“[W]e behold Kentucky, lately a howling wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a fruitful field; this region, so favorably distinguished by nature, now become the habitation of civilization, at a period unparalleled in history, in the midst of a raging war, and under all the disadvantages of emigration to a country so remote from the inhabited parts of the continent.
“Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent; where the horrid yells of savages and the groans of the distressed sounded in our ears, we now hear the praises and adorations of our Creator; where wretched wigwams stood, the miserable abodes of savages, we behold the foundations of cities laid, that, in all probability, will equal the glory of the greatest upon earth. And we view Kentucky, situated on the fertile banks of the great Ohio, rising from obscurity to shine with splendor, equal to any other of the stars of the American hemisphere.”
— Daniel Boone, as related to John Filson, Colonel Boone’s Autobiography, 1784
Daniel Boone had a vision. He saw himself leading his family, friends and neighbors to a pristine wilderness brimming with opportunity. And he saw himself as the owner of enough land to ensure his future security. The object of his ambitions was the unsettled land known as Kentucky.
Siege
However, during Daniel Boone’s first decade in Kentucky, it was still a “howling wilderness.” The challenges—and the setbacks—were many. On his first failed expedition to lead would-be settlers to the Promised Land, he had lost his oldest son in an American Indian attack. During the course of establishing Boonesborough as a frontier settlement, Boone’s daughter, Jemima, was taken by hostile warriors, calling forth a dramatic rescue operation. Over the years, Boone himself had been shot, tomahawked and, in early 1778, captured by the Shawnee and held for several months before escaping to Boonesborough.
As a prisoner and adopted son of Chief Blackfish, Boone had bought time for his family and neighbors by promising to surrender Boonesborough to the Native Americans in the spring. In August 1778, Blackfish, accompanied by some 400 warriors, arrived at the fort to “remind” the recently escaped frontiersman of his promise. When the men of Boonesborough unanimously voted to fight rather than surrender, the fort came under immediate siege.
For the next several days, the Shawnee and the settlers exchanged fire, as the American Indians periodically lobbed torches inside the stockade. On the evening of the 10th day, the natives launched a full-scale attack, setting several roofs on fire. The defenders, however, repelled them yet again and, with the help of a propitious heavy rain, managed to extinguish the flames. The next day, the Shawnee left, carrying their dead with them.
The fort inhabitants’ long rifles had been far more effective than the British muskets used by the Native Americans, and when the Shawnee finally lifted the siege and departed, Boone estimated that some 27 had been killed, as opposed to two dead settlers. Four were wounded, including Daniel, brother Squire and daughter Jemima.
Trials and Tribulations
Incredibly, instead of attributing their survival to Daniel Boone, the settlement’s militia officers court-martialed him for treason. The charges referred to—as described in Part II (November issue, page 18)—his surrender of his men at the salt lick, his offer to surrender the fort to the British and the Shawnee, his sortie to find the location of the American Indians (it was argued that he had deliberately weakened the fort’s garrison), and his conducting the leading settlers outside the fort in the presence of Blackfish’s warriors.
Boone was found innocent of all charges. In belated appreciation of his efforts in saving the settlement, Boone was commissioned a major in the militia, although the experience of the trial had so shamed him that he rarely referred to it in later life.
Shortly thereafter, Boone left for North Carolina to bring his wife and the rest of his family back to Kentucky. Reportedly, Rebecca was less than enthusiastic at the prospect of returning, having already spent three hard years there and having lost her oldest child. But after wintering on the Yadkin River, they returned to Kentucky and a life, as one biographer wrote, that would see “Boone’s sense of purpose and calling … challenged, diverted, and blurred, as he found himself involved in businesses for which he was not suited, in disputes that puzzled and embarrassed him. What had promised to be a simple life of hunting and trapping and locating land for others became a series of aggravations, failures.”
Boone arrived in late October 1779 to find Boonesborough bustling with new settlers. He immediately moved to a more remote area and established a new settlement, which he dubbed Boone’s Station. Historians have long assumed that the proximity of others was what repeatedly drove Boone to pull up stakes and move. Interestingly, however, Boone, who acknowledged having an “itchy foot,” was far from antisocial. As biographer Michael Lofaro points out, “[L]eading a solitary life was never his aim.” In fact, Boone was ever willing to help his neighbors build a barn, cabin or malt house and was known for his generosity, affability and patience. Colonist Peter Houston, who had spent considerable time with Boone, provided a fair description of the man: “He was one of the most benevolent and fatherly men I ever knew, and all looked to him as their counselor and guide.”
His moves, as Lofaro states, “generally stemmed from an economic necessity. Hunting and trapping paid far better than farming and, to be successful at either, he had to follow the game.” It stood to reason that the more people gathered in an area, the likelier the animal population would grow thin and eventually disappear.
Another way in which Boone hoped to prosper was through land speculation. Once resettled in Kentucky, Boone turned his efforts again to the acquisition of property, having earlier lost his original claims to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s courts. Sadly, his quest for land would continue to be a source of pain and frustration throughout his life.
In 1780, he sold his recent claims at a profit in order to reinvest under a new Virginia law allowing for the purchase of cheap land. Before he set out to finance the new warrants in Williamsburg, several friends entrusted him with their own savings so that he might buy claims for them as well. Carrying thousands of dollars in his saddlebags, Boone and a companion spent the night in a James City, Virginia inn. They awoke to find the money gone and their prospects completely destroyed. As Boone later stated, he was “left destitute.”
His fellow investors held him accountable for their losses, and some suspected that he had purloined the money himself. However, Thomas Hart, who along with his brother had lost the greatest amount to the thieves, criticized Boone’s accusers: “[M]uch degenerated must the people of this Age be, when Amongst them are to be found men to Censure and Blast the Character and Reputation of a person So Just and upright and in whose Breast is a Seat of Virtue too pure to admit of a thought so Base and dishonorable … I have ever found him of a Noble and generous Soul, despising everything mean.” Boone would spend years paying his neighbors back, but pay them back he did.
Apparently, Boone’s financial difficulties did not prevent him from dabbling in politics from time to time. He was still well thought of throughout the region, and in 1781, he was elected to the first of three terms as a representative to the Virginia legislature. According to biographer John Mack Faragher, however, he was anything but a diligent legislator. “He did not take to the work … and was absent a good deal of the time, meeting with old friends or escaping into the woods for short hunts.” Boone’s tenure as a politician would be unremarkable.
Native American Fights … and Losses
Following his return home, Boone continued to have trouble with the American Indians. He was involved in several skirmishes and one full-scale battle. As an old man, Boone would claim to have killed only one native in his lifetime, but from the eyewitness statements of others, as well as his own words, this is clearly not the case. In his constant fight for survival, Boone took his share of Native American lives.
Although he generally managed to emerge unscathed, Boone’s survival would come at a terrible personal cost. On one occasion, shortly after a force under George Rogers Clark raided and burned several native villages, Boone was out bear hunting with his brother, Edward. They were set upon by a war party, and the two were separated in their flight. While Daniel managed to escape his pursuers, Edward, whom the Native Americans mistook for his more celebrated brother, was caught and killed, his head taken to show the tribe that Daniel Boone finally had been slain.
Boone’s most tragic encounter occurred in August 1782, after a large combined force of Shawnee, Cherokee, Delaware, Wyandot and Tawa braves attacked the settlement at Bryan’s Station, killing several settlers and destroying crops and livestock. A party of 182 men from Bryan’s Station, Boonesborough, Harrodsburg and Lexington—including Boone and his young son, Israel—quickly assembled in pursuit. Coming upon an earlier camp, Boone estimated the number of American Indians at around 500 and advised waiting for reinforcements. He was outvoted.
The party pursued the braves along a trail so easily read—including trees blazed with tomahawks—that Boone feared an ambush. When the party reached the Blue Licks along the south bank of the Licking River, Boone knew his suspicions to be correct. Sensing that the natives awaited them in the ravines ahead, he again advised caution, only to be shouted down. With a cry of, “All who are not damned cowards follow me,” Maj. Hugh McGary led the party at a run toward the ravines.
What followed was a bloodbath. The settlers were caught in a murderous fire, and in less than 15 minutes, more than 40 percent of their number lay dead. As Boone later commented, “Many widows were now made.” One of the slain was Israel. Boone threw his son’s body over his shoulder and ran for the river but was forced to put him down in order to escape. “[I]t is painful to think,” Boone told Houston, who was a member of the party, “that my poor boy has fallen prey to the scalping knife.” Then, Houston recalled, “The grand old pioneer wept bitterly.”
Although no one blamed Boone for the defeat, he felt responsible for his inability to convince the others to show caution. “I cannot reflect upon this dreadful scene, but sorrow fills my heart,” he later told John Filson. “My footsteps have often been marked with blood … Two darling sons, and a brother, have I lost by savage hands.”
In the depths of despair following the Blue Licks debacle, Boone was on the verge of abandoning his dream of seeing Kentucky settled. At the end of August, he wrote to Gov. Benjamin Harrison, “I have Encouraged the people here in this Country all that I Could, but I Can no longer Encourage my Neighbors nor my Seff to risque our Lives here at Such Extraordinary hazards … I hope your Excellency will … Send us Some Relief as quick as possible.”
Shortly thereafter, Boone joined Clark and some 1,000 riflemen and staged a reprisal raid, destroying American Indian villages and crops, killing, scalping and taking prisoners as they went. Boone later commented, “We continued our pursuit through five towns on the Miami rivers … burnt them all to ashes, entirely destroyed their corn and other fruits, and everywhere spread a scene of desolation.” The war with the Shawnee would continue for 12 more years, until “Mad Anthony” Wayne finally subdued them at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers.
Jack of All Trades: Surveyor
As a businessman, Daniel Boone nearly always struggled. Sometime around 1783, he found himself involved in a lengthy lawsuit in which his claim of land ownership at Boone’s Station was called into question. Boone, however, was temperamentally ill-suited to courtroom battles. According to chronicler Robert Morgan, “[O]nce a claim was contested, his tendency was to abandon it and move on. He seemed unable or unwilling to adapt to the aggressive commercial and legal culture that was overwhelming the new territory.”
True to form, he uprooted his family and moved to Limestone, Kentucky, which is now the city of Maysville. Described at the time as a “muddy hole of a place with two or three log houses and a tavern,” it sat on the Ohio River and served as a jumping-off site for westering immigrants. There, Boone saw an opportunity to combine his woods skills with the possibility of both earning a decent living and finally acquiring his own land. He advertised himself as a surveyor and jobber—a “locator” of suitable land for investors. It was a function he had served earlier at Boonesborough, and he now passed an exam licensing him by the Commonwealth of Virginia as a deputy surveyor.
Boone’s wilderness skills were generally known, and he had no difficulty in attracting clients. At this time, the filing and purchasing of land in Kentucky was chaotic in the extreme. The entire region was poorly mapped where it was mapped at all and was being overrun by scoundrels and opportunists who would “claim” a tract of land by simply building a ramshackle cabin on it. They would then sell it, often several times, to unsuspecting settlers and investors.
As it turned out, Boone’s knowledge of the woods far outstripped his business sense and attention to detail. In a time and place in which land claims were constantly being disputed, he was haphazard in his methods and often oblivious to the possibilities of litigation. His approach to filing was generally hurried and unorthodox, and some of his clients lost their claims due to his procedural errors. Boone even had a claim of his own overturned in court because he had filed it “by right of discovery” rather than filing the appropriate papers and paying the required fees. Writes Lofaro, “Daniel’s lack of time and money often was matched only by his naiveté. He never thought anyone would question the legality of his claims. He was wrong.”
Boone lost a number of his claims through cross-filings and writs of ejectment. In numerous instances, believing he owned certain tracts, he sold them to finance further speculation, only to discover that others had laid valid claims to the same land. Not only did Boone again find himself landless, but he was now the object of several suits for damages, placing him in a degree of debt from which he was unable to extricate himself for years to come.
Daniel Boone, Businessman
At the same time he had earned his deputy surveyor’s license, Boone built a store and tavern in Limestone. At least for the moment, he proved to be a better store owner and innkeeper than surveyor, and he established a decent livelihood. And since the Commonwealth held a fair number of American Indian captives to exchange for captured settlers, Boone obtained a contract to supply food and goods to the Native American prisoners. For the first time in their lives, the Boones courted prosperity.
The tax rolls for 1787 indicate that Daniel owned seven slaves, who doubtless were put to work in the tavern and store. The fact that Boone was a slave owner has bedeviled historians. However, it must be remembered that while Boone was a lifelong proponent of personal liberty, he was also a product of a time and place in which slavery was an accepted fact of life. Writes Morgan, “Though some writers have tried to argue that Boone disapproved of slavery, there is little evidence for the argument.” Morgan further suggests that when Boone’s fortunes were at a low, he stooped to slave trading.
By this time, author Filson’s short “autobiography” of Boone, ostensibly dictated by the frontiersman himself, had been published and widely read. Soon, people throughout the fledgling nation as well as in France and Germany were familiar with Boone’s name, along with some of his more dramatic—if rhetorically enhanced—exploits. Filson’s flowery account concludes with a well-settled, complacent Boone stating, “This account of my adventures will inform the reader of the most remarkable events of this country. I now live in peace and safety, enjoying the sweets of liberty, and the bounties of Providence, with my once fellow-sufferers, in this delightful country, which I have seen purchased with a vast expense of blood and treasure: delighting in the prospect of its being, in a short time, one of the most opulent and powerful States on the continent of North America; which, with the love and gratitude of my countrymen, I esteem a sufficient reward for all my toil and dangers.”
Aging and Endings
Sadly, Boone’s euphoria was more the product of Filson’s creative wordsmithing than his subject’s actual words. For the real-life Boone, prosperity ultimately proved elusive. He continued to be dogged by business problems. His business as a surveyor, jobber and land speculator was in shambles, and after years of diligent effort, he quit the storekeeper’s trade over contract disputes. Determined to succeed as a horse trader, he sent two sons to sell a herd of horses, only to have several of the animals run away. At one juncture, he tried to make a business of gathering and selling the highly prized ginseng plant, only to have half of the shipment ruined by flooding.
Over all his efforts loomed the ever-present specter of debt, a problem that was exacerbated by the ever-trusting Boone’s lifelong habit of extending loans to untrustworthy people. His creditors pursued him relentlessly, to the point where, between 1789 and 1803, he and his family moved no fewer than six times, finally leaving Kentucky for good. Writes Lofaro, “The measure of Daniel’s bitterness over his treatment in Kentucky could not be underestimated.”
Out of necessity as well as pleasure, Boone would sometimes fall back on his hunting skills to fill the larder. In 1797, the 63-year-old Daniel and son Nathan killed 156 bears, selling the skins for up to $5 apiece, the carcasses for $20, and the oil for $1 per gallon. His success in taking deer and beaver was equally impressive. The old “Leatherstocking” had not lost his touch.
Boone ultimately settled in Spanish-owned Missouri. His fame had preceded him, and in 1800, in exchange for attracting more settlers, the governor gave him a significant land grant, along with an appointment as “syndic” (magistrate) for the Femme Osage district, some 60 miles west of St. Louis. Acting as administrator, sheriff, judge and jury, Boone thrived in the position, earning the locals’ respect as an evenhanded, benevolent patron.
Sadly, Boone’s role as regional magistrate lasted only a short time. The following year, Spain transferred the entire region to France, which sold it to the fledgling United States in 1803. As a result of this so-called Louisiana Purchase, Boone’s position was soon terminated, and his property allotment was rescinded. Once again, he had failed to follow the proper procedures in filing his land claim, believing that, since he was an official of the Spanish government, such a step was unnecessary. Although he personally appeared before the Federal Land Commission to petition for the return of his land grant, the courts declared Boone’s claims null and void in 1809.
By that time, Daniel was well into his 70s and suffering from severe rheumatism, exacerbated by a recent near-fatal plunge through the ice of the Missouri River, as well as the physical reminders of several narrow-but-punishing brushes with death. Conflict with American Indians continued to be a problem. Missouri was home to the powerful Osage, a tribe even more warlike and daunting than the Shawnee and Cherokee.
Personal loss took a terrible toll on Boone, as well. In addition to the two sons who had been slain by Native Americans, he had lost three of his four daughters, and in 1813, he buried his beloved Rebecca.
The following year, Congress, in belated recognition of Boone’s service, gave him a tract of land in what was then being called Missouri Territory. The 80-year-old frontiersman finally had a land claim that would stand undisputed.
In 1817, Boone fell ill on what would prove to be his last hunt, limiting him to a relatively sedentary existence. Three years later, sensing the end was near, Boone made arrangements to be buried near Rebecca and called on family members to prepare him for his death. They shaved him, cut his hair (saving the cuttings for posterity), and brushed his remarkably full set of teeth. “My teeth,” he commented, “would yet serve anybody a lifetime!” He then asked his daughter-in-law, Olive, to sing him some of his favorite songs.
On Sept. 28, 1820, after bidding farewell to Nathan, Jemima and other family members, he uttered his last words: “I am going, my time has come.” Daniel Boone, lifelong survivor of American Indian attacks and the harsh vagaries of wilderness life, died peacefully in bed, just one month before his 86th birthday.
A quarter-century after his death, delegates from Kentucky—the state that had alternately ignored him, denied his land claims, and threatened to jail him for non-payment of debts—traveled to his and Rebecca’s gravesites in Femme Osage Creek, Missouri. According to Marc Houseman, president of Missouri’s Friends of the Daniel Boone Burial Site, “Some Frankfort businessmen were building a new cemetery, and they wanted a celebrity buried there as a commercial draw.” Ignoring the fact that Boone had left Kentucky more than 20 years before his death, vowing never to return, they exhumed what human artifacts they could find and reburied the Boones’ remains in Frankfort. Kentucky had finally claimed him as its own.
Looking Back: Legends and Facts
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, opportunists and would-be authorities turned out countless portraits, plays, biographies, films and a successful television series purportedly depicting the life of Daniel Boone. Few, if any, bore a resemblance to the historical person. Only over the past few decades have biographers seriously attempted to separate the facts from the folklore. What has emerged is the story of a man who was both a legend in, and a product of, his time.
Boone, along with other denizens of the deep forests such as Robert Rogers and David Crockett, was at his best in the wild, where his natural skills could best be utilized and appreciated. As biographer Lofaro states, “Daniel seems always to have suffered at the hands of civilization.” Unwittingly, in helping to open Kentucky to white settlement, Boone had become the author of his own obsolescence. By living to old age, he witnessed his once-beloved Kentucky grow from the beckoning wilderness of his dreams into a world, writes Robert Morgan, “that was … repugnant to him, so raging and relentless in its growth and greed.”
Morgan makes what is perhaps the most profound observation on Boone and his time: “[H]eroes such as Boone were essential to the settlement of the frontier, but once the wilderness and Indians were gone, society had little use for the men themselves. It was the legend that was important.”
More than 200 years after Boone’s death, he continues to represent the consummate American frontiersman—the flesh-and-blood version of James Fenimore Cooper’s Deerslayer. Of all the paeans to the self-described “itchy-footed” frontiersman, perhaps Boone would have most appreciated the tribute paid to him by Daniel Carter Beard, founder of a popular youth organization in 1905, years before the establishment of the Boy Scouts of America. Beard, in his own words, strove to create “a society of scouts to be identified with the greatest of all Scouts, Daniel Boone, and to be known as the Sons of Daniel Boone.” Having lost two of his own sons to the tomahawk and scalping knife, such an honor no doubt would have touched Boone deeply.
Boone Illustration by Jessica Patton