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  • Born: 2 November 1734
  • Birthplace: Berks County, Pennsylvania
  • Died: 26 September 1820
  • Best Known As: The frontiersman who settled Kentucky

A legend in his own lifetime, Daniel Boone was an explorer and hunter whose exploits made him one of the most famous frontiersman in American history. He was born in rural Pennsylvania, but moved to the North Carolina frontier around 1750. From there he explored west into Kentucky in the 1760s and 1770s. In 1775 he established the frontier outpost of Boonesborough, one of the first white settlements in Kentucky. When the Kentucky territory became part of Virginia, Boone was named an officer in the Virginia militia (1776) and spent the next several years trailblazing and fighting off Indians. His "autobiography," written by John Filson and published in 1784, depicted the hunter as wily and adventurous and made Boone a folk hero. He tried to establish extensive land claims in Kentucky, but was unable to retain them and many were invalidated after 1780. After living in western Virginia, where he served three times in the state legislature (1781, 1784 and 1791), Boone moved in 1799 to what is now Missouri. He settled there with his son, Daniel Morgan Boone, and was later granted land by the U.S. Congress. He died near St. Louis in 1820 at the ripe age of 85.

Boone was played by actor Fess Parker in the children's TV series Daniel Boone from 1964-70; the show's theme song described him as "the rippin'est, roarin'est, fightin'est man the frontier ever knew." Unlike Parker, the real Boone did not wear a coonskin hat... The Cumberland National Forest in Kentucky was renamed in 1966 as the Daniel Boone National Forest.

 
 
Biography: Daniel Boone

An American frontiersman and explorer, Daniel Boone (1734-1820) was the greatest woodsman in United States history. Hero of much farfetched fiction, Boone survived both legend making and debunking to emerge a genuine hero.

For all the myths about him, Daniel Boone was very much a real man born near Reading, Pa., on Nov. 2, 1734. At the age of 12 he became a hunter. He accompanied his family to North Carolina's Buffalo Lick on the Yadkin River in 1751 and, after working for his father, became a teamster and blacksmith. In 1755 he accompanied Brig. Gen. Edward Braddock as a wagoner on the ill-fated march to Ft. Duquesne. While on this march he met a teamster named John Finley, an old hunter, whose talk of the Kentucky wilderness eventually influenced Boone's career as a woodsman and explorer. When Braddock's command was destroyed at Turtle Creek (near modern Pittsburgh) by a French and Indian ambush, Boone fled for his life on horseback.

Early Expeditions

Daniel Boone married Rebecca Bryan on Aug. 14, 1756, and settled down in the Yadkin Valley, firmly believing that he had all the requisites of a good life - "a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife." But Finley's stories of fabled "Kentucke" never really vanished from his mind. In 1767 Boone led his first expedition as far westward as the area of Floyd County, Ky. On May 1, 1769, with Finley and four other companions, Boone opened the way to the Far West by blazing a trail through the Cumberland Gap. This trail soon became a highway to the frontier. As an agent for Richard Henderson and his Transylvania Company, Boone led the first detachment of colonists to Kentucky, reaching the site of Boonesborough on April Fool's Day 1775. There he began to build a fort to protect the settlement from the Indians, and that year he brought west another party, which included his own family.

Boone became the leader of the Kentucky settlement, as hunter, surveyor, and Indian fighter. He was a major of the Virginia militia when Kentucky was added to that state as an enormous county. The first of a series of misfortunes for Boone occurred in July 1776, when his daughter, Jemima, was captured by Shawnee and Cherokee tribespeople. He rescued her but 2 years later was himself captured by Shawnee tribespeople. Though he escaped and helped defend Boonesborough against Indian raiders, while on his way east with more than $20,000 in settlers' money (with which he was to buy land warrants) he was robbed of the entire sum. The settlers who angrily demanded satisfaction were repaid by Boone in land. But from this time on, Boone was dogged by debts, lawsuits, and land-record technicalities until, as one of his kin said - exaggerating slightly - at the time of his death he did not own enough land to make a decent grave.

Moving Westward

Moving to Boone's Station, the scout held a succession of offices, including lieutenant colonel of Fayette County, legislative delegate, sheriff, county lieutenant, and deputy surveyor. In 1786 he moved to Maysville and was elected to the legislature. Misfortune continued to dog him, however: he lost his land because it had been improperly entered in the records. In 1788 he abandoned his beloved Kentucky and moved to Point Pleasant in what is now West Virginia. He was appointed lieutenant colonel of Kanawha County in 1789 and its legislative delegate in 1791.

When Boone lost the last of the Kentucky lands that he had discovered, protected, settled, and improved, he also lost faith. He moved all the way west to Spain's Alta Luisiana (or Upper Louisiana, now Missouri), where he obtained a land grant at the mouth of Femme Osage Creek. He had moved because the "Dark and Bloody Ground" of yore was filling up with settlers and he did not like to be crowded; when asked why he had left Kentucky, he answered, "Too many people! Too crowded, too crowded! I want some elbow room." Actually, however, he hoped to settle on some land that would not be taken away from him by legalistic trickery. The Spaniards were pleased to have the famous Kentuckian as a colonist and gave him a large land grant, making him magistrate of his district. He must have viewed the subsequent annexation of Louisiana Territory by the United States with mixed emotions, including apprehension. His fears were justified when, once again, U.S. land commissioners voided Boone's claim. However, in 1814 Congress confirmed a part of his Spanish grant.

Daniel Boone's greatest satisfaction was neither in opening up new territory to settlement nor in becoming the subject of laudatory books but simply in being able to journey back to Kentucky about 1810 to pay off his outstanding debts; he was left with only 50 cents. After his wife died 3 years later, the famous Kentuckian spent most of his remaining years in quiet obscurity in the Missouri home of his son, where he died on Sept. 26, 1820.

Boone was moderately well known for the wilderness exploits that had been described in several books when Lord Byron devoted seven stanzas of his poem Don Juan to him in 1823. The poet made the recently deceased woodsman world famous, with the result that Boone became a target for belittlers and debunkers as well as mythmakers. The latter sought to inflate his real-life adventures; the former tried to destroy his legend. All failed because the difference between legend and reality in Boone's case was so small. If he was not a dime-novel superman in buckskins, he was an unsurpassed woodsman; and he was strong, brave, loyal, and, above all, honest. Although he was hardly the "happiest of men" (as Byron described him) and had been forced to flee from American land sharks to Spanish territory, he shrugged off his shabby treatment and accepted his fate without rancor. In short, the rough woodsman was something of a stoic. He was also a true gentleman and a great figure of American history.

Further Reading

John Bakeless, Daniel Boone (1939), makes it unnecessary to consult such older works as Reuben G. Thwaites, Daniel Boone (1902), and Ella Hazel A. Spraker, The Boone Family (1922). Good background studies of the American frontier include Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (1949; 3d ed. 1967) and America's Frontier Heritage (1966), and Thomas D. Clark, Frontier America: The Story of the Westward Movement (1959; 2d ed. 1969).

 

(born , c. Nov. 2, 1734, Berks county, Pa. — died c. Sept. 26, 1820, St. Charles, Mo., U.S.) U.S. frontiersman and legendary hero. He lived on the North Carolina frontier as a hunter and trapper. He made several trips through the Cumberland Gap into eastern Kentucky (1767, 1769 – 71) and in 1775 was employed to blaze a permanent trail, called the Wilderness Road. He established the settlements of Boonesboro and Harrodsburg. As a militia captain he defended Boonesboro against the Indians; he was captured by the Shawnee in 1778 but escaped after five months to warn Boonesboro of an impending attack. After losing his Kentucky land claims in the late 1780s, he moved to the Missouri Territory. His exploits were featured in a widely read history of Kentucky and in Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan.

For more information on Daniel Boone, visit Britannica.com.

 
US History Companion: Boone, Daniel

(1734-1820), frontiersman and Kentucky pioneer. Daniel Boone is the most widely known of American frontiersmen. He served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking, and his adventures inspired incidents in hundreds of works of fiction. Even Lord Byron mentioned him in Don Juan. Without Boone the history of Kentucky would have been much different.

Boone was born near Reading, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the son of hard-working but adventurous Quaker parents. He learned some blacksmithing but had very little formal education. Daniel appears to have been a scrappy lad who loved hunting, the wilderness, and independence. When his parents left Pennsylvania in 1750 bound for the Yadkin valley of northwest North Carolina, Daniel went along willingly.

There, on the cutting edge of the frontier, he was able to indulge his hunting prowess and love of the wilderness. In the following years he served as a wagoner with Gen. Edward Braddock's ill-fated expedition to Fort Duquesne in 1755; married a neighbor's daughter, Rebecca Bryan, in 1756; and in 1758 is believed to have been a wagoner with Gen. John Forbes who was hacking out the road to Fort Duquesne, which he rebuilt as Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh). Back in North Carolina, Daniel purchased land from his father but never seriously engaged in farming; he loved to roam. In 1763 he and his brother Squire journeyed to Florida, although for unknown reasons they did not stay.

Boone's fame rests primarily upon his exploration and settlement of Kentucky. He was first in eastern Kentucky in 1767, but his expedition of 1769-1771 is more widely known. With a small party Boone advanced along the Warrior's Path into an Edenic region. When the time came for the party to return he remained behind in the wilderness until March 1771. On the way home, he and his brother were robbed by Indians of their deerskins and pelts, but the two remained exuberant over the land known as "Kentuck."

So much did Daniel love that "dark and bloody ground" that he tried to return in 1773, taking forty settlers with him, but the Indians drove them back. The next year he went again into the region carrying a warning of Indian troubles to Governor John Murray Dunmore's surveyors. Even as Judge Richard Henderson was concluding the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals (March 1775) by which much of Kentucky was sold to his Transylvania Company, Boone was hacking out the Wilderness Road. As soon as he reached his destination, he began building Boonesboro, one of several stations (forts) under construction at that time.

For the next four years--through 1778--Boone, a captain in the militia, was busy defending the settlements. His leadership helped save the three remaining Kentucky stations, Boonesboro, Logan's (St. Asaph's), and Harrodsburg. These were stirring years of ambushes (such as Blue Licks in 1778), captures (Boone was seized but escaped from the Shawnees), rescues, and desperate defenses.

Although he was highly respected and served in the Virginia assembly, Boone was not a good businessman and he lost his Kentucky lands. In September 1799, he set out for Missouri where a son had preceded him. He settled in the Femme Osage valley where he continued to hunt and roam until his death. Twenty-five years later his remains and those of his wife were returned to Kentucky for burial.

Daniel Boone was helped to immortality through the writings of John Filson, whose The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke included an appendix containing "The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon [sic]." The book was widely read in England and Europe as well as in America, and Boone became the model of the American frontiersman. But even if he had not been cast as a heroic figure in Kentucke, residents of Kentucky would still honor him as that state's frontier hero.

Bibliography:

John Bakeless, Daniel Boone (1939; reprint, 1989); Lawrence Elliott, The Long Hunter: A New Life of Daniel Boone (1976).

Author:

Richard A. Bartlett


 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Boone, Daniel,
1734–1820, American frontiersman, b. Oley (now Exeter) township, near Reading, Pa.

The Boones, English Quakers, left Pennsylvania in 1750 and settled (1751 or 1752) in the Yadkin valley of North Carolina. Daniel served as a wagoner in Braddock's ill-fated expedition (1755) against Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and almost certainly took part in Gen. John Forbes's successful march on the same place in 1758. He became interested in Florida, but his wife, the former Rebecca Bryan, whom he married in 1756, refused to accompany him. He explored (1769–71) the Kentucky region thoroughly, and its prospects delighted him.

Attacks by Native Americans turned back his first colonizing attempt (1773), but in Mar., 1775, as advance agent for Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company and with an armed band of 30 men, he blazed the famous Wilderness Road and founded Boonesboro (or Boonesborough) on the Kentucky River. Henderson arrived in a few weeks with additional settlers, and later in the same season Boone guided a second party, including his family. When Kentucky was made a county of Virginia in 1776, he was elected a captain of militia.

In the American Revolution, while on an expedition to find salt in the Blue Licks on the Licking River, Boone and his party were captured (Feb., 1778) by Shawnee and taken to British headquarters at Detroit. Highly regarded by his captors, he was adopted as a member of the tribe. He led them to think that he would prevail on the other settlers to surrender, but, after four months of captivity, he escaped in time to prepare Boonesboro for an attack by the tribe, which then failed. A disgruntled element charged Boone with disloyalty, and although he was promptly acquitted and elected major, he left Boonesboro and, after collecting his family, which had returned to North Carolina after his capture, founded (1779) a new settlement, Boone's Station, near what is now Athens, Ky.

Boone served several terms as representative in the Virginia legislature. His titles to large tracts of land were adjudged imperfect, and despite his services to Kentucky he lost his best holdings through ejectment suits. Disgusted, he and Rebecca followed (1799) a son to Missouri, where the Spanish government granted him a large tract in the Femme Osage valley and made him district magistrate. When the United States assumed jurisdiction over this territory after the Louisiana Purchase (1803), his land titles were again found to be defective, but the direct intercession of Congress (1814) restored part of his acreage.

Boone's adventures became well known through the so-called autobiographical account that appeared in the widely read Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (1784), by John Filson, and Lord Byron's verses on him in Don Juan gave his name international prominence. Historical scholarship has disproved many of the legends about him; nevertheless these still attest to those qualities of courage and determination that earned him enduring popularity.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. Bakeless (1965), R. G. Thwaites (1963, repr. 1971), and R. E. McDowell (1972).

 
History Dictionary: Boone, Daniel

An American frontier settler of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, best known for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky.

 
Quotes By: Daniel Boone

Quotes:

"All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife."

"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks."

 
Wikipedia: Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone
Unfinished_Portait_of_Danial_Boone_by_Chester_Harding_1820.jpg
This 1820 oil painting by Chester Harding is the only portrait of Daniel Boone made from life. Boone, 85 years old and just months away from death, had to be steadied by a friend while the artist worked.[1]
Background Information
Born Exeter township, PA, USA Flag of the United States
October 22 1734(1734--)
Died St. Charles, MO, USA Flag of the United States
September 26 1820 (aged 85)
Occupation Pioneer, Soldier, Trapper, Explorer
Religion Quaker
Spouse Rebecca Bryan (1756-1813)
Children 10
Timeline 1734 - 1820
1734 October 22: Born in Exeter township, near Reading.
1750 Family leaves Pennsylvania for the western country.
Engages in his first "long hunt."
1751 Family settles in Rowan County, North Carolina, on the Yadkin River
Takes up hunting as his business.
1755 French and Indian War begins.
Joins Braddock's army during the disastrous defeat near Pittsburg.
1756 August 14: Marries Rebecca Bryan; they soon settle in Rowan County.
1759 During the Cherokee War, family flees to Culpeper County, Virginia.
1760 Makes first crossing of the Blue Ridge during his winter hunt.
1762 The Boones return to Rowan County.
1765 Explores Florida country with an eye to moving there.
1766 Family moves to a site farther west, near present Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
1767 Reaches Kentuckyand hunts along the Big Sandy River.
1768 Regulator rebellion in North Carolina.
1769 May 1: Leaves with five others for a long hunt in Kentucky.
December 22: Captured by Shawnees on.
1771 Returns home to Kentucky after two years.
1773 October 9: Leads party of family and friends to Kentucky; turned back at Cumberland Gap by an Indian attack that kills his eldest son, James.
Lord Dunmore's War erupts.
1774 Sent by Virginia authorities to warn Kentucky surveyors of pending war with Shawnees.
Leads defense of Clinch River settlements during Dunmore's War.
1775 For the Transylvania Company, leads party cutting the Wilderness Road to Kentucky; founding of Boonesborough in the face of Shawnee attacks; brings family to Kentucky.
1776 July: Leads rescue of daughter Jemima and Callaway girls from Shawnees
August: Copy of Declaration of Independence reaches Boonesborough.
1777 April: Indians attack Boonesborough; Boone is shot in the ankle but recovers.
1778 February 9: Boone and his men captured by Shawnees while making salt
June: Escapes from Shawnees.
September 7-18: siege of Boonesborough.
rejoins Rebecca and children, who had returned to North Carolina.
1779 September: Leads large party of emigrants to Kentucky.
Settles Boone's Station, north of the Kentucky River.
1780 Participates in attack on Shawnee towns in Ohio.
October: Brother Edward killed by Shawnees.
1781 April: Takes elected seat in Virginia assembly.
June: Captured by invading British forces, but soon released.
1782 August 19: One of the commanding officers at the Kentuckians' defeat by Indians at the Blue Licks, where son Israel is killed.
November: In command of a company that attacks Shawnee towns.
1783 Relocates family to Limestone, on the Ohio River; takes up tavern keeping, surveying, and land speculating.
1784 The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon by John Filson published on Boone's 50th birthday.
1786 October: Commands an attack on Shawnee towns.
1787 August: Helps negotiate prisoner exchange with Shawnees at Limestone.
October: Takes seat in Virginia assembly.
1789 With Rebecca and youngest children leaves Limestone and relocates at Point Pleasant, farther up the Ohio River.
1791 Serves once again in the Virginia assembly
Wins contract to supply militia companies in western Virginia.
1792 Dispute over supply contracts leads to his abandonment of business and return to full-time hunting.
With Rebecca, soon moves to a cabin near present Charleston, West Virginia.
1795 To be nearer family, relocates to a cabin on Brushy Fork in Kentucky.
1797 Son Daniel Morgan Boone scouts land in Spanish Missouri.
Governor invites Boones to emigrate.
1798 Kentucky assembly names county after Boone.
Mason County issues warrant for his arrest for debt
Leaves Brushy Fork for a cabin at the mouth of the Little Sandy River on the Ohio.
1799 Leads extended family from Kentucky to Femme Osage country in Missouri.
Appointed "syndic" of district by Spanish governor.
1803 Seriously injured in hunting accident.
Relocates with Rebecca to cabin on the farm of son Nathan.
Louisiana Purchase is made.
1806 Appears before the Federal Land Commission, seeking confirmation of his Spanish land grant.
1808 Boone and companions are robbed by Indians while on a hunt.
1809 Gets word of rejection of his Spanish land grant.
Works on on petitions to Congress
1812 Volunteers for War of 1812 duty; he is turned down because of his age (78)
1813 March 18: Rebecca dies.
1814 Congress grants Boone a tract of Missouri land.
1815 President Monroe awards Boone a 1,000 arpent tract of Missouri land (Matson, Missouri), but Boone is forced to sell much of it to pay off old Kentucky claims against him. He sells 300 acres to Jonathan Bryan and keeps about 180 acres.
1816 Visits Fort Osage (near present-day Kansas City). In time he explores as far west as Nebraska. Some first hand reports allege he pushes on to hunt the Yellowstone country, but family members deny such claims.
1817 Goes on his last hunt.
1820 June: Artist Chester Harding paints Boone's portrait from life while at the log home of Flanders and Jemima Callaway.
September 26: Boone dies; he is interred next to Rebecca on Tuque Creek in the cemetery near Jemima's farm.
This article is about the American pioneer. For other uses, see Daniel Boone (disambiguation).


Daniel Boone (October 22, 1734 – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and hunter whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the U.S. state of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. Despite resistance from American Indians, for whom Kentucky was a traditional hunting ground, in 1775 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky. There he founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.[2]

Boone was a militia officer during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which in Kentucky was fought primarily between settlers and British-allied American Indians. Boone was captured by Shawnees in 1778 and adopted into the tribe, but he escaped and continued to help defend the Kentucky settlements. He was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the war, and fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, one of the last battles of the American Revolution. Boone worked as a surveyor and merchant after the war, but he went deep into debt as a Kentucky land speculator. Frustrated with legal problems resulting from his land claims, in 1799 Boone resettled in Missouri, where he spent his final years.

Boone remains an iconic, if imperfectly remembered, figure in American history. He was a legend in his own lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. After his death, he was frequently the subject of tall tales and works of fiction. His adventures—real and legendary—were influential in creating the archetypal Western hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, he is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen, even though the mythology often overshadows the historical details of his life.[3]

Youth

The Daniel Boone half dollar was a U.S. commemorative coin issued from 1934 to 1938 in honor of the bicentennial of Boone's birth.
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The Daniel Boone half dollar was a U.S. commemorative coin issued from 1934 to 1938 in honor of the bicentennial of Boone's birth.

Boone was born on October 22, 1734. Because the Gregorian calendar was adopted during Boone's lifetime, his birth date is sometimes given as November 2, 1734 (the "New Style" date), although Boone always used the October date. He was the sixth of eleven children in a family of Quakers. His father, Squire Boone (1696–1765), had immigrated to Pennsylvania from the small town of Bradninch, England in 1713. Squire Boone's parents George and Mary Boone followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717. In 1720, Squire, who worked primarily as a weaver and a blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700–1777), whose family members were Quakers from Wales. In 1731, the Boones built a log cabin in the Oley Valley, now the Daniel Boone Homestead in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where Daniel was born.[4]

Boone spent his early years on what was then the western edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. There were a number of American Indian villages nearby—the pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers generally had good relations with Indians—but the steady growth of the white population was compelling many Indians to relocate further west. Boone received his first rifle in 1747 and picked up hunting skills from local whites and Indians, beginning his lifelong love of hunting. Folk tales often emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone is hunting in the woods with some other boys. The scream of a panther scatters the boys, except for Boone, who calmly cocks his squirrel gun and shoots the animal through the heart just as it leaps at him. As with so many tales about Boone, the story may or may not be true, but it was told so often that it became part of the popular image of the man.[5]

In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child Sarah married a "worldling", or non-Quaker, while she was visibly pregnant. When Boone's oldest brother Israel also married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by his son and was therefore expelled from the Quakers, although his wife continued to attend monthly meetings with her children. Perhaps as a result of this controversy, in 1750 Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina. Daniel Boone did not attend church again, although he always considered himself a Christian and had all of his children baptized. The Boones eventually settled on the Yadkin River, in what is now Davie County, North Carolina, about two miles (3 km) west of Mocksville.[6]

Because he spent so much time hunting in his youth, Boone received little formal education. According to one family tradition, a schoolteacher once expressed concern over Boone's education, but Boone's father was unconcerned, saying "let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting...." Boone received some tutoring from family members, though his spelling remained unorthodox. Historian John Mack Faragher cautions that the folk image of Boone as semiliterate is misleading, however, arguing that Boone "acquired a level of literacy that was the equal of most men of his times." Boone regularly took reading material with him on his hunting expeditions—the Bible and Gulliver's Travels were favorites—and he was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen. Boone would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the evening campfire.[7]

Hunter, husband, and soldier

As a young man, Boone served with the British military during the French and Indian War (1754–1763), a struggle for control of the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains. In 1755, he was a wagon driver in General Edward Braddock's attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country, which ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. Boone returned home after the defeat, and on August 14, 1755, he married Rebecca Bryan, a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley. The couple initially lived in a cabin on his father's farm. They would eventually have ten children.

In 1759, a conflict erupted between British colonists and Cherokee Indians, their former allies in the French and Indian War. After the Yadkin Valley was raided by Cherokees, many families, including the Boones, fled to Culpeper County, Virginia. Boone served in the North Carolina militia during this "Cherokee Uprising", and was separated from his wife for about two years. According to one story, Boone was gone for so long that Rebecca assumed he was dead, and began a relationship with his brother Edward ("Ned"), giving birth to daughter Jemima in 1762. Upon his return, the story goes, Boone was understanding and did not blame Rebecca. Whether the tale is true or not is uncertain, but Boone raised Jemima as his own child. Boone's early biographers knew this story, but did not publish it.[8]

I can't say as ever I was lost,
but I was bewildered once for three days.
—Daniel Boone[9]

Boone's chosen profession also made for long absences from home. He supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter. Almost every autumn, Boone would go on "long hunts", which were extended expeditions into the wilderness lasting weeks or months. Boone would go on long hunts alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and then trapping beaver and otter over the winter. The long hunters would return in the spring and sell their take to commercial fur traders. In this business, buckskins came to be known as "bucks", which is the origin of the American slang term for "dollar."[10]

Frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone's name or initials have been found in many places. One of the best-known inscriptions was carved into a tree in present Washington County, Tennessee which reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar [killed a bear] on [this] tree in the year 1760". A similar carving is preserved in the museum of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, which reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803." However, because Boone always spelled his name with the final "e", these particular inscriptions may be forgeries, part of a long tradition of phony Boone relics.[11]

In the mid-1760s, Boone began to look for a new place to settle. The population was growing in the Yadkin Valley after the end of the French and Indian War, which inevitably decreased the amount of game available for hunting. This meant that Boone had difficulty making ends meet; he was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts, and he sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. After his father died in 1765, Boone traveled with a group of men to Florida, which had become British territory after the end of the war, to look into the possibility of settling there. According to a family story, Boone purchased land in Pensacola, but Rebecca refused to move so far away from friends and family. The Boones instead moved to a more remote area of the Yadkin Valley, and Boone began to hunt westward into the Blue Ridge Mountains.[12]

Kentucky

"Capture of Boone and Stuart" from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)
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"Capture of Boone and Stuart" from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)

Boone first reached Kentucky in the fall of 1767 when on a long hunt with his brother Squire Boone, Jr. While on the Braddock expedition years earlier, Boone had heard about the fertile land and abundant game of Kentucky from fellow wagoner John Findley, who had visited Kentucky to trade with American Indians. In 1768, Boone and Findley happened to meet again, and Findley encouraged Boone with more tales of Kentucky. At the same time, news had arrived about the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the Iroquois had ceded their claim to Kentucky to the British. This, as well as the unrest in North Carolina due to the Regulator movement, likely prompted Boone to extend his exploration.[13]

In May 1769, Boone began a two-year hunting expedition in Kentucky. On 22 December 1769, he and a fellow hunter were captured by a party of Shawnees, who confiscated all of their skins and told them to leave and never return. The Shawnees had not signed the Stanwix treaty, and since they regarded Kentucky as their hunting ground, they considered American hunters there to be poachers. Boone, however, continued hunting and exploring Kentucky until his return to North Carolina in 1771, and returned to hunt there again in the autumn of 1772.

On 25 September 1773, Boone packed up his family and, with a group of about 50 emigrants, began the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement in Kentucky. Boone was still an obscure hunter and trapper at the time; the most prominent member of the expedition was William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry. On October 9, Boone's oldest son James and a small group of men and boys who had left the main party to retrieve supplies were attacked by a band of Delawares, Shawnees, and Cherokees. Following the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, American Indians in the region had been debating what to do about the influx of settlers. This group had decided, in the words of historian John Mack Faragher, "to send a message of their opposition to settlement...." James Boone and William Russell's son Henry were captured and gruesomely tortured to death. The brutality of the killings sent shockwaves along the frontier, and Boone's party abandoned their expedition.[14]

George Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap (1851–52) is a famous depiction of Boone.
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George Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap (1851–52) is a famous depiction of Boone.

The massacre was one of the first events in what became known as Dunmore's War, a struggle between Virginia and primarily Shawnees of the Ohio Country for control of what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. In the summer of 1774, Boone volunteered to travel with a companion to Kentucky to notify surveyors there about the outbreak of war. The two men journeyed more than 800 miles in two months in order to warn those who had not already fled the region. Upon his return to Virginia, Boone helped defend colonial settlements along the Clinch River, earning a promotion to captain in the militia as well as acclaim from fellow citizens. After the brief war, which ended soon after Virginia's victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant in October 1774, Shawnees relinquished their claims to Kentucky.[15]

Following Dunmore's War, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina, hired Boone to travel to the Cherokee towns in present North Carolina and Tennessee and inform them of an upcoming meeting. In the 1775 treaty, Henderson purchased the Cherokee claim to Kentucky in order to establish a colony called Transylvania. Afterwards, Henderson hired Boone to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone marked a path to the Kentucky River, where he established Boonesborough. Other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone returned to the Clinch Valley and brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough on 8 September 1775.[16]

American Revolution

Violence in Kentucky increased with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Native Americans who were unhappy about the loss of Kentucky in treaties saw the war as a chance to drive out the colonists. Isolated settlers and hunters became the frequent target of attacks, convincing many to abandon Kentucky. By late spring of 1776, fewer than 200 colonists remained in Kentucky, primarily at the fortified settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan's Station.[17]

This 1877 illustration, entitled The rescue of Jemima Boone and Betsey and Fanny Callaway, kidnapped by Indians in July 1776, is one of many depictions of the famous event.
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This 1877 illustration, entitled The rescue of Jemima Boone and Betsey and Fanny Callaway, kidnapped by Indians in July 1776, is one of many depictions of the famous event.

On 14 July 1776, Boone's daughter Jemima and two other teenage girls were captured outside Boonesborough by an Indian war party, who carried the girls north towards the Shawnee towns in the Ohio country. Boone and a group of men from Boonesborough followed in pursuit, finally catching up with them two days later. Boone and his men ambushed the Indians while they were stopped for a meal, rescuing the girls and driving off their captors. The incident became the most celebrated event of Boone's life. James Fenimore Cooper created a fictionalized version of the episode in his classic book The Last of the Mohicans (1826).[18]

In 1777, Henry Hamilton, the British Lieutenant Governor of Canada, began to recruit American Indian war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements. On 24 April, Shawnees led by Chief Blackfish attacked Boonesborough. Boone was shot in the ankle while outside the fort, but he was carried back inside the fort amid a flurry of bullets by Simon Kenton, a recent arrival at Boonesborough. Kenton became Boone's close friend as well as a legendary frontiersman in his own right.

While Boone recovered, Shawnees kept up their attacks outside Boonesborough, destroying the surrounding cattle and crops. With the food supply running low, the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had, and so in January 1778 Boone led a party of thirty men to the salt springs on the Licking River. On 7 February 1778, when Boone was hunting meat for the expedition, he was surprised and captured by warriors led by Blackfish. Because Boone's party was greatly outnumbered, he convinced his men to surrender rather than put up a fight.

Blackfish wanted to continue to Boonesborough and capture it, since it was now poorly defended, but Boone convinced him that the women and children were not hardy enough to survive a winter trek. Instead, Boone promised that Boonesborough would surrender willingly to the Shawnees the following spring. Boone did not have an opportunity to tell his men that he was bluffing in order to prevent an immediate attack on Boonesborough, however. Boone pursued this strategy so convincingly that many of his men concluded that he had switched his loyalty to the British.

Illustration of Boone's ritual adoption by the Shawnees, from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone, by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)
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Illustration of Boone's ritual adoption by the Shawnees, from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone, by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)

Boone and his men were taken to Blackfish's town of Chillicothe where they were made to run the gauntlet. As was their custom, the Shawnees adopted some of the prisoners into the tribe to replace fallen warriors; the remainder were taken to Hamilton in Detroit. Boone was adopted into a Shawnee family at Chillicothe, perhaps into the family of Chief Blackfish himself, and given the name Sheltowee ("Big Turtle"). On 16 June 1778, when he learned that Blackfish was about to return to Boonesborough with a large force, Boone eluded his captors and raced home, covering the 160 miles to Boonesborough in five days on horseback and, after his horse gave out, on foot.[19]

During Boone's absence, his wife and children (except for Jemima) had returned to North Carolina, fearing that he was dead. Upon his return to Boonesborough, some of the men expressed doubts about Boone's loyalty, since after surrendering the salt making party he had apparently lived quite happily among the Shawnees for months. Boone responded by leading a preemptive raid against the Shawnees across the Ohio River, and then by helping to successfully defend Boonesborough against a 10-day siege led by Blackfish, which began on 7 September 1778.

After the siege, Captain Benjamin Logan and Colonel Richard Callaway—both of whom had nephews who were still captives surrendered by Boone—brought charges against Boone for his recent activities. In the court-martial that followed, Boone was found "not guilty" and was even promoted after the court heard his testimony. Despite this vindication, Boone was humiliated by the court-martial, and he rarely spoke of it.[20]

After the trial, Boone returned to North Carolina in order to bring his family back to Kentucky. In the autumn of 1779, a large party of emigrants came with him, including the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. Rather than remain in Boonesborough, Boone founded the nearby settlement of Boone's Station. Boone began earning money at this time by locating good land for other settlers. Transylvania land claims had been invalidated after Virginia created Kentucky County, and so settlers needed to file new land claims with Virginia. In 1780, Boone collected about $20,000 in cash from various settlers and traveled to Williamsburg to purchase their land warrants. While he was sleeping in a tavern during the trip, the cash was stolen from his room. Some of the settlers forgave Boone the loss; others insisted that he repay the stolen money, which took him several years to do.

A popular image of Boone which emerged in later years is that of the backwoodsman who had little affinity for "civilized" society, moving away from places like Boonesborough when they became "too crowded". In reality, however, Boone was a leading citizen of Kentucky at this time. When Kentucky was divided into three Virginia counties in November 1780, Boone was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Fayette County militia. In April 1781, Boone was elected as a representative to the Virginia General Assembly, which was held in Richmond. In 1782, he was elected sheriff of Fayette County.[21]

Meanwhile, the American Revolutionary War continued. Boone joined General George Rogers Clark's invasion of the Ohio country in 1780, fighting in the Battle of Piqua on 7 August. In October, when Boone was hunting with his brother Ned, Shawnees shot and killed Ned. Apparently thinking that they had killed Daniel Boone, the Shawnees beheaded Ned and took the head home as a trophy. In 1781, Boone traveled to Richmond to take his seat in the legislature, but British dragoons under Banastre Tarleton captured Boone and several other legislators near Charlottesville. The British released Boone on parole several days later. During Boone's term, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781, but the fighting continued in Kentucky unabated. Boone returned to Kentucky and in August 1782 fought in the Battle of Blue Licks, in which his son Israel was killed. In November 1782, Boone took part in another Clark expedition into Ohio, the last major campaign of the war.

Businessman on the Ohio

After the Revolution, Boone resettled in Limestone (renamed Maysville, Kentucky in 1786), then a booming Ohio River port. In 1787, he was elected to the Virginia state assembly as a representative from Bourbon County. In Maysville, he kept a tavern and worked as a surveyor, horse trader, and land speculator. He was initially prosperous, owning seven slaves by 1787, a relatively large number for Kentucky at the time, which was dominated by small farms rather than large plantations. Boone became something of a celebrity while living in Maysville: in 1784, on Boone's 50th birthday, historian John Filson published The Discovery, Settlement And present State of Kentucke, a book which included a chronicle of Boone's adventures.[22]

Although the Revolutionary War had ended, the border war with American Indians north of the Ohio River soon resumed. In September 1786, Boone took part in a military expedition into the Ohio Country led by Benjamin Logan. Back in Limestone, Boone housed and fed Shawnees who were captured during the raid and helped to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange. Although the Northwest Indian War escalated and would not end until the American victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the 1786 expedition was the last time Boone saw military action.[23]

This engraving by Alonzo Chappel (c. 1861) depicts an elderly Boone hunting in Missouri.
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This engraving by Alonzo Chappel (c. 1861) depicts an elderly Boone hunting in Missouri.

Boone began to have financial troubles while living in Maysville. According to the later folk image, Boone the trailblazer was too unsophisticated for the civilization which followed him and which eventually defrauded him of his land. Boone was not the simple frontiersman of legend, however: he engaged in land speculation on a large scale, buying and selling claims to tens of thousands of acres. These ventures ultimately failed because of the chaotic nature of land speculation in frontier Kentucky, as well as Boone's faulty investment strategy and his lack of ruthless business instincts.[24]

Frustrated with the legal hassles that went with land speculation, in 1788 Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia). There he operated a trading post and occasionally worked as a surveyor's assistant. When Virginia created Kanawha County in 1789, Boone was appointed lieutenant colonel of the county militia. In 1791, he was elected to the Virginia legislature for the third time. He contracted to provide supplies for the Kanawha militia, but his debts prevented him from buying goods on credit, and so he closed his store and returned to hunting and trapping.

In 1795, he and Rebecca moved back to Kentucky, living in present Nicholas County on land owned by their son Daniel Morgan Boone. The next year, Boone applied to Isaac Shelby, the first governor of the new state of Kentucky, for a contract to widen the Wilderness Road into a wagon route, but the governor did not respond and the contract was awarded to someone else. Meanwhile, lawsuits over conflicting land claims continued to make their way through the Kentucky courts. Boone's remaining land claims were sold off to pay legal fees and taxes, but he no longer paid attention to the process. In 1798, a warrant was issued for Boone's arrest after he ignored a summons to testify in a court case, although the sheriff never found him. That same year Kentucky named Boone County in his honor.

Missouri

In 1799, Boone moved out of the United States to Missouri, which was then part of Spanish Louisiana. The Spanish, eager to promote settlement in the sparsely populated region, did not enforce the legal requirement that all immigrants had to be Catholics. Boone, looking to make a fresh start, emigrated with much of his extended family to what is now St. Charles County. The Spanish governor appointed Boone "syndic" (judge and jury) and commandant (military leader) of the Femme Osage district. The many anecdotes of Boone's tenure as syndic suggest that he sought to render fair judgments rather than to strictly observe the letter of the law.

Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when Missouri became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase. Because Boone's land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on verbal agreements, he once again lost his land claims. In 1809, he petitioned Congress to restore his Spanish land claims, which was finally done in 1814. Boone sold most of this land to repay old Kentucky debts. When the War of 1812 came to Missouri, Boone's sons Daniel Morgan Boone and Nathan Boone took part, but by that time Boone was too old for militia duty.

A portrait of Boone by John James Audubon.
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A portrait of Boone by John James Audubon.

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. He hunted and trapped as often as his failing health allowed. According to one story, in 1810 or later Boone went with a group on a long hunt as far west as the Yellowstone River, a remarkable journey at his age, if true. Other stories of Boone around this time have him making one last visit to Kentucky in order to pay off his creditors, although some or all of these tales may be folklore. American painter John James Audubon claimed to have gone hunting with Boone in the woods of Kentucky around 1810. Years later, Audubon painted a portrait of Boone, supposedly from memory, although skeptics have noted the similarity of this painting to the well-known portraits by Chester Harding. Boone's family insisted that Boone never returned to Kentucky after 1799, although some historians believe that Boone visited his brother Squire near Kentucky in 1810 and have therefore reported Audubon's story as factual.[25]

Boone's gravesite in Frankfort, Kentucky.
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Boone's gravesite in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Boone died on September 26, 1820, at Nathan Boone's home on Femme Osage Creek. He was buried next to Rebecca, who had died on March 18, 1813. The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway's home on Tuque Creek, about two miles (3 km) from present day Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845, the Boones' remains were disinterred and reburied in a new cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone's remains never left Missouri. According to this story, Boone's tombstone in Missouri had been inadvertently placed over the wrong grave, but no one had corrected the error. Boone's Missouri relatives, displeased with the Kentuckians who came to exhume Boone, kept quiet about the mistake and allowed the Kentuckians to dig up the wrong remains. There is no contemporary evidence that this actually happened, but in 1983, a forensic anthropologist examined a crude plaster cast of Boone's skull made before the Kentucky reburial and announced that it might be the skull of an African American. Black slaves were also buried at Tuque Creek, so it is possible that the wrong remains were mistakenly removed from the crowded graveyard. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone's remains.[26]

Cultural legacy

Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.
—Daniel Boone[27]

Daniel Boone remains an iconic figure in American history, although his status as an early American folk hero and later as a subject of fiction has tended to obscure the actual details of his life. The general public remembers him as a hunter, pioneer, and "Indian-fighter", even if they are uncertain when he lived or exactly what he did. Many places in the United States are named for him, including the Daniel Boone National Forest, the Sheltowee Trace Trail, and Boone County, Missouri. His name has long been synonymous with the American outdoors. For example, the Boone and Crockett Club was a conservationist organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, and the Sons of Daniel Boone was the precursor of the Boy Scouts of America.

Emergence as a legend

Boone emerged as a legend in large part because of John Filson's "The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon", part of his book The Discovery, Settlement And present State of Kentucke. First published in 1784, Filson's book was soon translated into French and German, and made Boone famous in America and Europe. Based on interviews with Boone, Filson's book contained a mostly factual account of Boone's adventures from the exploration of Kentucky through the American Revolution. However, because the real Boone was a man of few words, Filson invented florid, philosophical dialogue for this "autobiography". Subsequent editors cut some of these passages and replaced them with more plausible—but still spurious—ones. Often reprinted, Filson's book established Boone as one of the first popular heroes of the United States.[28]

Like John Filson, Timothy Flint also interviewed Boone, and his Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky (1833) became one of the bestselling biographies of the 19th century. Flint greatly embellished Boone's adventures, doing for Boone what Parson Weems did for George Washington. In Flint's book, Boone fought hand-to-hand with a bear, escaped from Indians by swinging on vines (like Tarzan would later do), and so on. Although Boone's family thought the book was absurd, Flint greatly influenced the popular conception of Boone, since these tall tales were recycled in countless dime novels and books aimed at young boys.[29]

Symbol and stereotype

Thomas Cole's Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of His Cabin on the Great Osage Lake (1826) reflected a popular image of Boone's rejection of "civilized" society.
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Thomas Cole's Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of His Cabin on the Great Osage Lake (1826) reflected a popular image of Boone's rejection of "civilized" society.

Thanks to Filson's book, in Europe Boone became a symbol of the "natural man" who lives a virtuous, uncomplicated existence in the wilderness. This was most famously expressed in Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1822), which devoted a number of stanzas to Boone, including this one:

Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals any where;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.[30]

Byron's poem celebrated Boone as someone who found happiness by turning his back on civilization. In a similar vein, many folk tales depicted Boone as a man who migrated to more remote areas whenever civilization crowded in on him. In a typical anecdote, when asked why he was moving to Missouri, Boone supposedly replied, "I want more elbow room!" Boone rejected such an interpretation of his life, however. "Nothing embitters my old age," he said late in life, like "the circulation of absurd stories that I retire as civilization advances…."[31]

Existing simultaneously with the image of Boone as a refugee from society was, paradoxically, the popular portrayal of him as civilization's trailblazer. Boone was celebrated as an agent of Manifest Destiny, a pathfinder who tamed the wilderness, paving the way for the extension of American civilization. In 1852, critic Henry Tuckerman dubbed Boone "the Columbus of the woods", comparing Boone's passage through the Cumberland Gap to Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. In popular mythology, Boone became the first to explore and settle Kentucky, opening the way for countless others to follow. In fact, other Americans had explored and settled Kentucky before Boone, as debunkers in the 20th century often pointed out, but Boone came to symbolize them all, making him what historian Michael Lofaro called "the founding father of westward expansion".[32]

This 1874 lithograph entitled "Daniel Boone protects his family" is a representative image of Boone as an Indian fighter.
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This 1874 lithograph entitled "Daniel Boone protects his family" is a representative image of Boone as an Indian fighter.

In the 19th century, when Native Americans were being displaced from their lands and confined on reservations, Boone's image was often reshaped into the stereotype of the belligerent, Indian-hating frontiersman which was then popular. In John A. McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure (1832), for example, Boone was portrayed as longing for the "thrilling excitement of savage warfare." Boone was transformed in the popular imagination into someone who regarded Indians with contempt and had killed scores of the "savages". The real Boone disliked bloodshed, however. According to historian John Bakeless, there is no record that Boone ever scalped Indians, unlike other frontiersmen of the era. Boone once told his son Nathan that he was certain of having killed only one Indian, during the battle at Blue Licks, although he believed that others may have died from his bullets in other battles. Even though Boone had lost two sons in wars with Indians, he respected Indians and was respected by them. In Missouri, Boone often went hunting with the very Shawnees who had captured and adopted him decades earlier. Some 19th century writers regarded Boone's sympathy for Indians as a character flaw and therefore altered his words to conform to contemporary attitudes.[33]

Fiction

Boone's adventures, real and mythical, formed the basis of the archetypal hero of the American West, popular in 19th century novels and 20th century films. The main character of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the first of which was published in 1823, bore striking similarities to Boone; even his name, Nathaniel Bumppo, echoed Daniel Boone's name. As mentioned above, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Cooper's second Leatherstocking novel, featured a fictionalized version of Boone's rescue of his daughter. After Cooper, other writers developed the Western hero, an iconic figure which began as a variation of Daniel Boone.[34]

In the 20th century, Boone was featured in numerous comic strips, radio programs, and films, where the emphasis was usually on action and melodrama rather than historical accuracy. These are little remembered today; probably the most noteworthy is the 1936 film Daniel Boone, with George O'Brien playing the title role. Audiences of the "baby boomer" generation are more familiar with the Daniel Boone television series, which ran from 1964 to 1970. In the popular theme song for the series, Boone was described as a "big man" in a "coonskin cap", and the "rippin'est, roarin'est, fightin'est man the frontier ever knew!"[35] This did not describe the real Daniel Boone, who was not a big man and did not wear a coonskin cap. Boone was portrayed this way because Fess Parker, the tall actor who played Boone, was essentially reprising his role as Davy Crockett from an earlier TV series. That Boone could be portrayed as a Crockett, another American frontiersman with a very different persona, was another example of how Boone's image could be reshaped to suit popular tastes.[36]

Notes

  1. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 317.
  2. ^ For number of people, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 351.
  3. ^ For overview of Boone as early folk hero and American icon, as well as his enduring fame and the confusion of myth and history, see Lofaro, American Life, 180–83.
  4. ^ For Boone's use of October date, see Bakeless, Master of the Wilderness, 7.
  5. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 9.
  6. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 25–27; Bakeless, Master of the Wilderness, 16–17. For baptizing children, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 311.
  7. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 16–17, 55–6, 83.
  8. ^ For the story about Jemima's birth, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 58–62. Faragher notes that Lyman Draper collected the information but did not put it in his manuscript. Bakeless mentions only that, "There are some very queer—and probably slanderous—tales about Rebecca herself"; Master of the Wilderness, 29.
  9. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 65.
  10. ^ For market hunting, see Bakeless, Master of the Wilderness, 38–39.
  11. ^ For doubts about tree carvings, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 57–58; Belue's notes in Draper, Life of Daniel Boone,163, 286; Elliott, Long Hunter, 12. For historians who do not doubt the tree carvings, see Lofaro, American Life, 18; Bakeless, Master of the Wilderness, 33. Faragher and Belue generally question traditional stories more than Bakeless, Elliott, and Lofaro.
  12. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 62–66.
  13. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 69–74. According to some versions of the story, Findley specifically sought out Boone in 1768, but Faragher believes it more likely that their second meeting was by chance.
  14. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 89–96, quote on 93.
  15. ^ For Boone in Dunmore's War, see Lofaro, American Life, 44–49; Faragher, Daniel Boone, 98–106.
  16. ^ When exactly Henderson hired Boone has been a matter of speculation by historians. Some have argued that Boone's first expeditions into Kentucky might have been financed by Henderson in exchange for information about potential places for settlement, while Boone's descendants believed Henderson did not hire Boone until 1774. For doubts that Henderson hired Boone before 1774, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 74–76, 348.
  17. ^ Faragher, Daniel Boone, 130.
  18. ^ For Boone's influence on James Fenimore Cooper, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 331; Bakeless, Master of the Wilderness, 139.
  19. ^ Boone biographers write that Boone was adopted by the chief, but see Chief Blackfish for doubts.
  20. ^ For court-martial, see Faragher, Daniel Boone, 199–202; Lofaro, American Life</