The First White Man of the West: Life and Exploits of Col. Dan'l. Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky;; Interspersed with Incidents in the Early Annals of the Country.Flint, Timothy
History
The First White Man of the West: Life and Exploits of Col. Dan'l. Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky;; Interspersed with Incidents in the Early Annals of the Country.
Litigation in regard to land titles now began to increase, and continued
until it was carried to a distressing height. Col. Boone had begun to
turn his attention to the cultivation of the choice tracts he had
entered; and he looked forward with the consoling thought that he had
enough to provide for a large and rising family, by securing to each of
his children, as they became of age, a fine plantation. But in the
vortex of litigation which ensued, he was not permitted to escape. The
speculators who had spread their greedy claims over the lands which had
been previously located and paid for by Boone, relying upon his
imperfect entries, and some legal flaws in his titles, brought their
ejectments against him, and dragged him into a court of law. He employed
counsel, and from term to term, was compelled to dance attendance at
court. Here the old hunter listened to the quibbles--the subtleties, and
to him, inexplicable jargon of the lawyers. His suits were finally
decided against him, and he was cast out of the possession of all, or
nearly all the lands which he had looked upon as being indubitably his
own. The indignation of the old pioneer can well be imagined, as he saw
himself thus stript, by the quibbles and intricacies of the law, of all
the rewards of his exposures, labors, sufferings, and dangers in the
first settlement of Kentucky. He became more than ever disgusted with
the grasping and avaricious spirit--the heartless intercourse and
technical forms of what is called civilized society.
But having expended his indignation in a transient paroxysm, he soon
settled back to his customary mental complacency and self-possession;
and as he had no longer any pledge of consequence remaining to him in
the soil of Kentucky--and as it was, moreover, becoming on all sides
subject to the empire of the cultivator's axe and plough, he resolved to
leave the country. He had witnessed with regret the dispersion of the
band of pioneers, with whom he had hunted and fought, side by side, and
like a band of brothers, shared every hardship and every danger; and he
sighed for new fields of adventure, and the excitement of a hunter's
life.
Influenced by these feelings, he removed from Kentucky to the great
Kanawha; where he settled near Point Pleasant. He had been informed that
buffaloes and deer were still to be found in abundance on the unsettled
bottoms of this river, and that it was a fine country for trapping. Here
he continued to reside several years. But he was disappointed in his
expectations of finding game. The vicinity of the settlements above and
below this unsettled region, had driven the buffaloes from the country;
and though there were plenty of deer, yet he derived but little success
from his trapping. He finally commenced raising stock, and began to turn
his attention to agriculture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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