The boy pioneers, sons of Daniel Boone

Front matter

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

7 '^ (o MERRICK P' .!0'

; JUL 13; f

Foreword

This book is written for all boys. It is neither required nor expected that every one of its readers will belong to the Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone, but one use of the Society has been to afford occasion and opportunity for working out an original scheme for boys' clubs, recreation, and achievement, which is here put in the compact and convenient form of a new boys' book for the use of the readers.

Daniel Boone is, as doubtless he will always remain, the American boy's chosen hero.

" The great West nursed him on her rugged knees, The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul."

He certainly deserves the place he occupies in the boy's estimation. He and Simon Kenton, Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, Appleseed Johnny (Jonathan Chapman), and the great Abraham Lincoln could be produced only by the strenuous frontier life. It may be truthfully said of any one of these men, as it was said of Lincoln:

" The color of the ground was in him, the red earth, The smack and tang of elemental things: The rectitude and patience of the cliff; The good-will of the rain that falls for all."

Men of this description are not the product of an over-refined civiHzation. At times they might be and, indeed, are called barbarians. They are essentially boyish; like boys, they have restless minds and are noisy, energetic, fun-loving creatures, and, while

V vi Foreword

ready at any time to prove their true manhood, it cannot be denied they often lack the stiff, artificial deportment that sometimes masquerades as real dignity.

But the author thinks that boys are all right; owns up that among his fellow-men he loves best those of his older friends who still retain most of their boyish traits, and after thirty years of experience with the boys he has no hesitancy in confessing that he thinks it a greater honor to possess the love and respect of the lads of this country than it would be to wear the button of the Legion of Honor, the Carnegie gold medal for heroism, or the stars and orders bestowed by the monarchs of Europe, or even to occupy the high office of President of the United States.

One of the principal purposes in forming and carrying on the Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone was to awaken in the boy of to-day admiration for the old-fashioned virtues of American Knights in Buckskin and a desire to emulate them, which is the more likely to succeed because the average boy has rough-and-ready virtues of his own somewhat similar in character. We often hear of foot-races, base-ball games, and other athletic contests being sold out for money, but we never hear of boy athletes or their base-ball or foot-ball teams selling their games.

Another purpose the author had in view in getting up and promoting a society of this sort, besides furnishing entertainment for the boys, is the serious one of educating our lads early in life to an appreciation of the absolute necessity and value of our forests and natural resources, for we must all agree with President Roosevelt's message when it says:

" If there is one duty which more than another we owe to our children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of the country."

Foreword vii

And it is because this Society stands for just such sentiment that the founder received the personal indorsement for his Society of President Roosevelt, Admiral Dewey, Major-General Bell, Chief of Staff, U. S. A., John Muir, and other noted men.

The older generation of men, the ones with frosty locks or bald heads, had no practical boys' books to help them in their sports. The antique "English Boys' Own Book,'* antique even in their day, was the only one in the field, and the other juvenile books of those days were filled with goody-goody talk about namby-pamby boys who, if they really existed,' were fit for nothing outside of the nursery.

Everybody knows that adventure, daring, and skill appeal very forcibly to the juvenile mind and heart, but the only writers in our boyhood days who recognized this fact were the authors of the yellow Beadle Dime Novels and other similar literature. Those books consisted of wild and lurid fiction, probably not the right sort to be given indiscriminately to the boys to read; yet, if I remember aright, their heroes were always brave and the heroines pure; they were at least clean books, and described and told of a life that is dear to every healthy boy's heart.

Captain Mayne Reid and Fenimore Cooper were also patronized to some extent by the lads of that period, but the dime novels were easier of access and found more readers than any of the books by the more respectable and cultured authors, with the possible exceptions of such books as "Robinson Crusoe" and "Swiss Family Robinson."

It was the recollection of these facts and the desire to furnish the youths with a healthy outlet for their surplus energy which prompted the writer, while he was editor of Recreation, to invent and found the Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone. The result has more than justified the founder in the belief that such a society was needed, and would appeal with equal force to the boys, their parents, viii Foreword

teachers, and all those who are interested in boys' clubs and the welfare of the American youth.

The success of the project is proved by the fact that there now exists in this country some twenty odd thousand boys wearing the button of the Sons of Daniel Boone, and the demand upon the founder's time has become so great that he has frequently written over fifty letters to the boys in one day; so, partly in self-defence, he is issuing this book, which tells all about the Society, how to form a Fort, how to build one, how to conduct the meetings, how to win the honors, and how to do innumerable things, besides how to have lots of out-door fun in a sane, common-sense, enjoyable way.

In this I have the support of such authority as Dr. Eliot, of Harvard, who in a speech recently advised the students that if they wanted to make education effective they must do the things themselves.

The working drawings of the tree-top house, a back-yard switchback, a paper balloon, a back-yard zoo, a back-yard fish-pond, a tailless kite, a log house, a house-boat, and many other similar devices appeared first in the articles written by the author for the boys of America, and, what is much better, the boys have justified the author's belief in their ability by building all these things unaided by the grown folks.

From the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, from Cobalt, in the far North, to old Mexico and tropical South America, the tree-top houses, switchback, and other pieces of engineering described in the Beard books, have been successfully accomplished by the boy readers. Of course, this is a great source of satisfaction and pleasure to the author, but it was not an altogether unlooked-for result.

In late years, however, when the writer has met prominent naturalists, college professors, and men standing at the head of the movement for the preservation of our forests, and has been told by these

Foreword ix

distinguished and useful men that they first imbibed the love for the great out-doors and Mother Nature from his writings, he has felt a deep sense of gratitude that he has been able to exert such influence, which has stimulated and encouraged him to the belief that his books for boys have produced grander results than he himself dared hope for at the time that they were written.

The thanks of the author are due to Mr. Caspar Whitney, Mr. Arthur Vance, and the other editors for their promptness in returning original drawings used in their magazines. A delay on their part would have delayed the publication of this book, as many of the originals were necessary as illustrations in this volume.

The Pictorial Review, at the present writing, is the official organ of the author's clubs for boys.

Contents

CHAPTEK PAGE

Foreword v

I. Daniel Boone 3

Chapter I Daniel Boone

"Do all the good to your neighbor you can, do as little hann as possible, and trust in God."

Daniel Boone's Motto.

THERE, boys! we're through with that Foreword or Preface and are ready to have a good time. I would ask you to excuse me for placing a foreword in the book at all if I thought you had to read it, but I know that boys mostly skip such things, and I remember that, as a lad, I myself never read the preface to a book.

These introductions, however, are required by all those good people — friends, teachers, uncles, aunts, and parents — ^who buy books for the boys, and that's the reason that fellows like me who write books always stick a preface of some sort at the beginning of our volumes.

Personally, however, I'd rather open with "Hello, boys, howdy!" or something like that, and then jump right into the contents, as I am going to do now.

The English lads look back with pride to the days of knight-errantry, when all the chivalry of the land went around dressed like oil-stoves astride of horses covered with gorgeous crazy quilts, and poked each other with long barber poles, or playfully hammered each other's heads with sledge-hammers and broadaxes. That was the time of Ivanhoe, the Black Prince, and Richard Coeur de Lion.

But America also had her day of chivalry, with knights as bold as any who wore an iron pot on his head on a hot summer day. Our knights, however, encased their limbs in fringed buckskin in place of stovepipes, and their bodies in tawny deerskin tunics, or "wammuses," instead of sheet-iron corsets. The American knight's arms consisted of a long rifle with a barrel ranging from four to five feet in length, trimmed with brass and with a brass patch box in the butt. Hung from the shoulder of each knight by a broad band was a bullet pouch made of deerskin, or often of some very valuable fur, and not infrequently beautifully decorated with beads. Over this hung a cow's-horn powderflask, scraped smooth with a piece of glass and intricately engraved with a date, the owner's name, and rude representation of the chase, and pictures of wild animals and Indians, to which were often added cabalistic signs from old books of magic.

Thrust in the belt was a long butcher knife, a tomahawk, and sometimes a whetstone. The feet of the knights were encased in moccasins, and their heads in coonskin, bearskin, or foxskin caps. As a rule, they were tall, lithe men, usually with gray eyes, and wore their long hair either gathered in a queue, clubbed, or hanging loosely on their shoulders.

Like the old knights of Europe who wore iron clothes, the American heroes were unrelenting in their warfare; and yet they were men with big, kind hearts, who went into the serious game of frontier warfare with as much interest, zest, and enjoyment as the college boys of to-day display upon the foot-ball field.

The red men of those days, who contested inch by inch the ground of the frontier land of the Ohio River basin,

Figs. 3

The Regulation Daniel Boone Uniform

were very much the same kind of men as their white brothers in buckskin — crafty but valiant warriors; many of them, like Logan, lofty and noble characters; and all of them worthy opponents.

There's one great difference between boys and other healthy animals. You may have heard people say, "As patient as a beaver" or "As patient as a cat watching a mouse-hole," but did you ever hear any one say, "As patient as a boy" .? So it may be wise at the start to tell the reader how to make

A Pioneer Costume A pair of brown overalls with fringe stitched on at the side seams makes good leggins, and an ordinary blue flannel outing shirt with a cape like a sailor's collar sewed on at the neck, and fringes at the seams of the sleeves and edge of the cape, is as much like the old hunting shirts as they are like themselves. Of course, the shirt must be worn outside of the trousers (Fig. 6).

The regulation Sons of Daniel Boone uniform consists of leggins (Figs. I, 2, 3, 4) and hunting shirt (Fig. 5).

As may be seen in the diagrams, the leggins are made like the leather chaps worn by the cowboys, but fit the limbs more closely.

The leggins have to be made so that they can be pulled on over the shoes and clothes, and to facilitate this the leggins have their seams open from the bottom to the calf of the leg. This opening

Fig. 6. — One of the Sons of Daniel Boone is furnished with buttons in a row on one side and buttonholes or loops on the other. A stout belt about the waist holds the leggins in place. The shirt is made exactly like an ordinary outing shirt, with the exception that it is adorned by a cape having a fringe and has fringes inserted in seams of the shirt. Figs. 5A and 5B show how the fringes are to be fastened in the seams and secured there by being stitched in place. R and S show how the edges of the cloth are turned in at the seam, and T the piece of fringe inserted. The fringes in the leggins are inserted in the same manner. A suit for winter wear may be made of blankets, as are the Mackinaw coats and trousers worn by the lumbermen in the North woods, and as were many of the hunting shirts of the old pioneers.

For summer wear, use blue denim with yellow flannel fringes. This makes a picturesque and very striking outing costume. Of course, the ideal uniform would be made of buckskin, but, unfortunately, buckskin, once the cheapest material for clothes, is now far too expensive except for the wealthier boys, or perhaps a few of the poorer ones who live on the outskirts of civilization.

The Officers

of each Fort of the Sons of Daniel Boone wear their rank on their left sleeve or the left corner of the cape of their uni-

Fig. 5A Showing how the seams are turned in and the fringe inserted form (Fig. 6). Each officer has a different totem sign: Daniel Boone's (President) is a powder-horn (Fig. 7); Simon Kenton's (Vice-president) is a tomahawk (Fig. 8); Kit Carson's (Treasurer) is a flint arrowhead (Fig. 9); Audubon's (Librarian) is a bird (Fig. 10); Johnny Appleseed (Forester) has a tree (Fig. 11); David Crockett (Secretary)

Figs. 7 has a coonskin (Fig. 12); CatHn, the totem painter, wears a buffalo head on sleeve; and each scout, as the other members are called, has a log cabin (Fig. 13). For the Boy Pioneers Davy Crockett or Kit Carson is president.

The Emblems can be cut from any thick dark-green, red, or brown cloth or felt, and the patterns may be made by the reader himself by enlarging the ones shown in Figs. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20, which are divided up into squares so as to enable the boys to copy them by making bigger squares and then sketching them in the proper size.

The Boone Flag The lower triangle is bright turkey red, the upper one is buff or tan color, and the emblems are dark green.

The diagram of the flag is also divided into squares to help the boys to make a large flag from the pattern. If each square is called a foot the flag will be twelve feet by nine feet. If we call each square six inches, it will be six feet by four

Oflacial Emblems of Rank and the Official Flag and one-half feet. But if each square is called two inches, it will be only two feet by one and one-half feet. So you see that with this pattern your mothers, sisters, or aunts, or you yourself, can make a flag of the proper proportion and of any size.

Pioneer Days

AH loyal Sons of Daniel Boone and all good American boys should observe the pioneer days, the first of which is

Lincoln's Day

February 12th; little Abe was born on this day in 1809. We must count the great Lincoln in among the Buckskin

Knights, for he himself said that in his youth his wardrobe consisted of a coonskin cap, a Hnsey-woolsey shirt, a buckskin wammus, deerskin breeches and moccasins.

Johnny Appleseed Day

The exact day of Jonathan Chapman's birth is uncertain, but Arbor Day is his day and the day which we celebrate where Arbor Day is observed. In a country where Arbor Day is not observed we choose the first day of spring, when the ground and conditions are right, for tree-planting. Next comes the birthday of

Simon Kenton

on April 3d, which is celebrated by the first out-door camping expedition. After that quickly follows on the 4th day of May. This should be devoted to nailing bird boxes on all the trees within reach. Next in order is the midsummer hoHday,

David Crockett's Day

on August 17th. This may be celebrated by camping, out-door games, and athletic contests. After that comes the hunting season. When the leaves have lost their beautiful autumn coloring and those that have not fallen are withered and brown, it is

Boone's Day

November 2d. This day can be devoted to out-door sport, throwing the tomahawk, and archery for all the boys, but

Daniel Boone ii the older lads may engage in rifle practice. Right in midwinter, the day before Christmas, is

Kit Carson*s Day

because he was born on December 24th, and any Son of Daniel Boone who cannot think of something bully to do at that time can find it in the following pages. Snow forts, skating contests, running the gantlet, tracking in the snow, and, if the weather is bad, in-door games are in order. Kit was not only a great scout, but he was also a grandson of Daniel Boone, so be sure to remember him with a lively and enthusiastic day of fun.

Boone Day

does not come until autumn, but we are Boone boys, so a word about our patron saint is in order right here. There will be no attempt at a lengthy biography of any of our heroes. The reader can find books giving the lives of these men at all libraries, and a good biography of any one of the Pioneers would fill all the pages of this book; but a short sketch of some of our different characters may interest the reader, so a few such will be found in these pages.

Meeting descendants of an old hero whom we admire makes him more real to us. It is as if we were at the near end of tl.e bridge, which spans the length of days, separating us from the object of our interest.

I personally know a number of the people who are descendants of the great, simple-hearted hunter, Daniel

Boone. Among these are Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of Review of Reviews, and Mr. John Cassel, whose excellent illustrations frequently appear in the magazines. Cassel has that dark, reddish hair of the old Boone tribe.

Boone Day comes very appropriately in the hunting season, for the great hunter, pioneer, backwoodsman, and

State builder was born on November 2, 1734, in Oley Township, on Oatin Creek, Pennsylvania. He was of Quaker ancestry, and all through life retained many of the characteristics of the members of the religious Society of Friends, and never was guilty of using vulgar or coarse language. Rough as he was, he was not profane, but was a man of great action though of few words.

Daniel Boone was what is called a fighting Quaker, that is to say, he believed in self-defence, when his own life or those of his friends or family were threatened by savages, and there were many Quakers of this kind on the Ohio frontier. Daniel Boone was a religious man, and firmly believed that he was an instrument ordained of God to open up the wilderness to be settled by Christians.

If our hero was a birthright Quaker, he was also a born hunter. When he was not more than eight or ten years old, he managed to kill birds and small game with no better weapon than a smooth rod with a small bunch of hard roots at one end.

Fig. 22. — Daniel Boone's camp axe. (From a photograph)

His heart's desire, however, was a rifle, and when he was twelve years old his father gave him one. Never did a gift delight a boy more. Of course it was a man's size, for in those days no rifles were made for lads, and the men's rifles were, lock and stock, more than six feet long. We may fancy little Daniel Boone dragging about after him this great shooting-iron and looking about for a convenient stump or log upon which to rest it when he fired. Young Boone, however, in the due course of time, became strong enough to hold the long gun without a rest, and so expert in its use that it was no trouble to keep his family supplied with "meat fixings."

The young hunter left farming to the rest of the family and built himself a little lodge in the forest's depths, where he spent months at a time all by himself, especially in the fall and winter. He found more profit in the skins he dressed and sold at the nearest market towns than at the farm or the forge, for Daniel's father was a blacksmith.

When he came to the years of manhood, and after his return from Braddock's defeat, he married Rebecca Bryan, a sweet and pretty dark-haired girl of seventeen, who proved a good, faithful wife to him all her life long.

At the time he was married he was a powerfully built young man, five feet eight or ten inches tall, with the deep chest and broad shoulders of a modern foot-ball player or oarsman on a college crew. He had a firm, wide mouth with the thin lips of a man of strong character; his hair was reddish-black and long, after the style of the day; his eyes were blue and his sunburned eyebrows were bleached

H to a yellowish color; his nose had a hint of the Roman in its form; his color was ruddy and fine from exposure, and his countenance noble, dignified, and striking.

Boone dressed like other backwoodsmen, in a fringed buckskin drawers and leggins, with moccasins on his feet,

a wammus or long-tailed hunting shirt with cape or ornamental collar, trimmed with fur or fringe; but, unlike the others, he wore a Quaker's hat of felt in place of the ordinary coonskin cap, and when all wearers of felt hats had them cocked (the rim turned up on three sides) Boone wore his with a straight brim. Thus he was dressed when he married the pretty seventeen-year-old Rebecca Bryan.

The primitive life led by these young people was almost the same as that of the mountaineers of Tennessee nowadays.

Boone was in no sense a scholar. He knew how to read and write, but his spelling was exceedingly queer. Education, however, has a broader sense than the acquisition of book knowledge, and Boone knew more about hunting and woodcraft than perhaps any man of his day or of ours. No one could more quickly or accurately tread the thickest forests or use his rifle, hatchet, or knife, or track wild animals to their secret retreats.

He was the man for the work he had to do, and he did it well and bravely, and showed as much intelligence and

Fig. 23 manliness in what he accomplished as any individual who lived in his day or generation. He was a clear-minded man, and at forty years of age Boone still wore a felt hat, and showed his Quaker instinct by wearing buckskin clothes dyed black, his hair being long and clubbed in the back.

Boone said himself that he was an instrument of God to settle the wilderness, and proved it by his life.

The Sons of Daniel Boone stand for the preservation of our American birds and animals, and Daniel Boone himself was the first man in America to stand for game protection.

Before the Declaration of Independence was written, back in May, 1775, the hardy backwoodsmen of Kentucky formed themselves into an independent government of their own. Representatives from Harrodsburg, St. Asaph's, Boiling Springs, and Boonesborough met, formed a government, and passed laws. It was an assembly of backwoodsmen, but its proceedings were dignified and in due form.

In "Daniel Boone and the Hunters of Kentucky," by W. H. Bogart, published in 1854, we read that Boone was among the delegates, and one of his biographers says of him: "It was but a few months since he had been the only white man in all that country, with no form of human government about him; and here he was in the midst of a formal assemblage. But he made his presence known, and, true to the practical, earnest habits of his life, doing that which he could do best, on the first day the entry is this:

"*On motion of Mr. Daniel Boone, leave was given to bring in a bill for preserving game, and a committee was appointed for that purpose, of which Mr. Boone was chairman.'

i6

Fig. 24. — Boone's powder-horn

"His next bill was one for improving the breed of horses. Both of these bills passed, were signed by the proprietors, and became laws."

The laws of this unauthorized legislature did not long hold power, but when one considers how slight an impression could have been made at that time on the natural abundance of game, one realizes what wonderful foresight Boone showed in introducing a measure for preserving it.

The first real Boone Day celebration was on June 15, 1906, at Louisville.

There was a reunion of the descendants of Daniel Boone in, Cherokee Park pavilion, about a dozen lineal descendants of the great pioneer being present. The statue of Boone, modelled by Miss Enid Yandell, of Louisville, was unveiled. Following this a reproduction of one of the many stirring events in the life of Boone was given in another part of the park. A stronghold situated upon the summit of a small elevation and called "Fort Boonesborough " was attacked by the hordes of "savages," who were on the point of overpowering and annihilating the garrison when a swarm of "pioneers," led by "Boone" in person, arrived in time to drive away the "Indians" and save the fort and its inmates. The spectacle was given in a vivid and realistic manner, and evoked the hilarious cheers of the thousands who had gathered to witness it.

Open-air dancing finished the day in the park, the programme being confined to reels and other dances in vogue a century ago.

In the evening there w^as a gorgeous illuminated parade. Fifteen wagons, decorated as floats, were in the column, each representing some stage in the progress of Kentucky.

This was followed by a grand ball in the armory, for which twenty thousand invitations had been issued. The grand march was led by the chairman of the ball and the members of the floor committee. Behind them came the queen of the ball, Miss Clara Halde- Fig. 25.— Boone's spring trap.

dT>y . I T-> . -1 (Hand made)

Uaniel rJoone, impersonated

by W. W. Davies. Following them came maids of honor.

The march ended at the foot of the queen's throne, which she mounted with Daniel Boone standing at her side.

A queen and a throne are about the last things that "ole Dan'l Boone" would have had anything to do with, but this was only a make-believe Daniel Boone. The queen herself was pretty, and maybe she looked like seventeenyear-old Rebecca Bryan, so we cannot blame Mr. Davies for cHmbing up to the throne. There are many lives of Daniel Boone for the boys to read that are thrilling and interesting, but the one by Dr. Reuben Goldthwaites is the most authentic.

Chapter II How To Celebrate Appleseed Johnny's Day W

E are indebted to the Hon. J. Sterling Morton, formerly Secretary of Agriculture, for inventing and suggesting

Arbor Day

Nebraska was the first State to observe this day, and it was there officially noticed in 1872. Cincinnati followed in 1882, and now, not only all the States of the Union have followed Nebraska, each celebrating Arbor Day by tree-planting, but Great Britain, France, Spain, New Zealand, and Japan have also fallen in line.

Arbor Day is appointed each year in each State by the Governor, but here in America it should be called

Let Kansas take just pride in leading the great movement, and all honor to Mr. Morton, but long before either this man or State was born, when the whole Middle West was raw and new land, it was visited by a real saint, an angel in grotesque and comic garb, Jonathan Chapman, who began planting apple-trees in a forest-covered country.

This was our hero, Johnny Appleseed, or Appleseed

Johnny, as he was familiarly and affectionately named by the early settlers and pioneers of the Ohio Valley. He was a unique character, deserving greater fame than he has ever received, even in the State of Ohio, where he did most of his unselfish work for the benefit of people who were to come after him.