The First White Man of the West | Page 2

is appointed Commandant.

CHAPTER XV.
Anecdotes of Colonel Boone, related by Mr. Audubon--A remarkable
instance of memory.

CHAPTER XVI.
Progress of improvement in Missouri--Old age of Boone--Death of his
wife--He goes to reside with his son--His death--His personal
appearance and character.

PREFACE.
Our eastern brethren have entered heartily into the pious duty of
bringing to remembrance the character and deeds of their forefathers.
Shall we of the west allow the names of those great men, who won for
us, from the forest, the savages, and wild beasts, our fair domain of
fertile fields and beautiful rivers, to fade into oblivion? They who have
hearts to admire nobility imparted by nature's great seal--fearlessness,
strength, energy, sagacity, generous forgetfulness of self, the
delineation of scenes of terror, and the relation of deeds of daring, will
not fail to be interested in a sketch of the life of the pioneer and hunter
of Kentucky, Daniel Boone. Contemplated in any light, we shall find
him in his way and walk, a man as truly great as Penn, Marion, and
Franklin, in theirs. True, he was not learned in the lore of books, or
trained in the etiquette of cities. But he possessed a knowledge far more
important in the sphere which Providence called him to fill. He felt, too,
the conscious dignity of self-respect, and would have been seen as erect,
firm, and unembarrassed amid the pomp and splendor of the proudest
court in Christendom, as in the shade of his own wilderness. Where
nature in her own ineffaceable characters has marked superiority, she
looks down upon the tiny and elaborate acquirements of art, and in all
positions and in all time entitles her favorites to the involuntary
homage of their fellow-men. They are the selected pilots in storms, the
leaders in battles, and the pioneers in the colonization of new countries.
Such a man was Daniel Boone, and wonderfully was he endowed by
Providence for the part which he was called to act. Far be it from us to
undervalue the advantages of education: It can do every thing but
assume the prerogative of Providence. God has reserved for himself the
attribute of creating. Distinguished excellence has never been attained,
unless where nature and education, native endowment and
circumstances, have concurred. This wonderful man received his

commission for his achievements and his peculiar walk from the sign
manual of nature. He was formed to be a woodsman, and the
adventurous precursor in the first settlement of Kentucky. His home
was in the woods, where others were bewildered and lost. It is a
mysterious spectacle to see a man possessed of such an astonishing
power of being perfectly familiar with his route and his resources in the
depths of the untrodden wilderness, where others could as little divine
their way, and what was to be done, as mariners on mid-ocean, without
chart or compass, sun, moon, or stars. But that nature has bestowed
these endowments upon some men and denied them to others, is as
certain as that she has given to some animals instincts of one kind,
fitting them for peculiar modes of life, which are denied to others,
perhaps as strangely endowed in another way.
The following pages aim to present a faithful picture of this singular
man, in his wanderings, captivities, and escapes. If the effort be
successful, we have no fear that the attention of the reader will wander.
There is a charm in such recitals, which lays its spell upon all. The
grave and gay, the simple and the learned, the young and gray-haired
alike yield to its influence.
We wish to present him in his strong incipient manifestations of the
development of his peculiar character in boyhood. We then see him on
foot and alone, with no companion but his dog, and no friend but his
rifle, making his way over trackless and unnamed mountains, and
immeasurable forests, until he explores the flowering wilderness of
Kentucky. Already familiar, by his own peculiar intuition, with the
Indian character, we see him casting his keen and searching glance
around, as the ancient woods rung with the first strokes of his axe, and
pausing from time to time to see if the echoes have startled the red men,
or the wild beasts from their lair. We trace him through all the
succeeding explorations of the Bloody Ground, and of Tennessee, until
so many immigrants have followed in his steps, that he finds his
privacy too strongly pressed upon; until he finds the buts and bounds of
legal tenures restraining his free thoughts, and impelling him to the
distant and unsettled shores of the Missouri, to seek range and solitude
anew. We see him there, his eyes beginning to grow dim with the
influence of seventy winters--as he can no longer take