tionary War, and occupied the high valleys along the head waters of Tennessee River. From these beginnings settlement had spread rapidly in spite of Indian wars and frontier hardships, until, in the year 1800, Kentucky had a white population of 180,000, and Tennessee 92,000. By that time Ohio had also been settled, partly by Revolutionary soldiers from New England, and already counted 45,000 people. A few settlers were scattered along the rivers of Alabama and Mississippi, and still others lived in the old dilapidated French villages of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. We will not be far wrong in placing the total white population on Mississippi waters in 1800 at 325,000.
Conditions of life in the West. The prosperity of all these people was absolutely in the hands of the power that controlled the Mississippi. At that time there were no canals joining the eastern and western streams; railroads had never been heard of; and the steamboat, afterward such a wonderful aid in transporting goods and passengers up the rivers of the West, was yet to be invented. Manufactured goods, articles of little bulk and considerable value, were carried across the mountains from the Atlantic seaboard by pack train or wagon, to supply the frugal wants of the frontier settlers. Cattle from the great ranges of Kentucky and Tennessee were driven eastward to market; but all the other produce of farm, mill, and factory, the surplus wheat, corn, pork, flour, and lumber, were carried to the one invariable market at New Orleans.
