At the beginning of 1783, when the news of peace was spread abroad, immigration began to flow to Kentucky down the Ohio, and over the Wilderness road, in a flood of which the volume dwarfed all former streams into rivulets.  Indian hostilities continued at intervals throughout this year, [Footnote:  Do., p. 522.  Letter of Benjamin Logan, August 11, 1783.] but they were not of a serious nature.  Most of the tribes concluded at least a nominal peace, and liberated over two hundred white prisoners, though they retained nearly as many more. [Footnote:  Pennsylvania Packet, No. 1,079, August 12, 1783.] Nevertheless in the spring one man of note fell victim to the savages, for John Floyd was waylaid and slain as he was riding out with his brother.  Thus within the space of eight months, two of the three county lieutenants had been killed, in battle or ambush.

The inrush of new settlers was enormous, [Footnote:  McAfee MSS.] and Kentucky fairly entered on its second stage of growth.  The days of the first game hunters and Indian fighters were over.  By this year the herds of the buffalo, of which the flesh and hides had been so important to the earlier pioneers, were nearly exterminated; though bands still lingered in the remote recesses of the mountains, and they were plentiful in Illinois.  The land claims began to clash, and interminable litigation followed.  This rendered very important the improvement in the judiciary system which was begun in March by the erection of the three counties into the “District of Kentucky,” with a court of common law and chancery jurisdiction coextensive with its limits.  The name of Kentucky, which had been dropped when the original county was divided into three, was thus permanently revived.  The first court sat at Harrodsburg, but as there was no building where it could properly be held, it adjourned to the Dutch Reformed Meeting-house six miles off.  The first grand jury empanelled presented nine persons for selling liquor without license, eight for adultery and fornication, and the clerk of Lincoln County for not keeping a table of fees; besides several for smaller offences. [Footnote:  Marshall, I., 159.] A log court-house and a log jail were immediately built.

Manufactories of salt were started at the licks, where it was sold at from three to five silver dollars a bushel. [Footnote:  McAfee MSS.] This was not only used by the settlers for themselves, but for their stock, which ranged freely in the woods; to provide for the latter a tree was chopped down and the salt placed in notches or small troughs cut in the trunk, making it what was called a lick-log.  Large grist-mills were erected at some of the stations; wheat crops were raised; and small distilleries were built.  The gigantic system of river commerce of the Mississippi had been begun the preceding year by one Jacob Yoder, who loaded a flat-boat at the Old Redstone Fort, on the Monongahela, and drifted down to New Orleans,