Boone: A Biography (58 page)

After Spain went to war with Britain in 1796, the Spanish governor of Missouri sent handbills into the American states advertising cheap land and liberal conditions in their new territory. Lt. Gov. Zenon Trudeau welcomed all settlers and let it be known that, although the Spanish government required settlers to be Roman Catholics, he would not enforce the regulation with much strictness. The actual wording of the document was, “
[T]heir children must absolutely be Catholics
, and he who will not conform to these considerations shall not be admitted, and shall be obliged to retire immediately, although he be a man of great property.” But Spanish officials made it clear that however strict the letter of the official policy, it would be applied in a most flexible fashion. As Kentucky and Tennessee and
western Virginia were becoming thickly settled, the poorest people, the most recent immigrants, and the more adventurous and restless began looking for land farther west. Some looked north and west of the Ohio River, at former Shawnee lands and the Illinois country. More looked farther west, across the Father of Waters.

Boone’s son Daniel Morgan, a hunter and wanderer like his father, was the first in the family to explore Missouri. As early as 1795 he had gone into the region of Mississippi to hunt and explore. In 1797 he entered Missouri, scouting for land he and his family might claim. As many have pointed out, Daniel Morgan was following the family tradition of a son’s going to investigate new land, as his grandfather Squire Boone had gone to Pennsylvania almost a hundred years before. “
He [Boone] wanted to know the quantity of land
granted to new settlers, heads of families and children, and servants. He also wanted to know if settlers were required to embrace the Catholic religion,” Nathan told Draper.

Daniel Morgan found a particularly attractive spot on the banks of Femme Osage Creek where game was plentiful and the soil rich, with easy access to the Missouri River. Then Daniel Morgan went to see Lt. Gov. Zenon Trudeau to introduce himself and ask what conditions the regional government might set if Daniel Boone came to Missouri as a settler.

Trudeau was delighted at the prospect, for he knew that wherever the famous Daniel Boone went, others would follow. He told Daniel Morgan that though the law limited the amount of land that could be granted to any one immigrant to about a square mile or eight hundred “arpents,” in Daniel Boone’s case each member of his family would also be granted six hundred “arpents.” And he let Daniel Morgan know that the religious restriction would not be enforced.

Daniel Morgan filed his claim for the tract on Femme Osage Creek and with four slaves built a cabin and cleared land for crops. Lieutenant Governor Trudeau waived all the rules for the son of Daniel Boone
and granted him the land outright, without the usual stipulation of a one-year wait.
The grant noted that besides slaves
Daniel Morgan had a number of cattle.

In 1798 Daniel and Rebecca and Nathan had made the move from Brushy Creek to near the mouth of the Little Sandy on the Ohio. This appears to have been an intermediate step as they planned their relocation westward. Daniel’s brother Squire and his family had joined them, after failed attempts to settle in Mississippi, New Orleans, Florida, and Pennsylvania. As restless as his more famous brother, Squire was ready to try his luck again in the new territory of Missouri.

Daniel Morgan left his land on Femme Osage Creek in the charge of his slaves in the fall of 1798 and returned to Kentucky, bringing with him a letter from Lt. Gov. Zenon Trudeau to Daniel Boone. The letter inviting the old pioneer to Missouri must have been especially welcome at a time when former clients were trying to have Boone arrested, swearing out warrants for his debts, and summoning him to court as a defendant and witness.

On September 19, 1798, the
Kentucky Gazette
in Lexington listed lands to be auctioned. “will be sold: On Thursday of the 4th of October next, at the court-house in Lexington, the following tracts of land, or for as much of each tract as will pay the tax and interest due thereon . . . Lands returned by the sheriffs of the different counties, as lying in Fayette County . . . Daniel Boon, 500.do 160, Jessamine; 300, Little Hickman.” Property on which Boone had not paid taxes was being auctioned off. As one acquaintance put it, “Boone was soured against Kentucky.” Boone told Francis Baily, an English traveler who met him in 1797, that people in Kentucky “were got too proud,” and that he was “
unwilling to live among men who were
shackled in their habits.”

The rumors spread about Boone’s business practices and surveying gave him an added incentive to leave Kentucky. Some of the accusations were remembered and embellished and passed on to John Dabney Shane. “
When Boone went out to the site
to find the tree he had marked as the corner of the property ’twas said he couldn’t find
the entry, and leaving his company, made one and dirtied (rubbed) over the fresh marks so as to conceal the fraud.’ Boone’s trick was discovered, however, which disallowed the entry. Risk speculated that it was embarrassment over this matter that prompted Boone to move to Missouri.” But another version of these events was given to Draper by Boone’s nephew Daniel Bryan: “
Boone’s honor compelled him
to pay up his bond as long as he owned an acre of land of Kentucky. And not able to satisfy all he was harrast and pestered so much that he bade farewell to Kentucky.”

Right up to the end of his time in Kentucky, Boone was involved one way or another with land and surveying.
As late as July 13, 1798, he had
accompanied the deputy surveyor, John Ballenger, to Stinking Creek to survey one of his old campsites on the Warrior’s Path.

I
N THE SPRING
of 1799 Boone and his family began to prepare for the removal to Spanish territory. It was a large family undertaking, like the move to Pennsylvania from Devonshire, and to the Yadkin from Pennsylvania, and to Boonesborough from the Yadkin. Boone’s daughters Susannah and Jemima and their families were going, plus Squire and his extended family, all except his wife, Jane, who was not well and was worn out by travel and childbearing. Squire would go on ahead and build a house, hoping that Jane would follow later.

Boone selected an enormous tulip poplar not far from their cabin on the Little Sandy River. Nathan told Draper, “
We found an unusually large poplar tree
half a mile up the Little Sandy just below the falls and used it to make a large pirogue. This boat was five feet in diameter and between fifty and sixty feet long. It would hold five tons of our goods.” Boone and his sons cut down the tree and spent weeks hollowing out the trunk into a huge dugout to carry Rebecca and their belongings to Missouri. Squire and his sons made another dugout for their use and it is likely there were other boats to add to the small flotilla on the Ohio.

Besides family, a hired man, and several slaves, a number of Daniel
Morgan’s bachelor friends joined the party to seek their fortunes in Missouri. It must have thrilled Boone to once again be forming a convoy of family and friends to go in quest of new land, and a new life. Among the hugs and farewells, last-minute preparations, there was the exhilaration of emptying out yet another cabin, leaving behind what was not wanted or too heavy to carry, leaving the familiar and routine, selling a few things, giving away more, breaking away from the failed and soiled, facing the next minute, the next year. “
He said that when he left Kentucky
, he did it with the intention of never stepping his feet upon Kentucky soil again; and if he was compelled to lose his head on the block or revisit Kentucky, he would not hesitate to choose the former,” Nathan reported.

Boone divided his migrating party into two groups, those who would travel by boat down the Ohio and those who would go by land driving cattle and hogs and horses. Those going overland, including Boone himself, would follow the forest trails and fords and take ferries across the large rivers. The livestock drovers included Will Hays and his son, Will Hays Jr., and
they chose a route that took them
through Lexington, Louisville, and Vincennes.

As the party started out, young Nathan, then eighteen, grew increasingly agitated. He was crushed to be leaving behind Olive Van Bibber, who lived nearby on the Ohio and was
known as the prettiest girl
in the region. Every step took him down the river away from his sweetheart. Olive was even younger than Nathan, a mere sixteen. He wasn’t sure she would marry him, and he wasn’t sure, even if she did agree to marry him, that she would be willing to accompany him to Missouri. By the time the group reached their old hometown of Limestone, Nathan knew he had no choice but to go back up the river and propose to Olive. There were already two marriages between the Boone and Van Bibber families. Boones had known Van Bibbers as far back as Oley, in Pennsylvania. Maybe Olive would consent to another joining of the clans.

Daniel and Rebecca agreed to let their youngest son break away
from the party and go back up the river. Nathan bought a marriage license and turned back. He must have found his sweetheart willing, for on September 26, 1799, he married Olive Van Bibber on the Little Sandy and the two set out to follow the Boone company to Missouri. It was a match that would last more than fifty-five years, until Nathan’s death in 1856, and produce fourteen children. In the extended conversations Lyman Draper recorded with Nathan and Olive in 1851, Olive would show her liveliness and good sense and excellent memory. Traveling by horseback and sleeping on the ground, living on game Nathan killed, the newlyweds spent the month of their honeymoon reaching Missouri. Held up in Vincennes a week with a crippled horse, they still reached their destination not long after the small flotilla and herd of hogs and cattle arrived in St. Louis.

It was supposedly at a stop in Cincinnati that Boone was heard to say he was on his way west because Kentucky was “
too crowded—I want more elbow room
.” The phrase would attach itself to his legend and never be forgotten.

Lt. Gov. Zenon Trudeau had been replaced by Don Charles Dehault Delassus, but Trudeau had stayed on to welcome Daniel Boone and his company. John M. Krum remembered Boone’s riding into St. Louis in a hunting shirt and with his rifle on his shoulder, two knives in his belt, “
accompanied by three or four hunting dogs
.” Boone showed his knack for ceremony and the theatrical, appropriate to the occasion. He was received with full military honors, drums, flags, drawn sabers, salutes. Boone must certainly have relished the honor and respect shown him. He gave the new governor a list of those with him who would need additional land. Delassus informed Boone that the land would be granted and that he, Daniel Boone, would be made “syndic” of the tract, that is, administrator and leader of his own district. The appointment as syndic would become official on June 11, 1800. The Spanish government was extending to Boone a kind of feudal authority in the area he and his people were settling. Boone would have the power to grant parcels of land to whomever he chose. Clearly
Trudeau and Delassus were willing to do almost anything in their power to make Boone welcome and to encourage others to join him.

Later Boone said he only went
to Missouri because he was certain it would become part of the United States. Since he could see the force of westward expansion in Kentucky and Tennessee and beyond, this may well have been true. But at the time, he gave no sign that he thought the territory would later be transferred to the United States. He very likely understood that Trudeau and Delassus wanted more American settlers as a buffer against the British to the north and Americans to the east. It now seems odd that the Spanish assumed American immigrants to Louisiana would become loyal Spanish subjects and not further the American expansion westward. But in 1799 Boone seemed quite happy to be escaping from United States territory.

A
FTER THE
ceremonies in St. Louis, Boone and his large entourage made their way west from St. Louis along the bank of the Missouri River. After they reached the land Daniel Morgan and his slaves had cleared, Daniel and Rebecca settled in one side of the large dogtrot cabin Daniel Morgan had built the year before. Boone assigned tracts to his children and relatives and friends, and they began marking boundaries, cutting trees, and building cabins. Once again Boone was living on the frontier, between white civilization and Indian ways, where he felt most at home.

Daniel Morgan’s double log cabin stood on a height overlooking the wide river meadows and bottomlands. Boone chose as his own plot of land the acreage between Daniel Morgan’s tract and the river. It was rich fertile soil, but most of the tract would be eaten away in the two hundred years afterward as the Big Muddy shifted its course again and again.

Nathan Boone, arriving with his sixteen-year-old bride, traded a packhorse for a claim nearby. “
I purchased the home grant of Robert Hall
, for which I gave my only horse, saddle, and bridle, so subsequently got his concession at Loutre Lick.” On their way to Loutre Creek,
Nathan and Olive crossed the Missouri at St. Charles in a skiff, with Nathan rowing the boat and Olive steering and holding the reins of the horse to be traded, which swam behind them. When Nathan and Olive arrived in Missouri they had a guinea of English money, but after purchasing twenty-five pounds of flour they had only a half-dollar left as they settled on their new acreage. Jemima and Flanders Callaway settled with their children farther down the creek. Sadly, Susannah Boone Hays, the once lively older daughter, died of fever soon after arriving in Missouri. The mother of ten, she was the first of the clan to be planted in the burial ground in Missouri.

Boone had escaped once more from the stifling routines of society to a world where the beaver were plentiful, Indians not far away, where no one questioned his authority or character and his freedom to hunt and trap and wander as he chose. There were no land taxes in Missouri in 1800. Reuben Gold Thwaites would write, “
[T]hrough several years to come
he was wont to declare that, next to his first long hunt in Kentucky, this was the happiest period of his life.” At sixty-five Boone was as avid a woodsman as ever, when the arthritis relented.