We must not conclude, from the passionate devotion to hunting exhibited by these backwoodsmen of the eighteenth century, that they led the same shiftless, aimless lives as are followed by the "poor whites" found in some of the river-bottom communities of our own day, who are in turn farmers, fishermen, or hunters, as fancy or the seasons dictate. It must be remembered that farming upon the Virginia and Carolina uplands was, in the pioneer period, crude as to methods and insignificant as to crops. The principal wealth of the well-to-do was in herds of horses and cattle which grazed in wild meadows, and in droves of long-nosed swine feeding upon the roots and acorns of the hillside forests. Among the outlying settlers much of the family food came from the woods, and often months would pass without bread being seen inside the cabin walls. Besides the live stock of the richer folk, whose herds were driven to market, annual caravans to tidewater towns carried furs and skins won by the real backwoodsmen, who lived on the fringe of the wilderness. For lack of money accounts were kept in pelts, and with these were purchased rifles, ammunition, iron, and salt. It was, then, to the forests that the borderers largely looked for their sustenance. Hence those long hunts, from which the men of the Yadkin, unerring marksmen, would come back laden with great packs of pelts for the markets, and dried venison, bear's meat, and bear's oil for their family larders. Naturally, this wandering, adventurous life, spiced with excitement in many forms, strongly appealed to the rough, hardy borderers, and unfitted them for other occupations. Under such conditions farming methods were not likely to improve, nor the arts of civilization to prosper; for the hunter not only best loved the wilderness, but settlement narrowed his hunting-grounds. Thus it was that the frontiersman of the Daniel Boone type, Indian hater as he was, had at heart much the same interests as the savage whom he was seeking to supplant. It was simply a question as to which hunter, red or white, should occupy the forest; to neither was settlement welcome.
With the opening of 1762 the southwest border began to be reoccupied. The abandoned log cabins once more had fires lighted upon their hearths, at the base of the great outside chimneys of stones and mud-plastered boughs; the deserted clearings, which had become choked with weeds and underbrush in the five years of Indian warfare, were again cultivated by their reassured owners. Among the returned refugees were Daniel's parents, Squire and Sarah Boone, who had ridden on horseback overland all the way from Maryland. Three years later Squire Boone died, one of the most highly esteemed men in the valley.