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BLM Participates in a Project to Make History Come Alive

LIVING HISTORY

JERRY MASON

BLM Casper District Office

A camp in the snow made the hardships of a winter campaign more realistic. The snow made it easy for those students playing the part of the soldiers to track their classmates playing the part of Indians.

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A student plays the part of an Army sentry at old Fort Laramie.

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Indian Territory, now within the State of Oklahoma.

Accounts of what led to the escape and of what happened afterward vary greatly, but we do know that the band was pursued and overtaken by troops from the United States' 4th Cavalry. In the battle that followed about half of the Indians were killed and the rest taken to Fort Richardson in Wyoming.

When orders came for the survivors to be returned to Fort Reno, they refused to go. Soon after they killed their guards and broke out of the barracks where they were being confined. They fled from Fort Richardson, but twelve days later were surrounded in a ravine about 50 miles from the fort. When the commanding officer of the troops asked them to surrender, the Indians fired on the troops. In the ensuing battle all but a few of the Indians were killed.

In order to get the Indian's point of view as well as that of the soldiers, the students reenacted various scenes of the flight of Dull Knife's band as depicted in "Cheyenne Autumn." The students visited the Denver Museum of Natural History, Pawnee Butte in the Pawnee National Grasslands north of Greeley, Colorado and then old Fort Laramie in

Pawnee Butte had a special meaning to the Indian. The students visited the site to absorb background for their project to make history come alive.

southeastern Wyoming. This was to give the students background information for their reenactment of the chase to the north.

Whitehead made all the necessary arrangements for the students to use various sections of BLM and private land in the Dull Knife Battlefield area in the southern foothills of Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains. He also coordinated the use of land owned by three nearby ranchers and oriented the students to the area and explained its historical significance when they arrived.

On the battlefield, the students relived a tragic scene. Mike Flynn, one of the students' teachers played the part of Little Wolf and took half of the class to represent the Indians. Dave Roupp, another teacher, became Lt. Casper Collins of the United States 3rd Cavalry and the rest of the students became soldiers. Both groups were on foot. The soldiers were armed with tennis balls to simulate weapons the Indians had nothing.

The objective was for the soldiers to hunt down the Indians and to "kill" them by hitting them with a tennis ball. The students representing the Indians tried to remain hidden and escape. As soon as an Indian was "killed" he became a soldier, thereby simu

lating the fact that the soldier's ranks increased as the Indians' numbers diminished. Mike Flynn, who played the role of the Indian Chief said, "The Indians always had the soldiers in sight, but the soldiers often couldn't find the Indians. One night the Indians hid in the willows just five feet from the soldier's camp. Eventually though, the Indians were "killed" and our numbers dwindled. Finally we were pushed into a valley from which there was no escape."

One of the students described the scene, "... we were spotted running around the butte. We ran along a ravine trying to find a hiding place. At that time I was actually afraid. I knew that it was just a game, but the two days of living and being a total Indian made it seem so real. Even though we were exhausted, we had to try to climb out of the ravine and get out of the range of the soldiers, but we never made it."

The soldiers "killed" all the Indians. The students were so inIvolved in their roles that several lay down and cried when they were "killed." One girl said, "It really hit me for the first time what really happened to the Indians... how awful it must have been."

Afterwards the students were debriefed and talked about what they had learned. One student said, "We learned more about the feelings of both sides from dealing with the same circumstances than we could ever get out of a book or from a classroom situation."

After the exercise was over, the students presented Whitehead with a certificate of appreciation for making it all possible. They also thanked the ranchers for the use of their land. The ranchers were Norris Graves, A. B. Brock and Sons, and the Brock Livestock Company, all of Kaycee, Wyoming.

The outdoor history class was a four-day affair. The school held two sessions of the class in May using a different group of students from the same school. The class was popular with the students and the school is making plans to repeat the program during the coming school year.

AMERICAN

REVOLUTION

1776-1976

BICEN

CENTENNIA

A Dream That Failed Provided

the Incentive That Started Our Westward Expansion

The 14th STATE of TRANSYLVANIA

PAUL C. HERNDON

Office of Public Affairs

While the Colonies were in

the midst of the American Revolution, enterprising colonials were already petitioning both the Continental Congress and the Virginia Assembly to grant recognition to the 14th state of the Union. According to the petition, the new state would be called the State of Transylvania.

The chief architect of the Transylvania venture was Judge Richard Henderson. Henderson was the foremost figure among the group of influential North Carolina citizens who had organized the Transylvania Company in the hope of making money out of western land. It was among the first of a number of companies organized in the colonies to promote settlement of the vast areas of empty land that lay beyond the settlement line. It was the first Company to successfully establish settlements beyond the 1763 Proclamation Line.

In 1774 Henderson and his

associates purchased a vast tract
from the Cherokee Indians. Lying
in an approximate triangle formed.
by the Ohio, Kentucky and
Cumberland Rivers, the tract com-
prised more than half of the
present State of Kentucky.
Henderson paid approximately
$10,000 in trade goods to a
Cherokee chief named Little
Carpenter for the Indian rights to
the land. In the aftermath of this
purchase, we glimpse the conflict.
of cultures that became the
pattern of subsequent dealings.
between the Europeans and the
Indians. For soon there arose all
the misunderstandings that would
so often frustrate the white man
who tried to buy land from the
Indians. To the European, land
was a commodity to be bought
and sold in the same way a man
would buy or sell a pair of shoes.
To the Indian, land was a natural
gift like rain, wind or sunlight.

Rarely did the Indian intend to
sell what the white man intended

to buy. Because of this difference in cultures, and the inability of one to understand the other, the best of the white man's intention to deal fairly with the Indian would always be frustrated.

First the European confused the role of the Indian chief, with that of their own 18th century monarchs. In Europe the king was the man to deal with, but among the Indians a chief was a man of influence whose opinions and decisions carried a certain amount of weight, but were not necessarily binding on other members of the tribe.

In this instance, many in Little Carpenter's own tribe, including his own son, Dragging Canoe, were opposed to the sale of land. Dragging Canoe warned that the sale, now known as the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, would cause war between the Indians and the whites.

It also seems probable that the land in question did not belong to

the Cherokees. Other tribes certainly claimed the right to hunt in the area.

Yet it seems that Henderson bought the land in good faith, believing that he was dealing fairly with the Indians. There is less reason to believe that he did not know that his deal was contrary to English law.

As a young man, Henderson had been admitted to the bar in the Colony of Virginia after a scant year of reading law and had astonished his examiners with the thoroughness of his knowledge. A brilliant lawyer certainly knew that it was forbidden for private persons to make treaties with the Indians and that settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains was illegal.

In the light of Henderson's legal training, it becomes significant that his purchase of Indian land came shortly after the first Continental Congress had convened in Philadelphia. It seems certain that Henderson was counting on an American victory to protect his investment and give reality to his dreams.

But he had failed to gauge the mood of his own countrymen and

was guilty of poor timing. He laid his proposal before the Virginia Assembly at a time when many Assemblymen were hoping for a compromise of differences between them and the Mother Country. To approve a plan so blatantly in defiance of English law threatened to jeopardize all hopes of reconciliation.

Even though settlement was already well underway, the Assembly followed Governor Patrick Henry's recommendation and refused to approve the Transylvania project. Eventually the Assembly declared the purchase illegal. Actual settlers were granted the land they had already claimed and instead of the millions of acres purchased, the Company was granted title to a mere 200,000 acres.

In promoting settlement, the Company was faced with a problem of access. There were no roads beyond the mountains, and the land was covered with a dense deciduous forest that made crosscountry travel difficult if not impossible. To solve this problem, Henderson hired a 41-year old frontiersman named Daniel Boone.

Boone was the son of a Quaker who had. left Pennsylvania because he had fallen out with other members of his church. Squire Boone, Daniel's father, had moved his family to North Carolina in 1750 and had settled in the Yodkin Valley.

There Daniel grew up, and on August 14, 1756 he married Rebecca Bryan. He bought land from his father, but had no interest in farming. Beset with a restless spirit, he moved about, living for a while in Virginia, then investigating the possibilities of settling in Florida. He decided against the Florida venture and went to have a look at Kentucky. He liked what he saw in Kentucky and went back to North Carolina for his family.

Persuading his wife's family to move with him, they all returned to Kentucky. Their stay was a short one. The party was attacked by Indians. Boone's own son was captured, tortured and killed. They all went back to North Carolina, and Boone served for a time in the militia.

Boone went back to Kentucky in 1775 - this time as an employee of the Transylvania

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A BICENTENNIAL SERIES

Throughout the Bicentennial Year "Our Public Lands"

will continue to publish historical articles designed to help our readers understand how we developed our present public land policies and how the vast areas of our public domain influenced our nation's history.

At one time or another 1.8 billion acres of our total land base has been a part of our public domain. It began at the crest of the Alleghenies and eventually extended to the Pacific

coast.

Public land policy started to take shape before the Revolution was finished, and we adopted the Ordinance of 1785, which still influences public land policy, before we adopted the Constitution. The first rules and regulations that governed the disposal of public land were first applied to land in Ohio.

The evolution of ideas and the occupation of land are, for the most part, what the past 200 years have been all about. Now as we celebrate our 200th birthday it seems fitting that we remember how we developed as a nation and as a people.

Until recently, we were a people with a frontier, and the frontier had a lot to do with the development of our national character.

The story of the public domain is also the story of westward expansion, the story of the cowboy and the Indian, the mountain man and the fur trapper, the prospector and the miner. It is above all a "people" story.

Our westward migration, between 1840 and 1860, is unique in the history of the world. The northward trek of the South African Boers was its closest parallel, but they traveled less distance and there were fewer people involved. It was empty land that made the migration both possible and necessary, and it was the land and land resources that drew men to the west. Daniel Boone and James Robertson were among the first men to lead settlers through the mountains, and it is revealing that a grandson of Daniel Boone was among those settlers involved in the conquest of California.

With only 200 years of history, the United States is a stripling among nations. Most of the public domain has now passed into private ownership as envisioned by the founding fathers, but we still possess a public domain that is larger in area than any nation of Europe except Russia. In the final analysis, that land is yours and mine along with more than 200 million other Americans. It has been called our "Last Frontier."

These articles are based on a search of existing literature. Therefore, the stories we tell will not be new - but many may have been forgotten. We hope that you will enjoy the series.

Company. In March he led a party of 30 axmen into the wilderness to clear a road.

Starting on the bank of the Watauga River, where a settlement was already thriving, Boone and his axmen cleared a road through Cumberland Gap, and from there, roughly northwest to the point where Otter Creek joins the Kentucky River. The "Wilderness Road" as it soon was called, survived Boone and the Transylvania Company. By 1800 more than twenty thousand persons had traveled it in search of virgin land.

Boone and his men did not have to find their way unaided. For the most part the road followed existing Indian trails, just as the Indians had once adapted the game trails made by wild animals to their use.

Boone blazed the way so that the traveler would know which fork to follow as he reached each of the trail's many branchings. When necessary they chopped down trees or removed fallen logs so that packhorses and later wagons could get through the forest.

At the mouth of Otter Creek, Boone and other settlers built a stockade that became the nucleus of the frontier town of Boonesborough. This site is near the present city of Lexington, Kentucky.

Later a new branch of the Wilderness Road led to the settlement made by james Herrod. This settlement grew into the town of Herrodsburg, Kentucky. From Herrodsburg this branch was eventually extended to the south bank of the Ohio River where George Rogers Clark had drilled his militia prior to launching his campaign against the British in the Northwest Territory.

The settlement there became the City of Louisville and this branch would later become the main fork of the Wilderness Road.

At the time Boone started to build the Wilderness Road, the settlement where he started on the bank of the Watauga River was already six years old. William Bean built the first cabin there in 1769. He was soon joined by others who assumed that they

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