Daniel Boone is one of the United States’ first and most prominent folk heroes, a pioneer’s symbol of courage as he braved the dangers of the frontier for his fellow colonists and eventual revolutionaries. Boone’s life began humbly, born to a Quaker family in colonial Pennsylvania, one of 11 children living in a one-room log cabin. Boone was an avid and accomplished hunter from a young age, a fact that already becomes muddled with embellishment from his legendary status: supposedly he killed a panther with a clean shot through the heart as a teenager.
Even as a youth, Boone’s hunting skills provided his family with much of the food, although he did manage to find enough time to get a basic education and literacy. Boone picked up some of his hunting and trapping tricks from local Natives, but his relationship with America’s first nations, particularly the Cherokee and Shawnee, would soon sour into bloodshed.
The Boone family moved to North Carolina in 1750, and Daniel soon found himself caught up in the French and Indian War, fighting alongside the British, a role he quickly abandoned. He married and started a family, supporting them with long hunts for deer in Autumn and beaver in the winter.
These expeditions were made perilous by the Cherokee rising, and the threat of raids constantly loomed over the colonists of North Carolina. They also kept Boone separated from his family for months or even years. Lack of game and an abundance of violent raids from the Cherokee meant that Boone moved his family around the colony, collecting debt and court appearances. It was time to leave North Carolina, and Boone ventured west to the place where he would cement his folk hero status: Kentucky.
Kentucky was largely unknown to the colonists at the time, but Boone had heard rumors that the area was ripe with game and fertile land. Boone led a party of five men into the Cumberland Gap, a trail through the mountains that paved the way for colonists to access Kentucky and beyond.
Boone’s first sight of Kentucky was immortalized many times in painting and became the first iconic image of his folk hero mythology. There were early issues, however: even though the Iroquois (also known as the Haudenosaunee) had ceded their claim on Kentucky to the British colonists, the Shawnee had not, and considered Boone and his troop to be poachers. They were captured and their skins confiscated, and later Boone killed someone to avoid capture. Despite these dangers, Boone brought his family to Kentucky a couple of years afterward, with devastating consequences.
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Portrait of Daniel Boone by Chester Harding.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
A band of Boone’s party was traveling, seeking provisions, when they were ambushed by a group of Delaware, Shawnee, and Cherokee. Two men, including Boone’s son James, were tortured and killed to send a message about the colonists encroaching on Kentucky. Their message was grimly received, and the expedition into Kentucky was dissolved.
Boone spent the summer warning those who had not yet fled Kentucky that war with the Natives had broken out. He returned to Virginia and helped the militia in their defense, earning acclaim from officers and civilians alike. It wasn’t long before the colonists were victorious and the Shawnee relinquished their claims on Kentucky. Boone was appointed to a meeting with the Cherokee where land was purchased: Kentucky now belonged to the colonists.
Boone was hired to blaze a trail, known as Boone’s Trace or the Wilderness Road, through the Cumberland Gap and into the frontier. On the eve of the American Revolution, he founded Boonesborough as other settlements began to crop up; eventually, more than 200,000 colonists would follow the trail Boone blazed.
The early days of settlement were not easy, as the breakout of Revolution presented the Natives with an opportunity to drive out the colonists who were expanding by the day. Frequent raids and kidnappings drove out all but the most stubborn and valiant, including the Boones, who had their young daughter Jemima captured by a band of Shawnee and Cherokee. Boone gathered a posse and braved the wilderness to successfully rescue his daughter and other captives, further cementing his folk hero status.
The British allied with the Shawnee to raid Kentucky’s settlements; Boone himself was shot in the ankle after his village of Boonesborough was sieged before eventually being captured while hunting for meat. He managed to convince Chief Blackfish that they would surrender willingly in spring to prevent the women and children from having to make a dangerous winter trek. Boone’s passionate speech was enough to have the men be spared by the Shawnee, and Boone himself was adopted into Blackfish’s town. A few months later, hearing that Blackfish was sending a large force to attack Boonesborough, Boone escaped and trekked 160 miles in five days—mostly on foot—to warn the townsfolk. The town was defended successfully.
Boone began making money by finding good land for prospective settlers, and became an upstanding member of society as he was eventually elected Sheriff and a member of the Virginia legislature. Violence still followed him: his brother Ned was shot and beheaded by the Shawnee, who mistook him for Daniel, and his son was killed in the Revolutionary War.
Boone was undeterred. After the war, an embellished book about his exploits made him a celebrity, and he continued to fight Native Americans in the various border wars, sometimes housing and feeding prisoners while negotiating truces. Although the colonists began to flourish in Kentucky, Boone ran into financial trouble and decided to start anew in Missouri, then owned by Spain. He spent the last years of his life working as a judge, paying off old debts from his days in Kentucky, and of course, hunting. In fact, he died while hunting on September 26, 1820.
While Boone did not leave a fortune behind, he did leave an intriguing, complicated legacy. Tales of his adventures were embellished even while he was alive, and the passing centuries have not made it easier to separate fact from fiction. He showed respect to Native Americans but also blazed the trails that led to their eventual genocide. He was admired by Teddy Roosevelt and immortalized in a poem by Lord Byron. While it can be hard to say things for certain about Daniel Boone, it’s safe to say that the colonial history of the United States, and the entire country itself, was greatly impacted by the events of his life.
