Stories of Later American History Part 10

DANIEL BOONE

You remember that when the Last French War began, in 1756, the English colonists lived almost entirely east of the Alleghany Mountains. If you will look at your map, you will see how small a part of our present great country they occupied.

Even up to the beginning of the Revolution the Americans had few settlers west of the Alleghanies, and had done very little there to make good their claims to land.

Yet at the close of the war we find that their western boundary-line had been pushed back as far as the Mississippi River. How this was done we shall see if we turn our attention to those early hunters and backwoodsmen who did great service to our country as pioneers in opening up new lands.

One of the most famous of these was Daniel Boone. He was born in Pennsylvania, and, like many of the heroes of the Revolution, he was born in the "thirties" (1735).

As a boy, Daniel liked to wander in the woods with musket and fis.h.i.+ng-rod, and was never so happy as when alone in the wild forest. The story is told that while a mere lad he wandered one day into the woods some distance from home and built himself a rough shelter of logs, where he would spend days at a time, with only his rifle for company.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Daniel Boone.]

As he was a "good shot," we may be sure he never went hungry for lack of food. The game which his rifle brought down he would cook over a pile of burning sticks. If you have done outdoor camp cooking, you can almost taste its woodland flavor. Then at night as he lay under the star-lit sky on a bed of leaves, with the skin of a wild animal for covering, a prince might have envied his dreamless slumber.

This free, wild life made him thoroughly at home in the forests, and trained him for the work he was to do later as a fearless hunter and woodsman.

When Daniel was about thirteen years old his father removed to North Carolina and settled on the Yadkin River. There the boy grew to manhood.

After his marriage, at twenty, he built himself a hut far out in the lonely forest, beyond the homes of the other settlers.

But he was a restless man and looked with longing toward the rugged mountains on the west. Along the foothills other pioneer settlers and hunters had taken up their abode. And young Boone's imagination leaped to the country beyond the mountains, where the forest stretched for miles upon miles, no one knew how far, to the Mississippi River. It was an immense wilderness teeming with game, and he wanted to hunt and explore in it.

He was twenty-five when he made the first "long hunt" we know about. At this time he went as far as what is now Boone's Creek, in eastern Tennessee.

Other trips doubtless he made which increased his love for wandering; and in 1769, nine years after his first trip, having heard from a stray Indian of a wonderful hunting-ground far to the west, he started out with this Indian and four other men to wander through the wilderness of Kentucky.

For five weeks these bold hunters threaded their way through lonely and pathless mountain forests, facing many dangers from wild beasts and Indians.

BOONE GOES TO KENTUCKY

But when, in June, they reached the blue-gra.s.s region of Kentucky, a beautiful land of stretching prairies, lofty forests, and running streams, they felt well repaid for all the hards.h.i.+ps of their long journey. It was indeed as the Indian had said, alive with game. Buffaloes, wolves, bears, elk, deer, and wild beasts of many kinds abounded, making truly a hunter's paradise.

They at once put up a log shelter, and for six months they hunted to their hearts' content. Then one day two of the party, Boone himself and a man named Stewart, while off on a hunting expedition, were captured by an Indian band. For several days the dusky warriors carefully guarded the two white captives. But on the seventh night, having eaten greedily of game they had killed during the day, they fell into a sound sleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boone's Escape from the Indians.]

Then Boone, who had been watching for this chance, arose quietly from his place among the sleeping Indians and gently wakened Stewart. The two crept stealthily away until out of hearing of the Indians, when, rising to their feet, they bounded off like deer through the dark woods to their own camp.

But they found no one there, for the rest of the party had fled back home.

However, Boone and Stewart stayed on, and some weeks later they were pleasantly surprised when Daniel's brother, Squire Boone, also a woodsman, unexpectedly arrived with another man and joined the camp. The four were quite contented, living and hunting together, until one day Stewart was shot by an Indian and killed. His death so frightened the man who had come over the mountains with Squire Boone, that the woods lost their charm for the poor fellow and he went back home.

So only the two brothers were left. They remained together three months longer in a little cabin in the forest. Then, as their powder and lead were getting low, Squire Boone returned to North Carolina for a fresh supply, leaving his brother to hold the hunting-ground.

Now Boone was left all alone. His life was continually in danger from the Indians. For fear of being surprised, he dared not sleep in camp, but hid himself at night in the cane-brake or thick underbrush, not even kindling a fire lest he should attract the Indians.

During these weeks of waiting for his brother, he led a very lonely life.

In all that time he did not speak to a single human being, nor had he even a dog, cat, or horse for company. Without salt, sugar, or flour, his sole food was the game he shot or caught in traps.

How gladly he must have welcomed his brother, who returned at the end of two months, bringing the needed supplies! Other hunters also came from time to time, and Boone joined one party of them for a while.

After two years of his life in the woods he returned to his home on the Yadkin to bring out his wife and children.

By September, 1773, he had sold his farm and was ready with his family to go and settle in Kentucky. He had praised the new land so much that many others wished to go with him. So when he started there were, besides his wife and children, five families and forty men driving their horses and cattle before them. This group was the first to attempt settlement far out in the wilderness, away from the other settlers.

But while still on its way, the little company was set upon by a band of Indians near a narrow and difficult pa.s.s in the mountains. Six men were killed, among them Boone's eldest son, and the cattle were scattered. This misfortune brought such gloom upon the party that all turned back for a time to a settlement on the Clinch River.

But Daniel Boone was one of those who would not give up. He said of himself that he was "ordained of G.o.d to settle the wilderness," and in the end he carried out his unflinching purpose to make his home in the beautiful Kentucky region.

This region had already become well known by report east of the mountains.

The Indians called it "a dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground," for, as an old chief told Boone, many tribes hunted and fought there, and the Indians had roamed over it for hundreds of years.

But none of the tribes really owned the land. So it was not possible to buy any part of it outright. Yet, to avoid strife, a friend of Boone's, Richard Henderson, and a few others made treaties with the most powerful tribe, the Cherokees, who said that they might settle there.

As soon as it became certain that the Indians would not make trouble, Henderson sent Boone, in charge of thirty men, to open a pathway from the Holston River through c.u.mberland Gap to the Kentucky River.

With their axes the men chopped out a path through the dense undergrowth and cane-brakes broad enough for a pack-horse. You will be interested to know that this bridle-path was the beginning of the famous "Wilderness Road," as it is still called. Later the narrow trail was widened into a highway for wagons, and it was along this way, rightly called a "wilderness road," that in later years so many thousand settlers led their pack-trains over the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee.

But that is taking a long look ahead! Just now we are thinking about the very first of these settlers, Daniel Boone and his company.

THE KENTUCKY SETTLERS AT BOONESBOROUGH

When they reached the Kentucky River, Boone and his followers built a fort on the left bank of the stream and called it Boonesborough. Its four walls consisted in part of the outer sides of log cabins, and in part of a stockade, some twelve feet high, made by setting deep into the ground stout posts with pointed tops. In all the cabins there were loopholes through which to shoot, and at each corner of the fort stood a loophole blockhouse. There were also two strong wooden gates on opposite sides of the fort.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boonesborough.]

After the fort was built, Boone went back to the Clinch River and brought on his wife and children. When they settled, it was springtime, and Kentucky was at its best. Trees were in leaf, the beautiful dogwood was in flower, and the woods were fragrant with the blossoms of May. Do you wonder that they loved their new home?

At first the cattle and horses were always driven into the fort at night.

Later, however, every settler had a cabin in his own clearing, where he lived with his family and took care of his own stock. But even then in time of great danger all went to the fort, driving their animals inside its walls. This fort, with the outlying cabins, made the first permanent settlement in Kentucky.

Boone was a man you would have liked to know. Even the Indians admired him. He was tall and slender, with muscles of iron, and so healthy and strong that he could endure great hards.h.i.+p. Though quiet and serious, his courage never shrank in the face of danger, and men believed in him because he believed in himself, while at the same time his kind heart and tender sympathy won him lasting friends.h.i.+ps. These vigorous and sterling qualities commanded respect everywhere.

As a rule he wore the Indian garb of fur cap, fringed hunting-s.h.i.+rt, moccasins and leggings, all made from the skins of wild animals he had taken. This dress best suited the wilderness life.

Of course, this life in a new country would not be without its exciting adventures. One day, some months after Boone's family had come to Boonesborough, Boone's daughter, with two girl friends, was on the river floating in a boat near the bank. Suddenly five Indians darted out of the woods, seized the three girls, and hurried away with them. In their flight the Indians observed the eldest of the girls breaking twigs and dropping them in their trail. They threatened to tomahawk her unless she stopped it. But, watching her chance, from time to time she tore off strips of her dress and dropped them as a clew for those she knew would come to rescue them.

When the capture became known, Boone, accompanied by the three lovers of the captured maidens and four other men from the fort, started upon the trail and kept up the pursuit until, early on the second morning, they discovered the Indians sitting around a fire cooking breakfast. Suddenly the white men fired a volley, killing two of the Indians and frightening the others so badly that they beat a hasty retreat without harming the girls.

Another exciting experience, which nearly caused the settlement to lose its leader, came about through the settlers' need of salt. We can get salt so easily that it is hard to imagine the difficulty which those settlers, living far back from the ocean, had in obtaining this necessary part of their food. They had to go to "salt-licks," as they called the grounds about the salt-water springs. The men would get the salt water from the springs and boil it until all the water evaporated and left the salt behind.

Boone with twenty-nine other men had gone, early in 1778, to the Blue Licks to make salt for the settlement. They were so successful that in a few weeks they were able to send back a load so large that it took three men to carry it. Hardly had they started, however, when the men remaining, including Boone, were surprised by eighty or ninety Indians, captured, and carried off to the English at Detroit.

For we must not forget that all this time, while we have been following Boone's fortunes west of the Alleghanies, on the east side of those mountains the Revolution was being fought, and the Indians west of the Alleghanies were fighting on the English side. They received a sum of money for handing over to the English at Detroit any Americans they might capture, and that is why the Indians took Boone and his companions to that place.

But, strangely enough, the Indians decided not to give Boone up, although the English, realizing that he was a prize, offered five hundred dollars for him. The Indians admired him because he was a mighty hunter, and they liked him because he was cheerful. So they adopted him into the tribe and took him to their home.