第63章 Chapter XI. Boone's Last Days(1)

One spring day in 1799, there might have been observed a great stir through the valley of the Kanawha. With the dawn, men were ahorse, and women, too. Wagons crowded with human freight wheeled over the rough country, and boats, large and small, were afloat on the streams which pour into the Great Kanawha and at length mingle with the Ohio at Point Pleasant, where the battle was fought which opened the gates of Kentucky.

Some of the travelers poured into the little settlement at the junction of the Elk and the Kanawha, where Charleston now lies.

Others, who had been later in starting or had come from a greater distance, gathered along the banks of the Kanawha. At last shouts from those stationed farthest up the stream echoed down the valley and told the rest that what they had come out to see was at hand.

Several pirogues drifted into view on the river, now brightening in the sunshine. In the vessels were men and their families; bales and bundles and pieces of household furnishings, heaped to the gunwale; a few cattle and horses standing patiently. But it was for one man above all that the eager eyes of the settlers were watching, and him they saw clearly as his boat swung by--a tall figure, erect and powerful, his keen friendly blue eyes undimmed and his ruddy face unlined by time, though sixty-five winters had frosted his black hair.

For a decade these settlers had known Daniel Boone, as storekeeper, as surveyor, as guide and soldier. They had eaten of the game he killed and lavishly distributed. And they too--like the folk of Clinch Valley in the year of Dunmore's War--had petitioned Virginia to bestow military rank upon their protector.

"Lieutenant Colonel" had been his title among them, by their demand. Once indeed he had represented them in the Virginia Assembly and, for that purpose, trudged to Richmond with rifle and hunting dog. Not interested in the Legislature's proceedings, he left early in the session and tramped home again.

But not even the esteem of friends and neighbors could hold the great hunter when the deer had fled. So Daniel Boone was now on his way westward to Missouri, to a new land of fabled herds and wide spaces, where the hunter's gun might speak its one word with authority and where the soul of a silent and fearless man might find its true abode in Nature's solitude. Waving his last farewells, he floated past the little groups--till their shouts of good will were long silenced, and his fleet swung out upon the Ohio.

As Boone sailed on down the Beautiful River which forms the northern boundary of Kentucky, old friends and newcomers who had only heard his fame rode from far and near to greet and godspeed him on his way. Sometimes he paused for a day with them. Once at least--this, was in Cincinnati where he was taking on supplies--some one asked him why, at his age, he was leaving the settled country to dare the frontier once more.

"Too crowded," he answered; "I want more elbow-room!"

Boone settled at the Femme Osage Creek on the Missouri River, twenty-five miles above St. Charles, where the Missouri flows into the Mississippi. There were four other Kentucky families at La Charette, as the French inhabitants called the post, but these were the only Americans. The Spanish authorities granted Boone 840 acres of land, and here Daniel built the last cabin home he was to erect for himself and his Rebecca.

The region pleased him immensely. The governmental system, for instance, was wholly to his mind. Taxes were infinitesimal. There were no elections, assemblies, or the like. A single magistrate, or Syndic, decided all disputes and made the few regulations and enforced them. There were no land speculators, no dry-mouthed sons of the commercial Tantalus, athirst for profits. Boone used to say that his first years in Missouri were the happiest of his life, with the exception of his first long hunt in Kentucky.

In 1800 he was appointed Syndic of the district of Femme Osage, which office he filled for four years, until Louisiana became American territory. He was held in high esteem as a magistrate because of his just and wise treatment of his flock, who brought him all their small bickerings to settle. He had no use for legal procedure, would not listen to any nice subtleties, saying that he did not care anything at all about the EVIDENCE, what he wanted was the TRUTH. His favorite penalty for offenders was the hickory rod "well laid on." Often he decided that both parties in a suit were equally to blame and chastised them both alike. When in March, 1804, the American Commissioner received Louisiana for the United States, Delassus, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana, reporting'on the various officials in the territory, wrote of the Femme Osage Syndic: "Mr. Boone, a respectable old man, just and impartial, he has already, since I appointed him, offered his resignation owing to his infirmities. Believing I know his probity, I have induced him to remain, in view of my confidence in him for the public good."*

*Thwaites, "Daniel Boone. "To this and other biographies of Boone, cited in the Bibliographical Note at the end of this volume, the author is indebted for the material contained in this chapter.

Daniel, no doubt supposing that a Syndic's rights were inviolable, had neglected to apply to the Governor at New Orleans for a ratification of his grant. He was therefore dispossessed.