Speaker 1: M so as a storyteller, as a marketer, as a brander.
Speaker 1: I like to say, they're kind of, you know, twelve
Speaker 1: ish characters, and there are a handful, maybe nine types
Speaker 1: of stories, and the best stories combine like these universal
Speaker 1: storylines with these universal character types. When I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, people would say of people that like to
Speaker 1: hunt and fish run around the woods, people would say,
Speaker 1: he's a modern day Daniel Boom. He wants to be
Speaker 1: just like Daniel Boom. On this episode of the Bargarase podcast,
Speaker 1: will be exploring a story as American as cornbread and
Speaker 1: black eyed Peas. We're talking about one of America's first heroes,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone. Will sift through the myth and truth and
Speaker 1: discuss why the heck we're still talking about him two
Speaker 1: hundred years after his death. We'll learn about the mechanism
Speaker 1: of archetypes, and I'll interview two New York Times bestselling authors,
Speaker 1: Stephen Ranella and Robert Morgan about their fascination with Boone.
Speaker 1: The truth is wilder than the myth. This is part
Speaker 1: one of our series on Old Daniel Boone, and in
Speaker 1: it will walk through the first thirty five years of
Speaker 1: his life. You're not gonna wanna miss this one, but
Speaker 1: first let me request of you two things. This series
Speaker 1: is different than previous Burgers podcasts. It's a big bike
Speaker 1: to tell the life story of someone like Boone and
Speaker 1: try to understand their impact on American culture. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it was more challenging than I thought it would be.
Speaker 1: But if you'll stick around with me through this, you'll
Speaker 1: be glad you did. Lastly, take a quick inventory of
Speaker 1: everything you know about Daniel Boone to give you a
Speaker 1: jump start. I'll help you fit Dan into a timeline.
Speaker 1: He would was born in seventeen thirty four and died
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty, But what did he do in between?
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 1: the places we explore. That Okay, this is Josh Lambridge Spillmaker.
Speaker 1: Tell me everything you know about Daniel. I know he
Speaker 1: was a big man, I know he fought for America
Speaker 1: to keep all Americans free. That's what I know. You're
Speaker 1: watching the old Disney Daniel Boone was a man. It's
Speaker 1: a big man because he fought for America to capel American.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked. You know that song. Okay, a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone was five ft eight and way a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five pounds. That literally just destroyed my my.
Speaker 1: I thought Daniel Boon was like Paul Bunyon. Okay, and
Speaker 1: the other thing in the song, it talks about him
Speaker 1: wearing a coonskin cap, which he didn't he did. I
Speaker 1: don't know where you're getting their information, but I've seen
Speaker 1: the movies. He wore a coonskin cap. This is my
Speaker 1: other buddy, Jonathan, tell me, uh, every thing you know
Speaker 1: about Daniel Boone. How much time do you got tell
Speaker 1: me everything. I literally don't know much other than his
Speaker 1: name and that he was an American, that he was
Speaker 1: a pioneer. He worked with the He worked with the
Speaker 1: Native Americans to discover things and discover the woods. He
Speaker 1: was an outdoorsman. Discover the woods, discover the woods, discover
Speaker 1: things inside of the woods. I feel like I want
Speaker 1: to say he was at the Alamo. I really, like
Speaker 1: naturally want to say he was a part of the Alamo.
Speaker 1: But then I feel like it was a guy the
Speaker 1: the Jim Booe was that, that's the Jim Boos at
Speaker 1: the Alamo. Like then I kept saying, and then I
Speaker 1: kept saying David Bowie. I kept getting Daniel Boone and
Speaker 1: David Bowie mixed up in my head. That's really all
Speaker 1: I know about Daniel Boone. The action adventure series Daniel
Speaker 1: Boone ran on television from nineteens sixty four to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy on NBC. But that wasn't the beginning of our
Speaker 1: interest with Boone. America in the world has been fascinated
Speaker 1: with him since seventy four, when a former school teacher
Speaker 1: named John Philson published a single chapter in his book
Speaker 1: which the book was about the American Frontier in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and the chapter was called the Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone.
Speaker 1: Boone was fifty years old at the time, and this
Speaker 1: catalyzed his fame not just in America but in Europe.
Speaker 1: Not long after Boone's death in eighteen twenty, his first
Speaker 1: biography was written, and authors have feverishly written about him
Speaker 1: for the last two hundred years. Just in one a
Speaker 1: new Boone biography came out. What did this man do?
Speaker 1: And why are we infatuated with the life of this
Speaker 1: back woodsman? This is Steve and Ella. I think the
Speaker 1: people know that he was a woodsman and they know
Speaker 1: he was a frontiersman. The reason I know that is
Speaker 1: the guy became famous. He became famous in his own life.
Speaker 1: He was you know, he could almost argue he's one
Speaker 1: of those first He was one of those people that
Speaker 1: kind of became famous for being famous. Like the fame
Speaker 1: self perpetu The fame was self perpetuating because there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people, A lot of people were engaged
Speaker 1: in the things that Boone was engaged here. So you
Speaker 1: have this guy, like why do we know so much
Speaker 1: about him? But there were other long hunters. They can't
Speaker 1: figure out what their names were. Do you really expect
Speaker 1: me to run Mr Boone the way I see it running,
Speaker 1: Beach Dyan. The myth and lore around Boone is thick,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to whittle this down to the truth.
Speaker 1: But is that even possible. Time is like a carousel ride.
Speaker 1: There's a point when you get on and another. When
Speaker 1: you get off, you don't get to choose who you
Speaker 1: ride with. History allows us to look back at people
Speaker 1: who got off the ride before us, but it often
Speaker 1: leaves me feeling cheated. There's something intimate about an in
Speaker 1: person conversation, eye contact, human voice to human ear, and
Speaker 1: physical proximity. One man who I would have ridden a
Speaker 1: mule across the country to meet, just to look in
Speaker 1: his eyes, to see his hands, and to exchange a
Speaker 1: few words with would have been Daniel Boone. Carousel has
Speaker 1: cheated me out of getting a firsthand sense of who
Speaker 1: he was. Boone is shrouded in deep mystery. He's an
Speaker 1: American legend icon and archetype. To sum up Boone's life,
Speaker 1: he was a backwoodsman that taught us to chair fish, solitude,
Speaker 1: and wilderness, which was a foreign concept to the world.
Speaker 1: Raised the Quaker, he was influenced heavily by Native Americans
Speaker 1: and was even adopted as a Shawnee. He was a frontiersman,
Speaker 1: known for making the Cumberland Gap famous and settling the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Frontier. He embodied the westward expansion of America, which
Speaker 1: led this country to what it is today. He was uneducated,
Speaker 1: but influenced America's literary giants. He fought in the Revolutionary
Speaker 1: War for America, but was tried for treason by the Americans.
Speaker 1: He attained global fame in his lifetime, owned over thirty
Speaker 1: thousand acres in Kentucky, but he died a common and
Speaker 1: poor man. He was a contemporary of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: and Benjamin Franklin, and only their stories have been told
Speaker 1: more in American history than Daniel Boone. It's common for
Speaker 1: people to say that Boone is an American archetype. I
Speaker 1: want to get a better understanding of what that means
Speaker 1: and how they work. Seth Haines is a published author
Speaker 1: and the founder of through Line Strategy and brand. A
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, he introduced me to the idea
Speaker 1: of archetypes as they're used in modern branding. Meet my
Speaker 1: buddy Seth Paynes. So, in my work as a writer
Speaker 1: and in my work doing branding and marketing, we use
Speaker 1: archetypes a lot as sort of shortcuts for characters. And
Speaker 1: there's you know, some some old work that's been done
Speaker 1: on this by Carl Eung. There's about twelvish archetypes twelvish
Speaker 1: universal characters. So as the storyteller, as a marketer, as
Speaker 1: a brander, I like to say, they're kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve ish characters. And there are a handful, maybe nine
Speaker 1: types of stories, and the best stories combine like these
Speaker 1: universal storylines with these universal character types. Um so and
Speaker 1: so this is almost like something that's going on in
Speaker 1: the background that we don't even realize, but we'll totally
Speaker 1: identify with yeah, and and everyone in the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if you were to break down your life
Speaker 1: and say, here are the people in my life, you
Speaker 1: could almost break them down to oh, yeah, this guy
Speaker 1: represents the character of an outlaw. You know, he's always
Speaker 1: a rebel, he's always on the run, he's always something.
Speaker 1: This person represents the character of an explorer, someone who's
Speaker 1: always out in the wilderness looking for something to get into,
Speaker 1: some expression of freedom. And these character types, or what
Speaker 1: we call archetypes. So an archetypal expression is just simply like,
Speaker 1: this is the character that I play in the universal
Speaker 1: story of life. Can you give me an example of
Speaker 1: a national American figure that we've used as an archetype,
Speaker 1: like like Johnny Cash. It's like an outlaw archetype. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love Johnny Cash as an archetype because I actually
Speaker 1: think he's terribly complex. The Man in Black is I
Speaker 1: mean a thousand present the rebel right. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you picture Johnny Cash day, you'd see him, you know,
Speaker 1: on a Harley with his guitar slung over his shoulder
Speaker 1: or something, and always pushing the boundaries, always pushing it
Speaker 1: back against societal norms and so and he's always trying
Speaker 1: to to bring even in his music, you know, Wood
Speaker 1: he Got Through is another example of this, always trying
Speaker 1: to push against the norms of society to find what's
Speaker 1: true and what's real. Johnny Cash, though, I love because
Speaker 1: when you really look at his life, like he was
Speaker 1: also extremely generous. I mean the stories I've heard about
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash's generosity for everything from kids, to sick people
Speaker 1: to the elderly. Um, he truly cared for his community
Speaker 1: of people. So he had this public persona that was
Speaker 1: very much rebel, but he also had this private life
Speaker 1: that was very much caregiver. And so sometimes I think
Speaker 1: we even find that we embody different archetypes depending on
Speaker 1: where we are. That's a good that's a good example
Speaker 1: because what I see inside these archetypes and even inside
Speaker 1: of Boon is that they repres sent to people that
Speaker 1: really don't know them. This one dominant feature. Like Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash is an outlaw, outlaw music outlaw. He's complex, you
Speaker 1: realize he's a human and he has this bigger space.
Speaker 1: Like Boone is this courageous explorer, you know, frontiersman, conquering wilderness.
Speaker 1: That's something that we like. But that was actually a
Speaker 1: pretty not I'm not gonna say a small part, but
Speaker 1: there was much more to Boone's life than that. But
Speaker 1: the point being, we we are embracing something. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a shroud of marketing around a person. It's branding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a hun and so you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that we like to say when we talk about
Speaker 1: branding is that branding is biological. And so what we
Speaker 1: do is humans, is we take a character or take
Speaker 1: a person, and we impute to them or give to them.
Speaker 1: Like the character type of the story that that you
Speaker 1: know best sort of resonates with us internally. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you, man, the biggest characters in American history understand that,
Speaker 1: know that and embrace it, and it becomes part of
Speaker 1: their mystique and part of their branding, and that's what
Speaker 1: gives them lasting influence. And that's what's wild about Boon
Speaker 1: is it was clear that he, even even in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, when there was not social media, I mean
Speaker 1: like high level technology, was someone writing with a quill
Speaker 1: and ink you know, it's your story. He played the
Speaker 1: part and it wasn't inauthentic. It wasn't it was It
Speaker 1: wasn't like he was trying to drum up publicity around
Speaker 1: his life. He was who he was. But at the
Speaker 1: same time he was pretty masterful at doing things, saying things,
Speaker 1: and being things at the right time for people to
Speaker 1: remember him. These archetypes basically are our human shortcuts to
Speaker 1: understand the world around us. Understanding the mechanisms of culture
Speaker 1: building is important. I also think it's interesting that most
Speaker 1: of what we know about Boone didn't come directly from him,
Speaker 1: and there in Liza's mystery, wildly two different drafts of
Speaker 1: firsthand interviews with him were defunct. One manuscript was completed
Speaker 1: but lost. The other manuscript was incomplete but lost to
Speaker 1: what the heck? Who's in charge here? However, in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, thirty one years after Boone's death, a young
Speaker 1: nerdy librarian and historian from New York named Lyman Draper
Speaker 1: traveled to Missouri to interview Daniel's youngest and only living son,
Speaker 1: Nathan Boone, who at the time was seventy years old.
Speaker 1: It was said that Draper was quote nearly obsessed by
Speaker 1: the passing of the old frontiersman, and he determined to
Speaker 1: collect as much material and interview as many survivors as possible.
Speaker 1: Draper and Nathan give us the most intimate and accurate
Speaker 1: look into Boone's life. You can actually buy them compiled
Speaker 1: as a book titled My Father Daniel Boone. Here's an
Speaker 1: excerpt from the manuscripts. My grandfather's squire Boone was a
Speaker 1: weaver and a farmer. His residence was probably an only
Speaker 1: He kept at least five or six looms going at
Speaker 1: one time. He had his homestead and in the grass
Speaker 1: season moved his stock back several miles distance to a
Speaker 1: fine range where cow pens were made for hurting cattle
Speaker 1: at nights, and a cabin was built in which Miss
Speaker 1: Boone spent the dairy season in attending to her milk.
Speaker 1: During the mild weather, Her son Daniel went with her
Speaker 1: to act as a herdsman. He went with the cattle
Speaker 1: during the daily roaming through the woods and brought them
Speaker 1: back each evening. This was his chief occupation from the
Speaker 1: age of ten to seventeen. This move was an annual affair,
Speaker 1: and Ms Boone always went personally to attend the dairy,
Speaker 1: and her son Daniel was always attendant to watch her
Speaker 1: and take care of the cattle. My father soon became
Speaker 1: fond of the woods, even at the age of ten.
Speaker 1: He would carry a club a grub dug up by
Speaker 1: the roots, nicely shaven down, leaving a rudy knob at
Speaker 1: the end, which he called his herdsman's club. He became
Speaker 1: an expert in using it to kill birds in small game.
Speaker 1: This life enabled him to study their habits. When he
Speaker 1: was twelve or thirteen, his father bought him a gun
Speaker 1: and he became a good marksman. The only problem was
Speaker 1: that he often neglected his hurting duties to hunt, but
Speaker 1: this experience gave him his love of woods and hunting.
Speaker 1: Daniel's brother, Samuel, was born in seventeen twenty eight. According
Speaker 1: to the records of Squire Boone Jr. Samuel had a
Speaker 1: very intelligent wife who taught my father to read, spell
Speaker 1: and write a little. This was all the education Daniel
Speaker 1: ever had, as he never attended school, but he acquired
Speaker 1: more education by his own efforts, particularly in writing, as
Speaker 1: he could do little more than rudely write his own name.
Speaker 1: In all my research on Boone, I was moved by
Speaker 1: Nathan's account of his father. I envisioned me talking about
Speaker 1: my own father or my son, recounting my life long
Speaker 1: after my passing. We're gonna camp around Boone for a
Speaker 1: few episodes. He influenced the American Hedgemont the way that
Speaker 1: we think and to understand who we are. I think
Speaker 1: we need to acknowledge and be aware of the boon influence.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in how Boone has influenced my life unknowingly.
Speaker 1: Stephen Runnella is the founder of a company called meat Eater,
Speaker 1: the company that this Here Bear Grease podcast is produced by.
Speaker 1: He's in New York's best selling author, an American Hunter,
Speaker 1: but he's also known as a national Boone expert. Runella
Speaker 1: began his young life in the outdoors with dreams of
Speaker 1: being a full time trapper like Boone was during periods
Speaker 1: of his life. It was a real treat to get
Speaker 1: to sit with Steve and talk Boone. There's been like
Speaker 1: countless boon biography has written since the time of just
Speaker 1: after he died. Has recently sent me up still So okay,
Speaker 1: so people have this I can, and that is exactly
Speaker 1: what I want to talk to you about. Why are
Speaker 1: we so well? I want to I want to dive
Speaker 1: into your personal interest in Boone? Why were you so
Speaker 1: interested in boon Man when I was When I was
Speaker 1: just a little kid, people would say, of people that
Speaker 1: like to hunt and fish, okay, run around the woods.
Speaker 1: People would say, he's a modern day Daniel Boone. He
Speaker 1: wants to be just like Daniel Boone. He's a real
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone. It means like the consummate woodsman, right, It's
Speaker 1: like the dedicated woodsman. I didn't realize when I first
Speaker 1: started to hear that term, you know, growing up with it,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize like how correct it was. I think
Speaker 1: the people know that he was a woodsman, and they
Speaker 1: know he was a frontiersman. The reason I know that
Speaker 1: as the guy became famous, he became famous in his
Speaker 1: own life. He was you know, he could almost argue
Speaker 1: he's one of those first he was one of those
Speaker 1: people that kind of became famous for being famous, Like
Speaker 1: the fame self perpetu. The fame was self perpetuating because Um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were engaged and the things that Boone was engaged in.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of market hunters, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of long hunters. There were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who got tangled up in the American Revolution, in the
Speaker 1: western front of the American Revolution. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of people who one and lost a ton of money
Speaker 1: speculating in land. There were a lot of people that
Speaker 1: started frontier settlements or stations out on the frontier. Tons
Speaker 1: of people did this stuff. Boone wasn't the first one
Speaker 1: to go through the Cumberland Gap, and of course he
Speaker 1: wasn't the first one. Boone wasn't the first year American
Speaker 1: to go through the Cumberland Gap. But he owns that
Speaker 1: event because like he got he got a notoriety and
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm glad it happened. And people started to
Speaker 1: ask questions. They talked to his relatives, they talked to
Speaker 1: the children of his children, and and his body like
Speaker 1: built up. So you have this guy, like why do
Speaker 1: we know um so much? About him. But there were
Speaker 1: all their long hunters. They came figure out what their
Speaker 1: names were. Yeah, who were his contemporaries? Because I know
Speaker 1: because it never like the seed never got started, the
Speaker 1: idea that like to to to investigate an individual, that
Speaker 1: happened with Boone, And the investigation continued and continue to
Speaker 1: continue to the point where we put together for like
Speaker 1: really remarkable. Um, it's really remarkable biography of dates and
Speaker 1: where he went, what he did, what his feelings about
Speaker 1: things were. Um. And then people tracked down the people
Speaker 1: he hung out with, they tracked down his relatives. There's
Speaker 1: a later on a researcher like a historian his time
Speaker 1: whever he went to talk to Boone's kid. Yeah, relates
Speaker 1: the story where you have insight into Um. The story
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you is an example of like how
Speaker 1: thorough the investigation of Boone was. Right, Boone became a
Speaker 1: little bit famous and was well known. I mean, he
Speaker 1: wasn't like everybody else he was. He was exemplary. People
Speaker 1: recognized in his own time that he was an outstanding woodsman.
Speaker 1: But as he became famous, it prompted more and more
Speaker 1: people to go and interview him, and the people around him.
Speaker 1: So that little bit, like imagine a snowball rolling down
Speaker 1: a hill and went snow right. He had a little
Speaker 1: bit of fame, which is the initial bit of the
Speaker 1: thing going. But it led to investigation, which led to investigation,
Speaker 1: which led to an investigation. Were eventually you know, you
Speaker 1: have this like this one individual of of dozens of
Speaker 1: long hunters, of his contemporaries, this one individual who we
Speaker 1: put together a ton of information about, and there's a
Speaker 1: there's an interesting thing that comes from like very late
Speaker 1: in his life. Someone was interviewing one of his children
Speaker 1: one time, and the kids describing this is that this
Speaker 1: is after the after the bulk of the Indian Wars
Speaker 1: are over, this is after the American Revolution. His kids
Speaker 1: describing being out hunting with his father. I think maybe
Speaker 1: it would be best if we hear it in the
Speaker 1: words of Nathan Boone himself. In the fall of father
Speaker 1: and I were out hunting. We camped on the northern
Speaker 1: bank of the Ohio River, some two or three miles
Speaker 1: above the mouth of Campaign Creek, which was ten or
Speaker 1: twelve miles above Point Pleasant. It was frosty weather and
Speaker 1: the leaves were falling. About the second morning, a foggy morning.
Speaker 1: My father went off, leaving me alone at the camp.
Speaker 1: A large fine buck came within twenty or twenty five
Speaker 1: steps of camp. I seized my small rifle. This was
Speaker 1: not my little bird rifle, which used the ball about
Speaker 1: the size of a buckshot, that one I used to
Speaker 1: kill birds and squirrels near Crooked Creek back of Point Pleasant.
Speaker 1: This larger rifle was made by my father and William R. Buckle,
Speaker 1: a gunsmith. I rested his gun against one of the
Speaker 1: camp posts and fired, but the deer ran off. Father
Speaker 1: heard the shot and returned to camp. He asked me
Speaker 1: to point out where the deer stood. There he found
Speaker 1: hair which the ball had cut off. Then he followed
Speaker 1: the trail found blood. Sixty year eighty yards further he
Speaker 1: found the dead deer. This was the first deer I
Speaker 1: ever killed. But my father didn't leave me at camp anymore.
Speaker 1: He took me with him two or three times and
Speaker 1: pointed out deer, then showed me how to manage to
Speaker 1: get off shots. I was not to move or attempt
Speaker 1: to steal up on the deer when his head was
Speaker 1: up and chewing, and when he was looking around, but
Speaker 1: to do so when his head was down feeding and
Speaker 1: could not so well see me. Following this advice, I
Speaker 1: killed one or two other deer during this hunt. While
Speaker 1: we were together. My father shot a bear and one
Speaker 1: or two others when he was alone the first day.
Speaker 1: From these two or three bear we saved all the meat,
Speaker 1: and of the ten or fifteen deer, we saved the
Speaker 1: best hind quarters. On the fifth night, about midnight, I
Speaker 1: had been asleep for some time, but my father, Daniel Boone,
Speaker 1: heard of chopping or hacking some distance above and across
Speaker 1: the river. He awakened me, and he told me he
Speaker 1: thought the noise was made by Indians, as he thought
Speaker 1: it was made by their hatchet. He concluded that Indians
Speaker 1: had probably seen the fire at our camp, and we're
Speaker 1: making a raft to cross. We carried meat and skins
Speaker 1: to our canoe, which was twenty five yards camp, and
Speaker 1: returned to our fire again. The night was clear and
Speaker 1: frosty and a little foggy, so we remained at our
Speaker 1: fire with our blankets for some time. After the chopping ceased.
Speaker 1: We then went to our canoe. There we stayed some
Speaker 1: ten minutes until we heard the Indians paddling in the water.
Speaker 1: At that time, We pushed off, and father ordered me
Speaker 1: to roll his blanket around myself and lie down in
Speaker 1: the canoe. He said, in the stern put the paddle
Speaker 1: carefully in the water, and then gave a push. We
Speaker 1: went forward noiselessly and were soon in the main current,
Speaker 1: which washed us down the river. On the way, Father
Speaker 1: put his head over the canoe, close to the water,
Speaker 1: and he said he thought he could catch a glimpse
Speaker 1: of the Indians. He had looked between the surface of
Speaker 1: the water and the fog which did not quite reach
Speaker 1: the water, And soon we were beyond harm stream and
Speaker 1: escapes and the kids says. His kid says, in that moment,
Speaker 1: I kind of understood the year that that man lived
Speaker 1: with his whole life. So here you have like interviews
Speaker 1: with his kids talking about his like analyzing the guy's
Speaker 1: emotional state. We don't have that one of Boone's hunting partners.
Speaker 1: All we know is like basically he got killed one
Speaker 1: of dying in a hollow tree and the story mm hmm.
Speaker 1: But with him, man, we got all the goods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: almost too many goods, because there's a lot as you know,
Speaker 1: there's people that are always bringing an artifact. Oh this
Speaker 1: is Boone's gone. This is Boone's hatchet. You know, it's
Speaker 1: all hardwash. When Boone was in his mid fifties, this
Speaker 1: is this is what I've calculated. When Boone was in
Speaker 1: his mid fifties was when the first biography that includes well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a full biography, but a guy came down
Speaker 1: and interviewed him and included him in this book that
Speaker 1: went global and it was about the American frontier. So
Speaker 1: was it a combination that the war the eyes of
Speaker 1: the world. We're on this boundary between the American colony
Speaker 1: and this vast frontier that we knew nothing about. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was like the spot in the world that people
Speaker 1: were interested in. And then this guy wrote and it
Speaker 1: was included in part of this book. Sky wrote, this
Speaker 1: included Boone, and then all of a sudden, everybody's eyes
Speaker 1: were on Boone and he was mythologized first. It's kind
Speaker 1: of funny because like the first treatments of him were
Speaker 1: overblown mythologizing. You know, um, guys like him and Davy
Speaker 1: Crockett had the same thing, like very people like like
Speaker 1: the lump these guys together with very different people born
Speaker 1: far apart um, you know, just very different. But they're
Speaker 1: both hunters, and they're both frontiersmen to some extent, but
Speaker 1: they both had this thing where they were living with
Speaker 1: people telling crazy stories about them that weren't even true.
Speaker 1: And it became later historians based on this infatuation with
Speaker 1: these guys, these like superhuman individuals, you know, uh, based
Speaker 1: on the historians later kind of like a type of
Speaker 1: book that would later be written about Boone was sorting
Speaker 1: out fact from fiction fiction the man from the legend,
Speaker 1: and that became a whole you know, sub genre of
Speaker 1: Boone literature is when people stopped and been like, Okay,
Speaker 1: obviously that's all both, but what was this guy like? Like?
Speaker 1: What really was he like? And then when you look
Speaker 1: at what he really was like, it's more interesting than
Speaker 1: the mythologized version. There have been around ten legitimate Boone
Speaker 1: biographies written over the last two hundred years, and they're
Speaker 1: still being written today. However, one stands out to many,
Speaker 1: including Steve Ronnella, as the Bible of Boon biographies, and
Speaker 1: it's simply titled Boone. It's written by Cornell University professor
Speaker 1: Robert Morgan. I was unsure if Mr Morgan was still
Speaker 1: professionally active. But I reached out to him and was
Speaker 1: delighted when he was handed back within a few hours,
Speaker 1: inviting me to his home in New York. Mr Morgan
Speaker 1: is in his mid seventies and has dedicated his life
Speaker 1: to writing on the Appalachian region in which he grew up.
Speaker 1: He's a New York Times bestselling author who calls himself
Speaker 1: a poet that writes some fiction. Poets are a unique lot.
Speaker 1: They're often introspective and unusually contemplated. Sometimes you meet someone
Speaker 1: with a spirit about them that seems to pervade the
Speaker 1: space they fell. Mr Morgan is such a man. They
Speaker 1: were applaid shirt and suspenders. His accomplished professional career hasn't
Speaker 1: overshadowed as rural roots. I was struck by his stoic
Speaker 1: yet joyful demeanor, his humility and confidence, and his exhaustive
Speaker 1: familiarity with Boone. It's an honor to introduce you to
Speaker 1: Mr Robert Morgan. I I've been fascinated with Boone really
Speaker 1: since I read your book, probably ten years ago. And
Speaker 1: I would have known Boon just from the typical way
Speaker 1: an American kid would have known Boone, you know, just
Speaker 1: from from the Disney movies, kind of odd places sometimes
Speaker 1: that his his name would come up, but really knew
Speaker 1: nothing about him. And then when I read your book,
Speaker 1: I was enthralled with who this guy really was. What
Speaker 1: was your interest in Boone originally? Well, when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, my dad would talk about him. He he
Speaker 1: just loved to talk about Daniel Boone and the Frontier
Speaker 1: and he said we were related to Boone through the Morgans.
Speaker 1: Boone's mother was a Morgan, and this turns out to
Speaker 1: be true, is a very distant relation. Boone and I
Speaker 1: have a common ancestor in Wales and North Wales. But
Speaker 1: I think the first thing to know about the Boon
Speaker 1: families is they were Quakers, and the Boone family in
Speaker 1: way down in in the southwestern England around Exeter, they
Speaker 1: were weavers and blacksmiths. So this had a lot of
Speaker 1: influence on Boone's character all the way through his life.
Speaker 1: And of course they talked pacifism, quietness. The mother from
Speaker 1: Wales was a musical person. It's love to sing, and
Speaker 1: this also was an influence. So this family taught him
Speaker 1: this very pacifistic way of life. And it's odd because
Speaker 1: he's associated with Indian fighting and hunting, and of course
Speaker 1: that's part of the myth that he killed lots of Indians.
Speaker 1: He may have killed only one in his life. The
Speaker 1: real Boon is somewhat different from the legend, and that
Speaker 1: was part of the fun of researching and writing the
Speaker 1: book to separate these two. The actual character Daniel Boone
Speaker 1: and all these things in the movies and the legends,
Speaker 1: they do overlap some. I think the legend is has
Speaker 1: its roots and Boon, but he's actually a very different person. Uh.
Speaker 1: The monument in in Frankfort, Kentucky has him killing panthers
Speaker 1: and fighting with the Indians and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And and but that's not the real Moon. He was
Speaker 1: very pacifistic, very calm person, spoke calmly in a very
Speaker 1: low voice, and the evidence suggests. And one other thing
Speaker 1: it's important to remember is that his father was kicked
Speaker 1: out of the Quakers and became a Freemason. So this
Speaker 1: new very important organization in the eighteenth century that taught
Speaker 1: the brotherhood of all men, of all people. I think
Speaker 1: he was influenced by that, and he later became a
Speaker 1: Mason himself. Very early. He loved the forest. The family
Speaker 1: recognized that that he he could hunt, he could fine animals,
Speaker 1: he could trap. He lived out in the woods with
Speaker 1: his mother in the summertime. She took care of the cows,
Speaker 1: and he wanted it already to live like an Indian
Speaker 1: then to spend time in the forest, and there were
Speaker 1: Indians around. It's clear that he had a lot of
Speaker 1: Native American influence even from an early age. That overlap
Speaker 1: of society in the Pennsylvania area. That would have been
Speaker 1: pretty common, Like he would have just been out wandering
Speaker 1: around and run into Native Americans that he could have befriended.
Speaker 1: That would not have been hostile, right his His parents
Speaker 1: hosted Indians. Indians become and stay there in their house
Speaker 1: from time to time. Pennsylvania and especially that area had
Speaker 1: a much better relationship with with indigenous people than most
Speaker 1: of the other states. The land was bought from them
Speaker 1: for one thing, and I think there's only one battle
Speaker 1: with Indians and all the history of that part of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Soon got to know them, he imitated them. He loved
Speaker 1: to be in the forest, and I say in my
Speaker 1: biography that he was sort of divided between the mother
Speaker 1: world of the forest where he went with his mother
Speaker 1: and the father world of town and professions and blacksmithing
Speaker 1: and business money, that sort of thing. But there's no
Speaker 1: doubt he was more drawn to the mother world of
Speaker 1: the forest all of his life. At the very beginning,
Speaker 1: he was drawn to live like an Indian. Then like
Speaker 1: an Indian. It was always there from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: This is Stephen Ronella. He became those this guy like
Speaker 1: brought home a lot of game and also people that
Speaker 1: would begin relationships with Indians that lived in his area.
Speaker 1: But when he lived there, as he became older and
Speaker 1: became being a man, he became and this is kind
Speaker 1: of like where his real fame started to be a
Speaker 1: boon became a long hunter. He had always hunted for
Speaker 1: the family, okay, meaning he would hunt bears, he would
Speaker 1: hunt deer. They like to eat bear meat, they like
Speaker 1: to use dear meat, they ate it, but mainly was
Speaker 1: like the primary asset. The primary good you got from
Speaker 1: deer was leather, and people on the frontier preferred bear
Speaker 1: meat over dear meat. I'm sure he had probably always
Speaker 1: been involved in some like commercial activities, but as he
Speaker 1: became a young man in North Carolina, he became a
Speaker 1: commercial hunter, not just hunting for the pot right, not
Speaker 1: hunting for the family, but he would go out hunt deer, hunt, bear, trap, beaver, trap,
Speaker 1: otter in order to sell goods. And that's really the
Speaker 1: occupation that's like the livelihood that kind of boons. Most
Speaker 1: of his life was really centered around and a lot
Speaker 1: of his movements as he moved ever westward. His big
Speaker 1: famous move was when he moved into the Kentucky territory,
Speaker 1: was hunting out looking for good hunting ground. It's important
Speaker 1: to remember that these English commoners didn't know how to
Speaker 1: hunt when they arrived in the New World and europe
Speaker 1: hunting was reserved for the nobility, so they relied heavily
Speaker 1: on Native American methods of hunting and cooking game. Once,
Speaker 1: when Daniel was young, he cooked a turkey over an
Speaker 1: open fire and used a curved piece of bark to
Speaker 1: capture the drippings to base the turkey. His mother asked
Speaker 1: him where he learned this, and he said, quote the Indians.
Speaker 1: In seventeen thirty six, a band of twenty five Delaware
Speaker 1: Indians stayed at the Boon Homestead. Daniel would have just
Speaker 1: been a toddler at the time, but the point is
Speaker 1: that their lives overlapped with Indians since he was a child. However,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't just be hunting that he learned from them.
Speaker 1: He adopted select parts of their worldview that he saw
Speaker 1: as superior to the European worldview. I want to read
Speaker 1: an excerpt for Mr Morgan's book on your European and
Speaker 1: Native American world views. Colonists were surprised that Indians showed
Speaker 1: so little interest in accumulating wealth. The two cultures generally
Speaker 1: misunderstood each other. Europeans often assumed that Indians had no
Speaker 1: religion because they saw no recognizable ritual or symbols of worship.
Speaker 1: The Indians had no word for animal or beast as
Speaker 1: distinct from human. To them, all living things had spirits
Speaker 1: or souls. Not only did the animals have spirits, but
Speaker 1: the guardian spirits of people usually appeared as animals. Owning
Speaker 1: land in the White Way made no more sense than
Speaker 1: owning a tract of air or sunlight. Indians were rich
Speaker 1: by desiring Little William Cronin rights. The English passion for
Speaker 1: accumulating wealth struck the Indians as insanity. For this and
Speaker 1: other reasons, Indian holy men often began to describe whites
Speaker 1: as created for a different purpose. Both Indians and Whites
Speaker 1: suspected each other of witchcraft. Indians were thought to worship
Speaker 1: the devil, and Indians, in turn, were convinced the English
Speaker 1: were in league with evil spirits. All too soon, the
Speaker 1: Indians concluded the invaders were stupid and laughed. But the
Speaker 1: whites who got to know Indians found them more honest
Speaker 1: and tolerant than most of their own race. It was
Speaker 1: said by some that Indians were more quote Christian than
Speaker 1: the English, showing greater charity towards the land and its inhabitants.
Speaker 1: Later in Boone's life, we'd see that he never values
Speaker 1: accumulation of wealth, and frankly wasn't very good at it.
Speaker 1: Back to Mr Morgan describing Boone as a young man,
Speaker 1: but this famous quote from the father who was told
Speaker 1: by a relative that Daniel Leely wasn't going to school.
Speaker 1: He was skipping school, and he hadn't learned to spell.
Speaker 1: And the father say, let the others learn to spell.
Speaker 1: Daniel is the hunter. He was a will bring us
Speaker 1: the meat. So while he was growing up there he
Speaker 1: he was a prankster. Also, he was always playing tricks
Speaker 1: on people. He was a fun person. That's why he
Speaker 1: was so popular. He had lots of jokes, he could
Speaker 1: keep people laughing. He had a dynamic person charismatic personality.
Speaker 1: He was a leader from the very beginning. He was
Speaker 1: the kind of person who was a magnet. If he
Speaker 1: was in the room, everybody would be drawn to him.
Speaker 1: He had that leadership ability. So from the very beginning
Speaker 1: he was divided between that kind of leadership and the
Speaker 1: white world and this solitary world of the forest, and
Speaker 1: that also was with him from the very beginning to
Speaker 1: the end of his life. This really begin to show
Speaker 1: when they moved to North Carolina to the Adkin Valley
Speaker 1: about seventeen fifty or fifty one, because that was even wilder,
Speaker 1: and he began to live in the forest, go for
Speaker 1: longer hunts, go out trapping, and he became known. And
Speaker 1: he would have been a teenager at that time when
Speaker 1: he moved to the Yadkin in North Carolina, he would
Speaker 1: have been sixteen or seventeen, so just the prime budding
Speaker 1: age for a young man and outdoorsman to really start
Speaker 1: to so was Oates. He soon became well known as
Speaker 1: a marksman and a hunter and the people. Some people
Speaker 1: were jealous of him, but he was so skillful as
Speaker 1: a tracker, as a hunter even then, even even at
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen or eighteen, that his legend began
Speaker 1: to grow. This is a good place to give a
Speaker 1: high level review of Boone's early life. He was born
Speaker 1: on October sevent thirty four, near Reading, Pennsylvania. He was
Speaker 1: the first generation American. His parents had come over from
Speaker 1: England a few years prior. We've got to remember this
Speaker 1: was before the Revolutionary War, so they weren't really Americans yet.
Speaker 1: His dad's squire got in squabbles with the Quaker Church
Speaker 1: and they left Pennsylvania and moved into the wild country
Speaker 1: of the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, which at the
Speaker 1: time would have been the boundaries of European settlement in
Speaker 1: the colonies. It was here that Daniel started to make
Speaker 1: a name for himself as a hunter and explorer. I
Speaker 1: want to read another short excerpt from Mr Morgan's book.
Speaker 1: From the time he was a boy, Boone had a
Speaker 1: flair for the dramatic. He seemed to know instinctively how
Speaker 1: to make himself noticed remembered. As a young man, he
Speaker 1: began to create for himself the role of Daniel Boone
Speaker 1: and he spent much of his life perfecting that role.
Speaker 1: Despite his later protestation that he was quote but a
Speaker 1: common man, he seemed to wear from his early youth
Speaker 1: that he was not just playing himself, but a type
Speaker 1: what Emerson would later call a representative man. Boone would
Speaker 1: embody in his actions and attitude the aspirations and character
Speaker 1: of the whole era. At least once, Daniel became so
Speaker 1: distracted by his own explorations that he forgot the hours
Speaker 1: of the day, his home, the fact that he was
Speaker 1: supposed to help his mother before it got dark. Sarah
Speaker 1: had to round up the kettle herself and do the milking,
Speaker 1: strain the milk and put it in the springhouse. To
Speaker 1: stay cool, calm and prayerful, she worked at churning butter
Speaker 1: from the clavered milk. But when Daniel did not come
Speaker 1: home by the next morning and still had not returned
Speaker 1: by noon, she had no choice but to walk five
Speaker 1: miles back to town to get help. A search party
Speaker 1: was formed and they combed over the Olie Hills all
Speaker 1: the way to the never Seek Mountain range west of
Speaker 1: the Monocacy Valley. They found no sign of Daniel that afternoon,
Speaker 1: but starting out. Early the next morning, they traveled further
Speaker 1: in spotted a column of smoke. Later in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: they reached the source of the smoke and found Daniel
Speaker 1: sitting on a bear skin and roasting fresh bear meat
Speaker 1: over the fire. When asked if he was lost, he
Speaker 1: said no, he had known where he was all along
Speaker 1: on the south shoulder of the hill, nine miles from
Speaker 1: the pasture. The search party accused him of scaring his
Speaker 1: mother and forcing them all to waste time looking for him,
Speaker 1: but he calmly answered he had started tracking the bear
Speaker 1: and didn't want to lose it, and besides, here was
Speaker 1: fresh meat for everybody. Whether the story is true or
Speaker 1: just one of the legends that grew around Boon later
Speaker 1: in life, it reveals as much about the way he
Speaker 1: was perceived and remembered as it does about his character.
Speaker 1: People later recalled that even from his boyhood, there was
Speaker 1: a sense that Daniel had been singled out. The story
Speaker 1: of the search party echoes the story in Luke two
Speaker 1: forty nine of the twelve year old Jesus lost from
Speaker 1: Marion Joseph. The boys finally found in the temple conversing
Speaker 1: with the elders. When he is questioned and scolded, he
Speaker 1: explains that he had quote been about his father's business.
Speaker 1: The sense of the story is that Boone had already
Speaker 1: found his calling and destiny. It is clear he also
Speaker 1: knew how to make a memorable impression. For Boone, there
Speaker 1: was something erotic about the woods, a playground, a place
Speaker 1: of sometimes dangerous pleasure, and some would later suggest that
Speaker 1: with his lifelong passion for hunting, there was a part
Speaker 1: of Boon that never quite grew up. Back to Mr Morgan,
Speaker 1: as he describes a big event in young Daniel's life,
Speaker 1: then this big event in his life when he was
Speaker 1: about twenty one. He was born in seventeen thirty four
Speaker 1: and the French and Indian War started. So it's seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty five and he goes with the militia up into
Speaker 1: Virginia and John's George Washington's forces that are going to
Speaker 1: join the British led by General Braddock, and everybody knows
Speaker 1: the story of Braddock's defeat. They moved towards the Fort
Speaker 1: Duquesne and uh they were ambushed by the French and
Speaker 1: the Indians, and a lot were killed. And Boone was
Speaker 1: not a soldier. He was a teamster, and blacksmith teamster,
Speaker 1: meaning he he drove wagons, drove wagons, but around the campfires.
Speaker 1: He had met a man called Finlay, and Finlay had
Speaker 1: told him about his trip into Kentucky. He had going
Speaker 1: down the Ohio River as a peddler, he was a businessman,
Speaker 1: going all the way to the falls where was now Louisville.
Speaker 1: That he had traded with the Shawnees at the village
Speaker 1: of Eski Parka Thiki, which is where Winchester, Kentucky is now,
Speaker 1: and he had seen the bluegrass. So he told these
Speaker 1: stories of this amazing place, so beautiful, buffalo elk, dear beavers,
Speaker 1: and it didn't seem to be inhabited by Indians. There
Speaker 1: was at one village of escu Parka Thiki, and Boon
Speaker 1: determined them that someday he was going to the Bluegrass.
Speaker 1: So this is when he was in his early twenties,
Speaker 1: is when he met Finley right who told him about this.
Speaker 1: And this would have been so this would have been
Speaker 1: over the Appalachian Range, which at the time was this
Speaker 1: impenetrable barrier. It's it's really bizarre to think about it
Speaker 1: now because we have highway systems and do we have
Speaker 1: this modern transportation. It's almost like you have to reel
Speaker 1: yourself deeply back into history and a race. How you
Speaker 1: con driving a car, get an airplane. I mean, these
Speaker 1: people were confined massively by transportation, so Kentucky would have
Speaker 1: been like another planet. It was considered unreasonable for several reasons.
Speaker 1: The Indians it's dangerous to go there, had to climb
Speaker 1: over the mountains Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies to get there,
Speaker 1: and the Cumberlands. But they were also forbidden to go
Speaker 1: there after the French and Indian War, that that was
Speaker 1: to be divided up for the officers and ordinary people
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to go. Now, some white explorers had gone there,
Speaker 1: and uh Dr Thomas Walker I believe had actually found
Speaker 1: what we call Cumberland Gap, and he's the one who
Speaker 1: named it. We think John Finley was twenty years older
Speaker 1: than Boone and told Dan some marvelous tales of going
Speaker 1: into Kentucky. Findley would have been the man in Boone's
Speaker 1: life who inadvertently steered him into what many would say
Speaker 1: was his calling death Deny. He must have noted that
Speaker 1: young Daniel was highly interested in his stories of Kentucky,
Speaker 1: because ten years later he'd go visit Boon at his
Speaker 1: house and proposed a wild plan, but Finlay showed up
Speaker 1: as a traitor and he had a little money. They
Speaker 1: planned this trip. They got together with several people in
Speaker 1: the spring of seventeen sixty nine and left on first
Speaker 1: of May. Now let's see, now Daniel would have been
Speaker 1: by this time in his thirties. He would have been
Speaker 1: so this would have been ten years after he originally
Speaker 1: heard about it from Finlay. He wasn't able to to
Speaker 1: outfit a group to go, and he had other things
Speaker 1: on his mind. When he got back from Braddock's defeat
Speaker 1: that trip, he was in love with this beautiful girl,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Brian and they were married, uh not too long after.
Speaker 1: And Boon had a family soon and you know how
Speaker 1: to find arm and he had to support them by
Speaker 1: by working as a teamster. And and U primarily as
Speaker 1: a trapper, hunting deer. In the summertime that he hunted
Speaker 1: deer for the hides because the hide was in its
Speaker 1: best condition and a hide was worth a Spanish dollar,
Speaker 1: so a hide became a buck. Right in wintertime, he
Speaker 1: primarily trapped for fur because that's when it was in
Speaker 1: its prime, so That's what he was doing most of
Speaker 1: the time, right. He also went off on a trip
Speaker 1: to Florida, of all things, Yeah, and actually bought him
Speaker 1: a bit of of land down there, but Rebecca refused
Speaker 1: to go. And so that was in seventeen sixty five
Speaker 1: that he went to Florida. He didn't he owned land
Speaker 1: near Pensacola. He did. He bought some land and came back,
Speaker 1: arrived on Christmas to take his family there, and Rebecca
Speaker 1: just put her foot down she would not go. I
Speaker 1: have in my notes here Boon was like a typical
Speaker 1: timeshare Florida owner who bought his land and never went back.
Speaker 1: And during during this time, like when you try to
Speaker 1: understand the motivations for people to do these kind of things,
Speaker 1: this was a time of exploration of geographic exploration in
Speaker 1: North America. I mean it was like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say trendy, but it was I guess in a
Speaker 1: sense explorers. There was a lot of financial gain to
Speaker 1: be made from well from long hunters who could go
Speaker 1: and make a good living long hunting into new territory.
Speaker 1: But it was just a different time, in a different mentality.
Speaker 1: Who was said that Boone was fiddle footed that he
Speaker 1: just couldn't stay still. But to think of it, I mean,
Speaker 1: here was this continent and that much of it had
Speaker 1: not been explored. Jefferson was very interested in exploring it,
Speaker 1: for instance, But I think of people coming from Europe,
Speaker 1: mostly poor people who never had to hunt it. Hunting
Speaker 1: was for the upper classes, even firearms or for the
Speaker 1: upper classes. And they arrived in North America and it's
Speaker 1: this vast wilderness, animals to hunt to trap, and you
Speaker 1: get a gun and you could go anywhere you wanted.
Speaker 1: You could, you could explore that. And for the Scotch
Speaker 1: Irish it really was like a miracle that they had
Speaker 1: been moved from Scotland to Ireland and then the land
Speaker 1: had been taken away from them in Ireland. So you
Speaker 1: arrive here and basically all you have to do is
Speaker 1: find a patch somewhere and and make sure the Indians
Speaker 1: are cleared out, and you could grow things, you could hunt,
Speaker 1: claim a new life. So it was a very exciting
Speaker 1: time and exploring was one of the main things they did.
Speaker 1: But particularly Boon's time over the mountains. I say in
Speaker 1: the biography that Kentucky was the key because once you
Speaker 1: could get to Kentucky, that, and you could go further
Speaker 1: down the Ohio over into Ohio over into what became Indiana, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and beyond that the Mississippi Valley, and beyond that the
Speaker 1: Missouri Valley and these mountains. You heard of the snow
Speaker 1: Cap and uh, that was really thrilling. People were and
Speaker 1: the women, not just the men, the women wanted to
Speaker 1: go there too. It was it was a very exciting time.
Speaker 1: So we've covered about thirty years of Daniel's life. He
Speaker 1: was a backwoods kid, influenced by Quaker and Native American ideology.
Speaker 1: By the time he was in his teens, he was
Speaker 1: an accomplished hunter. When he was twenty one, he served
Speaker 1: under the George Washington, like the father of our country,
Speaker 1: George Washington, in the French and Indian War. In seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty six, he married the beautiful, black haired and black
Speaker 1: eyed Rebecca Brian and they started on their way towards
Speaker 1: having ten children. And if we're telling our story chronologically,
Speaker 1: Dan is now thirty three years old. He's a common backwoodsman,
Speaker 1: and it's now seventeen sixty seven. Now Mr Morgan will
Speaker 1: get back to Daniel and John Finlay's first trip into Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting for the boon Nerds out there
Speaker 1: that Dan actually had been into Kentucky for a short
Speaker 1: time on another trip, but thought he was in Virginia.
Speaker 1: He later would realize he had dipped into Kentucky and
Speaker 1: was unimpressed with what he'd seen. Okay, they they got together.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of disagreement about this, but somebody funded
Speaker 1: this finlay may have have contributed to it. But the
Speaker 1: job was how do you get there? You could get
Speaker 1: there by going down the Ohio, but how did you
Speaker 1: get to Kentucky as they called it. Well, they figured
Speaker 1: out that the Indians for thousands of years have been
Speaker 1: going there on the warriors Path, and if they could
Speaker 1: find the warriors Path, they could follow it out of it,
Speaker 1: take them through the gap into Kentucky. And this is
Speaker 1: this is something they would have just heard through interactions
Speaker 1: with Native Americans. They would they would have heard them
Speaker 1: say there's this, there's a gap in the mountains. They would.
Speaker 1: I mean there was enough contact, particularly Boone. I mean
Speaker 1: he'd gotten to know a lot of Cherokees, he had
Speaker 1: been cheated by them. He possibly had a Cherokee wife.
Speaker 1: We don't know that but some people said he did.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they also say that that Cherokee
Speaker 1: wife was African American an escaped slave, because I have
Speaker 1: actually met African Americans who claimed to be descended from Daniel. Really,
Speaker 1: I have what what is your what is your personal feeling?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's true? I think it's quite possible. Really,
Speaker 1: what about his Quaker upbringing and being like devoted to
Speaker 1: his wife? Like, how in contrasting that with character we
Speaker 1: see in other parts of his life, would that just
Speaker 1: have been I don't know, how would you explain? I
Speaker 1: think there are many facets character and many compartments in
Speaker 1: his mind. He had this amazing ability to blend in
Speaker 1: with people and groups ever he was, and this saved
Speaker 1: him many times. That he he understood other people. He
Speaker 1: had a mind like Shakespeare. I mean, who could get
Speaker 1: into the mind very different people and to be sympathetic
Speaker 1: with them. I don't know that he had a Cherokee wife,
Speaker 1: but I think it's possible. And uh, you know, if
Speaker 1: you were with an Indian group, you had to be
Speaker 1: sleeping with one woman or they would think you were
Speaker 1: a very bad it was I read it was inhospitable
Speaker 1: if you were a guest in some of these tribes.
Speaker 1: They would if you would not do that, it would
Speaker 1: be you you thought you were better, or you know,
Speaker 1: you were not one of them. So I just say
Speaker 1: it's possible. Well, I guess the way he fit in
Speaker 1: so well with the Native Americans, and we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about him being kidnapped by the shine and that, but
Speaker 1: the fact that he was able to blend in so well,
Speaker 1: I can see how that would make sense. That he
Speaker 1: might have just because to be able to fit in
Speaker 1: so well, it may have been a necessity, so he
Speaker 1: would have known about this gap. They went north from
Speaker 1: the Atkin to what was called Wolf Hills, which we
Speaker 1: call Abingdon, Virginia, and there they found the trail that
Speaker 1: Boone was good enough to read the sign the tracks,
Speaker 1: so they followed it to the southwest over Powell's River
Speaker 1: and Powell's Mountain, and they came to the Cumberland Mountains.
Speaker 1: And this is a really dramatic place. You can go
Speaker 1: there and these mountains have cliffs on them, and there's
Speaker 1: the most forbidding things. It really is. It's like it's threatening,
Speaker 1: these high cliffs, just mile after mile after mile and
Speaker 1: keep going and then suddenly you see this gap between them,
Speaker 1: like a gun side, and there it is. They found
Speaker 1: it what Dr. Thomas Walker called Cumberland Gap. And you
Speaker 1: cross that and there's a river. You got to cross
Speaker 1: the Cumberland River. You go through another gap and then
Speaker 1: you reached the Knob Country. And the famous paintings are
Speaker 1: a boon on top of the hill seeing into the
Speaker 1: blue grass Kentucky, and this is called the Pizga Vision.
Speaker 1: Moses on Pizga he could look into the Promised Land.
Speaker 1: But Boone could go into the promised land. Moses couldn't
Speaker 1: go right right. So you have this amazing idol of
Speaker 1: the boon in his group here for the deer, buffalo
Speaker 1: and elk beaver. Boone is now into Kentucky and what
Speaker 1: happened there will shape the rest of his life and
Speaker 1: America's what's interesting is that it's in the next ten
Speaker 1: years that most of what he's famous for, the things
Speaker 1: that defined his life, will happen. Mr Morgan had something
Speaker 1: to say about this to this day. We put this
Speaker 1: quote in in a frame in our house, and we
Speaker 1: did it when we were about thirty years old, so
Speaker 1: this would have been about ten years ago. But you said,
Speaker 1: in his mid thirties. A man either reaches out towards
Speaker 1: risk and glory or stays within the routines of the
Speaker 1: expected and ordinary. It is the age when men leave
Speaker 1: safe homes and jobs and go on voyages and odyssees
Speaker 1: and perform transforming sacrifices. It's the age when Walt Whitman
Speaker 1: wrote Leaves of Grass and Columbus started planning his voyage
Speaker 1: to the Indies. It's an age at which visionaries become profits,
Speaker 1: or explorers or inventors, or make fools of themselves trying.
Speaker 1: So I would have read this book when I was
Speaker 1: about thirty years old, and it just feels so true.
Speaker 1: This this window of time in life is so important.
Speaker 1: And you went on to give these examples of work
Speaker 1: that these artists and poets and explorers did when they
Speaker 1: were in their thirties, and you made the point that
Speaker 1: much of Boone's life was defined by this ten year
Speaker 1: period basically from seventeen seventy to about seventeen eighty. The
Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap in Kentucky and all these things things he's
Speaker 1: famous for. Yeah, we've done in that time. Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: it's uh. I got the idea from the study of
Speaker 1: the Romantic poets words Worth in Coleridge lived much longer,
Speaker 1: but almost everything that we associate with them has done
Speaker 1: in that in the ten years and more. Equipment is
Speaker 1: the perfect example that Whitman wrote all of these great poems,
Speaker 1: it's about in that period, it's a little bit more
Speaker 1: about eleven years, and devoted the rest of his life
Speaker 1: to writing prose. Basically write some poems. Uh, but I
Speaker 1: was also thinking of physicists and mathematicians, and yeah that
Speaker 1: they do their great work relatively early. Mathematics actions even earlier,
Speaker 1: but physicist and other scientists use it a little bit later. Novelist. Also,
Speaker 1: novelists usually get going about the age of thirty and
Speaker 1: at the age of forty early forties, like none most
Speaker 1: of the great work a few exceptions, but on this
Speaker 1: first episode we've basically covered the first thirty five years
Speaker 1: of Daniel's life up to him traversing the Cumberland Gap
Speaker 1: and going into Kentucky. This is just the beginning of
Speaker 1: the famed part of his life. And remember at this
Speaker 1: point no one knew his name. Daniel would live to
Speaker 1: be eighties six years old. In the remaining fifty one
Speaker 1: years of his life are more wild than the first.
Speaker 1: The man had a drive and a deep love of
Speaker 1: life that kept him moving. But I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: understand why this story matters. Understanding national archetypes helps us
Speaker 1: see the framework of our thinking, what we value and
Speaker 1: the things that seek to define us. A deeper look
Speaker 1: into national identity, and an awareness of this gives us
Speaker 1: the right to evaluate the good and the not so good.
Speaker 1: In the coming episodes will explore the rest of Boone's life,
Speaker 1: including the heroic rescue of his daughter from Indians and
Speaker 1: the lore of an illegitimate daughter, the death of his son,
Speaker 1: and fortunes won and lost. Will also explore the historical
Speaker 1: revision of Boone and the controversy of us celebrating him.
Speaker 1: It's improbable to think that after listening to a few
Speaker 1: podcasts you could understand the fullness of who Boon was,
Speaker 1: and it's my hope that you might explore Boone yourself. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I hope that his character, both positive and negative, will
Speaker 1: make us more relevant today and continuing to define American
Speaker 1: identity in I Oh My. Our exploration of Boone is
Speaker 1: an appeal to the masses to remember where we came from,
Speaker 1: and it's a cry to not forget the American backwoodsman,
Speaker 1: because we're still here and we deserve a lasting place
Speaker 1: at the American table because it's in our d n A. Folks,
Speaker 1: I cannot thank you enough for listening to the Beargrease podcast.
Speaker 1: We're pouring out everything we've got into these and thank
Speaker 1: you for the iTunes reviews, and I asked those of
Speaker 1: you who haven't to give us a review on iTunes
Speaker 1: and share this podcast with your buddies. Thanks A ton