Daniel Boone : the life and legend of an American pioneer
(Book - Regular Print)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 365-418) and index.

In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than fifty years, award-winning historian John Mack Faragher portrays America's famous frontier hero. Boone (1734-1820), who came to popular attention in 1784 with the publication of Kentucke, the narrative of his adventures published by John Filson, scouted the trans-Appalachian west for settlement before any other English-speaking American, surveyed and helped build the Wilderness Road, and led the settlers' struggle against the Shawnee defenders of Kentucky. Yet the complex range of Boone's accomplishments has inspired conflicting accounts of his life and character. Hailed as both an extraordinary and common man, Daniel Boone is an intriguing subject whose legends are enveloped in paradox. History portrays Boone as an Indian-fighting frontiersman, yet he objected to that reputation, proclaiming his belief in the Quaker tolerance of his forebears. He was a devoted family man, but his lengthy hunting and trapping expeditions encouraged the popular depiction of him as a misanthropic man of the woods. And although he served as a frontier leader of the American Revolution, his fellow officers suspected him of loyalty to the crown and treasonous sympathy for the Indians. Absorbed in the details of history and folklore, Faragher's work is a study of both the hero himself and of a uniquely American heromaking process. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone's own hand, and a treasure of reminiscence and recollection gathered by nineteenth-century antiquarians, Faragher employs the methods of new social history to produce a portrait that defines the man and the times he helped shape. The author addresses the relationship between native Americans and settlers in the formative period of our history; the contradictions in development and commercialism that frequently left those who struggled the hardest with the fewest rewards; and the manner in which heroes are manufactured, utilized, and treated. Blending themes from a much vitalized western and frontier history with the words and ideas of ordinary people, Faragher has produced a book that will stand as the definitive life of Daniel Boone for the next century.