xt7fbg2h7g02 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7fbg2h7g02/data/mets.xml Thwaites, Reuben Gold, 1853-1913. 19241902  books b92-106-27901942 English D. Appleton, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820. Daniel Boone  / by Reuben Gold Thwaites. text Daniel Boone  / by Reuben Gold Thwaites. 1924 2002 true xt7fbg2h7g02 section xt7fbg2h7g02 







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DANIEL BOONE




 



















































                   DANIEL BOONE.
From the portrait by Chester Harding made in 1819, when Boone
         was eighty-five years old. (See pp. 237-239.)


 






  g1Iant                3oone



                  BY
     REUBEN GOLD THWAITES
Author of "Father Marquette," "-The Colonies, 1492-
1750," "Down Historic Waterways," "Afloat on the
   Ohio," etc., Editor of "The Jesuit Relations and
     Allied Documents," "n Chronicles of Border
       Warfare," "n Wisconsin Historical
              Collections," etc.
                   v

            Illustra ted








         NEW YORK AND LONDON
    D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                  1924


 




























           COPYRIGHT, 1902
  BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
























Printed in the United States of America


 





















     TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE

LYMAN COPELAND DRAPER, LL. D.

    WHOSE UNPARALLELED COLLECTION OF
    MANUSCRIPT MATERIALS FOR WESTERN
    HISTORY IN THE LIBRARY OF THE
    WISCONSIN STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
       HAS MADE PRACTICABLE THE
    PREPARATION OF THIS LITTLE BOOK


 
This page in the original text is blank.


 


PREFACE



   POETS, historians, and orators have for
a hundred years sung the praises of Daniel
Boone as the typical backwoodsman of the
trans-Alleghany region.  Despite popular
belief, he was not really the founder of Ken-
tucky. Other explorers and hunters had
been there long before him; he himself was
piloted through Cumberland Gap by John
Finley; and his was not even the first perma-
nent settlement in Kentucky, for Harrods-
burg preceded it by nearly a year; his serv-
ices in defense of the West, during nearly a
half century of border warfare, were not
comparable to those of George Rogers Clark
or Benjamin Logan; as a commonwealth
builder he was surpassed by several. Nev-
ertheless, Boone's picturesque career pos-
sesses a romantic and even pathetic interest
that can never fail to charm the student of
history. He was great as a hunter, explorer,
                   Vil


 


Daniel Boone



surveyor, and land-pilot-probably he found
few equals as a rifleman; no man on the
border knew Indians more thoroughly or
fought them more skilfully than he; his life
was filled to the brim with perilous adven-
tures. He was not a man of affairs, he did
not understand the art of money-getting, and
he lost his lands because, although a sur-
veyor, he was careless of legal forms of en-
try. He fled before the advance of the civili-
zation which he had ushered in: from Penn-
sylvania, wandering with his parents to
North Carolina in search of broader lands;
thence into Kentucky because the Carolina
borders were crowded; then to the Kanawha
Valley, for the reason that Kentucky was
being settled too fast to suit his fancy; lastly
to far-off Missouri, in order, as he said, to
get " elbow room." Experiences similar to
his have made misanthropes of many an-
other man-like Clark, for instance; but the
temperament of this honest, silent, nature-
loving man only mellowed with age; his
closing years were radiant with the sunshine
of serene content and the dimly appreciated
consciousness of world-wide fame; and he
                   vii


 
Preface



died full of years, in heart a simple hunter
to the last-although he had also served with
credit as magistrate, soldier, and legislator.
At his death the Constitutional Convention
of Missouri went into mourning for twenty
days, and the State of Kentucky claimed his
bones, and has erected over them a suitable
monument.
   There have been published many lives of
Boone, but none of them in recent years.
Had the late Dr. Lyman Copeland Draper, of
Wisconsin, ever written the huge biography
for which he gathered materials throughout
a lifetime of laborious collection, those vol-
umes-there were to be several-would
doubtless have uttered the last possible word
concerning the famous Kentucky pioneer.
Draper's manuscript, however, never ad-
vanced beyond a few chapters; but the raw
materials which he gathered for this work,
and for many others of like character, are
now in the library of the Wisconsin State
Historical Society, available to all scholars.
From this almost inexhaustible treasure-
house the present writer has obtained the
bulk of his information, and has had the ad-
                    ix


 
Daniel Boone



vantage of being able to consult numerous
critical notes made by his dear and learned
friend. A book so small as this, concerning a
character every phase of whose career was
replete with thrilling incident, would doubt-
less not have won the approbation of Dr.
Draper, whose unaccomplished biographical
plans were all drawn upon a large scale;
but we are living in a busy age, and life is
brief-condensation is the necessary order
of the day. It will always be a source of re-
gret that Draper's projected literary monu-
ment to Boone was not completed for the
press, although its bulk would have been for-
bidding to any but specialists, who would
have sought its pages as a cyclopedia of
Western border history.
   Through the courtesy both of Colonel
Reuben T. Durrett, of Louisville, President
of the Filson Club, and of Mrs. Ranck, we
are permitted to include among our illustra-
tions reproductions of some of the plates in
the late George W. Ranck's stately mono-
graph upon Boonesborough. Aid in tracing
original portraits of Boone has been received
from Mrs. Jennie C. Morton and General
                    x


 


               Preface

Fayette Hewitt, of Frankfort; Miss Marjory
Dawson and Mr. W. G. Lackey, of St. Louis;
Mr. William H. King, of Winnetka, Ill.; and
Mr. J. Marx Etting, of Philadelphia.
                            R. G. T.
  MADISON, WIS.


 
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CONTENTS



DAlER
      PREFACE
   I. ANCESTRY AND TRAINING
   II. THE NIMROD OF THE YADKIN
 III. LIFE ON THE BORDER.
 IV. RED MAN AGAINST WHITE MAN.
 V. KENTUCKY REACHED AT LAST
 VI. ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS
 VII. PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES
 VIII. THE HERO OF CLINCH VALLEY
 IX. THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY.
 X. Two YEARS OF DARKNESS .
 XI. THE SIEGE OF BOONESBOROUGH
 XII. SOLDIER AND STATESMAN .
 XIII. KENTUCKY'S PATH OF THORNS
 KIV. IN THE KANAWHA VALLEY
 XV. A SERENE OLD AGE
     INDEX.



         PAG
      .  vii
    .   .    1
    .   .  13
    .  24
      .  35
    .  .   55
        .  71
        .  85
    .  .   97
    .  .  118
    .  . 129
    .  . 146
        . 169
    .  . 192
    . . 211
    .  . 223
  .   . 243



xifi


 
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         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                               Tanie
                                                 PAGI
Portrait of Daniel Boone    .r.n.isre
Boone's powder-horn and bake-kettle               30
A Boone tree, 1760.        .      .     .         56
A survey note by Boone                            120
Fort Boonesborough.       .         .            136
Climax of the treaty  .     .     .     .         162
Site of Boonesborough to-day  .   .   .    .      174
Boone's cabin in St. Charles County, Missouri       . 224
Nathan Boone's house in St. Charles County, Missouri. 230
Boone's religious views (two pages)            . 234
Boone's monument at Frankfort, Ky.               240


 
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       DANIEL BOONE



              CHAPTER I

         ANCESTRY AND TRAINING

   THE grandfather of Daniel Boone-
George by name-was born in 1666 at the
peaceful little hamlet of Stoak, near the city,
of Exeter, in Devonshire, England. His
father had been a blacksmith; but he him-
self acquired the weaver's art. In due time
George married Mary Maugridge, a young
woman three years his junior, and native of
the neighboring village of Bradninch, whither
he had gone to follow his trade. This worthy
couple, professed Quakers, became the par-
ents of nine children, all born .n Bradninch
-George, Sarah, Squire, Mary, John, Jo-
seph, Benjamin, James, anct Samruel. All of



   Not an abbreviation of I esquire," as has been supposed,
but given because of some old family connection. This name
was transmitted through several generations of Boones.
                    1


 


Daniel Boone



these, except John, married, and left numer-
ous descendants in America.
   The elder Boones were ambitious for the
welfare of their large family. They were
also fretful under the bitter intolerance
encountered by Quakers in those unrestful
times. As the children grew to maturity,
the enterprising weaver sought information
regarding the colony which his coreligionist
William Penn had, some thirty years pre-
vious, established in America, where were
promised cheap lands, religious freedom,
political equality, and exact justice to all
men. There were then no immigration bu-
reaus to encourage and instruct those who
proposed settling in America; no news-letters
from traveling correspondents, to tell the
people at home about the Western world; or
books or pamphlets illustrating the country.
The only methvd which occurred to George
Boone, of Bradrninch, by which he could sat-
isfy himself regai ding the possibilities of
Pennsylvan'a as a future home for his house-
hold, was to send out some of his older chil-
dren as prospectors.
   Accordingly-somewhere about 1712-14,
                    2


 


      Ancestry and Training

family tradition says-young George (aged
from twenty-two to twenty-four years), Sa-
rah (a year and a half younger), and Squire
(born November 25, 1696) were despatched
to the promised land, and spent several
months in its inspection. Leaving Sarah
and Squire in Pennsylvania, George re-
turned to his parents with a favorable re-
port.
   On the seventeenth of August, 1717, the
Boones, parents and children, bade a sorrow-
ful but brave farewell to their relatives and
friends in old Bradninch, whom they were
never again to see. After journeying some
eighty miles over rugged country to the port
of Bristol, they there entered a sailing vessel
bound for Philadelphia, where they safely ar-
rived upon the tenth of October.
   Philadelphia was then but a village. Laid
out like a checker-board, with architecture of
severe - simplicity, its best residences were
surrounded by gardens and orchards. The
town was substantial, neat, and had the ap-
pearance of prosperity; but the frontier was
not far away-beyond outlying fields the un-
tamed forest closed in upon the little capital.
                    3


 


Daniel Boone



The fur trade flourished but two or three
days' journey into the forest, and Indians
were frequently seen upon the streets.
When, therefore, the Boones decided to set-
tle in what is now Abingdon, twelve or four-
teen miles north of the town, in a sparse
neighborhood of Quaker farmers, they at
once became backwoodsmen, such as they re-
mained for the rest of their lives.
   They were, however, not long in Abing-
don. Soon after, we find them domiciled a
few miles to the northwest in the little fron-
tier hamlet of North Wales, in Gwynedd
township; this was a Welsh community
whose members had, a few years before,
turned Quakers.
   Sarah Boone appears, about this time, to
have married one Jacob Stover, a German
who settled in Oley township, now in Berks
County. The elder George Boone, now that
he had become accustomed to moving, after
his long, quiet years as a Devonshire weaver,
appears to have made small ado over folding
his family tent and seeking other pastures.
In 1718 he took out a warrant for four hun-
dred acres of land in Oley, and near the close
                    4


 
      Ancestry and Training

of the following year removed to his daugh-
ter's neighborhood. This time he settled in
earnest, for here in Oley-or rather the later
subdivision thereof called Exeter-he spent
the remainder of his days, dying in his orig-
inal log cabin there, in 1744, at the age of
seventy-eight. He left eight children, fifty-
two grandchildren, and ten great-grandchil-
dren-in all, seventy descendants: Devon-
shire men, Germans, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish
amalgamated into a sturdy race of American
pioneers.
   Among the early Welsh Quakers in the
rustic neighborhood of North Wales were the
Morgans. On the twenty-third of July, 1720,
at the Gwynedd meeting-house, in accordance
with the Quaker ceremony, Squire Boone
married Sarah Morgan, daughter of John.
A descendant tells us that at this time
"Squire Boone was a man of rather small
stature, fair complexion, red hair, and gray
eyes; while his wife was a woman something
over the common size, strong and active, with
black hair and eyes, and raised in the Quaker
order."
   For ten or eleven years Squire and Sarah
                    5


 
Daniel Boone



Boone lived in Gwynedd township, probably
on rented land, the former adding to their
small income by occasional jobs of weaving,
for he had learned his father's trade. They
were thrifty folk, but it took ten years under
these primitive conditions to accumulate even
the small sum sufficient to acquire a farm of
their own. Toward the close of the year
1730, Squire obtained for a modest price a
grant of 250 acres of land situated in his
father's township, Oley-a level tract adapt-
ed to grazing purposes, on Owatin Creek,
some eight miles southeast of the present
city of Reading, and a mile and a half from
Exeter meeting-house. Here, probably early
in 1731, the Boones removed with their four
children. Relatives and Quaker neighbors
assisted, after the manner of the frontier, in
erecting a log cabin for the new-comers and
in clearing and fencing for them a small
patch of ground.
   In this rude backwoods home, in the val-
ley of the Schuylkill, was born, upon the sec-
ond of November (new style), 1734, Daniel
Boone, fourth son and sixth child of Squire
and Sarah. It is thought that the name
                    6


 


      Ancestry and Training

Daniel was suggested by that of Daniel
Boone, a well-known Dutch painter who
had died in London in 1698, " and who
may have been known, or distantly related,
to the family." The other children were:
Sarah (born in 1724), Israel (1726), Samuel
(1728), Jonathan (1730), Elizabeth (1732),
Mary (1736), George (1739), Edward (1744),
Squire, and Hannah, all of them natives of
Oley.
   Born into a frontier community, Daniel
Boone's entire life was spent amid similar
surroundings, varying only in degree. With
the sight of Indians he was from the first
familiar. They frequently visited Oley and
Exeter, and were cordially received by the
Quakers. George Boone's house was the
scene of many a friendly gathering of the
tribesmen. When Daniel was eight years of
age, the celebrated Moravian missionary,
Count Zinzendorf, held a synod in a barn at
Oley, a party of converted Delaware Indians,
who preached in favor of Christianity, being



   Edward was killed by Indians when thirty-six years old,
and Squire died at the age of seventy-six. Their brothers and
sisters lived to ages varying from eighty-three to ninety-one.
                     7


 


Daniel Boone



the principal attractions at this meeting.
Thus young Boone started in life with an ac-
curate knowledge of the American savage,
which served him well during his later years
of adventurous exploration and settlement-
building.
   Squire Boone appears soon to have be-
come a leader in his community. His farm,
to whose acres he from time to time added,
was attended to as closely as was usual
among the frontiersmen of his day; and at
home the business of weaving was not neg-
lected, for he kept in frequent employment
five or six looms, making " homespun"
cloths for his neighbors and the market. He
had an excellent grazing range some five or
six miles north of the homestead, and each
season sent his stock thither, as was the cus-
tom at that time. Mrs. Boone and Daniel ac-
companied the cows, and from early spring
until late in autumn lived in a rustic cabin,
far from any other human beings. Hard by,
over a cool spring, was a dairy-house, in
which the stout-armed mother made and kept
her butter and cheese; while her favorite boy
watched the herd as, led by their bell-car-
                    8


 
      Ancestry and Training

riers, they roamed at will through the woods,
his duty at sunset being to drive them to the
cabin for milking, and later to lock them for
the night within the cow-pens, secure from
wild animals or prowling cattle-thieves.
   While tending his cattle, a work involving
abundant leisure, the young herdsman was
also occupied in acquiring the arts of the for-
est. For the first two or three years-his
pastoral life having commenced at the tender
age of ten-his only weapon was a slender,
smoothly shaved sapling, with a small bunch
of gnarled roots at the end, in throwing
which he grew so expert as easily to kill
birds and other small game. When reaching
the dignity of a dozen years, his father
bought him a rifle, with which he soon be-
came an unerring marksman. But, although
he henceforth provided wild meat enough for
the family, his passion for hunting some-
times led him to neglect the cattle, which
were allowed to stray far from home and
pass the night in the deep forest.
   Soon each summer of herding came to be
succeeded by a winter's hunt. In this occu-
pation the boy roved far and wide over the
                    9


 
Daniel Boone



Neversink mountain-range to the north and
west of Monocacy Valley, killing and curing
game for the family, and taking the skins to
Philadelphia, where he exchanged them for
articles needed in the chase-long hunting-
knives, and flints, lead, and powder for his
gun.
   In those days the children of the frontier
grew up with but slight store of such educa-
tion as is obtainable from books. The open
volume of nature, however, they carefully
conned. The ways of the wilderness they
knew full well-concerning the storms and
floods, the trees and hills, the wild animals
and the Indians, they were deeply learned;
well they knew how to live alone in the forest,
and to thrive happily although surrounded
by a thousand lurking dangers. This quiet,
mild-mannered, serious-faced Quaker youth,
Daniel Boone, was an ardent lover of the
wild woods and their inhabitants, which he
knew as did Audubon and Thoreau; but of
regular schooling he had none. When he
was about fourteen years of age, his brother
Samuel, nearly seven years his senior, mar-
ried Sarah Day, an intelligent young Quaker-
                   10


 
       Ancestry and Training

ess who had more education than was cus-
tomary in this neighborhood. Sarah taught
Daniel the elements of " the three R's." To
this knowledge he added somewhat by later
self-teaching, so that as a man he could read
understandingly, do rough surveying, keep
notes of his work, and write a sensible al-
though badly spelled letter-for our back-
woods hero was, in truth, no scholar, al-
though as well equipped in this direction as
were most of his fellows.
   In time Squire Boone, a man of enter-
prise and vigor, added blacksmithing to his
list of occupations, and employed his young
sons in this lusty work. Thus Daniel served,
for a time, as a worker in iron as well as a
hunter and herdsman; although it was no-
ticed that his art was chiefly developed in
the line of making and mending whatever
pertained to traps and guns. He was a fear-
less rider of his father's horses; quick,
though bred a Quaker, to resent what he
considered wrong treatment;  true to his



   Indeed, it is a matter of record that other members also
of this rtout-hearted Devonshire family were " sometimes
rather too belligerent and self-willed," and had "occasion-
                    11


 


               Daniel Boone

young friends; fond of long, solitary tramps
through the dark forest, or of climbing hill-
tops for bird's-eye views of the far-stretch-
ing wilderness. Effective training this, for
the typical pioneer of North America.

ally to be dealt with by the meeting." Daniel's oldest sister,
Sarah, married a man who was not a Quaker, and conse-
quently she was "I disowned " by the society.  His oldest
brother, Israel, also married a worldling and was similarly
treated; and their father, who countenanced Israel's disloyal
act and would not retract his error, was in 1748 likewise ex-
pelled.




 
CHAPTER II



       THE NIMROD OF THE YADKIN

   THE lofty barrier of the Alleghany Moun-
tains was of itself sufficient to prevent the
pioneers of Pennsylvania from wandering
far westward. Moreover, the Indians be-
yond these hills were fiercer than those with
whom the Quakers were familiar; their oc-
casional raids to the eastward, through the
mountain passes, won for them a reputation
which did not incline the border farmers to
cultivate their further acquaintance. To the
southwest, however, there were few obstacles
to the spread of settlement. For several
hundred miles the Appalachians run in par-
allel ranges from northeast to southwest-
from Pennsylvania, through Virginia, West
Virginia, the Carolinas, and east Tennessee,
until at last they degenerate into scattered
foot-hills upon the Georgia plain. Through
the long, deep troughs between these ranges
-notably in the famous Valley of Virginia
                    13


 


Daniel Boone



between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies
-Pennsylvanians freely wandered into the
south and southwest, whenever possessed by
thirst for new and broader lands. Hostile
Indians sometimes penetrated these great
valleys and brought misery in their train;
but the work of pioneering along this path
was less arduous than had the western mioun-
tains been scaled at a time when the colonists
were still few and weak.
   Between the years 1732 and 1750, numer-
ous groups of Pennsylvanians-Germans
and Irish largely, with many Quakers among
them-had been wending their way through
the mountain troughs, and gradually pushing
forward the line of settlement, until now it
had reached the upper waters of the Yadkin
River, in the northwest corner of North
Carolina. Trials abundant fell to their lot;
but the soil of the valleys was unusually fer-
tile, game was abundant, the climate mild,
the country beautiful, and life in general upon
the new frontier, although rough, such as to
appeal to the borderers as a thing desirable.
The glowing reports of each new group at-
tracted others. Thus was the wilderness
                    14


 
The Nimrod of the Yadkin



tamed by a steady stream of immigration
from the older lands of the northern colo-
nies, while not a few penetrated to this Ar-
cadia through the passes of the Blue Ridge,
from eastern Virginia and the Carolinas.
   Squire and Sarah Boone, of Oley, now
possessed eleven children, some of whom
were married and settled within this neigh-
borhood which consisted so largely of the
Boones and their relatives. The choicest
lands of eastern Pennsylvania had at last
been located. The outlook for the younger
Boones, who soon would need new home-
steads, did not appear encouraging. The
fame of the Yadkin Valley, five hundred
miles southwestward, had reached Oley, and
thither, in the spring of 1750, the majority
of the Boones, after selling their lands and
surplus stock, bravely took up the line of
march.
   With the women and children stowed in
canvas-covered wagons, the men and boys
riding their horses at front and rear, and
driving the lagging cattle, the picturesque
little caravan slowly found its way to the



 John and James remained, and lived and died in Oley.
                  15


 


Daniel Boone



ford at Harper's Ferry, thence up the
beautiful valley of the Shenandoah. By
night they pitched their camps beside some
gurgling spring, gathered the animals with-
in the circle of the wagons, and, with sen-
tinel posted against possible surprises by
Indians, sat around the blazing fire to dis-
cuss the experiences of the day-Daniel,
as the hunter for the party, doubtless hav-
ing the most interesting adventures of
them all.
   Tradition has it that the Boones tarried
by the way, for a year or more, on Linnville
Creek, six miles north of Harrisonburg, in
Rockingham County, Va. In any event,
they appear to have resumed their journey
by the autumn of 1751. Pushing on through
the Valley of Virginia-an undulating,
heavily forested table-land from three to
ten miles in width-they forded the upper
waters of numerous rivers, some of which,
according to the tilt of the land, flow east-
ward and southeastward toward the Atlantic,
and others westward and southwestward
toward the Ohio. This is one of the fairest
and most salubrious regions in America; but
                    16


 
The Nimrod of the Yadkin



they did not again stop until the promised
land of the Yadkin was reached.
   The country was before them, to choose
from it practically what they would. Be-
tween the Yadkin and the Catawba there was
a broad expanse of elevated prairie, yielding
a luxuriant growth of grass, while the bot-
toms skirting the numerous streams were
thick-grown to canebrake. Here were abun-
dant meadows for the cattle, fish and game
and wild fruits in quantity quite exceeding
young Daniel's previous experience, a well-
tempered climate, and to the westward a
mountain-range which cast long afternoon
shadows over the plain and spoke eloquently
of untamed dominions beyond. Out of thig
land of plenty Squire Boone chose a claim at
Buffalo Lick, where Dutchman's Creek joins
with the North Fork of Yadkin.
   Daniel was now a lad of eighteen. Nom-
inally, he helped in the working of his fa-
ther's farm and in the family smithy; actu-
ally, he was more often in the woods with
his long rifle. At first, buffaloes were so
plenty that a party of three or four men,
with dogs, could kill from ten to twenty in
                   17


 
            Daniel Boone

a day; but soon the sluggish animals receded
before the advance of white men, hiding
themselves behind the mountain wall. An
ordinary hunter could slaughter four or five
deer in a day; in the autumn, he might from
sunrise to sunset shoot enough bears to pro-
vide over a ton of bear-bacon for winter use;
wild turkeys were easy prey; beavers, otters,
and muskrats abounded; while wolves, pan-
thers, and wildcats overran the country.
Overcome by his passion for the chase, our
young Nimrod soon began to spend months
at a time in the woods, especially in autumn
and winter. He found also more profit in
this occupation than at either the forge or
the plow; for at their nearest market town,
Salisbury, twenty miles away, good prices
were paid for skins, which were regularly
shipped thence to the towns upon the At-
lantic coast.
   The Catawba Indians lived about sixty
miles distant, and the Cherokees still farther.
These tribesmen not infrequently visited the
thinly scattered settlement on the Yadkin,
seeking trade with the whites, with whom
they were as yet on good terms. They were,
                    18


 
The Nimrod of the Yadkin



however, now and then raided by Northerin
Indians, particularly the Shawnese, who, col-
lecting in the Valley of Virginia, swept down
upon them with fury; sometimes also com-
mitting depredations upon the whites who
had befriended their tribal enemies, and who
unfortunately had staked their farms in the
old-time war-path of the marauders.
   In the year 1754, the entire American
border, from the Yadkin to the St. Lawrence,
became deeply concerned in the Indian ques-
tion. France and England had long been
rivals for the mastery of the North American
continent lying west of the Alleghanies.
France had established a weak chain of posts
upon the upper Great Lakes, and down the
Mississippi River to New Orleans, thus con-
necting Canada with Louisiana. In the Val-
ley of the Ohio, however, without which the
French could not long hold the Western
country, there was a protracted rivalry be-
tween French and English fur-traders, each
seeking to supplant the intruding foreigner.
This led to the outbreak of the French and
Indian WVar, which was waged vigorously for
five years, until New France fell, and the
                   19


 
Daniel Boone



English obtained control of all Canada and
that portion of the continent lying between
the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi.
   As early as 1748, backwoodsmen from
Pennsylvania had made a small settlement
on New River, just west of the Alleghanies-
a settlement which the Boones must have vis-
ited, as it lay upon the road to the Yadkin;
and in the same season several adventurous
Virginians hunted and made land-claims in
Kentucky and Tennessee. In the following
year there was formed for Western fur trad-
ing and colonizing purposes, the Ohio Com-
pany, composed of wealthy Virginians,
among them two brothers of George Wash-
ington. In 1753 French soldiers built a little
log fort on French Creek, a tributary of the
Alleghany; and, despite Virginia's protest,
delivered by young Major Washington, were
planning to erect another at the forks of the
Ohio, where Pittsburg now is.  Thither
Washington went, in the succeeding year,
with a body of Virginia militiamen, to con-
struct an English stockade at the forks; but
the French defeated him in the Great Mead-
ows hard by and themselves erected the fort.
                   20


 
   The Nimrod of the Yadkin

It is thought by some writers that young
Boone, then twenty years of age, served in
the Pennsylvania militia which protected the
frontier from the Indian forays which suc-
ceeded this episode. A year later (1755) the
inexperienced General Braddock, fresh from
England, set out, with Washington upon his
staff, to teach a lesson to these Frenchmen
who had intruded upon land claimed by the
colony of Virginia.
   In Braddock's little army were a hundred
North Carolina frontiersmen, under Captain
Hugh Waddell; their wagoner and black-
smith was Daniel Boone. His was one of
those heavily laden baggage-wagons which,
history tells us, greatly impeded the progress
of the English, and contributed not a little
to the terrible disaster which overtook the
column in the ravine of Turtle Creek, only
a few miles from Pittsburg. The baggage-
train was the center of a fierce attack from
Indians, led by French officers, and many
drivers were killed. Young Boone, however,
cut the traces of his team, and mounting a
horse, fortunately escaped by flight. Behind
him the Indian allies of the French, now un-
                    21


 


Daniel Boone



checked, laid waste the panic-stricken fron-
tiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. But the
Yadkin, which Boone soon reached, was as
yet unscarred; the Northern tribes were
busied in the tide of intercolonial warfare,
and the Catawbas and Cherokees thus far
remained steadfast to their old-time prom-
ises of peace.
   Daniel was now a man, full-grown. He
had brought home with him not only some
knowledge of what war meant, but his imag-
ination had become heated by a new passion
-the desire to explore as well as to hunt.
VWhile upon the campaign he had fallen in
with another adventurous soul, John Finley
by name, who fired his heart with strange
tales of lands and game to the west of the
mountains. Finley was a Scotch-Irishman
of roving tendencies, who had emigrated to
Pennsylvania and joined a colony of his com-
patriots. As early as 1752 he had become a
fur-trader. In the course of his rambles
many perilous adventures befell him in the
Kentucky wilds, into which he had penetrat-
ed as far as the Falls of the Ohio, where
Louisville is now built. Hurrying, with
                   22


 
The Nimrod of the Yadkin



other woodsmen, to Braddock's support, he
enrolled himself under George Croghan, a fa-
mous trader to the Indians. But the expert
services of Croghan and his men, who, well
understanding the methods of savages upon
the war-path, offered to serve as scouts, were
coldly rejected by Braddock, who soon had
occasion to regret that he had not taken their
advice.
   Finley found in the Yadkin wagoner a
kindred spirit, and suggested to him with
eagerness a method of reaching Kentucky by
following the trail of the buffaloes and the
Shawnese, northwestward through Cumber-
land Gap. To reach this hunter's paradise,
to which Finley had pointed the way,