Speaker 1: M. Daniel Boone and his actions and his life, real
Speaker 1: or mythical, embodied what the American people wanted to see
Speaker 1: happen in the wilderness. They wanted to see man in
Speaker 1: the wilderness thriving and dominating and conquering, because that's a
Speaker 1: good story. Because that's a good story. And so whether
Speaker 1: it happened or not, we wrote it deep down because
Speaker 1: we wanted to read it. On this third and final
Speaker 1: episode of the Daniel Boone series on The Burglaries podcast,
Speaker 1: We're gonna cover Boone's life from thirty five years of
Speaker 1: age to the grave, or at least where we think
Speaker 1: it's grave is. Will explore Boone's adoption as a Shawnee,
Speaker 1: the heroic rescue of his daughter, rumors of his wife's unfaithfulness,
Speaker 1: him killing a hundred and fifty five bears in one season,
Speaker 1: his financial failures, and his character. We're in s of
Speaker 1: who Boon was, his significance in American culture, and perhaps
Speaker 1: you'll find his fingerprints on your life. Heroes are conduits
Speaker 1: of value systems, and will evaluate the one deposited by
Speaker 1: the old backwoodsman. Betrail has been steep and thick, but
Speaker 1: we're about to ascend to the hilltop and see Boone's
Speaker 1: grand vista. You're not gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 1: So Boone's story, it's really the story of this country,
Speaker 1: good and bad. My name is Clay Nukelem and this
Speaker 1: is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten
Speaker 1: but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where
Speaker 1: we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives
Speaker 1: close to the land. Presented by f h F gear,
Speaker 1: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the places we explore. On
Speaker 1: Part one of our series on Daniel Boone, we highlighted
Speaker 1: the foundations of his early life from birth to when
Speaker 1: he was thirty five years old, and traversed the Cumberland Gap.
Speaker 1: We explored the cultural mechanisms in which national heroes and
Speaker 1: their identity are created through archetypes. On Part two, we
Speaker 1: camped out in the dad Gum Cumberland Gap and knuck key.
Speaker 1: The Gap must have been blushing by the time we
Speaker 1: were done. Dan's passage through it was key in his life,
Speaker 1: his legend in the Young Life of America. Part three,
Speaker 1: the final in our series, maybe my favorite of them all,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a big swing at the rest of
Speaker 1: the Boone's life, all the way to the grave. There's
Speaker 1: no way we can do justice to all the stories,
Speaker 1: the nuance. But we're in search of understanding this woodsman's
Speaker 1: significance what it means to American identity today. On this
Speaker 1: third episode, I grow weary of telling you all the
Speaker 1: cool things about Steve Runella. He's played a very significant
Speaker 1: role in defining the modern American hunter through his books,
Speaker 1: podcast and the academic rigor he's brought into the space
Speaker 1: of the American hunter. Here's Steve, it's Dave Ranella. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about the significance of Kentucky to to Boon
Speaker 1: number one, but also to the American frontier. When we
Speaker 1: talk about going into Kentucky. When these guys would discuss it,
Speaker 1: they were more particularly talking about a region of Kentucky.
Speaker 1: If you came down through the Cumberland Gap and entered Kentucky.
Speaker 1: They were traveling quite a ways beyond that, because they
Speaker 1: were going out to the to the hills, to the
Speaker 1: grass the grasslands. Do you want to get an idea
Speaker 1: what this might look like. There are people, there are
Speaker 1: records from Boone and other frontiersman about massive herds of
Speaker 1: buffalo out on the grasslands of Kentucky. There are descriptions
Speaker 1: of it as where where there aren't trees around, herds
Speaker 1: of elk, estimations of maybe a thousand buffalo in a
Speaker 1: group deer to the point where long hunters could go
Speaker 1: there and shoot literally hundreds of deer. And it was
Speaker 1: fertile soil you could plant it, so they needed certain
Speaker 1: things that they could get off the land in order
Speaker 1: to pack up your family on pack horses or a
Speaker 1: small wagon and go way out and established like a
Speaker 1: new frontier settlement. And that had all of that game, grasslands, water,
Speaker 1: tillable soil, and just space where that every family going,
Speaker 1: every member of every family going is picturing that they're
Speaker 1: going to get all the land they need, and then
Speaker 1: their kids will have all the land they need. That's
Speaker 1: the promise that Kentucky held out to the frontiersman who
Speaker 1: are going there. It was a way to make a
Speaker 1: shift from being long hunters who lived off the spoils,
Speaker 1: the sort of immediate spoils of the field, to become landowners,
Speaker 1: to become like business people. Right, that was your place
Speaker 1: to go and get They wouldn't use this term at all,
Speaker 1: but it was your place to go get the American dream,
Speaker 1: which that was before the American dream existed. When I
Speaker 1: say that they wouldn't have used that term is at
Speaker 1: that time they wouldn't really have. They wouldn't really they
Speaker 1: thought of themselves as Americans. It's interesting that there was
Speaker 1: a confused even at the time the Revolutionary War among
Speaker 1: Boone and other long hunters and frontiers and he was with.
Speaker 1: There was a bit of confusion about what side of
Speaker 1: that you ought to fall on. Initially, they lived so
Speaker 1: far removed from like the the rule of the crown,
Speaker 1: that they weren't struggling from like that level of oppression there.
Speaker 1: They didn't immediately jump onto like this patriotic notion of
Speaker 1: being Americans. The idea that Boone was a dedicated American
Speaker 1: patriot is a myth. And we'll learn that he did
Speaker 1: fight for our country on the western front of the
Speaker 1: American Revolution. But the real Boon wasn't sporting eagles in
Speaker 1: American flag tato news. America wasn't even a country until
Speaker 1: he was in his forties, and he spent the last
Speaker 1: years of his life outside of the United States and
Speaker 1: the Missouri territory owned by the Spanish. This is the
Speaker 1: place where we'll get onto the same page about Boone's
Speaker 1: exploits in Kentucky. His first attempt to settle in Kentucky
Speaker 1: was in seventeen seventy three, two years after he returned
Speaker 1: home from his first long hunt there, but the mission
Speaker 1: was abandoned when his son James and several others were
Speaker 1: killed by Indians. Two years after that, in seventeen seventy five, Dan,
Speaker 1: along with thirty other men, cut a trail through the
Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap and trimmed out the longer wilderness road. And
Speaker 1: he brought a bunch of folks with him, including Rebecca
Speaker 1: and the kids. They make it into Kentucky and build
Speaker 1: a fort called Boonsboro. This is where we'll pick up
Speaker 1: with two very important events, the rescue of Jemima and
Speaker 1: the siege of Boonsboro by the Shawnees. We'll start with
Speaker 1: Jemima's story, but first you need to understand the controversy
Speaker 1: around her conception. Here's Steve and I talking about Boone's
Speaker 1: quote favorite daughter. To think about how significant the Cumberland
Speaker 1: Gap was to travel through it. When he goes through,
Speaker 1: he's gone two years it's not like you're bopping in
Speaker 1: and out like it's a commitment. He goes there and
Speaker 1: he's gone two years. We'll just imagine something like that
Speaker 1: from a business perspective. You just like walk away from
Speaker 1: your life for two years and come back and then
Speaker 1: later try to sort out your affairs. I mean, you
Speaker 1: just miss a lot. When historians line it all up,
Speaker 1: they can't even make sense of the birth you know,
Speaker 1: the birth dates of his children. There were somewhere they're
Speaker 1: like Holmett, but how could that be? He had been
Speaker 1: gone a year but then raise the kid as his oma.
Speaker 1: Just didn't make any sense when ye stuff that was his,
Speaker 1: like his daughter Jemima. He had been gone two years
Speaker 1: and he came back. And there's lots of versions of
Speaker 1: this story. The most decent book I read on Boone
Speaker 1: told this story as if it were true. Robert Morgan
Speaker 1: tells the story as if there's quite a bit of
Speaker 1: speculation inside of it. But Boone came back from a
Speaker 1: two year jaunt and his wife had a newborn child
Speaker 1: in her hand, and she was nursing a newborn child.
Speaker 1: He's been gone for two years to that, and it
Speaker 1: was found out that the father of the child was
Speaker 1: his brother and it was you know. And this is
Speaker 1: where Boone gets becomes even more famous because he said, well,
Speaker 1: at least we kept it in the family, and he
Speaker 1: raised the kid, and that that is for certain. I
Speaker 1: mean he raised the kid as his own. Jemoma was
Speaker 1: one of his daughters that later went to an incredible
Speaker 1: bit of heroism to savor life. Yeah, now that we
Speaker 1: know the drama around Jemoma, I couldn't tell Boone's story
Speaker 1: without including her kidnapping and Boone's rescue mission. We watch
Speaker 1: a lot of fake movies making stuff like this seemed normal,
Speaker 1: but this is real and epitomizes why we're still talking
Speaker 1: about d Boone. What a dad gum stud. This is
Speaker 1: the account as told by Nathan Boone, Boone's youngest son,
Speaker 1: who was interviewed by Lyman Draper. Draper stayed with Nathan
Speaker 1: and Olive Boone in October and November of eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: Draper's interview with Nathan is our best resource about Boone's
Speaker 1: life if you hadn't figured it out already. I love
Speaker 1: Lyman Draper. He's kind of the nerdy hero of our
Speaker 1: connection to Boone's life. Hashtag draper. Here's Nathan talking about
Speaker 1: his father and sister. The girls went pleasuring in a
Speaker 1: canoe on Sunday. One of the callaway girls wanted to
Speaker 1: go to a certain point to get some young kane,
Speaker 1: and my sister Jemima Boone, was steering in the canoe.
Speaker 1: As the canoe touched the shore, Indians leaped out and
Speaker 1: seized the girls, and the callaway girls fought with their battles.
Speaker 1: Jemima used to say she then had a sore foot
Speaker 1: from a cane stab and had got the other girls
Speaker 1: to go to the river with her that she might
Speaker 1: hold her foot in the water to quiet the pain.
Speaker 1: After capture, the Indians hurried the girl's away a few
Speaker 1: miles off. The Indians had left an old white horse.
Speaker 1: While the Indians hurried the girls, they delayed as much
Speaker 1: as possible. The Indians then cut off the girls dresses
Speaker 1: and petticoats to the knees to speed their progress, and
Speaker 1: gave them moccasins and leggings hanging mall. A Cherokee was
Speaker 1: of the group. Jemama Boone knew him, probably having met
Speaker 1: him when living on the Watuga. He asked if all
Speaker 1: were daughters of Daniel Boone. She said yes, feeling they
Speaker 1: would be treated more kindly. Hanging Mall then said, laughing,
Speaker 1: we have done pretty well for old Boon this time.
Speaker 1: When they reached the horse, they put Jemima on at
Speaker 1: first because of her sore foot, and occasionally put all
Speaker 1: three girls on together. The horse was crossed and would bite.
Speaker 1: The girls did everything they could to make a trail
Speaker 1: by dropping bits of cloth until the Indians put a
Speaker 1: stop to it. When first captured, their screams were heard.
Speaker 1: Father was lying down on the bed at his house
Speaker 1: and jumped up and seized his gun and started off
Speaker 1: without his moccasins. The only person I definitely recall being
Speaker 1: in the pursuing party was Flanders Callaway. Colonel Richard Callaway
Speaker 1: started with the pursuers and they soon found the Indian trail.
Speaker 1: Callaway was for following directly on the trail, but father objected.
Speaker 1: I suppose Colonel Callaway then returned to Boonsborough. The reason
Speaker 1: my father objected to following the trail was that if
Speaker 1: the Indians had a backwatch, the pursuers would be discovered.
Speaker 1: This would give the Indians time enough to tomahawk the girls.
Speaker 1: He reasoned that a better way would be to fall
Speaker 1: in ahead and strike and watch their war paths. The
Speaker 1: first night someone had returned for supplies. I think there
Speaker 1: were two or three, and very likely Colonel Callaway had
Speaker 1: returned as soon as the Indian trail was discovered in
Speaker 1: their direction. Determined Father's advice was followed, the party bore
Speaker 1: off to one side of their route, and on the
Speaker 1: day the girls were retaken, they again found the Indian trail.
Speaker 1: This they followed a short distance where they found a
Speaker 1: dead buffalo. The Indians had killed and skinned part of
Speaker 1: the hump and cut out a piece and pushed on.
Speaker 1: They only took part, as the whole hump would often
Speaker 1: weigh two hundred pounds. When Father saw that the buffalo
Speaker 1: had just been killed and the blood was yet trickling down,
Speaker 1: he was certain the Indians would stop to cook. When
Speaker 1: they reached the first water. Later, they found a small
Speaker 1: snake the Indians had killed, which was writhing in death.
Speaker 1: Then they discovered the Indian party had separated. The white
Speaker 1: men also split into two groups to search for the Indians,
Speaker 1: both up and down the stream. Father with the right
Speaker 1: hand party had gone about two or three hundred yards
Speaker 1: and when descending a hill into a glen, they saw
Speaker 1: the Indians camped in a small branch. Immediately, my father
Speaker 1: and some others shot at them and then rushed the camp.
Speaker 1: The girls were sitting in the grass on the ground
Speaker 1: in a small open glade and a few steps from
Speaker 1: the fire, and were apparently guarded by one of the
Speaker 1: Indians in a reclining posture. The fire was kindled, and
Speaker 1: three other Indians were gathering wood and preparing for cooking,
Speaker 1: while another Indian was posted some distance in the rear.
Speaker 1: This fellow, scene from the smoke that the fire was kindled,
Speaker 1: left his gun standing and ran down to light his pipe,
Speaker 1: and had reached the fire when Boone and his party fired,
Speaker 1: or so my sister always said. At the crack of
Speaker 1: the guns, the girls jumped up, Jemima shouted, that's daddy,
Speaker 1: and started towards their rescuers. Father yelled to them to
Speaker 1: throw themselves flat upon the ground in case the Indians
Speaker 1: might shoot back, or in case they might accidentally get
Speaker 1: harmed by the shots of the whites. The girls obeyed.
Speaker 1: The men did not know how many Indians were there,
Speaker 1: or if more than they saw might not be nearby.
Speaker 1: One of the Indians that the fire was shot and
Speaker 1: fell into the fire. He must have risen and run
Speaker 1: off mortally wounded, as nothing particularly was said about it.
Speaker 1: The Indian who was shot at the fire was probably
Speaker 1: the one shot by John Floyd. Father then pointed out
Speaker 1: the bush where the Indians stood that he shot, and
Speaker 1: there found the Indians rifle. The girls had been expecting
Speaker 1: to be rescued until that day, but had finally given
Speaker 1: up hope, and we're very downhearted. The Indians gave them
Speaker 1: jerked meat, but Jemima said she never felt like eating
Speaker 1: a morsel, but her foot mended doing the captivity travel.
Speaker 1: When attacked, the Indians made no attempt to injure the girls.
Speaker 1: I think Flanders Callaway was with the party to the left,
Speaker 1: and he was a little later than Boone's party and
Speaker 1: discovering the Indians camp, one of this group fired along shot.
Speaker 1: Jemama Boone was born October four, seventeen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: was in her thirteenth year when captured. It was not
Speaker 1: long after that that she married young to Flanders Callaway.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember Robert Morgan, the author of the
Speaker 1: great Boone biography titled Boone. This is the most complex
Speaker 1: event of his life. February of seventy eight, he was
Speaker 1: captured by the Shawnees led by a chief Blackfish Catta Wamanga,
Speaker 1: and because this large group of Indians appeared, he had
Speaker 1: to surrender his men, who were boiling salt at the
Speaker 1: Blue Legs. Here is Nathan Boone's version of the capture.
Speaker 1: It's so long, I've condensed it with my commentary splicing
Speaker 1: through the story, so stay with me. Here's Nathan Boone.
Speaker 1: I think it was Saturday when my father was taken.
Speaker 1: In Sunday when he surrendered up the others, he said
Speaker 1: he went on horseback to kill meat for the company.
Speaker 1: In any event, he had killed the buffalo and loaded
Speaker 1: his horse with meat. It started snowing quite hard before
Speaker 1: he killed the buffalo, so he started for the licks,
Speaker 1: which he had left that morning. He had proceeded some
Speaker 1: distance when he discovered a small party of India on
Speaker 1: his trail. The snow was now something like an inch
Speaker 1: or so deep, and he could easily be followed. Father
Speaker 1: at once attempted to untie and throw off the load
Speaker 1: of meat, but failed because the fresh buffalo strings were frozen.
Speaker 1: The strings had been cut from the buffalo that made
Speaker 1: up this heavy load, perhaps three or four hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: and lashed around the horses belly by the tugs. Then
Speaker 1: he attempted to draw his knife from the scabbard to
Speaker 1: cut the tugs, but he found his knife which had
Speaker 1: been thrust into the sheath when all bloody had frozen.
Speaker 1: Father's greasy hands and greasy knife handle prevented him from
Speaker 1: getting the knife out. End of quote. The Shawnees then
Speaker 1: captured Boone. Nathan went on to describe something very interesting
Speaker 1: about his father, My father, Colonel Daniel Boone used to
Speaker 1: say that in his early Indian troubles and difficulties in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: if he dreamed of his father and he was angry,
Speaker 1: it would forebode evil. But if he appeared pln't he
Speaker 1: had nothing to fear. Each time when captured, robbed, or defeated.
Speaker 1: He thus dreamed unfavorably about his father. End of quote.
Speaker 1: Now we'll hear Nathan talk about when Boone was captured
Speaker 1: and brought back to their chief, Blackfish, using Pompey as
Speaker 1: an interpreter, Blackfish asked my father about his men who
Speaker 1: were at the Pee Memo Lick. This was the general
Speaker 1: name in Shawnee for salt springs, referring to the lower
Speaker 1: blue licks. Father asked how they knew his men were there,
Speaker 1: and they said their spies had seen them. Father admitted
Speaker 1: that these men were his, and Blackfish informed him they
Speaker 1: were going to kill them. My father then proposed if
Speaker 1: they would not mistreat them nor make them run the gauntlet,
Speaker 1: he would surrender them up as prisoners of war. End
Speaker 1: of quote. Now Boone leads the Shawnees to his men
Speaker 1: that are working at a salt lick. Here's Boone. I
Speaker 1: suppose it was on the north side of the river.
Speaker 1: The salt makers were lying on their blankets, apparently stunning
Speaker 1: themselves with the snow then half a leg deep. My
Speaker 1: father called out to the men that they were surrounded
Speaker 1: by a large body of Indians. He explained that he
Speaker 1: had stipulated for their surrender and had secured the promise
Speaker 1: of good treatment for them. He said that it was
Speaker 1: impossible for them to get away, and begged them not
Speaker 1: to attempt to defend themselves, as they would all be massacred.
Speaker 1: They at once yielded to his advice, and as my
Speaker 1: father and the Indians with him began to descend the hill,
Speaker 1: the others began to come in from every direction. End
Speaker 1: of quote. Boone and his men would be captured and
Speaker 1: they would stay with the Shawnee for four months. Some
Speaker 1: of the men would escape at different times. It was
Speaker 1: at this time that Boone was adopted as the son
Speaker 1: of Blackfish and thus a Shawnee. Boone would spend the
Speaker 1: entire four months there and adapted very well to indigenous life.
Speaker 1: This would come back to haunt Boone later. This is
Speaker 1: Nathan talking about how Blackfish treated his father. Both Blackfish
Speaker 1: and his squall treated father very kindly, and he seemed
Speaker 1: to think much of them. They had two daughters, both small,
Speaker 1: named Puma PC and Pima PC. The former was four
Speaker 1: or five years old, ill tempered and hateful. The youngest
Speaker 1: was a mere child, perhaps a year old, with a
Speaker 1: kind temper, and Boone used to nurse it frequently. He
Speaker 1: used the silver trink it's his currency, and would buy
Speaker 1: maple sugar to give to the children, who would smile
Speaker 1: and call it molas. An example of blackfish his kindness
Speaker 1: and an Indian's idea of taste was that Blackfish would
Speaker 1: suck a lump of sugar while in his mouth, take
Speaker 1: it out and give it to Boone, who he always
Speaker 1: addressed as my son. Blackfish at that time was perhaps
Speaker 1: fifty years old, but perhaps not quite that old. Blackfish
Speaker 1: gave my father the name shell Tawee, which means the
Speaker 1: big turtle. End of quote. To make this story short
Speaker 1: and simple, Boon makes a daring escape from the Shawnee
Speaker 1: captors after four months of favorable captivity. While they were
Speaker 1: distracted by a flock of turkeys, Boone makes a bee
Speaker 1: line back to Boonsborough to warn the settlers and his
Speaker 1: family of the coming attack by the Shawnee. They prepare
Speaker 1: the fort and within a short time period, are attacked.
Speaker 1: After a set up peace talk from Blackfish, we can
Speaker 1: do a whole series on this one event. Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: The Shawnees are held off and the fort is saved,
Speaker 1: but there were consequences for Boone because of Boon on
Speaker 1: those people, including women of really excellent shots. The civil
Speaker 1: women remember us with a rifle. Uh, They're able to
Speaker 1: hold them off from Kentucky was not lost, so the
Speaker 1: western side of the United States is not lost. It's
Speaker 1: very important event. If they had lost Boonsborough, all of
Speaker 1: Kentucky would have been taken there's no doubt of it.
Speaker 1: So Boon and it's always the hero of the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: That's when he's court martial that Richard Henderson and the
Speaker 1: Benjamin Lardan accused him of treason because he had surrendered
Speaker 1: the men at the Blue Licks and gone to live
Speaker 1: with the Indians. So they they give this deposition accusing him. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Virginia militia has arrived with several officers, including a major,
Speaker 1: and they're the judges at this court martial. And Boone
Speaker 1: gets up and defends himself, and he was really good
Speaker 1: at this. One of the reasons the Indians admired him
Speaker 1: so much was he could talk. The big talk said
Speaker 1: he could talk like a chief. And he eloquently defends,
Speaker 1: explains this elaborate rush, and then the officers declare him
Speaker 1: innocent and promote him to major on the spot. Wow.
Speaker 1: So he wins that one, but he would never talk
Speaker 1: about it. This is a really humiliating After the Revolution
Speaker 1: is when Boone's influence and fame began to spread. I
Speaker 1: want to turn the ship and began to search for
Speaker 1: traces of Boone's influence in American literature, identity, and worldview.
Speaker 1: Kentucky became the fifteenth state in sevent Within this timeframe
Speaker 1: of like thirty years, Tucky Kentucky went from a complete
Speaker 1: wilderness to an American state. That's incredible thing about I
Speaker 1: never thought. I never thought about how compressed it was
Speaker 1: to stay. Yeah, so we see this thing in Boone's life.
Speaker 1: That part of the reason, you know, he was He
Speaker 1: was famous for a statement that he needed more elbow room.
Speaker 1: Once when someone asked, why are you moving, he said, well,
Speaker 1: I need more elbow room. So he was constantly in
Speaker 1: pursuit of this this edge of the runtier, you know,
Speaker 1: driven by commerce, potentially because he was a long hunter
Speaker 1: and he needed to harvest game to make a living.
Speaker 1: But also we've got to believe that that was also
Speaker 1: driven by this wanderlust for something new over the next
Speaker 1: edge that just is part of human nature. He was
Speaker 1: also he he did love to hunt. I mean, the
Speaker 1: guy just loved to hunt. He loved solitude. But like
Speaker 1: this idea that humans go to the wilderness to find
Speaker 1: solitude into commune with God, all kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to boot. He was the one that was made famous
Speaker 1: for contemplation. He was the one that really influenced Throw
Speaker 1: in some of the great American writers that talked about
Speaker 1: these things. In the final chapter of Mr Morgan's book,
Speaker 1: he makes a strong appeal that Boone had significant influence
Speaker 1: on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry David throw and
Speaker 1: many others. Mr Morgan says from his book quote The
Speaker 1: Row begins his essay Walking by saying, I wish to
Speaker 1: speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and wildness,
Speaker 1: as contrasted with the freedom and culture merely civil. The
Speaker 1: spirit of Boone hovers over every page of the essay,
Speaker 1: published in eighteen sixty two after the Row's death, with
Speaker 1: exuberance and often tongue in cheek, The Rose essay is
Speaker 1: a celebration of freedom and adventure. Quote. I believe there
Speaker 1: is a magnetism in nature which, if we unconsciously yield
Speaker 1: to it, will direct us a right end of quote.
Speaker 1: The Row also said, the west of which I speak
Speaker 1: is but another name for the wild, And what I
Speaker 1: have been preparing to say is that in wildness is
Speaker 1: the preservation of the world. That's the end of Mr
Speaker 1: Morgan's excerpt. If you send to the bear grease render
Speaker 1: you know who Dr Dan rupe Is. I consider him
Speaker 1: my speed dial anthropologist. I want to ask him about
Speaker 1: the peculiar way Americans view nature as compared to other
Speaker 1: parts of the world, and we think much of it
Speaker 1: came from these romantic writers. But originally Boon Dr. D
Speaker 1: Route lived abroad for twelve years and had some insight.
Speaker 1: The other country that I was in for quite some
Speaker 1: time twelve some odd years was China, and so China
Speaker 1: up until about thirty or even even in a lot
Speaker 1: of areas less than that years ago, was a grarian
Speaker 1: so people who are very closely tied to the land,
Speaker 1: and so their view of the wilderness and the woods
Speaker 1: in the wild I found in my personal experience very
Speaker 1: different from my view as an American of that. So
Speaker 1: we lived in a large city three to five hours
Speaker 1: from the Himalayas, depending on how you drove, and so
Speaker 1: regularly I would load up my kids it's to get
Speaker 1: out of town and go to the wild I found
Speaker 1: that as I did that, my Chinese friends thought about
Speaker 1: and interacted with the wilderness in a much different way.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the Himalayan Plateau is a barren wilderness.
Speaker 1: There's almost nothing of practical value there. If you're trying
Speaker 1: to eat, and so the question would regularly be why
Speaker 1: would you go there? They just didn't really make sense
Speaker 1: to them. So why did you want to go there?
Speaker 1: I wanted to go there for adventure and fun, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to get away from that. There's this kind
Speaker 1: of compelling I want to get out and be by
Speaker 1: myself or or just us as no place in their
Speaker 1: mind too, like why would you go there for fun?
Speaker 1: They really, I don't want to say, you know, all
Speaker 1: one point five billion Chinese people have no place for that,
Speaker 1: But the vast majority of of my friends and and
Speaker 1: people that I talked with that was just as odd
Speaker 1: to them as so many things about their culture was
Speaker 1: odd to me. It started to make more sense for
Speaker 1: me when there's a gentleman named Facial Tongue who wrote
Speaker 1: a book called From the Soil, and it is the
Speaker 1: seminal work on a grarian people's and so America. From
Speaker 1: its onset, we were industrial Chinese people from millennia have
Speaker 1: been tied to the land, hence the name of his book,
Speaker 1: From the Soil, and so they see themselves as connected
Speaker 1: to the soil. As part of the soil, you farm
Speaker 1: the same land that your ancestors are buried in. It's
Speaker 1: not something that's separate from them, that's far away from them,
Speaker 1: that you like go to for adventure. You go there
Speaker 1: if it can make food for you. If it can't,
Speaker 1: it has no use for you. Um nowadays, even I
Speaker 1: think I think this would be fair. You can look
Speaker 1: up and read articles on the vocation and the people
Speaker 1: group of Sherpas. Their desire and mindset and model of
Speaker 1: we're gonna climb these mountains is practically it provides them
Speaker 1: with a tremendous amount of income climbing those mountains. Before
Speaker 1: Westerners came money and the Westerners were in search of
Speaker 1: adventure and conquest. I would be shocked if the first
Speaker 1: person on the top of Mount Everest was a white
Speaker 1: western Man. But certainly the idea of we want to
Speaker 1: plant our flag at the top of a mountain that
Speaker 1: came from the West. But the way that they thought
Speaker 1: about it and the way that they approached it would
Speaker 1: have been very different. So this idea of even the
Speaker 1: phrase like a rugged individualist and you're gonna go off
Speaker 1: and quote unquote find yourself for an agrarian interdependent And
Speaker 1: when I say those two words you just described two
Speaker 1: thirds of the globe, you know. So for that kind
Speaker 1: of person, you you only find yourself connected to the
Speaker 1: ground and connected to the people around you, whereas you
Speaker 1: and I we quote unquote come alive when we go
Speaker 1: out and when disconnect and we're disconnected. So, you know,
Speaker 1: a primary difference between millennia of Chinese people in this
Speaker 1: case thinks to facial Ton's book and my own experience,
Speaker 1: and and Daniel Boone is our our friends in China
Speaker 1: are coming from millennia of farming. Daniel Boone is uh.
Speaker 1: You know, like so many people that came to America
Speaker 1: came for very different reasons, but tend to be wanting
Speaker 1: to leave behind an escape and get away from different
Speaker 1: things that are going on in Europe. And even this
Speaker 1: kind of fundamental idea of if I can just break
Speaker 1: away from the establishment, then I can start something new,
Speaker 1: and almost a necessity of doing that, and that would
Speaker 1: have been a mind frame deep inside of all these
Speaker 1: early colonialists with without a doubt. And so we as
Speaker 1: Western individualists tend to view the wilderness as a place
Speaker 1: where we can establish ourselves or conquer or have risk
Speaker 1: or adventure. These are all experiential terms that are entirely abstract.
Speaker 1: We are not going to the wilderness for tangible concrete
Speaker 1: that that idea was built and developed in the frontier
Speaker 1: stage of America. Talk to me about where they came
Speaker 1: from though, so so Daniel Boone's father and mother would
Speaker 1: have come over on that boat, but they were Quakers.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about kind of the Judeo Christian worldview,
Speaker 1: so in wilderness. So when you look at the Judeo
Speaker 1: Christian worldview, there's a big story that it's founded on.
Speaker 1: That big story starts in the Garden of Eden. And
Speaker 1: so there's this cultivated area of land. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a home, it's made, it's established. Outside of that, Adam
Speaker 1: is made and then he's placed inside of the Garden Eden.
Speaker 1: Everything else's wilderness. It's wild and then when they fall,
Speaker 1: they are banished, they're punished into the wildern. They are
Speaker 1: exiled into the wilderness. And there's a British sociologist named J. A.
Speaker 1: Walter who wrote several decades ago, and he actually the
Speaker 1: title of one of his works was A Long Way
Speaker 1: from Home, and the central premise of his work was
Speaker 1: that grace basically, the the grand story of the Judeo
Speaker 1: Christian worldview is that we've been banished to the wilderness
Speaker 1: from our home and that we are trying to find
Speaker 1: ourselves and find a home. And so that's just adds
Speaker 1: to this idea that the wilderness was not a place
Speaker 1: you wanted to go, and it's a place of punishment, definitely.
Speaker 1: And then along comes Boon and he conquers the wilderness,
Speaker 1: and in effect, we're giving Boon a ton of credit
Speaker 1: to And that's why this whole what I want to
Speaker 1: see is it does start with Boon, but it was
Speaker 1: so many other people too, of course, but it was
Speaker 1: it was here that that worldview kind of became finalized
Speaker 1: in the Staff. If anything, Daniel Boone and his actions
Speaker 1: and his life, real or mythical, embodied what the American
Speaker 1: people wanted to see happen in the wilderness. They wanted
Speaker 1: to see man in the wilderness thriving and dominating and
Speaker 1: conquering because that's a good story. Because that's a good story.
Speaker 1: And so whether it happened or not, we wrote it
Speaker 1: deep down because we wanted to read it. Boone taught
Speaker 1: America to love wilderness and cherish solitude, and that value
Speaker 1: system may seem really normal to you, especially if you
Speaker 1: have a rural or hunting background. But this is peculiar
Speaker 1: and fundamental to America. Boone's life was full of irony,
Speaker 1: and that's part of why his story reflects the American story.
Speaker 1: I asked Steve if he thought Boone had any regrets
Speaker 1: the tragic part of his life. And this is the
Speaker 1: question I want to ask you, Steve, is wherever he went,
Speaker 1: people followed. So he went to Kentucky, which was this
Speaker 1: wilderness Eden, and within thirty years it was an American state.
Speaker 1: And you know, three thousand people, you know, over the
Speaker 1: course of a longer period of time than thirty years,
Speaker 1: came through the Cumberland Gap and I mean just settled
Speaker 1: the whole place. How aware of that would he have been?
Speaker 1: How would he have dealt with that? And then the
Speaker 1: ultimate question for US hunters, and they're even an outdoor media,
Speaker 1: do you ever feel like that? Like, because the very
Speaker 1: nature of what we do demand's solitude, But we're like
Speaker 1: recruiting people. Yeah, if an interesting thing to push Boon on,
Speaker 1: if you could talk to him now, was uh, I
Speaker 1: would say to him, how conflicted were you? Let's say
Speaker 1: you now come out and find a great new hunting spot,
Speaker 1: and then over time, that great new hunting spot fills
Speaker 1: up with people, still shines for them. They love it,
Speaker 1: They think it's the greatest thing in the world. You
Speaker 1: saw it before and you lament its passing. But let's
Speaker 1: say that you didn't really do anything to usher that in, right,
Speaker 1: you just participated and stood by and watch this happen.
Speaker 1: It's reasonable for the person in that situation to feel
Speaker 1: a great sense of loss. It's not that clean. With Boone,
Speaker 1: though he was complicit, it seems as though he mourned it.
Speaker 1: He did not like to see they complained about game vanishing.
Speaker 1: But Boone was also speculating. He was in the land
Speaker 1: speculation business. He was invested in settlement. I think that
Speaker 1: he knew what he had to do was always poor,
Speaker 1: wanted money, wanted to find a way out of debt,
Speaker 1: wanted to get his family in a good position. And
Speaker 1: I think that he probably had to sit there and think,
Speaker 1: and you know what, man, not only did it never
Speaker 1: work right? I never got rich off Kentucky. Not only that,
Speaker 1: but I ruined what it was about it that I loved.
Speaker 1: If he was conflicted, meaning did he ever think I
Speaker 1: shouldn't do any of these activities that might lead to
Speaker 1: the exploitation to Kentucky. He just don't see any evidence
Speaker 1: of it, did, he lamented? Sure, man, we work really
Speaker 1: hard to raise our kids up and make them independent
Speaker 1: and eventually get him out the door so that they
Speaker 1: go on and have productive, happy lives. But what does
Speaker 1: every parent tell you when they move away? How sad
Speaker 1: it was? But would you ever go and do something
Speaker 1: to thwart their development in order to hang onto it?
Speaker 1: So there's like that, in order to hang on to
Speaker 1: and make it be that they were relying on you
Speaker 1: and had to stay home or not. You can live
Speaker 1: in two places at one time. They gotta get up
Speaker 1: and grow and get out of the house. And and
Speaker 1: my god, it's sad watching them go. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like it's every part of my life. It's
Speaker 1: almost it was inevitable though, I mean, like because if
Speaker 1: Boone had just said, you know what I value solitude
Speaker 1: and wilderness, I am bringing anybody back here, I mean
Speaker 1: five years later, first of all, we'd be talking about
Speaker 1: somebody else right now. Well, he could have been extremely
Speaker 1: impactful in that because he could have if he really
Speaker 1: felt that way, he would have aligned himself with Uh,
Speaker 1: he would have moved in, and at one point he did,
Speaker 1: but he would have moved in with the indie and
Speaker 1: explained to them the risk and explained to them how
Speaker 1: to head it off, and then there would have been
Speaker 1: a pathway to that. He could have been a trader.
Speaker 1: He would have been a trader to people, but would
Speaker 1: have been very effective. They're gonna come through there, They're
Speaker 1: gonna come through that gap, right there. Boys. Well but
Speaker 1: what would that have done though? That would have delayed
Speaker 1: this thing twenty years? You know, I'm just saying. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying. What's important is he didn't do that. He
Speaker 1: didn't do that, and you can't find any real evidence
Speaker 1: that he ever pumped the brakes. Uh. Yeah, man, he
Speaker 1: had to have been conflicted. And the reason you know
Speaker 1: that he probably was conflicted is because he kept seeking
Speaker 1: out in other places what he was instrumental in trashing
Speaker 1: in the last place. He didn't like for him, what
Speaker 1: guys like him created, hunted out agricultural lands now where
Speaker 1: he wanted to stay. Always moved into be in where
Speaker 1: he wanted to be, which him the simple fact of
Speaker 1: him being there made it that he didn't want to
Speaker 1: be there, there's almost like you know, you know people
Speaker 1: like that in life. You know, I'm like that in
Speaker 1: some aspects of life, right, I see, and everybody does
Speaker 1: I see like boonish at least my understanding of uh why,
Speaker 1: Like what's the wrong with things just being more simple?
Speaker 1: Like what is it in a person that just leads
Speaker 1: you to kind of to complexify everything around you, or
Speaker 1: what prevents you from ever saying this is enough, like
Speaker 1: this right here, this right here is just perfect. Instead
Speaker 1: you'd be like, this right here is just perfect. If
Speaker 1: only we could build a workshop right over there human nature,
Speaker 1: man and one boat. Sweet, imagine if you had two boats.
Speaker 1: I'm imagine if this boat was eight ft rather than
Speaker 1: why you'll never understand it's it's funny. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things that makes Boon so valuable. Man. It might
Speaker 1: be better for us that we can't sit here and
Speaker 1: ask him all these questions, because he's there's enough there
Speaker 1: where you can really pin you can really look and
Speaker 1: feel and smell what's there, Like he's there, right, He's tangible,
Speaker 1: but there's enough mystery about what he thought about the
Speaker 1: whole thing that he is like a very handy way
Speaker 1: to contemplate yourself ourselves, you know, more than if you
Speaker 1: sat them down right now and he and he was alive,
Speaker 1: you know, whether they dug him out of Missouri or Kentucky,
Speaker 1: depending on what version you believe in where he's resting now,
Speaker 1: he might be like, man, I read all the books
Speaker 1: I read Robert Morgan. Dude, that dude missed it by
Speaker 1: a million miles, like me, like that, like are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? You know what I felt about that stuff.
Speaker 1: In effort to understand Boone's personal identity, I want to
Speaker 1: explore him using the term woodsman to describe himself and
Speaker 1: will learn an interesting fact. We've yet to discuss Boon
Speaker 1: as a politician. It's clear that Boone's personal identity of
Speaker 1: himself was as a woodsman. And there was a letter
Speaker 1: that he wrote to a governor later in his life,
Speaker 1: and part of the preface of the letter says, I
Speaker 1: am no statesman, I am a woodsman. So that it's
Speaker 1: clear that that's if there was one word that would
Speaker 1: that he would describe himself, describe himself as it he said,
Speaker 1: I am a woodsman. If if he were, if he
Speaker 1: were only here, so we could ask him exactly what
Speaker 1: he meant by that that phrase and what he embodied,
Speaker 1: and what we see is something that's very much a
Speaker 1: live today in a lot of rural American culture. It's
Speaker 1: something that we deeply value. Like in my family, Mr Morgan,
Speaker 1: my dad would have raised me up with that very
Speaker 1: phrase on his lips. You need to be a woodsman.
Speaker 1: What do you think Daniel Boone meant when he said that, Well,
Speaker 1: somebody who could live on the land in the forest
Speaker 1: and could support himself. He could, he could feel game,
Speaker 1: He knew the herbs. He had learned that from Indians.
Speaker 1: It's a major way Indians influenced American civilization was to
Speaker 1: teach them the medicinal plants. Uh. But you you really
Speaker 1: said the important word there, that he was a woodsman.
Speaker 1: He knew he wasn't somebody actually was a statements a statesman.
Speaker 1: He had done pretty well in the legislature. He served
Speaker 1: three terms in the Virginia legislature. He did and did
Speaker 1: some important things about getting ferries built on the Kentucky
Speaker 1: River and laws about the game, wanton killing of game. Really,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone did that when he was in the Virginia. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was very much aware that you know, the game
Speaker 1: was disappearing, and there should be rules about how much
Speaker 1: she could kill and where you could kill it. But
Speaker 1: his life is full of paradoxes, and as all our
Speaker 1: lives are, really, But woodsman was the word he preferred
Speaker 1: in the first title of my biography was woodsman. Oh.
Speaker 1: I thought about this a lot. Boone was this legislator
Speaker 1: in Virginia. But I think sometimes it's in the place
Speaker 1: that we don't fit where we find our real identity,
Speaker 1: you know, where we where that identity probably of being
Speaker 1: a woodsman really became distinct to him. Tell me if
Speaker 1: you think this is right. It's almost like he he
Speaker 1: thought maybe he could fit in inside of that world
Speaker 1: and went there and and did okay, But it was like,
Speaker 1: this is not where I was us to be. Well,
Speaker 1: think of the image of Daniel Boone in the legislature.
Speaker 1: He's wearing well, he's there with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: wearing silk and brocade and wigs. He's with one of
Speaker 1: the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson, and he's
Speaker 1: wearing buckskin, and legends did he wear that to the
Speaker 1: We have eyewitnesses of it. Now these legends much legends
Speaker 1: that they have this this really elaborate bead work on
Speaker 1: he'd have to have gotten them from Indians. I think
Speaker 1: he did that sort of thing out of his sense
Speaker 1: of duty. That they elected him, he was expected to
Speaker 1: do it, and he was the kind of person that
Speaker 1: took these responsibilities seriously. But I think he did what
Speaker 1: he thought he was expected to do. He wasn't ashamed
Speaker 1: of being there in Buckskin and Indian legends. Now, the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is to think of him and Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: for some new in and wrote to him asking to
Speaker 1: get in touch with George Rogers Clark. Clark was supposed
Speaker 1: to find mammoth bones and things like that and bring
Speaker 1: them back to Uh. To Jefferson and after Boon, Jefferson
Speaker 1: is the most responsible for opening the West Almas. Jefferson
Speaker 1: was obsessed with the wilderness to the west. He says
Speaker 1: in his in his essays on Virginia, the Ohio River
Speaker 1: is the most beautiful river in the world. He had
Speaker 1: never seen it, but he knew from the word of
Speaker 1: Boon and other people. So that's really interesting. You juxtaposed Jefferson,
Speaker 1: who was famous around the world, with this philosopher scientist
Speaker 1: statesman and Daniel Moon, and they obviously had a lot
Speaker 1: in common them that they shared this obsession with the
Speaker 1: interior and the beauties of nature, the importance of nature.
Speaker 1: I want to tell a story that stood out to me.
Speaker 1: I feel like each one of these stories give us
Speaker 1: a window into Boone's life. At age sixty five, Daniel
Speaker 1: was still going strong. I want to read an excerpt
Speaker 1: from Morgan's book about Boone's market hunting for black Bear
Speaker 1: with Rebecca in Kentucky. These are Mr Morgan's words from
Speaker 1: his book Boone. J. P. Hale said that Boone was
Speaker 1: not remembered sufficiently quote for his qualities and experience as
Speaker 1: a counselor, commander and legislator in which fields. Notwithstanding his
Speaker 1: rare modesty and lack of self asserting, he was appreciated
Speaker 1: and put forward by his contemporaries. Hall went on to
Speaker 1: write in his short biography of Boone that the old
Speaker 1: frontiersman hardly seemed aware of the heroic deeds he had
Speaker 1: done quote, but seemed to be driven on irresistibly by
Speaker 1: that deep seated instinct for adventure which nature had implanted
Speaker 1: in him, and whose only gratification could be found among
Speaker 1: the wilds of the frontier. One thing that may have
Speaker 1: brought Boone back to Kentucky was the bear hunting on
Speaker 1: the Levisa fork of the Big Sandy. Each winter, Daniel
Speaker 1: and Rebecca and one of their sons returned there to
Speaker 1: kill bears, collect bear skins, smoked bear bacon, and render
Speaker 1: bear flesh into oil. A man named William Champ later
Speaker 1: said that he encountered Boone and his wife and two
Speaker 1: daughters and their husbands on the Big Sandy, living in
Speaker 1: half faced camps, where they quote eight their meals from
Speaker 1: a common rough tray very much like the sap tray,
Speaker 1: placed on a bench instead of a table, each using
Speaker 1: as needed a butcher knife to cut meat and using
Speaker 1: forks made of cane with times or prongs, and having
Speaker 1: only bread to eat with meat. Bears were so abundant
Speaker 1: that Boone killed a hundred and fifty five in one season,
Speaker 1: and he killed one monster bear that weighed between five
Speaker 1: hundred and six hundred pounds. A bear skin was worth
Speaker 1: about two dollars, but the meat of each animal was
Speaker 1: worth more than twice that. Boone's arthritis was so bad
Speaker 1: at times that Rebecca had to carry his rifle for him,
Speaker 1: but he killed record numbers of bears all the same,
Speaker 1: and since she was known as an excellent shot, Rebecca
Speaker 1: very likely killed her share of bruins. Also, one of
Speaker 1: the creeks where they camped was named Greasy Creek because
Speaker 1: they rendered bear fat there enough to fill several barrels.
Speaker 1: Bear grease could be sold for a dollar a gallon.
Speaker 1: One bear might yield twenty gallons of oil. Boon bragg
Speaker 1: that he had once killed eleven bears before breakfast. With
Speaker 1: his commercial hunting conducted on such a scale, it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine how Boone thought the game populations could be sustained.
Speaker 1: The last buffalo in the Bluegrass had been killed around
Speaker 1: sevent This is still one of the paradoxes of Boone's
Speaker 1: life and its character. Because he had been a professional
Speaker 1: hunter most of his life, the paradox was probably not
Speaker 1: as clear to Boon as it is to us in hindsight.
Speaker 1: End of quote. If you've read much about the Frontiersman,
Speaker 1: you've probably had questions about their physical toughness and wondered
Speaker 1: if they were superhuman. Here's what Steve thinks. The things
Speaker 1: that Boone did physically, like the physical acts of being
Speaker 1: in the frontier for two years and crossing rivers and
Speaker 1: the cold and the physical acts. You have got to
Speaker 1: believe that Boone was kind of a physical phenomen do you, dude,
Speaker 1: I I I explain that I wonder about it all
Speaker 1: the time. How tough was he? We like to now
Speaker 1: say like, oh, now we need all these advanced fabrics
Speaker 1: to keep warm, you know, and we have synthetic insulation
Speaker 1: in big Wider's Okay, like that that's what we need now.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling, though, that they were probably about
Speaker 1: as comfortable out in the boys as we are. The
Speaker 1: thresholds were different. It was like they got cold man bad.
Speaker 1: They were uncomfortable at times, They got bit up by
Speaker 1: bugs to a point where it would kind of drive
Speaker 1: you mad. They suffered, and they just didn't know any different.
Speaker 1: Like I, I don't think that they just walked around
Speaker 1: out there whistling all happy because they were just so
Speaker 1: tough that they were always comfortable. It's not fun getting
Speaker 1: bit up by bugs, it's not fun being cold. I
Speaker 1: think that they just were oftentimes, like really uncomfortable. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's so uncomfortable that if you went there now without
Speaker 1: growing up with that set of experiences, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to handle it and you tap out. And there's
Speaker 1: something to be said about the threshold, a strong threshold.
Speaker 1: But they weren't magicians. I mean there's I think there's
Speaker 1: a gradient of Yeah, there are people that are super
Speaker 1: tough and people that are super weak in out of
Speaker 1: this window of human capability. I would imagine somebody like
Speaker 1: Boone would have been on the higher scale exceptionally exceptionally,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't. He wasn't superhuman. Would he run a
Speaker 1: ultra marathon? Probably not. We can't talk about Boone without
Speaker 1: touching on one of the biggest challenges in his life.
Speaker 1: The later part of his life after the golden years
Speaker 1: of the seventeen seventies, were riddled with financial issues and lawsuits,
Speaker 1: most about land. Here are Mr Morgan's thoughts on Boone's character.
Speaker 1: Mr Morgan, this is a this is a quote from
Speaker 1: your book. In almost every case, frontiersman were remembered and
Speaker 1: honored more for character and dependability than marksmanship and scouting ability.
Speaker 1: In the dangerous world of the West, integrity counted above
Speaker 1: all else. I think we we kind of have this
Speaker 1: idea that somebody like Boon was solely known for his
Speaker 1: for for the things that he did go through the
Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, and his long long hunting and
Speaker 1: all these external feats, which is very true. But what
Speaker 1: what made him a legend and remembered and honored, as
Speaker 1: you said here, was character. And I think that's something
Speaker 1: that would not be intuitive, but it's true. Well, the
Speaker 1: fashion among historians and biographers is to debunk legends, to
Speaker 1: find out what the real story is. And and uh,
Speaker 1: we have an awful lot of that in our time.
Speaker 1: And it's good. I mean to try to, you know,
Speaker 1: find the weaknesses of people. But when I examined the
Speaker 1: Boon and great detail and went to all those sources
Speaker 1: I could find, I found he really lived up to
Speaker 1: the image we have of him. It's true he was
Speaker 1: in debt and he lost everything, but in every case
Speaker 1: some of his character was very consistent. And that's I
Speaker 1: think important in our time. It is certainly important in
Speaker 1: a dangerous world like Kentucky and the wilderness. You had
Speaker 1: to count on people and if they said I'm going
Speaker 1: to meet you at such a place, and they had
Speaker 1: to be there. And that's what he valued among his friends.
Speaker 1: His friend Steward, who was killed by Indians. I guess
Speaker 1: he admired him so much because he was dependable. Also
Speaker 1: two of Michael Stoner, the German who could hardly speak English,
Speaker 1: but Stoner, you know, you could absolutely depend on him.
Speaker 1: So Boone's legend grew partly because people admired him, they
Speaker 1: trusted him. And isn't that what we wanted a friend
Speaker 1: today as well? Though? Absolutely, I mean it's it's really
Speaker 1: no different. An example of this is that Boone was
Speaker 1: robbed of a lot of money and certificates for land
Speaker 1: in eastern Virginia. He had gone there to register this
Speaker 1: land for people, and they give him money and a
Speaker 1: lot of certificates, and apparently in this uh end he
Speaker 1: was drugged and during the night all the stuff was robbed.
Speaker 1: So he had to go back to Virginia and say
Speaker 1: I lost your money and lost their certificates. But the
Speaker 1: heart Brothers who knew him said, you know, they absolutely
Speaker 1: trusted him, and they had seen Boone in the worst
Speaker 1: situations and he always and I was somebody dependable, So
Speaker 1: they did not even ask for their money back, tried
Speaker 1: to force him. The people who knew him best absolutely
Speaker 1: trusted him. The people who went after him later were
Speaker 1: people who had lost land because of these surveys, so
Speaker 1: he was known among a certain number of people as
Speaker 1: untrustworthy because they had lost land, even if it surveyed
Speaker 1: by other people was associated with it. And the people
Speaker 1: who really got Boon were lawyers like Henry Clay, who
Speaker 1: was a young lawyer and made his fortune going to
Speaker 1: court and suing people, including Boone, over these land deals.
Speaker 1: And Boone was a frontiersman. He hated paperwork. He was
Speaker 1: very casual about registering things. Figured somebody else could do that.
Speaker 1: He was a man of the woods. He called himself
Speaker 1: a woodsman and he was. His reputation for being dishonest
Speaker 1: came from people who were mad because they had lost
Speaker 1: money in land deals and wanted to blame him. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it summed up his life so well. At
Speaker 1: the at the end of his life, he he didn't
Speaker 1: owe money to anyone, is that true. He went all
Speaker 1: the way back to Kentucky to pay people who claimed
Speaker 1: he owed them money. He may not owed him anything,
Speaker 1: but they claimed it. And he didn't want to be
Speaker 1: known as somebody who died still owing money, so he
Speaker 1: he took the little money he got from selling his
Speaker 1: land he was given a piece of land in Missouri
Speaker 1: and took that money back. That's one story. His children said.
Speaker 1: He never went back to Kentucky. So did he send
Speaker 1: the money by mail or something. Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 1: He would loan people money and give them land on
Speaker 1: a hand check. I never see them again. He would
Speaker 1: sell it to them without anything. He went down pay.
Speaker 1: He couldn't understand. You don't accumulate wealth. You share what
Speaker 1: you have. And that's one of the things that got
Speaker 1: him into so much trouble that here he would buy
Speaker 1: land and then set it to somebody else. He still
Speaker 1: had to pay for it. Yeah, and got nothing from
Speaker 1: the person. The ways of the backwoods didn't work very
Speaker 1: good in civilization. That he was out of place. He
Speaker 1: was out of place. Late in Boone's life, he lived
Speaker 1: as a common man in Missouri. Chester Harding, a young
Speaker 1: painter from Massachusetts, was the last known visitor of Boone,
Speaker 1: and he captured the only real imagery that we have
Speaker 1: of Boon just before his death, so no other images
Speaker 1: exist except for this one that Chester Harding did. Here's
Speaker 1: an excerpt from Mr. Morgan's book about the latter part
Speaker 1: of Daniel's life. Like almost all men and women who
Speaker 1: have the opportunity. Boone enjoyed his grandchildren. He could tell
Speaker 1: them stories and rhymes, wise sayings, and anecdotes from his
Speaker 1: childhood and his long adventurous life, and his curiosity never
Speaker 1: left him. He questioned visitors and family members about current
Speaker 1: events and news of the day, of the frontier advancing
Speaker 1: further west. Sometimes he took a bear skin or deer
Speaker 1: skin out under a tree, and he would lie on it,
Speaker 1: whistling or singing to himself. The Reverend James E. Welch
Speaker 1: described his person as he saw him in eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: He was rather low of stature, broad shoulders, high cheek bones,
Speaker 1: very mild countenance, fair complexion, Soft and quiet in his manner,
Speaker 1: but little to say unless spoken to, Amiable and kind
Speaker 1: in his feelings, very fond of quiet, retirement of cool
Speaker 1: self possession, and indomitable perseverance. Among Boone's last noted visitors
Speaker 1: was a young painter from Massachusetts named Chester Harding. Harding
Speaker 1: came to share it to paint Boone's portrait at the
Speaker 1: very end of his life, finding the old hunter roasting
Speaker 1: venison on a ramrod in a small cabin behind Jemima's house.
Speaker 1: The painter asked if he could do a portrait. Boone
Speaker 1: was hard of hearing and may not have understood the request.
Speaker 1: He had little experience with portrait painters, But Jemima understood
Speaker 1: the importance of the opportunity and persuaded her father to
Speaker 1: overcome his timidity or modesty and sit. The result was
Speaker 1: the only portrait from life that exists. Though he was
Speaker 1: old and frail in the Harding painting, the powerful presence
Speaker 1: of Boone comes through in the portrait. No longer the
Speaker 1: muscular big turtle of his prime, Boone still shows his
Speaker 1: character and will. It is the picture of a man
Speaker 1: who means to do what he sets out to do.
Speaker 1: We are all in Harding's debt for the last minute
Speaker 1: likeness of Boone. According to the family, Boone was surprised
Speaker 1: to see himself captured so convincingly on canvas. Harding's portrait
Speaker 1: was later revised by others to make Boone look younger
Speaker 1: and healthier. Harding captured the dignity and strength of the
Speaker 1: elusive Boone as he sketched. The young painter questioned Booned
Speaker 1: about his career, which now stretched into its ninth decade.
Speaker 1: Had he ever been lost in his wandering? Harding asked, no.
Speaker 1: Boone said, I can't say I was ever lost, but
Speaker 1: I was bewildered once for three days. Today there are
Speaker 1: many versions of Boone's portrait by Harding, but originally there
Speaker 1: was only one. Here are the words of Chester Harding
Speaker 1: about his trip to meet Boone. Quote. In June of
Speaker 1: this year, I made a trip of one hundred miles
Speaker 1: for the purpose of painting the portrait of old Colonel
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone. I had much trouble in finding him. He
Speaker 1: was living some miles from the main road, in one
Speaker 1: of the cabins of an old block house, which was
Speaker 1: built for the protection of the settlers against the incursion
Speaker 1: of Indians. I found that the nearer I got to
Speaker 1: his dwelling, the less was known of him. Within two
Speaker 1: miles of his house, I asked a man where Colonel
Speaker 1: Boone lived. He said he did not know any such man. Why, yes,
Speaker 1: you do, His wife said, it's that white headed old
Speaker 1: man who lives at the bottom near the river. A
Speaker 1: good illustration of the proverb that a prophet is not
Speaker 1: without honor save his own country. End of quote. I'm
Speaker 1: absolutely amazed at that story two miles from where Boone lived.
Speaker 1: People didn't even know who he was. And what I
Speaker 1: like about Boon though, is Boone he didn't buy into
Speaker 1: the Boone. You know, somebody came in his older age.
Speaker 1: There's an account of someone reading a story to him
Speaker 1: about him, and Boone said basically said they should wait
Speaker 1: till somebody's dead to write stuff like that. Like he
Speaker 1: he he didn't buy into the hype. And and he
Speaker 1: he was. He died a common man. And it's just
Speaker 1: so bizarre that he didn't do like yeah, he didn't
Speaker 1: do like a buffalo Bill Cody wild West show thing,
Speaker 1: theatrical performance. That's what I liked about the guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was Crockett would get up. You know again, man,
Speaker 1: we stick him together, but Crockett would get up and
Speaker 1: play himself in front of audiences. It's interesting to hear
Speaker 1: the story of the latter years of Boone's life. He's
Speaker 1: living in Missouri after leaving Kentucky and vowing never to
Speaker 1: come back. He had a bad taste in his mouth
Speaker 1: about Kentucky. What's wild is the level of detail we
Speaker 1: know about Boone's death. It's kind of bizarre. Boone had
Speaker 1: an infatuation with his coffin. Once, while Boone was away,
Speaker 1: he became ill and they thought he was gonna die.
Speaker 1: Nathan got word of it and had a common pine
Speaker 1: coffin built for his father, Much to everyone's surprise. Boone
Speaker 1: lived and was upset when he saw the coffin that
Speaker 1: had been chosen for him. Boone proceeded to build a
Speaker 1: beautiful walnut coffin that he kept in his house for
Speaker 1: some time before he decided to upgrade coffins again. He
Speaker 1: allowed a friend to be buried in the walnut coffin,
Speaker 1: and he had a beautiful ornate cherry coffin made. He
Speaker 1: kept it under his bed, polished it, often took naps
Speaker 1: in it, and loved to show it to visitors, and
Speaker 1: he would even scare his grandchildren with him inside of it.
Speaker 1: Mr Morgan had something to say about the way death
Speaker 1: used to be handled in the nineteenth century. People talked
Speaker 1: about a beautiful death. It was the last accomplishment. It
Speaker 1: was a kind of art. It was. It was something
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson. When somebody dies, she would always write and say,
Speaker 1: tell me about their death. What kind of death wasn't
Speaker 1: People then died at home they didn't die in a
Speaker 1: hospice or off in a hospital somewhere, and you know,
Speaker 1: they could tell they were dying. Uh, people would gather
Speaker 1: around when boone, and they wouldn't have had medicine to
Speaker 1: try to extend their life by long periods of time.
Speaker 1: Death would have been usually forecasted with some accuracy. You
Speaker 1: could see right that somebody was near death. Usually a
Speaker 1: boon refused to drugs laudanum, he refused alcohol. He wanted
Speaker 1: to be alert. His family gathered. I think his uh,
Speaker 1: his daughter in law, Ali was very good at singing.
Speaker 1: He had her sing. People would go their round, they
Speaker 1: would talk about things that had happened, Uh, forgive each other,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And yeah, it was it was
Speaker 1: a real kind of ceremony. I really enjoyed researching that
Speaker 1: and getting some sense of what death meant in the night.
Speaker 1: Isn't that like a really potentially important piece of the
Speaker 1: human experience that we now basically don't experience. We tried
Speaker 1: to hide it, we tried to to ignore it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: without modern medicine, you know, people sort of died in
Speaker 1: a natural way. It was it was just a fact.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a milestone that was part of life.
Speaker 1: It was It was like a like a birth and
Speaker 1: the death like they both would have been these bookends
Speaker 1: to life. It was done at home. I like to
Speaker 1: think about how the human experience in the last hundred
Speaker 1: years is so bizarre as compared to the eons that
Speaker 1: humans have been on the earth, And just in this
Speaker 1: period of time, have people died in hospitals and have
Speaker 1: people have been able to use by economic means basically
Speaker 1: farm out the the arrangements of their family member's death.
Speaker 1: Right we can prolong life when it's almost not life.
Speaker 1: Would know that that idea of dying naturally when he
Speaker 1: were still alert. Stonewall Jackson died that way. I remember
Speaker 1: he refused any laudanum or alcohol. He wanted to be
Speaker 1: aware of everything. He knew he was dying. But that
Speaker 1: was I think pretty common. But Boone's death was particularly
Speaker 1: beautiful because everybody was there. They all gathered around him,
Speaker 1: and Boone said, you know, don't worry, I've had a
Speaker 1: long life. I've had a good life. They offered him.
Speaker 1: He said he wanted a bowl of warm milk. I
Speaker 1: think that was the last thing. He had eaten. Too
Speaker 1: many sweet potatoes the night before, because and his grandchildren
Speaker 1: had applied him with cookies and candy. Um. But he
Speaker 1: certainly was a where of what was happening, and uh
Speaker 1: did not seem I wouldn't say blissful, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem worried. Particularly. This is Nathan Boone's account of his
Speaker 1: father's death. Finally, I took him back in a carriage,
Speaker 1: and my two little sons, Howard and John, six and
Speaker 1: four years of age, came along. We reached my house
Speaker 1: at midday, and he was cheerful and in good spirits.
Speaker 1: He told his grandchildren he thought he would soon be
Speaker 1: well enough to go with them and gather some of
Speaker 1: the hazel nuts he had seen nearby along the road.
Speaker 1: During the afternoon, he enjoyed the innocent prattle of his grandchildren,
Speaker 1: and to please them he would eat some cakes, nuts,
Speaker 1: and even drink buttermilk they affectionately presented to him. In
Speaker 1: this way, it was afterward thought he loaded his stomach
Speaker 1: with articles too rich and gross. My father rested pretty
Speaker 1: well that night. The next morning he went out upon
Speaker 1: the porch, looked around the arm and he said, if
Speaker 1: he felt as well the next day as he did,
Speaker 1: then he would ride horseback around the farm. He was
Speaker 1: brought in and laid down on the bed and slept.
Speaker 1: Before he awakened. It was discovered that a fever was
Speaker 1: coming upon him, and he began to complain of an acute,
Speaker 1: burning sensation such as he never before felt in his breast,
Speaker 1: which continually grew worse. When he was advised to take medicine,
Speaker 1: he declined, as he thought it would do no good.
Speaker 1: He said it was his last sickness, but he said
Speaker 1: calmly he was not afraid to die. He recognized all
Speaker 1: his relatives who came to see him during his last sickness,
Speaker 1: and talked until within a few minutes of his last breath.
Speaker 1: Some ten minutes before he breathed his last his daughter,
Speaker 1: miss Callaway, arrived. He recognized her and died placidly, only
Speaker 1: exhibiting a scowl with his last breath. Towards the last
Speaker 1: when asked if he suffered pain, he would say he
Speaker 1: did in his breast and between his shoulders. He died
Speaker 1: on the morning of September eighteen twenty about sunrise, the
Speaker 1: fourteenth day after his arrival here. Boone died at Nathan's
Speaker 1: home in fami O Sage Creek, Missouri, just west of St. Louis.
Speaker 1: He was buried with Rebecca, who had passed away seven
Speaker 1: years prior, near Martha'sville, Missouri. However, there is some drama.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty five, Boone's body was exhumed and moved
Speaker 1: to Frankfort, Kentucky. However, in the nineteen eighties his grave
Speaker 1: was dug up and forensic anthropologists believed that the skull
Speaker 1: that was in the grave was that of an African American,
Speaker 1: creating lore that they dug up the wrong body. To
Speaker 1: this day, both cemeteries claim to have Daniel Boone's grave.
Speaker 1: He was certainly acclaimed as a great explorer and leader,
Speaker 1: but that was the place where you know, the boon
Speaker 1: passed in the legend of his only stories and memories
Speaker 1: after that, and the legend has continued to grow it
Speaker 1: instead of fading away. I mean, most people die, and
Speaker 1: you know, even if the people who knew them, uh
Speaker 1: forget them. Mostly the boon was necessary to American culture.
Speaker 1: Why does some people become more and more famous and
Speaker 1: most people do not. Boon gives us an image of
Speaker 1: something we would like to be. Somebody who can has
Speaker 1: no fear, who who can blend in with nature, who
Speaker 1: sees nature as good and the Indians is good, and
Speaker 1: takes the country westward. Of course, this brings up the
Speaker 1: issue which Moon himself became aware of they during his life,
Speaker 1: that he has taken people into the wilderness. He has
Speaker 1: established civilization in a way, but he's also helped destroy
Speaker 1: the indigenous culture and the game and the wilderness. What
Speaker 1: he's done. This is divided him and you can look
Speaker 1: at it in these different ways. And he realized that
Speaker 1: he said as much that he has taken help take
Speaker 1: the Indians content hunting ground. So he's very divided about
Speaker 1: his career. He doesn't see it as just a great success,
Speaker 1: but partly of failure. That the very thing he loves
Speaker 1: so much has been destroyed are partly destroyed. So we
Speaker 1: have to think about that that Daniel Boone is America,
Speaker 1: he's us, and he's done these different things. But it
Speaker 1: is not all good by any means. The westward expansion has,
Speaker 1: you know, has some real drawbacks. Nobody would want to
Speaker 1: give up California, a very few, but you know it
Speaker 1: was taken from the Spaniards and from the Indians. So
Speaker 1: Boone's story is really the story of this country good
Speaker 1: and bad. Elizabeth Corbin, a relative by marriage of Boone,
Speaker 1: wrote about the old backwoodsman, quote, he had a soft,
Speaker 1: almost effeminate voice and extremely mild and pleasant manners. In fact, most,
Speaker 1: if not all, of the old hunters who spent most
Speaker 1: of their time in the deep solitude of the unbroken woods,
Speaker 1: spoken soft, low tones. I do not, among my acquaintances,
Speaker 1: recall an exception. As we consider Boone's influence on American ideals,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt's famous line about speaking
Speaker 1: softly but carrying a big stick. Boon Woun undoubtedly carried
Speaker 1: a big one. In the final moments of Nathan Boone's
Speaker 1: interview with Draper, he said, quote, my father, Daniel Boone,
Speaker 1: was five ft eight inches high. He had broad shoulders
Speaker 1: in a chest that tapered down. His usual weight was
Speaker 1: around a hundred and seventy five pounds, but at one
Speaker 1: period he exceeded two hundred pounds, and in his closing
Speaker 1: years weighed only a hundred and fifty five pounds. His
Speaker 1: hair was moderately black, eyes blue, and he had fair skin.
Speaker 1: He never used tobacco in any form and was temperate
Speaker 1: in everything. As we come to a close in our
Speaker 1: Boon series. I'm thrilled for the insight we've gained and
Speaker 1: learned about American identity and ourselves, but I'm slightly grieved.
Speaker 1: I've been immersed into Boone's life in the last several months,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to leave. But maybe that's the point.
Speaker 1: The values of our heroes can stay with us. So
Speaker 1: much of what I value, particularly in nature, wildness, solitude,
Speaker 1: and hunting, can be traced back to Boone. He defined
Speaker 1: for us what a woodsman and a backwoodsman was, and
Speaker 1: I now cherished those phrases more than ever, and I
Speaker 1: want to carry them with dignity and responsibility in modern times.
Speaker 1: At a larger scale, I think Boone was defined by
Speaker 1: the quest for more. The modern American version of that
Speaker 1: is an unsatiable quest for more stuff, more cars, more money,
Speaker 1: more land, more prestige. But I think we have the
Speaker 1: right to amend this, to redeem it. Quest and pursuit
Speaker 1: are good things. I think we should all be on
Speaker 1: a quest and undeterred by obstacles and trials. But we've
Speaker 1: just got to make sure that we're questing after and
Speaker 1: pursuing the right things, things that have more valued than
Speaker 1: external wealth which will ultimately rust rot and cannot be
Speaker 1: taken with us after we leave this place. Our country
Speaker 1: is in a quandary to define a modern American identity.
Speaker 1: My only input is this, the American backwoodsman has earned
Speaker 1: the right to sit at the table and put his
Speaker 1: fingerprint on these ideals. He's earned the right to exist
Speaker 1: in modern times. Our conservation ethic has been honed by
Speaker 1: two hundred years of experience, both good and bad, and indisputably,
Speaker 1: we are leading the way and saving wildlife in the
Speaker 1: wild places that we love. This is deeply an American
Speaker 1: ideal that honors the native American land ethic and the
Speaker 1: revamped modern think of the woodsman. Let the woodsman, the hunters,
Speaker 1: and fishermen be stewards and protectors the wild that we
Speaker 1: have left, and civilization and concrete spread like wildfire across
Speaker 1: the landscape. We will protect them because we value them,
Speaker 1: and we value them because of the words and lives
Speaker 1: of our fathers, one of which was Boom tumble, little
Speaker 1: guy rumbling gat wake up some couplet guy probing, gag prople,
Speaker 1: little gat up cup Gady, My grandpa wa so little
Speaker 1: guy rumbling, wake up a little girl, I'll take conboy
Speaker 1: raised me upon. Rust in the dast as long as
Speaker 1: you roll, long as your long as wrong, rust in
Speaker 1: the dast to long you're all. That song was played
Speaker 1: by Nick Shoulders