The First White Man of the West Part 1

The First White Man of the West.

by Timothy Flint.

PREFACE.

Our eastern brethren have entered heartily into the pious duty of bringing to remembrance the character and deeds of their forefathers.

Shall we of the west allow the names of those great men, who won for us, from the forest, the savages, and wild beasts, our fair domain of fertile fields and beautiful rivers, to fade into oblivion? They who have hearts to admire n.o.bility imparted by nature's great seal--fearlessness, strength, energy, sagacity, generous forgetfulness of self, the delineation of scenes of terror, and the relation of deeds of daring, will not fail to be interested in a sketch of the life of the pioneer and hunter of Kentucky, Daniel Boone. Contemplated in any light, we shall find him in his way and walk, a man as truly great as Penn, Marion, and Franklin, in theirs. True, he was not learned in the lore of books, or trained in the etiquette of cities. But he possessed a knowledge far more important in the sphere which Providence called him to fill. He felt, too, the conscious dignity of self-respect, and would have been seen as erect, firm, and unembarra.s.sed amid the pomp and splendor of the proudest court in Christendom, as in the shade of his own wilderness. Where nature in her own ineffaceable characters has marked superiority, she looks down upon the tiny and elaborate acquirements of art, and in all positions and in all time ent.i.tles her favorites to the involuntary homage of their fellow-men. They are the selected pilots in storms, the leaders in battles, and the pioneers in the colonization of new countries.

Such a man was Daniel Boone, and wonderfully was he endowed by Providence for the part which he was called to act. Far be it from us to undervalue the advantages of education: It can do every thing but a.s.sume the prerogative of Providence. G.o.d has reserved for himself the attribute of creating. Distinguished excellence has never been attained, unless where nature and education, native endowment and circ.u.mstances, have concurred. This wonderful man received his commission for his achievements and his peculiar walk from the sign manual of nature. He was formed to be a woodsman, and the adventurous precursor in the first settlement of Kentucky. His home was in the woods, where others were bewildered and lost. It is a mysterious spectacle to see a man possessed of such an astonis.h.i.+ng power of being perfectly familiar with his route and his resources in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, where others could as little divine their way, and what was to be done, as mariners on mid-ocean, without chart or compa.s.s, sun, moon, or stars.

But that nature has bestowed these endowments upon some men and denied them to others, is as certain as that she has given to some animals instincts of one kind, fitting them for peculiar modes of life, which are denied to others, perhaps as strangely endowed in another way.

The following pages aim to present a faithful picture of this singular man, in his wanderings, captivities, and escapes. If the effort be successful, we have no fear that the attention of the reader will wander. There is a charm in such recitals, which lays its spell upon all. The grave and gay, the simple and the learned, the young and gray-haired alike yield to its influence.

We wish to present him in his strong incipient manifestations of the development of his peculiar character in boyhood. We then see him on foot and alone, with no companion but his dog, and no friend but his rifle, making his way over trackless and unnamed mountains, and immeasurable forests, until he explores the flowering wilderness of Kentucky. Already familiar, by his own peculiar intuition, with the Indian character, we see him casting his keen and searching glance around, as the ancient woods rung with the first strokes of his axe, and pausing from time to time to see if the echoes have startled the red men, or the wild beasts from their lair. We trace him through all the succeeding explorations of the b.l.o.o.d.y Ground, and of Tennessee, until so many immigrants have followed in his steps, that he finds his privacy too strongly pressed upon; until he finds the buts and bounds of legal tenures restraining his free thoughts, and impelling him to the distant and unsettled sh.o.r.es of the Missouri, to seek range and solitude anew.

We see him there, his eyes beginning to grow dim with the influence of seventy winters--as he can no longer take the unerring aim of his rifle--casting wistful looks in the direction of the Rocky Mountains and the western sea; and sadly reminded that man has but one short life, in which to wander.

No book can be imagined more interesting than would have been the personal narrative of such a man, written by himself. What a new pattern of the heart he might have presented! But, unfortunately, he does not seem to have dreamed of the chance that his adventures would go down to posterity in the form of recorded biography. We suspect that he rather eschewed books, parchment deeds, and clerkly contrivances, as forms of evil; and held the dead letter of little consequence. His a.s.sociates were as little likely to preserve any records, but those of memory, of the daily incidents and exploits, which indicate character and a.s.sume high interest, when they relate to a person like the subject of this narrative. These hunters, unerring in their aim to prostrate the buffalo on his plain, or to bring down the geese and swans from the clouds, thought little of any other use of the gray goose quill, than its market value.

Had it been otherwise, and had these men themselves furnished the materials of this narrative, we have no fear that it would go down to futurity, a more enduring monument to these pioneers and hunters, than the granite columns reared by our eastern brethren, amidst a.s.sembled thousands, with magnificent array, and oratory, and songs, to the memory of their forefathers. Ours would be the record of human nature speaking to human nature in simplicity and truth, in a language always impressive, and always understood. Their pictures of their own felt sufficiency to themselves, under the pressure of exposure and want; of danger, wounds, and captivity; of reciprocal kindness, warm from the heart; of n.o.ble forgetfulness of self, unshrinking firmness, calm endurance, and reckless bravery, would be sure to move in the hearts of their readers strings which never fail to vibrate to the touch.

But these inestimable data are wanting. Our materials are comparatively few; and we have been often obliged to balance between doubtful authorities, notwithstanding the most rigorous scrutiny of newspapers and pamphlets, whose yellow and dingy pages gave out a cloud of dust at every movement, and the equally rigid examination of clean modern books and periodicals.

CHAPTER I.

Birth of Daniel Boone--His early propensities--His pranks at school--His first hunting expedition--And his encounter with a panther. Removal of the family to North Carolina--Boone becomes a hunter--Description of fire hunting, in which he was near committing a sad mistake--Its fortunate result--and his marriage.

Different authorities a.s.sign a different birth place to DANIEL BOONE.

One affirms that he was born in Maryland, another in North Carolina, another in Virginia, and still another during the transit of his parents across the Atlantic. But they are all equally in error. He was born in the year 1746, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, near Bristol, on the right bank of the Delaware, about twenty miles from Philadelphia. His father removed, when he was three years old, to the vicinity of Reading, on the head waters of the Schuylkill. From thence, when his son was thirteen years old, he migrated to North Carolina, and settled in one of the valleys of South Yadkin.

The remotest of his ancestors, of whom there is any recorded notice, is Joshua Boone, an English Catholic. He crossed the Atlantic to the sh.o.r.es of the Chesapeake Bay, with those who planted the first germ of the colony of Maryland. A leading motive to emigration with most of these colonists, was to avoid that persecution on account of their religion, which however pleasant to inflict, they found it uncomfortable to endure. Whether this gentleman emigrated from this inducement, as has been a.s.serted, or not, it is neither possible, nor, as we deem, important to settle; for we cannot find, that religious motives had any direct influence in shaping the character and fortunes of the hero of the woods. Those who love to note the formation of character, and believe in the hereditary transmission of peculiar qualities, naturally investigate the peculiarities of parents, to see if they can find there the origin of those of the children. Many--and we are of the number--consider transmitted endowment as the most important link in the chain of circ.u.mstances, with which character is surrounded. The most splendid endowments in innumerable instances, have never been brought to light, in defect of circ.u.mstances to call them forth. The ancestors of Boone were not placed in positions to prove, whether he did or did not receive his peculiar apt.i.tudes a legacy from his parents, or a direct gift from nature. He presents himself to us as a new man, the author and artificer of his own fortunes, and showing from the beginning rudiments of character, of which history has recorded no trace in his ancestors.

The promise of the future hunter appeared in his earliest boyhood. He waged a war of extermination, as soon as he could poise a gun, with squirrels, racc.o.o.ns, and wild cats, at that time exceedingly annoying to the fields and barn-yards of the back settlers.

No scholar ever displayed more decided pre-eminence in any branch of learning, than he did above the boys of his years, in adroitness and success in this species of hunting. This is the only distinct and peculiar trait of character recorded of his early years. The only transmitted fact of his early training is presented in the following anecdote.

In that section of the frontier settlement to which Boone had removed, where unhewn log cabins, and hewn log houses, were interspersed among the burnt stumps, surrounded by a potato patch and cornfield, as the traveller pursued his cow-path through the deep forest, there was an intersection, or more properly concentration of wagon tracks, called the "Cross Roads,"--a name which still designates a hundred frontier positions of a post office, blacksmith's shop, and tavern. In the central point of this metropolis stood a large log building, before which a sign creaked in the wind, conspicuously lettered "Store and Tavern."

To this point, on the early part of a warm spring morning, a pedestrian stranger was seen approaching in the path leading from the east. One hand was armed with a walking stick, and the other carried a small bundle inclosed in a handkerchief. His aspect was of a man, whose whole fortunes were in his walking stick and bundle. He was observed to eye the swinging sign with a keen recognition, inspiring such courage as the mariner feels on entering the desired haven.

His dialect betrayed the stranger to be a native of Ireland. He sat down on the _stoup_, and asked in his own peculiar mode of speech, for cold water. A supply from the spring was readily handed him in a gourd. But with an arch pause between remonstrance and laughter, he added, that he thought cold water in a warm climate injurious to the stomach and begged that the element might be qualified with a little whisky.

The whisky was handed him, and the usual conversation ensued, during which the stranger inquired if a school-master was wanted in the settlement--or, as he was pleased to phrase it, a professor in the higher branches of learning? It is inferred that the father of Boone was a person of distinction in the settlement, for to him did the master of the "Store and Tavern" direct the stranger of the staff and bundle for information.

The direction of the landlord to enable him to find the house of Mr.

Boone, was a true specimen of similar directions in the frontier settlements of the present; and they have often puzzled clearer heads than that of the Irish school-master.

"Step this way," said he, "and I will direct you there, so that you cannot mistake your way. Turn down that right hand road, and keep on it till you cross the dry branch--then turn to your left, and go up a hill--then take a lane to your right, which will bring you to an open field--pa.s.s this, and you will come to a path with three forks--take the middle fork, and it will lead you through the woods in sight of Mr.

Boone's plantation."

The Irishman lost his way, invoked the saints, and cursed his director for his medley of directions many a time, before he stumbled at length on Mr. Boone's house. He was invited to sit down and dine, in the simple backwoods phrase, which is still the pa.s.sport to the most ample hospitality.

After dinner, the school-master made known his vocation, and his desire to find employment. To obtain a qualified school-master in those days, and in such a place, was no easy business. This scarcity of supply precluded close investigation of fitness. In a word, the Irishman was authorized to enter upon the office of school-master of the settlement.

We have been thus particular in this description, because it was the way in which most teachers were then employed.

It will not be amiss to describe the school-house; for it stood as a sample of thousands of west country school-houses of the present day. It was of logs, after the usual fas.h.i.+on of the time and place. In dimension, it was s.p.a.cious and convenient. The chimney was peculiarly ample, occupying one entire side of the whole building, which was an exact square. Of course, a log could be "snaked" to the fire-place as long as the building, and a file of boys thirty feet in length, could all stand in front of the fire on a footing of the most democratic equality. Sections of logs cut out here and there, admitted light and air instead of windows. The surrounding forest furnished ample supplies of fuel. A spring at hand, furnished with various gourds, quenched the frequent thirst of the pupils. A ponderous puncheon door, swinging on substantial wooden hinges, and shutting with a wooden latch, completed the appendages of this primeval seminary.

To this central point might he seen wending from the woods, in every direction of the compa.s.s, flaxen-headed boys and girls, clad in homespun, brus.h.i.+ng away the early dews, as they hied to the place, where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the severe or loving humor prevailed. This vacillating administration was calculated for any result, rather than securing the affectionate respect of the children.

Scarcely the first quarter had elapsed, before materials for revolt had germinated under the very throne of the school-master.

Young Boone, at this time, had reached the second stage of teaching the young idea how to shoot. His satchel already held paper marked with those mysterious hieroglyphics, vulgarly called _pot-hooks_, intended to be gradually transformed to those clerkly characters, which are called hand-writing.

The master's throne was a block of a huge tree, and could not be said, in any sense, to be a cus.h.i.+on of down. Of course, by the time he had heard the first lessons of the morning, the master was accustomed to let loose his noisy subjects, to wanton and bound on the gra.s.s, while he took a turn abroad to refresh himself from his wearying duties. While he was thus unbending his mind, the observant urchins had remarked, that he always directed his walk to a deep grove not far distant. They had, possibly, divined that the unequal tempers of his mind, and his rapid transitions from good nature to tyrannical moroseness, and the reverse, were connected with these promenades. The curiosity of young Boone had been partially excited. An opportunity soon offered to gratify it.

Having one day received the accustomed permission to retire a few minutes from school, the darting of a squirrel across a fallen tree, as he went abroad, awakened his ruling pa.s.sion. He sprang after the nimble animal, until he found himself at the very spot, where he had observed his school-master to pause in his promenades. His attention was arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a gla.s.s bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his discovery and the result of his meditations to the larger boys of the school on their way home. They were ripe for revolt, and the issue of their caucus follows:

They were sufficiently acquainted with fever and ague, to have experimented the nature of tartar emetic. They procured a bottle exactly like the master's, filled with whisky, in which a copious quant.i.ty of emetic had been dissolved. Early in the morning, they removed the school-master's bottle, and replaced it by theirs, and hurried back to their places, panting with restrained curiosity, and a desire to see what results would come from their medical mixture.

The accustomed hour for intermission came. The master took his usual promenade, and the children hastened back with uncommon eagerness to resume their seats and their lessons. The countenance of the master alternately red and pale, gave portent of an approaching storm.

"Recite your grammar lesson," said he, in a growling tone, to one of the older boys.

"How many parts of speech are there?"

"Seven, sir," timidly answered the boy.

"Seven, you numscull! is that the way you get your lesson?" Forthwith descended a shower of blows on his devoted head.

"On what continent is Ireland?" said he, turning from him in wrath to another boy. The boy saw the shower pre-determined to fall, and the medicine giving evident signs of having taken effect. Before he could answer, "I reckon on the continent of England," he was gathering an ample t.i.the of drubbing.

"Come and recite your lesson in arithmetic?" said he to Boone, in a voice of thunder. The usually rubicund face of the Irishman was by this time a deadly pale. Slate in hand, the docile lad presented himself before his master.

"Take six from nine, and what remain?"

"Three, sir."

"True. That will answer for whole numbers, now for your fractions. Take three-quarters from an integer, and what remains?"

"The whole."

"You blockhead! you numscull!" exclaimed the master, as the strokes fell like a hail shower; "let me hear you demonstrate that."

"If I subtract one bottle of whisky, and replace it with one in which I have mixed an emetic, will not the whole remain, if n.o.body drinks it?"

By this time the medicine was taking fearful effect. The united acclamations and shouts of the children, and the discovery of the compounder of his medicament, in no degree tended to soothe the infuriated master. Young Boone, having paid for his sport by an ample drubbing, seized the opportune moment, floored his master, already weak and dizzy, sprang from the door, and made for the woods. The adventure was soon blazoned. A consultation of the patrons of the school was held.