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| Daniel Boone, 1820 |
On September 26,
1820, intrepid
frontiersman Daniel Boone died, a few weeks short of his 86th
birthday. He had spent a lifetime exploring the frontier west of the Appalachians. The myth
and legend surrounding this American icon grew rampant even in his lifetime.
The sixth of eleven
children, Boone was born in 1734 in Berks County, PA, near present-day Reading. He spent his early days learning to hunt and fish
from both white neighbors and friendly natives, and soon mastered musket,
rifle, bow and arrow, and knife. Some of his many siblings and cousins married their
Lincoln neighbors, the same family from which our 16th
president descended.
In 1750, young Boone’s
family pulled up stakes and followed the Conestoga wagons south and west
through the Shenandoah
Valley, and settled in
the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. In this forested, mountainous environment,
Boone soon became famous for his skill as a hunter and woodsman.
After several excursions
on his own, Boone began promoting the rich wilderness west of the Appalachians, organizing and leading expeditions through the Cumberland Gap to settle the fertile valley of the Kentucky River. He took
his own family there in the 1770s, establishing Fort Boonesboro, which became a primary gateway for westbound pioneers.
One of the new settlers
with wanderlust who accompanied Boone on one of these expeditions was Abraham
Lincoln, grandfather of President Lincoln.
Abraham’s family, equally restless, had followed Boone’s family south in
1768 and settled in Virginia’s Shenandoah
Valley. Young Lincoln accompanied Boone two or three
times before moving his wife and children to Kentucky in 1785.
Boone became a captain
during the American Revolution, his militia patrolling the west against
British-fostered Indian predations on white frontier communities, from western Virginia north to Ohio. Later in the war, he was made a lieutenant
colonel. He led military expeditions against British outposts well after the
official end of the American Revolution, counteracting British and Indian
actions that did not let up after the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 and the treaties between Great Britain and the United States in 1784.
Much of the Boone mystique
is fiction, but much of it is true. A certain John Filson published “The Discovery, Settlement And present State
of Kentucke” in 1784, with a dramatically enhanced
section about Daniel Boone’s exploits. All
exaggeration aside, however, Boone was a dynamic leader and explorer, and an
unparalleled marksman, deeply devoted to the solitude of the wilderness he
roamed. His exploits were remarkable, considering the dangers of the times and
places he frequented, far from civilization.
Boone’s adventures influenced James Fenimore Cooper in writing “The Last
of the Mohicans;” no doubt, many other writers were similarly inspired.
Even more remarkable is
the fact that despite his dangerous profession, he not only attained considerable
seniority, but also remained physically active well into his old age. He was the prototype for the strong
pioneering spirit of the American West so embedded in our American culture.
Boone preferred the
wilderness to the budding settlements in whose founding he was so instrumental.
Although he often served as a civic leader in several communities where he
lived over the years, he always ended up moving further west. He ultimately
retired, if such a concept could be applied to such an individual, at his son’s
home in Missouri. Retirement did not suit this trailblazer, however, who
trekked in 1816 at age 81 with a hunting expedition to the Yellowstone River,
which feeds into the upper reaches of the Missouri River in Idaho and Montana.
Four years later, back in Missouri, he died of natural causes at his son’s home near present-day Defiance, MO.
Do you think that Daniel
Boone has found sufficient elbow room in the afterlife? Or do you suppose he is
still blazing trail?
SOURCES
History.com: This Day in
History http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-famous-frontiersman-daniel-boone-dies-in-missouri
Wikipedia: Daniel Boone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone
Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission http://pa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/people/4277/lincoln,_abraham/443566
“Daniel
Boone” by Arthur Guiterman, poet (1871-1943) “The Saturday Evening Post” v. 196
No.32, February 9, 1924.
Boone portrait painted by Chester Harding in 1820.
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