discovery by Walker and Gist and the advent of Boone.



CHAPTER VIII. The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone

The long Hunters principally resided in the upper countries of
Virginia & North Carolina on New River & Holston River, and when
they intended to make a long Hunt (as they calls it) they
Collected near the head of Holston near whare Abingdon now stands
. . . .--General William Hall.


Before the coming of Walker and Gist in 1750 and 1751
respectively, the region now called Kentucky had, as far as we
know, been twice visited by the French, once in 1729 when
Chaussegros de Lery and his party visited the Big Bone Lick, and
again in the summer of 1749 when the Baron de Longueuil with four
hundred and fifty-two Frenchmen and Indians, going to join
Bienville in an expedition against "the Cherickees and other
Indians lying at the back of Carolina and Georgia," doubtless
encamped on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio. Kentucky was also
traversed by John Peter Salling with his three adventurous
companions in their journey through the Middle West in 1742. But
all these early visits, including the memorable expeditions of
Walker and Gist, were so little known to the general public that
when John Filson wrote the history of Kentucky in 1784 he
attributed its discovery to James McBride in 1754. More
influential upon the course of westward expansion was an
adventure which occurred in 1752, the very year in which the