Hero Tales From American History | Page 8

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Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes Of this unsighing people of the
woods. --Byron.

DANIEL BOONE AND THE FOUNDING OF KENTUCKY
Daniel Boone will always occupy a unique place in our history as the
archetype of the hunter and wilderness wanderer. He was a true pioneer,
and stood at the head of that class of Indian-fighters, game-hunters,
forest-fellers, and backwoods farmers who, generation after generation,
pushed westward the border of civilization from the Alleghanies to the
Pacific. As he himself said, he was "an instrument ordained of God to
settle the wilderness." Born in Pennsylvania, he drifted south into
western North Carolina, and settled on what was then the extreme
frontier. There he married, built a log cabin, and hunted, chopped trees,
and tilled the ground like any other frontiersman. The Alleghany
Mountains still marked a boundary beyond which the settlers dared not
go; for west of them lay immense reaches of frowning forest,
uninhabited save by bands of warlike Indians. Occasionally some
venturesome hunter or trapper penetrated this immense wilderness, and
returned with strange stories of what he had seen and done.
In 1769 Boone, excited by these vague and wondrous tales, determined
himself to cross the mountains and find out what manner of land it was
that lay beyond. With a few chosen companions he set out, making his

own trail through the gloomy forest. After weeks of wandering, he at
last emerged into the beautiful and fertile country of Kentucky, for
which, in after years, the red men and the white strove with such
obstinate fury that it grew to be called "the dark and bloody ground."
But when Boone first saw it, it was a fair and smiling land of groves
and glades and running waters, where the open forest grew tall and
beautiful, and where innumerable herds of game grazed, roaming
ceaselessly to and fro along the trails they had trodden during countless
generations. Kentucky was not owned by any Indian tribe, and was
visited only by wandering war-parties and hunting-parties who came
from among the savage nations living north of the Ohio or south of the
Tennessee.
A roving war-party stumbled upon one of Boone's companions and
killed him, and the others then left Boone and journeyed home; but his
brother came out to join him, and the two spent the winter together.
Self-reliant, fearless, and the frowning defiles of Cumberland Gap, they
were attacked by Indians, and driven back--two of Boone's own sons
being slain. In 1775, however, he made another attempt; and this
attempt was successful. The Indians attacked the newcomers; but by
this time the parties of would-be settlers were sufficiently numerous to
hold their own. They beat back the Indians, and built rough little
hamlets, surrounded by log stockades, at Boonesborough and
Harrodsburg; and the permanent settlement of Kentucky had begun.
The next few years were passed by Boone amid unending Indian
conflicts. He was a leader among the settlers, both in peace and in war.
At one time he represented them in the House of Burgesses of Virginia;
at another time he was a member of the first little Kentucky parliament
itself; and he became a colonel of the frontier militia. He tilled the land,
and he chopped the trees himself; he helped to build the cabins and
stockades with his own hands, wielding the longhandled, light-headed
frontier ax as skilfully as other frontiersmen. His main business was
that of surveyor, for his knowledge of the country, and his ability to
travel through it, in spite of the danger from Indians, created much
demand for his services among people who wished to lay off tracts of
wild land for their own future use. But whatever he did, and wherever
he went, he had to be sleeplessly on the lookout for his Indian foes.
When he and his fellows tilled the stump-dotted fields of corn, one or

more of the party were always on guard, with weapon at the ready, for
fear of lurking savages. When he went to the House of Burgesses he
carried his long rifle, and traversed roads not a mile of which was free
from the danger of Indian attack. The settlements in the early years
depended exclusively upon game for their meat, and Boone was the
mightiest of all the hunters, so that upon him devolved the task of
keeping his people supplied. He killed many buffaloes, and pickled the
buffalo beef for use in winter. He killed great numbers of black bear,
and made bacon of them, precisely as if they had been hogs. The
common game were deer and elk. At that time none of the hunters of
Kentucky would waste a shot on anything so small as a prairie-chicken
or wild duck; but they sometimes killed geese and swans when they
came