The 50 Greatest Explorers in History by Michelle Rosenberg;

Author:Michelle Rosenberg;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Adventurers & Explorers
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2022-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Sources

https://www.thoughtco.com/facts-about-christopher-columbus-2136702

https://www.history.com/news/the-viking-explorer-who-beat-columbus-to-america

https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/christopher-columbus-0

https://www.biography.com/news/christopher-columbus-day-facts

http://www.christopher-columbus.eu/columbus-ships.htm

Chapter 23

Daniel Boone

(2 November 1734–26 September 1820)

I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, hunter, tracker, woodsman and frontiersman, whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States.

Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Boone was chopping wood by the age of 5, milking the cows by 11, and given a rifle when he was 12, with which he would hunt small game and learn to track them, soon becoming the main hunting ‘breadwinner’ (deer, beaver, fox and wild turkey) for the family. He killed his first bear at the age of 14 – having spotted its tracks near his family’s cow herd. His rifle was nicknamed the ‘Ticklicker’, as legend has it that he was such a good shot, that he could shoot the ‘tick’ or flea off a bear’s nose.

He befriended the local Delaware Indians and soon adopted their dress. He was the sixth of eleven children to his English emigrant father, who had fled his home of Bradninch for Pennsylvania in 1713. Squire Boone, a weaver, blacksmith and Quaker, had fled due to religious persecution. Daniel’s mother was fellow Quaker Sarah Morgan.

Daniel never received any formal education but he did learn how to read, taking books with him on his trail expeditions, and he could sign his name.

Boone was only 17 when the family moved to the Yadkin River valley in North Carolina, where there were frequent fights with the Native Americans who resented the interlopers on their land hunting for the same food that was in short supply.

Such was his hunting prowess, that they were able to secure 1,300 acres of land from the profits of the skins he’d amassed. With the onset of the French-Indian wars (France and Britain fighting over territory in North America, with the Native Americans mostly siding with the French), Boone joined the side of the British army as a blacksmith and supply-wagon driver, narrowly escaping on horseback from the Battle of Turtle Creek.

After meeting Rebecca Bryan at a family wedding (their families knew each other well), they would marry on 14 August 1756 and have ten children. Rebecca, daughter of Welsh Quakers, was just 17. Daniel worked as a trapper and hunter in the Appalachian mountains to support his family, often gone for months, even years, on end. Rebecca herself was a good small-game hunter – she had to be in order to provide for her family in Daniel’s absence. Forget rose-tinted glasses of a romantic frontier life; according to the North Carolina Museum of History, ‘Rebecca also farmed, gardened, chopped wood, tended farm animals, and performed the other chores necessary to keep a farmstead going.’ She was an experienced midwife, made her own linen and was a leather-tanner. She would set up home in different places at least fifteen times, in North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri.

In 1769 Daniel ventured to the wilds of Kentucke (Kentucky), west of the Appalachian mountains, with

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