Buffalo, Barrels, and Bourbon E-Book

F. Paul Pacult

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 359

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Learn about one of the most impactful distilleries in American history in this comprehensive tale 

Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon tells the fascinating tale of the Buffalo Trace Distillery, from the time of the earliest explorations of Kentucky to the present day. Author and award-winning spirits expert F. Paul Pacult takes readers on a journey through history that covers the American Revolutionary War, U.S Civil War, two World Wars, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.  

Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon covers the pedigree and provenance of the Buffalo Trace Distillery:  

• The larger-than-life personalities that over a century and a half made Buffalo Trace Distillery what it is today 
• Detailed accounts on how many of the distillery’s award-winning and world-famous brands were created 
• The impact of world events, including multiple depressions, weather-related events, and major conflicts, on the distillery 

Belonging on the shelf of anyone with an interest in American spirits and history, Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon is a compelling must-read.  

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Glossary

1 “This River Runes North West and Out of ye Westerly Side …”

The Amazement, the Terror

Notes

2 “This Map of Kentucke: Drawn from Actual Observations …”

The Birth of Leestown and the Gift of “a Rattlesnake skin”

Notes

3 “… As Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg …”

Notes

4 “… 10,530 bls. Flour; 1374 Whiskey; 1984 Beef and Pork …”

Notes

5 “… The Machinery Is of the Best … for Making Copper Distilled Whisky.”

“… to lose Kentucky …”

Notes

6 “… Bourbon Production … Was at Best Crude and Unreliable …”

The Building of O.F.C.

Notes

7 “… That in Consideration of Five Hundred Dollars …”

Notes

8 “Rev. Dr. McLeod Thanks God for Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey”

Notes

9 “The Most Valuable Assistance That We Got in St. Louis …”

Taylor and Stagg: Born to Disagree

Notes

10 “… An Early Nineteenth Century Residence Situated in the Middle of an Expansive Lawn …”

Build Thee an Ark, Albert

Notes

11 “… Raised the Daily Production from 400 to 600 Barrels …”

Notes

12 “Despite Many Salacious Rumors, He Is Mostly Remembered As …”

Lewis S. Rosenstiel: The Supreme Commander

Notes

13 “Show Up Next Monday Morning …”

The Shot of Bourbon Heard 'Round the World

“Glad to see Libby & be home …”

Notes

14 Sazerac: The New Orleans Company and the Fabled Cocktail

“Never thought of doing anything else”

Notes

15 “Experimentation Is in Our DNA …”

“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble”

Notes

16 “Resistance Is Futile”

Buy, Buy, Buy!

Good to The Last Drop

Pappy: The One, the Only

Basking in the “Halo” of the BTAC

Notes

17 “… Projecting Forecasts in 2020 for the Next 100, 120 Years …”

Preparing for What's Next … with Caution

And, Finally, about Those Awards and What They Really Mean

Notes

Appendix

Buffalo Trace Distillery Whiskeys and Spirits

Timeline

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents

Introduction

Glossary

Begin Reading

Appendix

Timeline

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

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Other Books by F. Paul Pacult

Kindred Spirits: The Spirit Journal Guide to the World's Distilled Spirits and Fortified Wines (Hyperion, 1997)

The Beer Essentials: The Spirit Journal Guide to Over 650 of the World's Beers (Hyperion, 1997)

American Still Life: The Jim Beam Story and the Making of the World's #1 Bourbon (John Wiley & Sons, 2003)

A Double Scotch: How Chivas Regal and The Glenlivet Became Global Icons (John Wiley & Sons, 2005)

Kindred Spirits 2: 2,400 Reviews of Whiskey, Brandy, Vodka, Tequila, Rum, Gin, and Liqueurs from F. Paul Pacult's Spirit Journal 2000–2007 (Spirit Journal, Inc., 2008)

The New Kindred Spirits: More Than 2,000 All-New Reviews of Whiskey, Brandy, Gins, Vodkas, Agave Spirits, Rum, Amari, Bitters, and Liqueur from F. Paul Pacult's Spirit Journal (Matt Holt Books, 2021)

F. PAUL PACULT

BUFFALO, BARRELS, & BOURBON

THE STORY OF HOW BUFFALO TRACE DISTILLERY BECAME THE WORLD’S MOST AWARDED DISTILLERY

Copyright © 2021 by Spirit Journal, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781119599913 (Hardback)ISBN 9781119599937 (ePDF)ISBN 9781119599920 (ePub)

Cover Design: WileyCover Images: © Buffalo Trace DistilleryAuthor Photo: © Michael Gold/The Corporate Image

For Sue

Acknowledgments

I HAVE A WHOLE scorecard of generous people to thank for their assistance with the writing of this book. First of all, Matt Holt, the former Wiley publisher who approached Sue and me about writing a third book for Wiley, along with our present-day Wiley publisher Shannon Vargo. I appreciate their staunch support of Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon. Senior Editor Sally Baker and Managing Editor Deborah Schindlar at Wiley have been veritable rocks and a delight to deal with. Kudos also go to my friend Sarah Tirone for poring over the manuscript at a critical stage of development and telling, with candor, what she thought of it. Whiskey journalist/blogger/author Chuck Cowdery freely offered his keen insights along the way, both in person and via his many unvarnished blog postings. Thank you, Chuck. My appreciation also goes to colleague and celebrated whiskey writer Liza Weisstuch for her insightful viewpoints. Both the Filson Historical Society and the Kentucky Historical Society deserve a tip of my hat for their very existence, as well as the assistance their archives provided throughout the book's research period. Never standing in the way of where my independent research was leading me, the management and public relations teams at Buffalo Trace deserve shout-outs for their no-strings-attached cooperation, fully cognizant that my findings might in the end differ with their own data. A special note of appreciation goes to Buffalo Trace archivist Madison Sevilla, whose patience and diligence were pivotal in pointing out directions for deeper research. I would be remiss if I didn't note and acknowledge American whiskey historian Carolyn Brooks for sharing her superb investigative paper, “A Leestown Chronology,” which cleared many obstacles and bridged gaps on my fact-finding path. Last, but certainly not least, thanks to my wife, collaborator, master editor, and partner Sue Woodley for, well, everything.

Introduction

MY PROFESSION IS COMMUNING with spirits. Since 1989, I have formally reviewed over 30,000 of the fermented and distilled consumable liquids commonly referred to as “spirits,” “distillates,” “water of life,” or, more scurrilously, “firewater,” “hooch,” “booze,” “sauce,” or “hard liquor.” In addition to my subscription-only newsletter F. Paul Pacult's Spirit Journal, these product evaluations, sometimes with accompanying feature stories, have appeared in scores of publications over the past three decades. These included the New York Times Sunday magazine, Wine Enthusiast, Playboy, Delta Sky in-flight magazine, Wine & Spirits, Men's Journal, Beverage Dynamics, Cheers, and many more. Wearing another of my career hats, for two decades I have consulted to numerous beverage companies, assisting them either in the creation of new spirit brands or helping them to revitalize old ones. In one such instance, I have turned master blender for an American whiskey portfolio, Jacob's Pardon. Then there is my spirits education hat, but on this I'll spare you details, saving them for the next time.

After plying my trade in this manner for over 30 years, I have come to many conclusions. Perhaps the most salient determination I have made is this: of all the spirits that illuminate the galaxy of distilled potables, whiskey is my hands-down favorite. As charming as it can be, whiskey is a perplexing spirits category, one that is on occasion disconcerting and, at its most extreme, impenetrable. Yet for all its manifold complexities, every whiskey is composed of only three easily obtained, foundational ingredients: grain, water, and yeast. After being fermented and distilled, freshly made whiskeys are placed in cocoon-like barrels wherein they undergo periods of complicated metamorphosis. Once released from captivity in the aging warehouses, the world's whiskeys take the international stage as the most prized and expensive of all distillates. They are the monarch butterflies of the spirits category. They can be, and frequently are, great hooch, in other words.

One of whiskey's most enduring mysteries is why one can be so wildly dissimilar in character traits from another, not just from nation to nation or region to region, but even from barrel to barrel of the same batch. If all of the world's whiskeys are made from but a trio of commonplace, wholly familiar ingredients, how can they differ so markedly in personality? Moreover, why are a handful of the whiskey distillers more adept at the art of whiskey making than others? What are their secrets? I've been asking these questions for over three decades.

Three years ago, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., the Hoboken, New Jersey–based publisher of two previous books of mine, American Still Life (2003) and A Double Scotch (2005), contacted me, expressing an interest in backing another spirits-oriented business book. The topic choice, they said, was up to me. After some weeks of consideration deciding between proposing another book on Scotch whisky or one more on American whiskey, I settled on a subject that had all the earmarks of timeliness and pertinence: the meteoric rise in prominence of the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Along with a chapter and verse accounting of this distillery's emergence since before the nineteenth century, my other hope was to perhaps answer at least some of my queries about a few of whiskey's inherent riddles.

Wiley agreed to my proposal and the deal was struck. Upon informing the distillery operators about the project, I made arrangements to meet with their archivists to peruse their voluminous records. The top executives at Buffalo Trace at the time, namely CEO Mark Brown, public relations manager Amy Preske, master distiller Harlen Wheatley, master blender Drew Mayville, and former senior marketing director Kris Comstock (who departed early in 2021), have all known me long enough to know that I would allow the facts of the historical records as I unearthed them to dictate the trajectory of the story, warts and all. As with American Still Life and A Double Scotch, my independence would not permit a vanity project. They acknowledged that my views might in the end differ with theirs and to their credit offered me their assistance, encouragement, and direct access to the company archives. Nothing more.

As an active spirits critic, I have grown intimately familiar with the bourbon and rye whiskeys produced in abundance at their historic plant, which is now a celebrated landmark. As the research data unfolded over many months of examination, I became convinced that Buffalo Trace's history deserved to be told as much from the viewpoint of its low-bank location on the Kentucky River as from the intriguing lives of the people who created the legendary bourbon and rye whiskeys through the decades. The striking history of the distillery's site was, in my view, of paramount importance to the proper telling of the story. The tale of Buffalo Trace Distillery, I concluded early on, could not have occurred at any other place.

Consequently, reading after looking through the Glossary, which I suggest, you will find that the initial chapters have little to do with the bubbling of fermenting grain mash or the boiling of the mash's low-strength beer into high-alcohol distillate. The opening pages of Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon, nearly a fifth of the narrative, instead deals with the stark realities endured by the robust seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and early nineteenth-century Euro-American individuals who survived and persevered in the harsh, but green and lush North American environment. In this case, the focus lies on the uncharted, heavily forested area described first in maps as Kentucke. While beguiling to the eye and imagination, the deceptively feral soul of Kentucke forced hundreds of the earliest explorers, surveyors, military scouts, trappers, and fur traders to their knees in bruised submission. At least, it did for those fortunate ones who lived long enough to talk or write about it in journals.

The land itself where the Buffalo Trace Distillery campus stands today is a listed member of the National Register of Historic Places (#2428), one of a mere 2,600 such sites in the United States. This location in north-central Kentucky is the beneficiary of a geological and topographical majesty that must have been breathtaking to the first Euro-Americans who hacked their way through the midnight-dark primeval forests and paddled their pirogues down the swirling currents of the Kentucky River. It is here where the layers of sedentary substrata, the karst shelf geology, the trough-like sandy bank, pure spring water, the fertile, arable land for the growing of corn, and the strategic proximity to a major waterway, the Ohio River, all merge to create an ideal situation in which to make whiskey. Over time, the spilt blood of the pioneers, the heinous trials endured by the Native American tribes, and the near extinction of the dominant beast of the Great Plains, the buffalo, converged to create this saga about the taming of this virgin region and, later, about the distilling of legendary American whiskey.

After the low-bank location was settled with the building of crude riverside log structures, the storyline changes into a narrative that centers upon the multiple generations of influential clans, such as the Lees, Swigerts, Taylors, Staggs, Blantons, and Van Winkles. Painted with the main characters' foibles, peccadilloes, aspirations, failures, ingenuity, courage, and triumphs, Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon then warps into the chapters that uncover the evolution of some of America's most beloved whiskeys, the bourbons and ryes of Buffalo Trace.

The research and writing of this book took me back to places in time and space that I'd not visited to any significant degree for some years. It was grand to be immersed once again in the racehorse and whiskey fables of Kentucky's Bluegrass district. If bourbon whiskey is, as many believe, America's hallmark spirit, Kentucky is its cradle, its ancestral place of origin, its soul and vibrant inspiration.

F. PAUL PACULT

Hudson Valley, New York

Spring 2021

Glossary

IT WOULD BE UNFAIR to assume that everyone who picks up Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon will be sufficiently versed in the often arcane terminology related to whiskey and its production. Therefore, in the interest of leveling the linguistic playing field from the beginning, I am including this brief glossary upfront to assist in making better sense of some commonly utilized words in the American whiskey lexicon. Think of this as being your first sip.

Alcohol by volume

Also known globally as “abv”; the international measure of how many milliliters (mL) of pure ethanol exist in 100 mL of a liquid at precisely 20 degrees Centigrade (68 degrees Fahrenheit). It's the ratio between alcohol and water. By the liter, then, a bottle that is identified as 43 percent alcohol also has 57 percent water. All American whiskeys are at least 40 percent alcohol by volume as decreed by statute.

Barrel proof

Whiskey that is bottled directly from the barrel and released at the full alcohol by volume strength, undiluted, meeting the truth-in-labeling requirements laid down by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, ruling 79-9.

Blended whiskey

Legal whiskeys that by American law are composed of a minimum of 20 percent straight whiskey and other spirits, most typically neutral grain spirits (NGS), in order to create a low-cost, high-volume whiskey.

Bottled-in-bond

In accordance with the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, an American whiskey or spirit that comes from one distillation season (January–June or July–December), is then matured for at least four years in a federally bonded and supervised warehouse, and is bottled at 50 percent alcohol by volume. Most bottled-in-bond spirits are whiskey.

Bourbon whiskey

By law (Federal Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits, code 27 CFR §5.22(b)(1)(i)) must be made within the United States; must be at a minimum 51 percent corn; must be aged in new, charred oak containers; must be distilled not higher than 80 percent alcohol; must go into the aging barrel at no higher than 62.5 percent alcohol by volume; and must be bottled at no lower than 40 percent abv. Bourbon labeled as

Straight Bourbon

must, by law, be matured in new, charred oak containers for at least two years and cannot have anything added to it, such as coloring or flavoring.

Char level

One of the key requirements for straight whiskeys made in the United States is that they be matured in new, charred oak barrels (containers) for at least two years. Charring briefly over roaring flames of fire accomplishes several things, including altering some of the wood's chemical compounds, which prepares them for more advantageous contact with the virgin whiskey. Four levels of charring are traditionally employed, with level one being the lightest and level four being the deepest and most impactful. Experiments using even more severely charred barrels are ongoing. (I could discuss this topic at length for days, but not here.)

Light whiskey

Defined in January 1968 by U.S. government regulation, these whiskeys must be distilled to between 80 and 95 percent alcohol by volume and can be matured in either previously used or uncharred new barrels for any length of time.

Mash bill

Basically this is the recipe for the ratios of grains used in American whiskey; for example, straight bourbons are always created from mash bills that are made up of at least 51 percent corn with supplemental grains such as rye and malted barley or wheat and malted barley. Straight rye whiskeys mash bills must contain a minimum of 51 percent rye. Mash bills vary from distiller to distiller, depending entirely on the style of whiskey they prefer.

Proof

The variant measure of ethanol content in a beverage from alcohol by volume, whose origin arose in sixteenth-century England for taxation purposes. In the United States, proof is calculated as being twice the measure of abv, so 50 percent abv whiskey is 100 proof.

Rickhouse/Rackhouse

A traditional aging warehouse located within the United States, one that houses barreled whiskey for maturation in ascending wooden or metal racks, known as “ricks,” or on wooden pallets. Barrels are mostly laid horizontally, though some strategies have them vertically aligned (in palletized warehouses). Up to 20,000 barrels can be stored in a typical rickhouse. A federally bonded rickhouse is supervised by government agents. Free warehouses are not controlled by government agents. Rickhouses come in different construction variations, such as masonry with frames of concrete or steel, palletized, one-story flathouses, and steel-clad, with corrugated steel facings.

Rye whiskey

As a straight whiskey, rye must adhere to the regulations that dictate all American straight whiskeys. Must be at least 51 percent rye grain, must be aged in new, charred oak containers for a minimum of two years, must not be distilled to higher than 80 percent abv, and must not be barreled at more than 62.5 percent.

Sour mash

Mash is a mixture of grain, water, and malt, used in the creation of sourdough bread (the starter) and a majority of American whiskeys. Sour mash is a production process in which a portion of a previous mash is held back and then added to the next mash to trigger fermentation. This is done to improve overall quality and consistency of whiskey by exerting greater control over the growth of unwanted yeasts and bacteria, which could have adverse effects on the final product.

Straight whiskey

Must be produced from a minimum of 51 percent, respectively, of corn, rye, wheat, malted barley or malted rye; cannot be distilled to higher than 80 percent abv; cannot be entered into a barrel at higher than 62.5 percent abv; the containers must be charred, new oak containers aged for at least two years. These include straight bourbon, straight rye.

Whiskey/whisky

The spelling of

whiskey

with and without the

e

is a confounding side issue. Distillers in Scotland, India, Japan, and Canada prefer

whisky

while those in Ireland and most distillers in the United States utilize

whiskey

. To make it even more confusing, a handful of American distillers, namely Makers Mark, George Dickel, and Old Forester use

whisky

. Why should this be straightforward?

And so, we begin …

1“This River Runes North West and Out of ye Westerly Side …”

THE EXACT SPOT on which the story of Buffalo Trace Distillery begins is in the northern reaches of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, known as Bluegrass, the verdant region immediately south of the state of Ohio. This location, whose precise coordinates are 38.2167˚N, 84.8709˚W, is ordinary by most mid-continental topographical standards. It is just a low, dipping bank, a sandy crossing point along the serpentine Kentucky River. However, since the late twentieth century, this site has become a hallowed destination for whiskey lovers, specifically because of the present-day distillery, its engrossing history, and its acclaimed roster of award-winning rye and bourbon whiskeys.

To best set the stage with regard to this point on the North American map and its recent occupant, it is necessary to first time-travel back 11,500 to 12,000 years to the cold, bleak conclusion of planet Earth's Pleistocene Epoch. This frigid period was the bracing remnant, an echo of the Northern Hemisphere's last great Ice Age. North America's two towering, blue-tinted glaciers, the Laurentide that lay east of the Mississippi River and the Cordilleran that lay to the river's west, were slowly receding northward into Canada. In their wake, the glaciers, at some points two miles thick, left great swaths of hardwood forests, carved river valleys and fathomless glacial lakes, grassy pastures, and vast, desolate, and arid plains.

Archaeologists postulate that as long ago as 9500–8000 BCE (Before Common Era) the hunter-gatherer ancestors of today's Native Americans were already active in the area of North America that encompasses parts of the present-day states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, New York, Virginia, and Kentucky. Geologists refer to this distinctive area as the Salina Basin, a sprawling region south of the Great Lakes that is rich in deep layers of minerals and rock-salt deposits.1 Tribal histories point out that the Native Americans utilized salt as a condiment. In the slowly warming environmental conditions of the period, the small, nomadic groups of indigenous hunters became skilled in stalking big game, including mammalian behemoths like the wooly mammoth, bison, short-faced bear, dire wolf, ground sloth, and mastodon. Other predators included smilodons, the huge and ferocious genus of saber-toothed cats that without fuss or hesitation efficiently preyed on all mammals, including the era's scrawny, but swift and clever homo sapiens (Latin, “wise man”).

During the same period, a fateful North American event, called the “Pleistocene megafauna extinction,” occurred. In the relatively brief span of hundreds of years, as many as 90 genera of megafauna, that group of large mammals weighing more than 100 pounds, vanished due to a docket of still-speculative reasons. These possible causes included the gyrations in global climate as the Earth incrementally warmed; evolving terrain due to volcanic or seismic activity; widespread drought; overhunting by the increasingly adept and resourceful aboriginal tribes; and, perhaps most spectacularly, the yet-to-be discovered impact of an asteroid. Though major annihilations of plant, insect, and animal life have regularly occurred throughout the annuls of the Earth's history, no overwhelming body of evidence points to a single cause of such an extreme destruction of large mammals as the Pleistocene era closed. Most likely, this mass elimination happened due to a confluence of two or more of the cited causes. One result of significant note, however, involves one member of Pleistocene megafauna that somehow survived this cataclysmic event: the rugged bison.

With the heating up of North America's climate through the Archaic Period of 8000–1000 BCE, conditions in the Salina Basin region became more tolerable for the growing numbers of native peoples who populated the Bluegrass. Critically, fresh water was plentiful in the area presently known as Kentucky, as were big game and fresh water fish. The northwesterly flowing Kentucky and Licking rivers and their tributaries, along with cold-water springs, sinkholes, lakes and ponds formed through crevices in the karst, or limestone ridge, known as the Cincinnati Arch, created an accommodating habitat in which flora, fauna, and the hunter-gatherer native peoples could survive.

In the 2,000-year period that is known as the “Woodland Period,” from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE (Common Era), the social structure of the tribal populace grew more complex, as more permanent communities and residential compounds, some based upon primitive agriculture, began to be established. Pottery and basket-weaving became important skills and cultural emblems that defined tribal identities. The cultivation of crops centered mostly on the “three sisters” of Pan-American agriculture, beans, squash, and maize (also known as Indian corn), but also included the seasonal growing of amaranth, sunflower, and tobacco. By 450 BCE, the tribes started to build burial mounds in northern Kentucky, signaling another characteristic of a community-oriented society and the conclusion, at least in part, of nomadic lifestyles. The intersecting river system of the Bluegrass provided convenient highways by bark canoe or dugout that promoted inter-tribal trade and the movement between the Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Wyandot, Delaware, Mosopelea, and Yuchi hunting camps.

Once the Americas were pried open by the voyages of Christopher Columbus in the 1490s, European monarchs rushed to gain footholds in the exotic continents to the west for the express purposes of mining their untapped natural resources, in particular, gold, silver, and beaver furs, and to claim territory for the expansion of their kingdoms. Spain and Portugal were especially active in exploration throughout the sixteenth century. Their aggressive exploits caused deep concern in the courts of their main commercial and military rivals, England and France.

Then, in 1607, a century prior to the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain, three vessels sailing under the flag of England landed at what is now coastal Virginia. They were members of the chartered Virginia Company. Their mission was to create a colony, to be christened Jamestown, in North America for the English monarch King James I. Jamestown's harrowing struggles with famine, disease, and bitter clashes with the Algonquin tribe are widely known.

In 1609, James I proclaimed the vast expanse of lands northwest and west of Virginia, that included the area that would later become Kentucky, as the property of the royal colony. With that event as well as earlier incursions by the French and Spanish, the days of the eastern native tribes' reign became numbered. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, initial forays from Spanish and French Jesuit priests, trappers, and explorers like Robert de la Salle, Jacques Marquette, and Louis Jolliet deep into the North American heartland had already taken place. From 1650 to 1675, expeditions led by Euro-American colonists from Virginia and North Carolina traveling as far west as the Mississippi River passed through northern Kentucky, provoking the native tribes.

A remarkably vivid letter written on August 22, 1674 at Fort Henry in colonial Virginia by fur trader Colonel Abraham Wood to London-based investor John Richards described in startling detail the expeditions of two explorers, James Needham and Gabriel Arthur, Wood's servant.2 Ten jam-packed pages of derring-do chronicle their exploits over the course of two years, depicting with aching clarity the severity of the trials posed by such ventures of the period. Colonel Wood in April 1673 commissioned Needham and Arthur to venture into the wild regions west of the Virginia and Carolina colonies in order to reach a trade agreement with the Cherokee tribe. The letter addresses how the men “… killd many swine, sturgin [sturgeon] and beavers and barbecued them …” It spoke of Needham and Arthur's numerous tense encounters with the suspicious native tribes. In one intriguing passage, Wood speaks of how “This river runes north west and out of ye westerly side it goeth another great river about a days journey lower where the inhabitance are an inumarable company of Indians …” It is clear from the report that Needham and Arthur's travels covered a wide range of territory that lay directly to the west of the Virginia and North Carolina colonies. The language suggests that their journeys might well have included northern Kentucky, where two rivers, the Kentucky and the Licking, run in a northwesterly direction.

James Needham unfortunately came to a horrific end at the hands of a tribal warrior and guide called Occhonechee Indian John, “… a fatt thick bluff faced fellow …” who reportedly first shot Needham “… neare ye burr of ye eare …” after a heated, day-long disagreement. He then hacked open Needham's chest with a tomahawk, ripped out his heart, and held it aloft for all his companions to see. Wood's account of James Needham's death reported, “… ye Tomahittans started to rescue Needham but Indian John was too quick for them, soe died the heroyick English man.”

Arthur barely survived the violence, ending up first as a captive but later as a trusted companion of the tribal chief of the native band referred to by Wood as Tomahittans, more commonly known as Cherokees. After being wounded in the arm from an arrow, taking part in war party raids on Spanish settlements in Florida, and marrying a Tomahittan woman named Hannah Rebecca Nikitie, Gabriel Arthur eventually returned to Fort Henry on June 18, 1674, after roving back and forth through what is now Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee over the course of nearly two nerve-racking years. Abraham Wood's commercial ambitions in the frontier ceased with James Needham's demise and Gabriel Arthur's final return.3

Yet even facing such horrors, exploratory penetrations into the western frontier continued unabated and were often underwritten by companies like the Ohio Company of Virginia, the Illinois and Wabash Land Company, and the Ohio Land Company.4 The explorers, surveyors, traders, trappers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and hunters of the pre–American Revolutionary War period who journeyed westward over the crags of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountain chains to trek into the inhospitable environs of the Ohio River Valley were intrepid, rugged, and determined individuals. A substantial number of the adventurers who ventured into this desolate region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were never seen or heard from again. Others, either broken in spirit or maimed by bear claw or arrowhead or copperhead snake, returned chastened to the safety of the 13 Atlantic coast-hugging American colonies that were by the 1760s ruled by King George III, monarch of Great Britain. Their quests and dreams, as documented by volumes of existing accounts, often ended in defeat, ill health, or financial ruin. The taverns of Philadelphia, the beer halls of Boston, and the inns of Richmond served as the theatres in which the defeated travelers recounted their bedeviled wanderings. They spun bone-chilling tales of starvation, of lost fingers and toes to frostbite, of impenetrable forests, of lethal midnight attacks by panthers or feral pigs and, most frightening of all, their gruesome encounters with hunting and war parties of native tribes. Such was the misfortune for some after being subdued by the harsh rigors of the unforgiving western wilderness.

By stark contrast, the more successful returning wayfarers from the frontier came back to the colonies in triumph, brandishing bundles of animal pelts, the scars of hair-raising escapades, and unbridled hubris. With infectious gusto, they reported to mesmerized colonial audiences about a limitless, fertile, Garden of Eden–like paradise that, yes, tested any sane person's deepest inner resources and nerve, but likewise offered to those blessed with a surfeit of mettle the potential reward of witnessing virgin, uncharted lands on which to hunt and fish and perhaps, in time, to cultivate and settle. One later report carried by the Courier Journal of Louisville on September 9, 1888, that focused on the escapades of one family, the McAfee clan, stated, “The glowing description given of the country beyond the mountains, by Dr. [Thomas] Walker and other adventurous spirits, inspired the younger members of the [McAfee] family with enthusiasm and a burning desire to visit it and judge of its beauties for themselves.”5 The McAfee explorations would, as we shall see, prove to be of key importance to our story.

After a century (1670–1770) of steady immigration from Europe and the subsequent development of quiet hamlets into bustling towns, many mid-eighteenth-century citizens of the British Crown thought the King's most prized colonies had become too crowded and too overfarmed. In the minds of some colonists, the New World had become too much like the Old World of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, or Germany, the places they had left behind. Though 90 percent of the colonists during that period were farmers, the desire of the restless and the disgruntled to push westward into the fabled region the British called “Indian Reserve” became a clarion call in churches, taverns, and meeting halls from the late 1690s into the first half of the 1700s.

By the 1750s and 1760s, the focus of further colonial exploration had turned to locating suitable regions for settlement. The lushness of the Bluegrass held particular attraction to the surveyors. One notable surveyor, Christopher Gist, wrote in 1751 with evident excitement as he approached the Kentucky River, “From the top of the Mountain we saw fine level country SW as far as our Eyes could behold, and it was a clear Day.” Of his movements the next day, Gist wrote, “… at about 12 M. came to the Cuttaway [Kentucky] River; We were obliged to go up it about 1 m. to an island which was the shoalest place We coud find to cross at …”6 Gist's chronicled movements suggest that the crossing he describes might be at the very location, later to be called Leestown, that lay about one mile from present-day Frankfort and was a critical part of the famed ancient buffalo trail, referred to by the native tribes as “great buffalo trace.”

The Amazement, the Terror

Aside from the empty vastness and developmental potential of the western wilderness, one common impression communicated by the returning frontiersmen, especially the celebrated “longhunters” like Daniel and Squire Boone, Henry Skaggs, James Harrod, Isaac Bledsoe, Richard Callaway, and others involved their stirring firsthand accounts of the breathtaking numbers of big game creatures. Elk, whitetail deer, black bear, panther, beaver, bobcat, wolf, wolverine, wild boar, and bison reigned supreme in the frontier's dense woodlands, bogs, limestone outcroppings, plains, and meadows. Even allowing for the seasonal hunting by the regional tribes, big game populations of unimaginable sizes flourished in the region that now encompasses all or part of the heartland states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.

But of all the recorded accounts concerning big game, the most indelible impressions were spun courtesy of the horned, cocoa-brown-colored, and aggressive American bison. Zoology long ago determined that the two distinct varieties of buffalo in the greater Bovid family had for millennia been found solely in sub-Saharan Africa (the ornery and dangerous Cape buffalo) and southeastern Asia (the water buffalo), and not in North America until relatively recently. Buffalo and bison are related but biologically different. DNA findings from bones excavated in northern Canada suggest, however, that bison herds emigrated from eastern Asia anywhere from 195,000 to 130,000 years ago, traveling over the natural Bering Straits land bridge that connected eastern Asia to Alaska. The buffalo cousins that made the journey, two Bovid families of bison, are divided between the American bison and the European bison. Nevertheless, the English- and French-speaking explorers of the western frontier from their initial seventeenth century portrayals referred to the American bison by a variety of names, including biffalo, bofelo, buffalow, bufflo, buffaloe, and, most commonly, buffalo. That latter sobriquet, though technically incorrect, has endured to the present day. In keeping with this quirky custom, I will refer to the American bison as buffalo moving forward.

In terms of individual size the North American buffalo is an imposing, sinewy yet compact biological machine. Females average from 700 to 1,000 pounds, stand five feet at the shoulder and are six to seven feet from nose to tail while males can tip the scales at 1,800 to 2,000 pounds, stand six feet at the shoulder and span up to nine feet in length. In their innate “fight or flight” genetic programming, the slightest disturbance while they are at rest or grazing can, in an instant, set an entire herd into unpredictable, helter-skelter motion from zero to 30 miles per hour. This hair-trigger reflex is why Native American hunters, who regarded the buffalo as a sacred being, used so much caution, stealth, and concealing costumes when in the hunt. Their elaborate precautions taught the Euro-American longhunters and their successors about the necessity for extreme safeguard measures when dealing with the skittish buffaloes.

The Euro-American explorers encountered buffalo not only in small groups of 20 to 50 but also in vast herds in the tens of thousands, stretching across middle America's fertile prairies, which were carpeted with swaying short and tall grasses. The largest reported gatherings ranged from 100 to 500,000 buffalo. As the massive herds of buffalo trotted in migration mode, the ground underfoot quaked in rolling temblors and the air hummed with the sound of hooved thunder and guttural murmurs. The pong of hide, urine, and dung stung the eyes and clouds of billowing dust clogged the nostrils. Witnessing wild buffalo searching for sustenance in such staggering numbers proved such an awe-inspiring spectacle that it inspired the more literate early adventurers to connect pen to notebook. “The amazing herds of buffaloes, which resort thither, by their size and number, fill the traveller with amazement and terrors, especially when he beholds the prodigious roads they have made from all quarters as if leading to some populous city,” described Kentucky surveyor, mapmaker, historian, and pioneer John Filson in 1784.7 Twenty-one years later on August 29, 1806, William Clark wrote in the journal of his historic expedition to the Pacific Ocean with Meriwether Lewis about the spectacle of the buffalo population, estimated then to be in the range of at least 30 million, and by some estimates possibly 60 million, across the continent. Of the wonder he felt, Clark wrote, “I assended to the high Country and from an eminance I had a view of the plains for a great distance. From this eminance I had a view of a greater number of buffalow than I had ever Seen before at one time. I must have Seen near 20,000 of those animals feeding on this plain.”8