Many early Americans grew up with the Indians..........Merriwethaer Lewis did..............British Col. Goerge Washington,.......later an American general and then President........used the Cherokee against the Shawnee............who were bitter rivals................George Washington said that each Cherokee warrior was worth 3 or 4 British soldiers..................      

                    


Daniel Boone spent his early years on what was then the edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. Several Lenape Indian villages were nearby. The pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers had good relations with the Indians, but the steady growth of the white population compelled many Indians to move further west. Boone was given his first rifle at the age of 12, as families depended on hunting for much of their food. He learned to hunt from both local settlers and the Lenape. Folk tales have often emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys, when the howl of a panther scattered all but Boone. He calmly cocked his rifle and shot the predator through the heart just as it leaped at him. The validity of this claim is contested, but the story was told so often that it became part of his popular image.[7]

In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community when two of the oldest children married outside the endogamous community, in present-day Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child, Sarah, married John Willcockson, a "worldling" (non-Quaker). Because the young couple had "kept company", they were considered "married without benefit of clergy". When the Boones' oldest son Israel married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by him. Both men were expelled from the Quakers; Boone's wife continued to attend monthly meetings with their younger children.