Eskippakithiki, The Last Indian Town in Kentucky - The Filson ...

374 The Filson Club History Quarterly [ Vol. 6
Kentucky is spelled in this report just as we spell it now and
is used as a name for Eskippakithiki. His expression, "this side
Allegheny river," means on the English or the east and south
side. The l'."reneh claimed that LaSalle descended the upper Ohio
in 1669 while the English claimed that he descended the Wabash
and called it Ohio. This was the geographic issue in the French
and Indian War, so soon to follow Trent's report, and he did not
propose to call the upper river "Ohio" and thus seem to acknowledge
French pretensions thereto. As this was twenty years before
Dragging Canoe, at the Watauga Treaty, called the Transylvania
Purchase a "Dark and Bloody Ground," it disposes of those sinister
words as the supposed meaning of "Kentucky." Since Trent
received his information indirectly from the Conewagos, who
were Iroquoians, he calls the "place" by its Iroquoian name, KentuckT.
Kenta is an Iroquoian root-word, seen in many combinations
and various spellings, which means "level"; and those who
have seen the 3,500 acres of level, prairie country at Indian Old
Fields, can appreciate the relevancy of the name to that place.
As the Kentucky River is the one which was taken to reach
the "place called Kentucky," by those who came by water from
western New York or Pennsylvania, it was called the "Kentucky"
River, just as the Illinois, the Miami, the Mohawk, and many
other rivers of our continent have been named. As all of the
earliest settlements were on the Kentucky waters, except Harrodstown,
which was only five miles from the main stream, they were
spoken of collectively as the "Kentucky Settlements," just as the
people of that day spoke of the Monogahela Settlements, the
Cumberland Settlements, the Yadkin Settlements, the Holston
Settlements, etc. The same root, kenta, occurs in the word "Kentayenton-ga,"
which was the Iroquois name for the more level
country reached by the traveler down the Ohio--about Adams
County, Ohio, and Lewis County, Kentucky--after breaking
through the rough sandstone hills and narrow bottoms of the
coal-bearing country. Kentuckians of today describe these
two topographic proxdnces by the words "Mountain" and
"Bluegrass."-
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR: The French 'and Indian War
was declared in 1755, and John Findley joined Braddock's army.
There he met a young wagoner, Daniel Boone, whom he regaled
with stories of his adventure at Kentucky, in the level cane-land