More than a hundred and thirty years ago, he cut these words on a beech-tree, still standing in Eastern Tennessee,[3]—­“D.  Boon killed a bar on (this) tree in the year 1760.”  You will see if you examine the tree, on which the words can still be read, that Boone could not spell very well; but he could do what the bear minded a good deal more,—­he could shoot to kill.

[Illustration:  BOONE’S BEAR TREE.]

[Footnote 3:  The tree is still standing on the banks of Boone’s Creek, near Jonesboro, Washington County, Tennessee.]

148.  Boone goes hunting in Kentucky; what kind of game he found there; the Indians; the “Dark and Bloody Ground.”—­Nine years after he cut his name on that tree, Boone, with a few companions, went to a new part of the country.  The Indians called it Kentucky.  There he saw buffalo, deer, bears, and wolves enough to satisfy the best hunter in America.

This region was a kind of No Man’s Land, because, though many tribes of Indians roamed over it, none of them pretended to own it.  These bands of Indians were always fighting and trying to drive each other out, so Kentucky was often called the “Dark and Bloody Ground.”  But, much as the savages hated each other, they hated the white men, or the “pale-faces,” as they called them, still more.

149.  Indian tricks; the owls.—­The hunters were on the lookout for these Indians, but the savages practised all kinds of tricks to get the hunters near enough to shoot them.  Sometimes Boone would hear the gobble of a wild turkey.  He would listen a moment, then he would say, That is not a wild turkey, but an Indian, imitating that bird; but he won’t fool me and get me to come near enough to put a bullet through my head.

One evening an old hunter, on his way to his cabin, heard what seemed to be two young owls calling to each other.  But his quick ear noticed that there was something not quite natural in their calls, and what was stranger still, that the owls seemed to be on the ground instead of being perched on trees, as all well-behaved owls would be.  He crept cautiously along through the bushes till he saw something ahead which looked like a stump.  He didn’t altogether like the looks of the stump.  He aimed his rifle at it, and fired.  The stump, or what seemed to be one, fell over backward with a groan.  He had killed an Indian, who had been waiting to kill him.

150.  Boone makes the “Wilderness Road,” and builds the fort at Boonesboro’.—­In 1775 Boone, with a party of thirty men, chopped a path through the forest from the mountains of Eastern Tennessee to the Kentucky River,[4] a distance of about two hundred miles.  This was the first path in that part of the country leading to the great west.  It was called the “Wilderness Road.”  Over that road, which thousands of emigrants travelled afterward, Boone took his family, with other settlers, to the Kentucky River.  There they built a fort called Boonesboro’.  That fort was a great protection to all the first settlers in Kentucky.  In fact, it is hard to see how the state could have grown up without it.  So in one way, we can say with truth that Daniel Boone, the hunter, fighter, and road-maker, was a state-builder besides.