Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman

by C. H. Forbes-Lindsay

The most ardent defenders of the Indians must find it difficult to establish a case of trespass against the settlers of Kentucky. The territory that is now comprised within that State was ceded by the Indians in more than one treaty and purchased for a definite sum. Moreover, it had not been the home or country of any particular tribe, but was held as a hunting-ground common to all and in which none were allowed to settle. It contained no permanent Indian villages, nor was an acre of its soil cultivated until the white man cleared the land.

The pioneers of the wilderness made their settlements in groups of five or six families. The first thing they did was to erect their cabins and form a fort. This was usually accomplished by raising the former in a row and making their backs one side of a palisaded enclosure, with blockhouses at the corners. This was the refuge of all during an attack by the Indians, but otherwise each family lived in a cabin upon its farm. The clearings were generally four hundred acres in extent and lay at some distance from each other in the heart of the forest. The trees having been felled, the settler left the stumps standing, rolled the trunks to one side and burned the branches on the spot. He then planted his fields with maize or other cereals. Some stock was raised and a few sheep, but only in sufficient numbers to supply local needs. Corn, or maize, was the principal reliance of the frontier farmer. His wife made a coarse flour and hominy from it, and a bag of the parched grains served him for food on his hunting expeditions.

The backwoods cabin was commonly a one-roomed structure of unhewn logs, chinked with clay and moss. After a while, when the owner became fairly settled and had his fields in good order, this would give place to a larger building, containing perhaps as many as three rooms and an attic reached by a ladder. A huge stone fireplace occupied one end of the cabin, and the door was always furnished with heavy bolts. The logs were hewn, at least on the inside, and the roof covered with clapboards. There was little furniture and few utensils in such a place. The table was a board set on trestles, and three-legged stools served to sit upon. The beds were rough wooden contrivances covered with skins. The dishes and platters were often of wood and the spoons and forks of pewter, the hunting-knife serving admirably to cut the meat. The family depended very largely upon its head to furnish the larder with venison and bear-steaks.

The dress of the backwoodsman was a distinctive one. He wore a hunting-shirt of buckskin, or homespun, ornamented with a fringe of the same material, or perhaps with porcupine quills. It was a loose tunic, descending nearly to the knees and fastened round the waist with a belt, from which were suspended the tomahawk and hunting-knife. From his shoulders hung by a strap the powder-horn and bullet-pouch, in which he also carried spare flints. On his head he wore a fur cap or a soft felt hat, and his feet were covered with moccasins, after the fashion of the Indians, from whom the dress was in large part borrowed. His legs were encased in leather leggings or trousers.

The backwoodsman’s principal weapon was the heavy flint-lock rifle. It was five feet, and sometimes slightly more, in length, and although it did not carry very far was exceedingly accurate. The most marvellous feats of marksmanship were performed by some of the pioneers with these weapons. Every boy learned to shoot almost as soon as he was strong enough to lift a gun, and his training in woodcraft commenced even earlier, so that it is not surprising that many a youth, such as Kit Carson and Simon Kenton, exhibited the qualities of the expert hunter and Indian fighter before his beard was grown.

There was little money in the backwoods, pelts serving instead. Almost all the needs of the people were supplied by themselves. The women made homespun, in which they clothed the children and themselves. Every man was something of a smith, and most of the rifles were of backwoods manufacture. The men tanned the skins and their wives sewed them into foot-gear and garments. Trenchers and bowls, and even harrows and sleds, were made without much difficulty.

There were, however, a few very necessary articles for which the settlers had to depend upon the outside world. These were salt, iron, powder and lead. In the fall the members of a settlement would make a joint collection of fur-skins and send two or three of their number to some large town, such as Baltimore, to get what was needed. Thus, a train of several peltry-laden horses would make the long, slow journey over a distance which we may cover in these days in two or three hours.

Daniel Boone was a typical backwoodsman. Born in a frontier settlement, he passed his long and adventurous life in sparsely-peopled regions and died in a pioneer community beyond the Mississippi. Boone’s father, a native of England, after living in different parts of Pennsylvania, took up some land on what was then the frontier, in Oley township, about eight miles from the site of the present city of Reading. Here Daniel was born in November, 1734. His early life was that of the ordinary backwoods boy. It embraced no considerable opportunity for scholarship. He learned to read and write but, having little occasion in the course of his active life for the exercise of either accomplishment, his spelling was poor to the day of his death. He helped his mother with the chores and, when old enough, was entrusted with the care of the stock at pasture. His days were spent in the open and he grew to be a lusty lad, well versed in nature and the ways of wild beasts and the less dangerous denizens of the forest. When he had reached the age of twelve, his father gave him a rifle, with which he soon became a good shot and furnished his mother’s kitchen with an ample supply of game. His winters were now spent in hunting, and he often roamed long distances from home in his solitary expeditions, returning with skins secured by his trap or gun.

In 1750 Boone’s parents with their children migrated south and settled on the banks of the upper Yadkin, in the northwestern corner of North Carolina. The location was even wilder than that they had left, and their lives were harder and more adventurous. Attacks by the Indians were not infrequent, and a few years later a border war cost many lives in the Yadkin Valley. Here Daniel, following the custom of young backwoodsmen, married as soon as he had arrived at manhood and set up housekeeping in a log cabin.

Ten years were passed after the usual manner of backwoods existence, in hunting, farming, and fighting Indians. But Boone’s hunting expeditions sometimes partook of the character of explorations. He went far beyond the frontier in various directions, and on two or three occasions crossed the mountains into Kentucky. The beauty and richness of the country and the abundance of game filled him with an irresistible desire to make his home there. In the fall of 1773 Boone sold his farm on the Yadkin and set out at the head of a company, consisting of his own family and several others that he had induced to accompany them, to make new homes in the lovely valleys of Kentucky. It is at this point that we take up his story.