Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America

19. Boone in Missouri

238 19 Boone in Missouri Once in Missouri, Boone, as syndic, did some judging. Much more of his time was spent hunting and trapping and in the quest to perfect title to the land he thought he had been granted by the Spanish. Boone was growing older and frailer, but his reputation continued to grow across America and Europe. The fragments that survive of Boone’s work as syndic convey the roughness of the frontier and of the justice Boone dispensed. As his son Nathan put it, he “governed more by equity than by law.”1 Boone held court out in the open, under the shade of an elm that came to be known as the Judgment Tree. For petty offenses, according to one of Boone’s nephews, Boone often gave the defendant a choice of being whipped on the spot and set free or being sent to the more settled and larger (though still small) community of St. Charles for trial in court. Many chose to be “whipped and cleared,” as one story has it.2 Months after the Americans had assumed control over Lower and Upper Louisiana, in a case that presumably was sent on for trial at St. Charles, Boone signed a deposition that gives a flavor of frontier life in Missouri: June 30th, 1804 This Day came before me Justice of the Peace for the District of the Femme Osage, Francis Woods Peter Smith & John Manley and made oath that on the 29th of June of said Month at the house of David Bryan a Certain James Meek and the Bearer hereof Bery Vinzant had some difference Which Came to blows and in the scuffle the said James Meek bit of a piece of Bery Vinzants Left Ear, further the 239 Boone in Missouri Deponent saith not Given under my hand and seal the day and Date above written Daniel Boone [seal]3 One case too serious to be heard by a syndic in Femme Osage involved the December 1804 killing of Will Hays, husband of Boone’s daughter Susannah . Susannah had died in 1800 soon after the Boone party came to Missouri , felled by a “bilious fever” at the age of thirty-nine. One of her daughters married James Davis, and it was Davis who killed Will Hays, at Hays’s place on the Femme Osage Creek, not far from where Boone and Rebecca lived. For decades Boone had worked closely with Hays, who had helped to teach Boone writing and arithmetic and how to survey. Hays had become, however, in Nathan’s words, “a bad tempered, drinking man.” After Susannah ’s death Hays drank even more heavily and had wild rages, including ones directed at Davis. When Davis came on Hays’s place to borrow a horse in December 1804, Hays came out with a loaded rifle, and Davis went behind a tree. “All the trees in the world shan’t save you,” Hays said, aiming toward Davis and daring him to shoot. Davis jumped out from behind the tree and fired. Hays, shot in the chest, died several hours later. One of the Hays children, Daniel Boone Hays, the only witness to the killing, reported it to Boone, who took Davis into St. Charles, posted bond for his release, and testified at the trial about Hays and his character. Davis was acquitted.4 Even after Boone ceased to be an official at Femme Osage, he continued to be a significant local figure—chosen as executor of estates and as a resolver of disputes. He also played an ongoing role in defending the settlements . After the Louisiana Purchase, the territory of Louisiana in 1804 organized local militia. In 1806 James Wilkinson, the governor of the territory, appointed Boone as the captain of the Sixth Company of the militia, in the District of St. Charles. Nathan Boone was appointed an ensign, the thirdranking officer in the company.5 Much of Boone’s time in Missouri before 1813, when he was not out hunting , was spent on land on the Femme Osage Creek that had been granted to his son Nathan, though Boone and Rebecca also lived for a time at their son Daniel Morgan’s house in the Femme Osage District. Nathan started with a cabin in 1800, followed later that year by a “good substantial log house,” and several years later by a “commodious stone building,” still standing in what Frontiersman 240 is...