Daniel Boone

American explorer and settler

• Born: November 2, 1734
• Birthplace: Berks County, Pennsylvania
• Died: September 26, 1820
• Place of death: Near St. Charles, Missouri

In addition to opening Kentucky to settlement, Boone became a legendary symbol of the early American frontier and is considered a national hero.

Early Life

Daniel Boone was the sixth of eleven children. His father, Squire Boone, was the son of an English Quaker who came to Philadelphia in 1717; his mother, Sarah Morgan, was of Welsh ancestry. Young Boone received little, if any, formal schooling, but he learned to read and to write, although his spelling was erratic. His real interest was in the forest, and as a boy he developed into an excellent shot and superb woodsman.

Squire Boone left Pennsylvania in 1750, and by 1751 or 1752, the family was settled on Dutchman’s Creek in North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley. Daniel hunted and farmed, and he was a wagoner in General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated 1755 expedition against Fort Duquesne. He may have been a wagon master three years later, when General John Forbes took the fort. During the 1750’s, Boone met John Finley, who captivated him with tales of the lovely land called Kentucky.

In young adulthood, Boone was about 5 feet, 9 inches in height and had broad shoulders and a broad chest. Strong and quick, he possessed marvelous endurance and calm nerves. He had blue eyes, a Roman nose, a wide mouth with thin lips, and dark hair that he wore plaited and clubbed. Boone detested coonskin caps and always wore a hat. Mischievous and fun-loving, he was a popular companion, but Boone was happiest when alone in the wilderness. Honest, courageous, quiet, and unpretentious, he inspired confidence, and he accepted the leadership roles thrust upon him.

On August 14, 1756, Daniel married Rebecca Bryan, four years his junior. Between 1757 and 1781, they had ten children, and Rebecca carried much of the burden of rearing them during Daniel’s long absences. One child died in infancy, and sons James and Israel were killed in Kentucky by American Indians. Rebecca ended Daniel’s interest in Florida by refusing to move there in 1766. Boone, sometimes accompanied by brother Squire and brother-in-law John Stuart, explored westward, always tantalized by stories of the fine lands and bountiful game to be found in Kentucky.

Life’s Work

On May 1, 1769, Daniel Boone, John Finley, John Stuart, and three hired hands left Boone’s cabin for his first extended visit into Kentucky. A successful hunt was spoiled by a band of Shawnee, who took their catch and most of their equipment. Stuart was later killed, and when the rest of the party went back for supplies in 1770, Boone remained behind to hunt and explore westward. In 1771, some hunters investigated a strange sound and found Boone, flat on his back, singing at full volume for sheer joy. The seizure of another catch by Native Americans was a small price to pay for such delights.

In September, 1773, Boone attempted to take his family and other settlers into Kentucky, but they turned back after an American Indian attack in which Boone’s son James was among those killed. On the eve of Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774, Boone and Michael Stoner were sent to warn hunters and surveyors in Kentucky of the impending danger. In sixty-one days, they covered more than 800 miles of wilderness, although Boone paused at the incipient settlement at Harrodsburg long enough to claim a lot and throw up a cabin. During the short Indian war, Boone’s role as a militia officer was to defend some of Virginia’s frontier forts.

During these years, Boone became associated with Judge Richard Henderson, who dreamed of establishing a new colony (to be called Transylvania) in the western lands claimed by the North Carolina and Virginia colonies. Boone helped persuade the Cherokees to sell their claim to Kentucky, and agreement was reached at Sycamore Shoals on March 17, 1775. Anticipating that result, Boone and thirty axmen had already started work on the famed Wilderness Road that brought thousands of settlers into Kentucky and helped destroy the wilderness solitude that Boone loved.

Boonesborough was soon established on the south bank of the Kentucky River, and crops were planted in hastily cleared fields. When Henderson arrived with a larger party, a government was set up with representatives from the tiny, scattered stations. Boone introduced measures for protecting game and improving the breed of horses. American Indian raids frightened many of the settlers into fleeing eastward, but during the summer of 1775, Boone brought his family to Boonesborough. Had he joined the exodus, the settlements probably would have been abandoned. Even the capture of a daughter and two other girls by American Indians did not shake his determination to hang on. Henderson’s grandiose scheme failed when Virginia extended its jurisdiction over the region by creating a vast Kentucky County in December, 1776.

The American Revolution was fought largely along the seaboard, but the British used American Indians to attack the Kentucky settlements; the war in the West was fought for survival. Boone accepted the new nation created in 1776, but he was later charged with Toryism and treasonable association with the enemy. A court-martial cleared him of all charges, and he received a militia promotion.

During a raid led by Shawnee chief Blackfish, Boone’s life was saved by young Simon Kenton, one of his few peers as a woodsman. The indigenous peoples’ incursions brought the settlers near starvation, given the danger of both hunting and farming. When Boone was captured near Blue Licks by a large Shawnee raiding party on February 7, 1778, he persuaded his twenty-six salt makers to surrender to save their lives. Boone then convinced Blackfish to return home and that Boonesborough would capitulate in the spring. Boone was adopted by Chief Blackfish, who refused to sell him to the British in Detroit. Big Turtle, as Boone was called by the Shawnee, enjoyed American Indian life, but he escaped in June, 1778, to warn Kentuckians of an impending attack. First by horse, and then on foot, Boone covered 160 miles in four days with only one meal, and upon his arrival Boonesborough’s defenses were hastily improved. In any event, the attacking party of four hundred American Indians and one dozen French Canadians did not arrive until September 7. The settlers prolonged negotiations, hoping help would arrive, and the nine-day siege was one of the longest in American Indian warfare. All hostile stratagems failed, and Boonesborough survived.

George Rogers Clark’s 1778-1779 campaign in the Illinois country and later expeditions against American Indian towns eased some of the danger. Indeed, Boonesborough was becoming too crowded for Boone, and in October, 1779, he moved to Boone’s Station, a few miles from the fort. Boone had acquired some wealth, but he and a companion were robbed of between $40,000 and $50,000 when they went east in 1780 to purchase land warrants. Boone felt honor-bound to repay the persons who had entrusted money to him.

His hunting exploits, escapes from American Indians, and other feats of skill and endurance made him a legend in his own time. Kentucky was divided into three counties in November, 1780, and Boone’s importance was recognized by appointments as Fayette’s sheriff, county-lieutenant, lieutenant-colonel of militia, and deputy surveyor, and by election to the Virginia legislature. Captured by the British in Charlottesville in 1781, Boone soon escaped or was paroled.

In August, 1782, after a failed American Indian attack on Bryan’s Station, Boone’s warnings went unheeded, and the rash pursuers were ambushed near Blue Licks; Boone’s son Israel was among the sixty-four non-Indian casualties. Boone participated in expeditions across the Ohio River to curb the indigenous, but he criticized Clark for not moving his headquarters to the eastern settlements for better protection. This criticism failed to take into account Clark’s responsibilities for the Illinois country as well as for Kentucky: Louisville was a central location from which Clark could move quickly in either direction.

About 1783, Boone moved to Livestone (Maysville) on the Ohio River, where he opened a store, surveyed, hunted, and worked on prisoner exchanges with the indigenous. His fame spread throughout the nation and to Europe after 1784, following John Filson’s addition of a thirty-four-page Boone “autobiography” to The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (1784). In 1789 or 1790, Boone moved to Point Pleasant, in what became West Virginia, but he was in the Blue Licks area by 1795. By then, defective land titles had cost him most of his good lands, and Boone ceased to contest any claims brought against him. Disappointed by his treatment and convinced that Kentucky, a state since 1792, was becoming too crowded, Boone decided to move to Missouri, where Spanish officials welcomed him. In 1799, just before he was sixty-five years old, Boone led a party across the Mississippi River and settled on land some 60 miles west of St. Louis.

The next few years were happy ones. Despite rheumatism, Boone could still hunt, and the wilderness lured him into long journeys westward, perhaps as far as the Yellowstone. He received large land grants, and as a magistrate he held court under a so-called Justice Tree. The old pioneer was incensed in 1812, when he was rejected as a volunteer for the War of 1812; he was seventy-eight years old but ready to fight. His wife Rebecca died in 1813, and Boone probably made his last long hunt in 1817. He had a handsome coffin made and stored for future use. After the Louisiana Purchase, through carelessness and a series of misunderstandings, he lost most of his Missouri land, just as he had earlier lost his holdings in Kentucky.

Boone probably made his last visit to Kentucky in 1817; he was reputed to have only fifty cents left in his pocket after he paid the last of his creditors. Two years later, Chester Harding painted Boone’s only life portrait. Boone died at a son’s home near St. Charles on September 26, 1820, after a brief illness. In 1845, his and Rebecca’s remains were re-interred on a hill above Frankfort, Kentucky.

Significance

Despite his preference for the wilderness, Daniel Boone contributed mightily to the end of the Kentucky frontier—by opening roads, building settlements, surveying land, and fighting American Indians. Without his leadership, Kentucky’s settlement would have been delayed, for he inspired trust that kept settlers from fleeing to safety. This clash between the idea of wilderness as paradise and the restrictions of civilization has been a common theme in the history of the American frontier; it remains an issue still.

In addition to his notable accomplishments, Boone became the symbol of the American frontier during the first half-century of nationhood. James Fenimore Cooper and Lord Byron were only two of many authors whose work includes depictions of Boone. Both his character and his exploits made Boone a natural hero, and they marked a way of life, believed virtuous, that was rapidly vanishing.

Bibliography

Boone, Nathan. My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone. Edited by Neal O. Hammon, with an introduction by Nelson L. Dawson. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Historian Lyman Draper interviewed Boone’s only surviving child, Nathan, and Nathan’s wife, Olive, in 1851, as part of Draper’s research for a biography of Boone. This is an updated transcript of those interviews.

Chaffee, Allen. The Wilderness Trail: The Story of Daniel Boone. New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1936. An account that tells much more about Boone than his connection with the Wilderness Trail, one of the major routes for pioneers who entered Kentucky.

Draper, Lyman C. The Life of Daniel Boone. Edited by Franklin Belue. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1998. Historian Draper died in 1891, leaving a massive but unfinished biography of Boone. Belue has transcribed and annotated Draper’s manuscript. Although Draper presents a hagiographic account of Boone, his work was based on extensive research and interviews, and he vividly re-creates many details of Boone’s life. Belue’s chapter notes correct Draper’s romanticism, and the seventy-six period drawings, engraving, photos, and maps enhance the text.

Eckert, Allan W. The Court Martial of Daniel Boone. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973. This well-researched and well-written historical novel reconstructs the charges brought against Boone and his successful defense. The trial record disappeared, but Eckert’s version sounds plausible.

Filson, John. The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke: . . . To Which Is Added . . . the Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon. Wilmington, Del.: James Adams, 1784. This rare book has been reprinted many times. Although the “autobiography” was written by Filson and contains many errors, he did interview Boone and a number of other Kentuckians.

Lofaro, Michael A. Daniel Boone: An American Life. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Lofaro published an excellent biography, The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone, in 1979. This updated biography is more detailed and is based upon thirty years of research. Lofaro explains why Boone is considered the quintessential frontiersman and why the idea of the frontier remains a part of the American experience.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold. Daniel Boone. New York: D. Appleton, 1902. Despite its age, this book provides a generally accurate biography. The author was one of the first Boone biographers to make use of the Lyman Draper manuscripts.