Daniel Boone: Passing the Torch

The backwoodsman’s remarkable hunts out west foreshadowed the exploits of our iconic Mountain Men.

- Gary Zaboly

Neither Meriwether Lewis nor William Clark ever mentioned meeting Daniel Boone on May 24, 1804, when they stopped at the village nicknamed Boone’s Settlement, on the north bank of the Missouri River, some 60 miles from St. Louis, Missouri. The captains of the transcontinental expedition talked with the settlers, procured corn and butter, and then resumed their voyage. Had they met Daniel, they almost certainly would have recorded the moment—symbolizing the passing of the torch from the old American frontier to the new.

Although chief administrative officer of the district, the absent 69-year-old Daniel might well have been pursuing his favorite pastime: hunting and trapping. Daniel lived a life full of daring adventure, exploring dangerous country that would eventually take him high up the Missouri River.

The Ozark Mountains had become Daniel’s new Kentucky wilderness, and he, his sons and friends roamed deep into the forested valleys. Now and then, the resident Osages would angrily confiscate the party’s beaver pelts and deerskins, much like the Shawnees of old Kaintuck did during the 1760s and 1770s. By way of the Cumberland Gap, Daniel helped blaze a path into Kentucky to found Boonesborough, one of the first settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. In 1799, he and his family moved to Missouri, which was part of Spanish Louisiana. By 1808, Daniel and his fellow trappers had to outride pursuing Indians, probably Osages, whom they managed to deter from the chase only by cutting loose their traps and pelts.