in the land once known as the “Middle Ground.” Today we refer to the
“Middle Ground” as the present states of Kentucky and Tennessee. Not
everyone who hunted was a Long Hunter. The true Long Hunter was a
professional, and made his living by market hunting. Many of these
professional hunters came from the western frontiers of Pennsylvania,
Virginia and the Carolinas. Over the years, legends and tales have grown to
surround and mystify the history of these remarkable characters. They were
an unusual breed, even extraordinary, for they routinely existed in the
wilderness for months, even years at a time. They roamed at will, feeding
themselves from the endless bounty of the forests. These men were perhaps the
most talented, and most enduring of their time. They had to be blacksmiths
enough to shoe horses; forge froes, frizzens, gunsprings, to repair guns and
traps. They could haft axes and tomahawks, and knap flints to fit the locks
of their rifle-guns. Such men were skilled in hunting, trapping, stalking,
hiding, reading sign, and building shelters. They were packhorse men, their
work demanding that they follow the game trails deep into the endless forests.
That they were able to survive in such an unforgiving wilderness for such
lengths of time, under such adverse conditions, is truly a testament to their
qualities of marksmanship, woodslore, self-reliance and cleverness.


Long Hunters were the first American frontiersmen to push beyond the
Blue Ridge. Contrary to the popular Hollywood image, they were not dashing
nimrods clad in fringed buckskins and coonskin caps. Nor did they trek
west to make free the land for God and country, hearth and home. Most Long
Hunters did not have use for Indians, considering them competition, and were
prone to shoot them on sight. The Long Hunter was often a plain man, a poor
man seeking land, relief from debt, and a way to feed hungry mouths. The
stark edge of life and death inured these tough, and stubborn frontier folk to
toil, hardship, heat, cold, rain, snow and ice. The Long Hunter broke treaties
and laws to trespass and poach on Indian land. He went west to make money
in deerskins, tallow and furs. He was perhaps the freest Anglo-American of
the colonial era.
The decade of the 1760’s is referred to as “the golden age” of the Long
Hunt.
Copyright Larry Fiorillo, 2001

"The long hunters principally resided in the upper country of Va., and North Carolina, on the New River and Holston River, and when they intended to make a long hunt, as they called it, they collected near the head of Holston, near where Abingdon now stands. Thence they proceeded a westerly direction passing through Powell's valley crossing the Cumberland mountain where the road now crosses leading to the Crab Orchard in Ky. Then crossing the Cumberland River where the said road now crosses Rockcastle, and leaving the Crab Orchard to the right and continuing nearly the said course, crossing the head of Green River, going on through the Barrens, crossing Big Barren River at the mouth of Drake's Creek; thence up Drake'c Creek to the head, crossing the ridge which divides the waters of the Ohio river from the waters of the Cumberland, and the hunters, after crossing the ridge, either went down Bledsoe's Creek, or Station Camp Creek to the river and then spread out in the Cumberland ready to make their hunt.



The first trip that the long hunters made was about l772 or l773. There were several very enterprising, smart, active members along. I will name a few: Col. Isaac Bledsoe, Col. John Montgomery, Col. Gasper Mansker, Henry Scaggs, Obediah Terrell, two Drakes (this would be Joseph and Ephraim), and a number of other could be named.


When the hunters crossed the dividing ridge first named, they fell on the head of Station Camp Creek, and went down it about three miles and from Cumberland river, came to a very large, plain, buffalo path, much traveled, crossing the creek at right angles north and south. The south side of the creek was a pretty high bluff and a beautiful flat ridge made down to the creek. The hunters pitched their camp on the bluff and on the buffalo path, and they made that their Station Camp from which the creek took its name.


Col. Bledsoe and Col. Mansker, the first night they pitched their camp, agreed that the buffalo path that ran by their camp must lead at each end to Sulphur Licks or springs, and they made an agreement that night for Col. Bledsoe, in the morning, to take the north end of the path, and Col. Mansker to take the south side of the path, and each to ride one half day along the path to see what discoveries they could make and give themselves time to return to camp that night and report what they had seen.


They were both successful in their expectations. One found Bledsoe's Lick at the end of thirteen miles, and the other found Mansker's Lick at about twelve miles. They both returned that night, with great joy, to their companions at the camp, and made known their discoveries of the two licks.


Col. Bledsoe told me when he came to Bledsoe's Creek, about two miles from the lick, he had some difficulty in riding along the path, the buffaloes were so crowded in the path, and on each side, that his horse could scarcely get through them, and when he got to the bend of the creek at the Lick, the whole flat surrounding the lick of about one hundred acres was principally covered with buffaloes in every direction. He said no only hundreds, but thousands.


The space containing the Sulphur springs was about two hundred yards each way across, and the buffalo had licked the dirt away several feet deep in that space, and within that space there issued out about a dozen Sulphur springs, at which the buffalo drank. Bledsoe said there was such a crowd of buffaloes in the Lick and around it, that he was afraid to get off his horse for fear of getting run over by the buffaloes, and as he sat on his horse he shot down two in the lick and the buffaloes tread them in the mud so that he could not skin them. The buffaloes did not mind the sight of him and his horse, but when the wind blew from him to them they got the scent of him, they would break and run in droves."
The Long Hunter by Emory L. Hamilton, p. 29, The Mountain Empire Genealogical Quarterly, Spring l984.