The New Dominion: Virginia’s Bounty Land

There is a fine line between courage and stupidity. Eight men congregated at Smithfield Plantation in southwest Virginia on April 7, 1774, prepared for a perilous adventure. They were young men in high spirits, ready to set off into Virginia’s mostly unexplored western wilderness. Their intrepid leader was Deputy Fincastle County Surveyor John Floyd. Their guide was the original longhunter, James Knox, who knew the terrain.[1] A separate eight-man team led by Deputy Surveyor Hancock Taylor had already left. Their task was to survey lands that had been promised to veterans of the French and Indian War twenty years before as a reward for their service. Now, however, the Old Dominion was on the verge of a new war with the Shawnee and Mingo tribes. Crossing the Alleghenies at this moment was reckless; some of the expedition’s members would never be seen again.[2]

Many of the surveys had already been conducted, which added to the madness. Thomas Bullitt led an expedition down the Ohio River from Fort Pitt in 1773, marking off lots for veterans of the old war or men who had bought their warrants.[3] When Bullitt finished, Fincastle County refused to accept his plats. The surveys had not been done by county surveyors, as was required by law, and some of them encroached on unceded Cherokee land. So, despite the danger, Fincastle Surveyor William Preston was sending his own men out now to do the job correctly.[4]

Floyd’s team followed the New River north-northwest into the beauty of what is now New River Gorge National Park. They met Taylor’s team where the New joined the Gauley to form the Great Kanawha River. They continued on foot until they passed the river’s falls, then traveled in canoes made on site. Fincastle County was vast, stretching all the way to the Mississippi River and encompassing what are now southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, and all of Kentucky. The sixteen Virginia men made their first surveys for Col. George Washington along the Kanawha, floated north to the river’s mouth, and continued their work along the left bank of the Ohio River and its north-flowing tributaries.[5]

The danger increased while they worked. The Cherokee and the Six Nations Confederacy of Iroquois tribes (the Haudenosaunee) had sold this land to Virginia and North Carolina in 1768 and 1770. Though nominally under Haudenosaunee authority, the Shawnee and Mingo rejected those agreements, and Captain Bullitt’s abrasive conduct the previous year had further strained relations. Floyd and Taylor encountered hunters and settlers fleeing east, as well as a few individuals who were foolishly determined to stay. Others, seeking safety in numbers, asked if they could join the surveyors. The Shawnee, the explorers learned, “had placed themselves on both sides of the [Ohio] river, and … intended war.” Floyd tried to hire a fleeing man who could speak Algonquian as a hedge against trouble. The man “refused,” a team member noted, “and told us to take care of our scalps.” Undeterred, the Virginians continued down the river, surveying more land for prominent men such as Patrick Henry and Hugh Mercer.[6]