A period of severe adversity for Colonel Boone now ensued.  His aversion to legal technicalities and his ignorance of legal forms were partly the cause of defects in the titles to the lands which he had long ago acquired, improved, and nobly defended.  But the whole system of land titles in Kentucky at that early period was so utterly defective, that hundreds of others who were better informed and more careful than the old pioneer, lost their lands by litigation and the arts and rogueries of land speculators, who made it their business to hunt up defects in land titles.

The Colonel lost all his land—­even his beautiful farm near Boonesborough, which ought to have been held sacred by any men possessed of a particle of patriotism or honest feeling, was taken from him.  He consequently left Kentucky and settled on the Kenhawa River in Virginia, not far from Point Pleasant.  This removal appears to have taken place in the year 1790.  He remained in this place several years, cultivating a farm, raising stock, and at the proper seasons indulging in his favorite sport of hunting.

Some hunters who had been pursuing their sport on the western shores of the Missouri River gave Colonel Boone a very vivid description of that country, expatiating on the fertility of the land, the abundance of game, and the great herds of buffalo ranging over the vast expanse of the prairies.  They also described the simple manners of the people, the absence of lawyers and lawsuits, and the Arcadian happiness which was enjoyed by all in the distant region, in such glowing terms that Boone resolved to emigrate and settle there, leaving his fourth son Jesse in the Kenhawa valley, where he had married and settled, and who did not follow him till several years after.[55]

Mr. Peck fixes the period of this emigration in 1795.  Perkins, in his “Western Annals,” places it in 1797.  His authority is an article of Thomas J. Hinde in the “American Pioneer,” who says:  “I was ’neighbor to Daniel Boone, the first white man that fortified against the.  Indians in Kentucky.  In October, 1797, I saw him on pack-horses take up his journey for Missouri, then Upper Louisiana.”

Mr. Peck says:[56] “At that period, and for several years after, the country of his retreat belonged to the Crown of Spain.  His fame had reached this remote region before him; and he received of the Lieutenant-Governor, who resided at St. Louis, ’assurance that ample portions of land should be given to him and his family.’  His first residence was in the Femme Osage settlement, in the District of St. Charles, about forty-five miles west of St. Louis.  Here he remained with his son Daniel M. Boone until 1804, when he removed to the residence of his youngest son, Nathan Boone, with whom he continued till about 1810, when he went to reside with his son-in-law, Flanders Callaway.  A commission from Don Charles D. Delassus, Lieutenant-Governor, dated July 11th, 1800, appointing him commandant of the Femme Osage District, was tendered and accepted.  He retained this command, which included both civil and military duties and he continued to discharge them with credit to himself, and to the satisfaction of all concerned, until the transfer of the government to the United States.  The simple manners of the frontier people of Missouri exactly suited the peculiar habits and temper of Colonel Boone.”