[Ads-l] Quote Origin: I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The statement in the subject line has been attributed to Daniel Boone.
I was asked to trace it.

The U.S. portrait painter Chester Harding met with Boone in 1820 when
the latter was approaching the end of his life. Boone posed for
Harding who created the only known portrait of the frontiersman
painted from life.

Chester Harding died in 1866, and near the end of his life, he gave
his autobiographical notes to his daughter Margaret Eliot White. She
arranged the notes and weaved them together to yield a work playfully
titled "My Egotistigraphy" by Chester Harding.

In this 1866 book Harding described his encounter with Boone:

[ref] 1866, My Egotistigraphy by Chester Harding, Prepared for His
Family and Friends by One of His Children (daughter Margaret Eliot
White), Chapter 2, Quote Page 36, Press of John Wilson and Son,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Google Books Full View) [/ref]

[Begin excerpt]
He was ninety years old, and rather infirm; his memory of passing
events was much impaired, yet he would amuse me every day by his
anecdotes of his earlier life. I asked him one day, just after his
description of one of his long hunts, if he never got lost, having no
compass. "No," said he, "I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was
bewildered once for three days."
[End excerpt]

Harding's estimate of Boone's age was somewhat inaccurate. Boone died
when he was 85 years old. The passage above is the primary citation
supporting the ascription of the quotation to Boone. The accuracy is
dependent on the trustworthiness and fidelity of Harding.

Interestingly, Boone's use of the word "bewildered" fit the original
literal definition of the word as presented in the Oxford English
Dictionary:

[Begin excerpt]
bewildered adjective:
Lost in pathless places, at a loss for one's way; figurative confused mentally.
[End excerpt]

Readers have found the quotation ascribed to Boone comical because the
figurative definition has largely displaced the original literal
definition of bewildered in modern times.

Here is a link to the Quote Investigator article:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2025/06/15/bewildered-once/

Feedback welcome
Garson O'Toole

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