The first major movement west of the…
1780 CE to 1791 CE
Pioneers house themselves in a rough lean-to or at most a one-room log cabin.
The main food supply at first comes from hunting deer, turkeys, and other abundant game.
In a few years the pioneer adds hogs, sheep and cattle, and perhaps acquires a horse.
Homespun clothing replaces the animal skins.
The more restless pioneers grow dissatisfied with over-civilized life, and uproot themselves again to move fifty or a hundred miles (eighty or one hundred and sixty kilometers) further west.
American settlers in large numbers pour into the west after the Peace of Paris in 1783.
The Wilderness Road is steep and rough, and it can only be traversed on foot or horseback, but it is the best route for thousands of settlers moving into Kentucky.
In some areas they have to face attacks from natives.
In 1784 alone, natives kill over one hundred travelers on the Wilderness Road.
No natives live permanently in Kentucky but they send raiding parties to stop the newcomers.
One of those intercepted is Abraham Lincoln's grandfather, who is scalped in 1784 near Louisville.
In 1788, American pioneers to the Northwest Territory establish Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory.
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