<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap">xt72jm23bs48 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72jm23bs48/data/mets.xml White, Stewart Edward, 1873-1946. 19261922  books b92-66-27081434 English Doubleday, Page, : Garden City, N.Y. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820. Daniel Boone: wilderness scout  : the life story and true adventures of the great hunter, Long Knife, who first blazed the wilderness trail through the Indian's country to Kentucky / now fully told by Stewart Edward White ; and illustrated by James Daugherty. text Daniel Boone: wilderness scout  : the life story and true adventures of the great hunter, Long Knife, who first blazed the wilderness trail through the Indian's country to Kentucky / now fully told by Stewart Edward White ; and illustrated by James Daugherty. 1926 2002 true xt72jm23bs48 section xt72jm23bs48 


D A N I E L

    B 0 0 N E:

Wilderness                 Scout

'i . . . an inspiring book, one which any
father should be glad to place in the hands
of his growing son. Not only does the story
of Daniel Boone throw light on the early
history of the country, but it inculcates those
qualities that make for real manhood."
                 Th e
          jiterary 'Digest


               The 9Books of


STEWART EDWARD WHITE

                       +


Fiction


ARIZONA NIGHTS
BLAZED TRAIL, THE
BLAZED TRAIL STORIES, THE
CALL OF THE NORTH, THE
CLAIM JUMPERS, THE
GLORY HOLE, THE
GOLD
GRAY DAWN, THE
KILLER, THE
LEOPARD WOMAN, THE
MYSTERY, THE
ON TIPTOE
RIVERMAN, THE
ROSE DAWN, THE
RULES OF THE GAME, THE
SECRET HARBOR
SIGN AT SIX, THE
SILENT PLACES, THE
SIMBA
SKOOKUM CHUCK
WESTERNERS, THE


  a'dventure and Exploration

AFRICAN CAMPFIRES
CABIN, THE
CAMP AND TRAIL
FOREST, THE
LAND OF FOOTPRINTS, THE
MOUNTAINS, THE
PASS, THE
REDISCOVERED COUNTRY, THE


  Historical and Philosophical

CREDO
DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
FORTY-NINERS, THE


          2ubenile

ADVENTURES OF BOBBY ORDE
MAGIC FOREST, THE


This page in the original text is blank.


I


ILE

N


W i de rn e s s


S


c o u t


        The Life Story and
      True Adventures of the
      Great Hunter LONG KNIFE
      Tho first blazed The Wild-
      erness Trail tbrough the
   Indian's Country to KENTUCKY
        NOW FULLr TOLD
             BY
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
            AND
        ILLUSTRATED BY'
      JAMES DAUGHERTY


DOUBLEDAY, PAGE  COMPANY
    GARDEN CITY  NEW FORK
             MCMXX Vl


D

  B


A


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0s


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COPYVTRIGT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAcE 
COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922, BY TUB
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA. ALL RIGHTS RE-
SERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

           In Golor


VISION . . .

STRUGGLE.

WILDERNESS ROAD (double page)

ESCAPE.


Frontispiece
   FACING PAGE
    74
      142

      182


In /Blacik and White


EFFORT.

THE CABIN IN THE CLEARING

THE LEAP FROM THE PRECIPICE

IN THIS PATHLESS FOREST

TREATY.

MAPLE SUGAR .

KENTUCKY WEDDING

DEFENCE

AN HOUR'S WARNING

FRUITION


 .  .  10

        38

        62

        . OO

        132

       144

       152

 .  . 200

       224

     . 246


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D A N I E L
B OO N E:
Wilderness Scout


This page in the original text is blank.


DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT


                   CHAPTER I

W      HEN we think of American pioneers we recall
'llJ  automatically  certain  names-Daniel Boone,
  VY    Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, perhaps Simon Ken-
ton. Of course there were hundreds, yes, thousands of
others, who met the same dangers, exhibited at least ap-
proximate skill, fought the same savages. But the names
of most of them are unknown: and of the rest only the
especial student is aware. Often the more obscure men
have performed specific deeds that common legend ascribes
to better known names. Columbus, as we know, was really
not the first to discover America. Common belief has it that
Daniel Boone "discovered" Kentucky; but actually, as we
shall see, he first entered Kentucky lured by the glowing
tales of a man named Finley who had, with others, preceded
him. Did you ever hear of Finley But we have all
heard of Boone.
                         I


2 DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
  This is because these men have possessed some quality
that the others did not. It did not matter what especial
deeds they performed. Others must have performed sim-
ilar feats, or the West would never have been conquered.
Those deeds became renowned, not so much because they
were thrilling, but because of the men who did them.
  Thus Daniel Boone's name is inseparably connected with
the occupation of "the dark and bloody ground" because he
was Daniel Boone.
  He was one of the many great Indian fighters of his
time: lived for years with his rifle and tomahawk next his
hand: lost brothers and sons under the scalping knife. He
was a master of woodcraft, able to find his way hundreds
of miles through unbroken forests, able to maintain himself
alone not merely for a day or a week but for a year or more
without other resources than his rifle, his tomahawk, and his
knife; and this in the face of the most wily of foes. He was
'muscular and strong and enduring; victor in many a hand-
to-hand combat, conqueror of farms cut from the forest;
performer of long journeys afoot at speed that would seem
incredible to a college athlete. He was a dead shot with
the rifle, an expert hunter of game. Other men, long since
forgotten, were all these things.
  But Daniel Boone was reverent in the belief that he was
ordained by God to open the wilderness. He was brave
with a courage remarkable for its calmness and serenity.
Calmness and serenity, indeed, seem to have been his char-
acteristics in all his human relations. Those who knew him


DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT


remark frequently on this, speak of the fact that where
everyone else was an Indian hater, Boone never cherished
rancour against them, so that as honourable antagonists
they always met, both in peace and war. He was trust-
worthy, so that when wilderness missions of great responsi-
bility were undertaken, he was almost invariably the one
called. He was loyal to the last drop of his blood, as you
shall see in this narrative. He was ready ever to help
others. These are simple, fundamental qualities, but they
are never anywhere too common; they are rarely anywhere
combined in one man: and in those rough times of primitive
men they sufficed, when added to his wilderness skill and
determination, to make him the leading and most romantic
figure. If the Boy Scouts would know a man who in his
attitude toward the life to which he was called most nearly
embodied the precepts of their laws let them look on Daniel
Boone. Gentle, kindly, modest, peace-loving, absolutely
fearless, a master of Indian warfare, a mighty hunte
strong as a bear and active as a panther, his life was lived in
daily danger, almost perpetual hardship and exposure; yet
he died in his bed at nearly ninety years of age.


3


CHAPTER II


A       NY normal and healthy boy would have revelled in
       a youth similar to that of Daniel Boone. He was
       the fourth of seven brothers; and was born on the
banks of the Delaware River about twenty miles above
Philadelphia. His place in history can be better remem-
lfrred than by dates when you know that he was just three
years younger than George Washington. When he was
three years old, the family moved up state to a frontier set-
tlement that has since become the city of Reading. Here
he spent his boyhood and his early youth, and here he took
his first lessons in a school that was to help him through
all his life, the Wilderness.
  For at that time Reading was a collection of huts situated
in a virgin country. People lived in log houses set in
clearings that were slowly and laboriously cut out from
the forest. They spent their days swinging the axe, haul-
                          4


DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT


ing and burning the brush and logs, heaving out the snarled
and snaggy stumps which were sometimes burned, but more
often dragged to the boundaries of fields where they were
set on edge and so formed a fence of many twisted arms and
crevices and holes and devious passageways through which
such things as woodchucks or squirrels or ruffed grouse or
small boys could slip in a fascinating series of games or
escapes. And then the soil must be ploughed and planted.
Cattle roamed the woods near by, with bells so that they
could be more easily found. These must be brought in
every night; and while usually they gathered of their own
accord anticipating the reward of a few handfuls of corn,
often they must be sought for in the depths of the forest.
That was in itself a fine training in woodcraft; for not only
must one find the cows, but must not get lost oneself. The
clothes worn were spun and woven on the place; every item
of food and wear, with very few exceptions, was grown or
fashioned at home. Never was there lack of fascinating and
useful occupation for the little Boones, occupation that not
only developed their muscles but their wits.
  For one thing was never forgotten. This was on the
border of the Indian country. The little settlement of
Reading was not near enough the savages' home country to
be exposed to the frequent attacks in force which we in com-
pany with Boone shall see later; but it was always in danger
of raids and forays by stray war parties from over the moun-
tains. It was settled and inhabited in great part by men
who in their youth had fought the Indians. As part of


5


6 DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
their earliest education the children were taught caution
when out of sight of home. The woodcraft of moving
quietly in the forest, of trying always to see everything be-
fore affording a chance of being seen, of freezing into im-
mobility and silence at the slightest unknown sound or
movement until it could be identified was impressed upon
them as a mother partridge impresses the same thing on her
young.
  Nor was there lack of opportunity for practice. Plenty
of Indians visited the little settlement.  They were
"friendly" Indians: that is to say, they were not at war with
these settlers and came on peaceful errands. But as In-
dians they were always to be suspected by a brace of small
boys hunting cows in the forest. And so very early in life
these children became more expert in observation and more
skilful in concealment than anybody could possibly be now-
adays, unless he had the same training. No more thrilling,
fascinating game of I-spy or hide-and-seek could be im-
agined than this penetration of the leafy dark forest, every
sense alert for every sound and movement; the mind recog-
nizing them instantly-red squirrel scratching the bark,
towhee the leaves; the rare weird scrape of a leaning tree
rubbing another as the wind touched it; the cautious pad of
the lynx as it crossed a patch of dead and sodden leaves; the
innumerable disguised voices of wind and water and the
cautious conversation of woods creatures-there are a
thousand of them; and they all indicate life or movement,
and any of them might be a prowling savage, unless one is


    DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT 7
so familiar with them that he recognizes them for what they
are. And when unmistakably that sound of movement is
the savage, stalking confidently along in the forest aisles
with head shaven all but the long scalplock at the crown,
painted from head to toe in the bright colours that indicate
peace, his black eyes shifting keenly with the perpetual
restlessness of the man who lives among dangers, what a
triumph to fade so unobtrusively into concealment that the
warrior passes unnoticingl There was a zest to this game.
For many, many times on the frontier of those days it had
happened, in communities quite as peaceful, apparently, as
this, that the warrior stalking by had been painted for war
-the war paint varied with different tribes: but was most
often black with white markings-and that the children
searching the woods for the cattle had not managed to
escape notice. Then they had been tomahawked or their
brains dashed out against trees or carried away. Just such
a thing might happen at any time, anywhere. You may be
sure that that thought was impressed upon them, until it was
always present in their minds. And so, later, when you
read of marvellous escapes, feats of woodcraft, wiles of
strategy that seem incredible, remember this training from
the earliest years.
  Later when the day's work was over and the fire was roar-
ing in the fireplace, the elders' conversation had largely to
do with the strategy and wiles of Indian warfare. These
men talked of it not merely in the way of reminiscence or to
tell a tale; but practically. They compared notes and ex-


8   DANIEL BOONM: WILDERNESS SCOUT
changed ideas earnestly, as men would exchange experiences
or methods of any job. Thus young Daniel crouched in the
chimney corner and listening with all his cars learned of the
innumerable wiles and stratagems in which the Indians
were so skilful and ingenious; and he learned them, not the
wvay you and I learn them-as curious matters of interest-
but as practical expedients to be used in life; much as you
nowv would listen to experts talking about exactly how and
where to fish where you are going on your vacation. These
items of experience had been bought with blood and mas-
sacre. Each trick of the foe had probably succeeded one
or more times. Only thus did these pioneers learn to main-
tain themselves.
  Besides the necessity of getting in the cattle were other
errands that took our youngsters abroad. In those times
were tasks for every pair of hands, no matter how small.
We of this age hardly know what poverty is, as these men
and women knew it. We may know discomfort and
squalor; but we rarely front the danger of famine, for ex-
ample, face to face. These people perforce travelled life
with a light pack. Like the hunter far from his base, they
must take every advantage the country offered. Thus the
hickory nuts, and walnuts, and beechnuts and butternuts,
that to us mean merely a good time in the fall, to them were
an essential part of the foodstuffs, and were carefully gath-
ered and stored. That was the children's job. Then, too,
there were the berries and wild fruits-blackberries, rasp-
berries, huckleberries, wild plums, wild grapes-which


DANIEL BOONE: WILDER-NESS SCOUT


were to be garnered in their proper seaon; and edible roots.
The knowledge of these, together with the possibilities of
the inner bark of certain trees, came to these young people,
not in the way of play, but in the course of every-day life.
Later when it became neceary, as it often did, for them to
cut loose from all contact with civilization and o rely on
the wilderness for every item of their food, clothing, and
shelter,-save powder and lead,-they could do so.
  Another phase of this unique schooling was that which is
now done by our games and gymnasiums. I refer to the
building of their physical bodies. They had pretty good
stock to start from. Their immediate forbears were picked
men-picked by the energy and restlessness of their disposi-
tions to leave the more contented stay-at-homes and set sail
into a new world; picked again from the more settled sea-
board by the enterprise and audacityof their spirits to push
out into a hard and dangerous wilderness. But in addition
to a good heredity they had the advantage of a healthy life.
There were privations and even sufferings, to be sure; but
in the majority of cases these served merely to harden the
fibre. Year in year out the food was wholesome and gen-
erally abundant. Besides the game, fish, berries, and other
wild products they had cornbread, Indian pudding, maple
sugar, milk, butter, and sweet potatoes. Their days were
spent in the open air. From the time they could toddle
they were given tasks within their strength, all of which re-
quired long continued muscular effort.  When in their
teens they used the axe, drove the teams, lifted at the logs


9


io DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
and timbers, held the plough, wrestled with the clearing
and the planting of the stubborn soil.  As offset to this
heavy labour, which might otherwise tend to make them
clumsy and musclebound, were their expeditions into the
forest; at first, as we have said, after the cattle and wild nuts
and berries near at home, later in pursuit of game for the
family meat supply. The necessity for wariness, not only
to get the game but to save their own scalps, made them as
supple and enduring as their home labour made them sinewy
and strong.
  This physical prowess was further encouraged by the
sports of the day. They did not have baseball, nor basket
ball nor football. But when boys, or grown men, got to-
gether they played games just the same. Catch-as-catch-
can wrestling was much in vogue. There were no compli-
cated rules. You just got hold of the other fellow and tried
to throw him. Technicalities did not go. It did you no
good to prove that both shoulders were not on the ground;
you were flat on your back, and that was enough. It got
you nowhere to flop promptly and then play a defensive
game flat on your tummy; you were down, and-what was
the real point-your opponent could beat your face in or
tomahawk you, were it the real thing. You were licked.
They ran footraces, too, at all distances; jumped, both high
and wide. One of the most important sports was throwing,
a knife or a tomahawk at a mark. So, of course, was shoot-
ing. About the only real game, as we understand that term,.
was lacrosse. I suppose you all have a theoretical knowl-


      "large


0,00 e-


This page in the original text is blank.


    DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT i  
edge of that game; some of you have seen it; and perhaps a
few of you have played it. If not, look it up. It is suffi-
cient to say here that there is no game that involves more
long-continued fast running, is harder on the wind, or that
requiteS more endurance. When later you read some as-
tonishing stories of feats of running performed by men
escaping, or attempting to escape, from the Indians, remem-
ber all this early, easy, natural, almost unconscious training.
These boys exercised not at stated intervals, or between
hours spent indoors, but every day, all day.
  One other thing. They often underwent what to most
of us would seem extreme discomfort. We certainly do hate
to be literally wet to the skin.  Often we say we are
"drenched through" when in reality we are wet outside and
sort of chilly damp in a few places that touch our skin. But
to be really wet through, as when one falls in a river, is to
most-of us pretty tough and we think we've had a hard time,
even when we have very shortly a warm house to go to.
These children had no umbrellas, no waterproof coats, no
rubbers. Indeed, their usual foot covering was the deer-
skin moccasin; and that, as the old-timer expressed it, will
wet through two days before it rains. They were so often
wet, so often cold, that early in life they took these condi-
tions merely as annoying but inevitable. They slept in un-
warmed rooms that in winter were so cold that water in a
pail or pan would freeze almost to the bottom. In the morn-
ing they had to pile out in that atmosphere, break the ice.
and wash. I am not going to harrow your tender feelings


12 DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
further. These things were not sufferings, were not so very
terrible. I do not doubt that a certain number of my read-
ers in the rural districts may be a good deal in the same boat
themselves. But in addition to all the rest it was hardening
and tempering them later to endure. You must understand
the way they were raised and the training they had in order
intelligently to read of their later adventures.
  I am tempted to digress at this point and tell you a story
of five of these boys, aged from nine to thirteen years. It
has nothing to do with Daniel Boone, except that it shows
what this backwoods training can do toward making young
lads self-reliant beyond their years.
  It was in the year 1785. The two Linn brothers, a boy
named Brasher, one named Wells, and another whose name
we do not know left home to shoot ducks. They camped
overnight near the Ohio River. The fact that they were
allowed thus to go alone at a distance shows that the country
must have been for some time quiet and that Indians were
not expected. However, hardly had they returned from
their shooting and lighted their cooking fire when they
found themselves surrounded by savages. In spite of the
fact that they were completely encircled Linn and Brasher
made a dash for it. Brasher was a fast runner and an ex,
pert dodger, even at the age of twelve, but he stumbled over
a root and was seized. Linn made better progress, and
might even have broken through and escaped, but he re-
fused to drop his ducksI


    DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT 13
  Gathered together about their own fire the Indians pro-
ceeded to question them.
  "Where you from" demanded their leader.
  "From Louisville," instantly answered Linn, naming a
place at some distance in order to conceal the nearness of
his own people.
  They were marched at a swift pace for many days until
they reached the Indian town. Indians on such a journey
travel steadily all the day through, without pause. They
carry as provisions only corn and maple sugar. Their pace
is rapid and over rough country. If any captive lags or
falls behind, he is tomahawked. Yet these boys of from
nine to thirteen kept pace with their captors.
  At the Indian town the women and children rushed out
to meet them shouting abuse, pelting them with dirt and
sticks, finally approaching near enough to pinch and slap
them. The Kentucky boys drew close in a little group.
Finally Linn picked out the biggest Indian boy of the lot
and knocked him down with a straight left. It appears
that as a lead the straight left was a complete surprise to
these rough-and-tumble right-handed fighters. That par-
ticular Indian boy was so much hurt, or-more likely-so
much astonished, that he did not get up; but another
promptly flew at young Linn for revenge. Linn licked this
one. That was too much. Every youngster in the village
piled in. The white boys stood back to back and met them.
It was Kentuck against the field. The squaws too tried to


14 DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
mix in the rumpus, but the Indian men, interested in this
battle against odds, forbade them. And in spite of those
odds the white boys won the battle.
  They were adopted into the tribe, and to a boy entered
into the life wholeheartedly and with apparent enthusiasm,
as though they had no regrets for, had forgotten, their own
people. This was dissimulation so well carried out, even
by the nine-year-old, as completely to deceive the sharp-
eyed watchfulness keen for any signs of grief, homesickness
or regret. They took part in the hunting, in the wrestling,
the riding and racing. Gradually they gained the confi-
dence of the Indians until at last they were sent on a fishing
expedition in charge of a very old Indian and a squaw.
  Down the river they consulted anxiously and changed
their minds a number of times. To get home they must
cross alone many miles of dense forest wilderness absolutely
unknown to them. Think how hard it is to keep from get-
ting lost in a very moderate-sized swamp bottomland, and
realize what that means. This wilderness, moreover, was
full of enemies; and they were certain to be pursued by
the most skilled woodcraftsmen as soon as their absence was
discovered. They had almost no food; and no weapons
except their knives. They were, as we have seen, only
boys. Try to think of yourself in their places. Yet their
hesitation was on account of none of these things. They
were matters-of-course, only to be expected. But they
knew that if they were to get clear away it would be abso-
lutely necessary for them to kill the old Indian and the


    DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT is
squaw; and that was a dreadful decision for the boys to face.
  But it was their only chance. Shortly the tribe would be
moving so far away as to make thought of escape hopeless.
The deed was done.
  It took them just three weeks to reach the river, three
weeks in the wilderness without food or shelter other than
they could pick up by the way, without other directions
than those their wits suggested, and at the last pursued by
the Indians. They found their way, they fed themselves
on the berries, barks, and roots their education had taught
them; they eluded the savages; and so at last came out just
where they wanted to be, on the bank of the river opposite
Louisville.
  Here they shouted until they were seen. But the people
of the town were afraid to cross to them. It resembled a
very old Indian stratagem. Again and again apparent
white people, speaking good English, had appeared on
river banks opposite towns or flatboats floating down the
current. They told piteous tales of escape from captivity,
of imminent pursuit, and begged frantically for rescue be-
fore the Indians at their heels should appear and destroy
them. No decent man could resist such an appeal. Yet
when the flatboat had been swung to the shore, or when a
rescue party had crossed from the town, suddenly had up-
risen hundreds of warriors, and the decoys among them.
A good many massacres had taken place in this manner,
enough to make that particular stratagem well known.
  So though the boys used every means at their command


i6 DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
to carry conviction, they failed. The river was here too
wide to talk across.
  "We'll be caught if we stay here," said Linn desperately
at last, "the Indians are not far behind us."
  They turned up-stream and then, with no other tools than
their knives, they set about making a raft. They went up-
stream so that when they crossed the current would not take
them below the town. They collected pieces of driftwood
and down logs small enough to manage, and bound them to-
gether with strips of bark. (Would you know, as they did,
just which bark would come off in strips at that time of year
and would be tough enough to use thus) The raft was
done in a very short time. Four sat on it and Linn swam
behind, pushing. So real had been the necessity of haste
that before they had much more than reached mid-stream
the Indians appeared on the banks behind them I It sounds
almost too much like a moving-picture plot; but it is true.
The Indians fired at them, and the bullets splashed the
water all about them; but they arrived safely.
  So when you read, or someone tells you, that Daniel
Boone or his contemporaries were "ignorant and unedu-
cated," don't you believe them. Education is the learning
of things that fit one for life. These men may have been
to a certain extent illiterate in that they did not read many
books; but they read life and nature more closely than we
ever will, and to greater purpose than most of us will ever
read anything. Daniel Boone's spelling was on a free and
untrammelled principle of his own, though he could express


    DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT I7
himself well and clearly; but it was not one per cent. as free
and untrammelled as our readings would be of the things
that meant happiness, life, or death in his kind of life. He
was a very highly educated man; and this is proved by his
character, his intelligence, and his wisdom. The value of
any kind of education is not whether you know more of cer-
tain things-book or otherwise-than the other fellow, but
what intelligence, wisdom, and character you develop by
its means.
  One item of this education, and one of the most important,
I have left until the last. The entire meat supply of those
days came from the wild game. If a man would provide
for his family he must be a hunter, and a good one. It is a
mistake to suppose that abundance of game always means
easier hunting. It may be easier to find where game is, but
the individual animal was just as wary then as now, and its
successful pursuit demanded as much woodcraft. Besides
the usual supply of fresh meat from this source, it was cus-
tomary also to lay aside each year sufficient dried meat in
strips, or "jerkey." It might be interesting for you to know
that the word "jerkey" is a corruption of an ancient Peruv-
ian word from the time of the Incas, charqui, meaning dried
meat. Therefore at proper times of year, in addition to
the usual short excursions near at hand, the settlers of those
days used to make specifically hunting trips at a distance for
the purpose of laying in as much meat as they could to last
over the winter. Hunting was not only a sport but a seri-
ous occupation.


i8 DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT
  Fortunately the game was abundant. Deer roamed the
forests in herds; bear were incredibly numerous; squirrels
and grouse were everywhere; wild turkey frequented the
woods in large flocks. Although as yet beyond the reach of
young Boone, buffalo and elk swarmed but just over the sea-
board mountains. Youngsters were not merely permitted
to learn to shoot, nor left more or less to their own devices
in the process; they were painstakingly taught to shoot just
as soon as they could lift, however waveringly, the long,
heavy rifles of the day. After a certain amount of prelim-
inary instruction the small boy got a licking if he missed;
and he was openly shamed if he hit a squirrel anywhere but
in the head. At the age of twelve he was made a "fort sol-
dier," and assigned a particular loophole in case of attack.
  In all this varied education young Daniel Boone took part
and profited. Indeed he may be said to have been a pre-
cocious scholar, graduating younger than his mates and with
higher honours. He had a true passion for hunting, a pas-
sion that lasted all his life and into his extreme old age. In
very early boyhood he had a cabin all of his own, built by
himself, at some distance from home, where he used to live
for considerable periods by himself, for the purpose of bet-
ter hunting. This most wholesome of sports took him con-
stantly far afield, led him into all the nooks and intricate
byways of the wilderness about him, coaxed him into gran-
deurs and beauties that stay-at-home pioneering could never
have shown him. That is what makes the chase of wild
animals noble. That is why the man who kills his deer on a


    DANIEL BOONE: WILDERNESS SCOUT i9
still hunt is miles above the one who stops at a salt lick or
runway; why he who makes his own stalk can look down
on the man who tails a guide. Why is a mountain sheep a
trophy and a merino sheep not Because the former re-
quires skill and knowledge to acquire. If somebody else is
furnishing the skill and knowledge, and you are just trail-
ing along and pulling the trigger when you are told to, why
not shoot the merino It means just as much, really: you
can make the actual rifle shot as distant as you please. But
if you do shoot the mountain sheep, or the elk, or whatever
it is, after a guide has done all the real work for you, and
you hang its head on the wall, aren't you tacitly indulging in
a little false pretence A mountain sheep head, in a way,
is a sort of advertisement or certificate that a certain amount
of woodcraft and especial skill has been used to get it. That
is the only reason why a tame sheep's head is not just as
good. If you hang it on your wall, as your trophy, you
imply that you had and used that woodcraft and especial
skill. Did you The real aim of sportsmanlike hunting,
the real value of the hunting instinct, is not the killing of
animals; it is the acquiring of qualities of wisdom and hardi-
hood and patience and knowledge that will enable you' to
find and kill animals.


                   CHAPTER III

S    INCE the two most important single items in the life
      and development of those times were the axe and the
      rifle, and since firearms and shooting are interesting
in themselves, it will be amusing and worth while to talk
about them a little. I suppose it would not be an exaggera-
tion to say that from cradle to grave one or the other of these
instruments was in the hands of any pioneer during fully
half his waking hours.
  Of the axe there is not much of importance. The Ameri-
can pioneer developed the well-balanced instrument we use
to-day. Before him-a</pre>