Part 15 (2/2)
After two or three seasons of this energetic hunting, Colonel Boone succeeded in obtaining a sufficient quant.i.ty of furs to enable him, by their sale, to pay all his debts. With this object in view, he set out on his long journey of several hundred miles, through an almost trackless wilderness, to Kentucky. He saw every creditor and paid every dollar. Upon his return, Colonel Boone had just one half dollar in his pocket. But he said triumphantly to his friends who eagerly gathered around him:
”Now I am ready and willing to die. I am relieved from a burden which has long oppressed me. I have paid all my debts, and no one will say when I am gone, 'Boone was a dishonest man.' I am perfectly willing to die.”
In the year 1803, the territory west of the Mississippi came into the possession of the United States. The whole region, embracing what is now Missouri, was then called the territory of Louisiana. Soon after this a commission was appointed, consisting of three able and impartial men, to investigate the validity of the claims to land granted by the action of the Spanish Government. Again poor Boone was caught in the meshes of the law. It was found that he had not occupied the land which had been granted him, that he had not gone to New Orleans to perfect his t.i.tle, and that his claim was utterly worthless.
”Poor Boone! Seventy-four years old, and the second grasp you have made upon the West has been powerless. You have risked life, and lost the life next dearest your own for the West. In all its fearful forms, death has looked you in the face, and you have moved on to conquer the soil which you did but conquer, that it might be denied to you. You have been the architect of the prosperity of others, but your own crumbles each time as you are about to occupy it. When he lost his farm in Boonesborough, he did not linger around in complainings, but went quietly away, returning only to fulfil the obligations he had incurred.
And now this last decision came, even at old age, to leave Daniel Boone, the Pioneer of the West, unable to give a t.i.tle deed to a solitary acre.”[G]
[Footnote G: Life of Boone, by W. H. Bogart, p. 369.]
The fur trade was at this time very lucrative. Many who were engaged in it acc.u.mulated large fortunes. It was in this traffic that John Jacob Astor laid the foundations of his immense wealth. A guide of Major Long stated that he purchased of an Indian one hundred and twenty beaver skins for two blankets, two gallons of rum, and a pocket mirror. The skins he took to Montreal, where he sold them for over four hundred dollars.
In the employment of the fur companies the trappers are of two kinds, called the ”hired hand,” and the ”free trapper.” The former is employed by the month, receiving regular wages, and bringing in all the furs which he can obtain. Be they more or less, he receives his stipulated monthly wages. The free trapper is supplied by the company with traps and certain other conveniences with which he plunges into the forest on his own hook, engaging however to sell to the company, at a stipulated price, whatever furs he may secure.
The outfit of the trapper as he penetrated the vast and trackless region of gloomy forests, treeless prairies, and solitary rivers, spreading everywhere around him, generally consisted of two or three horses, one for the saddle and the others for packs containing his equipment of traps, ammunition, blankets, cooking utensils, etc., in preparation for pa.s.sing lonely months in the far away solitudes. He would endeavor to find, if possible, a region which neither the white man nor the Indian had ever visited.
The dress of the hunter consisted of a strong s.h.i.+rt of well-dressed and pliant buckskin, ornamented with long fringes. The vanity of dress, if it may be so called, followed him into regions where no eye but his own could see its beauties. His pantaloons were also made of buckskin decorated with variously-colored porcupine quills and with long fringes down the outside of the leg. Moccasins, often quite gorgeously embroidered, fitted closely to his feet. A very flexible hat or cap covered his head, generally of felt, obtained from some Indian trader.
There was suspended over his left shoulder, so as to hang beneath his right arm, a powder horn and bullet pouch. In the latter he carried b.a.l.l.s, flints, steel, and various odds and ends. A long heavy rifle he bore upon his shoulder.
A belt of buckskin buckled tightly around the waist, held a large butcher knife in a sheath of stout buffalo hide, and also a buckskin case containing a whet-stone. A small hatchet or tomahawk was also attached to this belt. Thus rigged and in a new dress the hunter of good proportions presented a very picturesque aspect. With no little pride he exhibited himself at the trading posts, where not only the squaws and the children, but veteran hunters and Indian braves contemplated his person with admiration.
Thus provided the hunter, more frequently alone but sometimes accompanied by two or three others, set out for the mountain streams, as early in the spring as the melting ice would enable him to commence operations against the beaver.
Arrived on his hunting ground he carefully ascends some creek or stream, examining the banks with practiced eye to discern any sign of the presence of beaver or of any other animal whose fur would prove valuable. If a cotton-wood tree lies prostrate he examines it to see if it has been cut down by the sharp tooth of the beaver; and if so whether it has been cut down for food or to furnish material for damming a stream. If the track of a beaver is seen in the mud, he follows the track until he finds a good place to set his steel trap in the run of the animal, hiding it under water and carefully attaching it by a chain to a bush or tree, or to some picket driven into the bank. A float strip is also made fast to the trap, so that should the beaver chance to break away with the trap, this float upon the surface, at the end of a cord a few feet long, would point out the position of the trap.
”When a 'lodge' is discovered the trap is set at the edge of the dam, at the point where the animal pa.s.ses from deep to shoal water. Early in the morning the hunter always mounts his mule and examines the traps. The captured animals are skinned, and the tails, which are a great dainty, carefully packed into camp. The skin is then stretched over a hoop or frame-work of osier twigs and is allowed to dry, the flesh and fatty substance being carefully sc.r.a.ped off. When dry it is folded into a square sheet, the fur turned inward, and the bundle, containing from about ten to twenty skins, lightly pressed and corded, is ready for transportation.
”During the hunt, regardless of Indian vicinity, the fearless trapper wanders far and near in search of 'sign.' His nerves must ever be in a state of tension and his mind ever present at his call. His eagle eye sweeps around the country, and in an instant detects any foreign appearance. A turned leaf, a blade of gra.s.s pressed down, the uneasiness of wild animals, the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in nature's legible hand and plainest language. All the wits of the subtle savage are called into play to gain an advantage over the wily woodsman; but with the instinct of the primitive man, the white hunter has the advantage of a civilised mind, and thus provided seldom fails to outwit, under equal advantages, the cunning savage.
”Sometimes the Indian following on his trail, watches him set his traps on a shrub-belted stream, and pa.s.sing up the bed, like Bruce of old, so that he may leave no track, he lies in wait in the bushes until the hunter comes to examine. Then waiting until he approaches his ambush within a few feet, whiz flies the home-drawn arrow, never failing at such close quarters to bring the victim to the ground. For one white scalp, however, that dangles in the smoke of an Indian lodge, a dozen black ones at the end of the hunt ornament the camp-fire of the rendezvous.
”At a certain time when the hunt is over, or they have loaded their pack animals, the trappers proceed to their rendezvous, the locality of which has been previously agreed upon; and here the traders and agents of the fur companies await them, with such a.s.sortments of goods as their hardy customers may require, including generally a fair supply of alcohol. The trappers drop in singly and in small bands, bringing their packs of beaver to this mountain market, not unfrequently to the value of a thousand dollars each, the produce of one hunt. The dissipation of the rendezvous, however, soon turns the trapper's pocket inside out. The goods brought by the traders, although of the most inferior quality, are sold at enormous prices. Coffee twenty and thirty s.h.i.+llings a pint cup, which is the usual measure; tobacco fetches ten and fifteen s.h.i.+llings a plug; alcohol from twenty to fifty s.h.i.+llings a pint; gunpowder sixteen s.h.i.+llings a pint cup, and all other articles at proportionately exhorbitant prices.
”The rendezvous is one continued scene of drunkenness, gambling, brawling and fighting, so long as the money and credit of the trappers last. Seated Indian fas.h.i.+on around the fires, with a blanket spread before them, groups are seen with their 'decks' of cards playing at 'euchre,' 'poker,' and 'seven-up,' the regular mountain games. The stakes are beaver, which is here current coin; and when the fur is gone, their horses, mules, rifles and s.h.i.+rts, hunting packs and breeches are staked. Daring gamblers make the rounds of the camp, challenging each other to play for the highest stake--his horse, his squaw if he have one, and as once happened his scalp. A trapper often squanders the produce of his hunt, amounting to hundreds of dollars, in a couple of hours; and supplied on credit with another equipment, leaves the rendezvous for another expedition which has the same result, time after time, although one tolerably successful hunt would enable him to return to the settlements and civilised life with an ample sum to purchase and stock a farm, and enjoy himself in ease and comfort for the remainder of his days.
”These annual gatherings are often the scene of b.l.o.o.d.y duels, for over their cups and cards no men are more quarrelsome than your mountaineers.
Rifles at twenty paces settle all differences, and as may be imagined, the fall of one or other of the combatants is certain, or, as sometimes happens, both fall at the same fire.”[H]
[Footnote H: Ruxton's Travels.]
CHAPTER XIV.
_Conclusion._
Colonel Boone Appeals to Congress--Complimentary Resolutions of the Legislature of Kentucky.--Death of Mrs. Boone.--Catholic Liberality.--Itinerant Preachers.--Grant by Congress to Colonel Boone.--The Evening of his Days.--Personal Appearance.--Death and Burial.--Transference of the Remains of Mr. and Mrs. Boone to Frankfort, Kentucky.
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