SKETCH OF BOONE’S LIFE
Daniel Boone’s ancestors were English, his grandfather, George Boone,
coming to America in 1717. Squire Boone, son of George, was the father
of Daniel.
The Boones purchased a tract of land in what is now Bucks County,
Pennsylvania. Squire Boone, Daniel’s father, married Sarah Morgan;
they had eleven children, Daniel being the fourth and coming into the
world on July 14, 1732. This date is according to the family record
kept by his father’s brother James, who was a schoolmaster. Some of the
biographies give different dates; but it is likely that James Boone
knew the facts as well as any one.
The county of Bucks was then to all intents a frontier settlement; the
Boones lived in a log house; all about them were the woods, which were
running with game, and in which hostile savages were often seen.
Even in his school days, Daniel was known as a hunter; his eye was of
the best and his rifle seldom failed. His passion for the wilderness
was shown in those early times when he’d wander away in the silent
forest and be missing for days. Then they would hunt for him and find
him encamped miles and miles away, perhaps cooking his supper at a
fire of sticks and calmly planning the building of a hut which was to
shelter him for days to come.
A story is told of him which proves his early skill as a hunter. With
some other lads of his own age, he started off for a day’s hunting of
small game. The shades of late afternoon were deepening in the woods,
and the boys were on their way back to the settlement when suddenly one
of them cried out: “Panther! Panther!” Now of all the beasts of the
forests, the lurking panther was held to be the deadliest; and knowing
him for such, the boys ran for their lives. But not so Boone. Steadily
he held his ground, his eye searching for the animal. Yes, there it
was; a panther sure enough, and a big one. Calmly his long rifle came
to his shoulder and his keen eyes drew the “bead.” And with the ringing
crack of the weapon, down fell the panther, shot through and through.
Boone was still a boy when his father concluded he’d get on better
if he went to North Carolina. He took up his homestead on the Yadkin
River; and in this section Daniel grew to manhood, married Rebecca
Bryan, and became the father of nine children.
During the whole of the dreadful Seven Years’ War, the whole frontier
swarmed with hostile redskins; but when this ended, comparative quiet
settled down, and Daniel Boone made the first of his long excursions
into the unknown country beyond the Laurel Ridge or Cumberland
Mountains.
The government of the colony of North Carolina had long been
oppressive; free spirits like that of Boone could not stand the gall
of oppression, and the thought came to him: “What a wonderful place to
plant a new settlement this new country would be.”
And so when Colonel Henderson spoke to him, as it is believed he did,
Boone was ready, and went upon his long exploration of the country of
“Cantuck,” as he called it in one of his letters. Then followed the
events related in this story, which runs very close to historical facts.
After the rescue of the Collaway girls and Boone’s daughter from the
Indians, the savages came in force and attacked the log fort; but they
were driven off. A few months later they returned with two hundred
braves in the band. For two days and nights their attack was continued
and at the end of that time they retreated once more, defeated.
The impossibility of holding any communication with the large
settlements and the stoppage of supplies caused the hardy band at
Boonesborough some suffering. They ran entirely out of salt; and as
this was a thing which they must have, Boone determined to procure a
supply.
Taking thirty men, he proceeded cautiously to Blue Licks with the
intention of making salt from the salt water to be found in that
section. While hunting and alone, Boone fell in with a band of several
hundred Indians who were on their way to make another attack upon
Boonesborough. They made him a prisoner, but following their usual
policy they did him no immediate harm; holding him, possibly, for
future torture.
Craftily Boone began casting about for the best thing to do; the
Indians knew of the presence of his men; to have this huge band fall
upon the thirty might mean death to them all. Boone concluded that to
surrender his command and trust to the future was the best thing to be
done. So the band of whites gave up their arms, and the Indians changed
their plans as to Boonesborough, proceeding instead to their town of
Chillicothe, on the Little Miami.
From here Boone and some of his men were sent to Detroit, where Boone’s
men were turned over to the British. But the savages had conceived
such a liking for Daniel himself that they refused to surrender him,
determining to adopt him into their tribe. So they took him back to
Chillicothe and made him a son of the Shawnee tribe.
Here he remained some months, being treated by the Indians as one of
themselves; then a huge war party organized to march upon Boonesborough
and take it by surprise, and Daniel saw that if the fort was to be
saved, he must escape at once. Slipping from the Indian town in
the early morning, Boone began a desperate journey toward the fort,
one hundred and sixty miles away. It took him five days to make the
journey, and when he reached the fort he was hailed as one returned
from the dead. Indeed, so sure were they that he was dead that his
family had returned to North Carolina.
Boone found the stockade in bad condition, and at once set about
strengthening it. However, the great band did not move against
Boonesborough; the escape of the great backwoodsman must have told them
that the settlers would be awaiting them, and as they had had previous
experiences of this sort they set the attack for a future time.
In August, no enemy presenting himself, Boone and a small party left
the fort and marched against an Indian village on the Scioto. The
braves belonging to this camp were encountered in full war paint, some
distance from the town, and evidently on the march to join some larger
band. The whites fell upon them and routed them, though outnumbered
two to one. Suspecting that a large movement of the savages was
taking place, Boone sent out a couple of scouts to get news. They
soon returned saying that these suspicions were correct; and the
frontiersmen hurried back toward Boonesborough in all haste.
On the day after their arrival at the fort, a great band of Indians,
flying the British colors and commanded by a French-Canadian named
Duquesne, made their appearance out of the forest.
The fort was summoned to surrender, but its defenders refused. They
were sixty and the savages were fully five hundred; but they made up
their minds to fight to the last.
The Indians, directed by their most famous chiefs, and now having the
advantage of Duquesne’s skilled military direction, began their attack.
Never was the marksmanship of the Kentucky riflemen more brilliant
than it was in that battle. Duquesne soon saw that he was the greatest
sufferer by this, as his Indians were falling all around him; so he set
about mining under the river bank, meaning to blow up the fort.
However, Boone discovered this and set his men to countermining,
flinging the freshly dug earth over the walls of the fort. The British
leader saw by this that his plan had failed, and abandoning it began an
attack as before.
This failed because of the unerring aim of the settlers; and then the
attackers became besiegers, sitting down before the fort, out of rifle
range, meaning to starve it into surrender. But in this he also failed;
the defenders had more food than the Indians; and so, there being no
way of feeding so large a band in a protracted siege, Duquesne gave
up the attempt, and marched away, leaving Boonesborough once more
victorious.
This was the last heavy blow aimed at the historic stockade. In spite
of the war, emigrants poured into the new territory; Boone brought back
his family and set to farming his acres like the others.
However, all during the affair with England, Kentucky continued to
merit the name of “the dark and bloody ground.” Fierce battles were
frequent, and the farmer tilled his hard won field with his long rifle
always ready at hand. And even after peace had been declared, the
Indians, under their own chiefs and under the renegade, Simon Girty,
ranged the settled places and strove to stem the tide of immigration.
But the whites were not to be denied; they pressed on and on until the
territory was completely won.
Through a fault in the deeds and grants, the settlements in the new
country were later thrown into disorder. Boone lost all his land, and
moved into Virginia with his family, taking up his home on the Kanawha
near to the place where the great battle was fought in the Dunmore War.
Later he journeyed westward toward Missouri, where he reëstablished
himself. As old age and ill health came on, Boone applied to Congress
to recover his land; a part of it was made over to him. His old age,
and he lived to be well on to ninety, was spent roaming the woods with
his rifle. He died at the home of his son-in-law, Flanders Collaway,
some distance from the city of St. Louis, in September, 1820.
Another Book to this Series is:
IN THE ROCKIES WITH KIT CARSON
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cumberland Mountains.
[2] This shot is what came to be known later as “barking off.” The
American naturalist, Audubon, in his “Ornithological Biography” speaks
of Boone’s performing the feat a number of times in procuring specimens.
[3] Afterward called the Kentucky River.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.