E-text prepared by Curtis Weyant, Thomas Hutchinson,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE,
The
GREAT WESTERN HUNTER AND PIONEER,
Comprising An
Account Of His Early History; His Daring And Remarkable CareerAs The First Settler Of Kentucky; His Thrilling AdventuresWith The Indians, And His Wonderful Skill, Coolness AndSagacity Under All The Hazardous And TryingCircumstances Of Western Border Life.
BY CECIL B. HARTLEY.
To Which Is Added
His Autobiography Complete As Dictated By Himself, And Showing
His Own Belief That He Was An Instrument
Ordained To Settle The Wilderness.
PREFACE
The subject of the following biography, the celebrated Colonel DanielBoone, is one of the most remarkable men which this country has produced.His character is marked with originality, and his actions were importantand influential in one of the most interesting periods of ourhistory—that of the early settlement of Kentucky. Boone is generallyacknowledged as the founder of that State. His having explored it aloneto a considerable extent; his leading the earliest bands of settlers;his founding Boonesborough, the nucleus of the future State; his havingdefended this and other stations successfully against the attacks of theIndians; and the prominent part which he took in military affairs atthis period of distress and peril, certainly render his claims to thedistinguished honor of founding Kentucky very strong.
But Boone, personally, reaped very little benefit from his patriotic anddisinterested exertions. The lands which he had first cultivated anddefended, were taken from him by the chicanery of the law; other landsgranted to him by the Spanish government were lost by his inattention tolegal forms; and in his old age he was without an acre of land which hecould call his own. A few years before his death a small tract, such asany other settler in Missouri was entitled to, was granted him byCongress. But he has left to his numerous posterity a noblerinheritance—that of an imperishable fame in the annals of his country!