Life of Daniel Boone, the Great Western Hunter and Pioneer

by Cecil B. Hartley

Tree

in ThE

yEAR

1760

"Boon was eighty-six years old when he died, which was September, 1820. He was thus twenty-six years old when the inscription was made. When he left the company of hunters in 1761, as mentioned above by Haywood, it is probable that he did so to revisit the theatre of a former hunt upon the creek that still bears his name, and where his camp is still pointed out near its banks. It is not improbable, indeed, that he belonged to, or accompanied, the party of Doctor Walker, on his first, or certainly on his second, tour of exploration in 1760. The inscription is sufficient authority, as this writer conceives, to date the arrival of Boon in Tennessee as early as its date, 1760, thus preceding the permanent settlement of the country nearly ten years."

It will be observed that the historian in this extract, spells Boon without the final e, following the orthography of the hunter, in his inscription on the tree. This orthography Boone used at a later period, as we shall show. But the present received mode of spelling the name is the one which we have adopted in this work.

On a subsequent page of Wheeler's history, we find the following memorandum:

"Daniel Boone, who still lived on the Yadkin, though he had previously hunted on the Western waters, came again this year to explore the country, being employed for this purpose by Henderson & Company. With him came Samuel Callaway, his kinsman, and the ancestor of the respectable family of that name, pioneers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Callaway was at the side of Boon when, approaching the spurs of the Cumberland Mountain, and in view of the vast herds of buffalo grazing in the valleys between them, he exclaimed, 'I am richer than the man mentioned in Scripture, who owned the cattle on a thousand hills; I own the wild beasts of more than a thousand valleys.'"

After Boone and Callaway, came another hunter, Henry Scaggins, who was also employed by Henderson. He extended his explorations to the Lower Cumberland, and fixed his station at Mansco's Lick.

We shall have occasion to speak more particularly of Henderson's company and Boone's connection with it; but we will first call the reader's attention to the state of affairs in North Carolina at this period, and their probable influence on the course pursued by Daniel Boone.