Boone, Daniel

Boone, Daniel (1734–1820), explorer and pioneer.Boone was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and in 1752 his family settled in North Carolina. In 1755 he enlisted as a volunteer in General Edward Braddock's unsuccessful campaign against the French at Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). He married Rebecca Bryan in 1756 and in 1765 explored as far south as Pensacola, Florida. Two years later, Boone and two companions crossed the Cumberland Mountains and kept winter camp, but returned home without realizing that they had reached Kentucky.

On 1 May 1769, with his acquaintance John Findley and four other men, Boone once more set out for the West and again reached Kentucky. Boone explored and hunted for two years before returning to North Carolina. He finally succeeded in settling in Kentucky in 1775 under Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company, having cut the Wilderness Road with thirty other backwoodsmen and founded the town of Boonesborough (now Boonesboro, Kentucky).

In July 1776 Boone's daughter Jemima and Betsy and Fanny Callaway were captured by a small Shawnee and Cherokee war party. Their rescue by Boone and his men caused a sensation on the frontier. James Fenimore Cooper used the adventure in The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

On 7 February 1778, Boone and thirty salt makers were captured by Shawnee Indians. Adopted into the tribe, Boone was given the name “Shel‐tow‐ee” or “Big Turtle.” He escaped to warn Boonesborough of an impending Shawnee attack, which came on 7 September. Though heavily outnumbered by Shawnee warriors, Boonesborough's defenders withstood the eleven‐day siege. Four years later, Daniel's son, Israel, was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks, the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War.

The publication of The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon in John Filson's The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784) ensured the now wealthy Boone's fame. But in 1799, having previously lost nearly all his 100,000 acres of land in Kentucky through lawsuits, he gladly accepted an invitation from the Spanish governor of Missouri to settle in the Femme Osage district. Given 850 acres of land and the position of syndic (magistrate), Boone gained 8,500 acres more by bringing one hundred new families to Missouri but again lost all his land in 1803 when his Spanish title was voided by the Louisiana Purchase. In 1814, Congress awarded the penniless pioneer 850 acres for his services in opening the West, but he sold the land to pay his debts. Even at his advanced age, Boone continued to hunt, explore, and trap.

No one is perhaps more central to the frontier experience than Daniel Boone. He was involved in the exploration and settlement of the western frontier for nearly seventy years, and he became the prototype of the frontier hero. For many Americans, Daniel Boone's pioneering adventuresome spirit best exemplified the American way of life.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Expansionism; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Land Policy, Federal; Revolution and Constitution, Era of the; Spanish Settlements in North America.

Bibliography

Richard Slotkin , Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860, 1973.
Michael A. Lofaro , The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone, 1978; 2d ed., 1986.
John M. Faragher , Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, 1992.

Michael A. Lofaro