Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies

by David Fisher

  As this G. W. Fasel lithograph depicts, when Boone’s daughter and two friends were kidnapped by Indians in 1776, he tracked them down and rescued them—an episode that served as an inspiration for James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans.

  Boone was reputed to be the young nation’s greatest Indian fighter, as shown in this Baraldi painting of an attack on Boonesborough.

  Boone led the Shawnees to his hunting party—and when his men saw him with the Indians, they suspected that he had betrayed them and prepared to fight for their lives. “Don’t fire!” Boone warned them. “If you do they will massacre all of us.” He put his reputation on the line, ordering his men to stack their arms and surrender. In the confusion, some men escaped and hurried back to warn the settlers.

  Daniel Boone and the remaining members of the expedition went north with the Shawnees to the village of Chillicothe, where there was great debate on how to treat the prisoners: Some of the braves wanted to kill them, but apparently Boone convinced them otherwise. As the weeks went by, he actually was adopted into the tribe and given the Indian name Sheltowee, or “Big Turtle.” He was known to hunt and fish and play sports with the tribe, and there were even some stories that he took a bride. The Shawnees trusted him enough to take him to Detroit, where he met with the British governor Hamilton. But when he returned to Chillicothe, he found more than four hundred fifty armed and painted braves preparing to attack Boonesborough. He feared that the unprepared settlers would be slaughtered. Boone waited for the right opportunity, and in the confusion of a wild-turkey hunt, he managed to slip away.

  He raced 160 miles in less than five days, on foot and horseback. He paused only one time for a meal. He reached Boonesborough still dressed in Indian garb, and his warning was met with great suspicion. The men who had escaped the original attack cautioned that he was cooperating with the Shawnees, pointing out that he had lived safely among the tribe for months and that he had returned while many of their relations remained captives. Finally Boone was able to convince the settlers to strengthen their wooden fortifications and, in an effort to prove his loyalty, suggested that instead of waiting for the attack, they take the offensive.

  He and his friend John Logan led a thirty-man raiding party to the Shawnee village of Paint Creek on the Scioto River. After a trek of several days, they found it abandoned—meaning the main Indian force, then under the command of the Canadian captain Duquesne, was already on its way to the settlement. The raiding party made it back safely, and the cattle and horses were brought into the fort, which was made as secure as possible. Soon Boonesborough was surrounded by as many as five hundred Shawnee braves. British colors were displayed, and the settlers were told to either surrender, with a promise of good treatment, or fight and face the hatchet. Rather than fighting, Boone asked Captain Duquesne for a parley.

  Boone and eight other men met with the Indians in a meadow beyond the settlement’s walls. Eventually they reached an agreement: The Ohio River would be the boundary between the settlers and the tribes. As they shook hands, the Indians tried to grab Boonesborough’s leaders and drag them away, but carefully hidden sharpshooters opened fire. Boone and his men retreated, and an eleven-day siege began. The enemy made several efforts to break into the fort, but riflemen inside the garrison released a steady stream of accurate fire on anyone who came within range. When the Indian force broke off the attack, thirty-seven braves had been killed and many more wounded, while inside the walls only two settlers had died and two were wounded. The resistance, led by Daniel Boone, had saved the settlement.

  But within weeks, Boone was accused of treason. Two militia officers—whose kin had been taken on the salt-lick expedition and were still being held captive in Detroit—claimed he had been collaborating with the Indians and the British. He was accused of surrendering the original expedition at the salt flats, consorting with the British in Detroit in their plan to capture the settlement, intentionally weakening Boonesborough’s defense by taking thirty men on the “foolish raid” on Paint Creek, and leaving the fort vulnerable by bringing its leadership outside to negotiate with Blackfish. The penalty for treason was death by hanging.

  Boone’s trial was held at another settlement, Logan’s Station. With few records available, it is difficult to reconstruct events. His accusers were Richard Callaway and Benjamin Logan. Callaway testified, “Boone was in favor of the British government and all his conduct proved it.”

  Boone insisted on representing himself rather than retaining a lawyer. He testified that both his salt expedition and the settlement were outmanned and outgunned, and neither of them was strong enough to survive a surprise attack. To prevent a massacre, he had been forced to “use some stratagem,” telling the Indians “tales to fool them.” After hearing his testimony, and perhaps taking into account his good name, the judges found him not guilty—then promoted him to the rank of major.

  Boone accepted the acquittal but could not forgive the insult, so he left Boonesborough and founded a new settlement in an area known as Upper Louisiana, which actually was in present-day Missouri. When asked why he’d left Kentucke, he replied, “I want more elbow room.” In recognition of his accomplishments, the Spanish governor of that region granted him 850 acres and appointed him commandant. He settled there with his family but couldn’t stay settled long.

  Perhaps still angry about the false accusations, in 1780 he finally joined the Revolution, acting as a guide for George Rogers Clark’s militia as they attacked and defeated a joint British and Indian force in Ohio. In that attack, his brother Ned was shot and killed. Apparently believing they had killed the great Daniel Boone, the Shawnees beheaded Ned Boone and took his head home as a trophy.

  This Currier and Ives hand-colored lithograph by Fannie Flora Palmer, The Rocky Mountains—Emigrants Crossing the Plains, 1866, illustrates the barren beauty of the frontier—although Palmer never left New York.

  A year later, Daniel Boone stood for election to the Virginia Assembly. He would be elected to that body three times.

  Two years later, at the Battle of Blue Licks, the then lieutenant colonel Daniel Boone warned his commanding officer that the militia was being led into an Indian trap. He explained that the Indians had left a broad and obvious trail, which was contrary to their custom and “manifested a willingness to be pursued.” Boone believed that “an ambuscade was formed at the distance of a mile in advance” and urged him not to cross the Licking River until the area could be properly scouted or reinforcements known to be marching toward them arrived. But as the commanders debated their strategy, a headstrong young Major McGary ignored Boone’s advice and instead mounted and charged the enemy. When he was in the middle of the stream, he paused, waved his hat over his head, and shouted, “Let all who are not cowards follow me!” As the rest of the men cheered and followed, Boone supposedly said, “We are all slaughtered men,” but still joined the attack. As pioneer historian Howe described it, “The action became warm and bloody … the slaughter was great in the river.” When the trap was sprung, as Boone had warned, he fought courageously and helped organize the militia’s retreat. Boone himself was in desperate trouble: Several hundred Indians were between him and the main force. Howe wrote, “Being intimately acquainted with the ground, he, together with a few friends, dashed into the ravine which the Indians had occupied, but which most of them had now left to join the pursuit. After sustaining one or two heavy fires, and baffling one or two small parties, who pursued him for a short distance, he crossed the river below the ford, by swimming, and entering the wood at a point where there was no pursuit, returned by a circuitous route….”

  Unfortunately, as he made this miraculous escape, Boone’s twenty-three-year-old son, Israel, was shot and became one of sixty men killed in the battle. It was the worst defeat the Kentuckians were to suffer in the long war against the Indians—and it came weeks after the Revolution had ended in the East.

  After the war, Boone settled in Limestone, Kentucky, a booming town o
n the Ohio River. He worked there as the deputy surveyor of Lincoln County, a horse trader, and a land speculator—as well as owning a small trading house.

  By the time America became an independent nation in 1783, Daniel Boone was one of its most famous citizens. That fame was magnified a year later during the celebration of his fiftieth birthday, with the publication of historian John Filson’s book, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke, with an appendix entitled “The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon, One of the First Settlers.” The book, published both in the United States and England, was a great success and guaranteed Boone’s place in history. A year later, The Adventures of Colonel Boone was published by itself, further spreading Boone’s fame. The image of Boone exploring the frontier, dressed in deerskin, fighting Indians, stood for all of the men—and women—who settled the West. Although the book supposedly included words that came “out of his own mouth,” the sometimes exaggerated tales caused Boone to admit later, “Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.”

  This fanciful hand-colored lithograph by Henry Schile (c. 1874), Daniel Boone Protects His Family, probably best captures the enduring image of the legendary frontiersman.

  Boone’s battles were not yet completely done. The Revolution was over, but the Indians north of the Ohio River had not given up fighting for their land. Battle hardened and desperate, they continued to raid settlements, killing and kidnapping people or stealing their livestock. In 1786, a war party of more than four hundred fifty braves had come into the Cumberland region and announced their intention to kill all the Americans. Mingo, Chickamauga, and Shawnee warriors had raided several settlements and murdered a number of people. In response, Benjamin Logan put together an army of 888 men and rode into the Mad River Valley to find and punish the tribes. Boone served as one of the commanders of the raiding party. Unfortunately, it proved far easier to find innocent Indians than those who had staged the attacks, and Logan’s men burned seven villages and destroyed the food supply of mostly peaceful natives. Among those taken prisoner were the Shawnee chief Moluntha, who believed he had made peace with the Americans. When he was brought to see Colonel Logan, he carried with him an American flag and a copy of the treaty he had signed at Fort Finney declaring he would fight no longer. He had proudly honored that agreement. However, while he was there he was accosted by the now colonel McGary—the same officer who had ignored Boone’s advice about riding into the Indian trap—who demanded to know if he had been present at the Battle of the Blue Licks. Although Moluntha had not fought in that battle, McGary did not believe his claim and clubbed him to death with a tomahawk. In an incredible twist, Logan adopted the chief’s son and raised him to become an honored American soldier.

  Boone, too, was greatly chagrined by the vengeance taken on innocent Indians. He brought several Shawnees back with him to Limestone, where he fed and cared for them until a truce could be negotiated and a prisoner exchange arranged. Although he was already in his fifties, quite an old age at that time, he still had one more fight left in him. During a 1787 Indian raid in Kanawha Valley, a settler named John Flinn and his wife were killed, and their young daughter, Chloe, was kidnapped. Boone happened to be nearby and quickly organized a party to pursue the Indians. Boone’s men caught up with them and killed them, rescuing the child—who was watched over by Boone for the remainder of his years.

  Like many other men of action, Daniel Boone was not especially successful when it came to business, and most of his enterprises eventually failed. He made and lost large amounts of money speculating in Kentucke land, buying and selling claims to vast tracts. For a brief time, he was rich and owned seven slaves, which some believed to be the most of any one master in the entire territory of Kentucke. His common decency was his greatest business flaw, as he was too often reluctant to enforce a claim to the detriment of others. He said he just didn’t like the feeling of profiting from another man’s loss. The respect he gained was paid for in the dollars he forfeited. Ironically, in 1798, a court in Mason County issued a warrant for his arrest for his failure to testify in a court case, while later that same year, Kentucke honored him by naming a large region of the state Boone County.

  But what pressed on him most was a large debt he spent much of his later life repaying: While sleeping in a Richmond tavern on his way to Williamsburg in 1780, he was robbed of twenty thousand dollars in depreciated scrip and land certificates that had been entrusted to him by settlers to purchase supplies and buy land claims from the Virginia government. Although some of the settlers forgave him, he vowed to pay all of them back completely. It took him more than thirty years to do so, which he finally did by selling off most of the lands he had been awarded in 1815 by President James Monroe. After making the final repayment, it was said he was left with fifty cents.

  His wife, Rebecca, died in 1813 after nearly fifty-seven years of marriage. She was buried on a knoll along Tuque Creek in Missouri, in the shade of large apple trees that had been grown from seeds Daniel had brought with him from Kentucke.

  In spirit, as well as body, Daniel Boone never really left the wilderness, continuing to hunt and fish well into his older years. There is some evidence that he went hunting up the Missouri all the way to the Yellowstone River in his eighty-first year. He spent the last years of his life living in the large stone house his son Nathan had built on the land originally given to Boone by the Spanish in the town of Booneslick, Missouri, where Kit Carson would grow up years later. In 1820, secure in his status as an American hero, he said simply, “My time has come,” and died. He was two and a half months short of his eighty-sixth birthday.

  In all those years after he had left Kentucke, Boone had rarely, if ever, spoken about the court-martial. Certainly any question about his allegiance had been answered decades earlier when he fought for the patriot cause. That the state of Kentucky had chosen to honor him by naming a county after him and President Monroe publicly recognized his service to the new country by awarding him a large tract of land settled any doubts about his loyalty. In The Adventures of Colonel Boone, the accusations were dismissed without being directly addressed: “My footsteps have often been marked with blood, and therefore I can truly subscribe to its original name [The Dark and Bloody Ground]. Two darling sons, and a brother, have I lost by savage hands, which have also taken from me forty valuable horses, and abundance of cattle.”

  The only portrait of Daniel Boone painted from life, Chester Harding’s oil painting was done in 1820, only a few months before Boone’s death.

  Near the end of his life, he was able to look back on the many sacrifices he had made to help settle the nation. He said, “Many dark and sleepless nights have I been a companion for owls, separated from the cheerful society of men, scorched by the summer’s sun, and pinched by the winter’s cold, an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness. But now the scene is changed: peace crowns the sylvan shade.”

  DAVID CROCKETT

  CAPITOL HILLBILLY

  During David Crockett’s first visit to Washington, D.C., in 1827, the newly elected congressman from Tennessee was stopped by a man who loudly proclaimed his support for President John Quincy Adams. When Crockett responded angrily, “You had better hurrah for hell and praise your own country,” the man demanded to know who was speaking. Crockett stood tall and replied, “I’m that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half horse, half alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning and slip without a scratch down a honey locust; can whip my weight in wildcats and, if any gentleman pleases, for a ten dollar bill he may throw in a panther …”

  Davy Crockett, who lives in American legend as “the King of the Wild Frontier,” was celebrated during his lifetime as “the Coonskin Congressman,” a backwoodsman who had “kilt bears” and fought Indians, then went
to Congress to fight for the rights of the hardworking settlers. He was among the most popular people in the country; his autobiography was so successful that he followed it with two more books. A play based on his exploits entitled The Lion in the West was a hit in New York in 1831, and marching bands would often greet him when he arrived in a city. He was so admired, in fact, that a faction of the Whig Party supported him for the presidency before the campaign of 1836.

  But instead of going to the White House, on March 6, 1836, Crockett and about one hundred courageous Texans trapped in a century-old mission in San Antonio known as the Alamo were overwhelmed and killed by more than a thousand Mexican troops under the command of General Santa Anna. “Never in the world’s history had defense been more heroic,” reported an 1851 book entitled The Great West. “It has scarce been equaled, save at the Pass of Thermopylae.”

  Crockett was the rare American who went from the quagmire of American politics to the real battlefields of freedom. People have long wondered—and speculated—how this national hero ended up dying at the Alamo. Others have taken the question even further and wondered if he did actually die there.