With Boone on the frontier

by Edward Stratemeyer

It was a hopeful beginning of the great work of settling the West, but it came to a speedy and disastrous termination. The pioneers had been but two weeks on the march when a band of Indians fell upon some of the young men who had gone out to round up the cattle. The fight was short and sharp, and six of the young men, including Daniel Boone’s oldest son, a lad of seventeen, were killed.

This was a great shock to the other members of the expedition, and despite the earnest protestations of Daniel and Squire Boone, it was decided to turn back.

“We can do nothing against the redskins,” said one timid hunter. “They will turn in some dark night and massacre the whole of us.”

But though this expedition turned back, the disaster did not dim the fame of Daniel Boone. He was known far and wide as Colonel Boone, the discoverer of Kentucky, and this fame reached even to the courts of Virginia, and he was often consulted regarding this “promised land” which he had explored. He was sent out at one time to assist a number of surveyors, and at another to open negotiations with the Indians, and his work in these directions served to increase his fame materially.

It was in the autumn of 1774 that a treaty was made with the Cherokee Indians by which all the land between the Cumberland and Kentucky Rivers passed into the control of a body known as the Transylvania Company. Immediately steps were taken to survey the territory, and to establish a trail which might be used by prospective settlers. It was a difficult task, and it fell to the lot of Daniel Boone to lead the way from a settlement on the Holston to the Kentucky River.

The Indians had been willing to negotiate the sale of the land, but when they saw an actual road being made through their beloved country they grew enraged, and soon there was a skirmish, in which two of Boone’s party fell, and he narrowly escaped death. But the expedition stood its ground, until it reached the site of the present village of Boonesborough, located about eighteen miles southeast of the city of Lexington. Here no time was lost in building a fort, and in making other defenses against the red men.

As soon as the stronghold was complete, Daniel Boone went back to the East and brought on his wife and children, and they were speedily joined by several other families. Then other settlements besides that of Boonesborough began to appear, and it was then that Peter Parsons went westward to see for himself if this “land of plenty” of which he had heard so much was really as good as pictured.

Mr. Parsons was delighted, both with the aspect of the country and with the kind-heartedness of Colonel Boone and the other hunters and pioneers that he met, and it did not take him long to reach the conclusion that a home here, if once the Indians could be brought to submission, would be most desirable. He was naturally a man who wanted freedom, and the troubles in the eastern settlements, where the discontentment that led to the Revolution was already in evidence, were exceedingly distasteful to him.

As soon as Mr. Parsons had sent for his family and that of Ezra Winship to come on, he set about clearing some of the land of the sites he had selected. He was hard at work one day felling some trees when an unexpected wind came along and knocked a tree over on him, hurting his leg. He was carried into the fort, and there he lay for several weeks while the hurt member grew better.

“It is too bad,” said he to Daniel Boone. “I was going out to meet my family and the others that are expected here. I have heard that the Indians are growing ugly again, and I am afraid that they will encounter trouble.”