PREFACE


The subject of the following biography, the celebrated Colonel Daniel
Boone, is one of the most remarkable men which this country has produced.
His character is marked with originality, and his actions were important
and influential in one of the most interesting periods of our
history--that of the early settlement of Kentucky. Boone is generally
acknowledged as the founder of that State. His having explored it alone
to a considerable extent; his leading the earliest bands of settlers;
his founding Boonesborough, the nucleus of the future State; his having
defended this and other stations successfully against the attacks of the
Indians; and the prominent part which he took in military affairs at
this period of distress and peril, certainly render his claims to the
distinguished honor of founding Kentucky very strong.

But Boone, personally, reaped very little benefit from his patriotic and
disinterested exertions. The lands which he had first cultivated and
defended, were taken from him by the chicanery of the law; other lands
granted to him by the Spanish government were lost by his inattention to
legal forms; and in his old age he was without an acre of land which he
could call his own. A few years before his death a small tract, such as
any other settler in Missouri was entitled to, was granted him by
Congress. But he has left to his numerous posterity a nobler
inheritance--that of an imperishable fame in the annals of his country!