Q: How did Daniel Boone help the pioneers move westward?

A: When most of the New World was an uncharted mess of overgrown trees and treacherous swamps, where danger lurked around every corner and enemies hid in plain site, Boone possessed the remarkable ability to get completely, hopefully lost.

He could lost anywhere: on the way home from the saloon, on the way to the outhouse, on the way from his desk to his bed. One morning, while walking from his porch to his backyard, he inexplicably wandered into the Atlantic Ocean, some 342 miles away.

He had literally no sense of direction, and he loved nothing more than a good walk, a combination which would have killed him, many times over, had it not been for the intervention of some very good friends.

His friends, realizing that Boone had been gone for hours and was undoubtedly lost, would organize search parties and set out in pursuit. They would make a game of it, first one to find him got the finest goose come Sunday's supper.

One time, Boone wandered so far, that it took the search party forty-seven days to find him. When found, Boone was completely naked, curled up into a ball, sobbing gently and eating his shoes. Once he saw his friends, he stood up, brushed himself off, pointed to the surrounding woods and said, "Marvel at this great land I have discovered. I shall call it Kentucky. This will be our new home."

Boone and his friends decided to settle in this new land of Kentucky. They set about doing all the work needing to be done to establish a community: clearing the woods, building homes and schools and a church, planting crops, hunting for food, and, of course, killing all the Native Americans who already lived there.