According to stories, Daniel Boone not only became a legend to his own people, but also to the Indians. It is said many Indians believed Boone to have supernatural powers.

Though a crack shot with his favorite flintlock rifle, "Old Tick Licker," Boone used his rifle only as a last resort when dealing with hostile Indians. Being fleet of foot and one who could "run like a deer," Boone, most of the time, escaped with superior speed.

It was also said that when it came to escaping the Indians Boone had a great deal of rabbit in his feet and legs. The superstitious Indians believed, according to some stories, that Boone could change himself into any animal he wished and often did so when cornered, just to escape. While a child the writer enjoyed winter fireside stories of how old Daniel Boone fooled the Indians by causing them to believe he changed himself into an animal.

There was a story about Boone swinging across the Kentucky River on a grapevine causing the Indians to believe he "sprouted wings" and "flew over the river."

Then there was the time Boone tried to escape the Indians by crawling into a hollow, fallen tree trunk. The Indians saw him crawl into the hollow trunk and were preparing to smoke and burn him out with fire. Inside the hollow trunk, Boone bumped into the rear end of a sleeping bear. He prodded the big animal's rear with the keen point of his hunting knife. The angry bear, unable to whirl around and attack its tormentor, ran out the other end right among the Indians, whom the bear thought were responsible for its disturbance.

Indians were mauled and laid flat on the ground all over the wooded area before the bear continued on its way. But the Indians, after recovering from the mauling the bear gave them, began tracking after the bear, which they thought was old Daniel Boone, who had changed himself into a big bear. They weren't about to let Boone get away with what he did to them, no matter how much magic he possessed!

As a child, the story I enjoyed most about Boone was the time he "changed" himself into a carrion-eating buzzard in order to escape the Indians. It started when an old Indian chief himself led a party just to capture Daniel Boone. To make sure Boone didn't escape, he took along some of the swiftest young braves in the tribe.

One day the chief and his hunting party found old Daniel. The woods rang with war whoops as they gave chase. Boone quickly outdistanced all of the Indians, except the few swift-running young men, who in most cases, kept the fleeing white man in sight. But as luck would have it, old Daniel ran into a straight up-and-down rock cliff. There was no way to climb the cliff, so he scaled up a tree that grew alongside it. The tree didn't reach the top of the cliff, but it did reach a ledge and a shallow cave on its face.

Old Daniel jumped from the tree to the ledge, then darted into the cave, but not before one Indian chaser saw him. Boone darted out of sight into a dent on the side of the cliff.

At first the strong odor of carrion nearly knocked him from the side of the cliff. Then there was a hissing sound near his feet, which almost frightened him into leaping from the face of the cliff. Then he saw a mother buzzard sitting on a nest in the shallow dent or cave. It was about to attack him over the possession of its nest.

The Indians ordered Boone to come out and surrender peacefully, or they would carry him out stuck full of arrows.
"Here I come!" he shouted, "and you can't stop me."

He grabbed the hissing buzzard around the neck with one hand and around the legs with the other. Then he tossed the big stinking carrion-eating bird out of the hole and off the cliff. As the frightened buzzard flew over the screaming Indians, it pulled up its foul-smelling dinner, which landed on the upturned face of the old chief.

The chief, now certain that old Daniel Boone had changed into a buzzard and was escaping, ordered his warriors to follow the buzzard until it changed back to Boone, then fill him so full of arrows he would never again have a chance to escape!