The most adventurous experience most modern-day travelers undertake is hiking a lengthy mountainous and rocky trail at one of America’s many national parks. These are usually well-marked with cairns or arrows, and any critter or weather danger is well presented via informational signage. However, when Daniel Boone traversed wilderness areas outside of the 13 original colonies, his journeys were often perilous and required persistence. Author Robert Morgan shows us just what the 18th-century frontiersman encountered in his thorough book, “Boone: A Biography,” published in 2007.
While the legend of the man has been perpetuated in everything from comic strips to a popular television series that ran from 1964 to 1970, the true Boone is offered up in Mr. Morgan’s in-depth work. Much of the writings about Boone (1734–1820) teeters on the edge of hyperbole, but painstaking research enabled Mr. Morgan to delve into the accuracies of this complex and very American icon.
In fact, Mr. Morgan addresses romanticized untruths in the first sentence of his introduction: “Forget the coonskin cap; he never wore one. The coonskin-topped Boone is the image from Hollywood and television. In fact, much that the public thinks it knows about Boone is fiction.”
Mr. Morgan explained that Boone wanted future generations to know the truth about him—noting that even while Boone was alive he disputed exaggerated accounts of his life. Mr. Morgan acknowledged that he wrote the book because he felt a connection to the man, having himself grown up in the mountains of Western North Carolina: “I wanted to find out what it was about Daniel Boone that made him lodge in the memory of all who knew him and made so many want to tell his story. How was a scout and hunter turned into such an icon of American culture?”
In order to show Boone was a real man with a past and future, he provides readers with a genealogy and a chronology. In the latter, readers quickly learn that Boone was not just an independent man with wanderlust but a devoted husband of more than 50 years to Rebecca Bryan, with whom he had 10 children. He was also a brave soldier, serving with the North Carolina militia in the French and Indian War, and an ardent patriot who became a lieutenant colonel in a battle that killed of one of his sons, Israel.
Boone endured such trials as learning that one of his daughters, Jemima, was abducted by Indians on July 14, 1776; being wounded in battles; becoming a Shawnee prisoner for four months; repeatedly disputing land claims in court; and much more.
Boone spent months at a time away from the different places his family called home—such as North Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri—where he explored and hunted. The self-educated, articulate man also farmed, managed a store that was also a tavern and offered a surveying service, and was an elected statesman.
Overall, “Boone: A Biography” delivers sense-of-place prose. Mr. Morgan takes readers on a ride-along with the renaissance man who left his indelible and fascinating mark on American history.
