In April, 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as an independent state; improvements were steadily and rapidly progressing, and notwithstanding the hostility of the Indians, the population of the state was regularly increasing until the peace which followed the victory of Gen. Wayne.  After which, as has been observed, the tide of emigration poured into the country with unexampled rapidity.

Litigation in regard to land titles now began to increase, and continued until it was carried to a distressing height.  Col.  Boone had begun to turn his attention to the cultivation of the choice tracts he had entered; and he looked forward with the consoling thought that he had enough to provide for a large and rising family, by securing to each of his children, as they became of age, a fine plantation.  But in the vortex of litigation which ensued, he was not permitted to escape.  The speculators who had spread their greedy claims over the lands which had been previously located and paid for by Boone, relying upon his imperfect entries, and some legal flaws in his titles, brought their ejectments against him, and dragged him into a court of law.  He employed counsel, and from term to term, was compelled to dance attendance at court.  Here the old hunter listened to the quibbles—­the subtleties, and to him, inexplicable jargon of the lawyers.  His suits were finally decided against him, and he was cast out of the possession of all, or nearly all the lands which he had looked upon as being indubitably his own.  The indignation of the old pioneer can well be imagined, as he saw himself thus stript, by the quibbles and intricacies of the law, of all the rewards of his exposures, labors, sufferings, and dangers in the first settlement of Kentucky.  He became more than ever disgusted with the grasping and avaricious spirit—­the heartless intercourse and technical forms of what is called civilized society.

But having expended his indignation in a transient paroxysm, he soon settled back to his customary mental complacency and self-possession; and as he had no longer any pledge of consequence remaining to him in the soil of Kentucky—­and as it was, moreover, becoming on all sides subject to the empire of the cultivator’s axe and plough, he resolved to leave the country.  He had witnessed with regret the dispersion of the band of pioneers, with whom he had hunted and fought, side by side, and like a band of brothers, shared every hardship and every danger; and he sighed for new fields of adventure, and the excitement of a hunter’s life.

Influenced by these feelings, he removed from Kentucky to the great Kanawha; where he settled near Point Pleasant.  He had been informed that buffaloes and deer were still to be found in abundance on the unsettled bottoms of this river, and that it was a fine country for trapping.  Here he continued to reside several years.  But he was disappointed in his expectations of finding game.  The vicinity of the settlements above and below this unsettled region, had driven the buffaloes from the country; and though there were plenty of deer, yet he derived but little success from his trapping.  He finally commenced raising stock, and began to turn his attention to agriculture.