Speaker 1: We're reflecting back on the foundations of bear Grease. This week,
Speaker 1: we're going back to one of the classics when we
Speaker 1: really didn't know how to make the grease. We were
Speaker 1: just kind of guessing, or at least I was guessing.
Speaker 1: Episode fourteen on Daniel Boone was originally released on August eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, which seems like an eternity ago. It
Speaker 1: was a project that put a stake in the ground
Speaker 1: for me, and the response to this episode surprised me.
Speaker 1: It was our first deep dive series into American history.
Speaker 1: This episode was the first one of three. Up until
Speaker 1: this point, I wasn't sure how deep we could go
Speaker 1: in this stuff, how long could we linger on one person.
Speaker 1: There was some identity stuff going on too. Inside the podcast.
Speaker 1: It was this a history podcast? Was this modern American
Speaker 1: story podcast?
Speaker 2: What was Bear Grease?
Speaker 1: I honestly didn't know if people would like this series,
Speaker 1: but it was wildly interesting to me, and two years later,
Speaker 1: with the feedback we've received on this specific series, I
Speaker 1: think it was one of our most impacting and I
Speaker 1: want to go back to it.
Speaker 2: And from this series we modeled.
Speaker 1: A whole bunch of other historical series that we've all
Speaker 1: learned a lot from However, I want to let you
Speaker 1: know what we're doing here, because once the calendar rolls
Speaker 1: into twenty twenty four, we're not going to be going
Speaker 1: back to the classics. We're going to be making some
Speaker 1: original episodes, And without foreshadowing too much, I'll let you
Speaker 1: know that our first episode in twenty twenty four will
Speaker 1: be about a modern poaching story, but I think the
Speaker 1: human element of it will surprise you.
Speaker 2: But for now, in this holiday season, we're.
Speaker 1: Going to take a deep breath and go back to
Speaker 1: a bear Grease classic. So, without further ado, my breth,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy Daniel Boone Foundations of an American archetype.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year to everyone.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, this is Phil Clay wanted me to remind
Speaker 3: you all that on January ninth, Meat Eater's next big
Speaker 3: audiobook project is dropping. It's titled meat Eaters American History
Speaker 3: The Long Hunters seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 3: It features our very own Clay Newcombe as well as
Speaker 3: Stephen Rnella, diving deep into the storied lives of these
Speaker 3: hunters and frontiersmen. Over the course of these fabled fourteen
Speaker 3: years that were so pivotal in the history of America.
Speaker 3: It's not available in print. This is an audio only format,
Speaker 3: and it's truly special. I've never seen the guys more
Speaker 3: excited about anything since I've worked here. And if listening
Speaker 3: to this episode about Daniel Boone gets you fired up
Speaker 3: to learn more about these men during this time, you
Speaker 3: can follow the link in the description to pre order
Speaker 3: your copy today. Again, Meat Eaters American History The Long
Speaker 3: Hunters comes out on January ninth, but you can pre
Speaker 3: order it today. We really hope you do. And now
Speaker 3: back to the show.
Speaker 4: So, as a storyteller, as a marketer, as a brander,
Speaker 4: I like to say, there are kind of, you know,
Speaker 4: twelve ish characters, and there are a handful, maybe nine
Speaker 4: types of stories. And the best stories combine like these
Speaker 4: universal storylines with these universal character types.
Speaker 5: When I was just a little kid, people would say
Speaker 5: of people that like to haunt and fish run around
Speaker 5: the woods, people would say, he's a modern day Daniel Boone.
Speaker 5: He wants to be just like Daniel Boone.
Speaker 1: On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, will be
Speaker 1: exploring a story as American as Cornbread and Black Eyed peas.
Speaker 1: We're talking about one of America's first heroes, Daniel Boone.
Speaker 1: We'll sift through the myth and truth and discuss why
Speaker 1: by heck we're still talking about him two hundred years
Speaker 1: after his death. We'll learn about the mechanism of archetypes,
Speaker 1: and I'll interview two New York Times bestselling authors, Stephen
Speaker 1: Ranella and Robert Morgan about their fascination with Boone. The
Speaker 1: truth is wilder than the myth. This is part one
Speaker 1: of our series on Old Daniel Boone, and in it
Speaker 1: will walk through the first thirty five years of his life.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna wanna miss this one, but first let
Speaker 1: me request of you two things.
Speaker 2: This series is.
Speaker 1: Different than previous Beargrease podcasts. It's a big bite to
Speaker 1: tell the life story of someone like Boone and try
Speaker 1: to understand their impact on American culture. And honestly, it
Speaker 1: was more challenging than I thought it would be. But
Speaker 1: if you'll stick around with me through.
Speaker 2: This, you'll be glad you did.
Speaker 1: Lastly, take a quick inventory of everything you know about
Speaker 1: out Daniel Boone to give you a jumpstart. I'll help
Speaker 1: you fit Dan into a timeline. He was born in
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty four and died in eighteen twenty. But what
Speaker 1: did he do in between? My name is Klay Nukem,
Speaker 1: and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore
Speaker 1: things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,
Speaker 1: and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived
Speaker 1: their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear,
Speaker 1: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 6: Man Man and I like the eagle that just fall
Speaker 6: as a mountain.
Speaker 1: Was Okay, this is Josh Lambridge filmmaker. Tell me everything
Speaker 1: you know about Daniel.
Speaker 7: I know he was a big man. I know he
Speaker 7: fought for America to keep all Americans free.
Speaker 6: That's what I know.
Speaker 7: Youmber watching the old Disney Daniel Boone was a man, Yes,
Speaker 7: a big man, because he fought for America to keep
Speaker 7: all Americans free.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked you know that song.
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone was five foot eight and weighed one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five pounds.
Speaker 7: That literally just destroyed my mind. I thought Daniel bunn
Speaker 7: was like Paul Bunyan okay, and.
Speaker 1: The other thing in the song it talks about him
Speaker 1: wearing a coonskin cap, which he didn't he he did.
Speaker 7: I don't know where you're getting your information, but I've
Speaker 7: seen the movies he work and was getting kept.
Speaker 2: This is my other buddy, Jonathan. Tell me everything you
Speaker 2: know about Daniel Boone. How much time do you got?
Speaker 1: Tell me everything.
Speaker 8: I literally don't know much other than his name and
Speaker 8: that he was an American, that he was a pioneer.
Speaker 8: He worked with the He worked with the Native Americans
Speaker 8: to discover things and discover the woods. He was an outdoorsman,
Speaker 8: discover the woods, discover the woods, discover things inside of
Speaker 8: the woods. I feel like I want to say he
Speaker 8: was at the Alamo. I really, like naturally want to
Speaker 8: say he was a part of the Alamo. But then
Speaker 8: I feel like it was a guy the Jim Booe
Speaker 8: is that that's Jim Boos of the Alamo.
Speaker 1: Like then I kept saying Bowe he was a human, yes, And.
Speaker 8: Then I kept saying David Bowie. I kept getting Daniel
Speaker 8: Boone and David Bowie mixed up in my head. That's
Speaker 8: really all I know about Daniel Boone.
Speaker 1: The Action Adventure series Daniel Boone ran on television from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four to nineteen seventy on NBC. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't the beginning of our interest with Boone. America in
Speaker 1: the world has been fascinated with him since seventeen eighty four,
Speaker 1: when a former schoolteacher named John Filson published a single
Speaker 1: chapter in his book which the book was about the
Speaker 1: American Frontier in Kentucky, and the chapter was called the
Speaker 1: Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone. Boone was fifty years old
Speaker 1: at the time, and this catalyzed his fame, not just
Speaker 1: in America but in Europe. Not long after Boone's death
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty, his first biography was written, and authors
Speaker 1: have feverishly written about him for the last two hundred years.
Speaker 1: Just in twenty twenty one, a new Boone biography came out.
Speaker 2: What did this man do?
Speaker 1: And why are we infatuated with the life of this
Speaker 1: back woodsman?
Speaker 2: This is Steve Ranella.
Speaker 1: I think the.
Speaker 5: People know that he was a woodsman and they know
Speaker 5: he was a frontiersman. The reason they know that is
Speaker 5: the guy became famous. He became famous in his own life.
Speaker 5: He was you know, he could almost argue He's one
Speaker 5: of those first He was one of those people that
Speaker 5: kind of became famous for being famous, Like the fame
Speaker 5: was self perpetual. The fame was self perpetuating because there
Speaker 5: were a lot of people, A lot of people were
Speaker 5: engaged in the things that Boone was engaged in. So
Speaker 5: you have this guy, like, why do we know so
Speaker 5: much about him? But there were other long hunters. They
Speaker 5: can't figure out what their names were.
Speaker 6: Do you really expect me to run mister Boone the
Speaker 6: way I see it running beach dying?
Speaker 1: The myth and lore around Boone is thick, and I'd
Speaker 1: like to whittle this down to the truth. But is
Speaker 1: that even possible. Time is like a carousel ride. There's
Speaker 1: a point when you get on in another when you
Speaker 1: get off. You don't get to choose who you ride with.
Speaker 1: History allows us to look back at people who got
Speaker 1: off the ride before us, but it often leaves me
Speaker 1: feeling cheated. There's something intimate about an in person conversation,
Speaker 1: eye contact, human voice to human ear, and physical proximity.
Speaker 1: One man who I would have ridden a mule across
Speaker 1: the country to meet, just to look in his eyes,
Speaker 1: to see his hands, and to exchange a few words
Speaker 1: with would have been Daniel Boone. Carousel has cheated me
Speaker 1: out of getting a first hand sense of who he was.
Speaker 1: Boone is shrouded in deep mystery. He's an American legend,
Speaker 1: icon and archetype. To sum up Boone's life, he was
Speaker 1: a backwoodsman that taught us to cherish solitude and wilderness,
Speaker 1: which was a foreign concept to the world. Raised a Quaker,
Speaker 1: he was influenced heavily by Native Americans and was even
Speaker 1: adopted as a Shawnee. He was a frontiersman known for
Speaker 1: making the Cumberland Gap famous and settling the Kentucky Frontier.
Speaker 1: He embodied the westward expansion of America, which led this
Speaker 1: country to what it is today. He was uneducated but
Speaker 1: influenced America's literary giants. He fought in the Revolutionary War
Speaker 1: for America, but was tried for treason by the Americans.
Speaker 1: He attained global fame in his lifetime, owned over thirty
Speaker 1: thousand acres in Kentucky, but he died a common and
Speaker 1: poor man. He was a contemporary of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: and Benjamin Franklin, and only their stories have been told
Speaker 1: more in American history. Than Daniel Boom. It's common for
Speaker 1: people to say that Boone is an American archetype. I
Speaker 1: want to get a better understanding of what that means
Speaker 1: and how they work. Seth Haynes is a published author
Speaker 1: and the founder of through Line Strategy and Brand. A
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, he introduced me to the idea
Speaker 1: of archetypes as they're used in modern branding. Meet my buddy,
Speaker 1: Seth Haynes.
Speaker 4: So, in my work as a writer and in my
Speaker 4: work doing branding and marketing, we use archetypes a lot
Speaker 4: as sort of shortcuts for characters. And there's you know,
Speaker 4: some old work that's been done on this by Carl Youwing.
Speaker 4: There's about twelve ish archetypes, twelveish universal characters. So as
Speaker 4: a storyteller's a marketer, as a brander, I like to say,
Speaker 4: there are kind of, you know, twelve ish characters, and
Speaker 4: there are a handful, maybe nine types of stories. And
Speaker 4: the best stories combine like these universal storylines with these
Speaker 4: universal character types.
Speaker 1: So this is almost like something that's going on in
Speaker 1: the background that we don't even realize, but we'll totally
Speaker 1: identify with Yeah.
Speaker 4: And everyone in the world. I mean, I think if
Speaker 4: you were to break down your life and say, here
Speaker 4: are the people in my life, you could almost break
Speaker 4: them down to Oh, yeah, this guy represents the character.
Speaker 6: Of an outlaw.
Speaker 4: You know, he's always a rebel, he's always on the run,
Speaker 4: he's always in something. This person represents the character of
Speaker 4: an explorer, someone who's always out in the wilderness looking
Speaker 4: for something to get into, some expression of freedom. And
Speaker 4: these character types are what we call archetypes. So an
Speaker 4: archetypal expression is just simply like, this is the character
Speaker 4: that I play in the universal story of life.
Speaker 1: Can you give me an example of a national American
Speaker 1: figure that we've used as an archetype, like like Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash is like an outlaw archetype.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love Johnny Cash is an archetype because I
Speaker 4: actually think he's terribly complex. The man in Black is
Speaker 4: I mean a thousand percent the rebel right. I mean,
Speaker 4: if you picture Johnny Cash day, you'd see him, you know,
Speaker 4: on a Harley with his guitaristlung over his shoulder or something,
Speaker 4: and always pushing the boundaries, always pushing it back against
Speaker 4: societal norms and so. And he's always trying to bring
Speaker 4: even in his music, you know, Woody Guthrie is another
Speaker 4: example of this, always trying to push against the norms
Speaker 4: of society to find what's true and what's real. Johnny Cash, though,
Speaker 4: I love because when you really look at his life,
Speaker 4: like he was also extremely generous. I mean the stories
Speaker 4: I've heard about Johnny Cash's generosity from everything from kids
Speaker 4: to sick people to the elderly. He truly cared for
Speaker 4: his community of people. So he had this public persona
Speaker 4: that was very much rebel, but he also had this
Speaker 4: private life that was very much caregiver. And so sometimes
Speaker 4: I think we even find that we embody different archetypes
Speaker 4: depending on where we are.
Speaker 1: That's a good that's a good example because what I
Speaker 1: see inside these archetypes, and even inside of Boone, is
Speaker 1: that they represent to people that really don't know them
Speaker 1: this one dominant feature. Yeah, Like Johnny Cash is an outlaw,
Speaker 1: outlaw music outlaw. He's complex, you realize he's a human,
Speaker 1: and he has this bigger space. Like Boone is this
Speaker 1: courageous explorer, you know, frontiersman, conquering wilderness.
Speaker 2: That's something that we like.
Speaker 1: But that was actually a pretty not I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say a small part, but there was much more
Speaker 1: to Boone's life than that. Yeah, but the point being,
Speaker 1: we we are embracing something. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: shroud of marketing around a person.
Speaker 4: It's branding. Yeah, it's one hundred and so you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things that we like to say when
Speaker 4: we talk about branding is that branding is biological. And
Speaker 4: so what we do as humans is we take a
Speaker 4: character or take a person, and we impute to them
Speaker 4: or give to them like the character type or the
Speaker 4: story that you know best sort of resonates with us internally.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you, man, the biggest characters in American
Speaker 4: history understand that, know that and embrace it. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: it becomes part of their mystique and part of their branding,
Speaker 4: and that's what gives them lasting influence.
Speaker 1: And that's what's wild about Boone is it was clear
Speaker 1: that he, even in the seventeen hundreds, when there was
Speaker 1: not social media, i mean like high level technology, was
Speaker 1: someone writing with a quill and ink you know your story. Yep,
Speaker 1: he played the part and it wasn't inauthentic. It wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was trying to drum up publicity
Speaker 1: around his life. He was who he was, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, he was pretty masterful at doing things,
Speaker 1: saying things, and being things at the right time for people.
Speaker 6: To remember him. That's right.
Speaker 1: These archetypes basically are our human shortcuts to understand the
Speaker 1: world around us. Yes, understanding the mechanisms of culture building
Speaker 1: is important. I also think it's interesting that most of
Speaker 1: what we know about Boone didn't come directly from him,
Speaker 1: and there in Liza's mystery, Wildly two different drafts of
Speaker 1: first hand interviews with him were defunct. One manuscript was
Speaker 1: completed but lost. The other manuscript was incomplete but lost
Speaker 1: to what the heck? Who's in charge here? However, in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, thirty one years after Boone's death, a young,
Speaker 1: nerdy librarian and historian from New York named Lyman Draper,
Speaker 1: traveled to Missouri to interview Daniel's youngest and only living son,
Speaker 1: Nathan Boone, who at the time was seventy years old.
Speaker 1: It was said that Draper was quote nearly obsessed by
Speaker 1: the passing of the old frontiersman, and he determined to
Speaker 1: collect as much material in interview as many survivors as possible.
Speaker 1: Draper and Nathan give us the most intimate and accurate
Speaker 1: look into Boone's life. You can actually buy them compiled
Speaker 1: as a book titled My Father Daniel Boone. Here's an
Speaker 1: excerpt from the manuscripts. My grandfather's squire Boone was a
Speaker 1: weaver and a farmer. His residence was probably an olie.
Speaker 1: He kept at least five or six looms going at
Speaker 1: one time. He had his homestead and in the grass
Speaker 1: season moved his stock back several miles distance to a
Speaker 1: fine range where cowpens were made for herding cattle at
Speaker 1: knights and a cabin was built in which Miss Boone
Speaker 1: spent the dairy season in attending to her milk. During
Speaker 1: the mild weather, her son Daniel went with her to
Speaker 1: act as a herdsman. He went with the cattle during
Speaker 1: the daily roaming through the woods and brought them back
Speaker 1: each evening. This was his chief occupation from the age
Speaker 1: of ten to seventeen. This move was an annual affair,
Speaker 1: and Miss Boone always went personally to attend the dairy,
Speaker 1: and her son Daniel was always attendant to watch her
Speaker 1: and take care of the cattle. My father soon became
Speaker 1: fond of the woods. Even at the age of ten,
Speaker 1: he would carry a club a grub dug up by
Speaker 1: the roots, nicely shaven down, leaving a rooty knob at
Speaker 1: the end, which he called his herdsman's club. He became
Speaker 1: an expert in using it to kill birds in small game.
Speaker 1: This life enabled him to study their habits. When he
Speaker 1: was twelve or thirteen, his father bought him a gun,
Speaker 1: and he became a good marksman. The only problem was
Speaker 1: that he often neglected his hurting duties to hunt, but
Speaker 1: this experience gave him his love of woods and hunting.
Speaker 1: Daniel's brother, Samuel, was born in seventeen twenty eight. According
Speaker 1: to the records of Squire Boone Junior, Samuel had a
Speaker 1: very intelligent wife who taught my father to read, spell
Speaker 1: and write a little. This was all the education Daniel
Speaker 1: ever had, as he never attended school, But he acquired
Speaker 1: more education by his own efforts, particularly in writing, as
Speaker 1: he could do little more than rudely write his own name.
Speaker 1: In all my research on Boone, I was moved by
Speaker 1: Nathan's account of his father. I envisioned me talking about
Speaker 1: my own father or my son, recounting my life. Long
Speaker 1: after my passing. We're going to camp around Boone for
Speaker 1: a few episodes. He influenced the American hegemon the way
Speaker 1: that we think and to understand who we are, I
Speaker 1: think we need to acknowledge and be aware of the
Speaker 1: Boone influence. I'm interested in how Boone has influenced my
Speaker 1: life unknowingly. Stephen Ranella is the founder of a company
Speaker 1: called meat Eater, the company that this Here Bear Grease
Speaker 1: podcast is produced by. He's a New York Times bestselling
Speaker 1: author an American hunter, but he's also known as a
Speaker 1: national Boone expert. Renella began his young life in the
Speaker 1: outdoors with dreams of being a full time trapper like
Speaker 1: Boone was during periods of his life. It was a
Speaker 1: real treat to get to sit with Steve and talk Boone.
Speaker 1: There's been like countless Boon biographies written since the time
Speaker 1: of just after he died.
Speaker 5: I just recently sent me a Boon book. Yeah, publishing
Speaker 5: a boomboo.
Speaker 2: So okay, so people have this.
Speaker 5: I can't stop.
Speaker 2: And that is exactly what I want to talk to
Speaker 2: you about. Why are we so well?
Speaker 1: I want to I want to dive into your personal
Speaker 1: interest in Boone? Why were you so interested in Boone?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 5: I was when I was just a little kid. People
Speaker 5: would say of people that like to hunt and fish, okay,
Speaker 5: run around the woods. People would say, he's a modern
Speaker 5: day Daniel Boone. He wants to be just like Daniel Boone.
Speaker 5: He's a real Daniel Boone. To it means like the
Speaker 5: consummate woodsman, right, it's like the dedicated woodsman. I didn't
Speaker 5: realize when I first started to hear that term, you know,
Speaker 5: growing up with it, I didn't realize like how correct
Speaker 5: it was. I think the people know that he was
Speaker 5: a woodsman, and they know he was a frontiersman. The
Speaker 5: reason they know that is the guy became famous. He
Speaker 5: became famous in his own life.
Speaker 6: He was.
Speaker 5: You know, he could almost argue he's one of those
Speaker 5: first he was one of those people that kind of
Speaker 5: became famous for being famous.
Speaker 6: Like the fame.
Speaker 5: Was self perpetual. The fame was self perpetuating because there
Speaker 5: were a lot of people. A lot of people were
Speaker 5: engaged in the things that Boone was engaged in. There
Speaker 5: were a lot of market hunters, there were a lot
Speaker 5: of long hunters. There were a lot of people who
Speaker 5: got tangled up in the American Revolution, in the Western
Speaker 5: front of the American Revolution, there were a lot of
Speaker 5: people who won and lost a ton of money speculating
Speaker 5: in land. There were a lot of people that started
Speaker 5: frontier settlements or stations out on the frontier. Tons of
Speaker 5: people did this stuff. Boone wasn't the first one to
Speaker 5: go through the Cumberland Gap. Me of course, he wasn't
Speaker 5: the first one. Boone wasn't the first euro American to
Speaker 5: go through the Cumberland Gap. But he owns that event
Speaker 5: because like he got notoriety and I'm not I'm glad
Speaker 5: it happened, and people started to ask questions. They talked
Speaker 5: to his relatives, they talked to the children of his children,
Speaker 5: and his body like built up. So you have this guy,
Speaker 5: like why do we know so much about him? But
Speaker 5: there were other long hunters. They can't figure out what
Speaker 5: they're as were who were his contemporaries because I know
Speaker 5: because it never like the seed never got started. The
Speaker 5: idea that like to investigate an individual, that happened with Boone,
Speaker 5: and the investigation continued and continued and continued to the
Speaker 5: point where we put together this like really remarkable, this
Speaker 5: really remarkable biography of dates and where he went, what
Speaker 5: he did, and what his feelings about things were, and
Speaker 5: then people tracked down the people he hung out with,
Speaker 5: they tracked down his relatives. There's a later on a researcher,
Speaker 5: like a historian his time or whatever, he went to
Speaker 5: talk to Boone's kid. Yeah, relates the story where you
Speaker 5: have insight into the story. I'm gonna tell you is
Speaker 5: an example of like how thorough the investigation of Boone was. Right,
Speaker 5: Boone became a little bit famous and was well known.
Speaker 5: I mean, he wasn't like everybody else he was. He
Speaker 5: was exemplary. I mean people recognized in his own time
Speaker 5: that he was an outstanding woodsman. But as he became famous,
Speaker 5: it prompted more and more people to go and interview
Speaker 5: him and the people around him. So that little bit,
Speaker 5: like imagine a snowball rolling down a hill and went
Speaker 5: snow right, he had a little bit of fame, which
Speaker 5: is the initial bit of the thing going. But it
Speaker 5: it led to investigation, which led to investigation, which led
Speaker 5: to an investigation where eventually you know, you have this
Speaker 5: like this one individual of dozens of long hunters of
Speaker 5: his contemporaries, this one individual who we put together a
Speaker 5: ton of information about, and there's a there's an interesting thing.
Speaker 5: It comes from like very late in his life. Someone
Speaker 5: was interviewing one of his children one time, and the
Speaker 5: kids describing this is this is after the after the
Speaker 5: bulk of the Indian Wars are over. This is after
Speaker 5: the American Revolution. His kids describe and being out hunting
Speaker 5: with his father.
Speaker 1: I think maybe it would be best if we hear
Speaker 1: it in the words of Nathan Boone himself. In the
Speaker 1: fall of seventeen ninety four, father and I were out hunting.
Speaker 1: We camped on the northern bank of the Ohio River,
Speaker 1: some two or three miles above the mouth of Campaign Creek,
Speaker 1: which was ten or twelve miles above Point Pleasant. It
Speaker 1: was frosty weather and the leaves were falling. About the
Speaker 1: second morning, a foggy morning, my father went off, leaving
Speaker 1: me alone at the camp. A large fine buck came
Speaker 1: within twenty or twenty five steps of camp. I seized
Speaker 1: my small rifle. This was not my little bird rifle,
Speaker 1: which used a ball about the size of a buckshot,
Speaker 1: that one I used to kill birds and squirrels near
Speaker 1: Crooked Creek back of Point Pleasant. This larger rifle was
Speaker 1: made by my father and William Arbuckle, a gunsmith, I
Speaker 1: rested his gun against one of the camp posts and fired,
Speaker 1: but the deer ran off. Father heard the shot and
Speaker 1: returned to camp. He asked me to point out where
Speaker 1: the deer stood. There he found hair which the ball
Speaker 1: had cut off. Then he followed the trail found blood.
Speaker 1: Sixty or eighty yard guards. Further, he found the dead deer.
Speaker 1: This was the first deer I ever killed. But my
Speaker 1: father didn't leave me at camp anymore. He took me
Speaker 1: with him two or three times and pointed out deer,
Speaker 1: then showed me how to manage to get off shots.
Speaker 1: I was not to move or attempt to steal up
Speaker 1: on the deer when his head was up and chewing,
Speaker 1: and when he was looking around, but to do so
Speaker 1: when his head was down feeding and could not so
Speaker 1: well see me. Following this advice, I killed one or
Speaker 1: two other deer during this hunt. While we were together.
Speaker 1: My father shot a bear and one or two others
Speaker 1: when he was alone.
Speaker 2: The first day.
Speaker 1: From these two or three bear we saved all the meat,
Speaker 1: and of the ten or fifteen deer, we saved the
Speaker 1: best hindquarters. On the fifth night, about midnight, I had
Speaker 1: been asleep for some time, but my father Daniel Boone
Speaker 1: heard a chopping or hacking some distance above and across
Speaker 1: the river. He awakened me, and he told me he
Speaker 1: thought the noise was made by Indians, as he thought
Speaker 1: it was made by their hatchet. He concluded that Indians
Speaker 1: had probably seen the fire at our camp and were
Speaker 1: making a raft to cross. We carried meat and skins
Speaker 1: to our canoe, which was twenty five yards from camp,
Speaker 1: and returned to our fire again. The night was clear
Speaker 1: and frosty and a little foggy, so we remained at
Speaker 1: our fire with our blankets for some time. After the
Speaker 1: chopping ceased. We then went to our canoe. There we
Speaker 1: stayed some ten minutes until we heard the Indians paddling
Speaker 1: in the water. At that time we pushed off, and
Speaker 1: Father ordered me to roll his blanket around myself and
Speaker 1: lie down in the canoe. He sat in the stern,
Speaker 1: put the paddle carefully in the water, and then gave
Speaker 1: a push. We went forward noiselessly and were soon in
Speaker 1: the main current, which washed us down the river. On
Speaker 1: the way, Father put his head over the canoe close
Speaker 1: to the water, and he said he thought he could
Speaker 1: catch a glimpse of the Indians he had looked between
Speaker 1: the surface of the water and the fog which did
Speaker 1: not quite reach the water, and soon we were beyond harm.
Speaker 5: Stream escapes and the kid says, his kid says, in
Speaker 5: that moment, I kind of understood the fear that that
Speaker 5: man lived.
Speaker 2: With his whole life.
Speaker 5: So here you have like interviews with his kids talking
Speaker 5: about his like analyzing the guy's emotional state. We don't
Speaker 5: have that one of Boon's hunting partners. All we know
Speaker 5: is like basically he got killed, want of dying in
Speaker 5: a hollow tree and the story m hm. But with him, man,
Speaker 5: we got all the goods. Yeah, almost too many goods
Speaker 5: because there's a lot as you know, there's people that
Speaker 5: are always bringing an artifact, Oh, this is Boone's gone,
Speaker 5: this is Boone's hatchet, you know, it's all hogwash.
Speaker 1: Well, when Boone was in his mid fifties, this is
Speaker 1: this is what I've calculated. When Boone was in his
Speaker 1: mid fifties was when the first biography that included well
Speaker 1: it wasn't a full biography, but a guy came down
Speaker 1: and interviewed him and included him in this book that
Speaker 1: went global, and it was about the American frontier. So
Speaker 1: was it a combination that the eyes of the world
Speaker 1: were on this boundary between the American colonies and this
Speaker 1: vast frontier that we knew nothing about. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was like the spot in the world that people were
Speaker 1: interested in. And then this guy wrote and it was
Speaker 1: included in part of this book. This guy wrote this
Speaker 1: included Boone, and then all of a sudden, everybody's eyes
Speaker 1: were on Boone.
Speaker 2: Sure, and he was mythologized first.
Speaker 5: It's kind of funny because like the first treatments of
Speaker 5: him were overblown mythologizing. Yeah, you know, guys like him
Speaker 5: and Davy Crockhead the same thing, like people like like
Speaker 5: the Lump, these guys that got very different people ye,
Speaker 5: born far apart, very you know, just very different. But
Speaker 5: they're both hunters and they're both frontiers went to some extent,
Speaker 5: but they both had this thing where they were living
Speaker 5: with people telling crazy stories about them that weren't even true. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he became later historians based on this infatuation with these
Speaker 5: guys of these like superhuman individuals, you know, based on
Speaker 5: the historians later kind of like a type of book
Speaker 5: that would later be written about Boone was sorting out
Speaker 5: fact from fiction fiction the man from the Legend, and
Speaker 5: that became a whole you know, subgenre of Boone literature
Speaker 5: is when people stopped and been like, okay, obviously that's
Speaker 5: all both, but what was this guy like?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what really was he like? And then when you
Speaker 5: look at what he really was like, it's more interesting
Speaker 5: than the mythologized version.
Speaker 1: There have been around ten legitimate Boone biographies written over
Speaker 1: the last two hundred years, and they're still being written today. However,
Speaker 1: one stands out to many, including Steve Brunella, as the
Speaker 1: Bible of Boone biographies, and it's simply titled Boone. It's
Speaker 1: written by Cornell University professor Sir Robert Morgan. I was
Speaker 1: unsure if mister Morgan was still professionally active, but I
Speaker 1: reached out to him and was delighted when he responded
Speaker 1: back within a few hours, inviting me to his home
Speaker 1: in New York. Mister Morgan is in his mid seventies
Speaker 1: and has dedicated his life to writing on the Appalachian
Speaker 1: region in which he grew up. He's a New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling author who calls himself a poet that
Speaker 1: writes some fiction. Poets are a unique lot. They're often
Speaker 1: introspective and unusually contemplative. Sometimes you meet someone with a
Speaker 1: spirit about them that seems to pervade the space they fill.
Speaker 1: Mister Morgan is such a man. They wore a plaid
Speaker 1: shirt and suspenders. His accomplished professional career hasn't overshadowed his
Speaker 1: rural roots. I was struck by his stoic yet joyful demeanor,
Speaker 1: his humility and confidence, and his exhaustive familiarity with Boone.
Speaker 1: It's an honor to introduce you to mister Robert Morgan.
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated with Boone really since I read your book,
Speaker 1: probably ten years ago. And I would have known Boone
Speaker 1: just from the typical way an American kid would have
Speaker 1: known Boone, you know, just from the Disney movies, kind
Speaker 1: of odd places sometimes that his name would come up,
Speaker 1: but really knew nothing about him. And then when I
Speaker 1: read your book, I was enthralled with who this guy
Speaker 1: really was. What was your interest in Boone originally?
Speaker 6: Well, when I was growing up, my dad would talk
Speaker 6: about him. He just loved to talk about Daniel Boone
Speaker 6: and the Frontier, and he said we were related to
Speaker 6: Boone through the Morgans. Boone's mother was a Morgan, and
Speaker 6: this turns out to be true. It's very distant relation.
Speaker 6: Boone and I have a common ancestor in Wales and
Speaker 6: North Wales. But I think the first thing to know
Speaker 6: about the Boone families is they were Quakers, and the
Speaker 6: Boone family way down in the southwestern England around Exeter,
Speaker 6: they were weavers and blacksmiths. So this had a lot
Speaker 6: of influence on Boone's character all the way through his life.
Speaker 6: And of course they taught pacifism quietness. The mother from
Speaker 6: Wales was a musical person. She loved to sing, and
Speaker 6: this also was an influence. So this family taught him
Speaker 6: this very pacifistic way of life. And it's odd because
Speaker 6: he's associated with Indian fighting and hunting, and of course
Speaker 6: that's part of the myth that he killed lots of Indians.
Speaker 6: He may have killed only one in his life. The
Speaker 6: real Boone is somewhat different from the legend, and that
Speaker 6: was part of the fun of researching and writing the
Speaker 6: book to separate these two. The actual character Daniel Boone
Speaker 6: and all these things in the movies and the legends
Speaker 6: they do overlaps on. I think the legend has its
Speaker 6: roots in Boone, but he's actually a very different person.
Speaker 6: The monument in Frankfort, Kentucky has him killing panthers and
Speaker 6: fighting with the Indians and that sort of thing, but
Speaker 6: that's not the real Moon. He was very pacifistic, very
Speaker 6: calm person, spoke calmly in a very low voice, the
Speaker 6: evidence suggests. And one other thing it's important to remember
Speaker 6: is that his father was kicked out of the Quakers
Speaker 6: and became a Freemason. So this new very important organization
Speaker 6: in the eighteenth century that taught the brotherhood of all men,
Speaker 6: of all people. I think he was influenced by that,
Speaker 6: and he later became a Mason himself. Very early. He
Speaker 6: loved the forest. The family recognized that that he could hunt,
Speaker 6: he could find animals, he could trap. He lived out
Speaker 6: in the woods with his mother in the summertime. She
Speaker 6: took care of the cows. And he wanted all ready
Speaker 6: to live like an Indian then to spend time in
Speaker 6: the forest, and there were Indians around.
Speaker 1: It's clear that he had a lot of Native American
Speaker 1: influence even from an early age.
Speaker 2: That overlap of society.
Speaker 1: In the Pennsylvania area that would have been pretty common,
Speaker 1: Like he would have just been out wandering around and
Speaker 1: run into Native Americans that he could have befriended. That
Speaker 1: would not have been hostile.
Speaker 6: Right, His parents hosted Indians. Indians would come and stay
Speaker 6: there in their house from time to time. Pennsylvania and
Speaker 6: especially that area had a much better relationship with Indigenous
Speaker 6: people than most of the other states. The land was
Speaker 6: bought from them for one thing, and I think there
Speaker 6: was only one battle with Indians and all the history
Speaker 6: of that part of Pennsylvania. So Boone got to know them.
Speaker 6: He imitated them. He loved to be in the forest,
Speaker 6: and I say in my biography that he was sort
Speaker 6: of divided between the mother world of the forest where
Speaker 6: he went with his mother, and the father world of
Speaker 6: town and professions and blacksmithing and business money that sort
Speaker 6: of thing. But there's no doubt he was more drawn
Speaker 6: to the mother world of the forest all of his life.
Speaker 6: The very beginning. He was drawn to live like an Indian,
Speaker 6: like an Indian. It was always there from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is Stephen Ranella.
Speaker 5: He became those this guy like brought home a lot
Speaker 5: of game and also people that would begin relationships with
Speaker 5: Indians who lived in his air. But when he lived there.
Speaker 5: As he became older and became being a man, he
Speaker 5: became and this is kind of like where his real
Speaker 5: fame started to be.
Speaker 6: As Boone became a long hunter.
Speaker 5: He had always hunted for the family, okay, meaning he
Speaker 5: would hunt bears, he would hunt deer. They liked to
Speaker 5: eat bear meat, they liked to use deer meat, they
Speaker 5: ate it. But mainly it was like the primary asset,
Speaker 5: The primary good you got from deer was leather, and
Speaker 5: people on the frontier preferred bear meat over deer meat.
Speaker 5: I'm sure he had probably always been involved in some
Speaker 5: commercial activities, but as he became a young man in
Speaker 5: North Carolina, he became a commercial hunter. Not just hunting
Speaker 5: for the pot right, not hunting for the family. But
Speaker 5: he would go out hunt deer, hunt bear, trap, beaver, trap.
Speaker 2: Otter in order to sell goods.
Speaker 5: And that's really the occupation, that's like the livelihood that
Speaker 5: kind of boons. Most of his life was really centered
Speaker 5: around and a lot of his movements as he moved
Speaker 5: ever westward in his big famous move was when he
Speaker 5: moved into.
Speaker 2: The Kentucky territory.
Speaker 5: Was hunting out looking for good hunting ground.
Speaker 1: It's important to remember that these English commoners didn't know
Speaker 1: how to hunt when they arrived in the New World.
Speaker 1: In Europe, hunting was reserved for the nobility, so they
Speaker 1: relied heavily on Native American methods of hunting and cooking game. Once,
Speaker 1: when Daniel was young, he cooked a turkey over an
Speaker 1: open fire and used a curved piece of bark to
Speaker 1: capture the drippings to base the turkey. His mother asked
Speaker 1: him where he learned this, and he said, quote the Indians.
Speaker 1: In seventeen thirty six, a band of twenty five Delaware
Speaker 1: Indians stayed at the Boone Homestead. Daniel would have just
Speaker 1: been a toddler at the time, but the point is
Speaker 1: that their lives overlapped with Indians since he was a child. However,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't just be hunting that he'd learned from them.
Speaker 1: He adopted select parts of their w worldview that he
Speaker 1: saw as superior to the European worldview. I want to
Speaker 1: read an excerpt from mister Morgan's book on European and
Speaker 1: Native American worldviews. Colonists were surprised that Indians showed so
Speaker 1: little interest in accumulating wealth. The two cultures generally misunderstood
Speaker 1: each other Europeans often assumed that Indians had no religion
Speaker 1: because they saw no recognizable ritual or symbols of worship.
Speaker 1: The Indians had no word for animal or beast as
Speaker 1: distinct from human. To them, all living things had spirits
Speaker 1: or souls. Not only did the animals have spirits, but
Speaker 1: the guardian spirits of people usually appeared as animals. Owning
Speaker 1: land in the White Way made no more sense than
Speaker 1: owning attractive air or sunlight. Indians were rich by desiring little.
Speaker 1: William Cronin writes the English passion for accumulating well struck
Speaker 1: the Indians as insanity. For this and other reasons, Indian
Speaker 1: holy men often began to describe whites as created for
Speaker 1: a different purpose. Both Indians and Whites suspected each other
Speaker 1: of witchcraft. Indians were thought to worship the devil, and Indians,
Speaker 1: in turn, were convinced that English were in league with
Speaker 1: evil spirits. All too soon, the Indians concluded the invaders
Speaker 1: were stupid and laughed, But the whites who got to
Speaker 1: know Indians found them more honest and tolerant than most
Speaker 1: of their own race. It was said by some that
Speaker 1: Indians were more quote Christian than the English, showing greater
Speaker 1: charity toward the land and its inhabitants. Later in Boone's
Speaker 1: life we'd see that he never values accumulation of wealth
Speaker 1: and frankly wasn't very good at it. Back to mister
Speaker 1: Morgan describing Boone as a young man.
Speaker 6: But this famous quote from the father who was by
Speaker 6: a relative, that Daniel Balley wasn't going to school. He
Speaker 6: was skipping school, and he hadn't learned to spell. And
Speaker 6: the father said, let the others learn to spell. Daniel
Speaker 6: is the hunter. He will bring us the meat. So
Speaker 6: while he was growing up there, he was a prankster. Also.
Speaker 6: He was always playing tricks on people. He was a
Speaker 6: fun person. That's why he was so popular. He had
Speaker 6: lots of jokes. He could keep people laughing.
Speaker 1: He had a dynamic, charismatic personality.
Speaker 6: He was a leader from the very beginning. He was
Speaker 6: the kind of person who was a magnet. If he
Speaker 6: was in the room, everybody would be drawn to him.
Speaker 6: He had that leadership ability. So from the very beginning
Speaker 6: he was divided between that kind of leadership and the
Speaker 6: white world and this solitary world of the forest. And
Speaker 6: that also was with him from the very beginning to
Speaker 6: the end of his life. This really begin to show
Speaker 6: when they moved to North Carolina to the Yadkin Valley
Speaker 6: about seventeen fifty or fifty one, because that was even wilder,
Speaker 6: and he began to live in the forest, go for
Speaker 6: longer hunts, go out trapping, and he became known.
Speaker 1: And he would have been a teenager at that time
Speaker 1: when he moved to the Yadkin in North Carolina, he
Speaker 1: would have.
Speaker 6: Been sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 1: So just the prime budding age for a young man
Speaker 1: and outdoorsman to really start to sew his oats.
Speaker 6: He soon became well known as a marksman and a
Speaker 6: hunter and people, some people were jealous of him, but
Speaker 6: he was so skillful as a tracker and a hunter
Speaker 6: even then, even at the age of seventeen or eighteen,
Speaker 6: that his legend began to grow.
Speaker 1: This is a good place to give a high level
Speaker 1: overview of Boone's early life. He was born on October
Speaker 1: twenty second, seventeen thirty four, near Reading, Pennsylvania. He was
Speaker 1: a first generation American. His parents had come over from
Speaker 1: England a few years prior. We've got to remember this
Speaker 1: was before the Revolutionary War, so they weren't really Americans yet.
Speaker 1: His dad, Squire, got in squabbles with the Quaker Church,
Speaker 1: and they left Pennsylvania and moved into the wild country
Speaker 1: of the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, which at the
Speaker 1: time would have been the boundaries of European settlement and
Speaker 1: the colonies. It was here that Daniel started to make
Speaker 1: a name for himself as a hunter and explorer. I
Speaker 1: want to read another short excerpt from mister Morgan's book.
Speaker 1: From the time he was a boy, Boone had a
Speaker 1: flair for the dramat He seemed to know instinctively how
Speaker 1: to make himself noticed, remembered. As a young man, he
Speaker 1: began to create for himself the role of Daniel Boone,
Speaker 1: and he spent much of his life perfecting that role.
Speaker 1: Despite his later protestation that he was quote but a
Speaker 1: common man, he seemed to wear from his early youth
Speaker 1: that he was not just playing himself, but a type
Speaker 1: what Emerson would later call a representative man. Boone would
Speaker 1: embody in his actions and attitude, the aspirations and character
Speaker 1: of the whole era. At least once Daniel became so
Speaker 1: distracted by his own explorations that he forgot the hours
Speaker 1: of the day his home, the fact that he was
Speaker 1: supposed to help his mother before it got dark. Sarah
Speaker 1: had to round up the cattle herself and do the milking,
Speaker 1: strain the milk and put it in the spring house.
Speaker 1: To stay cool, calm and prayerful, she worked a churning
Speaker 1: butter from the clabvered milk. But when Daniel did not
Speaker 1: come home by the next morning, and still had not
Speaker 1: returned by noon, she had no choice but to walk
Speaker 1: five miles back to town to get help. A search
Speaker 1: party was formed and they combed over the Oly Hills
Speaker 1: all the way to the never Seek Mountain range west
Speaker 1: of the Monocacy Valley. They found no sign of Daniel
Speaker 1: that afternoon, but starting out early the next morning, they
Speaker 1: traveled further and spotted a column of smoke. Later in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, they reached the source of the smoke and
Speaker 1: found Daniel sitting on a bear skin and roasting fresh
Speaker 1: bear meat over the fire. When asked if he was lost,
Speaker 1: he said no, he had known where he was all
Speaker 1: along on the south shoulder of the hill, nine miles
Speaker 1: from the pasture. The search party accused him of scarying
Speaker 1: his mother and forcing them all to waste time looking
Speaker 1: for him, but he calmly answered he had started tracking
Speaker 1: the bear and didn't want to lose it, and besides,
Speaker 1: here was fresh meat for everybody. Whether the story is
Speaker 1: true or just one of the legends that grew around
Speaker 1: Boone later in life, it reveals as much about the
Speaker 1: way he was perceived and remembered as it does about
Speaker 1: his character. People later recalled that even from his boyhood,
Speaker 1: there was a sense that Daniel had been singled out.
Speaker 1: The story of the search party echoes the story in
Speaker 1: Luke two forty nine of the twelve year old Jesus
Speaker 1: Lost for Mary and Joseph. The boy is finally found
Speaker 1: in the temple conversing with the elders. When he is
Speaker 1: questioned and scolded, he explains that he had quote been
Speaker 1: about his father's business. The sense of the story is
Speaker 1: that Boone had already found his calling and destiny. It
Speaker 1: is clear he also knew how to make a memorable impression.
Speaker 2: For Boone, there was something.
Speaker 1: Erotic about the woods, a playground, a place of sometimes
Speaker 1: dangerous pleasure, and some would later suggest that with his
Speaker 1: lifelong passion for hunting, there was a part of Boone
Speaker 1: that never quite grew up. Back to mister Morgan as
Speaker 1: he describes a big event in young Daniel's life.
Speaker 6: Then this big event in his life when he was
Speaker 6: about twenty one. He was born in seventeen thirty four
Speaker 6: and the French and Indian War started, So it's seventeen
Speaker 6: fifty five and he goes with the militia up into
Speaker 6: Virginia and joins George Washington's forces that are going to
Speaker 6: join the British led by General Braddock, and everybody knows
Speaker 6: the story of Braddock's defeat. They moved toward Fort Duquine
Speaker 6: and they were ambushed by the French and the Indians
Speaker 6: and a lot were killed. And Boone was not a soldier.
Speaker 6: He was a teamster and a blacksmith teamster, meaning he
Speaker 6: drove wagons. Drove wagons, but around the campfires he had
Speaker 6: met a man called Finley, and Finley had told him
Speaker 6: about his trip into Kentucky going down the Ohio River
Speaker 6: as a peddler. He was a businessman, going all the
Speaker 6: way to the falls which was now Louisville. But he
Speaker 6: had traded with the Shawnees at the village of Esque Parkathiki,
Speaker 6: which is where Winchester Kentucky is now Okay, and he
Speaker 6: had seen the Bluegrass. So he told these stories of
Speaker 6: this amazing place, so beautiful, buffalo elk, dear beavers, and
Speaker 6: it didn't seem to be inhabited by Indians. There was
Speaker 6: at one village of Escuepakathiki, and Boone determined then that
Speaker 6: someday he was going to the Bluegrass.
Speaker 1: So this is when he was in his early twenties,
Speaker 1: is when he met Finley Right, who told him about this.
Speaker 1: And this would have been so this would have been
Speaker 1: over the Appalachian Range, which at the time was this
Speaker 1: impenetrable barrier. It's really bizarre to think about it now
Speaker 1: because we have highway systems and do we have this
Speaker 1: modern transportation. It's almost like you have to reel yourself
Speaker 1: deeply back into history and erase how you can drive
Speaker 1: in a car, get an airplane. I mean, these people
Speaker 1: were confined massively by transportation, so Kentucky would have been
Speaker 1: like another planet.
Speaker 6: It was considered unreasonable for several reason. The Indians its
Speaker 6: dangerous to go there, had to climb over the mountains
Speaker 6: Blue rig the Alleghanys to get there, and the Cumberlands,
Speaker 6: but they were also forbidden to go there after the
Speaker 6: French and Indian War that was to be divided up
Speaker 6: for the officers and ordinary people weren't supposed to go. Now,
Speaker 6: some white explorers had gone there, and doctor Thomas Walker,
Speaker 6: I believe, had actually found what we call Cumberland Gap,
Speaker 6: and he's the one who named it. We think.
Speaker 1: John Finley was twenty years older than Boone and told
Speaker 1: Dan some marvelous tales of going into Kentucky. He would
Speaker 1: have been the man in Boone's life who inadvertently steered
Speaker 1: him into what many would say was his calling or destiny.
Speaker 1: He must have noted that young Daniel was highly interested
Speaker 1: in his stories of Kentucky, because ten years later he'd
Speaker 1: go visit Boone at his house and proposed a wild plan.
Speaker 6: But Finley showed up a trader and he had a
Speaker 6: little money. They planned this trip. They got together with
Speaker 6: several people in the spring of seventeen sixty nine and
Speaker 6: left on first of May.
Speaker 1: Now let's see, now Daniel would have been by this
Speaker 1: time in his thirties. He would have been, so this
Speaker 1: would have been ten years after he originally heard about
Speaker 1: it from Findley.
Speaker 6: He wasn't able to outfit a group to go, and
Speaker 6: he had other things on his mind. When he got
Speaker 6: back from Braddock's defeat that trip, he was in love
Speaker 6: with this beautiful girl, Rebecca Bryan, and they were married
Speaker 6: not too long after, and Foon had a family soon
Speaker 6: and you know, had to farm, and he had to
Speaker 6: support them by working as a teamster and primarily as
Speaker 6: a trapper hunting deer. In the summertime, he hunted deer
Speaker 6: for the hides because the hide was in its best
Speaker 6: condition and a hide was worth a Spanish dollar, so
Speaker 6: a hide became a buck. Right in wintertime, he primarily
Speaker 6: trapped for firm because that's when it was in its prime.
Speaker 6: So that's what he was doing most of the time.
Speaker 6: He also went off on a trip to Florida, of
Speaker 6: all things. Yeah, and actually bought a bit of land
Speaker 6: down there, but Rebecca refused to go.
Speaker 1: And so that was in seventeen sixty five that he
Speaker 1: went to Florida. Didn't he owned land near Pensacola.
Speaker 6: He did. He bought some land and came back, arrived
Speaker 6: on Christmas to take his family there, and Rebecca just
Speaker 6: put her foot down she would not go.
Speaker 1: I have in my notes here. Boone was like a
Speaker 1: typical timeshare Florida owner who bought his land and never
Speaker 1: went back. During this time, like when you try to
Speaker 1: understand the motivations for people to do these kind of things,
Speaker 1: this was a time of exploration, of geographic exploration in
Speaker 1: North America. I mean it was like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say trendy, but it was I guess in a
Speaker 1: sense explorers. There was a lot of financial gain to
Speaker 1: be made from well, from long hunters who could go
Speaker 1: and make a good living long hunting into new territory.
Speaker 1: But it was just a different time and a different mentality.
Speaker 6: It was said that Boone was fiddle footed, he just
Speaker 6: couldn't stay still. But to think of it, I mean,
Speaker 6: here was this continent and that much of it had
Speaker 6: not been explored. Jefferson was very interested in exploring it,
Speaker 6: for instance. But think of people coming from Europe, mostly
Speaker 6: poor people who never had hunted. Hunting was for the
Speaker 6: upper classes, even firearms, or for the upper classes, and
Speaker 6: they arrived in North America and it's this vast wilderness
Speaker 6: animals to hunt to trap, and if you get a
Speaker 6: gun and you could go anywhere you wanted, you could
Speaker 6: explore that. And for the Scotch Irish It really was
Speaker 6: like a miracle that they had been moved from Scotland
Speaker 6: to Ireland and then the land had been taken away
Speaker 6: from them in Ireland. So you arrive here and basically
Speaker 6: all you have to do is find a patch somewhere
Speaker 6: and make sure the Indians are cleared out and you
Speaker 6: could grow things, you could hunt, claim a new life.
Speaker 6: So it was a very exciting time and exploring was
Speaker 6: one of the main things they did, but particularly Boon's
Speaker 6: time over the mountains. I say in the biography that
Speaker 6: Kentucky was the key because once you could get to Kentucky,
Speaker 6: that meant you could go further down the Ohio over
Speaker 6: into Ohio, over into what became Indiana, Illinois, and beyond
Speaker 6: that the Mississippi Valley and beyond that the Missouri Valley.
Speaker 6: In these mountains, he heard of the Snowcap and that
Speaker 6: was really thrilling. People were and the women, not just
Speaker 6: the men, the women wanted to go there too. It
Speaker 6: was a very exciting time.
Speaker 1: So we've covered about thirty years of Daniel's life. He
Speaker 1: was a backwoods kid influenced by Quaker in Native American ideology.
Speaker 1: By the time he was in his teens, he was
Speaker 1: an accomplished hunter. When he was twenty one, he served
Speaker 1: under the George Washington, like the father of our country,
Speaker 1: George Washington, in the French and Indian War. In seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty six he married the beautiful, black haired and black
Speaker 1: eyed Rebecca Bryan, and they started on their way towards
Speaker 1: having ten children. And if we're telling our story chronologically,
Speaker 1: Dan is now thirty three years old. He's a common backwoodsman,
Speaker 1: and it's now seventeen sixty seven. Now, mister Morgan will
Speaker 1: get back to Daniel and John Finley's first trip into Kentucky.
Speaker 2: And it's worth.
Speaker 1: Noting for the boone nerds out there that Dan actually
Speaker 1: had been into Kentucky for a short time on another trip,
Speaker 1: but thought he was in Virginia. He later would realize
Speaker 1: he had dipped into Kentucky and was unimpressed with what
Speaker 1: he'd seen.
Speaker 6: Okay, they got together. There's a lot of disagreement about this,
Speaker 6: but somebody funded this. Finley may have contributed to it.
Speaker 6: But the job was how do you get there? You
Speaker 6: could get there by going down the Ohio, but how
Speaker 6: did you get to Kentucky as they called it. Well,
Speaker 6: they figured out that the Indians for thousands of years
Speaker 6: have been going there on the warriors Pathobi And if
Speaker 6: they could find the warriors path, they could follow it
Speaker 6: and it would take them through the gap into Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And this is a this is something they would have
Speaker 1: just heard through interactions with Native Americans. They would they
Speaker 1: would have heard them say, there's this, there's a gap
Speaker 1: in the mountains.
Speaker 6: They would. I mean there was enough contact, particularly Boon.
Speaker 6: I mean, he'd gotten to know a lot of Cherokees,
Speaker 6: he had been cheated by them. He possibly had a
Speaker 6: Cherokee wife. We don't know that, but some people said
Speaker 6: he did. And by the way, they also say that
Speaker 6: that Cherokee wife was African American, an escaped slave, as
Speaker 6: I have actually met African Americans who claimed to be
Speaker 6: descended from Daniel.
Speaker 1: But really I have what is your what is your
Speaker 1: personal feeling? Do you think that's true?
Speaker 6: I think it's quite possible.
Speaker 1: Really, what about his Quaker upbringing and being like devoted
Speaker 1: to his wife, like, how in contrasting that with character
Speaker 1: we see in other parts of his life, would that
Speaker 1: just have been I don't know, how would you explain it?
Speaker 6: I think there are many facets to woman's character and
Speaker 6: many compartments in his mind. He had this amazing ability
Speaker 6: to blend in with people and groups ever he was,
Speaker 6: and this saved him many times that he understood other people.
Speaker 6: He had a mind like Shakespeare. I mean, who could
Speaker 6: get into the mind very different people and to be
Speaker 6: sympathetic with them. I don't know that he had a
Speaker 6: Cherokee wife, but I think it's possible. And you know,
Speaker 6: if you were with an Indian group, you had to
Speaker 6: be sleeping with one woman or they would think you
Speaker 6: were a very bad it was.
Speaker 1: I read it was inhospitable if you were a guest
Speaker 1: in some of these tribes, they would If you would
Speaker 1: not do that, it would be.
Speaker 6: You thought you were better or you know, you were
Speaker 6: not one of them. So I just say it's possible.
Speaker 1: And I guess the way he fit in so well
Speaker 1: with the Native Americans. And we'll talk more about him
Speaker 1: being kidnapped by the Shawnee and all that, but the
Speaker 1: fact that he was able to blend in so well,
Speaker 1: I can see how that would make sense. That he
Speaker 1: might have just because too be able to fit in
Speaker 1: so well.
Speaker 6: It may have been a necessity, so he would have
Speaker 6: known about this gap they went north from the Yadkin
Speaker 6: to what was called Wolf Hills, which we call Abingdon, Virginia,
Speaker 6: and there they found the trail that Boone was good
Speaker 6: enough to read the sign the tracks, so they followed
Speaker 6: it to the southwest over Powells River and Pole's Mountain
Speaker 6: and they came to the Cumberland Mountains. And this is
Speaker 6: a really dramatic place. You can go there and these
Speaker 6: mountains have cliffs on them, and there's the most forbidding things.
Speaker 6: It really is like it's threatening, these high cliffs, just
Speaker 6: mile after mile after mile, and keep going and then
Speaker 6: suddenly you see this gap between them like a gun sight,
Speaker 6: and there it is. They found it what doctor Thomas
Speaker 6: Walker called Cumberland Gap. And you cross that and there's
Speaker 6: a river. You got to cross the Cumberland River. You
Speaker 6: go through another gap and then you reach the Knob Country.
Speaker 6: And the famous paintings are a Boone on top of
Speaker 6: a hill seeing into the bluegrass in Kentucky, and this
Speaker 6: is called the Pisga Vision. Moses on Pisga he could
Speaker 6: look into the promised land. But Boone could go into
Speaker 6: the promised land. Moses couldn't go right, So you have
Speaker 6: this amazing idol of Boone in his group Here for
Speaker 6: the Deer Buffalo Elk Beaver.
Speaker 1: Boone is now into Kentucky and what happened there will
Speaker 1: shape the rest of his life and Americas. What's interesting
Speaker 1: is that it's in the next ten years that most
Speaker 1: of what he's famous for, the things that defined his life,
Speaker 1: will happen. Mister Morgan had something to say about this
Speaker 1: to this day. We put this quote in a frame
Speaker 1: in our house, and we did it when we were
Speaker 1: about thirty years old, so this would have been about
Speaker 1: ten years ago. But you said in his mid thirties,
Speaker 1: a man either reaches out towards risk and glory or
Speaker 1: stays within the routines of the expected and ordinary. It
Speaker 1: is the age when men leave safe homes and jobs
Speaker 1: and go on voyages and odyssees and perform transforming sacrifices.
Speaker 1: It's the age when Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass
Speaker 1: and Columbus started planning his voyage to the Indies. It's
Speaker 1: an age at which visionaries become profits, or explorers or inventors,
Speaker 1: or make fools of themselves trying. So I would have
Speaker 1: read this book when I was about thirty years old,
Speaker 1: and it just feels so true. This window of time
Speaker 1: in life is so important. And you went on to
Speaker 1: give these examples of work that these artists and poets
Speaker 1: and explorers did when they were in their thirties, and
Speaker 1: you made the point that much of Boone's life was
Speaker 1: defined by this ten year period basically from seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: to about seventeen eighty. The Cumberland Gap in Kentucky and
Speaker 1: all these things.
Speaker 6: Things he's famous for. Yeah, we're done in that time. Yeah, well,
Speaker 6: I got the idea from the study of the Romantic
Speaker 6: poets words Worths and Coleridge lived much longer, but almost
Speaker 6: everything that we associate with them is done that in
Speaker 6: the ten years. And Walt Whitman is the perfect example.
Speaker 6: That Whitman wrote all of these great poems just about
Speaker 6: in that period, it's a little bit more about eleven years,
Speaker 6: and devoted the rest of his life to writing prose.
Speaker 6: Basically did write some poems. But I was also thinking
Speaker 6: of physicists and mathematicians and that they do their great
Speaker 6: work relatively early. Mathematicians even earlier, but physicists and other
Speaker 6: scientists usual a little bit later. Yeah, novelists also novelists
Speaker 6: usually get going about the age of thirty and at
Speaker 6: the age of forty early forties, they've done most of
Speaker 6: their great work. A few exceptions, but not Yeah Lenny.
Speaker 1: On this first episode, we basically covered the first thirty
Speaker 1: five years of Daniel's life up to him traversing the
Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap and going into Kentucky. This is just the
Speaker 1: beginning of the famed part of his life. And remember
Speaker 1: at this point no one knew his name. Daniel would
Speaker 1: live to be eighty six years old. In the remaining
Speaker 1: fifty one years of his life are more wild than
Speaker 1: the first. The man had a drive and a deep
Speaker 1: love of life kept him moving. But I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to understand why this story matters. Understanding national archetypes helps
Speaker 1: us see the framework of our thinking, what we value
Speaker 1: and the things that seek to define us. A deeper
Speaker 1: look into national identity and an awareness of this gives
Speaker 1: us the right to evaluate the good and the not
Speaker 1: so good. In the coming episodes, we'll explore the rest
Speaker 1: of Boone's life, including the heroic rescue of his daughter
Speaker 1: from Indians and the lore of an illegitimate daughter, the
Speaker 1: death of his son, and fortunes Won and Lost will
Speaker 1: also explore the historical revision of Boone and the controversy
Speaker 1: of us celebrating him. It's improbable to think that after
Speaker 1: listening to a few podcasts you could understand the fullness
Speaker 1: of who Boone was, and it's my hope that you
Speaker 1: might explore Boone yourself. Ultimately, I hope that his character,
Speaker 1: both positive and negative, will make us more relevant today
Speaker 1: in continuing to define American identity in my old my
Speaker 1: our exploration of Boone is an appeal to the masses
Speaker 1: to remember where we came from, and it's a cry
Speaker 1: to not forget the American backwoodsman, because we're still here
Speaker 1: and we deserve a lasting place at the American table
Speaker 1: because it's in our DNA. Folks, I cannot thank you
Speaker 1: enough for listening to the Bear Grease podcast. We're pouring
Speaker 1: out everything we've got into these and thank you for
Speaker 1: the iTunes reviews, and I ask those of you who
Speaker 1: haven't to give us a review on iTunes and share
Speaker 1: this podcast with your buddies. Thanks A ton