Frontiersman, born near Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. His parents were Quakers, and he learned to hunt and trap by the age of 12. He moved with his family to North Carolina (17501) and in 1755 took part in General Braddock's diasastrous campaign, where he met John Finley, a hunter who told him stories of the Kentucky wilderness. He explored Kentucky (17678, 176971), led the first settlers there in 1775, and founded Boonesborough, a fortified settlement. He was captured by Shawnee Indians (1778) but escaped in time to defend the fort against an Indian attack. Later, his claims to large tracts of Kentucky lands were not validated, and he moved to West Virginia (1788) and then to present-day Missouri (1799), where he remained until his death. He has retained his place as the archetypal American frontiersman.
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. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.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. 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.
Youth
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. Squire Boone's parents George and Mary Boone followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717. In 1731, the Boones built a log cabin in the Oley Valley in what is now Berks County, Pennsylvania, near present Reading, where Daniel was born.
Boone spent his early years on what was then the western edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. Boone received his first rifle in 1747 and picked up hunting skills from local whites and Indians, beginning his lifelong love of hunting. In one story, the young Boone is hunting in the woods with some other boys. 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.
In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community. 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. 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.
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...." 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.
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. Boone returned home after the defeat, and on August 14, 1755, he married Rebecca Bryan, a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley. 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. background-color: #f9f9f9;clear:right;">
|
I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days. —Daniel Boone |
Boone's chosen profession also made for long absences from home. 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.
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. 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.
In the mid-1760s, Boone began to look for a new place to settle. 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.
Kentucky
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. This, as well as the unrest in North Carolina due to the Regulator movement, likely prompted Boone to extend his exploration.
In May 1769, Boone began a two-year hunting expedition in Kentucky. 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. 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. In the summer of 1774, Boone volunteered to travel with a companion to Kentucky to notify surveyors there about the outbreak of war. 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.
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. 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. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone returned to the Clinch Valley and brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough on 8 September 1775.
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.
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.
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 and his men were taken to Blackfish's town of Chillicothe where they were made to run the gauntlet. 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.
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.
After the trial, Boone returned to North Carolina in order to bring his family back to Kentucky. 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. In 1780, Boone collected about $20,000 in cash from various settlers and traveled to Williamsburg to purchase their land warrants.
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 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. 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. 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. In September 1786, Boone took part in a military expedition into the Ohio Country led by Benjamin Logan. 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.
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.
Frustrated with the legal hassles that went with land speculation, in 1788 Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia). When Virginia created Kanawha County in 1789, Boone was appointed lieutenant colonel of the county militia.
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. 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.
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. 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.
Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. 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. 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.
Boone died on September 26, 1820, at Nathan Boone's home on Femme Osage Creek. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone's remains never
left Missouri. 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. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone's remains. With me the world has
taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.
—Daniel Boone
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. Many places in the United States are named for him, including the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky and the Sheltowee Trace Trail in Tennessee. 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. 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. Often reprinted, Filson's book established Boone as one of the first popular heroes of the United States.
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. 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.
Symbol and stereotype
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;Byron's poem celebrated Boone as someone who found happiness by turning his back on civilization.
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".
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. 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.
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. even his name, Nathaniel Bumppo, echoed Daniel Boone's name. After Cooper, other writers developed the Western hero, an iconic figure which began as a variation of Daniel Boone.
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. In the popular theme song for the series, Boone was described as follows:
Daniel Boone was a man, Yes, a big man!The song did not describe the real Daniel Boone, who was not a big man and did not wear a coonskin cap. 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. How the West was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay.
User Comments Add a comment…