Boone: A Biography (61 page)

In the fall of 1805, after James Davis’s acquittal of the murder of Will Hays, after Boone’s hand had recovered from the injury in the steel trap, and after Nathan had recovered from the terrible journey down the Missouri in the cold, Boone’s sons took him on a hunt up the Gasconade River, south of the Missouri, where there were fewer Osage Indians. It was a successful hunt, and old Boone was thrilled to be back in the woods. But just as they were about to return home at Christmas the weather turned deadly cold and ice began to form on the river. Fearing they could not cross with ice chunks floating in the stream, Boone and his sons camped overnight on the bank. Next morning the Missouri River was frozen and they decided to walk across. The sons made it to the northern shore, but Boone stepped on thin ice within
yards of the bank and fell through. He yelled to his sons not to come to him and risk falling in themselves. Nathan started a bonfire on the bank while his father stumbled and scrambled his way through broken ice and mud to the shore. His sons stripped Boone of his wet clothes and warmed him by the blazing fire. They carried Boone home in time for Christmas dinner, but the exposure in the cold water further weakened him and aggravated his rheumatism.

One of the happy events of 1805–6, according to Nathan Boone, was a surprise visit from the old friend of Boonesborough days, Simon Kenton. Like Boone, Kenton had endured the hardships and dangers of early exploration and settlement of Kentucky, only to lose his land claims in the Bluegrass. He had fought in several battles and been captured and tortured by Shawnees, and made a daring escape back to Kentucky. He had been befriended by Simon Girty and remained forever loyal to him. Kenton had been loyal to Boone also and had defended him when others accused Boone of treason and duplicity. Nathan told Draper, “
My father had great confidence in Kenton
as a spy and woodsman. Kenton visited Missouri in the spring or summer of 1805 or 1806 and spent about a week at our house.”

Losing his holdings in Kentucky, Kenton had moved north into Ohio and helped settle and develop that territory. He raised a family and when his business ventures failed was forced to depend on his children. After his first wife died, he married her younger first cousin and suggested they take a trip to Missouri. Their visit to the West had occurred just before the Boones moved there in 1799. When Kenton arrived at the Boone cabin in 1805, he did not introduce himself but asked Rebecca for lodging. According to Kenton’s children, she answered that they had no room. “You would if you knew who I am,” Kenton said. When he stepped closer Rebecca recognized him, threw aside her clay pipe, and rushed to hug him. Boone was out back chopping firewood, and when she called to him that he had a visitor, Boone assumed it was just a neighbor and continued chopping. When he finally came to the house and saw his old friend Kenton he burst into
tears. “
The venison supper was almost ready
when he appeared. There followed a week of reunion,” Edna Kenton would write.

Kenton and Boone recounted their many struggles and adventures and failures. Kenton had even spent time in a debtor’s prison. “
The old pioneers seemed to enjoy themselves
finely in recounting their old Kentucky troubles and hardships,” Nathan told Draper. In spite of their bitter experiences in Kentucky, both Boone and Kenton recalled their days there with special affection. In this they were like most other pioneers. Arthur K. Moore tell us, “
Timothy Flint perceived an almost mystical
fervor in the oldest settlers as they recalled the surpassing beauty of Kentucky in their youth, when they set about destroying the scene which was ever to be their fondest recollection.”

Boone had many visitors in Missouri, including a Shawnee “sister” who had moved west with the remnants of the tribe. But none was more welcome than Kenton. At the time of Kenton’s visit, Boone was recovering from his fall through the ice and was threatened with loss of all his land in the transition to American rule. No doubt it was a comfort to remember and lament the passing of the frontier with another veteran of those vivid times, who was also a legend, and who had also lost everything to lawyers and the changing culture. Kenton had been made a brigadier general of the Ohio militia and he was a hero of the frontier, but like Boone he never seemed able to hold on to the property he acquired. The French botanist François André Michaux, who visited Kentucky in 1802, commented, “
incertitude of property is an inexhaustible source
of tedious and expensive lawsuits which serve to enrich the professional gentlemen of the country.”

On the terrible walk back in the cold from the encounter with the Osage and Kansa warriors, Nathan Boone and Tice Van Bibber had discovered a number of salt springs about a hundred and twenty miles up the Missouri from the Femme Osage. After he had recovered from the ordeal, Nathan and his brother Daniel Morgan returned to the salt springs and decided to begin a salt-boiling operation. The place became known as Boone’s Lick and throughout 1805 the brothers kept
a half-dozen men working there, chopping wood and firing kettles. Salt was selling for $2.50 a bushel and Nathan carried hundreds of bushels to market in St. Louis on rafts and keelboats.

Contrary to the popular impression, Boone himself was not involved in this salt operation. He was old and in no condition to go off into the wilderness to boil salt, as he had done many times before in Kentucky and Ohio. According to the family, he was “
opposed to the scheme from the beginning
.” He had too many bad associations with salt works at the Blue Licks. Boone knew it was hard labor for dubious profit, and far up the Missouri the salt works were vulnerable to Indian attacks. Only surveying was more dangerous than salt boiling. In December 1805 the salt boilers were attacked and the works destroyed. Though reopened the next year, the operation, true to Boone’s prediction, never returned the profits Nathan and Daniel Morgan had hoped for.

However, the name Boone’s Lick drew many settlers to that region. Assuming Daniel Boone himself worked there or lived there, or owned the works, immigrants poured into the area. The Boone name acted as a mysterious magnet, as it had at Boonesbrough, Boone’s Station, Limestone, and the Femme Osage. Wherever Boone went others wanted to follow. It was a name that suggested safety and new opportunity. To follow Boone, to be connected to Boone, was to connect with a part of history, with the romance of a legend and new territory.

At the very time the Boone name and legend were attracting more and more settlers to Missouri, the man himself was informed that none of his claims to land in Missouri had proved valid. According to American law, he had not fulfilled his commitment, whatever the assurances Lieutenant Governor Delassus had given him. Syndic of the district he might have been under the old regime, but such a position and title did not exist under the American administration. Boone appeared before the land commission on February 13, 1806, with his original letter from Don Zenon Trudeau, his certificates of survey, his commission as syndic. What he could not produce was evidence that
he had ever improved or lived on any of his land claims.
And he had never registered his deeds
with the proper officials in New Orleans. The governor had told Boone the requirements would be waived, but Don Charles had never said so in writing.

So many speculators were altering documents and surveys, taking advantage of the confused conditions by changing dates and deeds, that the commission decided to be strict with Boone. It is possible they wanted to show they were not influenced by his fame. Likely they also knew of the accusations against him in Kentucky, of fraud and questionable surveys and titles. Perhaps some were jealous of his reputation, the preferential treatment he had been given by the Spanish, the legend and the hero. They declared all his claims invalid. General James Wilkinson had become governor of Louisiana in 1805 and he held the office for a year until forced to resign. It is possible that scoundrel and traitor set the commissioners in Missouri against Boone. After all, it was Wilkinson who had helped Imlay swindle the ten thousand acres from Boone in Kentucky in 1785.

Even under the cloud of his disputed claims, Boone was still willing to serve his community in 1807, as he had in almost all the places he had lived. “
Meriwether Lewis, [new] governor of Louisiana
Territory, appoints Boone justice of the Femme Osage township.”

The commission kept Boone waiting for three years before delivering their devastating verdict. By the time they handed down their ruling in 1809, Boone’s health had further deteriorated. But he still insisted on taking another hunting trip with his friend Derry Coburn. The whole family protested, but Boone argued that trapping was the only way he had of making a little money. “My wife is getting old and needs some little coffee and other refreshments, and I have no other way of paying for them but by trapping,” Boone told his nephew Daniel Bryan.

But once he and Coburn were out in the woods, Boone was stricken by an attack that convinced him he could not go on. The weather was stormy and he decided that his time was up. As soon as the storm
passed he had Derry help him to the top of a hill where he marked out a spot for his grave. Expecting the worst, and preparing himself and Derry for his approaching death, Boone was surprised when the attack began to wane. He and his companion slowly made their way back home and Boone agreed to consult a doctor.

1809–1820

With the help of his friend Judge John Coburn, Boone, at the age of seventy-five, prepared a petition to Congress for restoration of his lost land in Missouri. Describing himself as “an aged, infirm, worn-out man,” Boone dictated an account of his life to his grandson, to augment the petition Judge Coburn was preparing. Boone was not in the habit of speaking at length about his life. He had been the kind of man who preferred to look forward rather than backward. But spurred by his recent brush with death, and inspired by the promise of the petition to Congress, he also spoke about his long life with a neighbor named Stephen Hempstead. Hempstead passed on much of the information Boone told him to his brother Edward Hempstead, a lawyer in St. Louis helping to complete the petition to Congress. Many years later Stephen Hempstead wrote down his memories for Lyman Draper.

For all his physical weakness and disappointments, the gathering of information for the petition and the help of prominent lawyers seemed to inspire Boone with a new hope. As he looked back over his long career he saw the range and scale of his achievements. Despite all the failures and humiliations, the accusations of treason and fraud, his skills and leadership, his endurance and discoveries were recognized by many. However poor and feeble he had become, he had done great
things, and his deeds were remembered, and would be remembered. Our opinion of ourselves is, to a large degree, a reflection of the opinion of others. In his poverty and sickness, it meant a lot to Boone that others recognized his extraordinary accomplishments.

When the rejection of his appeal came in December 1809, Boone did not seem surprised, or as disturbed as he might have been. It was as if he had come to a kind of peace with himself. If one or two others believed in him, saw him as he saw himself, that was enough.

Elizabeth Corbin, sister of Sara Lewis, wife of Daniel Morgan Boone, later recalled her brother-in-law and his famous father. Her comments confirm the descriptions by others of Boone as calm and quiet. “
My brother-in-law, Col. Boone
, was very kind to me, and I was therefore much attached to him . . . Like his father, the old pioneer (whom at a later date I saw much) he had a soft, almost effeminate voice, and extremely mild and pleasant manners. In fact, most, if not all of the old hunters, who spent most of their time in the deep solitude of the then unbroken woods, spoke in low soft tones. I do not, among my acquaintances, recall an exception.”

Two friends from the Kentucky days who showed up in Missouri in 1810 were James Bridges and Michael Stoner, both of whom had served as axemen in 1775, chopping out Boone’s Trace. Bridges had been hunting with James Harrod in 1792 when Harrod disappeared. There were rumors that Bridges might have killed Harrod, but no one ever found any proof. Bridges and Stoner were on their way to explore and hunt in the upper Missouri and Boone could not resist their invitation to join them. Perhaps his arthritis was better. More likely his enthusiasm for seeing the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains was so intense he brushed aside any pains and ailments. He formed a party with Flanders Callaway and Will Hays Jr. and Callaway’s slave Mose, as well as Stoner and Bridges. It is said that Derry Coburn accompanied Boone also.

According to Hays, the party reached the Yellowstone and was away for six months. It was a long hunt, on the scale of Boone’s original
forays into Kentucky, except the distances were now greater, the mountains higher, the bears more dangerous. It must have been a special satisfaction to explore the new regions with Michael Stoner, who had accompanied Boone into Kentucky in 1774 on the mission to warn the surveyors of Indian hostility. Such events give Boone’s life a pleasing symmetry and show the long-term loyalty he inspired in his friends. It goes without saying that the old hunter relished the wonders of the Rockies, snowcapped and shining, buffalo herds stretching to the horizon, streams swollen with beaver dams, geysers and fumaroles belching steam like vents from Hades, grizzlies, elk, moose, mountain sheep. The forests were of lodgepole pine, piñon pine, Douglas fir.
The hunt was so successful
that the party returned to Missouri with several skin boats filled with furs. Stephen Hempstead claimed to have witnessed the return of the band early in 1811. One boat was rowed by a black man with Boone steering in the rear. The party carried their cargo to St. Louis to get the best prices for their furs. “
The canoe was covered with Bear skins
and she landed first the stern and the steersman got out and then the bowmen rowed her around and they landed. This was done to enable to land, and not disturb the cargo, the whole middle being full and covered. Mr. Callaway and the Negro rowed in front and Colo. Boone steared . . . the value of their furs and skins I cannot state but it was considerable.” The expedition to the Yellowstone was a triumph. But as with most victories, the success of the hunt probably made Boone feel all the more keenly that he was not able to go again, farther and higher up the Missouri, across the Rockies, into the Columbia valley and the Cascades. Lewis and Clark had been there. Scouts for the Astor fur company were going there. Had he been twenty years younger he would have pushed on to the Pacific, the final West.