Boone a biography

BOONE was a fascinating read, and offered many things I look for in a great biography: insight, understanding of why the subject is worth knowing, human perspective, and historical perspective, all in a narrative that flows like a good story. Robert Morgan, more known for his fiction, has accomplished much of this, though I dropped the fifth star because it needed some additional editing to remove a fair amount of unnecessary repetition and to improve the flow in a few places where the narrative bogs down. For the most part, however, this book was both edifying and entertaining.

The first words of the book are "Forget the coonskin cap; he never wore one." This sets the tone for one of the themes of the book -- that the myth of Daniel Boone was a phenomenon in itself and was often at odds with the real man, or was at least a larger-than-life image that served the purposes of those who helped create it. The author leaves no doubt, however, that Boone was a complex man of remarkable skill, industry, and courage.

Irony plays a starring role in the life of Daniel Boone. For someone whose fame and reputation were widespread -- during his lifetime and beyond -- Boone was a terrible businessman who was constantly, throughout his life, in trouble because of profligate spending and inattention to record-keeping and the details of proper legal transactions. His many prolonged adventures and exploratory expeditions made him an often absent husband to Rebeccah and their 10 children, though they moved many times to join him. Yet again and again he was celebrated, written about, elected to public office, and chosen for jobs over others without these weaknesses. The greatest irony of Boone's life is that his hunger for adventure and wilderness, for discovering uncharted territory, for living at one with Nature like the Indians, and the resulting trails that he blazed, actually paved the way for the rush of settlers westward that destroyed so much of what he loved. He lived long enough to appreciate and regret this irony.

Boone's relationship with the native Americans was particularly interesting in light of the conflicting stories about him and the suspicion by some whites that he was more sympathetic to the Indian cause than to theirs. He was greatly admired by many Indians for being such a skilled woodsman and hunter. When he was captured by the Shawnees for several months, he was adopted by the kidnappers, and there is good evidence that the bonds he formed with many members of that tribe endured to the very end of his life. Yet his reputation as an Indian fighter was made through his fearless and ferocious defense of various forts and settlements against Indian attacks; he had furs and horses stolen by the Indians time and again; and many among his family and friends were killed by Indians, including his sons James and Israel, and his brother Ned. The dangers and hardships of frontier life were masterfully and vividly portrayed in this book.

Perhaps the most compelling part of the book was the strong case made by the author for the impact that Boone and his legend had on thinkers, writers and artists in the decades after his death. He quotes historian Richard Slotkin, "[I]t was the figure of Daniel Boone, the solitary, Indian-like hunter of the deep woods, that became the most significant, most emotionally compelling myth-hero of the early republic. The other myth-figures are reflections or variations of this basic type." We find Boone's incarnations in the heroes of James Fennimore Cooper (e.g. Leatherstocking, Hawkeye and Natty Bumppo). The works of Thomas Cole, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Lord Byron, and Walt Whitman all reflect strong inspiration of Daniel Boone and the life he loved. "[By the 1850s], the image and legend of Boone had pervaded the American had become a figure of America's ideal self, a touchstone of poetry and history and national identity."