A Christmas Story… Of Sorts

Nathan Boone was his father’s son. Like his famous father, Daniel Boone, Nathan was not suited for a settled life as a farmer, much preferring to roam the woods as a hunter and trapper. Living in Missouri, where the Boone clan had landed after leaving Kentucky in 1799, Nathan spent the fall and winter months each year away from home, hunting and trapping when furs were in their best, most marketable condition.

While it was the kind of life the Boone men loved, it wasn’t sport. A good season rewarded the rigors of the life with hard cash, which was hard to come by for a frontier farmer.

Nathan’s wife, Olive Van Bibber, had to resign herself to her husband’s long absences, just as his mother Rebecca had done for so many years while Daniel was on long hunts into Kaintuck and Tennessee.

The Missouri country could be damn near as dangerous as Old Kentucky, and Nathan, like his father, had run-ins with Indians who regarded white hunters as trespassers and poachers.

Lead From The Target Tree by Kyle Carroll depicts an incident in which Nathan Boone and his hunting companion Mathias Van Bibber narrowly escaped dying in the winter woods.

In the fall of 1804, after being “relieved” of their furs, traps, pack horses, blankets and coats by Osage Indians, Nathan Boone and Mathias Van Bibber are left to fend for themselves over 200 miles from the settlements. Out of bullets and battling an early snow storm, their chances for survival are slipping away when they find a tree the Indians have used for target practice. After digging the deformed lead out of the tree, they are able to strike a fire, melt the lead and mold four precious bullets…and survive.

Note that the Indians did not take the hunters’ rifles. They tried. Boone and Van Bibber wrestled them away, ready to die before giving up their arms. The pair made the arduous trip home, once shooting and eating a cougar they found in abandoned cabin where they sought shelter, arriving at Nathan’s cabin on the Femme Osage on Christmas Eve. Olive, a pioneer woman to the core, saw the silver lining in her husband’s ordeal:

“It was the first Christmas he had spent at home since our marriage, and I have the Indians to thank for that.”

The rigors of this ordeal permanently damaged Mathias Van Bibber’s health, and he died two or three years later. Nathan Boone went on to a long life and successful career as a guide, diplomat, surveyor and militia officer, serving as a Captain in the Missouri Mounted Rangers, and later as an officer commanding Dragoons.

Hat tip to the Facebook page Blood on the Trail: Stories of the American Frontier for scouting up this tale.

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I know what you’re thinking. What happened this day in Ranger history? Tim Todish, Ranger historian and annotator of The Annotated and Illustrated Journals of Major Robert Rogers  (a must for every Frontier Partisan library, BTW) tells us:

On December 24, 1757, Robert Rogers was leading a scout to Ft. Carillon (Ticonderoga). After taking a couple of prisoners, he tried, unsuccessfully, to lure the French out of the fort and into an ambush. When this failed, he set fire to several piles of wood that had been gathered for the garrison, and killed 17 head of cattle that were to provide food for the troops.

According to French accounts, Rogers left a note stuck to the head of one of the slaughtered beasts:

“I am obliged to you, Sir, for the repose you have allowed me to take; I thank you for the fresh meat you have sent me; I shall take care of my prisoners; I request you to present my compliments to the Marquis de Montcalm. (Signed) ROGER, Commandant of the Independent Companies.”