ritories.

%274. The Three Streams of Westward Emigration.%--Sparse as was the
population in 1789, the rage for emigration had already seized the
people, and long before 1790 the emigrants were pouring over the
mountains in three great streams. One, composed of New England men, was
pushing along the borders of Lake Champlain and up the Mohawk valley. A
second, chiefly from Pennsylvania and Virginia, was spreading itself
over the rich valleys of what are now West Virginia and Kentucky.
Further south a third stream of emigrants, mostly from Virginia and
North Carolina, had gone over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and was creeping
down the valley of the Tennessee River.[1]

[Footnote 1: For an account of the movement of population westward along
these routes, see _The First Century of the Republic_, pp. 211-238.]

For months each year the Ohio was dotted with flatboats. One observer
saw fifty leave Pittsburg in five weeks. Another estimated that ten
thousand emigrants floated by Marietta during 1788. As this never-ending
stream of population spread over the wilderness, building cabins,
felling trees, clearing the land, and driving off the game, the Indians
took alarm and determined to expel them.

%275. The Indian War.%--During the summer of 1786 the tribes whose
hunting grounds lay in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky took the warpath,
sacked and burned a little settlement on the Holston, and spread terror
along the whole frontier. But the settlers in their turn rose, and
inflicted on the Indians a signal punishment. One expedition from
Tennessee burned three Cherokee towns. Another from Kentucky crossed the
Ohio, penetrated the Indian country, burned eight towns, and laid waste
hundreds of acres of standing corn. Had the Indians been left to
themselves, they would, after this punishment, have remained quiet. But
the British, who still held the frontier post at Detroit, roused them,
and in 1790 they were again at work, ravaging the country north of the
Ohio. They rushed down on Big Bottom (northwest of Marietta) and swept
it from the face of the earth. St. Clair, who was governor of the
Northwest Territory, sent against them an expedition which won some
success--just enough to enrage and not enough to cow them.

%276. St. Clair; Wayne.%--Not a settlement north of the Ohio was now
safe, and had it not been for the men of Kentucky, who came to the
relief, and in two expeditions held the Indians in check till the
Federal govern