Life of Daniel Boone, The Great Western Hunter and Pioneer | Page 9

of English origin."
"Although Fort Loudon was erected as early as 1756, upon the Tennessee, yet it was in advance of any white settlements nearly one hundred and fifty miles, and was destroyed in 1760. The fort, too, at Long Island, within the boundaries of the present State of Tennessee, were erected in 1758, but no permanent settlements had yet been formed near it. Still occasional settlers had begun to fix their habitations in the south-western section of Virginia, and as early as 1754, six families were residing west of New River. 'On the breaking out of the French war, the Indians, in alliance with the French, made an irruption into these settlements, and massacred Burke and his family. The other families, finding their situation too perilous to be maintained, returned to the eastern side of New River; and the renewal of the attempt to carry the white settlements further west, was not made until after the close of that war.'"[12]
[Sidenote: 1756]
"Under a mistaken impression that the Virginia line, when extended west, would embrace it, a grant of land was this year made, by the authorities of Virginia, to Edmund Pendleton, for three thousand acres of land, lying in Augusta County, on a branch of the middle fork of the Indian river called West Creek,[13] now Sullivan County, Tennessee."
[Sidenote: 1760]
In this year, Doctor Walker again passed over Clinch and Powell's River, on a tour of exploration into what is now Kentucky.
[Sidenote: 1761]
'The Cherokees were now at peace with the whites, and hunters from the back settlements began with safety to penetrate deeper and further into the wilderness of Tennessee. Several of them, chiefly from Virginia, hearing of the abundance of game with which the woods were stocked, and allured by the prospects of gain, which might be drawn from this source, formed themselves into a company, composed of Wallen, Scaggs, Blevins, Cox, and fifteen others, and came into the valley since known as Carter's Valley, in Hawkins County, Tennessee. They hunted eighteen mouths upon Clinch and Powell's Rivers. Wallen's Creek and Wallen's Ridge received their name from the leader of the company; as also did the station which they erected in the present Lee County, Virginia, the name of Wallen's station. They penetrated as far north as Laurel Mountain, in Kentucky, where they terminated their journey, having met with a body of Indians, whom they supposed to be Shawnees. At the head of one of the companies that visited the West this year 'came Daniel Boon, from the Yadkin, in North Carolina, and traveled with them as low as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them.'
"This is the first time the advent of Daniel Boon to the western wilds has been mentioned by historians, or by the several biographers of that distinguished pioneer and hunter. There is reason, however, to believe that he had hunted upon Watauga earlier. The writer is indebted to N. Gammon, Esq., formerly of Jonesboro, now a citizen of Knoxville, for the following inscription, still to be seen upon a beech tree, standing in sight and east of the present stage-road, leading from Jonesboro to Blountsville, and in the valley of Boon's Creek, a tributary of Watauga:"
D. Boon CillED A. BAR On Tree in ThE yEAR 1760
"Boon was eighty-six years old when he died, which was September, 1820. He was thus twenty-six years old when the inscription was made. When he left the company of hunters in 1761, as mentioned above by Haywood, it is probable that he did so to revisit the theatre of a former hunt upon the creek that still bears his name, and where his camp is still pointed out near its banks. It is not improbable, indeed, that he belonged to, or accompanied, the party of Doctor Walker, on his first, or certainly on his second, tour of exploration in 1760. The inscription is sufficient authority, as this writer conceives, to date the arrival of Boon in Tennessee as early as its date, 1760, thus preceding the permanent settlement of the country nearly ten years."
It will be observed that the historian in this extract, spells Boon without the final e, following the orthography of the hunter, in his inscription on the tree. This orthography Boone used at a later period, as we shall show. But the present received mode of spelling the name is the one which we have adopted in this work.
On a subsequent page of Wheeler's history, we find the following memorandum:
"Daniel Boone, who still lived on the Yadkin, though he had previously hunted on the Western waters, came again this year to explore the country, being employed for this purpose by Henderson & Company. With him came Samuel Callaway, his kinsman, and the ancestor of the respectable family of that name, pioneers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and