Interwoven with this more or less secret agitation for separating the West from the East were the corrupt intrigues of Spain, which might have been more successful had she pursued a persistent policy. Her agents—among whom were some Western pioneers who later found difficulty in explaining their conduct—craftily fanned the embers of discontent, spread reports that Congress intended to sacrifice to Spain the navigation rights of the West, distributed bribes, and were even accused of advising Spain to arm the Southern Indians in order to increase popular uneasiness over existing conditions. Spain also offered large land grants to prominent American borderers who should lead colonies to settle beyond the Mississippi and become her subjects—a proposition which Clark once offered to accept, but did not; but of which we shall see that Daniel Boone, in his days of discontent, took advantage, as did also a few other Kentucky pioneers. Ultimately Congress resolved never to abandon its claim to the Mississippi (1787); and when the United States became strong, and the advantages of union were more clearly seen in the West, Kentucky became a member of the sisterhood of States (1792).
It is estimated that, between 1783 and 1790, fully fifteen hundred Kentuckians were massacred by Indians or taken captive to the savage towns; and the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania furnished their full quota to the long roll of victims. It is impossible in so small a volume as this to mention all of even the principal incidents in the catalogue of assaults, heroic defenses, murders, burnings, torturings, escapes, reprisals, and ambushes which constitute the lurid annals of this protracted border warfare. The reader who has followed thus far this story of a strenuous life, will understand what these meant; to what deeds of daring they gave rise on the part of the men and women of the border; what privation and anguish they entailed. But let us not forget that neither race could claim, in this titanic struggle for the mastery of the hunting-grounds, a monopoly of courage or of cowardice, of brutality or of mercy. The Indians suffered quite as keenly as the whites in the burning of their villages, crops, and supplies, and by the loss of life either in battle, by stealthy attack, or by treachery. The frontiersmen learned from the red men the lessons of forest warfare, and often outdid their tutors in ferocity. The contest between civilization and savagery is, in the nature of things, unavoidable; the result also is foreordained. It is well for our peace of mind that, in the dark story of the Juggernaut car, we do not inquire too closely into details.
In 1785, goaded by numerous attacks on settlers and immigrants, Clark led a thousand men against the tribes on the Wabash; but by this time he had lost control of the situation, and cowardice on the part of his troops, combined with lack of provisions, led to the practical failure of the expedition, although the Indians were much frightened.
At the same time, Logan was more successful in an attack on the Shawnese of the Scioto Valley, who lost heavily in killed and prisoners. In neither of these expeditions does Boone appear to have taken part.
The year 1787 was chiefly notable, in the history of the West, for the adoption by Congress of the Ordinance for the government of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, wherein there dwelt perhaps seven thousand whites, mostly unprogressive French-Canadians, in small settlements flanking the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and in the Wabash Valley. Along the Ohio were scattered a few American hamlets, chiefly in Kentucky. In the same year the Indian war reached a height of fury which produced a panic throughout the border, and frantic appeals to Virginia, which brought insufficient aid. Boone, now a town trustee of Maysville, was sent to the legislature that autumn, and occupied his seat at Richmond from October until January. While there, we find him strongly complaining that the arms sent out to Kentucky by the State during the year were unfit for use, the swords being without scabbards, and the rifles without cartridge-boxes or flints.
A child of the wilderness, Boone was law-abiding and loved peace, but he chafed at legal forms. He had, in various parts of Kentucky, preempted much land in the crude fashion of his day, both under the Transylvania Company and the later statutes of Virginia—how much, it would now be difficult to ascertain. In his old survey-books, still preserved in the Wisconsin State Historical Library, one finds numerous claim entries for himself, ranging from four hundred to ten thousand acres each—a tract which he called "Stockfield," near Boonesborough; on Cartwright's Creek, a branch of Beech Fork of Salt River; on the Licking, Elkhorn, Boone's Creek, and elsewhere. The following is a specimen entry, dated "Aperel the 22 1785," recording a claim made "on the Bank of Cantuckey"; it illustrates the loose surveying methods of the time: "Survayd for Dal Boone 5000 acres begin at Robert Camels N E Corner at a 2 White ashes and Buckeyes S 1200 p[oles] to 3 Shuger trees Ealm and walnut E 666 p to 6 Shuger trees and ash N 1200 p to a poplar and beech W 666 p to the begining."
It did not occur to our easy-going hero that any one would question his right to as much land as he cared to hold in a wilderness which he had done so much to bring to the attention of the world. But claim-jumpers were no respecters of persons. It was discovered that Boone had carelessly failed to make any of his preemptions according to the letter of the law, leaving it open for any adventurer to reenter the choice claims which he had selected with the care of an expert, and to treat him as an interloper. Suits of ejectment followed one by one (1785-98), until in the end his acres were taken from him by the courts, and the good-hearted, simple fellow was sent adrift in the world absolutely landless.
At first, when his broad acres began to melt away, the great hunter, careless of his possessions, appeared to exhibit no concern; but the accumulation of his disasters, together with the rapid growth of settlement upon the hunting-grounds, and doubtless some domestic nagging, developed within him an intensity of depression which led him to abandon his long-beloved Kentucky and vow never again to dwell within her limits. In the autumn of 1788, before his disasters were quite complete, this resolution was carried into effect; with wife and family, and what few worldly goods he possessed, he removed to Point Pleasant, at the junction of the Great Kanawha and the Ohio—in our day a quaint little court-house town in West Virginia.