To become, during this tedious captivity, perfectly acquainted with
their most interior domestic and diurnal manners, was not without
interest for a mind constituted like his. To make himself master of
their language, and to become familiarly acquainted with their customs,
he considered acquisitions of the highest utility in the future
operations, in which, notwithstanding his present duress, he hoped yet
to be beneficial to his beloved settlement of Kentucky.
Although the indulgence with which he was treated in the family, in
which he was adopted, and these acquisitions, uniting interest with
utility, tended to beguile the time of his captivity, it cannot be
doubted, that his sleeping and waking thoughts were incessantly occupied
with the chances of making his escape. An expedition was in
contemplation, by the tribe, to the salt licks on the Scioto, to make
salt. Boone dissembled indifference whether they took him with them, or
left him behind, with so much success, that, to his extreme joy, they
determined that he should accompany them. The expedition started on the
first day of June, 1778, and was occupied ten days in making salt.
During this expedition, he was frequently sent out to hunt, to furnish
provisions for the party; but always under such circumstances, that,
much as he had hoped to escape on this expedition, no opportunity
occurred, which he thought it prudent to embrace. He returned with the
party to Chillicothe, having derived only one advantage from the
journey, that of furnishing, by his making no attempt to escape, and by
his apparently cheerful return, new motives to convince the Indians,
that he was thoroughly domesticated among them, and had voluntarily
renounced his own race; a persuasion, which, by taking as much apparent
interest as any of them, in all their diurnal movements and plans, he
constantly labored to establish.
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