11. The Regulators

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, but if he has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one cow to give a little milk for his children, they must all go to raise money which is not to be had. And lastly if his personal estate (sold at one tenth of its value) will not do, then his lands (which perhaps has cost him many years of toil and labour) must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungry caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a very short time.--George Sims: A Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer .... and some necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier explorations in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel Boone anticipated speedy removal to the West. Indeed, in the very year of his first tour in their interest, Daniel and his wife Rebeckah sold all their property in North Carolina, consisting of their home and six hundred and forty acres of land, and after several removals established themselves upon the upper Yadkin. This removal and the later western explorations just outlined were due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery. Three other causes also were at work. In the first place there was the scarcity of game. For fifteen years the shipments of deerskins from Bethabara to Charleston steadily increased; and the number of skins bought by Gammern, the Moravian storekeeper, ran so high that in spite of the large purchases made at the store by the hunters he would sometimes run entirely out of money. Tireless in the chase, the far roaming Boone was among "the hunters, who brought in their skins from as far away as the Indian lands"; and the beautiful upland pastures and mountain forests, still teeming with deer and bear, doubtless lured him to the upper Yadkin, where for a time in the immediate neighborhood of his home abundance of game fell before his unerring rifle. Certainly the deer and other game, which were being killed in enormous numbers to satisfy the insatiable demand of the traders at Salisbury, the Forks, and Bethabara, became scarcer and scarcer; and the wild game that was left gradually fled to the westward. Terrible indeed was the havoc wrought among the elk; and it was reported that the last elk was killed in western North Carolina as early as 1781.

Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope in the back country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguised outlawry, similar to that found on the western plains of a later era. This ruthless brigand age arose as the result of the unsettled state of the country and the exposed condition of the settlements due to the Indian alarms. When rude borderers, demoralized by the enforced idleness attendant upon fort life during the dark days of Indian invasion, sallied forth upon forays against the Indians, they found much valuable property--horses, cattle, and stock--left by their owners when hurriedly fleeing to the protection of the frontier stockades. The temptations thus afforded were too great to resist; and the wilder spirits of the backwoods, with hazy notions of private rights, seized the property which they found, slaughtered the cattle, sold the horses, and appropriated to their own use the temporarily abandoned household goods and plantation tools. The stealing of horses, which were needed for the cultivation of the soil and useful for quickly carrying unknown thieves beyond the reach of the owner and the law, became a common practice; and was carried on by bands of outlaws living remote from one another and acting in collusive concert.

Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon the New River settlements in Virginia had frightened away all the families at the Town Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, a man of Welsh stock, who had settled in the spring of 1752 in the upper Yadkin near the Mulberry Fields, was suspected of having robbed the storekeeper on the Meho. Not long afterward a band of outlaws who plundered the exposed cabins in their owners' absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain region in the rear of the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their ill-gotten plunder and made themselves secure from attack. Other members of the band dwelt in the settlements, where they concealed their robber friends by day and aided them by night in their nefarious projects of theft and rapine.

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