The next few years were passed by Boone amid unending Indian
conflicts. He was a leader among the settlers, both in peace and
in war. At one time he represented them in the House of Burgesses
of Virginia; at another time he was a member of the first little
Kentucky parliament itself; and he became a colonel of the
frontier militia. He tilled the land, and he chopped the trees
himself; he helped to build the cabins and stockades with his own
hands, wielding the longhandled, light-headed frontier ax as
skilfully as other frontiersmen. His main business was that of
surveyor, for his knowledge of the country, and his ability to
travel through it, in spite of the danger from Indians, created
much demand for his services among people who wished to lay off
tracts of wild land for their own future use. But whatever he
did, and wherever he went, he had to be sleeplessly on the
lookout for his Indian foes. When he and his fellows tilled the
stump-dotted fields of corn, one or more of the party were always
on guard, with weapon at the ready, for fear of lurking savages.
When he went to the House of Burgesses he carried his long rifle,
and traversed roads not a mile of which was free from the danger
of Indian attack. The settlements in the early years depended
exclusively upon game for their meat, and Boone was the mightiest
of all the hunters, so that upon him devolved the task of keeping
his people supplied. He killed many buffaloes, and pickled the
buffalo beef for use in winter. He killed great numbers of black
bear, and made bacon of them, precisely as if they had been hogs.
The common game were deer and elk. At that time none of the
hunters of Kentucky would waste a shot on anything so small as a
prairie-chicken or wild duck; but they sometimes killed geese and
swans when they came south in winter and lit on the rivers.