After many trials and vicissitudes, which included a journey to the Spanish Natchez and the loss of a great mass of peltries when they were plundered by Piomingo and a war party of Chickasaws, they finilly reached home in the late spring of 1770." The most notable expedition of this period, projected under the auspices of two bold leaders extraordinarily skilled in woodcraft, Joseph Drake and Henry Scaggs, was organized in the early autumn of 1770.

This imposing band of stalwart hunters from the New River and Holston country, some forty in number, garbed in hunting shirts, leggings, and moccasins, with three pack-horses to each man, rifles, ammunition, traps, dogs, blankets, and salt, pushed boldly through Cumberland Gap into the heart of what was later justly named the "Dark and Bloody Ground" (see Chapter XIV)--"not doubting," says an old border chronicler, "that they were to be encountered by Indians, and to subsist on game." From the duration of their absence from home, they received the name of the Long Hunters--the romantic appellation by which they are known in the pioneer history of the Old Southwest.

Many natural objects were named by this party--in particular Dick's River, after the noted Cherokee hunter, Captain Dick, who, pleased to be recognized by Charles Scaggs, told the Long Hunters that on HIS river, pointing it out, they would find meat plenty--adding with laconic signifigance: "Kill it and go home." From the Knob Lick, in Lincoln County, as reported by a member of the party, "they beheld largely over a thousand animals, including buffaloe, elk, bear, and deer, with many wild turkies scattered among them; all quite restless, some playing, and others busily employed in licking the earth....

The buffaloe and other animals had so eaten away the soil, that they could, in places, go entirely underground." Upon the return of a detachment to Virginia, fourteen fearless hunters chose to remain; and one day, during the absence of some of the band upon a long exploring trip, the camp was attacked by a straggling party of Indians under Will Emery, a halfbreed Cherokee.

Two of the hunters were carried into captivity and never heard of again; a third managed to escape.