The First White Man of the West

Our eastern brethren have entered heartily into the pious duty of bringing to remembrance the character and deeds of their forefathers. Shall we of the west allow the names of those great men, who won for us, from the forest, the savages, and wild beasts, our fair domain of fertile fields and beautiful rivers, to fade into oblivion? They who have hearts to admire nobility imparted by nature's great seal—fearlessness, strength, energy, sagacity, generous forgetfulness of self, the delineation of scenes of terror, and the relation of deeds of daring, will not fail to be interested in a sketch of the life of the pioneer and hunter of Kentucky, Daniel Boone. Contemplated in any light, we shall find him in his way and walk, a man as truly great as Penn, Marion, and Franklin, in theirs. True, he was not learned in the lore of books, or trained in the etiquette of cities. But he possessed a knowledge far more important in the sphere which Providence called him to fill. He felt, too, the conscious dignity of self-respect, and would have been seen as erect, firm, and unembarrassed amid the pomp and splendor of the proudest court in Christendom, as in the shade of his own wilderness. Where nature in her own ineffaceable characters has marked superiority, she looks down upon the tiny and elaborate acquirements of art, and in all positions and in all time entitles her favorites to the involuntary homage of their fellow-men. They are the selected pilots in storms, the leaders in battles, and the pioneers in the colonization of new countries.