The Big Black Bear

The Black Bear
& Buttered Indian
By
G. Lee Hearl


Pond Near Harroll Spring

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    The first pioneer settlers began arriving in the area around Wolf Hills about 1769 and started clearing land and building cabins. One of them was James Harroll and his family.. James located a tract of well watered land about three miles north of Wolf Hills on the creek which was named for him, Harrolls Creek.
     In 1773 Daniel Boone and a group of his neighbors left the Yadkin River area of N.C. and started the journey to Kentucky where they planned to establish a settlement, however, they were attacked by Indians in Powell Valley and had to turn back..Some of them went back to N.C. but Boone and his family found a deserted cabin near the Clinch River and arranged to live there for a while..
    The trail from Wolf Hills to the Clinch Valley passed through the James Harroll farm and Daniel Boone often traveled it as he went back and forth to the Yadkin River in NC.. He would often stop for a drink at the big spring a short distance from the Harroll cabin and visit with the Harroll family a while.
    During that period the Cherokee Indians had begun raising cattle and they were trying to take white women captive to teach their women how to make butter and cheese. One day Mrs Harroll was down at the spring house churning butter in a wooden churn when an Indian tried to capture her but she was a tough pioneer woman and she jerked the dasher out of the churn and beat him about the head and shoulders with it! Then she picked up the churn and jammed it down over his head! It was a tapered churn and the Indian couldn't get it off his head.. The butter and buttermilk ran down all over him! Well, a big black bear in the bushes near the spring smelled the butter and took off after that Indian, trying to lick the butter and milk off him!
      The Indian couldn't see where he was going and was running all over the field, trying to get away from the bear!

        Mrs. Harroll ran to the house and told James what had happened so he loaded his rifle and went out into the yard but he couldn't decide whether to shoot the bear or the Indian, so he didn't shoot either one..
      A few days later he found the Indian lying beside the busted churn by a big tree in the woods.. That bear had licked him to death!
        One day Daniel Boone came up the trail and stopped for a drink at the spring house and he saw a big bear in the bushes so he went to the cabin and told Mrs Harroll, "I jist seed a big black bar' in the bushes by the sprang. Ifen you go down thar be kerful, he might hurt you"
       Mrs Harroll said, "Dan'l  Boone, that bear ain't gonna' do me no harm, he's jist waitin' fer another buttered Indian!"   The End....

 

Note: This story has not been documented, believe it or not.. G. Lee Hearl...