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Daniel Boone

kevinburtonsmith

(1734–1820)

“What a Boone. What a wonder. What a dream-comer-truer, was he…”
–lyrics from the TV theme song by Vera Matson and Lionel Newman

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend…”
from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Ah, the interconnectedness of all things…

One of my very first childhood heroes (after Roy Rogers, but before Batman) was DANIEL BOONE, who was then appearing regularly on a TV series that wafted across the border from Plattsburgh, New York’s NBC affiliate, starring Fess Parker as the iconic American frontiersman, explorer, soldier, politician, surveyor, map maker, merchant, and “Injun fighter.”

I would watch, wide-eyed, as Boone, in his coonskin cap, and his faithful Indian companion Mingo wandered from the safety of Boonesboro out into the wilderness, fighting hostile natives, crooked traders, French spies and various other frontier miscreants week after week (in thrilling black and white, no less!). For a kid who already spent far too much time wandering alone in the forests and fields that surrounded our house, it was heady stuff.

It inspired me to coax my parents into the purchase of a Classics Illustrated comic book edition of the life of Boone for me from Benoit’s, a local pharmacy, and eventually a biography through Scholastic’s at school. Somewhere along the line–possibly as a birthday gift–I even scored a coonskin cap. And to this day, I’m still fascinated by Boone’s story. Or stories.

But it wasn’t just me.

* * * * *

In real life, Boone was born on November 2, 1734 (coincidentally November 2nd is also my birthday) in a one-room log cabin Pennsylvania on November 2, 1734. His parents were Quakers–his father, Squire Boone, was a weaver from England, and his mother, Sarah, was from Wales.

Boone wasn’t much for schooling, and spent much of his childhood romping about the Pennsylvania woods, often interacting with  friendly natives, learning how to track and hunt from local settlers and Natives, and by his teens, had earned some fame as one of the area’s best trackers, hunters and marksman. Stories about his prowess as a woodsman (possibly exaggerated) began to spread, following him as the family relocated to the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina.

Boone led a life full of rip-roaring adventures that included their young man serving in a North Carolina militia company in the French and Indian War as a teamster and a blacksmith. He married Rebecca Bryan in 1756, and they raised at least ten children (at least), relocating to Virginia when tensions between British settlers and the local Cherokees (their former allies in the French and Indian War) escalated. There Boone joined a North Carolina militia during the so-called “Cherokee Uprising,” serving until 1760.

Boone, by then, was supporting his growing family by hunting and trapping, going on “long hunts,” despite the ongoing threat of violence between settlers and the Cherokee and other tribes. On his expeditions, he and his companions would accumulate hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and beaver and otter pelts over the winter, selling their take to commercial fur traders in the spring. He would wander far on these hunts, which occasionally lasted months, and as there family grew, his hunts had him traveling further and further, expanding west into the largely uncharted Blue Ridge Mountains, where the rumors about Kentucky’s fertile land and abundant game must have tantalized him. A 1767 attempt to reach Kentucky failed, but a subsequent attempt in 1769 succeeded. Later that same year, Boone and a friend were taken prisoner by a party of Shawnee, who stole their skins and told the pair to leave the area and never return.

Didn’t work, though. Boone was defiant, and continued hunting and exploring in the area. He returned to North Carolina in 1771, but came back to hunt in Kentucky in the autumn of 1772, and in 1973, decided to move his family, his brother Squire and a group of about 50 others (including a few Black slaves) from Tennessee to Kentucky, with the intention of establishing a settlement, carving their way through the so-called Cumberland Gap, while the path they forged became known as the Wilderness Road. The party established Fort Boone by the Kentucky River and other settlements, including Harrodsburg and Transylvania (really!). Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone brought his family and other settlers to the renamed settlement, Boonesboro, in September 8, 1775.

By all accounts, the tiny fortified village was a success (at least according to European standards), becoming one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By 1800, more than 200,000 people had entered the area by following the Wilderness Road. The local tribes were no doubt not as impressed.

Further adventures followed, including the daring 1776 tracking and rescue of his daughter and two friends from hostile natives who had taken them prisoner, and it was clear Boone was not done. He continued blazing trails, helping to defend colonial settlements in the Virginias and Kentucky, and to establish other settlements, often under the constant threats of violence from the Delawares, Shawnee, and Cherokee tribes. There were enough tales of bloodshed and torture, deception and deceit, broken promises and treaties, prisoner-taking and breathless escapes, expeditions both failed and successful, to fill a lifetime–and a young nation’s imagination. Boone even found time to serve during the Revolutionary War in Kentucky, battling the British-allied Shawnee, and  was taken prisoner by them in 1778. He got away.

He was elected to the Virginia General Assembly during the war, and later worked as a surveyor and merchant. His attempts at post-war land speculation in Kentucky failed however, and Boone and family moved to land granted (not sure why) to him by the Spanish, in what was then Louisiana and is now Missouri, where he ran a store, twice more won election to the House of Delegates and he spent most of the rest of his life dealing with legal problems resulting from his land claims.

Boone passed away in 1820, at the ripe old age of 85.

* * * * *

As tales of his exploits grew (considerably fictionalized or not), Boone became a celebrity of sorts, a legend in his own lifetime, especially after the publication of The Discovery, Settlement and present State of Kentucke and an Essay towards the Topography, and Natural History of that important Country by John Filson in 1784 .

A significant part of the book contained stories of Boone’s adventures, presented as “out of his own mouth.” The book, although at times inaccurate and almost surely occasionally exaggerated, made Boone something of a celebrity in both the U.S. and Europe.

His legend grew and expanded after his death, through pamphlets, dime novels, books, stage plays, radio, film and television, and the tales of his adventures (considerably fictionalized or not) have fascinated generations ever since (including one wide-eyed kid growing up in the Quebec suburbs); laying the foundation for what would become the archetypal American frontier hero of myth and folklore.

Which begat the cowboy.

Which begat the private eye.

No, really…

James Fennimore Cooper, whose frontier hero Natty “Hawkeye” Bumppo, was almost certainly at least partially inspired by Boone‘s adventures, including the daring 1776 rescue of his daughter from the hostile natives, with a strikingly similar situation forming the main narrative of  The Last of the Mohicans (1826)…

Which in turn may have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes, like Boone, displayed some savvy “reading of sign” when it comes to examining footprints and other early forensic skills.

And inspiring Doyle is tantamount to inspiring the whole shamus game, which is my viewpoint, and I’m sticking to it.

SHOCKING FACT

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Sorry for the potted history–

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