Long Hunters

K-127

Long hunters, so named because they left home for months at a time, pursued game beyond the limits of Euro-American settlement in the 18th century. Hunting parties often formed in the Holston River valley and traveled west before setting up base camps from which hunters dispersed in groups of two or three. In 1761, Elisha Wallen established the first-known base camp here in Powell Valley. Long hunters, including Daniel Boone, explored present-day Kentucky and Tennessee and brought back deer, elk, and bison hides and beaver and otter pelts to sell in eastern markets. Native Americans, primarily Cherokee and Shawnee, violently resisted this use of their traditional hunting territory.

Department of Historic Resources, 2019

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Ted Franklin Belue, The Hunters of Kentucky: A Narrative History of America’s First Far West, 1750-1792 (Stackpole Books, 2003). Nancy Clarke Brown, Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia, publication No. 50 (Historical Society of Southwest Virginia, 2016). Emory L. Hamilton, “The Long Hunters,” in Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia, publication No. 51 (Historical Society of Southwest Virginia, 2017). Mary B. Kegley, Finding Their Way from the Great Road to the Wilderness Road, 1745-1796 (2008). Mary B. Kegley and F.B. Kegley, Early Adventures on the Western Waters (Orange, Virginia: Green Publishers, 1980). Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008). “Daniel Boone, Role Model”: http://www.lewis-clark.org/article/383 John Redd, “Reminiscences of Western Virginia, 1770-1790,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 6, no. 4 (April 1899) and vol. 7, no. 3 (Jan. 1900).