 |
| Daniel Boone's first view of Kentucky. |
No longer does our great republic have an internal frontier. Before the close of the nineteenth century the primary wave of settlement sweeping westward from the Atlantic had met the secondary wave sweeping eastward from the Pacific. The two lines were at once blotted out of existence, very much as two lines of prairie fire are extinguished when they fall into one another. Yet the memories of that frontier will hold an abiding place in history. They are memories of empire-building, and they often wear a guise that is picturesque and romantic. To the Americans of the present and the future they convey lessons of red-blooded heroism and unflinching perseverance. These lessons have a value that will endure. Already the simple aim and the direct manner of the frontier are well-nigh submerged by the tide of artificial and complex life characteristic of our twentieth century. There is a restfulness and an inspiration in now and then turning our gaze to those conditions which survive only in history. And among the personages who stand in the limelight on that scene of action, there is no one more worthy of our esteem than Daniel Boone.
Among the immigrants at Philadelphia in 1717 was George Boone, of the county of Devonshire in England. He was a Quaker, and in the Western World he sought the flourishing colony founded by his co-religionist, William Penn. Furthermore, the Boones were endowed with the Quaker virtues of morality, industry, and thrift.
Yet the head of the household was too shrewd to take his entire family across the Atlantic without previous investigation. His three oldest children, George, Sarah, and Squire, had been sent forward in advance, and he acted on the strength of their favorable report. But the Pennsylvania of 1717 was only the promise of what it has become after two centuries of wonderful growth. Instead of its present million and a half of inhabitants,
Philadelphia had then only about six thousand. In the entire province were but fifty thousand people, and in three days a man could walk to the border of settlement. It was, therefore, needless for the Boones to go very far in quest of the amount of land they desired.
When the new home was established, Squire, the third child and second son, was in his twenty-third year. Within two years he had found a wife in the person of Sarah Morgan, the daughter of a Welsh neighbor, who was likewise of the Quaker faith. His older sister, who had been on the committee of investigation, took a husband of German birth. Such facts go to illustrate how a stock characteristically American sprang into existence along the border of the wilderness. All but one of the nine sons and daughters of George Boone took to themselves life companions, and are now represented in the United States by a numerous posterity.
Squire Boone secured a tract of two hundred and fifty acres lying eight miles southeast of the present city of Reading. Here in a log house and on the date of November 2, 1734, was born Daniel, the sixth of his ten children. Thus the man who was to become so famous in the border life of America opened his eyes on the very frontier, and in a frontier environment he continued to the end. Daniel Boone was quite as much a child of the wilderness as was the indigenous man himself, and in woodcraft he was even more expert. He could not lose himself in the forest, and his skill in finding game was almost a matter of instinct. For weeks at a time, and even months, he would live entirely alone in the wild.
At the age of only ten young Daniel was hunting game while herding his father's cattle. He carried a peeled stick with the root end large and tough. By means of this primitive weapon he secured many a squirrel or bird. At the customary age of twelve the boy became the owner of a gun, and was soon a marksman of very uncommon skill. It was largely through his individual effort that the family table was kept supplied with wild meat.
The life of the frontier is necessarily versatile. The father and grandfather were weavers as well as farmers. Squire Boone was also a blacksmith, and he made Daniel his assistant. As a matter of course the boy took a share in the labors of the farm. But although tilling the soil remained a pursuit during most of his life, it was always combined with hunting.
Sarah Stover, the oldest aunt on the father's side, imparted to the boy the rudiments of an education. But his days in the actual schoolroom were very few and came to an early end. The spelling displayed in the letters of Daniel Boone shows little regard for any dictionary standard. Because of this fact, there is an impression that Boone was practically illiterate. Yet when we consider the times in which he lived, we find he had a very serviceable training. He wrote a quite easy hand, expressed himself clearly, and read books understandingly. He learned to survey land, and often put this knowledge to practical use. In fact, Boone was somewhat of a scholar, when we compare him with the generality of the people of the backwoods. He possessed an alert mind, and improved upon the training imparted by his instructors. But the life of the frontier was not favorable to learning. The very few persons on the border who had both the opportunity and inclination to read much could become good spellers by means of the eye. To persons of limited schooling the ear was the main reliance, and they spelled accordingly. In spelling and capitalizing words and in the observance of grammar, Boone was not distantly outclassed by such men as George Washington, Andrew Lewis, and Isaac Shelby. Like them, and like all others who had much to do with the frontier, Boone was far more a man of action than of books. In his chosen sphere, which was that of the outdoors world, he was always practical and efficient, and in whatever lay within his knowledge his judgment was exceedingly accurate. He was self-reliant, persevering, a good judge of human nature, and a sagacious counselor.
By the time Daniel had reached the age of fifteen, the line of settlement had advanced well beyond the paternal home. The price of land was steadily advancing, and the wild animals were retiring before the resounding echoes of the wood-chopper's axe. Squire Boone had a large family, and he wished his sons to have an easy opportunity to acquire land of their own. He was, also, very willing to respect Daniel's irrepressible desire to hunt. So the household migrated to the valley of the Yadkin in the middle section of North Carolina. But instead of covering the distance of five hundred miles in the least possible time, the Boones spent a year and a half on Linville Creek, near Harrisonburg, in the Valley of Virginia. Settlers from Pennsylvania were buying choice land in this neighborhood at ten cents an acre. At this time, or soon afterwards, John Lincoln, the great-grandfather of the martyred President, was living there. It is said that the Lincolns and the Boones had known one another in Pennsylvania, and the family first reaching the Linville was doubtless a pathfinder to the other.
The settlement in North Carolina was effected in 1751, a new home being made in Davie County. Here was a virgin country, a milder climate, and an abundance of game. Hunting was not only a source of food but of ready money, an article always scarce on the colonial frontier. At Salisbury, twenty miles from the Boones, that was a market for dressed skins, these being sent to Europe. As home-seekers multiplied, Daniel followed the steadily retreating game until his more extended trips took him into the coves of the Blue Ridge and even beyond. A beech on the Watauga River carries the record in its bark that Boone killed a bear on that tree in 1760. (There is, also, the tradition that Henry Miller, a cousin to Daniel, came at the same time to the Shenandoah. Furthermore, the George Boone, who, in 1735, purchased 1,500 acres on Boone's Run, in the same county of Rockingham, was very probably the grandfather of Daniel. The land was bought of one Jacob Stover, and this was the name of Sarah Boone's husband.)
Before he was twenty years old, he had become a soldier. He seems to have been one of the North Carolina band that, in 1754, marched to Winchester, in the Valley of the Shenandoah. A year later, he was a teamster and blacksmith in the expedition under General Braddock. In the rout which followed the disastrous battle near Pittsburgh, he escaped by mounting a horse.
In 1756, Daniel Boone was married to Rebecca Bryant, the brunette daughter of a neighbor. Like the Boones, the Bryants had come to Carolina by way of the Shenandoah. As husband and wife, the pair lived happily together for fifty-seven years. They began housekeeping in a little cabin in Squire Boone's yard, but soon removed to some land which Daniel purchased for himself. For a while they were compelled to abandon the new home. In 1759, and again in 1760, the Cherokee warriors desolated the flourishing settlements in upper Carolina. Daniel took his wife and their two infants to Culpeper, in Virginia, where they remained three years. A portion of this time the husband was a wagoner between that town and Alexandria. He took part, however, in the Cherokee War, and, with the return of peace, the family reoccupied their home on the Yadkin.
In the fall of 1765, Boone went to Florida, with the intention of settling there. His long journey westward from the mouth of the St. John's was a trying experience, and once he was saved from starvation by a party of Seminole Indians. Yet, in spite of his hardships, he was so well pleased with Pensacola that he bought a house and lot in the little place. His purpose, however, was not carried out, because the wife did not think it best to remove to an almost gameless region.
The year 1769 is a turning-point in the career of Daniel Boone. He had thus far spent half his life in North Carolina, and was thirty- five years of age. Immigration to this colony had been heavy, and, as in Pennsylvania, it was banishing the game from the settled districts. Yet there was a deep-seated unrest
among the inhabitants, the specter of the American Revolution having appeared in the political horizon. The higher civil officials and the clergy of the established church were almost wholly from the British Isles. The fees exacted by these men under cover of law were excessive beyond all reason, and were, therefore, difficult to meet. The insolent extravagance of the colonial administration and the greed of the British merchants had brought about a condition that was almost intolerable. The dwellers in upland Carolina were consequently turning their thoughts to the imperfectly known country beyond the Alleghanies.
It is a very short-sighted opinion to suppose it was merely the big game of Kentucky which attracted Boone. While it is true that game was his chief means of livelihood, he was looking beyond this purely material consideration. Like his neighbors, he had felt the heavy hand of oppression. He had been constrained to sacrifice his early home, and to move higher up the Yadkin to a location on the river-bank eight miles below Wilkesboro. Boone was not only an explorer by inclination and choice, but he was a leader among men. The land beyond the mountains would be a refuge from the grasping policy of the British government and its agents in America. He would go out from Carolina as a pathfinder. He would prospect the transmontane country in the interest of his fellow-citizens. His errand was a quest for freer opportunity; a motive that has ever impelled the American people westward.
While in the expedition under Braddock, Boone had met one Finley, a trader in furs. In the fall of 1768, this whilom friend appeared in North Carolina as a peddler, and, during the following winter he was a guest in Boone's house. His account of the Western country was so alluring that his host thoroughly determined to remove thither. Finley was entirely willing to act as guide. Boone's idea was first to explore the new region, and, while doing so, to collect a stock of furs that would relieve his financial stringency. Then he would cross
the mountains with his family and such of his friends as might be willing to join him. A long separation from home was thus unavoidable. But James, the oldest son, was now thirteen, and had more than once been his father's companion in long hunting trips.
Boone had already some personal knowledge of the land beyond the Blue Ridge. He had followed the wild animals into the upper waters of the Tennessee basin. In 1764, he had reached the Cumberland River, and in 1767 he had penetrated the rugged region on the headwaters of the Big Sandy. But he had not beheld the rich prairies of Middle and Western Kentucky.
After the planting for 1769 had been done, Boone and Finley set out, in May, for Kentucky. They were accompanied by one Stuart, a brother-in-law to Boone, and by three other neighbors. Squire, Jr., an own brother to Daniel, was to tend the latter's farm as well as his own, and join the party in the fall. Boone was delighted with the fertility of the Kentucky soil, the huge size of the forest trees, and the mildness and salubrity of the climate. The abundant game was not very shy. It included elk, as well as large herds of buffalo, the latter animal being unknown east of the Blue Ridge. The forest was not always dense, and was often quite free of undergrowth. There were large expanses of grassy plain, the result of systematic burning on the part of the Indians. It was, therefore, not difficult to penetrate the wilderness.
During eight months, the half-dozen hunters met neither red man nor white. A large store of furs had been accumulated. To Daniel Boone, a man not averse to solitude and a lover of unspoiled nature, these were happy months. The appeal of the wilderness to an unconventional life wove itself into his very being. Toward him, the forest primeval was not a stern and repellant solitude. It spoke to Boone with many voices, not all of which found expression in the habits of its furry and feathered denizens.
Yet their Christmas was one of sorrow. Three days before that event, the hunters were
suddenly captured by a party of Shawnees. The red men appropriated their pelts, yet left them enough food for the return home. Such an experience was indeed exasperating. Boone was only human, and seldom has the American borderer been appreciative of the Indian's point of view. Nevertheless, the Shawnees were within their treaty rights in telling Boone that he was poaching on their hunting-ground, inasmuch as the British government recognized a full ownership of Kentucky on the part of the Natives. This treaty of Fort Stanwix had been made only the year previous, and Boone may have known little or nothing about it. The Shawnees had imposed a fine instead of lifting scalps. But, full of anger at the loss of a season's toil, Boone and Stuart followed the red men two days, crept into their camp, and made off with several horses. They were pur- sued in their turn and retaken, yet the Indians again showed their forbearance in releasing the men after a week of kindly treatment. Meanwhile, the other hunters were going homeward, but were soon overtaken by Boone and Stuart. The reunited party was presently joined by Squire Boone and a man named Neely. The two Boones and Stuart and Neely decided to remain, but the others continued on their way home.
Trapping the wild animals was resumed, and with much success, but Stuart came to a mysterious end and Neely deserted. In May, Squire Boone went to Carolina with the accumulation of furs, Daniel staying behind with- out even the companionship of a dog. He moved his camp very frequently, so as to avoid being found by the Indians. During the months he was alone, he wandered as far as the falls of the Ohio below Cincinnati. Through the screen of the forest, he perceived a native walking on the opposite bank. On another occasion he came within sight of an Indian fishing from a fallen tree. In later years, he remarked that while he was looking at the red man, the latter fell from the log into the river and he never saw him again! It would seem difficult to find an adequate excuse for this act.
After paying off their debts with his stock of furs, Squire Boone came back with the supplies most needed by a hunter. In autumn, he went to Carolina a second time, and Daniel spent a solitary winter in the Kentucky wild. Once again rejoined by Squire, he went home with him in the spring of 1771. Daniel Boone had spent two years in the West, and, in spite of his efforts, he was poorer than when he started out. On the return to Carolina, and while passing across the Valley of East Tennessee, he was a second time plundered by the Indians.
In the fall of 1773, Boone bade a final adieu to North Carolina. He was now accompanied by his family and a considerable party of friends. But in Powell's Valley a detachment of the home-seekers, numbering five persons, was waylaid by prowling Cherokees, and all were massacred. Among the slain was Boone's oldest son. Through the instrumentality of Captain John Stuart of South Carolina, the Cherokees were called to account for this outrage. One of the two guilty leaders was put to death by the tribe, the other one escaping to the Chickasaws. But the tragic event disheartened Boone's neighbors, and they at once gave up the plan of going to Kentucky. There was left only the Boone household, and it wintered in a vacant cabin on Clinch River, within the Virginia line. Inasmuch as Kentucky was, until 1792, an integral part of the Old Dominion, Boone was to be a Virginian during the next twenty-six years. This was a longer period than he sojourned in any other state.
In the spring of 1774, there was a strong prospect of war with the tribesmen, and it was no time to press forward into Kentucky. Boone was commissioned a captain of militia by Governor Dunmore, and to assist in the protection of the frontier, he was stationed with twenty men at Fort Morris on Clinch River. During this campaign, Boone was influential and efficient, and was held in great esteem. Because of his skill as a woodsman, he and one Michael Stoner were sent to warn the surveyors and prospectors who were roaming over central
Kentucky. Such a task would seem to us like looking for needles in a haystack; yet, in sixty one days, the two scouts traveled eight hundred miles and accomplished their mission. In the month of October, Boone is believed to have taken part in the great battle at Point Pleasant. Being a decisive victory for the whites, it was quickly followed by a treaty of peace.
The way was now open for Boone to carry out his long cherished purpose of settling in Kentucky. An influential friend was Richard Henderson, a judge of North Carolina. To find a retreat from British injustice, Henderson, with eight bold associates, projected the colony of Transylvania. They purchased the claim of the Shawnees to twenty million acres of Kentucky and Tennessee soil. But Virginia and North Carolina were hostile to the plan, and because, also, of the breaking out of the war for American independence, the project did not quite become a reality. Nevertheless, it was the administrative germ which, in sixteen years, developed into the commonwealth of Kentucky. Henderson engaged Boone to lay out a bridle-path. With a force of thirty men, Boone opened the famous Wilderness Road, over which thousands of Virginia and Carolina people flocked into the Blue-Grass State.
At the head of a band of settlers, Boone established, on the sixth of April, 1775, the settlement of Boonesboro. But for several years the peopling of Kentucky was slow and difficult. The war of the Revolution was in progress. The Indians were sullen from the first, and, under British influence, they put on the war-paint in 1777. The three thousand immigrants who gave up their lives during the first ten years of occupation caused Kentucky to earn its name of a "dark and bloody ground."
Daniel Boone was now a man of note. In 1777, he was appointed a justice of the peace. In 1780, he was colonel of militia for one of the three counties which then covered the whole area of the future state. He was three times a member of the Virginia Legislature, and when, in 1781, that body was dispersed at Charlottesville by a raid of the British cavalry,
Boone was taken prisoner. He was promptly released on parole, and, because of this circumstance, he did not deem it proper, on resuming his seat in the Assembly, to take an active part in the further business of that session.
During those trying years, Boone was a famous Indian fighter. It was not alone that he was expert in firing a rifle and throwing a tomahawk. His exceptional knowledge of the woods and of Indian nature caused him to be a tower of strength among the settlers. Within the limits of these pages, we cannot relate all that is known of his hair-breadth escapes. Several times was he captured by natives, and twice was he wounded. One of his brothers was killed. Another of his own sons fell by his side in the disastrous battle of the Blue Licks. A daughter was carried off, but was soon restored. On the other hand, Boone slew at one time or another several of the foe.
His one prolonged captivity is worthy of mention. A hunting party that he led was taken by the Shawnees. A larger party from the settlement was, at the same time, making salt. Knowing the stockade could not sustain an attack while so many of its defenders were away, he yet secured the safety of the women and children. He induced the party at the salt-lick to surrender, and then told the Indians that they could all return in the spring and take the families to Canada. Easily satisfied by this argument, the Indians gave up their purpose of assailing the stockade, and went home with their captives, all of whom were spared. Seventeen were adopted into the tribe. Boone was given the name of Big Turtle, and became the foster-son of a chief named Black Fish. He was held in high esteem by the Shawnees, who, nevertheless, were fearful that he might try to escape. He accompanied Black Fish to Detroit, when the prisoners not adopted were taken there for the bounty offered by the British. Hamilton, the commandant at Detroit, was intensely hated by the Americans, because of paying for the scalps turned over to him by the natives. But on this occasion he paid a ransom for the ten captives, and offered
Black Fish five hundred dollars for Boone. The chief thought entirely too much of his adopted son to let him go, and the latter rode away on a horse presented to him by the governor. Learning that Boone had formerly been made a captain by Lord Dunmore, Hamilton admonished him to be obedient to the king. When the fortune of war turned, and Hamilton himself became a captive, Boone used his influence to secure him due protection as a prisoner of war.
After the return to the Shawnee village, it was noticed that a war party was making ready to attack Boonesboro. The adopted son of Black Fish effected his escape, and, with only one meal to subsist upon, he covered in five days, the one hundred and sixty miles that lay between the Shawnee town and his own settlement. He found that his wife had given him up for dead, and had returned to North Carolina. The blockade, which soon began, was closely pressed for ten days, yet the large force of Indians and Canadians was beaten off with great damage, and Boonesboro was never again molested.
Though he had a practical mind and was wise in giving counsel, Boone was not endowed with the spirit of commercialism. Being deficient in those peculiar qualities which come to the front in the man of business, Boone neglected to fulfill all the technical requirements to be observed in gaining title to the public lands of Virginia. This oversight caused him to lose one by one all the tracts he had entered in Kentucky. Boone had done very much toward opening the new commonwealth, and he doubtless intended to make it his permanent home. It was a grievous wrong to permit him to suffer through a merciless application of the exact letter of the law. The orgy of insatiable greed, which has disfigured the opening of Oklahoma, had its precursor on the blue-grass pastures of Kentucky. As the Indian warcloud began to lift, the fertile acres attracted a horde of land sharks. For all such (In Kentucky and Virginia, the entries made by Daniel Boone aggregate 8,879 acres.-J. Т. М.) beasts of prey, Boone had a hearty contempt. He was not a man to whimper, and he was uttering no more than a manly protest when he declared he would nevermore dwell in the commonwealth which had displayed a practical ingratitude.
It was a little while before Boone left Kentucky that his so-called autobiography appeared. This little book added much to his fame, and caused him to be known in Europe. But, although sanctioned by Boone, it was written by the same pedantic schoolmaster who would have inflicted upon the metropolis of Southern Ohio the uncouth name of Losantiville. He turned the unpolished reminiscences of the great pathfinder into language that would have caused a devotee of Boston culture to "sit up and take notice."
By 1785, Boone had quit the settlement he founded, and was living at Maysville, on the Ohio, where he combined the pursuits of tavern-keeper and river-trader. He now went to Point Pleasant, whence he soon removed to a more retired home on the south bank of the Great Kanawha, four miles from where Charleston afterward arose.
During fourteen years, Boone was a resident of what is now the State of West Virginia. This period in his career has been quite overlooked by some of the biographers. Yet he had by no means sunk into obscurity. He was, indeed, still a huntsman, and during his stay on the Kanawha it is averred that he was very skillful in trapping beaver. But he was also a deputy surveyor, and in this capacity he performed considerable service. In 1789, he was lieutenant-colonel for Kanawha County, and two years later he was its delegate in the Legislature. The long distance between his home and Richmond he traveled afoot. The esteem in which he was held by his neighbors was shown when they gathered in large numbers to see him off on his final migration, and to bid him godspeed in his new home.
Boone was quite a traveler, when we reflect that he never beheld a railroad train, and could not have seen a steamboat until near the end
of his long life. It was while he dwelt on the Kanawha that he paid, in 1788, his last visit to the home of his boyhood in Pennsylvania. In making his legislative journey to Richmond, he almost surely passed by way of the now famous resort of Hot Springs. His course would have taken him within rifle-shot of the "Daniel Boone Cabin," a few yards from which this booklet is being written.
_(14784705735).jpg) |
| Old Boone Cabin, 1916. |
This replica of an old-time cabin was never tenanted by Boone, and has been given his name because a very close approximation to the style of dwelling with which he was familiar. Some twenty miles eastward he would have passed the spot known to local tradition as "Boone's muster- ground." Here was then living William Boone, very probably a cousin to the famous borderer.
In 1799, Daniel Boone went to Missouri, then a Spanish possession. The journey of about one thousand miles was made on the Western rivers. He said he wanted more elbow- room. He longed to be again on the actual frontier, and nothing less would content him. That the pathfinder was now in his sixty-fifth year, and entirely willing to make a new home, may well assure us that Boone was not at all ready to become a has-been. The Spanish government gave him a grant of eight hundred acres in St. Charles county, forty-five miles from St. Louis. He was appointed magistrate, his office under Spanish law combining military with civil duties. In dispensing justice among his new neighbors, very many of whom were of American birth, Boone did not make the spirit of the written law a bed of Procrustes. On the contrary, he rendered his decisions according to his ideas of common sense.
Four years after his arrival, Missouri became a part of the United States. In resuming American citizenship, Boone was to have more of that bitter experience he had known in Kentucky. Through a mere inadvertence, he was deprived of his grant. More than a dozen years later, his right was confirmed, although it required a petition by the state of Kentucky, as well as the pleading of the old hero himself, to move Congress to an act of tardy justice.
Boone would have sought still another home in the direction of the setting sun, had he but secured the consent of his family. He was always interested in hearing of new regions. He wished to visit the Yellowstone. He was told of California, and his enthusiasm in what he heard caused some of his friends to go there. He even wanted to take part in the War of 1812, and felt aggrieved that he was not permitted to enlist.
But the annual hunting trip he could not and would not forego. The call of the wild was in his blood. By heeding this call, his days were undoubtedly lengthened, even though his strong frame was affected by rheumatism and his keenness of vision somewhat impaired. When past eighty years of age, he visited the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska, roaming far toward the foot of the Rockies. In these last trips, he was accompanied by an Indian servant, who was strictly enjoined to bring him back to his home, whether living or dead. His old age was serene, and he was tenderly cared for by his grandchildren. The end did not come until September 26, 1820, when Daniel Boone passed away without illness, at the age of almost eighty-six years. Missouri was about to become a state, and a constitution was being framed at St. Louis. As a mark of respect, the convention immediately adjourned for a day. The mortal remains of the frontiersman were buried by those of his wife on a bluff over- looking the great Father of Waters. Kentucky made an eloquent plea that his bones might be reinterred in her own soil, yet final action in this matter was not taken until 1845, and the present monument at Frankfort was not erected until 1880. There is, however, some reason to think that Boone's ashes still repose on the bank of the Mississippi.
Daniel Boone stood about five feet and ten inches in height, and weighed a hundred and seventy-five pounds. His frame was broad and muscular. His complexion was ruddy, his hair was dark, and his eyes were blue. His voice was soft and mellow, and his face wore a smile when he was in conversation. He was
temperate in every respect, and was capable of great endurance and exertion.
Boone was habitually clad in the costume of the frontier, such garb being a near approach to that of the Indian. The most conspicuous item was the hunting-shirt of deerskin or homemade cloth. Its borders were fringed, its collar was sometimes ornamented, and at the waist the garment was secured by a belt. Moccasins were generally worn, and, being porous, they kept the feet damp, and induced rheumatism. But having no use for the customary coonskin cap, Boone always wore a hat. As for the log cabin of the frontier, its furnishings, and the domestic economy practised therein, there was a close correspondence with the primitive costume of the inmates.
Daniel Boone was the father of five sons and four daughters. Two of the former were killed at an early age by the Indians. The other three settled in Missouri, and it was with the young- est that the father spent his last years. The ruling passion of the parent was transmitted to his son, Albert Gallatin Boone, who, without aid from the national Government, became a great explorer among the Rocky Mountains. The still more famous Kit Carson was a near kinsman. The four daughters of Boone married in the Blue-Grass State. At least two of them were of uncommon beauty.
 |
| Boone as elderly huntsman. |
As we have seen, Daniel Boone was a plain man and moved among other plain men. He knew very little of any home more pretentious than a log cabin. He was not the first man to explore Kentucky. He was not its first permanent settler. He had not the military genius of Clark or Logan. He held no prominent civil position, and, as an empire-builder in the West, he ranks below several other names. Conceding all this, why is it that the name of Daniel Boone is familiar to every genuine American? Why is it that eight counties and thirty-one towns and villages of the United States bear his name?
It is not a sufficient answer to these queries to say that all the world admires a hero, espe- cially when he appears on a romantic back- ground. Benedict Arnold was a hero at Quebec
and Saratoga, and yet his name does not live in our geographical gazetteer. But when the hero has personal qualities that command our confidence and affection, his place in history is secure.
Daniel Boone was one of Nature's noblemen. He abhorred meanness and insincerity, and won the love of those with whom he came in contact. Though a member of no visible church, his religion was that of the Golden Rule. It was his impulse to be of service to his fellow-beings, and he regarded himself as ordained of God to settle the Western wilderness. In this aim, he was impelled by a force he could not adequately interpret to others. His strength of character, his sense of rectitude, and his high purpose did not permit him to become a turncoat like Simon Girty, a brutalized scalp-hunter like Lewis Wetzel, or a drunken misanthrope like George Rogers Clark.
The county of Boone, in West Virginia, is a memorial to his desire to help his fellow-beings. A married couple in that region were killed by Indians. A daughter, taken captive, was re- deemed by Boone and reared by him. A grandson of this daughter was chosen to the Virginia legislature, and, through his insistence, a county established during his term was named for the benefactor. Boone's sense of honesty is shown in the purpose of his last visit to Kentucky. With a load of furs, he paid off the obligations which the stealing of his Kentucky soil had until then deprived him of the means of paying. He went home at the age of seventy five, and with but fifty cents in his pocket, yet happy in the realization that he was square with the world.
The hero of Kentucky was an idealist, but his idealism took note of the workaday world as well as the clouds. With literary aptitude, he would have been, like Bryant, a poet of nature. And as Bryant was also a man of action, so was Boone. He stood for that simple life, which, in whatever guise it may be followed, is a saving force in true civilization. The whole tenor of his life was a voice of protest against the deadening influence of an unbridled rush for the Golden Fleece. Oren F. Morton, 1913.
LETTER BY BOONE
(From Roosevelt's "Winning of the West.")
July the 20th 1786.
SIR-The Land has Been Long Survayd and Not Knowing When the Money would be Rady was the Reason of my not Returning the Works however the may be Returned when you pleas. But I must have Nother Copy of the Entry as I have lost that I had when I lost my plating instruments and only have the Short Field Notes. Just the Corse Distance and corner trees pray send me Nother Copy that I may know how to give it the proper bounderry agreable to the Location and I will send the plot to the offis medetly if you chose it, the expense is as follows
Survayers fees ....£ 9 3 8
Ragesters fees 7 14 0
Chanman 8 0 0
purvisions of the tower... 2 0 0
26 17 8
You will also Send a Copy of the agreement betwixt Mr. the warrants overton and myself Where I Red
I am, sir, your omble servant,
DANIEL BOONE.
NOTE. The above sum equals $89.61.
Boone's Legacy:
_headpiece_p126.png)
