A great number of young men of good families, like Washington and Clark, went into the business.

Soon after the return of Boon and the Long Hunters, parties of surveyors came down the Ohio,[30] mapping out its course and exploring the Kentucky lands that lay beside it.[31] Among the hunters, surveyors, and explorers who came into the wilderness in 1773 was a band led by three young men named McAfee,--typical backwoodsmen, hardy, adventurous, their frontier recklessness and license tempered by the Calvinism they had learned in their rough log home.

They were fond of hunting, but they came to spy out the land and see if it could be made into homes for their children; and in their party were several surveyors.

They descended the Ohio in dugout canoes, with their rifles, blankets, tomahawks, and fishing-tackle.

They met some Shawnees and got on well with them; but while their leader was visiting the chief, Cornstalk, and listening to his fair speeches at his town of Old Chilicothe, the rest of the party were startled to see a band of young Shawnee braves returning from a successful foray on the settlements, driving before them the laden pack-horses they had stolen.[32] They explored part of Kentucky, and visited the different licks.