The victory at Point Pleasant practically closed the war upon the border. Boone had been made a captain in response to a popular petition that the hero of Clinch Valley be thus honored, and was given charge of the three lower forts; but there followed only a few alarms, and upon the twentieth of November he and his brother militiamen of the region received their discharge. The war had cost Virginia £10,000 sterling, many valuable lives had been sacrificed, and an incalculable amount of suffering and privation had been occasioned all along the three hundred and fifty miles of American frontier. But the Shawnese had been humbled, the Cherokees had retired behind the new border line, and a lasting peace appeared to be assured.
In the following January Captain Boone, true son of the wilderness, was celebrating his freedom from duties incident to war's alarms by a solitary hunt upon the banks of Kentucky River.
[9] Previous to this there had been built in Kentucky many hunters' camps, also a few isolated cabins by "improvers"; but Harrodsburg (at first called "Harrodstown") was the first permanent settlement, thus having nearly a year's start of Boonesborough. June 16, 1774, is the date given by Collins and other chroniclers for the actual settlement by Harrod.
[10] The Indians had called the Americans "Knifemen," "Long Knives," or "Big Knives," from the earliest historic times; but it was not until about the middle of the eighteenth century that the Virginia colonists began to make record of the use of this epithet by the Indians with whom they came in contact. It was then commonly supposed that it grew out of the use of swords by the frontier militiamen, and this is the meaning still given in dictionaries; but it has been made apparent by Albert Matthews, writing in the New York Nation, March 14, 1901, that the epithet originated in the fact that Englishmen used knives as distinguished from the early stone tools of the Indians. The French introduced knives into America previous to the English, but apparently the term was used only by Indians within the English sphere of influence.
Kentucky had so long been spasmodically occupied and battled over by Shawnese, Iroquois, and Cherokees, that it can not be said that any of them had well-defined rights over its soil. Not until white men appeared anxious to settle there did the tribes begin to assert their respective claims, in the hope of gaining presents at the treaties whereat they were asked to make cessions. The whites, on their part, when negotiating for purchases, were well aware of the shadowy character of these claims; but, when armed with a signed deed of cession, they had something tangible upon which thenceforth to base their own claims of proprietorship. There was therefore much insincerity upon both sides. It is well to understand this situation in studying the history of Kentucky settlement.