"Dark and Bloody Ground," the name given Kentucky at the time of settlement in the mid-eighteenth century. Northern and southern tribes, particularly the Cherokee and Shawnee, had long fought over the region. When representatives of the Transylvania Land Company signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals in 1775, Chief Dragging Canoe of the Cherokee said they had secured "a dark and bloody ground." In later periods Kentucky has been called "a dark and bloody ground" because of its feuds and civil outbreaks.
Bibliography
Channing, Steven A. Kentucky: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1977.
—T. D. Clark/A. R.
