Soon after, I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune.

Rather than remain in Boonesborough Boone founded the nearby settlement of Boone's Station. James Fenimore Cooper created a fictionalized version of the episode in his classic book The Last of the Mohicans (1826). 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.

Later he left the Indians and returned to Boonesborough to help defend the European settlements in Kentucky/Virginia. In American popular culture he is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen. Frustrated with all the legal problems resulting from his land claims in 1799 Boone emigrated to eastern Missouri where he spent most of the last two decades of his life (1800–20).