Bear Grease - Ep. 14: Daniel Boone - Foundations of an American Archetype (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, we’ll be exploring a story as American as cornbread and black-eyed peas, we’re talking about one of America’s first heroes--Daniel Boone. We’ll sift through the myth and truth and discuss why the heck we’re still talking about him 200 years after his death. We’ll learn about the mechanism of archetypes, and Clay Newcomb will interview two New York Times best-selling authors Robert Morgan and Steven Rinella about their fascination with Boone. We'll learn that the truth is wilder than the myth. This is part one of our series on Ol’ Dan’l Boone, and in it we’ll walk through the first 35 years of Boone’s life. You’re not going to want to miss this one.Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. So as a storyteller, as a marketer, as a brander, I like to say there are kind of, you know, 12-ish characters, and there are a handful, maybe nine types of stories. And the best stories combine like these universal storylines with these universal character types. When I was just a little kid, people would say of people that like to hunt and fish,

run around the woods. people would say he's a modern day, Daniel Boone. He wants to be just like Daniel Boone. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we'll be exploring a story as American as cornbread and black-eyed peas. We're talking about one of America's first heroes, Daniel Boone. We'll sift through the myth and truth and discuss why the heck we're still talking about him 200 years after his death. We'll learn about the mechanism of archetypes.

and I'll interview two New York Times bestselling authors, Stephen Ronella and Robert Morgan, about their fascination with Boone. The truth is wilder than the myth. This is part one of our series on Old Daniel Boone, and in it will walk through the first 35 years of his life. You're not going to want to miss this one. But first, let me request of you two things.

This series is different than previous Bear Grease podcasts. It's a big bite to tell the life story of someone like Boone and try to understand their impact on American culture. And honestly, it was more challenging than I thought it would be. But if you'll stick around with me through this, you'll be glad you did. Lastly, take a quick inventory of everything you know about Daniel Boone. To give you a jump start, I'll help you fit Dan into a tight. He was born in 1734 and died in 1820.

But what did he do in between? My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Greece podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, purpose-built hunting and fishing gear

that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Okay, this is Josh Lambridge Spillmaker. Tell me everything you know about Daniel. I know he was a big man. I know he fought for America to keep all Americans free. That's what I know. You ever watching the old Disney?

Daniel Boone was a man. Yes, a big man. Because he fought for America to keep all Americans free. I'm shocked you know that song. Okay, a couple of things. Daniel Boone was 5'8 and weighed 175 pounds. That literally just destroyed my... I thought Daniel Boone was like Paul Bunyan.

Okay, and the other thing in the song, it talks about him wearing a coonskin cap, which he didn't. He did. I don't know where you're getting your information, but I've seen the movies. He wore a coom skin cap. This is my other buddy, Jonathan.

Tell me everything you know about, Daniel Boone. How much time do you got? Tell me everything you know. I literally don't know much other than his name and that he was an American, that he was a pioneer. He worked with the, he worked with the Native Americans to discover things and discover the woods. He was an outdoorsman. Discover the woods? Discover the woods. Discover the woods. Discover things inside of the woods. I feel like I want to say he was at the Alamo. I really like, naturally want to say he was a part of the Alamo, but then I feel like it was a guy of the Jim Boone, is that what, that's Jim Boos of the Alamo?

Like, then I kept saying, Boe was a human, yes. And then I kept saying David Bowie, I kept getting Daniel Boone and David Bowie mixed up in my head. That's really all I know about Daniel Boone. The action adventure series Daniel Boone ran on television from 1964 to 1970 on NBC, but that wasn't the beginning of our interest with Boone. America in the world has been fascinated with him since 1784 when a former schoolteacher named John Philson published a single chapter in his book, which the book was about the American frontier in Kentucky. And the chapter was called The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone.

Boone was 50 years old at the time, and this catalyzed his fame not just in America, but in Europe. Not long after Boone's death in 1820, his first biography was written, and authors have feverishly written about him for the last 200 years. Just in 2021, a new Boone biography came out. What did this man do and why are we infatuated with the life of this back woodsman? This is Steve Ronella. I think the people know that he was a woodsman, and they know he was. as a frontiersman. The reason I know that is the guy became famous.

He became famous in his own life. He was, you know, you could almost argue he's one of those first. He was one of those people that kind of became famous for being famous. Like the fame was self-perpetuous. The fame was self-perpetuating because there were a lot of people. A lot of people were engaged in the things that Boone was engaged in. So you have this guy like, why do we know so much about him? But there were other long hunters, they can't figure out what their names were.

Do you really expect me to run, Mr. Boone? The way I see it, running beats dying. The myth and lore around Boone is thick, and I'd like to whittle this down to the truth. But is that even possible? Time is like a carousel ride. There's a point when you get on and another when you get off. You don't get to choose who you ride with. History allows us to look back at people who got off the ride before us,

but it often leaves me feeling cheated. There's something intimate about an in-person conversation. Eye contact, human voice to human ear, and physical proximity. One man who I would have ridden a mule across the country to meet, just to look in his eyes, to see his hands, and to exchange a few words with would have been Daniel Boone. Carousel has cheated me out of getting a firsthand sense of who he was.

Boone is shrouded in deep mystery. He's an American legend, icon, and archetype. To sum up Boone's life, he was a backwoodsman that taught us to cherish solitude and wilderness, which was a foreign concept to the world. Raised a Quaker, he was influenced heavily by Native Americans and was even adopted as a Shawnee.

He was a frontiersman known for making the Cumberland Gap famous and settling the Kentucky frontier. He embodied the, the westward expansion of America, which led this country to what it is today. He was uneducated but influenced America's literary giants. He fought in the Revolutionary War for America, but was tried for treason by the Americans. He attained global fame in his lifetime, owned over 30,000 acres in Kentucky, but he died a common and poor man. He was the contemporary of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin,

And only their stories have been told more in American history than Daniel Boone. It's common for people to say that Boone is an American archetype. I want to get a better understanding of what that means and how they work. Seth Haynes is a published author and the founder of ThruLine Strategy and Brand. A couple of years ago, he introduced me to the idea of archetypes as they're used in modern branding. Meet my buddy Seth Haynes. So in my work as a writer and in my work doing branding and marketing, we use archetypes a lot as sort of shortcuts for characters. And there's, you know, some old work that's been done on this by Carl Ewing.

There's about 12-ish archetypes, 12-ish universal characters. So as a storyteller, as a marketer, as a brander, I like to say they're kind of, you know, 12-ish characters. And there are a handful, maybe nine types of stories. the best stories combine like these universal storylines with these universal character types. So this is almost like something that's going on in the background that we don't even realize, but we totally identify with. Yeah. And everyone in the world, I mean, I think if you were to break down your life and say,

here are the people in my life, you could almost break them down to, oh yeah, this guy represents the character of an outlaw. You know, he's always a rebel. He's always on the run. He's always in something. This person represents the character. of an explorer, someone who's always out in the wilderness looking for something to get into some expression of freedom. And these character types are what we call archetypes. So an archetypal

expression is just simply like, this is the character that I play in the universal story of life. Can you give me an example of a national American figure that we've used as an archetype? like Johnny Cash is like an outlaw archetype. Yeah. I love Johnny Cash as an archetype because I actually think he's terribly complex. The man in black is, I mean, a thousand percent the rebel, right? I mean, if you picture Johnny Cash Day, you'd see him, you know, on a Harley with his guitar slung over his shoulder or something. And always pushing the boundaries, always pushing it back against societal norms.

And so, and he's always trying to bring, even in his music, you know, Woody Guthrie is another example of this, always trying to push against the norms of society to find what's true and what's real. Johnny Cash, though, I love, because when you really look at his life, he was also extremely generous. I mean, the stories I've heard about Johnny Cash's generosity

from everything, from kids to sick people to the elderly, he truly cared for his community of people. So he had this public persona that was very much rebel, but he also had this private life that was very much caregiver. And so sometimes I think we even find that we embody different archetypes depending on where we are. That's a good example because what I see inside these archetypes and even inside of Boone is that they represent to people that really don't know them this one dominant feature. Yeah. Like Johnny Cash is an outlaw, outlaw music, outlaw.

He's complex. You realize he's a human and he has this bigger space. Like Boone is this courageous explorer, you know, frontiersmen. conquering wilderness, that's something that we like. But that was actually a pretty, I'm not going to say a small part, but there was much more to Boone's life than that. Yeah. But the point being, we, we are embracing something. It's kind of like a shroud of marketing around a person. It's branding. Yeah. It's 100%. And so, you know, one of the things that we like to say when we talk about branding is that branding is biological. And so what we do as humans is we take a character, or take a person and we impute to them or give to them like the character type or the story

that best sort of resonates with us internally. And I'll tell you, man, the biggest characters in American history understand that, know that, and embrace it. And it becomes part of their mystique and part of their branding. And that's what gives them lasting influence. And that's what's wild about Boone is it was clear that he, even in the 1700s when there was not social media. I mean, like high-level technology was someone writing with a quill and ink, you know, your story.

Yep. He played the part. And it wasn't inauthentic. Right. It wasn't like he was trying to drum up publicity around his life. He was who he was. But at the same time, he was pretty masterful at doing things,

saying things, and being things at the right time for people to remember him. That's right. These archetypes basically are human shortcuts to understand the world around us. Yes. Understanding the mechanisms of culture building is important. I also think it's interesting that most of what we know about Boone didn't come directly from him. And therein lies his mystery.

Wildly, two different drafts of firsthand interviews with him were defunct. One manuscript was completed but lost. The other manuscript was incomplete, but lost too. What the heck? Who's in charge here? However, in 1851, 31 years after Boone's death, a young nerdy librarian and historian from New York named Lyman Draper traveled to Missouri to interview Daniel's youngest and only living son, Nathan Boone, who at the time was 70 years old.

It was said that Draper was, quote, nearly obsessed by the passing of the old frontiersman, and he determined to collect as much material and interview as many survivors as possible. Draper and Nathan give us the most intimate and accurate look into Boone's life. You can actually buy them compiled as a book titled My Father, Daniel Boone. Here's an excerpt from the manuscript. My grandfather's Squire Boone was a weaver and a farmer. His residence was probably an oly. He kept at least five or six looms going at one time.

He had his homestead and in the grass season moved his stock back several miles distance to a fine range where cowpins were made for herding cattle at nights and a cabin was built in which Miss Boone spent the dairy season in attending to her milk. During the mild weather, her son Daniel went withered. to act as a herdsman. He went with the cattle during the daily roaming through the woods and brought them back each evening. This was his chief occupation from the age of 10 to 17. This move was an annual affair and Miss Boone always went personally to attend the dairy and her son Daniel was always attendant to watch her and take care of the cattle. My father soon became fond of the woods.

Even at the age of 10 he would carry a club, a grub dug up by the roots, nicely shaven down, leaving a rudy knob at the end, which he called his herdsman's club. He became an expert in using it to kill birds and small game. This life enabled him to study their habits. When he was 12 or 13, his father bought him a gun, and he became a good marksman. The only problem was that he often neglected his herding duties to hunt, but this experience gave him his love of woods and hunting. Daniel's brother Samuel was born in 1728, according to the records of Squire Boone Jr.

Samuel had a very intelligent wife who taught my father to read, spell, and write a little. This was all the education Daniel ever had as he never attended school, but he acquired more education by his own efforts, particularly in writing, as he could do little more than rudely write his own name. In all my research on Boone, I was moved. by Nathan's account of his father. I envision me talking about my own father or my son recounting my life long after my passing.

We're going to camp around Boone for a few episodes. He influenced the American hegemon the way that we think. And to understand who we are, I think we need to acknowledge and be aware of the Boone influence. I'm interested in how Boone has influenced my life unknowingly. Stephen Ronella is the founder of a company called Meat Eater, the company that this here Bear Greece podcast is produced by. He's a New York Times bestselling author, an American hunter,

but he's also known as a national Boone expert. Rinella began his young life in the outdoors with dreams of being a full-time trapper like Boone was during periods of his life. It was a real treat to get to sit with Steve and talk Boone. There's been like countless Boone biographies written since the time of just after he died. They're still writing them now, man. They're still writing them now. The guy just recently sent me a Boone book.

Yeah. He was like self-publishing of Boone biography. So, okay, so people have this idea. They can't stop writing them. And that is exactly what I want to talk to you about. Why are we so, well, I want to dive into your personal interest in Boone. why were you so interested in Boone? Man, when I was just a little kid,

people would say of people that like to hunt and fish, okay, run around the woods, people would say, he's a modern day, Daniel Boone. He wants to be just like Daniel Boone. He's a real Daniel Boon. I think it means like the consummate woodsman, right? It's like the dedicated woodsman.

I didn't realize when I first started to hear that. term, you know, growing up with it. I didn't realize, like, how correct it was. I think the people know that he was a woodsman and they know he was a frontiersman. The reason I know that is the guy became famous. He became famous in his own life. He was, you know, he could almost argue he's one of those first, he was one of those people that kind of became famous for being famous. Like, the fame was self-perpetual. The fame was self-perpetuating. because there were a lot of people. A lot of people were engaged in the things that Boone was engaged in.

There were a lot of market hunters. There were a lot of long hunters. There were a lot of people who got tangled up in the American Revolution in the Western Front of the American Revolution. Right. There were a lot of people who won and lost a ton of money speculating in land. There were a lot of people that started frontier settlements or stations out on the frontier.

Tons of people did this stuff. Boone wasn't the first one to go through the Cumberland Gap. I mean, of course, he wasn't the first one. Boone wasn't the first Euro-American. Right. To go through the Cumberland Gap, but he owns that event. Because, like, he got notoriety. And I'm not, I'm glad to happen.

And people started to ask questions. They talked to his relatives. They talked to the children of his children. And his body, like, built up. So you have this guy, like, why do we know so much, about him but there were all their long hunters they came figure out what their names were yeah who were his contemporaries because like no because it never like the seed never got started the idea that like to to investigate an individual that happened with boon and the investigation

continued and continued to the point where we put together this were like really remarkable um this really remarkable biography yeah of dates and where he went what he did and what his feelings about things were And then people track down the people he hung out with. They tracked down his relatives. There's a later on, a researcher, like a historian in his time, or whatever, he went to talk to Boone's kid. Nathan Draper. Yeah, relates to story where you have insight into, the story I'm going to tell you is an example of like how thorough the investigation of Boone was, right?

Boone became a little bit famous and was well known. I mean, he wasn't like everybody else. He was exemplary. I mean, people recognized in his own time that he was an outstanding woodsman. But as he became famous, it prompted more and more people to go and interview him and the people around him. So that little bit, like, imagine a snowball rolling down a hill and wet snow, right? He had a little bit of fame, which is the initial bit of the thing going. But it led to investigation, which led to investigation, which led to an investigation.

where eventually, you know, you have this like this one individual of dozens of long hunters of his contemporaries, this one individual who we put together a ton of information about. And there's an interesting thing that comes from like very late in his life. Someone was interviewing one of his children one time. And the kids describing this is that this is after the, after the bulk of the Indian Wars are over, this is after the American Revolution. His kids describe him being out hunting with his father. I think maybe it would be best if we hear it in the words of Nathan Boone himself. In the fall of 1794, father and I were out hunting. We camped on the northern bank of the Ohio River some two or three miles above the mouth of Campaign Creek,

which was 10 or 12 miles above Point Pleasant. It was frosty weather and the leaves were falling. About the second morning, a foggy morning, my father went off, leaving me alone. at the camp. A large, fine buck came within 20 or 25 steps of camp. I seized my small rifle. This was not my little bird rifle, which used a ball about the size of a buckshot. That one I used to kill birds and squirrels near Crooked Creek, back of Point Pleasant. This larger rifle was made by my father and William Arbuckle, a gunsmith. I arrested his gun against one of the camp posts and fired, but the deer ran off. Father heard the shot and returned to camp.

He asked me to point out where the deer had stood. There he found hair, which the ball had cut off. Then he followed the trail, found blood. 60 or 80 yards further, he found the dead deer. This was the first deer I ever killed. But my father didn't leave me at camp anymore. He took me with him two or three times and pointed out deer, then showed me how to manage to get off shots.

I was not to move or attempt to steal up on the deer when his head was up and chewing, and when he was looking around. but to do so when his head was down feeding and could not so well see me. Following this advice, I killed one or two other deer during this hunt. While we were together, my father shot a bear and one or two others when he was alone the first day. From these two or three bear, we saved all the meat, and of the 10 or 15 deer, we saved the best hindquarters. On the fifth night, about midnight, I had been asleep for some time, but my father, Daniel Boone, heard a chopping or hacking some distance above and across the river. He awakened me and he told me he thought the noise was made by Indians,

as he thought it was made by their hatchet. He concluded that Indians had probably seen the fire at our camp and were making a raft to cross. We carried meat and skins to our canoe, which was 25 yards from camp, and returned to our fire again. The night was clear and frosty and a little foggy, so we remained at our fire with our blankets for some time. After the chopping ceased, We then went to our canoe. There we stayed some 10 minutes until we heard the Indians paddling in the water. At that time we pushed off and Father ordered me to roll his blanket around myself and lie down in the canoe.

He sat in the stern, put the paddle carefully in the water and then gave a push. We went forward noiselessly and we're soon in the main current which washed us down the river. On the way Father put his head over the canoe close to the water and he said he thought he could catch a glimpse of the Indians. He had looked between the surface of the water and the fog, which did not quite reach the water. Soon we were beyond harm. And escapes.

And the kid says, his kid says, in that moment, I kind of understood the fear that that man lived with his whole life. So here you have interviews with his kids talking about his, like analyzing the guy's emotional state.

we don't have that one of boone's hunting partners all we know is like basically he got killed one of dying in a hollow tree end the story but with him man we got all the goods yeah almost too many goods because there's a lot as you know there's people that are always bringing an artifact oh this is boon's gun this is boon's hatchet you know it's all hogwash well when boon was in his mid 50s this is this is what i've calculated when boon was in his mid 50s was when the first biography that included, well, it wasn't a full biography, but a guy came down and interviewed him and included him in this book that went global. And it was about the American frontier. So was it a combination that the eyes of the world were on this boundary between the American colonies and this vast frontier that we knew nothing about? I mean, this was like the spot in the world.

that people were interested in. And then this guy wrote, and it was included in part of this book, this guy wrote this, included Boone, and then all of a sudden, everybody's eyes were on Boone. Sure.

And he was mythologized first. It's kind of funny because, like, the first treatments of him were overblown, mythologizing. Yeah. You know, guys like him, David Crockett had the same thing.

Like, very, people like to lump these guys together, but they're very different people. Yeah. Born far apart. part. Very, you know, just very different. But they're both hunters and they're both

frontiers, went to some extent. But they both had this thing where they were living with people telling crazy stories about them that weren't even true. Yeah. And it became later historians based on this infatuation with these guys, these like superhuman individuals, you know. Based on that historians later,

kind of like a type of book that would later be written about Boone was sorting out fact from fiction, fiction, the man from the legend. And that became a whole subgenre of Boone literature is when people stopped and been like, okay, obviously that's all bullshit, but what was this guy like? What really was he like?

And then when you look at what he really was like, it's more interesting than the mythologized version. There have been around 10 legitimate Boone biographies written over the last 200 years, and they're still being written today. However, one stands out to many, including Steve Ronella, as the Bible of Boone biographies. And it's simply titled Boone.

It's written by Cornell University Professor Robert Morgan. I was unsure if Mr. Morgan was still professionally active, but I reached out to him and was delighted when he responded back within a few hours inviting me to his home in New York. Mr. Morgan is in his mid-70s and has dedicated his life to writing on the Appalachian region in which he grew up. He's a New York Times best-selling author who calls himself a poet that writes some fiction. Poets are a unique lot. They're often introspective and unusually contemplative. Sometimes you meet someone with a spirit about them that seems to pervade the space they fill. Mr. Morgan is such a man.

He wore a plaid shirt and suspenders. His accomplished professional career hasn't overshadowed his rural roots. I was struck by his stoic yet joyful demeanor, his humility and confidence, and his exhaustive familiarity with Boone. It's an honor to introduce you to Mr. Robert Morgan. I've been fascinated with Boone. Really, since I read your book, probably 10 years ago. And I would have known Boone just from the typical way an American kid would have known Boone, you know, just from the Disney movies, kind of odd places sometimes that his name would come up, but really knew nothing about him. And then when I read your book, I was enthralled with who this guy really was.

What was your interest in Boone originally? Well, when I was growing up, my dad would talk about him. He'd just love to talk about Daniel Boone and the frontier, and he said we were related to Boone through the Morgans. Boone's mother was a Morgan. And this turns out to be true. It's a very distant relation. Boone and I have a common ancestor in Wales, North Wales. But I think the first thing to know about the Boone families is they were Quakers.

And the Boone family, way down in southwestern England, around Exeter, they were weavers and blacksmith. So this had a lot of influence on Boone's character, all the way through his life. And, of course, they taught pacifism, quietness. The mother from Wales was a musical person. He loved to sing, and this also was an influence. So this family taught him this very pacifist. way of life. And it's odd because he's associated with Indian fighting and hunting. And, of course, that's part of the myth that he killed lots of Indians. He may have killed only one

in his life. The real Boone is somewhat different from the legend. And that was part of the fun of researching and writing the book to separate these two. The actual character, Daniel Boone, and all these things in the movies and the legends. They do, overreaching. overlap some. I think the legend has its roots in Boone, but he's actually a very different person. The monument in Frankfurt, Kentucky, has him killing Panthers and fighting with Indians and that sort of thing. But that's not the real Boone. He was a very pacifistic, very calm person, spoke calmly, and a very low voice. The evidence suggests. And one other thing it's important to remember is that his father was kicked out of the Quakers and became a Freemason.

So this new, very important organization in the 18th century that taught the brotherhood of all men, of all people. I think he was influenced by that, and he later became a mason himself. Very early, he loved the forest. The family recognized that, that he could hunt, he could find animals, he could trap. He lived out in the woods with his mother in the summertime. She took care of the cows. And he wanted all ready to live like an Indian then, but to spend time in the forest. And there were Indians around. It's clear that he had a lot of Native American influence, even from an early age. That overlap of society in the Pennsylvania area, that would have been pretty common. Like,

he would have just been out wandering around and run into Native Americans. That's he could have befriended that would not have been hostile. Right. His parents hosted Indians. Indians would come and stay there in their house from time to time. Pennsylvania, especially that area, had a much better relationship with indigenous people than most of the other states. The land was bought from them for one thing. And I think there was only one battle with Indians and all the history of that part of Pennsylvania. So Boone got to know. know them, he imitated them, he loved to be in the forest. And I say in my biography that he was sort of divided between the mother world of the forest,

where he went with his mother and the father world of town and professions and blacksmithing and business, money, that sort of thing. But there's no doubt he was more drawn to the mother world of the forest, all of his life. the very beginning he was drawn to live like an Indian the hunt like an Indian it was always there from the very beginning yeah this is Stephen Ronella he became those this guy like brought home a lot of game

and also people that would begin relationships with Indians that lived in his area but when he lived there as he became older and became it being a man he became and this is kind of like where his real fame started to be as Boone became a long hunter he had always hunted for the family, meaning he would hunt bears, he would hunt deer. They liked to eat bear meat, they like to use deer meat,

they ate it, but mainly it was like the primary asset, the primary good you got from deer was leather, and people on the frontier preferred bear meat over deer meat. I'm sure he'd probably always been involved in some like commercial activities, but as he became a young man in North Carolina, he became a commercial hunter, not just hunting for the pot, right? Not hunting for the family, but he would go out, hunt deer, hunt bear,

trap beaver, trap otter in order to sell goods. And that's really the occupation. That's like the livelihood that kind of boons most of his life was really centered around. And a lot of his movements, as he moved ever westward, his big famous move was when he moved into the Kentucky territory, was hunting out looking for good hunting ground. It's important to remember that these English commoners, didn't know how to hunt when they arrived in the new world.

In Europe, hunting was reserved for the nobility, so they relied heavily on Native American methods of hunting and cooking game. Once when Daniel was young, he cooked a turkey over an open fire and used a curved piece of bark to capture the drippings to base the turkey. His mother asked him where he learned this, and he said, quote, the Indians. In 1736, a band of 25 Delaware Indian. stayed at the Boone homestead. Daniel would have just been a toddler at the time, but the point is that their lives overlapped with Indians since he was a child. However, it wouldn't just be

hunting that he'd learned from them. He adopted select parts of their worldview that he saw as superior to the European worldview. I want to read an excerpt for Mr. Morgan's book on European and Native American worldviews. colonists were surprised that Indians showed so little interest in accumulating wealth. The two cultures generally misunderstood each other. Europeans often assumed that Indians had no religion because they saw no recognizable ritual or symbols of worship. The Indians had no word for animal or beast as distinct from human.

To them, all living things had spirits or souls. Not only did the animals have spirits, but the guardian spirits of people usually appeared as animals. Owning land in the white way made no more sense than owning attractive air or sunlight. Indians were rich by desiring little,

William Cronin writes. The English passion for accumulating wealth struck the Indians as insanity. For this and other reasons, Indian holy men often began to describe whites as created for a different purpose. Both Indians and whites suspected each other of

witchcraft. Indians were thought to worship the devil and Indians in turn were convinced the English were in league with evil spirits. All too soon the Indians concluded the invaders were stupid and laughed. But the whites who got to know Indians found them more honest and tolerant than most of their own race. It was said by some that Indians were more, quote, Christian than the English, showing greater charity toward the land and its inhabitants. Later in Boone's life, we'd see that he never, values accumulation of wealth and frankly wasn't very good at it. Back to Mr. Morgan describing Boone as a young man. But this famous quote from the father who was told by a relative that Daniel

Bealey wasn't going to school. He was skipping school and he hadn't learned to spell. And the father said, let the others learn to spell Daniel is the hunter. He will bring us the meat. So while he was growing up there, He was a prankster also. He was always playing tricks on people. He was a fun person. That's why he was so popular. He had lots of jokes. He could keep people laughing.

He had a dynamic charismatic personality. He was a leader from the very beginning. He was the kind of person who was a magnet. If he was in the room, everybody would be drawn to him. He had that leadership ability. So from the very beginning, he was divided between that kind of leadership and the white world and this solitary world of the forest. And that also was with him from the very beginning to the end of his life.

This really began to show when they moved to North Carolina to the Adkin Valley about 1750 or 51. Because that was even wilder. And he began to live in the forest, go for longer hunts. go out trapping and he became known. And he would have been a teenager at that time. When he moved to the Yadkin in North Carolina, he would have been... 16 to 17. So just the prime budding age for a young man and outdoorsman to really start to

sow his oats. He soon became well known as a marksman and a hunter. And some people were jealous of him. But he was so scum. skillful as a tracker and a hunter even then, even at the age of 17 or 18, that his legend began to grow. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sound. that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is a good place to give a high-level overview of Boone's early life. He was born on October 22nd, 1734, near Redding, Pennsylvania. He was a first-generation American. His parents had come over from England a few years prior. We've got to remember, this was before the Revolutionary War,

so they weren't really Americans yet. His dad squire got in squabbles with the Quaker Church, and they left Pennsylvania and moved into the wild country of the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, which at the time would have been the boundaries of European settlement in the colonies. It was here that Daniel started to make a name for himself as a hunter and explorer. I want to read another short excerpt from Mr. Morgan's book. From the time he was a boy, Boone,

had a flare for the dramatic. He seemed to know instinctively how to make himself noticed, remembered. As a young man, he began to create for himself the role of Daniel Boone, and he spent much of his life perfecting that role. Despite his later protestation that he was, quote, but a common man, he seemed aware from his early youth that he was not just playing himself, but a type, what Emerson would later call a representative man. Boone would embody in his actions and attitude, the aspirations and character of the whole era. At least once, Daniel became so distracted by his own explorations that he forgot the hours of the day, his home, the fact that he was supposed to help his mother.

Before it got dark, Sarah had to round up the cattle herself and do the milking, strain the milk, and put it in the springhouse to stay cool. Calm and prayerful, she worked at churning butter from the clabbard milk. But when Daniel did not come home by the next morning and still, and not returned by noon, she had no choice but to walk five miles back to town to get help. A search party was formed and they combed over the Oly Hills all the way to the Never Seek Mountain Range west of the Monocacy Valley. They found no sign of Daniel that afternoon. But starting out early the next morning, they traveled further and spotted a column of smoke.

Later in the afternoon, they reached the source of the smoke and found Daniel sitting on a bear skin and roasting fresh bear meat over the fire. When asked if he was lost, he said no. He had known where he was all along on the south shoulder of the hill nine miles from the pasture. The search party accused him of scaring his mother and forcing them all to waste time looking for him. But he calmly answered he had started tracking the bear and didn't want to lose it. And besides, here was fresh meat for everybody. Whether the story is true or just one of the legends that grew around Boone later in life,

it reveals as much about the way he was perceived and remembered as it does about his character. People later recalled that even from his boyhood, there was a sense that Daniel had been singled out. The story of the search party echoes the story in Luke 249 of the 12-year-old Jesus lost from Mary and Joseph. The boy is finally found in the temple conversing with the elders. When he is questioned and scolded, he explains that he had, quote, been about his father's business. The sense of the story is that Boone had already found his calling and destiny. It is clear he also knew how to make a memorable impression. For Boone, there was something erotic about the woods, a playground, a place of sometimes dangerous pleasure.

And some would later suggest that with his lifelong passion for hunting, there was a part of Boone that, never quite grew up. Back to Mr. Morgan as he describes a big event in young Daniel's life. Then this big event in his life, when he was about 21, he was born in 1734, and the French and Indian War started. So it's 1755. And he goes with the militia up into Virginia and joins George Washington's forces that are going to join the British. by General Braddock. And everybody knows the story of Braddock's defeat. They moved toward Fort Duquesne, and they were ambushed by the French and the Indians.

And a lot were killed. And Boone was not a soldier. He was a teamster and a blacksmith. Teamster, meaning he drove wagons. He drove wagons. But around the campfires, he had met a man called Finley. And Finley had told him about his trip. into Kentucky. He'd gone down the Ohio River as a peddler. He was a businessman.

Going all the way to the falls, which is now Louisville, but he had traded with the Chalneys at the village of Esquipakothiki, which is where Winchester, Kentucky is now. Okay. And he had seen the bluegrass. So he told these stories of this amazing place. So beautiful. Buffalo, elk, deer, beavers. And it didn't seem to be in how. inhabited by Indians that was at one village of Esquipakothiki. And Boone determined then that someday he was going to the bluegrass. So this is when he was in his early 20s is when he met Finley. Right.

Who told him about this. And this would have been, so this would have been over the Appalachian Range, which at the time was this impenetrable barrier. It's really bizarre to think about it now because we have highway systems and do we have this modern transportation? It's almost like you have to reel yourself deeply back into history and a race, how you can drive in a car, get on an airplane. I mean, these people were confined massively by transportation. So Kentucky would have been like another planet.

It was considered unreasonable for several reasons. The Indians, it was dangerous to go there, had to climb over the mountains, Blue Ridge, the Alleghenies, to get there, and the Cumberland's. But they were also forbidden to go. there after the French and Indian War, that that was to be divided up for the officers and ordinary people weren't supposed to go. Now, some white explorers had gone there, and Dr. Thomas Walker, I believe, had actually found what we call Cumberland Gap, and he's the one who named it,

we think. John Finley was 20 years older than Boone and told Dan some marvelous tales of going into Kentucky. Findlay would have been the man in Boone's life who inadvertently steered him into what many would say was his calling or destiny. He must have noted that young Daniel was highly interested in his stories of Kentucky because 10 years later, he'd go visit Boone at his house and propose a wild plan. But Finley showed up. I have a trader and he had a little money. They planned this trip. They got together with several people in the spring of 1769 and left on 1st of May. Now, let's see. Now, Daniel would have been by this time in his 30s.

He would have been. So this would have been 10 years after he originally heard about it from Findlay. He wasn't able to outfit a group to go. And he had other things on his mind. When he got back from Braddock's defeat that trip, he was in love with this beautiful girl, Rebecca Bryan. And they were married, not too long after. And Boone had a family soon and, you know, had to farm, and he had to support them by working as a teamster and primarily as a trapper, hunting deer. In the summertime, he hunted deer for the hides because the hide was in its best condition.

And a hide was worth a Spanish dollar, so a hide became a buck. Right. Wintertime, he primarily trapped for fur because that's when it was in its prime. So that's what he was doing most of the time. Right. He also went off on a trip to Florida, of all things. Yeah. And actually bought a bit of land down there, but Rebecca refused to go.

So that was in 1765 that he went to Florida. Didn't he, he owned land near Pensacola? He did. He bought some land and came back. arrived on Christmas to take his family there and Rebecca just put her foot down. She would not go. I have in my notes here, Boone was like a typical timeshare Florida owner who bought his land and never went back. And during this time, like when you try to understand the motivations for people to do these kind of things, this was a time of exploration, of geographic exploration in North America.

I mean, it was like, I don't want to say trendy, but it was, I guess, in a sense. Explorers, there was a lot of financial gain to be made from, well, from long hunters who could go and make a good living long hunting into new territory. But it was just a different time and a different mentality. It was said that Boone was fiddle-footed, meant he just couldn't stay still. But to think of it, I mean, here was this continent, and much of it had not been exploited. Jefferson was very interested in exploring it, for instance. But think of people coming from Europe, mostly poor people, who never had hunted. Hunting was for the upper classes.

Even firearms were for the upper classes. And they arrive in North America, and it's this vast wilderness, animals to hunt, to trap. And you get a gun that you could go anywhere you wanted. You could explore that. And for the Scotch Irish, it really was like a miracle that they had been moved from Scotland to Ireland, and then the land had been taken away from them in Ireland. So you arrive here, and basically all you have to do is find a patch somewhere and make sure the Indians are cleared out, and you could grow things, you could hunt, claim a new life.

So it was a very exciting time, and exploring was one of the main things. They did, but particularly Boone's Time, over the mountains. I say in the biography that Kentucky was the key, because once you could get to Kentucky, that meant you could go further down the Ohio, over into Ohio, over into what became Indiana, Illinois, and beyond that, the Mississippi Valley, and beyond that the Missouri Valley,

and these mountains, you heard of a snow cat, and that was really thrilling. people were, and the women, not just the men, the women wanted to go there too. It was a very exciting time. So we've covered about 30 years of Daniel's life. He was a backwoods kid influenced by Quaker and Native American ideology. By the time he was in his teens, he was an accomplished hunter. When he was 21, he served under the George Washington, like the father of our country George Washington in the French and Indian War. In 1756, he married the beautiful, beautiful black-haired and black-eyed Rebecca Bryan, and they started on their way towards

having 10 children. And if we're telling our story chronologically, Dan is now 33 years old. He's a common backwoodsman, and it's now 1767. Now Mr. Morgan will get back to Daniel and John Finley's first trip into Kentucky. And it's worth noting for the Boone nerds out there that Dan actually had been into Kentucky for a short time on another trip, but thought he was in Virginia. He later would realize he had dipped into Kentucky and was unimpressed with what he'd seen. Okay, they got together. There's a lot of disagreement about this, but somebody funded this. Finley may have contributed to it, but the job was, how do you get there? You could get there by going down the Ohio, but how did you get to Kentucky, as they called it? Well, they figured out that the Indians for thousands of years have been going there on the warriors path, Atheomi-Owi.

And if they could find the warrior's path, they could follow it and it would take them through the gap into Kentucky. And this is something they would have just heard through interactions with Native Americans. They would have heard them say there's this, there's a gap in the mountains. They would. I mean, there was enough contact, particularly with Boone. I mean, he'd gotten to know a lot of Cherokees. He had been cheated by them. He possibly had a Cherokee wife.

We don't know that, but some people said he did. And by the way, they also say that that Cherokee wife was African American, an escaped slave, because I have actually met African Americans who claimed to be descended from Daniel Bowman. Really? I have. What is your personal feeling? Do you think that's true? I think it's quite possible.

Really? What about his Quaker upbringing? and being devoted to his wife, like how, in contrasting that with character we see in other parts of his life, would that just have been, I don't know, how would you explain that?

I think there are many facets to women's character and many compartments in his mind. He had this amazing ability to blend in with people and groups, wherever he was. And this saved him many times

that he understood other people, He had a mind like Shakespeare, who could get into the mind, very different people, and to be sympathetic with them. I don't know that he had a Cherokee wife, but I think it's possible. And you know, if you were with an Indian group, you had to be sleeping with one woman, or they would think you were a very bad country. Right. It was, I read, it was inhospitable. If you were a guest in some of these tribes, they would, if you would not do that, it would be. You thought you were better or you were not one of them.

So I'd just say it's possible. Well, I guess the way he fit in so well with the Native Americans, we'll talk more about him being kidnapped by the Shawnee and all that. But the fact that he was able to blend in so well, I can see how that would make sense that he might have, just because to be able to fit in so well. It may have been a necessity. So he would have known about this gap.

They went north from the Yadkin to what was called Wolf Hills, which we call Abingdon, Virginia. And there they found the trail, that Boone was good enough to read the sign, the tracks. So they followed it to the southwest over Powell's River and Powell's Mountain, and they came to the Cumberland Mountains. And this is a really dramatic place. You can go there, and these mountains have cliffs on them. And there's the most forbidding things. It really is like it's threatening.

These high cliffs just mile after mile after mile. And they keep going. And then suddenly you see this gap between them, like a gunside. And there it is. They found it what Dr. Thomas Walker called Cumberland Gap. You cross that. And there's a river you got to cross, the Cumberland River. You go through another gap.

And then you reach the knob country. And the famous paintings are a boon on top of a hill, seeing into the bluegrass. And this is called the Pisgivision. Moses on Pisga, he can look into the promised land. But Boone could go into the promised land. Moses couldn't go. Right, right.

So you have this amazing idol of Boone in his group here for the deer, buffalo elk beaver moon is now into Kentucky and what happened there will shape the rest of his life and America's what's interesting is that it's in the next 10 years that most of what he's famous for the things that defined his life will happen mr morgan had something to say about this to this day we put this quote in a frame in our house and we did it when we were about 30 years old. So this would have been about 10 years ago. But you said, in his mid-30s, a man either reaches out towards risk and glory or stays within the routines of the expected and ordinary.

It is the age when men leave safe homes and jobs and go on voyages and odyssees and perform transforming sacrifices. It's the age when Walt Whitman wrote leaves of grass and Columbus started planning his voyage to the Indies. It's an age at which visionaries become prophets, or explorers or inventors or make fools of themselves trying. So I would have read this book when I was about 30 years old. And it just feels so true. This window of time in life is so important. And you went on to give these examples of work that these artists and poets and explorers did when they were in their 30s.

And you made the point that much of Boone's life was defined by this 10-year period, basically from 1770 to about 1780, the Cumberland Gap and Kentucky and all these things. The things he's famous for were done in that time. Yeah. Well, I got the idea from the study of the Romantic poets. Wordsworth and Coleridge live much longer, but almost everything that we associate with them is done in that in the 10 years.

And Walt Whitman is the perfect example that Whitman wrote all of his great poems just about in that period. It's a little bit more about 11 years and devoted the rest of his life to writing prose, basically. Yeah. Write some poem. But I was also thinking of physicists and mathematicians and that they do their great work relatively early. Mathematicians even earlier, but physicists and other scientists usually a little bit later.

Novelists also, novelists usually get going about the age of 30 and by the age of 40, early 40s. they'd done most of their great work. There are a few exceptions, but not far many. On this first episode, we've basically covered the first 35 years of Daniel's life, up to him traversing the Cumberland gap and going into Kentucky. This is just the beginning of the famed part of his life. And remember, at this point, no one knew his name. Daniel would live to be 86 years old.

and the remaining 51 years of his life are more wild than the first. The man had a drive and a deep love of life that kept him moving, but I'm still trying to understand why this story matters. Understanding national archetypes helps us see the framework of our thinking, what we value, and the things that seek to define us. A deeper look into national identity and an awareness of this, gives us the right to evaluate the good and the not so good. In the coming episodes, we'll explore the rest of Boone's life,

including the heroic rescue of his daughter from Indians, and the lore of an illegitimate daughter, the death of his son and fortunes won and lost. We'll also explore the historical revision of Boone and the controversy of us celebrating him. It's improbable to think that after listening to a few podcasts, you could understand the fullness of who Boone was, and it's my hope that you might explore Boone yourself. Ultimately, I hope that his character, both positive and negative, will make us more relevant today in continuing to define American identity. And my, oh my, our exploration of Boone is an appeal to the masses to remember where we came from.

and it's a cry to not forget the American backwoodsmen because we're still here and we deserve a lasting place at the American table because it's in our DNA. Folks, I cannot thank you enough for listening to the Bear Grease podcast. We're pouring out everything we've got into these. And thank you for the iTunes reviews. And I ask those of you who haven't to give us a review. on iTunes and share this podcast with your buddies. Thanks a ton. First Lights Fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening

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