Editing Daniel Boone (section)

==Hunter, husband, and soldier==
{{quote box|quote=I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.|source= —Daniel Boone{{sfn|Faragher|1992|p=65}}}}

The [[French and Indian War]] (1754–1763) broke out between the French and the British, along with their respective Indian allies, and Boone joined a [[Provincial troops in the French and Indian Wars|North Carolina militia]] company as a teamster and blacksmith.{{sfn|Morgan|2007|p=43}} In 1755, his unit accompanied [[Edward Braddock|General Edward Braddock's]] attempt to drive the French out of the [[Ohio Country]], which ended in disaster at the [[Battle of the Monongahela]]. Boone, in the rear with the wagons, took no part in the battle, and fled with the retreating soldiers.{{sfn|Morgan|2007|p=45}} He returned home after the defeat, and married [[Rebecca Boone|Rebecca Bryan]], a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley, on August 14, 1756.{{sfn|Morgan|2007|pp=48–51}} The couple initially lived in a cabin on his father's farm, and eventually had ten children, in addition to raising eight children of deceased relatives.{{sfn|Morgan|2007|p=52}}

In 1758, conflict erupted between British colonists and the [[Cherokee]]s, their former allies in the French and Indian War. After the Yadkin Valley was raided by Cherokees, the Boones and many other families fled north to [[Culpeper County, Virginia]].{{sfn|Morgan|2007|p=60}} Boone saw action as a member of the North Carolina militia during this [[Anglo-Cherokee War|"Cherokee Uprising"]], periodically serving under [[Hugh Waddell (general)|Captain Hugh Waddell]] on the North Carolina frontier until 1760.{{sfn|Morgan|2007|pp=58–61}}

Boone supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter and trapper, collecting pelts for the [[fur trade]]. Almost every autumn, despite the unrest on the frontier, he would go on [[longhunter|"long hunts"]], extended expeditions into the wilderness lasting weeks or months. Boone went alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and trapping beaver and otter over the winter. When the long hunters returned in the spring, they sold their take to commercial fur traders.{{sfn|Bakeless|1939|pp=38–39}} On their journeys, frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone's name or initials have been found in many places. A tree in [[Washington County, Tennessee]] reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar on tree in the year 1760". A similar carving is preserved in the museum of the [[Filson Historical Society]] in [[Louisville, Kentucky]] which reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803." The inscriptions may be genuine, or part of a long tradition of phony Boone relics.{{sfn|Faragher|1992|pp=57–58}}{{sfn|Lofaro|2012|p=181}}{{sfn|Draper|1998|pp=163, 286}}

According to a popular story, Boone returned home after a long absence to find that Rebecca had given birth to a daughter. Rebecca confessed that she had thought that Daniel was dead, and that his brother had fathered the child. Boone did not blame Rebecca, and raised the girl as his own child. Boone's early biographers knew the story but did not publish it.{{sfn|Faragher|1992|pp=59}} Modern biographers regard the tale as possibly folklore, since the identity of the brother and the daughter vary in different versions of the tale.{{sfn|Morgan|2007|pp=73–77}}{{sfn|Faragher|1992|pp=58–61}}{{sfn|Brown|2008|pp=25–26}}

In the mid-1760s, Boone began to look for a new place to settle. The population was growing in the Yadkin Valley, which reduced the amount of game available for hunting. He had difficulty making ends meet, and was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts. He sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. After his father's death in 1765, Boone traveled with a group of men to Florida, which had become British territory after the end of the war, to look into the possibility of settling there. According to a family story, he purchased land in [[Pensacola]], but Rebecca refused to move so far away from friends and family. The Boones instead moved to a more remote area of the Yadkin Valley, and he began to hunt westward into the [[Blue Ridge Mountains]].{{sfn|Faragher|1992|pp=62–66}}