University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER X

DANIEL BOONE IN KENTUCKY

ACHANCE acquaintance formed by
Daniel Boone, during the French and
Indian War, with the Irish lover of adventure,
John Findlay,[1] was the origin of Boone's cherished
longing to reach the El Dorado of the
West. In this slight incident we may discern
the initial inspiration for the epochal movement
of westward expansion. Findlay was a
trader and horse peddler, who had early migrated
to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had
been licensed a trader with the Indians in 1747.
During the same year he was married to Elizabeth
Harris, daughter of John Harris, the Indian-trader

at Harris's Ferry on the Susquehanna
River, after whom Harrisburg was
named. During the next eight years Findlay
carried on his business of trading in the
interior. Upon the opening of the French
and Indian War he was probably among
"the young men about Paxtang who enlisted
immediately," and served as a waggoner in
Braddock's expedition. Over the camp-fires,
during the ensuing campaign in 1765, young
Boone was an eager listener to Findlay's stirring
narrative of his adventures in the Ohio
Valley and on the wonderfully beautiful
levels of Kentucky in 1752. The fancies
aroused in his brooding mind by Findlay's
moving recital and his description of an ancient
passage through the Ouasioto or Cumberland
Gap and along the course of the Warrior's
Path, inspired him with an irrepressible
longing to reach that alluring promised land
which was the perfect realization of the hunter's
paradise.

Thirteen years later, while engaged in selling
pins, needles, thread, and Irish linens in

the Yadkin country, Findlay learned from the
Pennsylvania settlers at Salisbury or at the
Forks of the Yadkin of Boone's removal to the
waters of the upper Yadkin. At Boone's
rustic home, in the winter of 1768-9, Findlay
visited his old comrade-in-arms of Braddock's
campaign. On learning of Boone's failure
during the preceding year to reach the Kentucky
levels by way of the inhospitable Sandy
region, Findlay again described to him the
route through the Ouasioto Gap traversed
sixteen years before by Pennsylvania traders
in their traffic with the Catawbas. Boone,
as we have seen, knew that Christopher Gist,
who had formerly lived near him on the
upper Yadkin, had found some passage
through the lofty mountain defiles; but he
had never been able to discover the passage.
Findlay's renewed descriptions of the immense
herds of buffaloes he had seen in Kentucky,
the great salt-licks where they congregated, the
abundance of bears, deer, and elk with which
the country teemed, the innumerable flocks of
wild turkeys, geese, and ducks, aroused in
Boone the hunter's passion for the chase; while
the beauty of the lands, as mirrored in the
vivid fancy of the Irishman, inspired him with
a new longing to explore the famous country
which had, as John Filson records, "greatly
engaged Mr. Findlay's attention."

In the comprehensive designs of Henderson,
now a judge, for securing a graphic report of
the trans-Alleghany region in behalf of his
land company, Boone divined the means of
securing the financial backing for an expedition
of considerable size and ample equipment.[2]
In numerous suits for debt, aggregating hundreds
of dollars, which had been instituted
against Boone by some of the leading citizens
of Rowan, Williams and Henderson had acted
as Boone's attorneys. In order to collect their
legal fees, they likewise brought suit against
Boone; but not wishing to press the action
against the kindly scout who had hitherto acted
as their agent in western exploration, they continued
the litigation from court to court, in
lieu of certain "conditions performed" on behalf
of Boone, during his unbroken absence,

by his attorney in this suit, Alexander Martin.[3]
Summoned to appear in 1769 at the March
term of court at Salisbury, Boone seized upon
the occasion to lay before Judge Henderson
the designs for a renewed and extended exploration
of Kentucky suggested by the golden
opportunity of securing the services of Findlay
as guide. Shortly after March 6th, when
Judge Henderson reached Salisbury, the conference,
doubtless attended by John Stewart,
Boone's brother-in-law, John Findlay, and
Boone, who were all present at this term of
court, must have been held, for the purpose of
devising ways and means for the expedition.
Peck, the only reliable contemporary biographer
of the pioneer, who derived many facts
from Boone himself and his intimate acquaintances,
draws the conclusion (1847): "Daniel
Boone was engaged as the master spirit of this
exploration, because in his judgment and fidelity
entire confidence could be reposed. . . .
He was known to Henderson and encouraged
by him to make the exploration, and to examine
particularly the whole country south of the
Kentucky—or as then called the Louisa
River."[4] As confidential agent of the land
company, Boone carried with him letters and
instructions for his guidance upon this extended
tour of exploration.[5]

On May 1, 1769, with Findlay as guide, and
accompanied by four of his neighbors, John
Stewart, a skilled woodsman, Joseph Holden,
James Mooney, and William Cooley, Boone
left his "peaceable habitation" on the upper
Yadkin and began his historic journey "in
quest of the country of Kentucky." Already
heavily burdened with debts, Boone must have
incurred considerable further financial obligations
to Judge Henderson and Colonel Williams,
acting for the land company, in order
to obtain the large amount of supplies requisite
for so prolonged an expedition. Each of the
adventurers rode a good horse of strength and
endurance; and behind him were securely
strapped the blanket, ammunition, salt, and
cooking-utensils so indispensable for a long sojourn
in the wilderness. In Powell's Valley
they doubtless encountered the party led

thither by Joseph Martin (see Chapter
VII), and there fell into the "Hunter's
Trail" commented on in a letter written by
Martin only a fortnight before the passing of
Boone's cavalcade. Crossing the mountain at
the Ouasioto Gap, they made their first "station
camp" in Kentucky on the creek, still
named after that circumstance, on the Red
Lick Fork. After a preliminary journey for
the purpose of locating the spot, Findlay
led the party to his old trading-camp at Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki,
where then (June 7, 1769)
remained but charred embers of the Indian
huts, with some of the stockading and the
gate-posts still standing. In Boone's own
words, he and Findlay at once "proceeded to
take a more thorough survey of the country";
and during the autumn and early winter, encountering
on every hand apparently inexhaustible
stocks of wild game and nothing the
ever-changing beauties of the country, the various
members of the party made many hunting
and exploring journeys from their "station
camp" as base. On December 22, 1769, while
engaged in a hunt, Boone and Stewart were
surprised and captured by a large party of
Shawanoes, led by Captain Will, who were
returning from the autumn hunt on Green
River to their villages north of the Ohio.
Boone and Stewart were forced to pilot the
Indians to their main camp, where the savages,
after robbing them of all their peltries and
supplies and leaving them inferior guns and
little ammunition, set off to the northward.
They left, on parting, this menacing admonition
to the white intruders: "Now, brothers,
go home and stay there. Don't come here any
more, for this is the Indians' hunting-ground,
and all the animals, skins, and furs are ours.
If you are so foolish as to venture here again,
you may be sure the wasps and yellow jackets
will sting you severely."

Chagrined particularly by the loss of the
horses, Boone and Stewart for two days pursued
the Indians in hot haste. Finally approaching
the Indians' camp by stealth in the
dead of night, they secured two of the horses,
upon which they fled at top speed. In turn

they were immediately pursued by a detachment
of the Indians, mounted upon their fleetest
horses; and suffered the humiliation of recapture
two days later. Indulging in wild
hilarity over the capture of the crestfallen
whites, the Indians took a bell from one of
the horses and, fastening it about Boone's
neck, compelled him under the threat of brandished
tomahawks to caper about and jingle the
bell, jeering at him the while with the derisive
query, uttered in broken English: "Steal
horse, eh?" With as good grace as they could
summon—wry smiles at best—Boone and
Stewart patiently endured these humiliations,
following the Indians as captives. Some days
later (about January 4, 1770), while the vigilance
of the Indians was momentarily relaxed,
the captives suddenly plunged into a dense
cane-brake and in the subsequent confusion
succeeded in effecting their escape. Finding
their camp deserted upon their return, Boone
and Stewart hastened on and finally overtook
their companions. Here Boone was both surprised
and delighted to encounter his brother
Squire, loaded down with supplies. Having
heard nothing from Boone, the partners of the
land company had surmised that he and his
party must have run short of ammunition,
flour, salt, and other things sorely needed in the
wilderness; and because of their desire that the
party should remain, in order to make an exhaustive
exploration of the country, Squire
Boone had been sent to him with supplies.[6]
Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley returned
to the settlements; but Stewart, Squire
Boone, and Alexander Neely, who had accompanied
Squire, threw in their lot with the intrepid
Daniel, and fared forth once more to the
stirring and bracing adventures of the Kentucky
wilderness. In Daniel Boone's own
words, he expected "from the furs and peltries
they had an opportunity of taking . . . to recruit
his shattered circumstances; discharge the
debts he had contracted by the adventure; and
shortly return under better auspices, to settle
the newly discovered country."[7]

Boone and his party now stationed themselves
near the mouth of the Red River, and

soon provided themselves, against the hardships
of the long winter, with jerk, bear's oil,
buffalo tallow, dried buffalo tongues, fresh
meat, and marrow-bones as food, and buffalo
robes and bearskins as shelter from the inclement
weather. Neely had brought with
him, to while away dull hours, a copy of "Gulliver's
Travels"; and in describing Neely's successful
hunt for buffalo one day, Boone in
after years amusingly deposed: "In the year
1770 I encamped on Red River with five other
men, and we had with us for our amusement
the History of Samuel Gulliver's Travels,
wherein he gave an account of his young master,
Glumdelick, careing him on market day
for a show to a town called Lulbegrud. A
young man of our company called Alexander
Neely came to camp and told us he had been
that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two
Brobdignags in their capital."[8] Far from
unlettered were pioneers who indulged together
in such literary chat and gave to the near-by
creek the name (after Dean Swift's Lorbrulgrud)
of Lulbegrud which name, first seen
on Filson's map of Kentucky (1784), it bears
to this day. From one of his long, solitary
hunts Stewart never returned; and it was not
until five years later, while cutting out the
Transylvania Trail, that Boone and his companions
discovered, near the old crossing at
Rockcastle, Stewart's remains in a standing
hollow sycamore. The wilderness never gave
up its tragic secret.

The close of the winter and most of the
spring were passed by the Boones, after
Neely's return to the settlements, in exploration,
hunting, and trapping beaver and otter,
in which sport Daniel particularly excelled.
Owing to the drain upon their ammunition,
Squire was at length compelled to return to the
settlements for supplies; and Daniel, who remained
alone in the wilderness to complete his
explorations for the land company, must often
have shared the feelings of Balboa as, from
lofty knob or towering ridge, he gazed over the
waste of forest which spread from the dim outlines
of the Alleghanies to the distant waters
of the Mississippi. He now proceeded to

make those remarkable solitary explorations of
Kentucky which have given him immortality
—through the valley of the Kentucky and the
Licking, and along the "Belle Rivière" (Ohio)
as low as the falls. He visited the Big Bone
Lick and examined the wonderful fossil remains
of the mammoth found there. Along
the great buffalo roads, worn several feet below
the surface of the ground, which led to the
Blue Licks, he saw with amazement and delight
thousands of huge shaggy buffalo gamboling,
bellowing, and making the earth rumble
beneath the trampling of their hooves.
One day, while upon a cliff near the junction
of the Kentucky and Dick's Rivers, he suddenly
found himself hemmed in by a party of
Indians. Seizing his only chance of escape,
he leaped into the top of a maple tree growing
beneath the cliffs and, sliding to safety full
sixty feet below, made his escape, pursued by
the sound of a chorus of guttural "Ughs" from
the dumbfounded savages.

Finally making his way back to the old
camp, Daniel was rejoined there by Squire

on July 27, 1770. During the succeeding
months, much of their time was spent in hunting
and prospecting in Jessamine County,
where two caves are still known as Boone's
caves. Eventually, when ammunition and
supplies had once more run low, Squire was
compelled a second time to return to the settlements.
Perturbed after a time by Squire's
failure to rejoin him at the appointed time,
Daniel started toward the settlements, in search
of him; and by a stroke of good fortune encountered
him along the trail. Overjoyed at
this meeting (December, 1770) the indomitable
Boones once more plunged into the wilderness,
determined to conclude their explorations
by examining the regions watered by the
Green and Cumberland rivers and their tributaries.
In after years, Gasper Mansker, the
old German scout, was accustomed to describe
with comic effect the consternation created
among the Long Hunters, while hunting one
day on Green River, by a singular noise which
they could not explain. Steathily slipping
from tree to tree, Mansker finally beheld with
mingled surprise and amusement a hunter,
bare-headed, stretched flat upon his back on
a deerskin spread on the ground, singing merrily
at the top of his voice! It was Daniel
Boone, joyously whiling away the solitary
hours in singing one of his favorite songs of
the border. In March, 1771, after spending
some time in company with the Long Hunters,
the Boones, their horses laden with furs, set
their faces homeward. On their return journey,
near Cumberland Gap, they had the
misfortune to be surrounded by a party of
Indians who robbed them of their guns and all
their peltries. With this humiliating conclusion
to his memorable tour of exploration,
Daniel Boone, as he himself says, "once more
reached home after experiencing hardships
which would defy credulity in the recital."[9]

Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone
had achieved the ambition of years: he had seen
Kentucky, which he "esteemed a second paradise."
The reports of his extended explorations,
which he made to Judge Henderson,
were soon communicated to the other partners

of the land company; and their letters of this
period, to one another, bristle with glowing and
minute descriptions of the country, as detailed
by their agent. Boone was immediately engaged
to act in the company's behalf to sound
the Cherokees confidentially with respect to
their willingness to lease or sell the beautiful
hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany.[10]
The high hopes of Henderson and his associates
at last gave promise of brilliant realization.
Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions
of Kentucky excited in their minds, says a
gifted early chronicler, the "spirit of an enterprise
which in point of magnitude and peril,
as well as constancy and heroism displayed in
its execution, has never been paralleled in the
history of America."