In 1799, an aging “Kaintuck” Indian fighter migrated to Missouri. In doing so, Daniel Boone, sons Nathan and Daniel Morgan as well as other scions of the Boone family tree, spent the balance of their lives raising their families and seeking their fortunes on Missouri’s frontier. Today, these pathfinders’ Missouri graves testify to life-long commitments to the state they helped found.
Kentucky enticed Daniel’s restless spirit west of the Appalachians. Missouri lured him even further west and eventually gave him the incentive to build a magnificent home - a place to plant roots - a place to which he could commit his restless spirit for the rest of his life. Most importantly, Missouri treated Boone with the respect deserved for his personal sacrifices to advance the frontier. Two sons and a brother were lost in the Kentucky Indian wars. He was wounded in the Seige of Boonesborough. As hostilities wound down, politics flew in the face of reason. Neighbors, state and country singled Boone out for an incredible crossfire of personal insults and attacks.
Daniel was lured to the “Missouri Territory” by St. Louis’ Spanish Regents governing Spanish held territory west of the Mississippi. Anxious to attract settlers to their largely untamed frontier, they enticed Boone with a substantial personal land grant (1000 arpents of land) trusting that his name and reputation as a savy frontiersman would encourage others to soon follow him. Boone’s bitter acrimonious relations with the state of Kentucky and opposing political interests at the Boonesborough settlement left him little choice. When he decided to accept the Spanish Regents’ offer, reportedly negotiated by son Daniel Morgan, during late summer 1799 family and close friends followed him down the Ohio and up the Mississippi Rivers to Missouri - just as they earlier followed him overland down “Wilderness Road” to Kentucky from east of the Appalachians.
Soon after Boone’s arrival in Missouri Territory, Spain officially sold the “Louisiana Territory,” held since 1608, to France’s Napoleon on November 30, 1803 who, in turn, sold the “Louisiana Purchase” to the U.S. with the latter negotiation closing a mere twenty days later on December 20, 1803.
Defiance and the Boone’s suddenly found themselves back in the states.
The winters of 1799-1800 and 1800-1801, Boone’s sons, Daniel Morgan Boone and Nathan Boone, accomplished frontier explorers in their own right, trapped an area today surveyed as Missouri’s Ha Ha Tonka State Park. It was a major Osage Indian warrior’s outpost in the late 1700s guarding their tribe’s main village located 25 some miles away near today’s village of Gravois Mills. A 250 foot high bluff, Ha Ha Tonga, watched over a major trail leading south all the way to Comanche territory (enemies of the Osage tribe) in Texas. It stretched north following today’s Big Niangua River, Osage River and Missouri River channels to St. Louis.
In the Osage language, Ha Ha Tonga allegedly meant “Big Surprise” or “Big Lookout.” According to Daniel Morgan’s journal of the trip, the trail it guarded followed the “Niango (sic-Niangua) River.” In the Osage dialect, the name chosen for their Nee-Ong-Wah river allegedly meant “Watery Arms.”
A written journal of the Boone’s first foray into the Missouri Territory’s wilds that winter of 1799-1800 is archived at Defiance’s “The Daniel Boone Homestead Museum” near Washington, Missouri. This site, now a treasure of Missouri frontier history, established the anchor point that eventually jump-started the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis. The nation’s westward explosion of frontier exploration, and eventually the settlement of this entire new nation, followed Boone to St. Louis’ “Gateway to the West.”
In the final years of his life, Daniel Boone was said to stand on bluffs overlooking the Missouri River watching a seemingly never-ending stream of hopeful settlers struggling west up-river against its mighty current with their rafts and dugouts. Apparently, he contemplated the enormity of the scene while shaking his head in utter disbelief at the riverine highway’s seemingly non-ending stream of congested traffic.
Osage Indians hijacked Boone’s sons first season’s take of furs near the site of Ha Ha Tonga just as they gathered them up to fulfill a contract back in Kentucky. Daniel Sr. had made a strategic decision to stay behind after arrival at the new settlement helping various families accompanying him to Missouri get shelters built for the women and children ahead of a fast approaching winter.
Dan Sr. neared his 70’s during this time. None the less, he was unquestionably leader of his flock. The Spanish Regents ordained full legal authority on him as “Syndic” and “Commandant” of the Spanish Missouri Territory. When court was in session, it convened under a tree in his back yard.
The sons returned to Ha Ha Tonga the next year cacheting their pelts in nooks and crannies of numerous area caves hiding their take a bale at a time - insurance against another theft. Eventually, they delivered that entire winter’s trapping production, without incident this time, to a Lexington, Kentucky hat-maker, fulfilling a contract thwarted by the previous year’s highjacking. A copy of this contract is on display at the Daniel Boone Home Museum in Defiance.
By 1812, the year of the massive New Madrid earthquake, father Daniel and son Nathan finally completed a four-story quarried stone (30″ square stone blocks) mansion just west of St. Louis. As destructive as that latter quake was to a relatively sparsely settled frontier (actually reversed the course of the Mississippi River briefly and rang the bell in Liberty Hall’s tower as far away as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), the Boone mansion withstood the quake and its severe aftershocks with minimal damage.
Under construction from 1803-1811, the Daniel Boone mansion formed the core of a community named Defiance. The name defers to the Kentucky political acrimony that drove Boone and his followers to Missouri. The impressive Boone mansion is reminiscent of English nobilities’ mansions built in that country in the early to mid 1700s. Daniel Boone’s father was a prosperous miller from England who migrated to the U.S. before his famous pioneer son was born.
Boone’s sons are the first known white men to explore Bridal Cave which overlooked the Osage Indian’s aptly named “Nee‑Ong‑Wah (Watery Arms) River.” Written records on display at the Boone Homestead in Defiance document that the two men traveled from Defiance up the Osage River in a dugout canoe till reaching the cave’s vicinity. Today, corruption of the river’s Osage Indian name is affixed to two scenic Missouri Ozark rivers known as the Big Niangua River and the Little Niangua River. Both flow into waters impounded by 75+ year-old Bagnell Dam built downstream on Missouri’s historically significant Osage River.
The resultant impoundment is named Lake of the Ozarks. The latter’s magnificent scenery includes 1300+ miles of often rocky and precipitous dolomite limestone cliffs towering over its twisting tortuous 93-mile channel-length. The impoundment is sometimes referred to as “The Dragon Lady” because of a medieval dragon-like shape when viewed from the air. Bridal Cave’s mouth fronts “The Big Niangua Channel” on Lake of the Ozarks near Camdenton, Missouri.
In 1894, Colonel R.G. Scott purchased 5400 acres around Bridal Cave. The acreage included today’s interpretation of its former Osage name - Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Scott was an avid caver and historian. Bridal Cave became his personal passion.
He uncovered the Indian legend of the Osage maiden, Wasena. After fleeing from her kidnappers at the mouth of Bridal Cave, Osage Indian legend says she jumped to her death from Lover’s Leap, at the confluence of Lake of the Ozarks’ Big Niangua and Osage River channels’. Colonel Scott recorded the legend in his book “Indian Romances.”
The ensuing marriage of Wasena’s best friend, Irona, in Bridal Cave’s “Bridal Chapel” room, established a precedence founding the marketing strategy behind Bridal Cave’s modern name. Marriage ceremonies are reserved in the cave year round.
In 1903, Scott sold 2500 acres to R.M. Snyder, a wealthy entrepreneur from Kansas City. He purchased all seven area caves on the original acreage, including Bridal “Veil,” that are recorded on Scott’s original deed. He began constructing a huge resort complex atop Ha Ha Tonka’s 250-foot sheer bluff towering over its namesake spring below. Missouri’s twelfth largest spring disgorges more than 55,000,000 gallons of water daily into Lake of the Ozarks.
Tragically, Snyder became Kansas City metro’s first automobile fatality. He never saw his dream completed atop the sheer bluffs overlooking Ha Ha Tonka spring. Though eventually completed years later, the now burned out shell of native quarried stone is the signature feature showcasing today’s Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Annually, more than 500,000 visitors trek through this incredibly beautiful 3600+ acres of spectacular world-class Karst topography and incomparable wild flower glades.
The Karst geography of the park is reportedly one of only two such elaborate examples in the world. Besides an abundance of caverns, the park features a natural bridge remnant of a collapsed cavern. Hiking trails provide access to more than 3000 acres of extraordinarily scenic, primitive, natural habitat.
After Bagnell Dam’s gates closed in 1930, the resulting area around the impoundment matured into a thriving tourist mecca called “Lake of the Ozarks.” Attracted to all the tourist activity, Wichita, Kansas native B.F. Krehbiel collaborated with other investors in founding Bridal Cave Development Company. They dropped the word “Veil” from the company’s logo.
Workmen enlarged the cave’s original two by four foot opening to permit easy access to a paying public. Initially, construction workers arrived by boat. At that time, no road led down the steep bluffs to the location. Initial construction proceeded by hand labor at the remote site. Others eventually carved a road down Thunder Mountain to permit public access to its commercial opening in 1948.
Today, Thunder Mountain Park encompasses 1,100 acres with more than a mile of lake-frontage on Lake of the Ozarks’ Big Niangua Arm. The property extends to approximate corners situated on Camdenton’s northern outskirts at Farris Food Market on State Highway 5; It then commences north on State Highway 5 approximately to Scott’s Concrete.
This pristine undeveloped acreage includes outdoor classrooms for nature students, nature trails, reportedly Missouri’s largest sugar maple, the remains of two log cabin homesteads and a second cave, Bear Cave, preserved in its original natural form and available for tour by private reservation.
Thunder Mountain Park remains largely undeveloped to protect the purity of the water drainage still actively forming Bridal Cave’s formations below. Authorities estimate the cavern began forming 40 million years ago. Developing the overlying property above it would severely contaminate and alter unique formations in the cave below in a mere wink of a few years.
In 1990, Bridal Cave opened a previously unapproachable extension off the main cavern. Brilliant white onyx formations in that new addition remain pristine, virtually unaltered by man.
There is also a small lake (Mystery Lake) in the newest opened cavern whose waters are clear as crystal and clearly expose every pebble on its bottom 20-30 feet under the lake’s surface. Bridal Cave’s management counsels that this new extension in Bridal Cave represents one of only two similarly undefiled caves currently known in the U.S.
Even after 40 million years, Bridal Cave continues to generate ongoing geologic history as well as contributing to tourism in its Camden County community. Thunder Mountain Park at Lake of the Ozarks, in many ways, parallels a modern day Jurassic Park minus T. Rex and his reptilian buddies. Nearby, strikingly scenic Ha Ha Tonka State Park encapsulates ghosts of history registered by the largely uncovered Osage Indian Nation’s roots embedded there coupled with the Boone family’s initial exposure of the entire area to hordes of white men poised to follow them down through history’s pages.
Nathan Boone and wife Olive lie buried on an estate near Ash Grove, Missouri, now an officially designated Missouri State Historic Site, that he built after losing Defiance’s Boone Homestead in a foreclosure. He put the latter up for security for a family friend who skipped on a loan after Nathan’s father passed away.
Nathan served in the U.S. Army as a frontier cavalry officer until expiring in his 70’s. His contribution suppressing “The Blackhawk Indian War” in Iowa and Northern Missouri was significant. He virtually died of old age with “his boots on” while in the nation’s military service .
Daniel Morgan Boone is buried in a Kansas City, Missouri Cemetery. He served in the U.S. military, held an officer’s commission, was the Kaw Indian agent in Kansas for a time, eventually returning to Jackson County, Missouri where he spent the remainder of his life.
Daniel Sr. was reportedly disinterred from his original burial site near Defiance and returned to Kentucky in a scandalous collaboration between the Kentucky and Missouri Legislatures of that era about 20-years after Boone died in Defiance. However, a once closely held family rumor has whispered for two centuries that, instead of Daniel’s relics, Kentucky authorities were, instead, tricked into removing the body of a slave from the family’s private burial plot.
If the Shawnee Indian Nation couldn’t hold Boone captive in real life after kidnapping him from the safety of Boonesborough, Boone’s acrimonious Kentucky detractors didn’t stand a chance to successfully kidnap his bones - even in death. Allegedly, the aging Pathfinder had anticipated that event and laid a plan in advance of his death to thwart it.
Kentucky politicians tried him for treason after the battle of Blue Licks, where Boone lost a son in battle, and the seige of Boonesborough, where he was wounded. He was acquitted. The state of Kentucky foreclosed on his lands. The U.S. government harassed him for unpaid taxes.
After fleeing to Spanish governed Missouri Territory to escape his Kentucky “benefactors,” 20-some years after his death, the Sovereign State of Kentucky officially prevailed on Missouri’s now also Sovereign Legislature to return their “Favorite Son” for reburial in Kentucky, “… where he rightfully belongs.”
Boone family legend firmly holds that a former family slave’s relics were disinterred by Kentucky authorities at the Family Cemetery. The corpse of a former family indentured servant is alleged to have accompanied Rebecca’s relics back to Frankfort, Kentucky - not Boone’s. Even in death, the Old Indian Fighter apparently eluded capture by his enemies.
Allegedly, only Rebecca doesn’t now rest in the pioneering Boone family’s hard won Missouri soil. There is sound argument and sounder logic to be made to return her to Daniel’s side. They’ve earned their peace - and they deserve to share it together. Missouri was their chosen final resting place. Rational leaders of today would do well to heed their voices from the past about their undebatable choice in the matter.