The Brilliant Victory of Mad Anthony Wayne brings Peace to the Frontier—Boone Loses his Farm—He Removes to Missouri—Made Commandant of the Femme Osage District—Audubon's Account of a Night with Colonel Boone—Hunting in his Old Age—He Loses the Land granted him by the Spanish Government—Petitions Congress for a Confirmation of his Original Claims—The Petition Disregarded.
While the stirring events recorded in the preceding chapter were taking place, Daniel Boone, like every one else, was advancing in years, and the prime of his life was passed before a lasting peace was gained by the American settlers on the frontier.
Disaster followed disaster, until Congress at last did the thing which it ought to have done long before. "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the hero of Stony Point and a dozen Revolutionary battlefields, was appointed to assume the military management of affairs in the West.
This appointment was made in April, 1792, when he became Major-General and Commander-in-Chief, and he led an expedition against the defiant combination of tribes, encountering them in August, 1794, when he utterly defeated and overthrew them. He compelled the treaty of Greenville, which ended all danger from any combination of the aborigines—nothing of the kind developing itself, until the great Tecumseh roused his race against the Americans in the war of 1812.
Boone now applied himself with great industry to the cultivation of his farm near Boonesborough. He soon made it one of the finest and most valuable pieces of land in the country; but, like many a man in his position, he fell a victim to the rapacious speculator, who took advantage of the intricacies and elasticity of the law.
Boone felt such a dislike of legal forms, and in fact of everything that pertained to them, that he failed to secure the title of his land locations. Before he suspected his danger, he found himself deprived of all his possessions, the right to which he never dreamed would be questioned.
The great pioneer had reached that period in life when it would be supposed that he was too feeble to begin over again, but, although the misfortune was a great blow to him, he did not lose courage. He removed to Point Pleasant, on the Kanawha River, in Virginia, where he stayed several years, tilling the ground with his usual industry, and indulging also in his favorite pastime of hunting.
One day, when he returned from hunting, he received a call from a number of friends who had been on a tour across the Missouri. They gave such fervid accounts of the richness of the soil and the abundance of game, that the heart of the old pioneer was fired again as it was forty years before. He determined to emigrate to Missouri with the purpose of spending the remainder of his days there. Accordingly, with his household goods and family, he turned his back forever upon the land of his early sufferings and triumphs. This removal was probably made in 1797, though the precise date is unknown.
At the time named, Spain owned the country, then called Upper Louisiana, and the fame of the renowned pioneer had extended to that comparatively remote region. The Lieutenant-Governor, residing at St. Louis, promised him ample portions of land, and Boone took up his residence in the Femme-Osage settlement, some 50 miles west of St. Louis. Don Charles D. Delassus, the Lieutenant-Governor, presented Boone with a commission, in 1800, as Commandant of the Femme-Osage District—an office which included both civil and military duties.
Boone accepted the office, and discharged the duties connected with it with great credit, up to the time when the territory was purchased by the United States in 1804. Boone lived with his son, Daniel M., until the date named, when he changed his residence to that of his son Nathan, with whom he tarried six years, when he became a member of the family of his son-in-law, Flanders Callaway.