Boone: A Biography (13 page)

Burrell had spent years in the mountains looking after cattle and other livestock and, at the same time, exploring the mountains and valleys farther west. He told Boone and Gist of even richer hunting grounds farther on and showed them buffalo traces that led through low gaps to reach there. He took them to a herder’s cabin built by Benjamin Howard on a high, sweeping meadow. Water on the east side flowed to the Yadkin, on the north to the New River, and on the west to the Watauga and the Tennessee. Boone and Gist had found what was called then “the backwater,” water moving toward the Mississippi, drawn in the direction they were drawn.

The hunters followed another path into southwestern Virginia. It was spectacular country. Boone used the Howard cabin for several years for his long hunts. Stones from the chimney of the hut are now incorporated in a monument to Boone in Boone, North Carolina. From this area Boone began to push farther and farther west on successive hunts. The point of each new season was not just to come home with hides and pelts but to come back having seen new valleys and rivers, while managing to evade the Cherokees. In the early 1760s Boone reached as far west as the Holston River and the Clinch, tributaries of the Tennessee. His reputation as a hunter and scout grew, as he pushed farther and brought in more hides and pelts. He was not by any means the first white man to see these regions. The French, the Spanish, and others had been there long before. But Boone explored the regions more thoroughly and hunted there more profitably than anyone else had. He was known for his precise memory. Once he saw a piece of ground he seemed to never forget it. It was said of him that “
he never crossed a route
that he had once traversed without at once recognizing the place and knowing that he was crossing one of his former trails.”

In late 1761 Boone and Gist were camping in far southwestern Virginia, at a site where Black’s Fort would later be built. During the night they were attacked by a pack of ravenous wolves and with great difficulty beat off the animals with rifles and axes.
They named the place Wolf Hills
, but later settlers changed the name to Abingdon.

Boone’s prowess as a hunter and scout became part of the folklore of the region. A century later stories still circulated on the Yadkin about his exploits. A good hunter might be
referred to as a “Boone
.” This was a time when
to be called an excellent hunter
was about the highest honor a man could aspire to. There was a political dimension to hunting also. Hunting could level the social playing field in a society where the great landowners and leaders were rarely hunters, the reverse of the case in the Old World. While expressing contempt for the rough backwoods hunters,
the gentry resented their
democratic independence.

It is likely that by this period Boone had also become a digger of ginseng to supplement his income. Called “sang” in the southern Appalachians, ginseng (
Panax quinquefolius
) was reputed to be a general tonic and aphrodisiac. The root could be sold to the Chinese for a substantial profit. In Boone’s time the woods were filled with ginseng, if one knew where to look, and what to look for. The herb preferred shady forest slopes and valleys. It had to be found while the leaves were recognizable or the berries bright red. In winter the bare stalks were hard to identify. Once dug, the roots were dried and kept dry to prevent mildew and rot. It’s because the root of ginseng can grow roughly in the shape of a man’s body that according to the doctrine of signatures, it is a stimulant for the whole body and for sexual potency, nature’s own Viagra. When hunting, Boone hid the sang he had dug in caches throughout the mountains. Later he’d come back and collect the roots. It was said he would later return “
strait to them all with unerring accuracy
.”

In those years on the Yadkin, Boone also acquired a reputation as a storyteller and wit. A century later people in the region were still quoting his anecdotes and jokes. He is supposed to have said, “
I wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn
for a man who isn’t sometimes afraid. Fear’s the spice that makes it interesting to go ahead.” And he is credited with observing, “Wisdom comes by facing the wind; fools let it carry them.” And on another occasion he said, “Hurry? Why don’t you know a man will overrun a heap more than he will overtake.” There were many
other sayings and stories attributed to him: When a man said to a smoker, “Don’t you know even a hog don’t use tobacco?” the smoker answered, “Well, who does that make more like a hog, me or you?” (Nathan Boone later said his father never used tobacco in any form.) It was said of a man with no socks in very cold weather that his feet would freeze. Boone answered, “Even taters wouldn’t freeze with that much dirt on them.”

It is a pity that we know so little of the herder and guide named Burrell. Throughout his long career Boone was often accompanied by African Americans on his hunting expeditions. For a slave such as Burrell, the occupation of highland herder must have been a godsend, allowing him to escape the fieldwork and hardships of the plantation for the beauty and adventure of the upland forests. Only one-tenth of the families on the Carolina border at that time owned slaves, and most of the households that did owned only a few. But it is striking how often references to black people appear in accounts of the frontier. Usually they are not named, mentioned only in passing, but we know they were there. Some slaves ran away to join the Indians and became members of the tribes. Others were kidnapped by the Indians and used as interpreters, guides, and marksmen.

Though Boone did go on long hunts with neighbors and friends and his brother Squire, and was known as a good companion around the campfire, expert at roasting turkey and eating it with relish, it was safer to slip through the woods on his own. He liked spending several weeks in the mountains wandering and hunting with only his dog and horse. One early biographer, the Reverend John Mason Peck, said Boone had developed “
the habit of contemplation
” while alone in the woods. Emerson later said, “
If a man would be alone
, let him look at the stars.” The sage of Concord could well have been putting into words Boone’s experience of many nights in the wilderness with only the stars for company.

When Boone camped in the woods he usually built a little hut open on one side to the campfire and the southern sun, called a half-face and made of limbs on poles, pine boughs, bark, and even moss. Within the
shelter, warmed by blankets or bearskins or buffalo skins, with his feet to the coals, he could survive the coldest nights, looking out at the stars that seemed to chatter just beyond the treetops. His favorite meal at this period was said to be elk’s liver.

According to his son Nathan,
Boone learned to watch the direction
bears moved in the fall looking for plentiful mast of acorns and hickory nuts, and he followed them. Boone knew that the secret of hunting, as in so many other pursuits, was not just in marksmanship, but in attention, preparation, watching and listening, before one made a move. Bear meat was especially sweet and tender because of all the nuts the bears ate in late summer and autumn.

On later hunts Daniel was known to carry a Bible and other books, including
Gulliver’s Travels
. “
In middle life, he read
considerably in history, which was his favorite reading,” Nathan said. Late in his life Boone wrote his widowed sister-in-law that it had always been his habit to read the scriptures. Nathan said he read the Bible more than any other book in his later years. It’s possible Boone took the Bible with him on these early hunts to savor by the campfire. He already had a pronounced sense of the sacredness of life, of the forest and Natives who lived in it, probably influenced as much by Indian beliefs as by his Quaker upbringing. “
His worship was in secret
and he placed his hopes in the Savior,” Nathan told Draper.

Daniel told the story of being awakened one winter night in his camp near later Jonesborough, Tennessee, to find himself surrounded by Cherokees, as one lifted the snow-covered blanket off him. “
Ah, Wide Mouth
, have I got you now,” the brave exclaimed. The Cherokees had given him that name, perhaps because he was prone to laughter and storytelling, and to them that’s how Boone was always known. The exclamation shows how elusive they had found Boone, though he was ranging in the heart of their hunting grounds. Not showing surprise, Boone sat up and smiled and shook hands with his captors. Though deeply asleep minutes before, he chatted with the braves and probably passed his flask. He usually traveled with a jug or flask of whiskey or
applejack. His aplomb and steadiness, ease and gracefulness, as well as his marksmanship and skill, gave him an extraordinary rapport with the Indians. Of famous white Americans, only Sam Houston appears to have had a comparable knack for fitting in with Native peoples.

The Cherokees did not harm Boone but took all his furs. They could have scalped him, or tomahawked him, or taken him back to their village for a night of torture and burning at the stake. Instead they claimed his precious hoard of pelts and his fine Pennsylvania rifle. This would happen to him again and again in his career in the woods. He would hunt and trap for weeks, even months, only to have his harvest taken from him. Undaunted, Boone would return to the woods as soon as he’d replaced his supplies and traps and rifle, and begin all over again. There is little evidence that he ever expressed bitterness or sought revenge for these losses. He could always trade for a new rifle, forge some more traps. If he had to he could even make a rifle. And it’s likely he understood how the Cherokees felt, facing a poacher and spy who could shoot and trap and track as well as they could, on their own land. The Indians may have monitored his activities from a distance, waiting until he had accumulated a hoard of furs, before they robbed him. When Indians stole Boone’s furs and rifle, they often did it in the guise of a trade. It was bad manners to steal outright. They offered to trade their musket for his fine rifle, a worn-out knife for his new one, a little wampum for all his furs. Boone understood the protocol and charade and complied. Theft might be considered wrong in tribal ethics, but a “trade” was respectable.

Boone may not have cared as much about possessions and wealth as other hunters did, the ones who got angry, fought back, and were killed. Much as he loved trapping, it was still worth going into the wilderness, even if one did return to the settlements without a fortune in beaver skins and deer hides. And he could always catch more beavers and kill more deer. It would seem, in fact, that Boone sometimes hunted
with
the Cherokees. Wellborn Coffey told Lyman Draper,
on September 28, 1884, that Boone was once hunting with a band of Cherokees when they came across what appeared to be buffalo tracks. Buffalo had been gone from that part of the Blue Ridge for some time, as the white settlements encroached on Cherokee lands. But Catawbas would sometimes make what appeared to be buffalo tracks to lure Cherokees into an ambush. “No buffalo,” one Cherokee said. “Tawbers.” But Boone led them farther down the trail until they came to a huge pile of buffalo droppings. “
Tawbers no make so
,” a Cherokee said, and Boone laughed, and likely the Cherokees laughed with him.

T
HE FIRST
inscriptions on trees with Boone’s name in the Watauga area appear to date from this period. Hunters of the time were fond of carving their names on beech and other trees, on boulders, cave walls. Indians also carved pictures and signs on trees and rocks, to mark a path or to record their passing through an area or a victory in war. Hunters’ inscriptions have been found in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. As Boone’s fame spread, so did the number of inscriptions. Boone certainly seemed to get around. Perhaps an authentic one was found on the Clinch River:

Daniel Boone

come on boys

here’s good water
.

No doubt the urge to write one’s name, or make one’s sign, inscribe the name of a lover, is enhanced by solitude and distance from others. Indians sometimes left a tomahawk to show where they had been. It appears Boone merely left his name.

W
HEN
D
ANIEL
returned to Virginia for his family in 1762, legend has it that he’d been gone for twenty-four months. There in Culpeper County he found Rebecca nursing a new baby, Jemima, born October 4. Boone’s response to the new daughter, born, some would say, while
he had been away two years, is one of the high points of his legend. The story is told in several different variations, but all versions agree about Boone’s gracious acceptance of the fact.

An old settler named Josiah Collins told Rev. John Dabney Shane a version of the story in 1841. “
When Boone returned home
after a two-year absence, there was a new child in the cradle. “‘Oh well!’ says he, ‘whose is it?’ ‘Why brother Squire’s,’ replied his wife. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘One of the name is all the same’; and so hushed her up.”

Lyman Draper collected different versions of the story, and the one he found most plausible was told by James Norman, who claimed to have returned to North Carolina from Virginia with the Boone family that fall of 1762. According to Norman, Rebecca fell on her knees when Boone returned to Culpeper from his militia service and long hunts in the Blue Ridge. Rebecca explained that he was gone so long she assumed he was dead, and she had given birth to someone else’s child. When Daniel asked whose child it was, Rebecca confessed the baby belonged to his brother Ned. Rebecca was reported to have said that
Ned “looked so much like Daniel
.”

As John Mack Faragher points out, such stories color the folklore of the frontier. With men gone on long hunts, on expeditions with militias, prospecting for minerals, or captured by Indians, there were many opportunities for husbands to disappear so long they were assumed to be dead. In some stories the husband or fiancé reappears just as the woman is about to take her vows in a new marriage.
In almost all versions
, the husband and wife reconcile, and if there is a new baby, the returned husband accepts it as his own.