Daniel Boone: The Pioneer of Kentucky

rifle, some pack-horses, and, accompanied by a single black servant boy, repaired to the banks of the Osage River to spend the winter in hunting. Here he was taken dangerously sick, and was apprehensive that he should die. We know not what were his religious thoughts upon this occasion, but his calmness in view of death, taken in connection with his blameless, conscientious, and reflective life, and with the fact that subsequently he became an openly avowed disciple of Jesus, indicate that then he found peace in view of pardoned sin through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ. He pointed out to the black boy the place where, should he die, he wished to be buried. He gave very minute directions in reference to his burial and the disposal of his rifle, blankets, and peltry. Mr. Peck in the following language describes this interesting incident in the life of the pioneer: "On another occasion he took pack-horses and went to the country on the Osage river, taking for a camp-keeper a negro boy about twelve or fourteen years of age. Soon after preparing his camp and laying in his supplies for the winter, he was taken sick and lay a long time in camp. The horses were hobbled out on the range. After a period of stormy weather, there came a pleasant and delightful day, and Boone felt able to walk out. With his staff--for he was quite feeble--he took the boy to the summit of a small eminence and marked out the ground in shape and size of a grave, and then gave the following directions. "He instructed the boy, in case of his death, to wash and lay his body straight, wrapped up in one of the cleanest blankets. He was then to construct a kind of shovel, and with that instrument and the hatchet to dig a grave exactly as he had marked it out. He was then to drag the body to the place and put it in the grave, which he was directed to cover up, putting posts at the head and foot. Poles were to be placed around and above the surface, the trees to be marked so that the place could be easily found by his friends; the horses were to be caught, the blankets and skins gathered up, with some special instructions about the old rifle, and various messages to his family. All these directions were given, as the boy afterwards declared, with entire calmness, and as if he were giving instructions about ordinary business. He soon recovered, broke up his camp, and returned homeward without the usual signs of a winter's hunt." One writer says Colonel Boone went on a trapping excursion up the Grand River. This stream rises in the southern part of Iowa, and flows in a southerly course into the Missouri. He was entirely alone. Paddling his canoe up the lonely banks of the Missouri, he entered the Grand River, and established his camp in a silent sheltered cove, where an experienced hunter would with difficulty find it. Here he first laid in his supply of venison, turkeys, and bear's meat, and then commenced his trapping operation, where no sound of his rifle would disturb the beavers and no smell of gunpowder would excite their alarm. Every morning he took the circuit of his traps, visiting them all in turn. Much to his alarm, he one morning encountered a large encampment of Indians in his vicinity, engaged in hunting. He immediately retreated to his camp and secreted himself. Fortunately for him, quite a deep snow fell that night, which covered his traps. But this same snow prevented him from leaving his camp, lest his footprints should be discovered. For twenty days he continued thus secreted, occasionally, at midnight, venturing to cook a little food, when there was no danger that the smoke of his fire would reveal his retreat. At length the enemy departed, and he was released from his long imprisonment. He subsequently stated that never in his life had he felt so much anxiety for so long a period, lest the Indians should discover his traps and search out his camp. It seems that the object of Colonel Boone in these long hunting excursions was to obtain furs that he might pay the debts which he still owed in Kentucky. A man of less tender conscience would no longer have troubled himself about them. He was far removed from any importunity on the part of his creditors, or from any annoyance through the law. Still his debts caused him much solicitude, and he could not rest in peace until they were fully paid. After two or three seasons of this energetic hunting, Colonel Boone succeeded in obtaining a sufficient quantity of furs to enable him, by their sale, to pay all his debts. With this object in view, he set out on his long journey of several hundred miles, through an almost trackless wilderness, to Kentucky. He saw every creditor and paid every dollar. Upon his return, Colonel Boone had just one half dollar in his pocket. But he said triumphantly to his friends who eagerly gathered around him: "Now I am ready and willing to die. I am relieved from a burden which has long oppressed me. I have paid all my debts, and no one will say when I am gone, 'Boone was a dishonest man.' I am perfectly willing to die." In the year 1803, the territory west of the Mississippi came into the possession of the United States. The whole region, embracing what is now Missouri, was then called the territory of Louisiana. Soon after this a commission was appointed, consisting of three able and impartial men, to investigate the validity of the claims to land granted by the action of the Spanish Government. Again poor Boone was caught in the meshes of the law. It was found that he had not occupied the land which had been granted him, that he had not gone to New Orleans to perfect his title, and that his claim was utterly worthless. "Poor Boone! Seventy-four years old, and the second grasp you have made upon the West has been powerless. You have risked life, and lost the life next dearest your own for the West. In all its fearful forms, death has looked you in the face, and you have moved on to conquer the soil which you did but conquer, that it might be denied to you. You have been the architect of the prosperity of others, but your own crumbles each time as you are about to occupy it. When he lost his farm in Boonesborough, he did not linger around in complainings, but went quietly away, returning only to fulfil the obligations he had incurred. And now this last decision came, even at old age, to leave Daniel Boone, the Pioneer of the West, unable to give a title deed to a solitary acre."[G] [Footnote G: Life of Boone, by W. H. Bogart, p. 369.] The fur trade was at this time very lucrative. Many who were engaged in it accumulated large fortunes. It was in this traffic that John Jacob Astor laid the foundations of his immense wealth. A guide of Major Long stated that he purchased of an Indian one hundred and twenty beaver skins for two blankets, two gallons of rum, and a pocket mirror. The skins he took to Montreal, where he sold them for over four hundred dollars. In the employment of the fur companies the trappers are of two kinds, called the "hired hand," and the "free trapper." The former is employed by the month, receiving regular wages, and bringing in all the furs which he can obtain. Be they more or less, he receives his stipulated monthly wages. The free trapper is supplied by the company with traps and certain other conveniences with which he plunges into the forest on his own hook, engaging however to sell to the company, at a stipulated price, whatever furs he may secure. The outfit of the trapper as he penetrated the vast and trackless region of gloomy forests, treeless prairies, and solitary rivers, spreading everywhere around him, generally consisted of two or three horses, one for the saddle and the others for packs containing his equipment of traps, ammunition, blankets, cooking utensils, etc., in preparation for passing lonely months in the far away solitudes. He would endeavor to find, if possible, a region which neither the white man nor the Indian had ever visited. The dress of the hunter consisted of a strong shirt of well-dressed and pliant buckskin, ornamented with long fringes. The vanity of dress, if it may be so called, followed him into regions where no eye but his own could see its beauties. His pantaloons were also made of buckskin decorated with variously-colored porcupine quills and with long fringes down the outside of the leg. Moccasins, often quite gorgeously embroidered, fitted closely to his feet. A very flexible hat or cap covered his head, generally of felt, obtained from some Indian trader. There was suspended over his left shoulder, so as to hang beneath his right arm, a powder horn and bullet pouch. In the latter he carried balls, flints, steel, and various odds and ends. A long heavy rifle he bore upon his shoulder. A belt of buckskin buckled tightly around the waist, held a large butcher knife in a sheath of stout buffalo hide, and also a buckskin case containing a whet-stone. A small hatchet or tomahawk was also attached to this belt. Thus rigged and in a new dress the hunter of good proportions presented a very picturesque aspect. With no little pride he exhibited himself at the trading posts, where not only the squaws and the children, but veteran hunters and Indian braves contemplated his person with admiration. Thus provided the hunter, more frequently alone but sometimes accompanied by two or three others, set out for the mountain streams, as early in the spring as the melting ice would enable him to commence operations against the beaver. Arrived on his hunting ground he carefully ascends some creek or stream, examining the banks with practiced eye to discern any sign of the presence of beaver or of any other animal whose fur would prove valuable. If a cotton-wood tree lies prostrate he examines it to see if it has been cut down by the sharp tooth of the beaver; and if so whether it has been cut down for food or to furnish material for damming a stream. If the track of a beaver is seen in the mud, he follows the track until he finds a good place to set his steel trap in the run of the animal, hiding it under water and carefully attaching it by a chain to a bush or tree, or to some picket driven into the bank. A float strip is also made fast to the trap, so that should the beaver chance to break away with the trap, this float upon the surface, at the end of a cord a few feet long, would point out the position of the trap. "When a 'lodge' is discovered the trap is set at the edge of the dam, at the point where the animal passes from deep to shoal water. Early in the morning the hunter always mounts his mule and examines the traps. The captured animals are skinned, and the tails, which are a great dainty, carefully packed into camp. The skin is then stretched over a hoop or frame-work of osier twigs and is allowed to dry, the flesh and fatty substance being carefully scraped off. When dry it is folded into a square sheet, the fur turned inward, and the bundle, containing from about ten to twenty skins, lightly pressed and corded, is ready for transportation. "During the hunt, regardless of Indian vicinity, the fearless trapper wanders far and near in search of 'sign.' His nerves must ever be in a state of tension and his mind ever present at his call. His eagle eye sweeps around the country, and in an instant detects any foreign appearance. A turned leaf, a blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of wild animals, the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in nature's legible hand and plainest language. All the wits of the subtle savage are called into play to gain an advantage over the wily woodsman; but with the instinct of the primitive man, the white hunter has the advantage of a civilised mind, and thus provided seldom fails to