Progress of improvement in Missouri--Old age of Boone--Death of his
wife--He goes to reside with his son--His death--His personal appearance
and character.
Soon after the purchase of Missouri from the French by our government,
the American system of government began to be introduced there. American
laws, American courts, and the whole American system of politics and
jurisprudence spread over the country, changing, by degrees, the
features of civil society; infusing life and vigor into the body
politic, and introducing that restless spirit of speculation and
improvement which characterise the people of the United States. The tide
of emigration once more swept by the dwelling of Daniel Boone, driving
off the game and monopolizing the rich hunting grounds. His office of
commandant was merged and lost in the new order of things. He saw that
it was in vain to contend with fate; that go where he would, American
enterprize seemed doomed to follow him, and to thwart all his schemes of
backwoods retirement. He found himself once more surrounded by the rapid
march of improvement, and he accommodated himself, as well as he might,
to a state of things which he could not prevent. He had the satisfaction
of seeing his children well settled around him, and he spent his time in
hunting and exploring the new country.
Meantime, old age began to creep upon him by degrees, and he had the
mortification to find himself surpassed in his own favorite pursuit. The
_sharp shooters_, and younger hunters could scour the forests with
fleeter pace, and bring down the bears and buffaloes with surer aim,
than his time-worn frame, and impaired vision would allow. Even the
French, with their fleets of periogues, ascended the Missouri to points
where his stiffened sinews did not permit him to follow. These volatile
and babbling hunters, with their little, and to him despicable shot
guns, could bring down a turkey, where the rifle bullet, now directed by
his dimmed eye, could not reach. It was in vain that the sights were
made more conspicuous by shreds of white paper. No vigor of will can
repair the irresistible influence of age. And however the heart and
juvenile remembrances of Boone might follow these brisk and talkative
hunters to the Rocky mountains and the Western sea, the sad
consciousness that years were stronger than the subduer of bears and
Indians, came over his mind like a cloud.
Other sorrows came also with age. In March, 1813, he had the misfortune
to lose his wife. She had been to him a faithful companion--participating
the same heroic and generous nature with himself. She had followed him
from North Carolina into the far wilderness, without a road or even a
trace to guide their way--surrounded at every step by wild beasts and
savages, and was one of the first white women in the state of Kentucky.
She had united her fate to his, and in all his hardships, perils, and
trials, had stood by him, a meek, yet courageous and affectionate
friend. She was now taken from him in his old age, and he felt for a
time, that he was alone in the world, and that the principal tie to his
own existence was sundered.
About this time, too, the British war with its influence upon the savage
auxiliaries of Britain, extended even to the remote forests of Missouri,
which rendered the wandering life of a hunter extremely dangerous. He
was no longer able to make one of the rangers who pursued the Indians.
But he sent numerous substitutes in his children and neighbors.
After the death of his wife, he went to reside with his son Major Nathan
Boone, and continued to make his home there until his death. After the
peace he occupied himself in hunting, trapping, and exploring the
country--being absent sometimes two or three months at a time--solacing
his aged ear with the music of his young days--the howl of the nocturnal
wolf--and the war song of the prowling savages, heard far away from the
companionship of man.
When the writer lived in St. Charles, in 1816, Colonel Boone, with the
return of peace, had resumed his Kentucky habits. He resided, as has
been observed, with his son on the Missouri--surrounded by the
plantations of his children and connections--occasionally farming, and
still felling the trees for his winter fire into his door yard; and
every autumn, retiring to the remote and moon-illumined cities of the
beavers, for the trapping of which, age had taken away none of his
capabilities. He could still, by the aid of paper on his rifle sights,
bring down an occasional turkey; at the salt licks, he still waylaid the
deer; and he found and cut down bee-trees as readily as in his morning
days. Never was old age more green, or gray hairs more graceful. His
high, calm, bold forehead seemed converted by years, into iron. Decay
came to him without infirmity, palsy, or pain--and surrounded and
cherished by kind friends, he died as he had lived, composed and
tranquil. This event took place in the year 1818, and in the
eighty-fourth year of his age.
Frequent enquiries, and opposite statements have been made, in regard to
the religious tenets of the Kentucky hunter. It is due to truth to
state, that Boone, little addicted to books, knew but little of the
bible, the best of all. He worshipped, as he often said, the Great
Spirit--for the woods were his books and his temple; and the creed of
the red men naturally became his. But such were the truth, simplicity,
and kindness of his character, there can be but little doubt, had the
gospel of the Son of God been proposed to him, in its sublime truth and
reasonableness, that he would have added to all his other virtues, the
higher name of Christian.
He was five feet ten inches in height, of a very erect, clean limbed,
and athletic form--admirably fitted in structure, muscle, temperament,
and habit, for the endurance of the labors, changes, and sufferings he
underwent. He had what phrenologists would have considered a model
head--with a forehead peculiarly high, noble, and bold--thin and
compressed lips--a mild, clear, blue eye--a large and prominent chin,
and a general expression of countenance in which fearlessness and
courage sat enthroned, and which told the beholder at a glance, what he
had been, and was formed to be.
We have only to add, that the bust of Boone, in Washington, the painting
of him ordered by the General Assembly of Missouri, and the engravings
of him in general, have--his family being judges--very little
resemblance. They want the high port and noble daring of his
countenance.
Though ungratefully requited by his country, he has left a name
identified with the history of Kentucky, and with the founders and
benefactors of our great republic. In all future time, and in every
portion of the globe; in history, in sculpture, in song, in
eloquence--the name of Daniel Boone will be recorded as the patriarch of
Backwoods Pioneers.
His name has already been celebrated by more than one poet. He is the
hero of a poem called the "MOUNTAIN MUSE," by our amiable countryman,
Bryan. He is supposed to be the original from which the inimitable
characters of LEATHER STOCKING, HAWKEYE, and the TRAPPER of the
PRAIRIES, in Cooper's novels, were drawn; and we will close these
memoirs, with the splendid tribute to the patriarch of backwoodsmen, by
the prince of modern poets, Lord Byron.
Of all men, saving Sylla, the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boone, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest among mortals any where,
For killing nothing, but a bear or buck; he
Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age, in wilds of deepest maze.
Crime came not near him; she is not the child
Of solitude; health shrank not from him, for
Her home is in the rarely trodden wild,
Which, if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguil'd
By habit to what their own hearts abhor--
In cities cag'd. The present case in point I
Cite is, Boone liv'd hunting up to ninety:
And what is stranger, left behind a name,
For which men vainly decimate the throng;
Not only famous, but of that good fame,
Without which glory's but a tavern song;
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
Which hate or envy e'er could tinge with wrong;
An active hermit; even in age the child
Of nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.
'Tis true, he shrank from men even of his nation,
When they built up unto his darling trees;
He mov'd some hundred miles off, for a station,
Where there were fewer houses and more ease.
The inconvenience of civilization
Is, that you neither can be pleased, nor please.
But where he met the individual man,
He showed himself as kind as mortal can.
He was not all alone; around him grew
A sylvan tribe of children of the chase,
Whose young unwaken'd world was always new;
Nor sword, nor sorrow, yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you
A frown on nature's, or on human face.
The free-born forest found, and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they,
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions;
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions
No sinking spirits told them they grew gray,
No fashion made them apes of her distortions.
Simple they were; not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.
Motion was in their days; rest in their slumbers;
And cheerfulness, the handmaid of their toil;
Nor yet too many, nor too few their numbers;
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil
The lust, which stings; the splendor which encumbers,
With the free foresters divide no spoil.
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The First White Man of the West, by Timothy Flint