Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/190

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190
BOONE'S WILDERNESS ROAD

far-away Kentucky increased one hundred and forty-seven thousand.

But the West as a whole was benefited by Boone's Road. The part played by this earliest population of Kentucky in the development of the contiguous states—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri—has never been emphasized sufficiently. No Ohio historian has given sufficient attention to the part played by Kentuckians in the conquest of that area of territory. The struggle between the Kentuckians and the Ohio Indians has been outlined. The former fought for and saved to the Union the great territory south of the Ohio; and then left their smoking cabins and threw themselves ever and anon across the Ohio, upon the Indian settlements between that river and the Great Lakes. Where is even the Kentucky historian who has done his state justice in telling the story of Kentucky's conquest of Ohio and Indiana? Of the brilliant operations of Clark in Illinois we know very much, and the part played by the Kentuckians on the Mississippi and Illinois has frequently been made plain. But a singular misconception of the nature