DANIEL BOONE
In preceding chapters we have taken up in general and in particular the
origin, the purpose and the progress of the early American frontiersman.
We have seen how this man, impelled by one reason or another, began to
push outward on his way over the Appalachian range into the valley of
the Mississippi. We have seen that the course of west-bound civilization
was at first not wholly along the easiest way, but over barriers that
had apparently been established by nature as insurmountable.
From headwater to headwater, among these rugged hills, from one valley
into another, ever and ever westward, the early American had won his
way, until he struck the waters running into the lower Gulf by way of
that great highway of the interior floods, the Mississippi River. We
have seen that for a space the early population did not head directly
westward, but dropped down from Pennsylvania into Maryland and Virginia,
and from Maryland and Virginia into the Carolinas.
Many of the early adventurers seem to have made their halting and
rallying ground in North Carolina. Here were some of the men of Watauga,
men who were to people Tennessee, men who were to discover and settle
the grand state of Kentucky, that steadfast portion of our Western
empire whose fidelity was to thwart all of those early efforts at
Western sedition and secession that once threatened the unity of the
American people.
Having thus dealt in generalizations, we shall perhaps now do well to
study some type, some product, of this early civilization, some
character that shall indicate the general characteristics of the land
and people of that early time. In this desire we fall naturally on the
romantic yet pertinent story of that typical and historical
frontiersman, Daniel Boone.
Among the great sayings of great men there is one that rings like a
trumpet voice through all the press of years. “Here stand I,” said
Martin Luther. “Here I stand. I can not otherwise. God help me!” If we
should come to comparisons, we might perhaps call Daniel Boone the
Luther of frontiering, the evangel of adventure, the prophet of early
west-bound daring. Certainly he was the most forward, the most present,
the most instant man of his place and time.
If we endeavor to see Daniel Boone, the man, as he actually was, we find
ourselves at the outset dealing with a character already approaching the
mythical in quality. Thus, in regard to his personality, certain folk
imagine him as tall, thin, angular, uncouth. Others will portray to you
a man with voice like thunder in the hills, with gore ever in his eye,
in his voice perpetually the breathings of insatiate hate and rage. They
will insist that Boone was bloody minded, overbearing, a man delighting
in slaughters and riotings. Such pictures are utterly wrong; so much we
may discover to be absolutely sure from the scant record of Boone’s real
life.
He was Quaker-bred, as we have seen. A sweeter soul than his we shall
not find though we search all the pages of history. Meeting every
species of danger, he remained undaunted. Meeting every manner of
adversity, he remained unsoured. With every reason for conceit, he
remained unbitten of any personal vanity. To the end of his life it was
his belief that he was “an instrument ordained by Providence to settle
the wilderness;” yet he lost no time in posing himself in any
supposititious sainthood. Nor must we imagine him crude or ignorant in
his simplicity, for those who knew him best state that he was “a man of
ambition, shrewdness and energy, as well as of fine social qualities and
an extreme sagacity.”
He was learned in the knowledge useful at his time, although of books he
wist not at all. Deeply religious in the true sense of religion, a
worshiper of the Great Maker as evidenced in His works, he was not a
church member. There was no vaunting in his soul of his own
righteousness; yet never was he irritable even in old age, when the
blood grows cold, and the thwarted ambitions come trooping home to roost
in the lives of most of us. “God gave me a work to perform,” said he,
“and I have done my best.” With this feeling he lived and died content.
Regarding the Boone of early years, we find it difficult to frame a
clear picture, but there is more information obtainable regarding his
later life, and we can see him then clearly. A man reaching the ripe age
of eighty-six, with five generations of his family living at the same
time; a man snowy haired, yet still of ruddy complexion, of frame still
unbent, with kindly and gentle personal habits—this is the real Daniel
Boone: no swearer of oaths, no swashbuckler, no roisterer, but a
self-respecting, fearless gentleman, steadfast, immovable from his fixed
purpose, inalienable from the mission which he conceived to be his own.
A writer who knew him late in life says that on his introduction to
Colonel Boone his impressions were those of “surprise, admiration and
delight.” In boyhood he had read of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of
Kentucky, the celebrated hunter and Indian fighter, and in imagination
he portrayed a “rough, uncouth looking specimen of humanity, and, of
course, at this period of life, an irritable and intractable old man.
But in every respect,” says this biographer, “the reverse appeared. His
high bold forehead was slightly bald, and his silver locks were combed
smooth. His countenance was ruddy and fair, and exhibited the simplicity
of a child. His voice was soft and melodious, and a smile frequently
played over his face in conversation. His clothing was of the plain,
coarse manufacture of the family. Everything about him indicated that
kind of comfort that was congenial to his habits and feelings, and he
evinced a happy old age. Boone was a fair specimen of the better class
of Western pioneers, honest of heart and liberal—in short, one of
nature’s noblemen. He abhorred a mean action and delighted in honesty
and truth. He never delighted in the shedding of human blood, even that
of his enemies in war. His remarkable quality was an unwavering and
invincible fortitude.”
As to personal description, Boone was neither a tall nor a thin man. He
was not angular nor bony. His frame was covered not with cloying fat but
with firm and easily playing muscles, and he carried none of the useless
tissue of the man of civilization. His weight was “about one hundred and
seventy-five pounds.” Audubon, who met him late in his life, says: “He
approached the gigantic in stature. His chest was broad and prominent,
and his muscular powers were visible in every limb. His countenance gave
indication of his great courage, enterprise and perseverance.”
Yet in person Boone did not quite reach the six-foot mark, but was just
below five feet and ten inches in stature, some say five feet eight
inches, being therefore of exactly that build which good judges of men
esteem to be most desirable for combined strength, activity and
endurance. He was rather broad shouldered: that is to say, his shoulders
nicely overhung his hips. All agree that he was of “robust and powerful
proportions.” One historian speaks of his “piercing hazel eye”; yet this
is but romancing.
Most portraits of Daniel Boone are the products of imagination. The most
authentic, perhaps the only authentic portrait of him, is that painted
in 1820 by Chester Harding, “who,” says an early writer, “of American
artists is the one most celebrated for his likenesses.” When Harding
made his portrait of Boone, the latter was very feeble, and had to be
supported during the sittings. This portrait shows a face thin and pale,
with hair of snowy whiteness and eye “bright blue, mild and pleasant.”
This blue eye is of the best color in all the world for keenness of
vision, for quickness and accuracy with the rifle. The Harding portrait
does not show the square chin that some writers give to Boone; and
certainly it portrays no ferocious looking ruffian, but a man mild,
gentle and contemplative, “not frivolous, thoughtless or agitated.”
As to Boone’s appearance early in life, we must to some extent join the
others who imagine or presume. It is fair to suppose that in complexion
he was florid, with the clear skin, sometimes marked with freckles, that
you may see to-day in the mountains of the Cumberland, in parts of
Tennessee, Kentucky, sometimes in North Carolina and Mississippi. The
color of his hair was never that of “raven blackness.” Perhaps it was
brown, but not a finely filamented brown. It was more likely blond, and
perhaps indeed carried a shade of red. Certainly the ends of his hair
were bleached a tawny yellow, that splendid yellow that you may see even
to-day in the hair and beard and mustaches of the outdoor men of the
American West.
In his younger days he often wore the half savage garb of the early
American hunters—the buckskin or linsey hunting shirt, the fringed
leggings of the same material, with moccasins made of the skin of the
deer or buffalo. His hat was as chance would have it. Perhaps sometimes
he wore a cap of fur.
His weaponry we may know exactly, for his rifle can be seen to-day,
preserved by his descendants. It is the typical long-barreled,
crooked-stocked, small-bore American rifle, with the wooden stock or
fore end extending along the full length of the barrel. There are a few
rude attempts at ornamentation on this historic arm. The sights lie
close to the barrel, after the fashion of those deadly ancient weapons.
The wood is rotting a little bit where the oil of long-ago cleaning
operations has touched it. Perhaps the spring of the lock is a trifle
weak. Yet we may not doubt that, were Daniel Boone alive to-day, he
could teach the old piece to voice its music and could show again its
ancient deadly art.
In chronology Boone’s time runs back to that of Washington. He was born
November second, 1734, the date of Washington’s birth being 1732. His
older brother was called Squire Boone, after the first American Boone,
who was himself an Englishman, but who came to America early in the
history of the lower colonies. The Boone homestead was once located in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but Daniel was born after his parents had
moved into Berks County, Pennsylvania, near the town that is now
Reading. Some historians say he was born in Bucks County.
In his youth Daniel did not seek knowledge through the medium of
books.[8] His mind was “not of the most ardent nature.” Before him lay
the great book of the Wilderness. Thus he became well acquainted with
the habits of wild game animals, not ascribing to these creatures, we
may be sure, any of those fanciful qualities which are accorded them in
the silly fashion of these days, but knowing them as they actually were,
and betimes using them, as was planned in the scheme of nature.
When Boone was eighteen years of age his family heard many stories about
the Yadkin River country of North Carolina. Forthwith they moved through
the Shenandoah valley into what was then a yet wilder country than that
of Pennsylvania. Here we have mythical tales of a fire hunt at night in
which Daniel Boone “shined the eyes” of a certain maiden; of a deadly
aim miraculously stayed, and a subsequent marriage unceremoniously sped.
As to the fire hunt we may doubt, but as to the marriage there is no
question. Boone married Rebecca Bryan in 1755. Therefore Daniel must
move once more, this time farther up the Yadkin, where the forests were
yet more quiet, and neighbors still more distant.
Previously to his marriage Boone had been a hunter,—what we would now
call a professional hunter. He sometimes took hides and furs to the more
distant Eastern settlements, and so saw some of the Virginia towns. He
was, however, not merely a half-savage woods wanderer, although a past
master in all woodcraft. The year before his marriage he was with the
Pennsylvania militia, who fought the Indians along the border after the
French had defeated George Washington and his Virginians at Great
Meadows. In the fatal Braddock fight Daniel Boone was a wagoner in the
baggage train, and barely escaped with his life in the panic flight.
At twenty-one he was a man grown, matured, acquainted with all the
duties and dangers of frontier life, physically fit for feats of
strength, activity and endurance, and both mentally and physically a
perfect machine for the purposes of vanguard work in the wilderness. His
imagination painted him no gloomy picture of peril, but only scenes of
things delectable a little farther to the west, across the hills that
faced him. His emotions did not prevent his walking forthwith into what
might be peril; and having entered perils, he was content if each day
found him yet alive, nor did his mind entertain forebodings as to the
morrow. The creed of the wilderness, the creed of wild things had
entered into his soul.
They call Daniel Boone explorer, hunter, Indian fighter. Let us figure
him as philosopher. Temperament and training gave footing for that part
of his philosophy that embodied his permanent personal conviction that
“God had appointed him as an instrument for the settlement of the
wilderness.”
Boone, after his marriage, and after his edging out westward toward the
head of the Yadkin, lived much as he had done before. His cabin was no
better than his neighbor’s, his little corn farm was much as theirs,
albeit his table always had wild meat enough and to spare, and there
were hides and furs in abundance. By this time two generations of white
men had held this slope of the Appalachians. The buffalo had in all
likelihood crossed the mountains to the westward, though one writer says
they were “abundant” on the Yadkin at this time. Boone may perhaps have
seen an elk now and then along the Yadkin, but even this is not certain.
Bear, deer, turkey, small furred animals, he took in numbers. He was
content, nor did he differ much from his fellows. He must have been
about thirty years of age before he began to evince traits distinctly
different from those of his scattered wilderness neighbors; before he
began to hear the Voices, whispering yet irresistible, that called him
on; those Voices of the West, which for a hundred years called our best
and boldest to come out into the unknown and the alluring; those Voices
which to-day are perforce stilled forever.
It was in the year 1769, in the month of May, that Boone started out for
his first determined exploration of “the far-famed but little-known land
of Kentucky.” He had before this time been eager to cross the range and
see for himself; indeed, he had made one short hunting trip into what is
now the eastern edge of the state of Kentucky. Now, in the prime of
life, at thirty-five years of age, he felt that the time had come for
him to cross the range and make his abiding place in the West.
We are accustomed to think that Boone was the first explorer of
Kentucky, but such was by no means the case. Boone’s first trip across
the mountains, to the headwaters of the Holston, was in 1761. John Peter
Salling, a West Virginian, crossed Kentucky and Illinois as early as
1738. Doctor Thomas Walker and a party of Virginians had long before
deliberately explored a part of Kentucky; and in 1751 Boone’s Yadkin
neighbor, Christopher Gist,—the same Gist that accompanied Washington
in his dangerous winter trip to the French forts on the Ohio,—made yet
fuller explorations.
Some of these early voyagings were not made of intent. Salling crossed
Kentucky as a captive of the Indians, who took him as far west as
Kaskaskia; and Mary Draper Ingles, “the first American bride west of the
mountains,” whose father established the first actual settlement west of
the Alleghanies, was in 1755 taken captive by the savages, and carried
across Kentucky and parts of Ohio and Indiana, thus being an explorer
quite against her will.
Two hunters from Pittsburg, James Harrod and Michael Steiner or Stoner,
after pushing out into the Illinois country, crossed the Ohio and
traveled quite across Kentucky, as far south as the present city of
Nashville, Tennessee. Steiner and Harrod were friends of Boone’s, and
Harrod built his stockade of Harrodsburg a year before Boonesborough was
begun, his journey with Steiner having been made two years before Boone
made his pilgrimage across the Divide.
Kasper Mansker or Mansco, later a famous scout and Indian fighter, went
with the Virginian “Long Hunters” into Kentucky in 1769. John Finley or
Finlay had traded with the Indians on the Red River of Kentucky in 1752,
some years before Boone saw that region. Finley was an associate of
Boone’s in the border wars before Boone was married, and it was Finley,
in all likelihood, that first set Boone aflame with the desire to see
and settle in Kentucky. Yet he might have had the counsel of James
McBride, who in 1754 visited the mouth of the Kentucky River, and came
back to say that he “had found the best tract of land in North America,
and probably in the world.” Finley added to these stories, and clinched
it all by saying that game of all kinds was abundant, that the mountains
were beautiful beyond description, and that, moreover, salt could be
manufactured on the spot.
This last argument had very much to do with the settlement of Kentucky.
Salt and lead were essentials. Salt was very heavy. The transportation
across these grim mountains was very difficult. If one could have salt
in Kentucky, it would not be necessary for one to come back. To-day we
can scarcely understand this reasoning, once so cogent.
To strengthen the grasp upon historical facts and dates it is sometimes
well to begin at the time close at hand, and go backward. We may
therefore make a reversed recapitulation of the explorations of
Kentucky, this dark and bloody hunting and fighting ground of many
tribes of strong-legged and peppery-headed savages.
In 1770 the “Long Hunters” of Joseph Drake and Henry Skaggs were in
Kentucky—indeed, ran across Daniel Boone there; yet Kentucky was then
an oldish land. In 1766 James Smith and five others explored much of
west Tennessee, and worked north as far as Illinois. The Virginian, John
McCullough, with one white companion, saw Kentucky in the summer of
1769, pushed on northward as far as the point where Terre Haute,
Indiana, now stands, and later descended the Mississippi River to New
Orleans. Uriah Stone took a party of twenty hunters over the Cumberland
Gap into Kentucky in the month of June, 1769, one month later than
Boone’s journey thither; but Stone had been in Kentucky in 1766.
George Washington was on the Ohio River in 1770 and 1767; John Finley in
1752; Christopher Gist in 1750; Doctor Thomas Walker in 1748; John Peter
Salling and John Howard, in 1742, we have noted. Before all these was
the French expedition of 1735. Indeed, just one hundred years before
Boone’s journey into Kentucky, John Lederer, a Virginian, crossed the
Alleghanies and fared westward for some distance; and ninety-nine years
previous to Boone’s first glimpse of the delectable land, Thomas Batts
and party had “taken possession” of the headwaters of the Great Kanawha
in the name of Charles II.
We therefore see, with what will be a certain surprise to the average
reader of American history, that Kentucky and the trans-Appalachian land
was not wholly unknown but indeed fairly well understood and accurately
forecast in possibilities, more than a generation before Daniel Boone
ever saw it. Where, then, is Boone’s fame as an explorer? Upon what does
his reputation as an adventurer rest? What claim had he to hold himself
as an “instrument for the settlement of the wilderness”?
The answer to all these doubts is read in the record of the holding of
Kentucky. It is found in the inefficacy of a “taking possession” by
means of the temporary planting of a flag and the empty claiming of a
territory extending from sea to sea. The flag of Boonesborough was
planted never to come down. The stockade of the homebuilders was
defended by an “unwavering fortitude.” Kentucky discovered Daniel Boone,
not Daniel Boone discovered Kentucky. Read it in this way and all shall
be plain.
The birth of a new man in the world, the American, had now taken place.
The Old World explorers took possession with a flag, furled it and
carried it away again. The new man, the American, flung out a flag that
has never yet come down in all the world, and which, please God! never
shall so long as we remain like to the first Americans. John Finley
guided Daniel Boone across the Cumberland Gap; but he guided him into a
land now ready for a Daniel Boone—into a West now ready for the
American man.
It was, then, in the month of May, 1769, that Boone left the Yadkin
settlements and started westward. He had as companions John Finley,
Joseph Holden, James Monay or Mooney, William Coole or Cooley, and John
Stewart or Stuart. Of all the different expeditions into the region west
of the Appalachians this was the most important. Following its doings,
you shall see the long spur of the Anglo-Saxon civilization thrusting
out and out into the West—to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the
Rockies, the Pacific—and never setting backward foot.
The journey over the mountains was not rapid and not continuous, it
being necessary for the party to hunt as well as to explore. The rifle,
the ax, the horse, the boat, were their aids and agents, their argument
and answer to the wilderness. Evolution had gone on. The American was
born.
Boone and his friends seem to have camped on the east side of the
Cumberland Mountains, where they remained for “some days.” It was from
this camp that they made expeditions, and at length climbed to a certain
ridge whence they could see the glorious realm of Kentucky. On this day
they saw their first herd of buffalo, the first trail-makers over the
Appalachians, of which they killed some numbers. They saw, also, elk,
deer and other animals. Boone was delighted. There thrilled in his heart
all the joy of the hunter and explorer. Now the little party moved over
to the Red River, where Finley had formerly been located. “Here,” said
Boone, “both man and beast may grow to their full size.” That was good
American prophecy.
For six months this adventurous little party lived and hunted in their
new empire. Then, swiftly and without warning, there came a taste of
some of the disadvantages of this wild residence. Stewart and Boone were
taken captive by the Indians and were carried to the north, a march of
seven days. On the seventh night they made their escape and came back to
their bivouac on the Red River, only to find that their friends had left
them and returned to the settlements. As offset to this unpleasant news
came their present discovery by Squire Boone and one companion,
Alexander Neeley, who had followed the adventurers all the way into
Kentucky. Daniel’s older brother had brought with him some needful
supplies, chief of these powder and lead, worth far more than gold and
silver.
“Soon after this period,” goes on the simple and businesslike chronicle,
“John Stewart was killed by the Indians.” Hence the two Boone brothers
were left alone, Squire Boone’s companion having met his fate in some
mysterious manner, perhaps at the hands of the Indians, though others
state that he was devoured by wolves,—a very unlikely story. The two
brothers built themselves a rude cabin of poles and bark, and there they
spent the fall and summer of 1769. In May of the following year Squire
Boone returned to North Carolina.[9]
It is now that for the first time we may accord justice to the picture
that shows us the pioneer, Daniel Boone, alone in the wilderness of
Kentucky. He was at this time, so far as he knew, the only white man in
that entire section of country. Fearless, adventurous and self-reliant,
he extended his wanderings farther to the west, and visited the site of
what is now the city of Louisville. His life depended entirely upon his
own vigilance. He was without bread or salt, without even a dog to keep
him company or serve as guard. Naturally he met the savages. Once when
pursued by the Indians, he escaped by the clever artifice of swinging
himself far to one side of his trail by means of a depending
grape-vine—a stratagem not recorded of any other Western adventurer.
He seems to have been happy, alone in a solitude whose nature one can
not understand who has never found himself under conditions at least
mildly similar. His consolation came in his communings with the wild
things about him, in his readings in the great book of nature. His
gallery was the magnificent one of wood and stream and hill. “He stood
upon an eminence, whence, looking about in astonishment, he beheld the
ample plain and beauteous upland, and saw the river rolling in silent
dignity. The chirp of the birds solaced his cares with music. The
numerous deer and elk which passed him gave him assurance that he was in
the midst of plenty. Cheerfulness possessed his mind. He was a second
Adam—if the figure be not too strong—giving names to springs and
rivers and places all unknown to civilized man.” Such was the kingdom of
the West.
Now came again the faithful Squire Boone, all the way from the far-off
Yadkin. These two discovered country of such fertility and such
abundance in game that they no longer had any heart left for the more
barren region of North Carolina. They determined to bring thither their
families, and the fall of that year saw them both back at the old home,
making plans for the pilgrimage into the new world beyond the
Alleghanies. Restless and ill-content we may suppose Daniel to have
been, for it was not until the fall of 1773 that he was able to sell his
farm and get together his effects.
Five families left the Yadkin with him for Kentucky, these being joined
later by forty men, all of whom traveled under the guidance of Boone.
They proceeded westward in pastoral cavalcade, driving their herds and
carrying their effects with them. So far, very well, until the tenth of
October, when came the first ambuscade of the savage Indians. Six men of
the party were killed, among these a son of Daniel Boone. The cattle
were scattered or destroyed. No wonder that all lost heart except the
steadfast leader. He was content to remain with the retreating party in
the settlements of the Clinch River only until June of the following
year.
Now, biding his time, and longing for greater adventures, Boone receives
a message from the governor of Virginia. It seems there are certain
surveyors who have gone down the Ohio River and have lost themselves in
the wilderness. Could Daniel Boone discover these surveyors for the
governor? Assuredly. And hence he undertakes his first real mission of
independent leadership. He has but one companion, Michael Stoner or
Steiner, and before them lie many hundred miles of trackless forest,
with no road, no path, no trail. Yet the surveyors are found and led
safely back to their own.
This act seems to inspire confidence in Boone, and Colonel Henderson, a
famous land speculator, employs him as his agent for the purchase from
the Southern Indians of certain lands lying south of the Kentucky River.
Boone is successful in these negotiations. It is necessary now that
there should be a road established between these outlying lands and the
door of civilization. Who better than Boone to establish this wilderness
trail? He lays out the way from the Holston to the Kentucky River. We
are told, without unnecessary flourish, that “in this work four of his
party were killed and five wounded.”
It was in April, 1775, that Boone erected a station or palisade on the
Kentucky River near a salt lick. We are told that the stockade was built
“sixty yards from the south bank of the stream.” This was close to the
present site of the town of Frankfort, Kentucky. Another writer says the
date of the foundation of Boonesborough—as the station was called—was
June fourteenth, 1775. Dates are unimportant. The fact is that Boone
during that spring attained his immediate and most cherished ambition.
He established his home in the heart of this beautiful land of Kentucky.
Thither he moved his family, his wife and daughter being the first white
women willingly and of intent to set foot on the soil of Kentucky. Boone
was now in the heyday of life, strong, fearless, tireless, a keen
hunter, a cool-headed warrior. The ways of the wilderness were known to
him. The imprint on the moss, the discolored water at the fountain, the
broken bough, the abraded bark on the tree-trunk—all these things were
an open book. No Indian could imitate the chatter of the squirrel, the
calling of the crow, the gobbling of the wild turkey in his signals to
his fellow savage, so closely that the acute ear of this master hunter
did not detect the deceit. If savages crossed the country within a score
of miles of his station, Boone knew of them, knew how they were armed,
knew what was their purpose in that land. None could have been better
equipped than he as “an instrument for the settlement of the
wilderness.”
Life went on in Kentucky much as on the Yadkin, on the Clinch or on the
Holston. White men began to gather in at the station of Boonesborough,
or at one of the two or three other posts that now were established in
the land. These white men, shoulder to shoulder, fought the savages
cheerfully, continuously, never for a moment thinking of surrendering
their hold. The leader of this wild warfare was Daniel Boone, the man of
“unwavering fortitude.”
The war of the rebellion against the Old World was now going on apace.
Great Britain had given the red savages below the Great Lakes better
arms and had deliberately incited a more insatiate enmity against the
white man. Whereas the Indians had at first adopted prisoners into their
tribe, they now became more savage and implacable, in many more
instances killing such prisoners as fell into their hands.
Here we find ourselves again to some extent in the realms of imagination
as to the adventures of Daniel Boone. We meet the ancient anecdote of
the capture by the Indians of Boone’s daughter, in company with two
daughters of the neighboring Calloway family. Some say that the children
were out hunting up the cows, others that they were in a canoe on the
river, and that the canoe was taken away by a savage who swam out and
made them prisoners. We may be sure that Boone and Calloway raised a
party in pursuit, and it may be deemed historical fact that they rescued
their daughters; though some state that the rescue was effected within a
few miles of the post, whereas others place it after a long journey, and
state that Boone and Calloway were themselves taken prisoners by the
savages, and in turn rescued by their surviving companions only after a
bitter struggle. One may suit himself in these matters, yet he must
believe that the settlement of Boonesborough was the center of a most
savage and relentless warfare.
The civilized necessity for salt was one of the chief causes of danger
for these Kentuckians. In 1778 Boone, with twenty-seven companions, was
engaged in salt-making at the Blue Licks, when they were surrounded by a
large band of Indians. Boone was made captive, with others, and taken
north across the Ohio River. These savages were Shawanese, from the
Pickaway Plain. Eventually they took Boone as far north as Detroit,
where the commandant, Hamilton, pleased with Boone’s manly character,
undertook to ransom him from the savages. The latter, however, would not
hear to this, and after some parleying concluded to make Boone one of
their tribe.
He lived with them for some months, his fate meantime quite unknown to
his friends at Boonesborough. At length, discovering a war party of more
than four hundred savages preparing to invade the Kentucky frontier, he
escaped from his captors, journeyed two hundred miles to the southward,
and saved not only Boonesborough but all the infant posts of this new
commonwealth beyond the Alleghanies. This, were there naught else to
commend him, should establish Boone’s place as one of the great pillars
of the west-bound civilization.
After the savages were at last beaten away in this attack, Boone found
that he was a man not without a country, but without a family. His wife,
supposing him dead, had returned to the old home on the Yadkin. There is
a wide hiatus here in the Boone history, regarding which Boone himself
is reticent.
It is probable that at this time there began those legal difficulties
that later caused the pioneer to leave his chosen land. He had been
given a grant of land by the governor of Virginia, but the state of
Kentucky had never been surveyed, and it was the fashion and privilege
of every holder of one of these loose titles to locate his land as he
pleased, and to record it in the simplest and most primitive fashion.
Thus there came to be many claimants for the best of the lands, the
desirable tracts being sometimes deeply covered by these old-time
“shingle titles.”
The courts swiftly followed into these crude little Kentucky
communities. It may have been the legal complications in which Boone now
found himself that made him unwilling to speak of this period of his
career. It is also known that at one time he was custodian of some
twenty thousand dollars of money, which he intended to take eastward
across the Alleghanies for the purchase of lands. He was robbed, and
hence carried to his grave the bitter sense that he had, through no
fault of his own, been unable to carry out a trust that had been imposed
on him. Yet, be these things as they may, the fact remains that he did
again bring his family to his chosen settlement on the Kentucky River.
Meantime the Northern savages, under their own leaders, under the
leadership of British officers, under the leadership of the dangerous
renegades, Girty and McKee, came down time and again on the Kentucky
settlements. The salt parties must go out as before, and in one of these
excursions Squire Boone, Daniel’s beloved older brother, fell a victim
to the savages. In the celebrated and ill-fated McGary fight—the
blackest battle of all Kentucky—a son of Daniel Boone’s fell with the
flower of the frontier. Again and again the tribes came raging down, the
Cherokees, the Pottawatamies, the Shawanese, all joining hands to wipe
these settlements from the face of the earth. In the fight at Bryant’s
Station, little as it was, thirty of the savages were left on the field.
The year 1781 was one of wrath for the thin firing line on the western
side of the Divide. All the fights and the fighters centered about or
came from the “Dark and Bloody Ground.” Clark, Hardin, Harmar—all these
started from Kentucky, and by reason of Kentucky. It was General Scott
with one thousand Kentuckians that avenged the horrible defeat of St.
Clair, killed two hundred of the victorious savages, and took back from
them their booty. In the seven years from 1783 to 1790 there were
fifteen hundred whites killed or taken captive in the state of Kentucky.
In all these affairs, we may be sure, Daniel Boone held his full and
manly part. He had drunk the war-drink of the savages during his
captivity, and the spirit of the savage had entered into him.
Yet Boone was simple and unpretentious as any leader that ever lived.
Once Simon Kenton, himself a hardy soul, set out with some friends on a
little hunt from the station at Boonesborough. They were fired upon by
Indians from ambush. One man was shot down by the Indians within seventy
yards of the stockade. His murderer would have scalped him had not
Kenton dropped him, a corpse beside a corpse. Then it was general mêlée
until Daniel Boone and ten others came out from the stockade to assist
their fighting comrades. Kenton killed another Indian, and then there
came a rush. Boone directed a charge upon the savages, but was shot
down, a ball breaking his leg. Kenton, brave fellow that he was, shot
down Boone’s assailant and carried Boone safely into the fort. As he lay
on the couch receiving attention for the leg broken by the ball, Boone
sent for Kenton and said: “Well, Simon, you have behaved like a man
to-day. Indeed you are a fine fellow.” That was all there was to it.
They made no great parade in those days. There was no proclamation in
the public places. There were no illustrated newspapers, no gifted war
correspondents to describe the heroism of that time. A similar act
to-day would have made both participants famous, would perhaps have won
for both a Victoria Cross, and would have afforded imaginative
correspondents excellent opportunity. The West had no Victoria Crosses,
nor needed any.
In times of such continual excitement and danger it is small wonder that
there has been but scant record kept of individual deeds of daring.
Boone himself was not wont to boast of his own prowess, and regarding
his deeds of arms there are not many authentic anecdotes.
One of the best known of his adventures was that in which he met two
savages in the forest while he himself was alone. Those were flint-lock
days, and Boone was, according to the story, able, by watching the flash
of the first savage’s rifle, to throw himself out of the way of the
bullet. This manœuver he repeated with the second Indian. Then he calmly
shot one Indian dead with his rifle, closed with the other, received a
blow of his tomahawk on his own rifle barrel, and killed the savage with
his knife. A statue commemorating this feat was later placed above the
south door of the rotunda in the Capitol at Washington.
There was need in Boone’s case of fortitude, not only of the physical
but of the moral sort. In 1792 Kentucky, which had formerly been a
county of the state of Virginia, was set up as a state by itself, with
courts, jails, judges, lawyers and all the appurtenances of the
artificial civilization that Boone had hoped to leave forever behind
him.
Then came lawsuits regarding the lapping titles. Daniel Boone, his blue
eyes troubled and bewildered, found himself among the haggling officials
of the law courts. It broke his heart. Stunned but not protesting, he
gave up that beautiful land he had enabled all these others to find and
to hold. He was old now, and had fought the main fight of his life only
to find himself the loser.
He left now for the mouth of the great Kanawha, but found the hunting
poor. A son of his had crossed the Mississippi River and sent back word
that there was still a West, still a country where were buffalo and elk,
where were otter and beaver in the streams. There was to be one more
pilgrimage for Daniel Boone, a pilgrimage down the Ohio River, ending in
the region, still wilderness, not far from the point that is now the
city of St. Louis. Bear in mind that this latter point was not within
the United States. Daniel Boone was an emigrant from the land he had
founded. He was going now out from under the infant Stars and Stripes.
In token of his character, the Spanish governor of Louisiana gave Boone
some sort of trifling commission. He was made commandant or syndic, an
official with about the same importance as a country justice of the
peace to-day. By the terms of his settlement in that country Boone was
entitled to a tract of something like ten thousand acres of land. He was
wrongly informed that, as he was an officer of the state, he need not
settle nor improve his land. Once more a fatal mistake for the man who
knew the book of nature better than the printed page.
Late in his life we find the American government, now reaching its
control over this trans-Missouri country, taking up the question of
Boone’s tract of land and allowing him, with extreme generosity,
one-tenth of that which by every right and title of justice ought to
have been his own in fee simple in return for what he had done for the
civilization of America. This was the poor pittance that Daniel Boone,
one of the great Americans, was able to hand down to his posterity.
With this poor heritage go the few incidents of a meager and in some
cases uncertain personal history, the main facts of which have been
given above. There is even uncertainty, or rather discrepancy, regarding
the date of his death. One writer states that he died at the age of
eighty-four, in the year 1818. The date of his death was really
September twenty-sixth, 1820, he being at that time eighty-six years of
age.
In his later years Boone kept up those practices that had endeared
themselves to him in his earlier lifetime. In a mild way he was a
trapper, and always he was a hunter. Even when he had passed his
eightieth year he went regularly each fall in pursuit of the deer, the
turkey, the elk or the furred animals, or followed his simple pastime of
squirrel hunting, in which he was very expert. It was his custom on
these excursions to exact a promise from his attendant that, in case of
his death, his body should be properly cared for. He long kept his
coffin under his bed at his home, near Charette, Missouri. Once, taken
sick in camp, he marked out the place for his grave, and told his negro
servant (some say his Indian friend or servant) what should be done with
his body.
From this indisposition, however, he recovered, and went on several
other hunts later. Failing gradually, though not from any specific
disease, Boone met the great and final enemy with the same fortitude
that had been with him all his life. He had said farewell to all earthly
ambitions, and was ready to die when the time might come. He kept the
coffin under his bed not in any bravado, but in a simple wish for
complete preparedness. His personal habits remained sweet and simple as
of old.
Boone seems to have wandered a little farther to the West than his home
near St. Louis. It is said that he “saw the mouth of the Kansas River,”
and that he noted, with the impatient longing of an old man, the passing
up-stream, into the mysterious Northwest, of those early parties of fur
traders, the voyagers who were now heading the far Western American
migration. It was now too late in the closing years. It is said that he
trapped on the Kaw and the Osage, and he is said to have made one
journey “up the Missouri, and to have reached the mouth of the
Yellowstone”, whence he was driven back by savages.
His sons and grandsons were figures in Western history, always
frontiersmen, travelers. A granddaughter became the wife of a governor
of Oregon. His grandson, Kit Carson, was to hold fast the family
traditions on many a Western trail; but there were to be no more trails
for Daniel Boone. Overtaken once more by America, once more surrounded
by the civilization from which he had by choice always alienated
himself, he at length lay down peacefully to his final sleep beneath the
trees.
Some twenty-five years after his death, the legislature of Kentucky
awakened to a sense of the greatness of this man, and to the onerous
nature of that debt of gratitude under which he had placed his
commonwealth. By virtue of a special enactment, the bodies of Boone and
his faithful wife were moved from their Missouri home, eastward across
the Mississippi River, and laid at rest in the cemetery of Frankfort,
close to that original stockade where, supported by an “unwavering
fortitude”, there first flew the hard beset flag of the west-bound.
These coffins came garlanded with flowers, heralded with music,
surrounded with tardy honors. They were laid away on September
thirteenth, 1845. There were effusive speeches in abundance, the chief
oration being pronounced by Mr. Crittenden, “the leading orator of his
time,” as he is called in the chronicle. Thus at last this primeval
patriarch, this Father of the Frontier, this leader of the Western
home-builders, came home to sleep on the soil that was by right his own.
-----
Footnote 8:
There was long known a tree near the Cumberland which bore this quaint
inscription: “D. Boon Cilled A Bar on this tree, year 1760.”
Footnote 9:
There is continual discrepancy among the historians regarding these
incidents. Thus another writer states that Boone and Stewart were
twice taken prisoners by the savages, but that no northward journey
was made by the Indians, who simply kept the prisoners at their camps,
and at length dismissed them with a warning to leave Kentucky, as it
was their own hunting ground and belonged to the Indians only. Again
there seems confusion in the stories of the death of Neeley and
Stewart. One account is that Boone saw Stewart shot down and scalped;
another states that Stewart disappeared, and that no idea of his fate
was obtained until years afterward, when in a hollow tree Boone found
a skeleton, near which was Stewart’s powder horn, which had his name
inscribed upon it.