At the age of sixty, while Washington was still president, and after he had seen Kentucky become a state, Daniel Boone and his faithful wife made the long journey to the region beyond the Mississippi, into what is now Missouri. There he lived and hunted. He saw this region pass from Spain to France, and from France to the United States (1803). He was still a hunter at eighty-two, and saw Missouri preparing to enter the Union as the twenty-fourth state. [Sidenote: =Died in 1820=] He died in 1820 at the age of eighty-six. Years afterward, remembering the noble deeds of the great pioneer, Kentucky brought his body to the capital city and buried it with great honors. [Sidenote: =The Louisiana country and the French=] =108. Life in the Mississippi Valley.= When Boone led his brave men into Kentucky, white men had been living for years in the Mississippi Valley, farther west. These were the French of Louisiana, as they called their country. Their chief settlement was St. Louis. These people came at first to dig lead from the old Indian mines of southern Missouri and to trade for furs. They were a quiet people who knew little and cared less about the rest of the world. They did not work hard, and they loved good times. A traveler who visited them says they were "the happiest people on the globe." JOHN SEVIER, "NOLICHUCKY JACK" [Sidenote: =Sevier born in Virginia=] [Sidenote: =Early life in the Shenandoah=] =109. A Famous Indian Fighter.= John Sevier was born in the Shenandoah Valley in 1745. His mother taught him to read, but he obtained most of his schooling in Washington's old school town, Fredericksburg. He quit school at sixteen. He built a storehouse on the Shenandoah and called it Newmarket. He lived there, selling goods and fighting Indians, until, at the early age of twenty-six, he was a wealthy man. He had already made such a name as an Indian fighter that the governor made him captain in the militia of which George Washington was then colonel. [Sidenote: =Fine looking=] Sevier was a fine-looking man. He was tall, slender, erect, graceful in action, fair skinned, blue eyed, and had pleasing manners, which had come to him from his French parents. He charmed everybody who met him, from backwoodsmen up to the king's governor at Williamsburg. [Sidenote: =He goes to the Watauga=] A most promising future opened before him in Virginia. But hearing of a band of pioneers on the Watauga, he rode over one day to see them and resolved to cast in his lot with them. [Sidenote: =Tennessee in the Revolution=]