From headwater to headwater, among these rugged hills, from one valley into another, ever and ever westward, the early American had won his way, until he struck the waters running into the lower Gulf by way of that great highway of the interior floods, the Mississippi River. We have seen that for a space the early population did not head directly westward, but dropped down from Pennsylvania into Maryland and Virginia, and from Maryland and Virginia into the Carolinas.
Many of the early adventurers seem to have made their halting and rallying ground in North Carolina. Here were some of the men of Watauga, men who were to people Tennessee, men who were to discover and settle the grand state of Kentucky, that steadfast portion of our Western empire whose fidelity was to thwart all of those early efforts at Western sedition and secession that once threatened the unity of the American people.
Having thus dealt in generalizations, we shall perhaps now do well to study some type, some product, of this early civilization, some character that shall indicate the general characteristics of the land and people of that early time. In this desire we fall naturally on the romantic yet pertinent story of that typical and historical frontiersman, Daniel Boone.
Among the great sayings of great men there is one that rings like a trumpet voice through all the press of years. "Here stand I," said Martin Luther. "Here I stand. I can not otherwise. God help me!" If we should come to comparisons, we might perhaps call Daniel Boone the Luther of frontiering, the evangel of adventure, the prophet of early west-bound daring. Certainly he was the most forward, the most present, the most instant man of his place and time.
If we endeavor to see Daniel Boone, the man, as he actually was, we find ourselves at the outset dealing with a character already approaching the mythical in quality. Thus, in regard to his personality, certain folk imagine him as tall, thin, angular, uncouth. Others will portray to you a man with voice like thunder in the hills, with gore ever in his eye, in his voice perpetually the breathings of insatiate hate and rage. They will insist that Boone was bloody minded, overbearing, a man delighting in slaughters and riotings. Such pictures are utterly wrong; so much we may discover to be absolutely sure from the scant record of Boone's real life.