Boone: A Biography (50 page)

In October 1782 Boone and other officers of the county militia began to assemble a large expeditionary force to be led by General George Rogers Clark in a campaign against the Shawnee towns in Ohio. More than eleven hundred men were mustered and they crossed the Ohio River on November 1, two days before the British signed
the preliminary peace agreement with the Americans. The Indians may not have known for certain yet that they were losing their British allies at Detroit. Colin C. Calloway tells us that when they did learn the peace terms they would feel betrayed. “
Indian speakers in council after council
expressed their anger and disbelief that their British allies had betrayed them and handed their lands over to their American and Spanish enemies.” Not sure about the policies of the new republic, the Indians were confronted with uncertainty on all sides.

There had been more Wyandottes than any other nation in the Indian force at the Blue Licks, but the Kentucky militia did not attempt to march north to the Wyandotte villages between the Sandusky and Cuyahoga rivers. Instead Clark and his large force again burned Chillicothe and Piqua and other Shawnee towns, destroyed crops and storehouses. But they encountered little resistance and killed only twenty Indians before returning to Kentucky. The invasion was largely symbolic, except that as a result more Indians moved farther north and west.

Another of Clark’s projects was to build a gunboat to patrol the Ohio River and prevent Indian raids into Kentucky. The craft was seventy-three feet long, with forty-six oars and a complement of 110 men. Called the
Miami
, it was designed to carry eight cannons, averaging about three pounds in size. The long clumsy galley proved to have little effect in preventing Indian incursions across the river. The invaders simply hid in the forest until the gunboat was out of sight and then crossed the river quickly in their skin boats. The gunboat could only have been useful attacking forts along the river, but neither the British nor the Indians had such forts.

It would be twelve more years before the Shawnees and Miamis would finally be defeated by “Mad” Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers near Toledo, August 20, 1794, after the humiliating defeats the Indians delivered to Colonel Harmar in 1790 and General St. Clair in 1791. Twelve years and one day after the defeat at the Blue Licks,
Wayne, having studied Indian tactics at the Blue Licks and elsewhere, told his men to approach the Indians hidden in the brush and fallen trees of a hurricane-leveled forest, let the Shawnees and Miamis fire at them, then rush them with bayonets and swords while the Indians were trying to reload among the tangled limbs and trunks and the cavalry prevented them from fleeing. This time the Long Knives used their long knives. The tactic worked and the Shawnees and Miamis were soundly defeated.

A
FTER THE RETURN
from Ohio, Boone and a group of men from Boone’s Station, including Will Hays and Flanders Callaway, camped for several days at
the mouth of Limestone Creek
on the Ohio River. It was already a popular landing place for immigrants and travelers coming down the Ohio and was the logical entrance to the settlements in the Great Meadow. Filson described, “The mouth of Limestone Creek, where is a fine harbor for boats coming down the Ohio . . . now a common landing.” As always, Boone had an eye out for new land, new places to settle. After the humiliating defeat at the Blue Licks and the death of Israel, he may have felt it was time to move on. Everything at Boone’s Station reminded him of Israel and his own failure and guilt. Also his land at Boone’s Station was being claimed by another party. The land he had surveyed there overlapped with two earlier claims, including that of James Hickman. He had sold one tract of land, surveyed by Floyd, to Alex Cleveland, which was also claimed by Hickman and his heirs. Around 1783 Boone moved his family a few miles west to Marble Creek. But he may have already had a move north to the Ohio River in mind. Peter Harget would later give a deposition, saying that in October or November of 1782, when he was camping on Limestone Creek with Boone, Flanders Callaway, Will Hays, and others, “
Boone wanted to examine the land
abt. The mouth of limestone, and then talked of settling there, and did settle there in 1785.”

Instead of brooding on loss and his mistakes, it was better to plan
to move on to new opportunities. It was Boone’s habit, and his destiny, to keep moving toward a future of risk and unlimited potential. Simon Kenton already had a station near Limestone Creek, and the business of land surveying and trading was booming, especially now that the Shawnees had moved farther to the north. At the temporary home on Marble Creek, Boone would later choose Limestone as the place where he would establish himself and his extended family.

1783–1785

With the move to Marble Creek around 1783, Boone’s life entered a new phase, almost another dispensation. He was almost fifty and the events for which he would be remembered were mostly behind him: his long 1769–71 hunt into Kentucky, his negotiations with the Cherokees for the Transylvania Company, hacking Boone’s Trace and building Boonesborough in 1775, the rescue of Jemima in 1776, his adoption by the Shawnees in 1778, and his heroic escape and defense of Boones-borough. The debacle at the Blue Licks marked an end to his era of exploits, heroism, genius. And to really put a period to that phase of his life, he was about to become famous. He may have been a legend on the frontier for a dozen years already, but he was about to become even more of a legend back east, in Britain, and on the Continent. It is hard for anyone, even a man of Daniel Boone’s modesty, cheer, courtesy, and resourcefulness, to survive his own legend.

“
Two darling sons, and a brother, have I lost
by savage hands, which have also taken from me forty valuable horses, and abundance of cattle,” he told John Filson in 1783. John Filson had come west to make his fortune also. His idea was to write a book about Kentucky and make a map of the region that would sell well and bring even more investors and settlers to the West. And part of his plan was to include the life story of Kentucky’s most famous citizen, Daniel Boone.
Filson’s biographer, John Walton, writes: “
The earliest references to Filson
have him surveying and teaching school: the first, one of the most practical and respected vocations on the frontier; and the second, not without at least some respectability . . . Filson, however, immediately set about a third and most extraordinary activity—he began writing a book.”

Many have commented on the stilted style of the narration in Filson’s “Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon,” included as a chapter in
The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke
. The former schoolmaster Filson cast Boone’s narrative in the proper and decorative language of the time. From the many documents in his own handwriting we know Boone was an uncertain speller, and among backwoodsmen Boone probably talked their language. But there is reason to suspect that Boone could speak more proper English in the right company, when the occasion demanded it. He had grown up among educated Quakers, and he knew how to match his speech and behavior to his audience, whether Shawnees who loved eloquence, or rough hunters, or learned lawyers such as Richard Henderson, or British officers such as Hamilton.

Almost everyone has assumed it is only Filson’s construction of Boone’s voice that comes through in the narrative of the “autobiography.” But it may be that Filson’s text is not so entirely unlike Boone’s actual telling of his story in the 1783 or 1784 interviews. Filson says in his introduction that the story is “
from his own mouth
.” Boone was talking to an educated easterner, and he was about to move into town to establish himself as a leading citizen and businessman. He was leaving the woods for the greater world. It is just possible that Filson’s narrative reflects with some accuracy the way Boone actually spoke to him, doctored up and corrected here and there. It certainly reflects the way Boone saw himself or wanted to view himself. In fact
Boone certified the story true
in every detail.

John Filson was about thirty years old when he came to Kentucky in 1783. A native of Chester County, Pennsylvania, he had taught school near Wilmington, Delaware, during the Revolution. With the war over he decided to strike out for the West and seek his destiny, as so many others were doing. He invested a small inheritance in Kentucky land and set out to inspect his property. Going by way of Pittsburgh, he took a barge down the Ohio River, landing very likely at Limestone, where Boone would later become the best-known citizen.

Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon by
John Filson. Published as an appendix to John Filson’s
The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke
, 1784, this supposed autobiography made Boone famous in America, Europe, and Britain. Late in his life Boone declared that every word of the account was true. (Photo: Benjamin R. Morgan.)

Unlike most of those arriving in Kentucky to make their fortunes, Filson planned on writing a book and making a map of “Kentucke” to attract investors. He had put his inheritance in twelve thousand acres
of land and he hoped to advertise his holdings with a little book. Let others kill a buck to make a buck; he would write a book to make a buck. Filson himself became something of a legend in American history. He is always portrayed as awkward, inept, stumbling around the rough frontier towns and settlements, pencil and notebook in hand, interviewing hunters and Indian fighters. However clumsy he appeared, he was so insistent he usually got the story he wanted. Walton tells us, “
He acquired a reputation for annoying
persistence.” Kentuckians found that the only way to get rid of the nagging schoolmaster was to tell him what he wanted to know. He was fortunate to meet Boone, and his timing was perfect. As he was planning to set himself up for a career in business, surveying, and possibly politics, Boone was willing, even enthusiastic, to advise the newcomer and tell his story. Flattered that the eastern schoolmaster wanted to publish an account of his life, Boone rose to the occasion and gave Filson what he sought. “
Curiosity is natural to the soul of man
, and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections,” the memoir begins. The first note Boone struck was about his hunger for exploration and discovery, his capacity for wonder. He began to reminisce about his struggle to reach the paradise of Kentucky, the risks he had taken, the tragic losses of two sons and a brother, the kidnapping of Jemima, the captivity with the Shawnees, the heroic escape to warn and fortify Boonesborough, the extended siege of Boonesborough. It was as though Boone had been waiting all his life to tell this story. He didn’t mention the court-martial for treason at Logan’s Station, but he did stress the devastating losses at the Blue Licks the summer before.

It is quite possible Boone did look back on his quest for Kentucky as heroic, almost a knightly quest for the Holy Grail. In all the Arthurian stories the Grail is never pursued with more determination and hope than that with which Boone and others had sought the meadows and hunting paradise of Kentucky. Boone was later described as “naturally romantic.” Boone himself could not have written the account as Filson did, but Filson could not have written as he did either without a great
deal of the tone and aphoristic asides coming from the subject himself. The voice of the Boone narrative is in many ways different from the rest of Filson’s book about “Kentucke.” “
Certainly the most florid writing
in Filson’s book on Kentucky occurs in some of the descriptive passages and in his prophecy,” John Walton says. Filson portrayed Boone pretty much as Boone saw himself in 1783, and as he wanted to be seen. The air of the quest, which some have said was inspired by familiarity with medieval literature, is more likely taken from
The Pilgrim’s Progress
, which Boone and everyone else on the frontier knew. The Boone-Filson collaboration produced a text that has been a classic of frontier literature ever since. Walton observes, “
He [Boone] has been the inspiration
for a substantial portion of American literature.”

“
It was the first of May, in the year 1769
, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River, in North-Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucke.” The style is that of a quest narrative, of a knight errant in search of a paradise. But it fits the adventure narrative also, as popularized by Defoe in
Robinson Crusoe
. After the Bible and
The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe
was perhaps the mostly widely read book in North America in the eighteenth century. Published in 1719 by the fifty-nine-year-old dissenter, journalist, spy, and sometimes double agent, Daniel Defoe, the book, often called the first novel in English, went through printing after printing and edition after edition. Thought by the public to be a factual memoir, not a work of fiction,
Robinson Crusoe
was modeled on the true account of the adventures of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk as published by Richard Steele in 1713. Though largely unnoticed by scholars and historians writing about Boone, Defoe’s novel deeply influenced the way Boone told his story and the way Filson wrote down the narrative. Crusoe’s story is told in the first person and not only describes one man’s heroic struggle for survival in the wilderness but is interspersed with moral meditations on the growth of character, humility, and wisdom.