With the village and county of St. Charles are connected most of the events attending the early settlement of the region west of the Mississippi; and during the late war with Great Britain, the atrocities of the savage tribes were chiefly perpetrated here. Early in that conflict the Sacs and Foxes, Miamis, Pottawattamies, Iowas, and Kickapoo Indians commenced a most savage warfare upon the advanced settlements, and the deeds of daring which distinguished the gallant "rangers" during the two years in which, unaided by government, they sustained, single-handed, the conflict against a crafty foe, are almost unequalled in the history of warfare.[174] St. Charles county and the adjoining county of Booneslick were the principal scene of a conflict in which boldness and barbarity, courage and cruelty, contended long for the mastery. The latter county to which I have alluded {23} received its name from the celebrated Daniel Boone.[175] After being deprived, by the chicanery of law, of that spot for which he had endured so much and contended so boldly in the beautiful land of his adoption, we find him, at the close of the last century, journeying onward towards the West, there to pass the evening of his days and lay away his bones. Being asked "_why_ he had left that dear Kentucke, which he had discovered and won from the wild Indian, for the wilderness of Missouri," his memorable reply betrays the leading feature of his character, the _primum mobile_ of the man: "Too crowded! too crowded! I want elbow-room!" At the period of Boone's arrival in 1798, the only form of government which existed in this distant region was that of the "Regulators," a sort of military or hunters' republic, the chief of which was styled _commandant_. To this office the old veteran was at once elected, and continued to exercise its rather arbitrary prerogatives until, like his former home, the country had become subject to other laws and other councils. He continued here to reside, however, until the death of his much-loved wife, partner of all his toils and adventures, in 1813, when he removed to the residence of his son, some miles in the interior. Here he discovered a large and productive salt-lick, long and profitably worked, and which still continues to bear his name and give celebrity to the surrounding country. To this lick was the old hunter accustomed to repair in his aged days, when his sinews were unequal to the chase, and lie in wait for the deer {24} which frequented the spring. In this occupation and in that of trapping beavers he lived comfortably on until 1818, when he calmly yielded up his adventurous spirit to its God.[176] What an eventful life was that! How varied and wonderful its incidents! How numerous and pregnant its vicissitudes! How strange the varieties of natural character it developed! The name of Boone will never cease to be remembered so long as this Western Valley remains the pride of a continent, and the beautiful streams of his