Pioneers of the Old Southwest [26]
the Forks of the Ohio. This time they were there to stay. Where the walls of Fort Duquesne had crumbled in the fire Fort Pitt was to rise, proudly bearing the name of England's Great Commoner who had directed English arms to victory on three continents.
With France expelled and the Indians deprived of their white allies, the westward path lay open to the pioneers, even though the red man himself would rise again and again in vain endeavor to bar the way. So a new era begins, the era of exploration for definite purpose, the era of commonwealth building. In entering on it, we part with the earliest pioneer--the trader, who first opened the road for both the lone home seeker and the great land company. He dwindles now to the mere barterer and so--save for a few chance glimpses--slips out of sight, for his brave days as Imperial Scout are done.
Chapter V. Boone, The Wanderer
What thoughts filled Daniel Boone's mind as he was returning from Braddock's disastrous campaign in 1755 we may only conjecture. Perhaps he was planning a career of soldiering, for in later years he was to distinguish himself as a frontier commander in both defense and attack. Or it may be that his heart was full of the wondrous tales told him by the trader, John Findlay, of that Hunter's Canaan, Kentucky, where buffalo and deer roamed in thousands. Perhaps he meant to set out ere long in search of the great adventure of his dreams, despite the terrible dangers of trail making across the zones of war into the unknown.
However that may be, Boone straightway followed neither of these possible plans on his return to the Yadkin but halted for a different adventure. There, a rifle shot's distance from his threshold, was offered him the oldest and sweetest of all hazards to the daring. He was twenty-two, strong and comely and a whole man; and therefore he was in no mind to refuse what life held out to him in the person of Rebecca Bryan. Rebecca was the daughter of Joseph Bryan, who had come to the Yadkin from Pennsylvania some time before the Boones; and she was in her seventeenth year.
Writers of an earlier and more sentimental period than ours have endeavored to supply, from the saccharine stores of their fancy, the romantic episodes connected with Boone's wooing which history has omitted to record. Hence the tale that the young hunter, walking abroad in the spring gloaming, saw Mistress Rebecca's large dark eyes shining in the dusk of the forest, mistook them for a deer's eyes and shot--his aim on this occasion fortunately being bad! But if Boone's rifle was missing its mark at ten paces, Cupid's dart was speeding home. So runs the story concocted a hundred years later by some gentle scribe ignorant alike of game seasons, the habits of hunters, and the way of a man with a maid in a primitive world.
Daniel and Rebecca were married in the spring of 1756. Squire Boone, in his capacity as justice of the peace, tied the knot; and in a small cabin built upon his spacious lands the young couple set up housekeeping. Here Daniel's first two sons were born. In the third year of his marriage, when the second child was a babe in arms, Daniel removed with his wife and their young and precious family to Culpeper County in eastern Virginia, for the border was going through its darkest days of the French and Indian War. During the next two or three years we find him in Virginia engaged as a wagoner, hauling tobacco in season; but back on the border with his rifle, after the harvest, aiding in defense against the Indians. In 1759 he purchased from his father a lot on Sugar Tree Creek, a tributary of Dutchman's Creek (Davie County, North Carolina) and built thereon a cabin for himself. The date when he brought his wife and children to live in their new abode on the border is not recorded. It was probably some time after the close of the Indian War. Of Boone himself during these years we have but scant information. We hear of him again in Virginia and also as a member of the pack-horse caravan which brought into the Back Country the various necessaries for
With France expelled and the Indians deprived of their white allies, the westward path lay open to the pioneers, even though the red man himself would rise again and again in vain endeavor to bar the way. So a new era begins, the era of exploration for definite purpose, the era of commonwealth building. In entering on it, we part with the earliest pioneer--the trader, who first opened the road for both the lone home seeker and the great land company. He dwindles now to the mere barterer and so--save for a few chance glimpses--slips out of sight, for his brave days as Imperial Scout are done.
Chapter V. Boone, The Wanderer
What thoughts filled Daniel Boone's mind as he was returning from Braddock's disastrous campaign in 1755 we may only conjecture. Perhaps he was planning a career of soldiering, for in later years he was to distinguish himself as a frontier commander in both defense and attack. Or it may be that his heart was full of the wondrous tales told him by the trader, John Findlay, of that Hunter's Canaan, Kentucky, where buffalo and deer roamed in thousands. Perhaps he meant to set out ere long in search of the great adventure of his dreams, despite the terrible dangers of trail making across the zones of war into the unknown.
However that may be, Boone straightway followed neither of these possible plans on his return to the Yadkin but halted for a different adventure. There, a rifle shot's distance from his threshold, was offered him the oldest and sweetest of all hazards to the daring. He was twenty-two, strong and comely and a whole man; and therefore he was in no mind to refuse what life held out to him in the person of Rebecca Bryan. Rebecca was the daughter of Joseph Bryan, who had come to the Yadkin from Pennsylvania some time before the Boones; and she was in her seventeenth year.
Writers of an earlier and more sentimental period than ours have endeavored to supply, from the saccharine stores of their fancy, the romantic episodes connected with Boone's wooing which history has omitted to record. Hence the tale that the young hunter, walking abroad in the spring gloaming, saw Mistress Rebecca's large dark eyes shining in the dusk of the forest, mistook them for a deer's eyes and shot--his aim on this occasion fortunately being bad! But if Boone's rifle was missing its mark at ten paces, Cupid's dart was speeding home. So runs the story concocted a hundred years later by some gentle scribe ignorant alike of game seasons, the habits of hunters, and the way of a man with a maid in a primitive world.
Daniel and Rebecca were married in the spring of 1756. Squire Boone, in his capacity as justice of the peace, tied the knot; and in a small cabin built upon his spacious lands the young couple set up housekeeping. Here Daniel's first two sons were born. In the third year of his marriage, when the second child was a babe in arms, Daniel removed with his wife and their young and precious family to Culpeper County in eastern Virginia, for the border was going through its darkest days of the French and Indian War. During the next two or three years we find him in Virginia engaged as a wagoner, hauling tobacco in season; but back on the border with his rifle, after the harvest, aiding in defense against the Indians. In 1759 he purchased from his father a lot on Sugar Tree Creek, a tributary of Dutchman's Creek (Davie County, North Carolina) and built thereon a cabin for himself. The date when he brought his wife and children to live in their new abode on the border is not recorded. It was probably some time after the close of the Indian War. Of Boone himself during these years we have but scant information. We hear of him again in Virginia and also as a member of the pack-horse caravan which brought into the Back Country the various necessaries for