Boone, Daniel
Daniel (1735-1822), an American pioneer. His father had eleven children, and when Daniel was eighteen years old migrated from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, where he settled on the Yadkin. Young Boone was more of a trapper and hunter than a farmer. He became dissatisfied with North Carolina. In 1769 he headed a party of explorers, who penetrated the Blue Ridge Mountains and entered the present territory of Kentucky. Two years later, Daniel and his brother returned with as much peltry as their horses could carry.
In 1773 the two Boones, with five other families and forty riflemen, set out for Kentucky. They had many adventures with the hostile Shawnee Indians and engaged in pitched battles. In April, 1775, the party reached a point on the bank of the Kentucky River where they erected a stockade fort named for the commander, Boonesborough. This was the first white settlement in Kentucky. The Indians made every attempt to dislodge the whites, but without success. Boone was captured more than once. Most of the original settlers lost their lives in contests with the Indians, but, other settlers arriving, held the country. The most thrilling incidents known in Indian warfare are related in connection with the "dark and bloody ground," as Kentucky was called. Boone and his followers lived on the meat of the wild turkey, the deer, and the bear. They clothed themselves in buckskin and slept between robes made from the hide of the deer and buffalo. With a possible Indian behind each tree or lying in ambush in the nearest canebrake, a light foot, a quick eye, and a sure aim were the successful settlers' chief reliance.
Boonesborough consisted of block-houses protected by a stockade of tree trunks placed on end. During the Revolutionary War it withstood more than one siege in which the Indians were assisted by Canadians and renegade whites. In these pioneer times Boone was a stirring figure. Without him it would be safe to say the settlement of Kentucky would have been deferred many years.
When Kentucky was admitted as a state and lands became valuable, Boone lost all that he had through alleged defects in title. He was an unlettered backwoodsman, without knowledge of legal matters and without the means to prosecute his claims in the courts. With such of his family as had escaped the tomahawk of the Indian, he shouldered his rifle and led the way to Missouri, where he settled about forty-five miles west of St. Louis. Here his experience with titles was a repetition of that in Kentucky. He remained a few years and returned with enough peltry to pay off some Kentucky debts that had been troubling him.
In his old age some recognition of his services was tardily bestowed by Congress. He was a hunter as long as his strength permitted and ended his days in a hunter's cabin. In 1845 the remains of himself and wife were removed to the state cemetery at Frankfort. Boone was a born fighter, but, like Grant, left a reputation as a lover of peace and as a man of the utmost integrity. An ancient beech tree said to be standing on the banks of Boone's Creek near Jonesboro, Tennessee, still bears the illiterate inscription: "D. Boon killed a bar on tree in the year 1760."