1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:08,760
Speaker 1: M. Daniel Boone and his actions and his life, real

2
00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:14,440
Speaker 1: or mythical, embodied what the American people wanted to see

3
00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:18,640
Speaker 1: happen in the wilderness. They wanted to see man in

4
00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:23,360
Speaker 1: the wilderness thriving and dominating and conquering, because that's a

5
00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:26,640
Speaker 1: good story. Because that's a good story. And so whether

6
00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:30,000
Speaker 1: it happened or not, we wrote it deep down because

7
00:00:30,040 --> 00:00:34,640
Speaker 1: we wanted to read it. On this third and final

8
00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:38,200
Speaker 1: episode of the Daniel Boone series on The Burglaries podcast,

9
00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:41,600
Speaker 1: We're gonna cover Boone's life from thirty five years of

10
00:00:41,680 --> 00:00:44,520
Speaker 1: age to the grave, or at least where we think

11
00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:48,320
Speaker 1: it's grave is. Will explore Boone's adoption as a Shawnee,

12
00:00:48,520 --> 00:00:52,880
Speaker 1: the heroic rescue of his daughter, rumors of his wife's unfaithfulness,

13
00:00:52,960 --> 00:00:55,840
Speaker 1: him killing a hundred and fifty five bears in one season,

14
00:00:56,040 --> 00:01:00,480
Speaker 1: his financial failures, and his character. We're in s of

15
00:01:00,520 --> 00:01:04,920
Speaker 1: who Boon was, his significance in American culture, and perhaps

16
00:01:05,240 --> 00:01:10,039
Speaker 1: you'll find his fingerprints on your life. Heroes are conduits

17
00:01:10,040 --> 00:01:14,280
Speaker 1: of value systems, and will evaluate the one deposited by

18
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:18,760
Speaker 1: the old backwoodsman. Betrail has been steep and thick, but

19
00:01:18,880 --> 00:01:23,120
Speaker 1: we're about to ascend to the hilltop and see Boone's

20
00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:27,200
Speaker 1: grand vista. You're not gonna want to miss this one.

21
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:30,759
Speaker 1: So Boone's story, it's really the story of this country,

22
00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:43,080
Speaker 1: good and bad. My name is Clay Nukelem and this

23
00:01:43,120 --> 00:01:47,199
Speaker 1: is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten

24
00:01:47,440 --> 00:01:51,640
Speaker 1: but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where

25
00:01:51,720 --> 00:01:55,480
Speaker 1: we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives

26
00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:59,760
Speaker 1: close to the land. Presented by f h F gear,

27
00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:05,000
Speaker 1: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed

28
00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:38,320
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the places we explore. On

29
00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:41,640
Speaker 1: Part one of our series on Daniel Boone, we highlighted

30
00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:45,160
Speaker 1: the foundations of his early life from birth to when

31
00:02:45,160 --> 00:02:48,280
Speaker 1: he was thirty five years old, and traversed the Cumberland Gap.

32
00:02:48,720 --> 00:02:52,760
Speaker 1: We explored the cultural mechanisms in which national heroes and

33
00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:56,520
Speaker 1: their identity are created through archetypes. On Part two, we

34
00:02:56,680 --> 00:03:00,520
Speaker 1: camped out in the dad Gum Cumberland Gap and knuck key.

35
00:03:00,600 --> 00:03:03,240
Speaker 1: The Gap must have been blushing by the time we

36
00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:07,440
Speaker 1: were done. Dan's passage through it was key in his life,

37
00:03:07,480 --> 00:03:11,320
Speaker 1: his legend in the Young Life of America. Part three,

38
00:03:11,680 --> 00:03:15,679
Speaker 1: the final in our series, maybe my favorite of them all,

39
00:03:15,919 --> 00:03:17,880
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a big swing at the rest of

40
00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:21,720
Speaker 1: the Boone's life, all the way to the grave. There's

41
00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:24,640
Speaker 1: no way we can do justice to all the stories,

42
00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:29,800
Speaker 1: the nuance. But we're in search of understanding this woodsman's

43
00:03:29,880 --> 00:03:38,240
Speaker 1: significance what it means to American identity today. On this

44
00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:41,640
Speaker 1: third episode, I grow weary of telling you all the

45
00:03:41,720 --> 00:03:47,600
Speaker 1: cool things about Steve Runella. He's played a very significant

46
00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:51,040
Speaker 1: role in defining the modern American hunter through his books,

47
00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:55,160
Speaker 1: podcast and the academic rigor he's brought into the space

48
00:03:55,400 --> 00:04:01,480
Speaker 1: of the American hunter. Here's Steve, it's Dave Ranella. Talk

49
00:04:01,520 --> 00:04:05,240
Speaker 1: to me about the significance of Kentucky to to Boon

50
00:04:05,640 --> 00:04:10,080
Speaker 1: number one, but also to the American frontier. When we

51
00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:13,960
Speaker 1: talk about going into Kentucky. When these guys would discuss it,

52
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:17,159
Speaker 1: they were more particularly talking about a region of Kentucky.

53
00:04:17,400 --> 00:04:20,000
Speaker 1: If you came down through the Cumberland Gap and entered Kentucky.

54
00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:22,200
Speaker 1: They were traveling quite a ways beyond that, because they

55
00:04:22,240 --> 00:04:24,359
Speaker 1: were going out to the to the hills, to the

56
00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:26,680
Speaker 1: grass the grasslands. Do you want to get an idea

57
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:29,520
Speaker 1: what this might look like. There are people, there are

58
00:04:29,560 --> 00:04:35,680
Speaker 1: records from Boone and other frontiersman about massive herds of

59
00:04:36,120 --> 00:04:41,640
Speaker 1: buffalo out on the grasslands of Kentucky. There are descriptions

60
00:04:41,640 --> 00:04:45,799
Speaker 1: of it as where where there aren't trees around, herds

61
00:04:45,839 --> 00:04:49,760
Speaker 1: of elk, estimations of maybe a thousand buffalo in a

62
00:04:49,839 --> 00:04:53,920
Speaker 1: group deer to the point where long hunters could go

63
00:04:54,040 --> 00:04:58,279
Speaker 1: there and shoot literally hundreds of deer. And it was

64
00:04:58,320 --> 00:05:02,839
Speaker 1: fertile soil you could plant it, so they needed certain

65
00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:05,480
Speaker 1: things that they could get off the land in order

66
00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:08,440
Speaker 1: to pack up your family on pack horses or a

67
00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:12,240
Speaker 1: small wagon and go way out and established like a

68
00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:19,840
Speaker 1: new frontier settlement. And that had all of that game, grasslands, water,

69
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:26,120
Speaker 1: tillable soil, and just space where that every family going,

70
00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:29,080
Speaker 1: every member of every family going is picturing that they're

71
00:05:29,080 --> 00:05:32,160
Speaker 1: going to get all the land they need, and then

72
00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:36,040
Speaker 1: their kids will have all the land they need. That's

73
00:05:36,080 --> 00:05:43,560
Speaker 1: the promise that Kentucky held out to the frontiersman who

74
00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:45,720
Speaker 1: are going there. It was a way to make a

75
00:05:45,760 --> 00:05:52,039
Speaker 1: shift from being long hunters who lived off the spoils,

76
00:05:51,839 --> 00:05:57,440
Speaker 1: the sort of immediate spoils of the field, to become landowners,

77
00:05:57,920 --> 00:06:01,760
Speaker 1: to become like business people. Right, that was your place

78
00:06:01,839 --> 00:06:04,880
Speaker 1: to go and get They wouldn't use this term at all,

79
00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:08,400
Speaker 1: but it was your place to go get the American dream,

80
00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:11,599
Speaker 1: which that was before the American dream existed. When I

81
00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:14,279
Speaker 1: say that they wouldn't have used that term is at

82
00:06:14,360 --> 00:06:17,960
Speaker 1: that time they wouldn't really have. They wouldn't really they

83
00:06:18,440 --> 00:06:21,840
Speaker 1: thought of themselves as Americans. It's interesting that there was

84
00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:24,960
Speaker 1: a confused even at the time the Revolutionary War among

85
00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:27,839
Speaker 1: Boone and other long hunters and frontiers and he was with.

86
00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:29,880
Speaker 1: There was a bit of confusion about what side of

87
00:06:29,880 --> 00:06:32,920
Speaker 1: that you ought to fall on. Initially, they lived so

88
00:06:32,960 --> 00:06:35,800
Speaker 1: far removed from like the the rule of the crown,

89
00:06:35,960 --> 00:06:39,440
Speaker 1: that they weren't struggling from like that level of oppression there.

90
00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:42,960
Speaker 1: They didn't immediately jump onto like this patriotic notion of

91
00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:49,040
Speaker 1: being Americans. The idea that Boone was a dedicated American

92
00:06:49,120 --> 00:06:52,400
Speaker 1: patriot is a myth. And we'll learn that he did

93
00:06:52,520 --> 00:06:54,560
Speaker 1: fight for our country on the western front of the

94
00:06:54,560 --> 00:06:58,560
Speaker 1: American Revolution. But the real Boon wasn't sporting eagles in

95
00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:02,760
Speaker 1: American flag tato news. America wasn't even a country until

96
00:07:02,800 --> 00:07:05,279
Speaker 1: he was in his forties, and he spent the last

97
00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:07,840
Speaker 1: years of his life outside of the United States and

98
00:07:07,880 --> 00:07:11,480
Speaker 1: the Missouri territory owned by the Spanish. This is the

99
00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:14,520
Speaker 1: place where we'll get onto the same page about Boone's

100
00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:18,400
Speaker 1: exploits in Kentucky. His first attempt to settle in Kentucky

101
00:07:18,480 --> 00:07:22,280
Speaker 1: was in seventeen seventy three, two years after he returned

102
00:07:22,280 --> 00:07:25,480
Speaker 1: home from his first long hunt there, but the mission

103
00:07:25,840 --> 00:07:29,080
Speaker 1: was abandoned when his son James and several others were

104
00:07:29,160 --> 00:07:34,160
Speaker 1: killed by Indians. Two years after that, in seventeen seventy five, Dan,

105
00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:37,040
Speaker 1: along with thirty other men, cut a trail through the

106
00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:41,320
Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap and trimmed out the longer wilderness road. And

107
00:07:41,320 --> 00:07:44,280
Speaker 1: he brought a bunch of folks with him, including Rebecca

108
00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:47,760
Speaker 1: and the kids. They make it into Kentucky and build

109
00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:51,440
Speaker 1: a fort called Boonsboro. This is where we'll pick up

110
00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:55,440
Speaker 1: with two very important events, the rescue of Jemima and

111
00:07:55,480 --> 00:07:59,280
Speaker 1: the siege of Boonsboro by the Shawnees. We'll start with

112
00:07:59,360 --> 00:08:03,760
Speaker 1: Jemima's story, but first you need to understand the controversy

113
00:08:03,800 --> 00:08:08,360
Speaker 1: around her conception. Here's Steve and I talking about Boone's

114
00:08:08,520 --> 00:08:16,280
Speaker 1: quote favorite daughter. To think about how significant the Cumberland

115
00:08:16,320 --> 00:08:19,080
Speaker 1: Gap was to travel through it. When he goes through,

116
00:08:19,560 --> 00:08:22,040
Speaker 1: he's gone two years it's not like you're bopping in

117
00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:24,760
Speaker 1: and out like it's a commitment. He goes there and

118
00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:26,880
Speaker 1: he's gone two years. We'll just imagine something like that

119
00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:29,320
Speaker 1: from a business perspective. You just like walk away from

120
00:08:29,360 --> 00:08:31,600
Speaker 1: your life for two years and come back and then

121
00:08:31,680 --> 00:08:33,640
Speaker 1: later try to sort out your affairs. I mean, you

122
00:08:33,679 --> 00:08:36,560
Speaker 1: just miss a lot. When historians line it all up,

123
00:08:36,720 --> 00:08:39,320
Speaker 1: they can't even make sense of the birth you know,

124
00:08:39,360 --> 00:08:42,360
Speaker 1: the birth dates of his children. There were somewhere they're

125
00:08:42,360 --> 00:08:45,000
Speaker 1: like Holmett, but how could that be? He had been

126
00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:47,680
Speaker 1: gone a year but then raise the kid as his oma.

127
00:08:47,800 --> 00:08:50,640
Speaker 1: Just didn't make any sense when ye stuff that was his,

128
00:08:50,800 --> 00:08:55,240
Speaker 1: like his daughter Jemima. He had been gone two years

129
00:08:56,040 --> 00:08:58,440
Speaker 1: and he came back. And there's lots of versions of

130
00:08:58,480 --> 00:09:01,520
Speaker 1: this story. The most decent book I read on Boone

131
00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:05,200
Speaker 1: told this story as if it were true. Robert Morgan

132
00:09:05,320 --> 00:09:07,559
Speaker 1: tells the story as if there's quite a bit of

133
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:10,840
Speaker 1: speculation inside of it. But Boone came back from a

134
00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:14,559
Speaker 1: two year jaunt and his wife had a newborn child

135
00:09:14,559 --> 00:09:16,679
Speaker 1: in her hand, and she was nursing a newborn child.

136
00:09:16,760 --> 00:09:20,120
Speaker 1: He's been gone for two years to that, and it

137
00:09:20,240 --> 00:09:24,120
Speaker 1: was found out that the father of the child was

138
00:09:24,200 --> 00:09:27,719
Speaker 1: his brother and it was you know. And this is

139
00:09:27,760 --> 00:09:30,959
Speaker 1: where Boone gets becomes even more famous because he said, well,

140
00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:33,000
Speaker 1: at least we kept it in the family, and he

141
00:09:33,520 --> 00:09:35,880
Speaker 1: raised the kid, and that that is for certain. I

142
00:09:35,880 --> 00:09:38,240
Speaker 1: mean he raised the kid as his own. Jemoma was

143
00:09:38,280 --> 00:09:42,240
Speaker 1: one of his daughters that later went to an incredible

144
00:09:42,280 --> 00:09:48,320
Speaker 1: bit of heroism to savor life. Yeah, now that we

145
00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:51,920
Speaker 1: know the drama around Jemoma, I couldn't tell Boone's story

146
00:09:51,960 --> 00:09:56,600
Speaker 1: without including her kidnapping and Boone's rescue mission. We watch

147
00:09:56,679 --> 00:09:59,640
Speaker 1: a lot of fake movies making stuff like this seemed normal,

148
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:03,559
Speaker 1: but this is real and epitomizes why we're still talking

149
00:10:03,640 --> 00:10:08,720
Speaker 1: about d Boone. What a dad gum stud. This is

150
00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:12,640
Speaker 1: the account as told by Nathan Boone, Boone's youngest son,

151
00:10:12,800 --> 00:10:17,280
Speaker 1: who was interviewed by Lyman Draper. Draper stayed with Nathan

152
00:10:17,520 --> 00:10:21,720
Speaker 1: and Olive Boone in October and November of eighteen fifty one.

153
00:10:22,240 --> 00:10:26,240
Speaker 1: Draper's interview with Nathan is our best resource about Boone's

154
00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:29,120
Speaker 1: life if you hadn't figured it out already. I love

155
00:10:29,200 --> 00:10:32,199
Speaker 1: Lyman Draper. He's kind of the nerdy hero of our

156
00:10:32,240 --> 00:10:37,040
Speaker 1: connection to Boone's life. Hashtag draper. Here's Nathan talking about

157
00:10:37,160 --> 00:10:44,720
Speaker 1: his father and sister. The girls went pleasuring in a

158
00:10:44,800 --> 00:10:47,760
Speaker 1: canoe on Sunday. One of the callaway girls wanted to

159
00:10:47,800 --> 00:10:49,880
Speaker 1: go to a certain point to get some young kane,

160
00:10:50,040 --> 00:10:53,240
Speaker 1: and my sister Jemima Boone, was steering in the canoe.

161
00:10:53,720 --> 00:10:56,600
Speaker 1: As the canoe touched the shore, Indians leaped out and

162
00:10:56,760 --> 00:11:00,400
Speaker 1: seized the girls, and the callaway girls fought with their battles.

163
00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:03,839
Speaker 1: Jemima used to say she then had a sore foot

164
00:11:03,920 --> 00:11:06,559
Speaker 1: from a cane stab and had got the other girls

165
00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:08,640
Speaker 1: to go to the river with her that she might

166
00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:11,200
Speaker 1: hold her foot in the water to quiet the pain.

167
00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:15,160
Speaker 1: After capture, the Indians hurried the girl's away a few

168
00:11:15,160 --> 00:11:17,880
Speaker 1: miles off. The Indians had left an old white horse.

169
00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:21,200
Speaker 1: While the Indians hurried the girls, they delayed as much

170
00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:24,400
Speaker 1: as possible. The Indians then cut off the girls dresses

171
00:11:24,400 --> 00:11:27,640
Speaker 1: and petticoats to the knees to speed their progress, and

172
00:11:27,679 --> 00:11:31,960
Speaker 1: gave them moccasins and leggings hanging mall. A Cherokee was

173
00:11:32,040 --> 00:11:35,440
Speaker 1: of the group. Jemama Boone knew him, probably having met

174
00:11:35,559 --> 00:11:38,720
Speaker 1: him when living on the Watuga. He asked if all

175
00:11:38,800 --> 00:11:42,360
Speaker 1: were daughters of Daniel Boone. She said yes, feeling they

176
00:11:42,360 --> 00:11:46,240
Speaker 1: would be treated more kindly. Hanging Mall then said, laughing,

177
00:11:46,559 --> 00:11:49,200
Speaker 1: we have done pretty well for old Boon this time.

178
00:11:49,559 --> 00:11:51,760
Speaker 1: When they reached the horse, they put Jemima on at

179
00:11:51,760 --> 00:11:54,680
Speaker 1: first because of her sore foot, and occasionally put all

180
00:11:54,760 --> 00:11:58,160
Speaker 1: three girls on together. The horse was crossed and would bite.

181
00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:01,160
Speaker 1: The girls did everything they could to make a trail

182
00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:04,120
Speaker 1: by dropping bits of cloth until the Indians put a

183
00:12:04,160 --> 00:12:07,400
Speaker 1: stop to it. When first captured, their screams were heard.

184
00:12:07,800 --> 00:12:10,360
Speaker 1: Father was lying down on the bed at his house

185
00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:13,200
Speaker 1: and jumped up and seized his gun and started off

186
00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:17,520
Speaker 1: without his moccasins. The only person I definitely recall being

187
00:12:17,559 --> 00:12:21,840
Speaker 1: in the pursuing party was Flanders Callaway. Colonel Richard Callaway

188
00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:25,320
Speaker 1: started with the pursuers and they soon found the Indian trail.

189
00:12:25,840 --> 00:12:30,080
Speaker 1: Callaway was for following directly on the trail, but father objected.

190
00:12:30,400 --> 00:12:34,520
Speaker 1: I suppose Colonel Callaway then returned to Boonsborough. The reason

191
00:12:34,559 --> 00:12:37,200
Speaker 1: my father objected to following the trail was that if

192
00:12:37,200 --> 00:12:40,800
Speaker 1: the Indians had a backwatch, the pursuers would be discovered.

193
00:12:41,040 --> 00:12:44,280
Speaker 1: This would give the Indians time enough to tomahawk the girls.

194
00:12:44,640 --> 00:12:47,480
Speaker 1: He reasoned that a better way would be to fall

195
00:12:47,520 --> 00:12:51,040
Speaker 1: in ahead and strike and watch their war paths. The

196
00:12:51,120 --> 00:12:54,240
Speaker 1: first night someone had returned for supplies. I think there

197
00:12:54,240 --> 00:12:57,440
Speaker 1: were two or three, and very likely Colonel Callaway had

198
00:12:57,480 --> 00:13:00,200
Speaker 1: returned as soon as the Indian trail was discovered in

199
00:13:00,240 --> 00:13:04,360
Speaker 1: their direction. Determined Father's advice was followed, the party bore

200
00:13:04,400 --> 00:13:06,440
Speaker 1: off to one side of their route, and on the

201
00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:09,520
Speaker 1: day the girls were retaken, they again found the Indian trail.

202
00:13:09,800 --> 00:13:12,240
Speaker 1: This they followed a short distance where they found a

203
00:13:12,280 --> 00:13:15,200
Speaker 1: dead buffalo. The Indians had killed and skinned part of

204
00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:17,640
Speaker 1: the hump and cut out a piece and pushed on.

205
00:13:17,840 --> 00:13:20,280
Speaker 1: They only took part, as the whole hump would often

206
00:13:20,360 --> 00:13:23,400
Speaker 1: weigh two hundred pounds. When Father saw that the buffalo

207
00:13:23,440 --> 00:13:26,480
Speaker 1: had just been killed and the blood was yet trickling down,

208
00:13:26,600 --> 00:13:28,839
Speaker 1: he was certain the Indians would stop to cook. When

209
00:13:28,840 --> 00:13:31,760
Speaker 1: they reached the first water. Later, they found a small

210
00:13:31,840 --> 00:13:35,600
Speaker 1: snake the Indians had killed, which was writhing in death.

211
00:13:35,960 --> 00:13:39,320
Speaker 1: Then they discovered the Indian party had separated. The white

212
00:13:39,320 --> 00:13:42,120
Speaker 1: men also split into two groups to search for the Indians,

213
00:13:42,160 --> 00:13:44,640
Speaker 1: both up and down the stream. Father with the right

214
00:13:44,679 --> 00:13:47,520
Speaker 1: hand party had gone about two or three hundred yards

215
00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:50,480
Speaker 1: and when descending a hill into a glen, they saw

216
00:13:50,559 --> 00:13:54,080
Speaker 1: the Indians camped in a small branch. Immediately, my father

217
00:13:54,200 --> 00:13:57,240
Speaker 1: and some others shot at them and then rushed the camp.

218
00:13:57,480 --> 00:13:59,520
Speaker 1: The girls were sitting in the grass on the ground

219
00:13:59,559 --> 00:14:02,079
Speaker 1: in a small open glade and a few steps from

220
00:14:02,120 --> 00:14:04,480
Speaker 1: the fire, and were apparently guarded by one of the

221
00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:07,880
Speaker 1: Indians in a reclining posture. The fire was kindled, and

222
00:14:08,080 --> 00:14:11,440
Speaker 1: three other Indians were gathering wood and preparing for cooking,

223
00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:14,440
Speaker 1: while another Indian was posted some distance in the rear.

224
00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:18,280
Speaker 1: This fellow, scene from the smoke that the fire was kindled,

225
00:14:18,480 --> 00:14:21,680
Speaker 1: left his gun standing and ran down to light his pipe,

226
00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:24,760
Speaker 1: and had reached the fire when Boone and his party fired,

227
00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:27,560
Speaker 1: or so my sister always said. At the crack of

228
00:14:27,560 --> 00:14:31,240
Speaker 1: the guns, the girls jumped up, Jemima shouted, that's daddy,

229
00:14:31,520 --> 00:14:34,960
Speaker 1: and started towards their rescuers. Father yelled to them to

230
00:14:35,080 --> 00:14:37,920
Speaker 1: throw themselves flat upon the ground in case the Indians

231
00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:41,000
Speaker 1: might shoot back, or in case they might accidentally get

232
00:14:41,040 --> 00:14:44,040
Speaker 1: harmed by the shots of the whites. The girls obeyed.

233
00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:46,840
Speaker 1: The men did not know how many Indians were there,

234
00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:51,000
Speaker 1: or if more than they saw might not be nearby.

235
00:14:51,120 --> 00:14:53,240
Speaker 1: One of the Indians that the fire was shot and

236
00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:55,720
Speaker 1: fell into the fire. He must have risen and run

237
00:14:55,720 --> 00:14:59,520
Speaker 1: off mortally wounded, as nothing particularly was said about it.

238
00:14:59,800 --> 00:15:01,960
Speaker 1: The Indian who was shot at the fire was probably

239
00:15:01,960 --> 00:15:05,160
Speaker 1: the one shot by John Floyd. Father then pointed out

240
00:15:05,320 --> 00:15:08,320
Speaker 1: the bush where the Indians stood that he shot, and

241
00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:11,640
Speaker 1: there found the Indians rifle. The girls had been expecting

242
00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:14,920
Speaker 1: to be rescued until that day, but had finally given

243
00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:18,160
Speaker 1: up hope, and we're very downhearted. The Indians gave them

244
00:15:18,280 --> 00:15:21,120
Speaker 1: jerked meat, but Jemima said she never felt like eating

245
00:15:21,120 --> 00:15:24,360
Speaker 1: a morsel, but her foot mended doing the captivity travel.

246
00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:27,720
Speaker 1: When attacked, the Indians made no attempt to injure the girls.

247
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:31,160
Speaker 1: I think Flanders Callaway was with the party to the left,

248
00:15:31,320 --> 00:15:34,040
Speaker 1: and he was a little later than Boone's party and

249
00:15:34,080 --> 00:15:37,400
Speaker 1: discovering the Indians camp, one of this group fired along shot.

250
00:15:37,880 --> 00:15:41,680
Speaker 1: Jemama Boone was born October four, seventeen sixty two, and

251
00:15:41,800 --> 00:15:44,920
Speaker 1: was in her thirteenth year when captured. It was not

252
00:15:45,080 --> 00:15:50,080
Speaker 1: long after that that she married young to Flanders Callaway.

253
00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:55,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember Robert Morgan, the author of the

254
00:15:55,520 --> 00:16:01,400
Speaker 1: great Boone biography titled Boone. This is the most complex

255
00:16:01,960 --> 00:16:05,840
Speaker 1: event of his life. February of seventy eight, he was

256
00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:11,000
Speaker 1: captured by the Shawnees led by a chief Blackfish Catta Wamanga,

257
00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:14,600
Speaker 1: and because this large group of Indians appeared, he had

258
00:16:14,640 --> 00:16:18,240
Speaker 1: to surrender his men, who were boiling salt at the

259
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:24,200
Speaker 1: Blue Legs. Here is Nathan Boone's version of the capture.

260
00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:29,000
Speaker 1: It's so long, I've condensed it with my commentary splicing

261
00:16:29,160 --> 00:16:32,600
Speaker 1: through the story, so stay with me. Here's Nathan Boone.

262
00:16:38,480 --> 00:16:40,800
Speaker 1: I think it was Saturday when my father was taken.

263
00:16:40,800 --> 00:16:43,760
Speaker 1: In Sunday when he surrendered up the others, he said

264
00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:46,760
Speaker 1: he went on horseback to kill meat for the company.

265
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:49,680
Speaker 1: In any event, he had killed the buffalo and loaded

266
00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:52,520
Speaker 1: his horse with meat. It started snowing quite hard before

267
00:16:52,520 --> 00:16:54,840
Speaker 1: he killed the buffalo, so he started for the licks,

268
00:16:54,880 --> 00:16:57,480
Speaker 1: which he had left that morning. He had proceeded some

269
00:16:57,560 --> 00:17:00,280
Speaker 1: distance when he discovered a small party of India on

270
00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:03,160
Speaker 1: his trail. The snow was now something like an inch

271
00:17:03,240 --> 00:17:06,119
Speaker 1: or so deep, and he could easily be followed. Father

272
00:17:06,200 --> 00:17:08,480
Speaker 1: at once attempted to untie and throw off the load

273
00:17:08,520 --> 00:17:12,360
Speaker 1: of meat, but failed because the fresh buffalo strings were frozen.

274
00:17:12,680 --> 00:17:15,200
Speaker 1: The strings had been cut from the buffalo that made

275
00:17:15,240 --> 00:17:18,320
Speaker 1: up this heavy load, perhaps three or four hundred pounds,

276
00:17:18,359 --> 00:17:21,680
Speaker 1: and lashed around the horses belly by the tugs. Then

277
00:17:21,680 --> 00:17:23,879
Speaker 1: he attempted to draw his knife from the scabbard to

278
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:26,360
Speaker 1: cut the tugs, but he found his knife which had

279
00:17:26,359 --> 00:17:29,720
Speaker 1: been thrust into the sheath when all bloody had frozen.

280
00:17:30,200 --> 00:17:34,399
Speaker 1: Father's greasy hands and greasy knife handle prevented him from

281
00:17:34,480 --> 00:17:39,960
Speaker 1: getting the knife out. End of quote. The Shawnees then

282
00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:44,640
Speaker 1: captured Boone. Nathan went on to describe something very interesting

283
00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:49,600
Speaker 1: about his father, My father, Colonel Daniel Boone used to

284
00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:53,199
Speaker 1: say that in his early Indian troubles and difficulties in Kentucky,

285
00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:56,400
Speaker 1: if he dreamed of his father and he was angry,

286
00:17:56,720 --> 00:18:00,639
Speaker 1: it would forebode evil. But if he appeared pln't he

287
00:18:00,680 --> 00:18:05,040
Speaker 1: had nothing to fear. Each time when captured, robbed, or defeated.

288
00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:10,600
Speaker 1: He thus dreamed unfavorably about his father. End of quote.

289
00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:14,680
Speaker 1: Now we'll hear Nathan talk about when Boone was captured

290
00:18:14,720 --> 00:18:20,320
Speaker 1: and brought back to their chief, Blackfish, using Pompey as

291
00:18:20,359 --> 00:18:23,880
Speaker 1: an interpreter, Blackfish asked my father about his men who

292
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:26,680
Speaker 1: were at the Pee Memo Lick. This was the general

293
00:18:26,760 --> 00:18:29,400
Speaker 1: name in Shawnee for salt springs, referring to the lower

294
00:18:29,440 --> 00:18:33,080
Speaker 1: blue licks. Father asked how they knew his men were there,

295
00:18:33,200 --> 00:18:36,200
Speaker 1: and they said their spies had seen them. Father admitted

296
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:39,199
Speaker 1: that these men were his, and Blackfish informed him they

297
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:42,639
Speaker 1: were going to kill them. My father then proposed if

298
00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:45,840
Speaker 1: they would not mistreat them nor make them run the gauntlet,

299
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:49,640
Speaker 1: he would surrender them up as prisoners of war. End

300
00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:54,640
Speaker 1: of quote. Now Boone leads the Shawnees to his men

301
00:18:54,840 --> 00:18:59,159
Speaker 1: that are working at a salt lick. Here's Boone. I

302
00:18:59,200 --> 00:19:01,080
Speaker 1: suppose it was on the north side of the river.

303
00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:03,879
Speaker 1: The salt makers were lying on their blankets, apparently stunning

304
00:19:03,920 --> 00:19:06,720
Speaker 1: themselves with the snow then half a leg deep. My

305
00:19:06,800 --> 00:19:09,400
Speaker 1: father called out to the men that they were surrounded

306
00:19:09,400 --> 00:19:11,919
Speaker 1: by a large body of Indians. He explained that he

307
00:19:11,960 --> 00:19:14,840
Speaker 1: had stipulated for their surrender and had secured the promise

308
00:19:14,880 --> 00:19:17,159
Speaker 1: of good treatment for them. He said that it was

309
00:19:17,200 --> 00:19:20,000
Speaker 1: impossible for them to get away, and begged them not

310
00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:23,680
Speaker 1: to attempt to defend themselves, as they would all be massacred.

311
00:19:23,880 --> 00:19:26,480
Speaker 1: They at once yielded to his advice, and as my

312
00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:29,320
Speaker 1: father and the Indians with him began to descend the hill,

313
00:19:29,600 --> 00:19:33,960
Speaker 1: the others began to come in from every direction. End

314
00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:38,119
Speaker 1: of quote. Boone and his men would be captured and

315
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:41,199
Speaker 1: they would stay with the Shawnee for four months. Some

316
00:19:41,359 --> 00:19:44,359
Speaker 1: of the men would escape at different times. It was

317
00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:47,680
Speaker 1: at this time that Boone was adopted as the son

318
00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:51,720
Speaker 1: of Blackfish and thus a Shawnee. Boone would spend the

319
00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:56,679
Speaker 1: entire four months there and adapted very well to indigenous life.

320
00:19:57,040 --> 00:20:00,760
Speaker 1: This would come back to haunt Boone later. This is

321
00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:06,440
Speaker 1: Nathan talking about how Blackfish treated his father. Both Blackfish

322
00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:09,359
Speaker 1: and his squall treated father very kindly, and he seemed

323
00:20:09,359 --> 00:20:12,000
Speaker 1: to think much of them. They had two daughters, both small,

324
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:15,960
Speaker 1: named Puma PC and Pima PC. The former was four

325
00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:19,240
Speaker 1: or five years old, ill tempered and hateful. The youngest

326
00:20:19,359 --> 00:20:21,680
Speaker 1: was a mere child, perhaps a year old, with a

327
00:20:21,800 --> 00:20:25,280
Speaker 1: kind temper, and Boone used to nurse it frequently. He

328
00:20:25,440 --> 00:20:27,840
Speaker 1: used the silver trink it's his currency, and would buy

329
00:20:27,920 --> 00:20:30,520
Speaker 1: maple sugar to give to the children, who would smile

330
00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:34,640
Speaker 1: and call it molas. An example of blackfish his kindness

331
00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:37,920
Speaker 1: and an Indian's idea of taste was that Blackfish would

332
00:20:37,960 --> 00:20:40,440
Speaker 1: suck a lump of sugar while in his mouth, take

333
00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:42,960
Speaker 1: it out and give it to Boone, who he always

334
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:47,200
Speaker 1: addressed as my son. Blackfish at that time was perhaps

335
00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:51,240
Speaker 1: fifty years old, but perhaps not quite that old. Blackfish

336
00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:54,840
Speaker 1: gave my father the name shell Tawee, which means the

337
00:20:54,960 --> 00:21:05,240
Speaker 1: big turtle. End of quote. To make this story short

338
00:21:05,280 --> 00:21:08,360
Speaker 1: and simple, Boon makes a daring escape from the Shawnee

339
00:21:08,440 --> 00:21:12,200
Speaker 1: captors after four months of favorable captivity. While they were

340
00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: distracted by a flock of turkeys, Boone makes a bee

341
00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:19,240
Speaker 1: line back to Boonsborough to warn the settlers and his

342
00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:23,080
Speaker 1: family of the coming attack by the Shawnee. They prepare

343
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:26,119
Speaker 1: the fort and within a short time period, are attacked.

344
00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:29,760
Speaker 1: After a set up peace talk from Blackfish, we can

345
00:21:29,840 --> 00:21:33,879
Speaker 1: do a whole series on this one event. Spoiler alert.

346
00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:36,840
Speaker 1: The Shawnees are held off and the fort is saved,

347
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:42,000
Speaker 1: but there were consequences for Boone because of Boon on

348
00:21:42,119 --> 00:21:46,359
Speaker 1: those people, including women of really excellent shots. The civil

349
00:21:46,440 --> 00:21:51,320
Speaker 1: women remember us with a rifle. Uh, They're able to

350
00:21:51,359 --> 00:21:54,280
Speaker 1: hold them off from Kentucky was not lost, so the

351
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:57,680
Speaker 1: western side of the United States is not lost. It's

352
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:01,960
Speaker 1: very important event. If they had lost Boonsborough, all of

353
00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:05,440
Speaker 1: Kentucky would have been taken there's no doubt of it.

354
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:08,359
Speaker 1: So Boon and it's always the hero of the American Revolution.

355
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:13,840
Speaker 1: That's when he's court martial that Richard Henderson and the

356
00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 1: Benjamin Lardan accused him of treason because he had surrendered

357
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:21,600
Speaker 1: the men at the Blue Licks and gone to live

358
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:28,200
Speaker 1: with the Indians. So they they give this deposition accusing him. Meanwhile,

359
00:22:28,280 --> 00:22:32,879
Speaker 1: the Virginia militia has arrived with several officers, including a major,

360
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:36,439
Speaker 1: and they're the judges at this court martial. And Boone

361
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 1: gets up and defends himself, and he was really good

362
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:42,280
Speaker 1: at this. One of the reasons the Indians admired him

363
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 1: so much was he could talk. The big talk said

364
00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 1: he could talk like a chief. And he eloquently defends,

365
00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:53,679
Speaker 1: explains this elaborate rush, and then the officers declare him

366
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 1: innocent and promote him to major on the spot. Wow.

367
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:00,600
Speaker 1: So he wins that one, but he would never talk

368
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: about it. This is a really humiliating After the Revolution

369
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:13,639
Speaker 1: is when Boone's influence and fame began to spread. I

370
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,639
Speaker 1: want to turn the ship and began to search for

371
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:22,080
Speaker 1: traces of Boone's influence in American literature, identity, and worldview.

372
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:30,920
Speaker 1: Kentucky became the fifteenth state in sevent Within this timeframe

373
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 1: of like thirty years, Tucky Kentucky went from a complete

374
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:40,680
Speaker 1: wilderness to an American state. That's incredible thing about I

375
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 1: never thought. I never thought about how compressed it was

376
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 1: to stay. Yeah, so we see this thing in Boone's life.

377
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 1: That part of the reason, you know, he was He

378
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 1: was famous for a statement that he needed more elbow room.

379
00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: Once when someone asked, why are you moving, he said, well,

380
00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:57,199
Speaker 1: I need more elbow room. So he was constantly in

381
00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: pursuit of this this edge of the runtier, you know,

382
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:04,760
Speaker 1: driven by commerce, potentially because he was a long hunter

383
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 1: and he needed to harvest game to make a living.

384
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:10,760
Speaker 1: But also we've got to believe that that was also

385
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: driven by this wanderlust for something new over the next

386
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:17,919
Speaker 1: edge that just is part of human nature. He was

387
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 1: also he he did love to hunt. I mean, the

388
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: guy just loved to hunt. He loved solitude. But like

389
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: this idea that humans go to the wilderness to find

390
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: solitude into commune with God, all kind of goes back

391
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:36,240
Speaker 1: to boot. He was the one that was made famous

392
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 1: for contemplation. He was the one that really influenced Throw

393
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,760
Speaker 1: in some of the great American writers that talked about

394
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 1: these things. In the final chapter of Mr Morgan's book,

395
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: he makes a strong appeal that Boone had significant influence

396
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 1: on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry David throw and

397
00:24:56,600 --> 00:25:01,440
Speaker 1: many others. Mr Morgan says from his book quote The

398
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: Row begins his essay Walking by saying, I wish to

399
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:10,520
Speaker 1: speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and wildness,

400
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: as contrasted with the freedom and culture merely civil. The

401
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: spirit of Boone hovers over every page of the essay,

402
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 1: published in eighteen sixty two after the Row's death, with

403
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: exuberance and often tongue in cheek, The Rose essay is

404
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:30,360
Speaker 1: a celebration of freedom and adventure. Quote. I believe there

405
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: is a magnetism in nature which, if we unconsciously yield

406
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 1: to it, will direct us a right end of quote.

407
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,719
Speaker 1: The Row also said, the west of which I speak

408
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:44,960
Speaker 1: is but another name for the wild, And what I

409
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 1: have been preparing to say is that in wildness is

410
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 1: the preservation of the world. That's the end of Mr

411
00:25:53,800 --> 00:26:01,680
Speaker 1: Morgan's excerpt. If you send to the bear grease render

412
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:05,639
Speaker 1: you know who Dr Dan rupe Is. I consider him

413
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: my speed dial anthropologist. I want to ask him about

414
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 1: the peculiar way Americans view nature as compared to other

415
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: parts of the world, and we think much of it

416
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 1: came from these romantic writers. But originally Boon Dr. D

417
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: Route lived abroad for twelve years and had some insight.

418
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,520
Speaker 1: The other country that I was in for quite some

419
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: time twelve some odd years was China, and so China

420
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: up until about thirty or even even in a lot

421
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:40,120
Speaker 1: of areas less than that years ago, was a grarian

422
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: so people who are very closely tied to the land,

423
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,960
Speaker 1: and so their view of the wilderness and the woods

424
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: in the wild I found in my personal experience very

425
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 1: different from my view as an American of that. So

426
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:55,960
Speaker 1: we lived in a large city three to five hours

427
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: from the Himalayas, depending on how you drove, and so

428
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:00,440
Speaker 1: regularly I would load up my kids it's to get

429
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 1: out of town and go to the wild I found

430
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:07,160
Speaker 1: that as I did that, my Chinese friends thought about

431
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:10,639
Speaker 1: and interacted with the wilderness in a much different way.

432
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: For the most part, the Himalayan Plateau is a barren wilderness.

433
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: There's almost nothing of practical value there. If you're trying

434
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: to eat, and so the question would regularly be why

435
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: would you go there? They just didn't really make sense

436
00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 1: to them. So why did you want to go there?

437
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 1: I wanted to go there for adventure and fun, and

438
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:32,120
Speaker 1: I wanted to get away from that. There's this kind

439
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: of compelling I want to get out and be by

440
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: myself or or just us as no place in their

441
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: mind too, like why would you go there for fun?

442
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 1: They really, I don't want to say, you know, all

443
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 1: one point five billion Chinese people have no place for that,

444
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:53,359
Speaker 1: But the vast majority of of my friends and and

445
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: people that I talked with that was just as odd

446
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 1: to them as so many things about their culture was

447
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: odd to me. It started to make more sense for

448
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: me when there's a gentleman named Facial Tongue who wrote

449
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: a book called From the Soil, and it is the

450
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 1: seminal work on a grarian people's and so America. From

451
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:18,879
Speaker 1: its onset, we were industrial Chinese people from millennia have

452
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:21,399
Speaker 1: been tied to the land, hence the name of his book,

453
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:24,960
Speaker 1: From the Soil, and so they see themselves as connected

454
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:27,679
Speaker 1: to the soil. As part of the soil, you farm

455
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 1: the same land that your ancestors are buried in. It's

456
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: not something that's separate from them, that's far away from them,

457
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 1: that you like go to for adventure. You go there

458
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: if it can make food for you. If it can't,

459
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: it has no use for you. Um nowadays, even I

460
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: think I think this would be fair. You can look

461
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: up and read articles on the vocation and the people

462
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 1: group of Sherpas. Their desire and mindset and model of

463
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 1: we're gonna climb these mountains is practically it provides them

464
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: with a tremendous amount of income climbing those mountains. Before

465
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: Westerners came money and the Westerners were in search of

466
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: adventure and conquest. I would be shocked if the first

467
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:08,959
Speaker 1: person on the top of Mount Everest was a white

468
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,959
Speaker 1: western Man. But certainly the idea of we want to

469
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: plant our flag at the top of a mountain that

470
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: came from the West. But the way that they thought

471
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: about it and the way that they approached it would

472
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: have been very different. So this idea of even the

473
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: phrase like a rugged individualist and you're gonna go off

474
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: and quote unquote find yourself for an agrarian interdependent And

475
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: when I say those two words you just described two

476
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:39,360
Speaker 1: thirds of the globe, you know. So for that kind

477
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: of person, you you only find yourself connected to the

478
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 1: ground and connected to the people around you, whereas you

479
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:49,479
Speaker 1: and I we quote unquote come alive when we go

480
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: out and when disconnect and we're disconnected. So, you know,

481
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: a primary difference between millennia of Chinese people in this

482
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: case thinks to facial Ton's book and my own experience,

483
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: and and Daniel Boone is our our friends in China

484
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:07,959
Speaker 1: are coming from millennia of farming. Daniel Boone is uh.

485
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: You know, like so many people that came to America

486
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 1: came for very different reasons, but tend to be wanting

487
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: to leave behind an escape and get away from different

488
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: things that are going on in Europe. And even this

489
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: kind of fundamental idea of if I can just break

490
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: away from the establishment, then I can start something new,

491
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: and almost a necessity of doing that, and that would

492
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 1: have been a mind frame deep inside of all these

493
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: early colonialists with without a doubt. And so we as

494
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: Western individualists tend to view the wilderness as a place

495
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: where we can establish ourselves or conquer or have risk

496
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: or adventure. These are all experiential terms that are entirely abstract.

497
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: We are not going to the wilderness for tangible concrete

498
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 1: that that idea was built and developed in the frontier

499
00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: stage of America. Talk to me about where they came

500
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: from though, so so Daniel Boone's father and mother would

501
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: have come over on that boat, but they were Quakers.

502
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: Talk to me about kind of the Judeo Christian worldview,

503
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: so in wilderness. So when you look at the Judeo

504
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: Christian worldview, there's a big story that it's founded on.

505
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: That big story starts in the Garden of Eden. And

506
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: so there's this cultivated area of land. It's a it's

507
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: a home, it's made, it's established. Outside of that, Adam

508
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: is made and then he's placed inside of the Garden Eden.

509
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: Everything else's wilderness. It's wild and then when they fall,

510
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: they are banished, they're punished into the wildern. They are

511
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: exiled into the wilderness. And there's a British sociologist named J. A.

512
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: Walter who wrote several decades ago, and he actually the

513
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: title of one of his works was A Long Way

514
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: from Home, and the central premise of his work was

515
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: that grace basically, the the grand story of the Judeo

516
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 1: Christian worldview is that we've been banished to the wilderness

517
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: from our home and that we are trying to find

518
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: ourselves and find a home. And so that's just adds

519
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: to this idea that the wilderness was not a place

520
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: you wanted to go, and it's a place of punishment, definitely.

521
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: And then along comes Boon and he conquers the wilderness,

522
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 1: and in effect, we're giving Boon a ton of credit

523
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 1: to And that's why this whole what I want to

524
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 1: see is it does start with Boon, but it was

525
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: so many other people too, of course, but it was

526
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: it was here that that worldview kind of became finalized

527
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: in the Staff. If anything, Daniel Boone and his actions

528
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 1: and his life, real or mythical, embodied what the American

529
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: people wanted to see happen in the wilderness. They wanted

530
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: to see man in the wilderness thriving and dominating and

531
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: conquering because that's a good story. Because that's a good story.

532
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,959
Speaker 1: And so whether it happened or not, we wrote it

533
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: deep down because we wanted to read it. Boone taught

534
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: America to love wilderness and cherish solitude, and that value

535
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:22,880
Speaker 1: system may seem really normal to you, especially if you

536
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: have a rural or hunting background. But this is peculiar

537
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: and fundamental to America. Boone's life was full of irony,

538
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: and that's part of why his story reflects the American story.

539
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 1: I asked Steve if he thought Boone had any regrets

540
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 1: the tragic part of his life. And this is the

541
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 1: question I want to ask you, Steve, is wherever he went,

542
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: people followed. So he went to Kentucky, which was this

543
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: wilderness Eden, and within thirty years it was an American state.

544
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: And you know, three thousand people, you know, over the

545
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 1: course of a longer period of time than thirty years,

546
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: came through the Cumberland Gap and I mean just settled

547
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,359
Speaker 1: the whole place. How aware of that would he have been?

548
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: How would he have dealt with that? And then the

549
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 1: ultimate question for US hunters, and they're even an outdoor media,

550
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:19,520
Speaker 1: do you ever feel like that? Like, because the very

551
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: nature of what we do demand's solitude, But we're like

552
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:27,359
Speaker 1: recruiting people. Yeah, if an interesting thing to push Boon on,

553
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: if you could talk to him now, was uh, I

554
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 1: would say to him, how conflicted were you? Let's say

555
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 1: you now come out and find a great new hunting spot,

556
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:39,959
Speaker 1: and then over time, that great new hunting spot fills

557
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 1: up with people, still shines for them. They love it,

558
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: They think it's the greatest thing in the world. You

559
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: saw it before and you lament its passing. But let's

560
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: say that you didn't really do anything to usher that in, right,

561
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:52,880
Speaker 1: you just participated and stood by and watch this happen.

562
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 1: It's reasonable for the person in that situation to feel

563
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: a great sense of loss. It's not that clean. With Boone,

564
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:03,359
Speaker 1: though he was complicit, it seems as though he mourned it.

565
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: He did not like to see they complained about game vanishing.

566
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 1: But Boone was also speculating. He was in the land

567
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:15,799
Speaker 1: speculation business. He was invested in settlement. I think that

568
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,240
Speaker 1: he knew what he had to do was always poor,

569
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:21,839
Speaker 1: wanted money, wanted to find a way out of debt,

570
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:24,560
Speaker 1: wanted to get his family in a good position. And

571
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 1: I think that he probably had to sit there and think,

572
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,719
Speaker 1: and you know what, man, not only did it never

573
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,919
Speaker 1: work right? I never got rich off Kentucky. Not only that,

574
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,360
Speaker 1: but I ruined what it was about it that I loved.

575
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:40,719
Speaker 1: If he was conflicted, meaning did he ever think I

576
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: shouldn't do any of these activities that might lead to

577
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 1: the exploitation to Kentucky. He just don't see any evidence

578
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: of it, did, he lamented? Sure, man, we work really

579
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:54,880
Speaker 1: hard to raise our kids up and make them independent

580
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: and eventually get him out the door so that they

581
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:01,319
Speaker 1: go on and have productive, happy lives. But what does

582
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:05,000
Speaker 1: every parent tell you when they move away? How sad

583
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 1: it was? But would you ever go and do something

584
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: to thwart their development in order to hang onto it?

585
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: So there's like that, in order to hang on to

586
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 1: and make it be that they were relying on you

587
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: and had to stay home or not. You can live

588
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: in two places at one time. They gotta get up

589
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,120
Speaker 1: and grow and get out of the house. And and

590
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: my god, it's sad watching them go. You know, it's

591
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:30,279
Speaker 1: like it's like it's every part of my life. It's

592
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:33,279
Speaker 1: almost it was inevitable though, I mean, like because if

593
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:37,360
Speaker 1: Boone had just said, you know what I value solitude

594
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: and wilderness, I am bringing anybody back here, I mean

595
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: five years later, first of all, we'd be talking about

596
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,320
Speaker 1: somebody else right now. Well, he could have been extremely

597
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 1: impactful in that because he could have if he really

598
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: felt that way, he would have aligned himself with Uh,

599
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:57,440
Speaker 1: he would have moved in, and at one point he did,

600
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: but he would have moved in with the indie and

601
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: explained to them the risk and explained to them how

602
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:06,839
Speaker 1: to head it off, and then there would have been

603
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,240
Speaker 1: a pathway to that. He could have been a trader.

604
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: He would have been a trader to people, but would

605
00:37:11,160 --> 00:37:14,919
Speaker 1: have been very effective. They're gonna come through there, They're

606
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 1: gonna come through that gap, right there. Boys. Well but

607
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:21,320
Speaker 1: what would that have done though? That would have delayed

608
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 1: this thing twenty years? You know, I'm just saying. I'm

609
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 1: just saying. What's important is he didn't do that. He

610
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 1: didn't do that, and you can't find any real evidence

611
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: that he ever pumped the brakes. Uh. Yeah, man, he

612
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: had to have been conflicted. And the reason you know

613
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: that he probably was conflicted is because he kept seeking

614
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 1: out in other places what he was instrumental in trashing

615
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:52,839
Speaker 1: in the last place. He didn't like for him, what

616
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: guys like him created, hunted out agricultural lands now where

617
00:37:56,480 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: he wanted to stay. Always moved into be in where

618
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 1: he wanted to be, which him the simple fact of

619
00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: him being there made it that he didn't want to

620
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 1: be there, there's almost like you know, you know people

621
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: like that in life. You know, I'm like that in

622
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: some aspects of life, right, I see, and everybody does

623
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: I see like boonish at least my understanding of uh why,

624
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: Like what's the wrong with things just being more simple?

625
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: Like what is it in a person that just leads

626
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 1: you to kind of to complexify everything around you, or

627
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:37,279
Speaker 1: what prevents you from ever saying this is enough, like

628
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:45,240
Speaker 1: this right here, this right here is just perfect. Instead

629
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:47,279
Speaker 1: you'd be like, this right here is just perfect. If

630
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,720
Speaker 1: only we could build a workshop right over there human nature,

631
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 1: man and one boat. Sweet, imagine if you had two boats.

632
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: I'm imagine if this boat was eight ft rather than

633
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,400
Speaker 1: why you'll never understand it's it's funny. That's one of

634
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: the things that makes Boon so valuable. Man. It might

635
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:05,239
Speaker 1: be better for us that we can't sit here and

636
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 1: ask him all these questions, because he's there's enough there

637
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:11,359
Speaker 1: where you can really pin you can really look and

638
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: feel and smell what's there, Like he's there, right, He's tangible,

639
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: but there's enough mystery about what he thought about the

640
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:24,720
Speaker 1: whole thing that he is like a very handy way

641
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: to contemplate yourself ourselves, you know, more than if you

642
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 1: sat them down right now and he and he was alive,

643
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: you know, whether they dug him out of Missouri or Kentucky,

644
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:42,959
Speaker 1: depending on what version you believe in where he's resting now,

645
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:45,280
Speaker 1: he might be like, man, I read all the books

646
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,839
Speaker 1: I read Robert Morgan. Dude, that dude missed it by

647
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: a million miles, like me, like that, like are you

648
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: kidding me? You know what I felt about that stuff.

649
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 1: In effort to understand Boone's personal identity, I want to

650
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 1: explore him using the term woodsman to describe himself and

651
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: will learn an interesting fact. We've yet to discuss Boon

652
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: as a politician. It's clear that Boone's personal identity of

653
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: himself was as a woodsman. And there was a letter

654
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:33,320
Speaker 1: that he wrote to a governor later in his life,

655
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 1: and part of the preface of the letter says, I

656
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: am no statesman, I am a woodsman. So that it's

657
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: clear that that's if there was one word that would

658
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: that he would describe himself, describe himself as it he said,

659
00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: I am a woodsman. If if he were, if he

660
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 1: were only here, so we could ask him exactly what

661
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:57,160
Speaker 1: he meant by that that phrase and what he embodied,

662
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:00,040
Speaker 1: and what we see is something that's very much a

663
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: live today in a lot of rural American culture. It's

664
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: something that we deeply value. Like in my family, Mr Morgan,

665
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 1: my dad would have raised me up with that very

666
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:15,280
Speaker 1: phrase on his lips. You need to be a woodsman.

667
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,399
Speaker 1: What do you think Daniel Boone meant when he said that, Well,

668
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 1: somebody who could live on the land in the forest

669
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: and could support himself. He could, he could feel game,

670
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: He knew the herbs. He had learned that from Indians.

671
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 1: It's a major way Indians influenced American civilization was to

672
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: teach them the medicinal plants. Uh. But you you really

673
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: said the important word there, that he was a woodsman.

674
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:46,239
Speaker 1: He knew he wasn't somebody actually was a statements a statesman.

675
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: He had done pretty well in the legislature. He served

676
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: three terms in the Virginia legislature. He did and did

677
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 1: some important things about getting ferries built on the Kentucky

678
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 1: River and laws about the game, wanton killing of game. Really,

679
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:06,879
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone did that when he was in the Virginia. Yes,

680
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:09,879
Speaker 1: he was very much aware that you know, the game

681
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: was disappearing, and there should be rules about how much

682
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 1: she could kill and where you could kill it. But

683
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 1: his life is full of paradoxes, and as all our

684
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: lives are, really, But woodsman was the word he preferred

685
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: in the first title of my biography was woodsman. Oh.

686
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: I thought about this a lot. Boone was this legislator

687
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: in Virginia. But I think sometimes it's in the place

688
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 1: that we don't fit where we find our real identity,

689
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: you know, where we where that identity probably of being

690
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: a woodsman really became distinct to him. Tell me if

691
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: you think this is right. It's almost like he he

692
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 1: thought maybe he could fit in inside of that world

693
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 1: and went there and and did okay, But it was like,

694
00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: this is not where I was us to be. Well,

695
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: think of the image of Daniel Boone in the legislature.

696
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: He's wearing well, he's there with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson,

697
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 1: wearing silk and brocade and wigs. He's with one of

698
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson, and he's

699
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: wearing buckskin, and legends did he wear that to the

700
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: We have eyewitnesses of it. Now these legends much legends

701
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: that they have this this really elaborate bead work on

702
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:34,040
Speaker 1: he'd have to have gotten them from Indians. I think

703
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:36,920
Speaker 1: he did that sort of thing out of his sense

704
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 1: of duty. That they elected him, he was expected to

705
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: do it, and he was the kind of person that

706
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: took these responsibilities seriously. But I think he did what

707
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 1: he thought he was expected to do. He wasn't ashamed

708
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: of being there in Buckskin and Indian legends. Now, the

709
00:43:56,280 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: interesting thing is to think of him and Thomas Jefferson

710
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: for some new in and wrote to him asking to

711
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:06,280
Speaker 1: get in touch with George Rogers Clark. Clark was supposed

712
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:09,880
Speaker 1: to find mammoth bones and things like that and bring

713
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:14,839
Speaker 1: them back to Uh. To Jefferson and after Boon, Jefferson

714
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 1: is the most responsible for opening the West Almas. Jefferson

715
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:22,320
Speaker 1: was obsessed with the wilderness to the west. He says

716
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:26,399
Speaker 1: in his in his essays on Virginia, the Ohio River

717
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:28,839
Speaker 1: is the most beautiful river in the world. He had

718
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: never seen it, but he knew from the word of

719
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: Boon and other people. So that's really interesting. You juxtaposed Jefferson,

720
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:39,360
Speaker 1: who was famous around the world, with this philosopher scientist

721
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:42,480
Speaker 1: statesman and Daniel Moon, and they obviously had a lot

722
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: in common them that they shared this obsession with the

723
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 1: interior and the beauties of nature, the importance of nature.

724
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:56,879
Speaker 1: I want to tell a story that stood out to me.

725
00:44:57,360 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 1: I feel like each one of these stories give us

726
00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 1: a window into Boone's life. At age sixty five, Daniel

727
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:07,240
Speaker 1: was still going strong. I want to read an excerpt

728
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:11,480
Speaker 1: from Morgan's book about Boone's market hunting for black Bear

729
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 1: with Rebecca in Kentucky. These are Mr Morgan's words from

730
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:24,319
Speaker 1: his book Boone. J. P. Hale said that Boone was

731
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:29,439
Speaker 1: not remembered sufficiently quote for his qualities and experience as

732
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 1: a counselor, commander and legislator in which fields. Notwithstanding his

733
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 1: rare modesty and lack of self asserting, he was appreciated

734
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: and put forward by his contemporaries. Hall went on to

735
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,959
Speaker 1: write in his short biography of Boone that the old

736
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: frontiersman hardly seemed aware of the heroic deeds he had

737
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: done quote, but seemed to be driven on irresistibly by

738
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: that deep seated instinct for adventure which nature had implanted

739
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: in him, and whose only gratification could be found among

740
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: the wilds of the frontier. One thing that may have

741
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,360
Speaker 1: brought Boone back to Kentucky was the bear hunting on

742
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: the Levisa fork of the Big Sandy. Each winter, Daniel

743
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 1: and Rebecca and one of their sons returned there to

744
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: kill bears, collect bear skins, smoked bear bacon, and render

745
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: bear flesh into oil. A man named William Champ later

746
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 1: said that he encountered Boone and his wife and two

747
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: daughters and their husbands on the Big Sandy, living in

748
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: half faced camps, where they quote eight their meals from

749
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,640
Speaker 1: a common rough tray very much like the sap tray,

750
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:39,840
Speaker 1: placed on a bench instead of a table, each using

751
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: as needed a butcher knife to cut meat and using

752
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: forks made of cane with times or prongs, and having

753
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 1: only bread to eat with meat. Bears were so abundant

754
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: that Boone killed a hundred and fifty five in one season,

755
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:56,879
Speaker 1: and he killed one monster bear that weighed between five

756
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 1: hundred and six hundred pounds. A bear skin was worth

757
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,319
Speaker 1: about two dollars, but the meat of each animal was

758
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 1: worth more than twice that. Boone's arthritis was so bad

759
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 1: at times that Rebecca had to carry his rifle for him,

760
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:12,240
Speaker 1: but he killed record numbers of bears all the same,

761
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:15,320
Speaker 1: and since she was known as an excellent shot, Rebecca

762
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 1: very likely killed her share of bruins. Also, one of

763
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 1: the creeks where they camped was named Greasy Creek because

764
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: they rendered bear fat there enough to fill several barrels.

765
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: Bear grease could be sold for a dollar a gallon.

766
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: One bear might yield twenty gallons of oil. Boon bragg

767
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: that he had once killed eleven bears before breakfast. With

768
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,239
Speaker 1: his commercial hunting conducted on such a scale, it's hard

769
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: to imagine how Boone thought the game populations could be sustained.

770
00:47:43,200 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 1: The last buffalo in the Bluegrass had been killed around

771
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 1: sevent This is still one of the paradoxes of Boone's

772
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: life and its character. Because he had been a professional

773
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:55,959
Speaker 1: hunter most of his life, the paradox was probably not

774
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 1: as clear to Boon as it is to us in hindsight.

775
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: End of quote. If you've read much about the Frontiersman,

776
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: you've probably had questions about their physical toughness and wondered

777
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 1: if they were superhuman. Here's what Steve thinks. The things

778
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 1: that Boone did physically, like the physical acts of being

779
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 1: in the frontier for two years and crossing rivers and

780
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: the cold and the physical acts. You have got to

781
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:38,319
Speaker 1: believe that Boone was kind of a physical phenomen do you, dude,

782
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:42,280
Speaker 1: I I I explain that I wonder about it all

783
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:47,760
Speaker 1: the time. How tough was he? We like to now

784
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 1: say like, oh, now we need all these advanced fabrics

785
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:56,279
Speaker 1: to keep warm, you know, and we have synthetic insulation

786
00:48:56,719 --> 00:49:00,919
Speaker 1: in big Wider's Okay, like that that's what we need now.

787
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: I have a feeling, though, that they were probably about

788
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 1: as comfortable out in the boys as we are. The

789
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 1: thresholds were different. It was like they got cold man bad.

790
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: They were uncomfortable at times, They got bit up by

791
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:19,919
Speaker 1: bugs to a point where it would kind of drive

792
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 1: you mad. They suffered, and they just didn't know any different.

793
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 1: Like I, I don't think that they just walked around

794
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: out there whistling all happy because they were just so

795
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 1: tough that they were always comfortable. It's not fun getting

796
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 1: bit up by bugs, it's not fun being cold. I

797
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 1: think that they just were oftentimes, like really uncomfortable. Maybe

798
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:41,720
Speaker 1: it's so uncomfortable that if you went there now without

799
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: growing up with that set of experiences, you wouldn't be

800
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: able to handle it and you tap out. And there's

801
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: something to be said about the threshold, a strong threshold.

802
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 1: But they weren't magicians. I mean there's I think there's

803
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:57,800
Speaker 1: a gradient of Yeah, there are people that are super

804
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: tough and people that are super weak in out of

805
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 1: this window of human capability. I would imagine somebody like

806
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: Boone would have been on the higher scale exceptionally exceptionally,

807
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:11,560
Speaker 1: but he wasn't. He wasn't superhuman. Would he run a

808
00:50:11,640 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: ultra marathon? Probably not. We can't talk about Boone without

809
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,800
Speaker 1: touching on one of the biggest challenges in his life.

810
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: The later part of his life after the golden years

811
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:31,959
Speaker 1: of the seventeen seventies, were riddled with financial issues and lawsuits,

812
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:37,360
Speaker 1: most about land. Here are Mr Morgan's thoughts on Boone's character.

813
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:40,520
Speaker 1: Mr Morgan, this is a this is a quote from

814
00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: your book. In almost every case, frontiersman were remembered and

815
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: honored more for character and dependability than marksmanship and scouting ability.

816
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 1: In the dangerous world of the West, integrity counted above

817
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 1: all else. I think we we kind of have this

818
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:04,759
Speaker 1: idea that somebody like Boon was solely known for his

819
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:07,880
Speaker 1: for for the things that he did go through the

820
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, and his long long hunting and

821
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: all these external feats, which is very true. But what

822
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: what made him a legend and remembered and honored, as

823
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:22,360
Speaker 1: you said here, was character. And I think that's something

824
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:27,000
Speaker 1: that would not be intuitive, but it's true. Well, the

825
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: fashion among historians and biographers is to debunk legends, to

826
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,319
Speaker 1: find out what the real story is. And and uh,

827
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: we have an awful lot of that in our time.

828
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:40,319
Speaker 1: And it's good. I mean to try to, you know,

829
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:44,319
Speaker 1: find the weaknesses of people. But when I examined the

830
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: Boon and great detail and went to all those sources

831
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:49,400
Speaker 1: I could find, I found he really lived up to

832
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 1: the image we have of him. It's true he was

833
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:55,240
Speaker 1: in debt and he lost everything, but in every case

834
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:58,960
Speaker 1: some of his character was very consistent. And that's I

835
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:02,440
Speaker 1: think important in our time. It is certainly important in

836
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:06,439
Speaker 1: a dangerous world like Kentucky and the wilderness. You had

837
00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: to count on people and if they said I'm going

838
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 1: to meet you at such a place, and they had

839
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 1: to be there. And that's what he valued among his friends.

840
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,479
Speaker 1: His friend Steward, who was killed by Indians. I guess

841
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:21,360
Speaker 1: he admired him so much because he was dependable. Also

842
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,720
Speaker 1: two of Michael Stoner, the German who could hardly speak English,

843
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: but Stoner, you know, you could absolutely depend on him.

844
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 1: So Boone's legend grew partly because people admired him, they

845
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: trusted him. And isn't that what we wanted a friend

846
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:37,640
Speaker 1: today as well? Though? Absolutely, I mean it's it's really

847
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: no different. An example of this is that Boone was

848
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:46,440
Speaker 1: robbed of a lot of money and certificates for land

849
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 1: in eastern Virginia. He had gone there to register this

850
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:53,800
Speaker 1: land for people, and they give him money and a

851
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: lot of certificates, and apparently in this uh end he

852
00:52:58,239 --> 00:53:01,720
Speaker 1: was drugged and during the night all the stuff was robbed.

853
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:03,759
Speaker 1: So he had to go back to Virginia and say

854
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: I lost your money and lost their certificates. But the

855
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 1: heart Brothers who knew him said, you know, they absolutely

856
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:13,920
Speaker 1: trusted him, and they had seen Boone in the worst

857
00:53:14,040 --> 00:53:17,879
Speaker 1: situations and he always and I was somebody dependable, So

858
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 1: they did not even ask for their money back, tried

859
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: to force him. The people who knew him best absolutely

860
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:27,399
Speaker 1: trusted him. The people who went after him later were

861
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: people who had lost land because of these surveys, so

862
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: he was known among a certain number of people as

863
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:39,360
Speaker 1: untrustworthy because they had lost land, even if it surveyed

864
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 1: by other people was associated with it. And the people

865
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 1: who really got Boon were lawyers like Henry Clay, who

866
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:49,440
Speaker 1: was a young lawyer and made his fortune going to

867
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 1: court and suing people, including Boone, over these land deals.

868
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 1: And Boone was a frontiersman. He hated paperwork. He was

869
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 1: very casual about registering things. Figured somebody else could do that.

870
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 1: He was a man of the woods. He called himself

871
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: a woodsman and he was. His reputation for being dishonest

872
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:12,440
Speaker 1: came from people who were mad because they had lost

873
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:16,280
Speaker 1: money in land deals and wanted to blame him. Uh.

874
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: I think it summed up his life so well. At

875
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 1: the at the end of his life, he he didn't

876
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 1: owe money to anyone, is that true. He went all

877
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:27,640
Speaker 1: the way back to Kentucky to pay people who claimed

878
00:54:28,160 --> 00:54:30,840
Speaker 1: he owed them money. He may not owed him anything,

879
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:34,880
Speaker 1: but they claimed it. And he didn't want to be

880
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 1: known as somebody who died still owing money, so he

881
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 1: he took the little money he got from selling his

882
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:43,800
Speaker 1: land he was given a piece of land in Missouri

883
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:48,600
Speaker 1: and took that money back. That's one story. His children said.

884
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: He never went back to Kentucky. So did he send

885
00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:55,480
Speaker 1: the money by mail or something. Yeah, we don't know.

886
00:54:55,960 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 1: He would loan people money and give them land on

887
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: a hand check. I never see them again. He would

888
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: sell it to them without anything. He went down pay.

889
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: He couldn't understand. You don't accumulate wealth. You share what

890
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:12,359
Speaker 1: you have. And that's one of the things that got

891
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,359
Speaker 1: him into so much trouble that here he would buy

892
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:17,719
Speaker 1: land and then set it to somebody else. He still

893
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:20,359
Speaker 1: had to pay for it. Yeah, and got nothing from

894
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:23,480
Speaker 1: the person. The ways of the backwoods didn't work very

895
00:55:23,480 --> 00:55:26,840
Speaker 1: good in civilization. That he was out of place. He

896
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 1: was out of place. Late in Boone's life, he lived

897
00:55:32,080 --> 00:55:36,160
Speaker 1: as a common man in Missouri. Chester Harding, a young

898
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:41,120
Speaker 1: painter from Massachusetts, was the last known visitor of Boone,

899
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:44,840
Speaker 1: and he captured the only real imagery that we have

900
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:49,400
Speaker 1: of Boon just before his death, so no other images

901
00:55:49,480 --> 00:55:53,400
Speaker 1: exist except for this one that Chester Harding did. Here's

902
00:55:53,440 --> 00:55:56,919
Speaker 1: an excerpt from Mr. Morgan's book about the latter part

903
00:55:57,120 --> 00:56:05,440
Speaker 1: of Daniel's life. Like almost all men and women who

904
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:09,120
Speaker 1: have the opportunity. Boone enjoyed his grandchildren. He could tell

905
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 1: them stories and rhymes, wise sayings, and anecdotes from his

906
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: childhood and his long adventurous life, and his curiosity never

907
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:21,320
Speaker 1: left him. He questioned visitors and family members about current

908
00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 1: events and news of the day, of the frontier advancing

909
00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:28,799
Speaker 1: further west. Sometimes he took a bear skin or deer

910
00:56:28,840 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 1: skin out under a tree, and he would lie on it,

911
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 1: whistling or singing to himself. The Reverend James E. Welch

912
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:40,280
Speaker 1: described his person as he saw him in eighteen eighteen.

913
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:44,640
Speaker 1: He was rather low of stature, broad shoulders, high cheek bones,

914
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:49,360
Speaker 1: very mild countenance, fair complexion, Soft and quiet in his manner,

915
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 1: but little to say unless spoken to, Amiable and kind

916
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 1: in his feelings, very fond of quiet, retirement of cool

917
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:05,440
Speaker 1: self possession, and indomitable perseverance. Among Boone's last noted visitors

918
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 1: was a young painter from Massachusetts named Chester Harding. Harding

919
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:12,600
Speaker 1: came to share it to paint Boone's portrait at the

920
00:57:12,680 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 1: very end of his life, finding the old hunter roasting

921
00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:20,240
Speaker 1: venison on a ramrod in a small cabin behind Jemima's house.

922
00:57:20,400 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 1: The painter asked if he could do a portrait. Boone

923
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:26,480
Speaker 1: was hard of hearing and may not have understood the request.

924
00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: He had little experience with portrait painters, But Jemima understood

925
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:34,120
Speaker 1: the importance of the opportunity and persuaded her father to

926
00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:38,280
Speaker 1: overcome his timidity or modesty and sit. The result was

927
00:57:38,320 --> 00:57:41,920
Speaker 1: the only portrait from life that exists. Though he was

928
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:45,680
Speaker 1: old and frail in the Harding painting, the powerful presence

929
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: of Boone comes through in the portrait. No longer the

930
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:52,480
Speaker 1: muscular big turtle of his prime, Boone still shows his

931
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:55,280
Speaker 1: character and will. It is the picture of a man

932
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: who means to do what he sets out to do.

933
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:01,720
Speaker 1: We are all in Harding's debt for the last minute

934
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:05,760
Speaker 1: likeness of Boone. According to the family, Boone was surprised

935
00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:10,240
Speaker 1: to see himself captured so convincingly on canvas. Harding's portrait

936
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: was later revised by others to make Boone look younger

937
00:58:13,320 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: and healthier. Harding captured the dignity and strength of the

938
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:21,520
Speaker 1: elusive Boone as he sketched. The young painter questioned Booned

939
00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: about his career, which now stretched into its ninth decade.

940
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:29,200
Speaker 1: Had he ever been lost in his wandering? Harding asked, no.

941
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 1: Boone said, I can't say I was ever lost, but

942
00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 1: I was bewildered once for three days. Today there are

943
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 1: many versions of Boone's portrait by Harding, but originally there

944
00:58:43,400 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: was only one. Here are the words of Chester Harding

945
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 1: about his trip to meet Boone. Quote. In June of

946
00:58:52,080 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 1: this year, I made a trip of one hundred miles

947
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 1: for the purpose of painting the portrait of old Colonel

948
00:58:58,480 --> 00:59:02,800
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone. I had much trouble in finding him. He

949
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: was living some miles from the main road, in one

950
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,360
Speaker 1: of the cabins of an old block house, which was

951
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 1: built for the protection of the settlers against the incursion

952
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: of Indians. I found that the nearer I got to

953
00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 1: his dwelling, the less was known of him. Within two

954
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:23,120
Speaker 1: miles of his house, I asked a man where Colonel

955
00:59:23,160 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 1: Boone lived. He said he did not know any such man. Why, yes,

956
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:31,439
Speaker 1: you do, His wife said, it's that white headed old

957
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 1: man who lives at the bottom near the river. A

958
00:59:35,200 --> 00:59:38,440
Speaker 1: good illustration of the proverb that a prophet is not

959
00:59:38,520 --> 00:59:43,280
Speaker 1: without honor save his own country. End of quote. I'm

960
00:59:43,320 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: absolutely amazed at that story two miles from where Boone lived.

961
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:54,520
Speaker 1: People didn't even know who he was. And what I

962
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:59,320
Speaker 1: like about Boon though, is Boone he didn't buy into

963
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:04,000
Speaker 1: the Boone. You know, somebody came in his older age.

964
01:00:04,000 --> 01:00:07,000
Speaker 1: There's an account of someone reading a story to him

965
01:00:07,040 --> 01:00:11,560
Speaker 1: about him, and Boone said basically said they should wait

966
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:14,800
Speaker 1: till somebody's dead to write stuff like that. Like he

967
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:18,520
Speaker 1: he he didn't buy into the hype. And and he

968
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:22,960
Speaker 1: he was. He died a common man. And it's just

969
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:25,720
Speaker 1: so bizarre that he didn't do like yeah, he didn't

970
01:00:25,760 --> 01:00:28,800
Speaker 1: do like a buffalo Bill Cody wild West show thing,

971
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: theatrical performance. That's what I liked about the guy. I mean,

972
01:00:32,360 --> 01:00:34,800
Speaker 1: he was Crockett would get up. You know again, man,

973
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:37,680
Speaker 1: we stick him together, but Crockett would get up and

974
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:42,439
Speaker 1: play himself in front of audiences. It's interesting to hear

975
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:45,240
Speaker 1: the story of the latter years of Boone's life. He's

976
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:49,680
Speaker 1: living in Missouri after leaving Kentucky and vowing never to

977
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:52,320
Speaker 1: come back. He had a bad taste in his mouth

978
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:56,440
Speaker 1: about Kentucky. What's wild is the level of detail we

979
01:00:56,520 --> 01:01:00,920
Speaker 1: know about Boone's death. It's kind of bizarre. Boone had

980
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:05,280
Speaker 1: an infatuation with his coffin. Once, while Boone was away,

981
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: he became ill and they thought he was gonna die.

982
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 1: Nathan got word of it and had a common pine

983
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:17,200
Speaker 1: coffin built for his father, Much to everyone's surprise. Boone

984
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:21,320
Speaker 1: lived and was upset when he saw the coffin that

985
01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 1: had been chosen for him. Boone proceeded to build a

986
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:28,720
Speaker 1: beautiful walnut coffin that he kept in his house for

987
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:33,360
Speaker 1: some time before he decided to upgrade coffins again. He

988
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:37,320
Speaker 1: allowed a friend to be buried in the walnut coffin,

989
01:01:37,600 --> 01:01:42,160
Speaker 1: and he had a beautiful ornate cherry coffin made. He

990
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 1: kept it under his bed, polished it, often took naps

991
01:01:45,960 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 1: in it, and loved to show it to visitors, and

992
01:01:49,320 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 1: he would even scare his grandchildren with him inside of it.

993
01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:57,720
Speaker 1: Mr Morgan had something to say about the way death

994
01:01:58,120 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 1: used to be handled in the nineteenth century. People talked

995
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:10,640
Speaker 1: about a beautiful death. It was the last accomplishment. It

996
01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 1: was a kind of art. It was. It was something

997
01:02:13,080 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson. When somebody dies, she would always write and say,

998
01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:19,440
Speaker 1: tell me about their death. What kind of death wasn't

999
01:02:20,080 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: People then died at home they didn't die in a

1000
01:02:23,200 --> 01:02:26,760
Speaker 1: hospice or off in a hospital somewhere, and you know,

1001
01:02:26,800 --> 01:02:30,000
Speaker 1: they could tell they were dying. Uh, people would gather

1002
01:02:30,080 --> 01:02:32,800
Speaker 1: around when boone, and they wouldn't have had medicine to

1003
01:02:32,840 --> 01:02:35,919
Speaker 1: try to extend their life by long periods of time.

1004
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:40,600
Speaker 1: Death would have been usually forecasted with some accuracy. You

1005
01:02:40,640 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: could see right that somebody was near death. Usually a

1006
01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: boon refused to drugs laudanum, he refused alcohol. He wanted

1007
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:54,439
Speaker 1: to be alert. His family gathered. I think his uh,

1008
01:02:55,080 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 1: his daughter in law, Ali was very good at singing.

1009
01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:00,800
Speaker 1: He had her sing. People would go their round, they

1010
01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:04,560
Speaker 1: would talk about things that had happened, Uh, forgive each other,

1011
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:07,120
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And yeah, it was it was

1012
01:03:07,160 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: a real kind of ceremony. I really enjoyed researching that

1013
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:14,160
Speaker 1: and getting some sense of what death meant in the night.

1014
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:19,080
Speaker 1: Isn't that like a really potentially important piece of the

1015
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 1: human experience that we now basically don't experience. We tried

1016
01:03:23,360 --> 01:03:26,600
Speaker 1: to hide it, we tried to to ignore it. Yeah,

1017
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: without modern medicine, you know, people sort of died in

1018
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:33,040
Speaker 1: a natural way. It was it was just a fact.

1019
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:36,160
Speaker 1: You know, it was a milestone that was part of life.

1020
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: It was It was like a like a birth and

1021
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:42,760
Speaker 1: the death like they both would have been these bookends

1022
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: to life. It was done at home. I like to

1023
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:49,200
Speaker 1: think about how the human experience in the last hundred

1024
01:03:49,280 --> 01:03:54,200
Speaker 1: years is so bizarre as compared to the eons that

1025
01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:56,760
Speaker 1: humans have been on the earth, And just in this

1026
01:03:56,800 --> 01:03:59,760
Speaker 1: period of time, have people died in hospitals and have

1027
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 1: people have been able to use by economic means basically

1028
01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:09,479
Speaker 1: farm out the the arrangements of their family member's death.

1029
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:13,400
Speaker 1: Right we can prolong life when it's almost not life.

1030
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:19,040
Speaker 1: Would know that that idea of dying naturally when he

1031
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: were still alert. Stonewall Jackson died that way. I remember

1032
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: he refused any laudanum or alcohol. He wanted to be

1033
01:04:26,560 --> 01:04:30,160
Speaker 1: aware of everything. He knew he was dying. But that

1034
01:04:30,240 --> 01:04:35,080
Speaker 1: was I think pretty common. But Boone's death was particularly

1035
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,480
Speaker 1: beautiful because everybody was there. They all gathered around him,

1036
01:04:38,520 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 1: and Boone said, you know, don't worry, I've had a

1037
01:04:40,680 --> 01:04:43,760
Speaker 1: long life. I've had a good life. They offered him.

1038
01:04:44,720 --> 01:04:47,920
Speaker 1: He said he wanted a bowl of warm milk. I

1039
01:04:47,960 --> 01:04:50,240
Speaker 1: think that was the last thing. He had eaten. Too

1040
01:04:50,280 --> 01:04:55,080
Speaker 1: many sweet potatoes the night before, because and his grandchildren

1041
01:04:55,080 --> 01:04:59,120
Speaker 1: had applied him with cookies and candy. Um. But he

1042
01:04:59,320 --> 01:05:02,160
Speaker 1: certainly was a where of what was happening, and uh

1043
01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:05,280
Speaker 1: did not seem I wouldn't say blissful, but it doesn't

1044
01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:12,880
Speaker 1: seem worried. Particularly. This is Nathan Boone's account of his

1045
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:19,360
Speaker 1: father's death. Finally, I took him back in a carriage,

1046
01:05:19,360 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: and my two little sons, Howard and John, six and

1047
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,200
Speaker 1: four years of age, came along. We reached my house

1048
01:05:25,200 --> 01:05:28,040
Speaker 1: at midday, and he was cheerful and in good spirits.

1049
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:30,680
Speaker 1: He told his grandchildren he thought he would soon be

1050
01:05:30,760 --> 01:05:32,880
Speaker 1: well enough to go with them and gather some of

1051
01:05:32,920 --> 01:05:35,680
Speaker 1: the hazel nuts he had seen nearby along the road.

1052
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:39,959
Speaker 1: During the afternoon, he enjoyed the innocent prattle of his grandchildren,

1053
01:05:40,120 --> 01:05:42,760
Speaker 1: and to please them he would eat some cakes, nuts,

1054
01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:47,280
Speaker 1: and even drink buttermilk they affectionately presented to him. In

1055
01:05:47,400 --> 01:05:50,600
Speaker 1: this way, it was afterward thought he loaded his stomach

1056
01:05:50,720 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 1: with articles too rich and gross. My father rested pretty

1057
01:05:55,040 --> 01:05:58,280
Speaker 1: well that night. The next morning he went out upon

1058
01:05:58,360 --> 01:06:01,640
Speaker 1: the porch, looked around the arm and he said, if

1059
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:04,160
Speaker 1: he felt as well the next day as he did,

1060
01:06:04,200 --> 01:06:07,560
Speaker 1: then he would ride horseback around the farm. He was

1061
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:09,760
Speaker 1: brought in and laid down on the bed and slept.

1062
01:06:10,280 --> 01:06:13,520
Speaker 1: Before he awakened. It was discovered that a fever was

1063
01:06:13,560 --> 01:06:16,800
Speaker 1: coming upon him, and he began to complain of an acute,

1064
01:06:16,880 --> 01:06:20,760
Speaker 1: burning sensation such as he never before felt in his breast,

1065
01:06:20,960 --> 01:06:25,320
Speaker 1: which continually grew worse. When he was advised to take medicine,

1066
01:06:25,360 --> 01:06:27,959
Speaker 1: he declined, as he thought it would do no good.

1067
01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:31,400
Speaker 1: He said it was his last sickness, but he said

1068
01:06:31,440 --> 01:06:34,920
Speaker 1: calmly he was not afraid to die. He recognized all

1069
01:06:35,000 --> 01:06:37,680
Speaker 1: his relatives who came to see him during his last sickness,

1070
01:06:37,840 --> 01:06:41,200
Speaker 1: and talked until within a few minutes of his last breath.

1071
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: Some ten minutes before he breathed his last his daughter,

1072
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:50,560
Speaker 1: miss Callaway, arrived. He recognized her and died placidly, only

1073
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:55,080
Speaker 1: exhibiting a scowl with his last breath. Towards the last

1074
01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 1: when asked if he suffered pain, he would say he

1075
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:01,640
Speaker 1: did in his breast and between his shoulders. He died

1076
01:07:01,760 --> 01:07:06,720
Speaker 1: on the morning of September eighteen twenty about sunrise, the

1077
01:07:06,840 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: fourteenth day after his arrival here. Boone died at Nathan's

1078
01:07:15,360 --> 01:07:19,800
Speaker 1: home in fami O Sage Creek, Missouri, just west of St. Louis.

1079
01:07:20,440 --> 01:07:23,760
Speaker 1: He was buried with Rebecca, who had passed away seven

1080
01:07:23,800 --> 01:07:29,000
Speaker 1: years prior, near Martha'sville, Missouri. However, there is some drama.

1081
01:07:29,560 --> 01:07:33,480
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty five, Boone's body was exhumed and moved

1082
01:07:33,520 --> 01:07:38,880
Speaker 1: to Frankfort, Kentucky. However, in the nineteen eighties his grave

1083
01:07:39,040 --> 01:07:44,280
Speaker 1: was dug up and forensic anthropologists believed that the skull

1084
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:47,920
Speaker 1: that was in the grave was that of an African American,

1085
01:07:48,480 --> 01:07:53,320
Speaker 1: creating lore that they dug up the wrong body. To

1086
01:07:53,440 --> 01:07:59,280
Speaker 1: this day, both cemeteries claim to have Daniel Boone's grave.

1087
01:08:03,440 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 1: He was certainly acclaimed as a great explorer and leader,

1088
01:08:09,360 --> 01:08:12,960
Speaker 1: but that was the place where you know, the boon

1089
01:08:13,120 --> 01:08:16,240
Speaker 1: passed in the legend of his only stories and memories

1090
01:08:16,280 --> 01:08:19,000
Speaker 1: after that, and the legend has continued to grow it

1091
01:08:19,760 --> 01:08:22,240
Speaker 1: instead of fading away. I mean, most people die, and

1092
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:24,760
Speaker 1: you know, even if the people who knew them, uh

1093
01:08:25,400 --> 01:08:31,879
Speaker 1: forget them. Mostly the boon was necessary to American culture.

1094
01:08:32,680 --> 01:08:36,400
Speaker 1: Why does some people become more and more famous and

1095
01:08:36,560 --> 01:08:41,400
Speaker 1: most people do not. Boon gives us an image of

1096
01:08:41,479 --> 01:08:44,120
Speaker 1: something we would like to be. Somebody who can has

1097
01:08:44,200 --> 01:08:48,800
Speaker 1: no fear, who who can blend in with nature, who

1098
01:08:48,800 --> 01:08:52,439
Speaker 1: sees nature as good and the Indians is good, and

1099
01:08:52,880 --> 01:08:55,720
Speaker 1: takes the country westward. Of course, this brings up the

1100
01:08:55,760 --> 01:09:00,759
Speaker 1: issue which Moon himself became aware of they during his life,

1101
01:09:01,600 --> 01:09:06,120
Speaker 1: that he has taken people into the wilderness. He has

1102
01:09:06,240 --> 01:09:11,599
Speaker 1: established civilization in a way, but he's also helped destroy

1103
01:09:12,400 --> 01:09:16,320
Speaker 1: the indigenous culture and the game and the wilderness. What

1104
01:09:16,439 --> 01:09:19,960
Speaker 1: he's done. This is divided him and you can look

1105
01:09:20,000 --> 01:09:22,640
Speaker 1: at it in these different ways. And he realized that

1106
01:09:22,680 --> 01:09:25,719
Speaker 1: he said as much that he has taken help take

1107
01:09:26,160 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 1: the Indians content hunting ground. So he's very divided about

1108
01:09:30,000 --> 01:09:32,479
Speaker 1: his career. He doesn't see it as just a great success,

1109
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:36,040
Speaker 1: but partly of failure. That the very thing he loves

1110
01:09:36,160 --> 01:09:40,600
Speaker 1: so much has been destroyed are partly destroyed. So we

1111
01:09:40,720 --> 01:09:45,520
Speaker 1: have to think about that that Daniel Boone is America,

1112
01:09:46,040 --> 01:09:49,519
Speaker 1: he's us, and he's done these different things. But it

1113
01:09:49,560 --> 01:09:53,640
Speaker 1: is not all good by any means. The westward expansion has,

1114
01:09:53,720 --> 01:09:57,680
Speaker 1: you know, has some real drawbacks. Nobody would want to

1115
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:01,240
Speaker 1: give up California, a very few, but you know it

1116
01:10:01,320 --> 01:10:05,640
Speaker 1: was taken from the Spaniards and from the Indians. So

1117
01:10:05,800 --> 01:10:10,080
Speaker 1: Boone's story is really the story of this country good

1118
01:10:10,080 --> 01:10:21,360
Speaker 1: and bad. Elizabeth Corbin, a relative by marriage of Boone,

1119
01:10:21,600 --> 01:10:26,519
Speaker 1: wrote about the old backwoodsman, quote, he had a soft,

1120
01:10:26,720 --> 01:10:33,080
Speaker 1: almost effeminate voice and extremely mild and pleasant manners. In fact, most,

1121
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:36,240
Speaker 1: if not all, of the old hunters who spent most

1122
01:10:36,320 --> 01:10:40,560
Speaker 1: of their time in the deep solitude of the unbroken woods,

1123
01:10:40,560 --> 01:10:46,480
Speaker 1: spoken soft, low tones. I do not, among my acquaintances,

1124
01:10:46,760 --> 01:10:52,800
Speaker 1: recall an exception. As we consider Boone's influence on American ideals,

1125
01:10:53,120 --> 01:10:56,960
Speaker 1: it reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt's famous line about speaking

1126
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:01,840
Speaker 1: softly but carrying a big stick. Boon Woun undoubtedly carried

1127
01:11:01,880 --> 01:11:05,280
Speaker 1: a big one. In the final moments of Nathan Boone's

1128
01:11:05,360 --> 01:11:10,639
Speaker 1: interview with Draper, he said, quote, my father, Daniel Boone,

1129
01:11:10,800 --> 01:11:14,640
Speaker 1: was five ft eight inches high. He had broad shoulders

1130
01:11:14,640 --> 01:11:18,200
Speaker 1: in a chest that tapered down. His usual weight was

1131
01:11:18,280 --> 01:11:21,080
Speaker 1: around a hundred and seventy five pounds, but at one

1132
01:11:21,160 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 1: period he exceeded two hundred pounds, and in his closing

1133
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:28,320
Speaker 1: years weighed only a hundred and fifty five pounds. His

1134
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:32,719
Speaker 1: hair was moderately black, eyes blue, and he had fair skin.

1135
01:11:33,040 --> 01:11:36,880
Speaker 1: He never used tobacco in any form and was temperate

1136
01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:46,599
Speaker 1: in everything. As we come to a close in our

1137
01:11:46,640 --> 01:11:50,880
Speaker 1: Boon series. I'm thrilled for the insight we've gained and

1138
01:11:51,000 --> 01:11:56,280
Speaker 1: learned about American identity and ourselves, but I'm slightly grieved.

1139
01:11:56,960 --> 01:12:00,439
Speaker 1: I've been immersed into Boone's life in the last several months,

1140
01:12:00,680 --> 01:12:04,880
Speaker 1: and I don't want to leave. But maybe that's the point.

1141
01:12:05,400 --> 01:12:09,240
Speaker 1: The values of our heroes can stay with us. So

1142
01:12:09,479 --> 01:12:14,120
Speaker 1: much of what I value, particularly in nature, wildness, solitude,

1143
01:12:14,320 --> 01:12:17,920
Speaker 1: and hunting, can be traced back to Boone. He defined

1144
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:21,680
Speaker 1: for us what a woodsman and a backwoodsman was, and

1145
01:12:21,760 --> 01:12:24,920
Speaker 1: I now cherished those phrases more than ever, and I

1146
01:12:25,000 --> 01:12:29,879
Speaker 1: want to carry them with dignity and responsibility in modern times.

1147
01:12:30,600 --> 01:12:34,040
Speaker 1: At a larger scale, I think Boone was defined by

1148
01:12:34,080 --> 01:12:38,360
Speaker 1: the quest for more. The modern American version of that

1149
01:12:38,600 --> 01:12:43,519
Speaker 1: is an unsatiable quest for more stuff, more cars, more money,

1150
01:12:43,840 --> 01:12:47,760
Speaker 1: more land, more prestige. But I think we have the

1151
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:52,600
Speaker 1: right to amend this, to redeem it. Quest and pursuit

1152
01:12:52,680 --> 01:12:55,760
Speaker 1: are good things. I think we should all be on

1153
01:12:55,840 --> 01:13:00,000
Speaker 1: a quest and undeterred by obstacles and trials. But we've

1154
01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:03,120
Speaker 1: just got to make sure that we're questing after and

1155
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:07,760
Speaker 1: pursuing the right things, things that have more valued than

1156
01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:13,400
Speaker 1: external wealth which will ultimately rust rot and cannot be

1157
01:13:13,520 --> 01:13:17,679
Speaker 1: taken with us after we leave this place. Our country

1158
01:13:17,800 --> 01:13:21,600
Speaker 1: is in a quandary to define a modern American identity.

1159
01:13:21,960 --> 01:13:27,559
Speaker 1: My only input is this, the American backwoodsman has earned

1160
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:30,479
Speaker 1: the right to sit at the table and put his

1161
01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:35,040
Speaker 1: fingerprint on these ideals. He's earned the right to exist

1162
01:13:35,520 --> 01:13:40,040
Speaker 1: in modern times. Our conservation ethic has been honed by

1163
01:13:40,080 --> 01:13:44,360
Speaker 1: two hundred years of experience, both good and bad, and indisputably,

1164
01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:49,200
Speaker 1: we are leading the way and saving wildlife in the

1165
01:13:49,240 --> 01:13:53,360
Speaker 1: wild places that we love. This is deeply an American

1166
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:57,840
Speaker 1: ideal that honors the native American land ethic and the

1167
01:13:57,920 --> 01:14:04,559
Speaker 1: revamped modern think of the woodsman. Let the woodsman, the hunters,

1168
01:14:04,560 --> 01:14:08,880
Speaker 1: and fishermen be stewards and protectors the wild that we

1169
01:14:09,000 --> 01:14:14,800
Speaker 1: have left, and civilization and concrete spread like wildfire across

1170
01:14:15,080 --> 01:14:20,520
Speaker 1: the landscape. We will protect them because we value them,

1171
01:14:20,560 --> 01:14:24,480
Speaker 1: and we value them because of the words and lives

1172
01:14:24,920 --> 01:15:10,759
Speaker 1: of our fathers, one of which was Boom tumble, little

1173
01:15:10,800 --> 01:15:15,519
Speaker 1: guy rumbling gat wake up some couplet guy probing, gag prople,

1174
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:31,559
Speaker 1: little gat up cup Gady, My grandpa wa so little

1175
01:15:31,600 --> 01:15:48,000
Speaker 1: guy rumbling, wake up a little girl, I'll take conboy

1176
01:15:48,160 --> 01:15:50,559
Speaker 1: raised me upon. Rust in the dast as long as

1177
01:15:50,560 --> 01:15:53,320
Speaker 1: you roll, long as your long as wrong, rust in

1178
01:15:53,400 --> 01:16:08,080
Speaker 1: the dast to long you're all. That song was played

1179
01:16:08,439 --> 01:16:09,680
Speaker 1: by Nick Shoulders