red men. Bloody reprisal was often the sequel to such
encroachment. The vast region of Tennessee and the
trans-Alleghany was a twilight zone, through which the savages
roamed at will. From time to time war parties of northern
Indians, the inveterate foes of the Cherokees, scouted through
this no-man's land and even penetrated into the western region of
North Carolina, committing murders and depredations upon the
Cherokees and the whites indiscriminately. During the summer of
1766, while Boone's friend and close connection, Captain William
Linville, his son John, and another young man, named John
Williams, were in camp some ten miles below Linville Falls, they
were unexpectedly fired upon by a hostile band of Northern
Indians, and before they had time to fire a shot, a second volley
killed both the Linvilles and severely wounded Williams, who
after extraordinary sufferings finally reached the settlements."
In May, 1767, four traders and a half-breed child of one of them
were killed in the Cherokee country. In the summer of this year
Governor William Tryon of North Carolina laid out the boundary
line of the Cherokees, and upon his return issued a proclamation
forbidding any purchase of land from the Indians and any issuance
of grants for land within one mile of the boundary line. Despite
this wise precaution, seven North Carolina hunters who during the
following September had lawlessly ventured into the mountain
region some sixty miles beyond the boundary were fired upon, and
several of them killed, by the resentful Cherokees Undismayed by
these signs of impending danger, undeterred even by the tragic
fate of the Linvilles, Daniel Boone, with the determination of
the indomitable pioneer, never dreamed of relinquishing his
long-cherished design. Discouraged by the steady disappearance of
game under the ruthless attack of innumerable hunters, Boone