HKK-Chapter 3

Source: "A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians, Volume 1", Pages 9 - 12
Author; E. Polk Johnson

Published: THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO - NEW YORK
1912

Submitted by: Charlie Vines

Boone and Stewart Go Forth—Captured by Indians —Return to Deserted Camp—Joined by Boone's Brother—A Great Agent of Destiny —Alone in the Wilderness—Rejoined by Faithful Brother—"Happiest of Mortals Anywhere."

Throughout the summer and into the fall, the little party loitered in the fairy land, now hunting, now "loafing and inviting their souls," leaving to those whom they had left behind in North Carolina the less congenial and burdensome task of planting, hoeing and reaping the crops. They were care-free, game was abundant, their wants were few and easily supplied; they were free to go and come as they chose and so far, there had been none to disturb or make them afraid.

At last came the day of separation and, for wider exploration and convenience in hunting, Boone and John Stewart left the main party and proceeded to the Louisa river. Here John Filson takes up the story in the biography of Boone and himself grows poetical though one would think that recitals of the grim events of Kentucky's early days had but little of poetry about them. Filson makes Boone say: "We practiced hunting with great success until the twenty-second day of December. This day John Stewart and I had a pleasing ramble, but fortune changed the scene in the close of it. We had passed through a great forest on which stood myriads of trees, some gay with blossoms, others rich with fruit. Nature was here a series of wonders and a fund of delight. Here she displayed her ingenuity and industry in a variety of flowers and fruits, beautifully colored, elegantly shaped and charmingly flavored; and we were diverted with innumerable animals presenting themselves perpetually to our view."

Fancy Daniel Boone of the Yadkin river, in North Carolina — sometime hunter, trapper, surveyor and Indian fighter — rhapsodizing after that fashion. It is evident that Filson was something of a poet himself and that he adorned the plain language of Boone out of the exuberance of his own fancy.

But there was to be a quick transition from the beauties of nature as exemplified in Kentucky, to the sterner realities which filled the lives of the pioneers of the state. Filson, quitting his study of the flora and fruits of the forests of Kentucky by a sharp transition, brings one to a realization of the sterner features of life in those same forests. In the following statement he has Boone saying: "In decline of a day near the Kentucky river, as we ascended the brow of a small hill, a number of Indians rushed out of a thick canebrake upon us and made us prisoners. The time of our sorrow had now arrived and the scene was fully opened. The Indians plundered us of what we had and kept us in confinement seven days, treating us with common savage usage. At last, in the dead of night as we lay in a thick canebrake by a large fire, when sleep had locked up their senses, my situation not disposing me for rest," says Boone, "I touched my companion and gently awoke him. We improved this favorable opportunity and departed, leaving them to take their rest."

Boone and Stewart then set out to the camp where they had left their comrades, which they reached after several days travel, only to find it plundered and deserted; their companions gone they knew not whither. It is presumed, of course, that the plundering had been done by Indians, and their comrades murdered by them though this is conjecture only. Certain it is that their names no more appear in history. Boone and Stewart, not dismayed by the misfortunes of their comrades, did not turn their faces towards North Carolina, but constructed another camp and, though short of ammunition, continued hunting and exploring as before. It must be assumed that on their escape from the Indians, they had brought away their guns and ammunition. One historian reports them as amusing themselves in hunting and exploring, which statement, if correct, indicates that certain natures can find amusement under the most adverse circumstances. But even this method of amusement drew near its end as their slender stock of ammunition was nearly exhausted, when there happened an incident tending to show that Providence was on the side of the gallant hunters and explorers.

The family of Daniel Boone grew alarmed because of his long absence, during which, of course, they had heard nothing from him, and his faithful brother. Squire Boone, with a single companion whose name is to historv unknown, set forth to find him. This illustrates the spirit of the pioneer; his carelessness of danger; his purpose to go on and do that which his duty called him to do, fearing nothing, daring all things and through these high qualities winning in the end, as Squire Boone and his unknown companion did in this instance. McElroy says of them : "With no chart to guide them, with no knowledge of the location of the wanderers, amid thousands of miles of unbroken forest, it seems little short of a miracle that early in January, 1770, they came upon the camp in which Boone and Stewart had spent the previous night. Even after this discovery, it might have been a sufficiently difficult task for any but an Indian or pioneer to find the wanderers. But to a woodsman so new a trail could not be missed, and shortly afterward Boone and Stewart were startled to see two human forms approaching through the forest. Instantly alert and on guard against surprises, they watched the figures until, as they came within the range of clear vision, Boone recognized the beloved form of his faithful brother."

John Filson, the biographer of Boone, makes the old hero describe this momentous event in the following terms : "About this time my brother. Squire Boone, with another adventurer, who came to explore the countrv shortly after us, was wandering through the forest, determined to find me, if possible and accidentally found our camp." Again there is a failure to name Squire Boone's fellow adventurer who appears to have wandered away from his comrades and never returned either to them or to his home in North Carolina. And so he passed into the early history of Kentucky and out of it again, nameless and unknown so far as most historical research has shown. But John Filson reports Daniei Boone as saying to him : "The man who came with my brother returned home by himself. We were then in a dangerous, helpless situation, exposed daily to perils and death amongst the savages and wild beasts, not a white man in the country but ourselves." Boone, it will be observed, does not give the name of this man. It is charitable to suppose that he did not desert his comrades, but fell at the hands of the savages ; and there let him rest.

Boone had no thought of turning back. Filson does him the high honor of saying that Boone considered himself "an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness." Bogart in his "Boone" says: "On the safety of these men rested the hope of a nation. Their defeat, their captivity, their death would have chilled the vigor of enterprise. Without Boone the settlements could not have been held, and the conquest of Kentucky would have been reserved for the immigrants of the nineteenth century."

He might have added that without Boone and the results of his coming to Kentucky, the splendid results following in after years the activity of George Rogers Clark, would have been an impossibility; and the immense territorv which he added to our domain would later have been gained only with great loss of life, and it may be would have been indefinitely left in the hands of those from whose hands the heroic Clark so easily took it. Kentucky, though giving Boone a grave in her capital, has never paid to him the debt of honor and gratitude which was his due. It is not to the credit of the state that he sought a resting place first on Virginia. where he was honored, and lastly in Missouri, where the brave old pioneer finally laid down life's burden and found in the grave the only peace his restless spirit had ever known.

In May, 1770, their stock of ammunition being again nearly exhausted. Squire Boone, it was determined, should return home "for a new recruit of horses and ammunition." Daniel Boone being thus left alone in the wilderness was the only white man, so far as he knew, in all Kentucky. Stewart, his gallant and long-time comrade, had been killed by the Indians soon after they were joined by Squire Boone, thus being the first martyr to western exploration so far as is accurately known.

To make the trip to North Carolina and return, required some three months, during which Boone must have grown very lonely. Filson makes him say, and no doubt truthfully: "I confess I was never before under greater necessity of exercising philosophy and fortitude. A few days I passed uncomfortably." Note that expression of "a few days." Boone was not the man to give way to his feelings, else he would never have been the successful pioneer that he was. Some one has said of him that he was once asked if he was never lost in the wilderness, to which he replied that he was never lost but "was once bewildered for three days" : which is a fair companion piece to the statement of the Indian who declared "Indian not lost; wigwam lost."

Boone spent the months of waiting in explorations to the southwest which appear to have brought him to Salt river and Green river. Signs of Indians were abundant, but he had now become so expert a woodman that he managed to avoid meeting any of them. He slept without a fire and made his camps in the dense canebrakes and thus avoided his savage foes. July 27, 1770, he returned to his old camp where to his great happiness his brother met him. Indian signs warned them of their danger and turning to the southward they explored the region along the Cumberland, finding abundant game, but a poorer soil than that which they had left. In March, 1771, they went northward toward the Kentucky river, finally selecting a point for the permanent settlement which they had planned and then loading their furs and few other belongings upon their two horses they turned their faces once more towards North Carolina and civilization; of which Boone had known nothing for two years, "during most of which time," says McElroy, "he had neither tasted bread nor seen the face of man with the exception of his brother, his unfortunate fellow hunters now gone, and a few straggling Indians, more animal than human ; but at its close, he was a real Kentuckian, the first Kentuckian, ready at all times to speak in unmeasured praise of the land which," he says, "I esteemed a second Paradise."

It may be of interest to some to note here that the fame of Daniel Boone, in after years, did not rest alone with those by whom he was immediately surrounded, but had gone across the seas to England, whose poet. Lord Byron, thus embalmed him in one of the cantos of "Don Juan":

"Of all men saving Sylla, the manslayer.
Who passes for, in Hfe and death, most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boone, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest of mortals anywhere."

While Boone would doubtless have objected to the title of "General" given him by Byron, there is no doubt that the poet caught the dominant note of his character in describing him as "happiest of mortals anywhere," when alone in the midst of the wilderness. This may not be altogether complimentary to Mrs. Boone and the younger Boones, but history was invented to record facts and not compliments.

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