Bear Grease - Ep. 16: Daniel Boone - The Legend of Cumberland Gap (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

We're on to part two of our series on the incredible life of the American backwoodsman, Daniel Boone. We’re going to dive deep into a topographic feature in the Appalachian Mountains that was a major player in the identity of Daniel Boone and America – we’re talking about the Cumberland Gap. We’ll interview two New York Times best-selling authors and Boone experts - Steven Rinella and Robert Morgan, we’ll nerd out with a geologist, we’ll talk about the potential of historical revision of Boone, and lastly, we’ll talk with a member of the Cherokee Nation, Professor Taylor Keen, and hear his perspective on the Ol’ Gap. The path is rough, and American identity is at stake.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. Cumberland Gap was so important because coming from the eastern colonies, from the Carolinas, from Tennessee, that was the way in. It was a hard thing to go do, and they knew to do it to try to pull it off. They knew it was risky.

They knew it was a major undertaking. You had to scout it. You had the plan. It was like a thing. on this episode of the bear grease podcast we're on part two of our series on the incredible life of the american backwoodsman daniel boone we're gonna dive in deep like over your head deep into a topographic feature in the appalachian mountains that was a major player in the identity of old d boone and america we're talking about the cumberland gap we'll interview two new york bestselling authors and Boone experts, Stephen Rinella and Robert Morgan. We'll nerd out with the geologist. We'll talk about the potential historical revision of Boone. And lastly, we'll talk with a member of the Cherokee Nation and hear his perspective on the old gap. The path is rough, an American

identity is at stake. You're not going to want to miss this one. And do me a favor. Give yourself a Pop quiz. What do you know about the Cumberland Gap? I don't know. Maybe the weather's nicer. Maybe there's more game and it gets rewarded because it is. But it's like people moving because they just got to know. They got to go see. My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Grease 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. Daniel Boone's passing through the Cumberland Gap has been mythologized in American culture. They've written songs about it, made movies, written poems, and made art. I've got the reprint of the famous 1852 painting

by George Bingham in my house. It depicts Boone leading his family and a group of settlers through the rugged gap. The mountains around him are dark and ominous, but beautiful light bathes Boone's figure, making him look almost angelic. To understand Dan Boone, we've got to understand the Cumberland Gap. Okay, tell me everything you know about the Cumberland Gap. Okay, well, that will not take very long. The only thing I know about the Cumberland Gap is that folk musicians like to write about it in their songs.

Where are you from? Michigan. So do you have a sense of where the Cumberland Gap is in relation to Michigan? I know it is South Michigan. Tell me everything you know about the Cumberland Gap. The Cumberland Gap? Yeah. Nothing.

Cumberland Gap. I want to say it's somewhere in the Wild Wild West. I want to say maybe there's a grocery store. I want to say a Cumberland Grap grocery store. That's all I got. Hey, guys, tell me everything you know. We'll start with you. Everything you know about the Cumberland Gap.

Is that like a fault line or something? I don't know. You tell me. I don't know. I think I've heard you mentioned the Cumberland Gap. Do you know what? I don't know anything about the Cumberland Gap? I feel like if you mention it, I would, but I don't know.

I can't think anything. Come on. There's one more guy standing here. I'm sorry, I don't know. struck out on the Cumberland Gap. This is embarrassing. Josh Landbridge Spillmaker, do you know anything about the Cumberland Gap?

The Cumberland Gap, I know, is in some songs. I know that there is a gap named after General Cumberland. He had quite a mustache, if I remember. Are you being serious? How do you know that? You just made that up? It's not too far from the truth, because the Cumberland Gap was named after the Duke of Cumberland.

Are you serious? He probably had a nice mustache. That song is called Cumberland Gap. It's being played by a string band out of Ohio called The Wayfarers. I'm continuing to build on the assumption that the average American doesn't know much about Daniel Boone and we're exploring how, despite that,

this backwoodsman's influence on the American worldview was notable. In part one, we learned that archetypes are the mechanism of this powerful culture-building weapon. They deliver a value system through branding around the lives of our heroes or villains. After some time, the values remain, but the original life, the host, is often forgotten. And this is just the point. Daniel Boone did stuff that captured the attention of America and the world in a vulnerable time period when we were looking for identity.

The prime of his life was in the 1770. A time when many of our heroes were birthed, an old Dan stepped up to the plate and in true Americana fashion became a representative man. The courageous explorer, engaging and thriving in the wilderness and bringing civilization with him.

He delivered parts of the American dream to America. I'll point out that this was a new identity for planet Earth, at least this version of it. And it had ravish appearance. heel. In part one, we left the Bear Grease podcast world in a massive cliffhanger with Daniel Boone and John Findley finding the Cumberland Gap and going into the frontier of Kentucky in 1769. We're going to nerd out on the Cumberland Gap and we'll hear firsthand from Boone what happened on that first trip into Kentucky. Well, sort of. It's complicated. But there's a bigger question

at hand. Why were they risking life and limb to get into Kentucky? And an even bigger question is this, why is there this deep history of human geographic dispersion? Old Steve Ronella of Meat Eater has something to say about this. I introed him up right on part one and he's got all the street cred, or should I say backwoods cred. He's a New York Times bestselling author, a hunter and a noted boon expert. Here's Steve. There's a kind of a theory of human movement around the earth where, I shouldn't say a theory, a way to imagine human movement around the earth so often is that you're propelled by warfare and starvation.

Human migrations under duress. Okay. So with people, you know, in the 1930s, right, you have Jews escaping Europe, you know, and maybe coming, trying to escape the coming holocaust and, get to the United States or just, you know, different things like migrations in Ethiopia from famine and that, and that moves people. There's also this, this aspect of that has to be just driven by curiosity. Okay. Human migrations into the new world or human migrations into the Western Hemisphere. You can't really look at and explain it like that they were being pushed

along by warfare, being pushed along by overpopulation. They were moving from like wilderness setting, like a wilderness setting, oftentimes across tremendous hurdles, probably crossing, ice sheets, crossing glaciers that are coming down valleys. You have no idea. No one's ever been there before you. You have no idea what's on the other side of the glacier, if anything. But for whatever reason, you've got to go look. They go. And there's a practical aspect. Like, I don't know, maybe the weather's nicer. Maybe there's more game. And it gets rewarded because it is. But it's like people moving because they just got to know. They got to go see. Is it dangerous? Was it dangerous to cross a

glacier, when you had never met or talked to or heard about anybody who had ever lived south of there before, as far as you knew, you're just going into the absolute unknown, but you're dying to know. And I think that you can't ignore that aspect of what that must have seemed like to guys. Sure, Boone's like a market hunter. He hunts hides for a living. But, God, there has to have been an enormous amount of curiosity about it. The reason it's so safe to assume that is because the Cumberland Gap was a

very literal for them, like a very literal pathway into a relatively untapped hunting ground. These guys were hunting stuff that had been hunted by people prior to them. They made a living off it. Here's a place to go where the Euro-Americans, like your peers, haven't tapped it out yet. It's supposed to be loaded with buffalo, loaded with deer, loaded with elk, loaded with beaver.

So it's like, yeah, man, you can go there and make a lot of money. But think about how we now feel like still today when we're not tied to the market incentives. we still dream about and talk about the secret spots. Yeah. The secret hunting places that haven't been tapped out. So it's like to them was this literal gap that you could use to get into the good hunting ground. But for us, it's like you can just get it.

It works perfectly well as nothing but a metaphor for like a passage, like a keyhole that you go through that brings you into like the dream. landscape upon which you'd live your life. I think that's why we still sit around here talking about it today. It had to have existed in both ways to Boone. It had to have existed as a literal thing. Like, no, there's this big mountain. It's really hard to get through. You can't really get over there. But there's a way to do it. Okay, that's cool. But also, like, that curiosity element was there, too, man. It was both things. Do you think that is, that's deep inside of us as humans at like a DNA granular level? Oh, I mean, it has to be, man. I mean, It's so hard to understand how that stuff manifests, but you'd put it this way.

If you wanted to explain, like, why would it be that way? Why are humans like that? Because it's rewarded. Yeah. It's rewarded. There has been. You may die. Yeah.

But you may get a big reward. You might also. Just if you imagine, like, as a species, like moving across landscape going to new places, there's a danger to it. But imagine the reward that you get into a place where you have unlimited access to land. You have unlimited access to game. You're able to produce many children

and have place for them to stick around. Like, there's an advantage to being out on the edge. Like being out making the discoveries and finding things. Another way to look at it, man. It kind of like almost defies like, you know, it's so hard to imagine.

But imagine the first Polynesians who were rewarded with landing in Hawaii. They were just heading out on big blue ocean. It's like, oh, here's a giant landmass that no one lives on and we'll now have like staggering

population growth and establish this whole new culture on this untapped landscape that we don't need to fight to get, right? It's like if it's an enormous reward. Or then you have all the people that probably sailed off into the South Pacific never to be seen

again and die to thirst. Yeah. Right? So either that or you get a big island. There seems to be an I think we would see this still inside of humanity today manifested in different ways. But there are people like Boone that push the edge. And there are settlers. There are people that stay where they're at and they find gratification for life in insecurity and staying safe. There's much to be said for the latter.

But then there's also there's much reward for those who have this wanderlust. And that defined Boone's life. Yeah. Defined his life. Human movement implies that humans have to deal with the actual topography of the earth. I think we need to understand topographically what a gap is. I know just the guy to talk with. Dr. Greg Dumond is a geology professor at the University of Arkansas.

I'm interested in understanding the geologic history of this gap that helped define Boone's life and build an empire. In FYI, the gap sits almost slap on the spot where verse is. Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky touch. However, most of the actual mountain pass is in Virginia. Meet Dr. Dumond. Dr. Dumond, I am trying to understand two things. What a gap is from a geologic standpoint.

Because we throw out this term, the Cumberland gap, in such a way that we just assume that everybody knows what that is. So I want to understand what a gap. is. But then the second thing I want to understand is why the Cumberland gap, even from a topographic perspective, was so special. Talk to me about how a gap would be formed in the Appalachian Mountains. Well, gaps throughout any sort of mountain belt across the world are sort of a product of erosion of rock that's been uplifted to make the mountain in the first place. And erosion works preferentially, for example on the rocks that are weakest, so like a shale versus a granite.

If there are places where the mountains or rocks have been fractured, you might have faults that slid, and they introduce a place where erosion can happen and create that notch or gap that would allow people to pass through it. Other places like if you were in the Himalayas, you'd have glaciers that are creating some of those notches that you could pass over. And the term notch, gap, pass applies universally. You know, you can look across the U.S. in the Rockies, up in Canada, in the Appalachians, and see similar features. And not all of them are caused by the same things. The Appalachians were the product of several mountain building events, but one that was really prominent is what's called the Alleghenian erogenean. orogeny. When you take continental crust and other material and you collide it together to make

a mountain belt, you end up producing faults where some rocks slide up on top of another. And the pine mountain thrust is the main structure that brings part of the Appalachians up on top of the adjacent rock. But then there are other faults, you know, everyone's familiar with the San Andreas fault, for example. And in that case, rocks are actually sliding past each other on a very steep fault like Los Angeles is now creeping towards San Francisco, for example. And the fault that's unique in the Cumberland gap is kind of like that. It's a steep fault where rocks have slid past each other called the Rocky Face Fault. And if you didn't have the juxtaposition of the Pine Mountain Thrust and the Rocky Face Fault where they sit and intersect each other, it seems conceivable you wouldn't have really

had a gap. Really? So there's two different major forces working together that created gap. Yeah, two faults that occur right in that vicinity that helped create the gap. And we talked about earlier how the rock type matters too. And some of the high ground that's held up along the ridges is a very resistant sandstone conglomerate rock. And so it helps to have rocks that are more resistant to weathering. What kind of map, would you call this that you got pulled up here? So this is what's called a digital elevation model, and it's basically a three-dimensional representation of what hunters would see as a topographic map.

I don't know if anybody knows about this, but there is a huge impact crater that is just to the southwest of what you're talking about. Is that a natural lake there at Middlesboro? No, it's not a lake. It is, so here's the topographic map, and you can see it's a depressive. So he's, let me describe to you what I'm seeing. He's pointing at an impact crater, which looks like, I mean, like an asteroid or something hit there.

Is that right? That is what the current thinking is that here's a geologic map. And you can see it's got this circular shape to it. And there is a pretty decent evidence that post-deposition of these rocks and the Appalachian Origeny. Something smack down hard right there. And apparently, this is one of the few. places where coal is mined within an impact crater.

Really? Yeah. Geologists call these impact craters astrobleems. Daniel Boone had three interesting structures to negotiate along with all of the Native Americans prior to him and everybody trying to make the big trip across the Appalachians. Two intersecting faults and an astrobleem where an asteroid hit aided in forming the Cumberland Gap. I like connecting human history to grand things like mountain building that we have absolutely no control over but inflict a massive control on us. The Cumberland Gap is the biggest and best gap for a hundred miles in either direction and forces above and below the earth help make it that way. It's wild because no gap in the world has been more critical in building an empire than the Cumberland Gap.

The gap is actually pretty new to people of European descent, but Native Americans have used it since before recorded history, and they called it the Warriors Path, or Athawomani. This gap connected the Iroquois Confederacy and the Cherokees in the South. The first recorded account of Europeans going through the Cumberland gap dates back to the 1670s. But Dr. Thomas Walker officially named the gap. It's European name, anyway,

in the 1750s. Wild and ironic, this American gap was named after a straight-up English chump, the Duke of Cumberland because of his recent military escapade. And wouldn't you know it,

they named the whole stinking mountain range after this man who never set foot in North America. Oh, the injustice. The Shawnee, however, called the range Wasioto, which means mountains where the district, deer are plentiful. Now, I can get behind that. Dr. Walker was a medical doctor, a land speculator,

and a woodsman. He took good notes of his 1750 travels into Kentucky. They hauled a pack of bear hounds with them and ate a lot of bear meat. Here's a couple of wild stories. One of his men got bit on the knee by a bear. Pretty unfortunate. Walker's horse got snake bit on the nose and he rubbed it with bear grease to help cure it. I'm not kidding, it's in his journal. Walker recorded killing 13 buffaloes, eight elk, 53 bear, 20 deer, four geese, 150 turkeys on their five-month trip. And Walker's men built a first log cabin constructed by white men in Kentucky.

It was no doubt quite the trip, but very few remember Dr. Walker's name. But they do remember Boone, who crossed the gap. almost 20 years later. I want to take you into the Cumberland Gap. You can go there yourself. This mountain pass maintained its relevance into modern times as a travel corridor as it eventually became modern U.S. Highway 25. The section of road was extremely treacherous

and the Cumberland Gap was notorious for tragic vehicle accidents claiming an average of five lives per year in this very short stretch of road. However, something good happened. On October 18, 1996, the Cumberland Gap Twin Bore Four Lane Tunnel was opened, which boroughs through Cumberland Mountain, and in an incredibly encouraging feat, they removed the concrete and asphalt highway that went through the old gap and rewilded it. And today, it looks similar to what it looked like when only a single wagon lane trail passed through it. The Gap now sits in the Cumberland State Park. It's an incredible place, and I took my family there.

So we are at the Cumberland Gap is the historic Cumberland Gap. We're in the Cumberland Gap right now. Take a picture with your mama. Freaking buffalo, mucous and clad warriors, dreaming pioneer, battling Civil War soldiers. Each was here in the historic Cumberland Gap, and now so are you. This is the historic Cumberland Gap. You're there. This is it, man.

I think this is where James Lawrence would put his tree stand if he was trying to hunt the Cumberland Gap Boys. This is about the most narrow spot of the gap. You know, the Native Americans called this the deer path. And James Lawrence and many others before and since him made a living off deer hunting in these gaps in the mountains. Guys, Daniel Boone stood right here. Think about that. I mean, like, maybe his feet were right. where your feet are.

And the vegetation of the gap would have been different in 1769. It was the first time he came through here. But he would have stood within, I mean, at least 10 feet of here, no doubt. Think of all the Native Americans that came through this gap. The buffalo. Wild. What do you think, dude? Crazy.

Bear John. I think it's pretty cool. Describe what these woods look like, Bear, right here in the Cumberland guy. They look a lot like Arkansas. saw which I guess is eastern deciduous right there there's a lot of oak trees white oak trees there's a lot of like it's really green on the ground there's a lot of rocks with covered in moss yeah going into the gap was a unique experience for me you get the impression the cumberland gap is massive and grand but it's really not it's a narrow mountain gap it's wild to think that such historical significance

was derived from such an obscure place. Frederick Jackson Turner wrote, Stand at the Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization marching single file. The buffalo following the trail to the Salt Springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle raiser, the pioneer farmer,

and the frontier has passed by. Here's Steve Ronella on the significance of the Cumberland Gap on Boone's life. Some people's lives, we see this through history, some people's lives become defined by history, not necessarily by them. I don't know if Daniel Boone would look back at his life and see that going through the Cumberland Gap

was that significant. Maybe would, maybe wouldn't. But history has decided that that is this defining moment, that it was iconic. It had, man, it had significance to him. Why was it significant? If you were to ask him and he was in the mood to discuss it, I think it would have been described as this is what we, his family, his people, him,

this is what we had always been hoping to find in all those moves and all those shifting arounds. Like that's the thing you were after. Unlimited game, grassland, agricultural land, no other people that look like you there. The people that were there were easily dismissed by them reckoned with, but not. recognizes a rightful owners to it, you know. And also, it was a hard thing to go do. And they knew to do it, to try to pull it off. They knew it was risky.

They knew it was a major undertaking. You had to scout it. You had the plan. It was like a thing. Meaning that not to any way equate this, I grew up in Michigan and wound up in Montana. If I was laying out my life for someone later, I would put that as a key moment.

Okay. That was like a key moment upon which many things were angered. And there's no way that Boone wouldn't regard that going through the Cumberland gap. And he didn't discover Kentucky. He wouldn't have said he discovered Kentucky. Yeah. He no doubt went places that no white man had gone before. Absolutely.

But it wasn't through the gap. Yeah, he didn't make that. But he would have said like, man, my whole life built up to this. I put everything I had into making the. this a go. I put my family at risk to make this a go. He's buried in two places. But I think it would have been symbolic.

And he would have recognized the symbolism had you taken his ashes and sprinkled them at the top of the Cumberland Gap. I think it would have been. To him, it would have made sense. I want you to hear two of Steve Ronella's favorite boon stories and both involve the Cumberland Gap.

Here's what he had to say. I have two favorite boon stories. one's very precise and specific and one is more general and that one is about a moment and the other one is about a stretch of years in terms of the one that lasted for a stretch of years if I had an opportunity to to do time travel and I just had one shot okay I'm torn between two things one would be to go to the northern great plains at a time when the first humans had kind of entered what is now the sort of like, you know, the mid-continent,

entered what is now the Great Plains of America. Okay, so non-Boon related. Non-Boon related. 20,000 years ago, whatever it was, to be on the northern plains with the, the paleo-Indian hunters who were first ever humans a step foot. So if I didn't do that, plice to seeing, you know,

mammoth hunter move, I would want to go with Boone when he went in first hunted Kentucky for a couple of years. And yes, I said a couple of years. They went there on a long hunt. People he was with were killed. He wound up staying willfully, not trapped, just staying, so long that he ran out of gunpowder,

had to make his own gunpowder with bat guano from caves, worked up, you know, a good amount of money's worth of hides, lost it. Was taken from him by the Indians, and from their perspective, he had taken it from them. they took it back, worked up another good fortune in hides, had that taken from him, comes home empty-handed, but that adventure, that two-year adventure in the wilderness. The finite, very specific moment is later,

when Boone wanted to bring his family out to the wilderness of Kentucky, his boy, one of his boys was tortured and killed on the route, on the wilderness road that led, into Kentucky. Which that was the Cumberland Gap. Yeah. They were spread out.

They were moving livestock, you know. You imagine them like walking along, but they were, they're strung out. Well, they're strong out so much in fact as they're traveling through in a big group. They're strung out so much in fact that his boy gets caught, tortured, and killed. Boone doesn't know what's going on until later. But he's very, you know, his boy's left there and he's very hastily buried. They didn't want to linger. They hastily buried.

his son. I believe it might have been about a year later. And this is the kind of favorite Boone story moment. About a year later, he happens to be going through there by himself. And as he tells it, it's raining. He describes it as the most, as the lowest point of his life. Goes back to find his boy's grave. His boy was killed with another kid.

Finds where they had hastily buried him and had been dug up by wolves. And it was just the remains there. scavenged remains but he recognizes his boy's hair on a dried scalp on his head and so he knows what child is his

and sits with him and weeps with him in his arms in the rain and then hears something that doesn't sound right to him and realizes there are Indians coming and has to

slip off into the night to get away. I'm a father. Losing a child, it's just you can't begin to imagine it. But these people live so close to death that sometimes you think that they had to have been immune to it. Right.

If you watch Westerns, right, just people shooting people all the time and like, you know, no one cares and they're ambivalent. And maybe there was some of that. But that he had like that deep emotion, you know, shows that like they felt all that stuff. He was human. Like anybody did.

And the thought of a father in the rain by himself, cradling like the wolf scavenged body of his child and then slipping off into the night. Oh, it's haunting, man. Well, I think what you've tapped into there is that with these superhero Disney-Fide characters that we've made of some of these. people like Boone, we lose the fact that they are human. That's lost somewhere inside of that story

and that when you see some of these things that he did, and I think this is where the real Boone is better than the myth of Boone. Because as I've learned about his life, what I'm most impressed with is him as a human. I introduced you to Mr. Robert Morgan robustly on part one, but in case you missed it, he's a heck of a guy. He wrote one of the most famous Boon biographies in history, simply titled, Boone. You should probably check it out. Born in Appalachia in the 1940s, he spent his life writing about the people of the mountains. He's a New York Times bestselling author and poet. He's quite the catch for a hillbilly podcast like this one here. It's an honor again to bring you, Mr. Morgan.

So the Cumberland Gap is this like small topographic feature that if you were looking across the topographic map of North America, you wouldn't pick it out as this place that was really significant in American history. But it became very significant. It's significant for the United States, but it's also significant for Boone. Can you explain for us why it was so significant specifically for Daniel Boone? Well, it's the topography that makes it so important. You have this chain of mountains, the Cumberlands, and they're hard to cross, particularly with no roads, no trails, or almost none. And for about 200 years, English-speaking settlers had kind of been trapped on the eastern side of these mountains.

So to get to the middle ground, the great meadow, they needed an easier way than just crossing one row of mountains. after another after another. There were other gaps, pound gap, farther north, was away in through the Cumberlands, into the Cumberland Plateau. But it wasn't as good as a Cumberland gap, which had been used for thousands of years by the Indians. They had a name for it. They called it Wasiota, meaning the deer path, the deer trail. And so there was no secret to the Indians. They had known about it for a long time.

But getting into Kentucky was an enormously important thing as it turned out. You wouldn't think so, really. But they needed a way into the middle ground and the bluegrass because that was the opening really to the west, to what we call the Middle West. You could get to it by coming down the Ohio River, but you had to go way up there to Pittsburgh, that area to get on the river.

And it was very dangerous to come down the river. because you had Indians in both sides and many were killed coming down that river. But there were very few Indians in Kentucky. That's why it seemed so appealing it. It seemed like a miracle. There were no Indian villages there in this vast area of the boograss.

Now, why would that be? That was very interesting. It was a mystery, but a very wonderful mystery to explorers. Well, there is a reason. There are several reasons, but there had been an enormous fur war early in the 18th century between Indians and the French

for control of what we called the bluegrass. Everybody wanted it, and the Iroquois had won that. This huge confederation of the Iroquois way up here in New York, actually. But they traveled a long way, and that was their buffalo hunting ground. They forbade the other Indians for building villages there. But it wasn't just the Iroquois and the other end. Everybody wanted it.

The Cherokees wanted it. The Mingoes wanted the Delawares. But because it was so fought over, it was called the Dark and Bloody Ground. Now, that's not what Kentucky means. Kentucky is made from two Iroquois words, meaning the flatland, the level land. There have been many names for the area of Kentucky. For a long time, people thought that's what Kentucky means, the dark and bloody ground. They'd heard that.

But the Iroquois had named it something a little more peaceable, Kentucky. and why would the white people have called it by that Iroquois name? I think they had heard the Cherokees use it, and there's something so beautiful about Kentucky, those double-k sounds. Yeah, the actual word itself. Once you've heard it, you just want to say it. It's like poetry. It's sweet on the tongue, and you could have called it, as the Shawnees did,

Esquipakothiki, or you could call it Kentucky, and we can see what went out. But Cumberland Gap was so important because coming from the eastern colonies, from the Carolinas, from Tennessee, that was the way in. It was a fairly easy way. Once you found it, you follow the Warriors path. And you're looking at these absolutely forbidding cliffs. A Boone or somebody in the adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone said they're like the ruins of Palmyra. And people wonder, how did Daniel Boone ever hear about the ruins of Palmyra? Well, Daniel Boone was surprisingly educated.

And some of his, he loved to read, and he loved to read history. He had a fabulous memory. He could remember topography. He had ever seen a place he would remember it. And he had a gift for language and an ability to talk the language of whoever he was talking to, that ability to blend in. And among these backwoodsmen, he could talk rough. when he met better educated people,

he could talk like a better educated person. You know, that mirror, that language mirror, whoever he was with. Code switching. Absolutely. It was a kind of, you know, chameleon ability. And I think some people think

that was put in there by Philson. But it may have been, but I think Boone was perfectly capable of coming up with a phrase he had read or heard and saying there were like the ruins of Palmyra. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 sounds 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 Phelps game calls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises, and getting action. Steve gave a quick overview of Boone's first trip into Kentucky, but I'd like to let Daniel tell you what happened. What? I thought the mystery of Boone is that we never heard about his life directly from him. If you remember, the chapter in John Philson's book titled The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone,

the one that made him famous, was a first-person account of what Boone told Philson. However, it's disputed. Remember how the interview took place when Daniel was 50 years old? When you hear the style of language, it makes you wonder how much of this first-person account was really from Boone, or is it in the young writer's interpretation of what he said? Philson was around 30 years old when he wrote this. Lastly, and most importantly, Daniel Boone is verified to have said, quote, true, every word true regarding Philson's interviews. and what he wrote. However, Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone's youngest son, who Lyman Draper interviewed, said, quote, I feel confident that Philson took many liberties and made not a few misinterpretations

in the narrative, either purposefully or unintentionally. I think their frequency can only be explained by supposing that my father narrated his Kentucky adventures to Philson, who wrote them down from memory at some subsequent period. Much of the language is not my father's. End of quote. I'll let you be the judge of whether you believe Daniel or his son Nathan. These are the words that catapulted Boone into global fame as recorded by Philson. It was on the 1st of May in the year 1769 that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time

and left my family in peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River in North Carolina to wander through the wilderness of America in quest of the country of Kentucky in company with John Finley, John Stewart, Joseph Holden, James Manet, and William Kuhl. We proceeded successfully and after a long and fatiguing journey through a mountainous wilderness in a westward direction on the 7th day of June following, we found ourselves on Red River, where John Finley had formerly been trading with Indians, and from a top of an eminence saw, with pleasure, the beautiful level of Kentucky. Here, let me observe that for some time we had experienced the most uncomfortable weather

as a pre-libation of our future sufferings. At this place we encamped and made a shelter to defend us from the inclement season and began to hunt the country. We found everywhere abundance of wild beasts of all sorts through this vast forest. The buffaloes were more frequent that I had seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane and cropping the herbage on those extensive plains, fearless because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing.

In this forest, the habitation of beasts of every kind natural to America, we practiced hunting with great success until the 22nd day of December following. This day John Stewart and I had a pleasing ramble, but fortune changed the scene and the close of it. We had passed through a great forest on which stood myriads of trees, some gay with blossoms, others rich with fruits. Nature here was a series of wonders and a fund of delight. Here she displayed her ingenuity in industry in a variety of flowers and fruits, beautifully colored, elegantly shaped, and charmingly flavored. and we were diverted with innumerable animals presenting themselves perpetually to our view. In the decline of the day near the Kentucky River as we ascended the brow of a small hill, a number of Indians rushed out of the thick cane break upon us and made us prisoners.

The time of our sorrow was now arrived and the scene fully opened. The Indians plundered of us what we had and kept us in confinement seven days, treating us with common Indian usage. During this time, we discovered no uneasiness or desire to escape, which made them less suspicious of us. But in the dead of night, as we lay in a thick cane break by a large fire, when sleep had locked up their senses, my situation not disposing me for rest,

I touched my companion and gently awoke him. We improved this favorable opportunity and departed, leaving them to take their rest, and speedily directed our course towards our old king. camp but found it plundered, and the company dispersed and gone home. About this time my brother Squire Boone, with another adventure who came to explore the country shortly after us, was wandering through the forest, determined to find me, if possible, and accidentally found our camp.

Notwithstanding the unfortunate circumstances of our company and our dangerous situation as surrounded with hostile Indians, our meetings so fortunately in the wilderness made us reciprocally sensible of the utmost satisfaction. So much does friendship triumph over misfortune that sorrows and sufferings vanish at the meeting not only of real friends, but of the most distant acquaintances and substitutes happiness in their room. Soon after this, my companion in captivity John Stewart was killed by the Indians and the man that came with my brother returned home by himself. We were then in a dangerous, helpless situation, exposed daily to perils and death amongst Indians and wild beasts, not a white man in the country but ourselves. Thus situated many hundred miles from our families in the howling wilderness, I believe few would have equally enjoyed the happiness we experienced.

I often observe to my brother, you see now how little nature requires to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things. And I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatever state he is. This consists in a full resignation of the will of providence, and a resigned soul finds pleasure in a path strewed with briars and thorns. We continued not in a state of indolence, but hunted every day and prepared a little cottage to defend us from the winter storms. We remained there undisturbed during the winter, and on the first day of May, 1770, my brother returned home to the settlement by himself for a new recruit of horses and ammunition, leaving me by myself without bread, salt, or sugar, without company of my fellow creatures or even a horse or dog. I confess I never before was under greater necessity of exercising philosophy and fortitude. A few days I passed uncomfortably. The idea of a beloved wife and family and their anxiety upon the account of my absence and exposed situation made sensible impressions on my heart. A thousand dreadful apprehensions presented themselves to my view and had undoubtedly disposed me to melancholy if further indulged.

One day I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature I met within this charming season expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of the day, as gentle gales retired and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm, not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, and the beheadiest dreams. and the beauteous tracks below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous River, Ohio, that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucky with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance, I beheld the mountains

lift their venerable brows and penetrate the clouds. All things were still. I kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water and feasted on the loin of a buck, which a few hours before I had killed. The sullen shades of night soon overspread the whole hemisphere, and the earth seemed to gasp after the hovering moisture. My roving excursion this day had fatigued my body and diverted my imagination.

I laid me down to sleep, and I awoke not until the sun had chased away the night. I continued this tour, and in a few days explored a considerable part of the country, each day equally pleased as the first. I returned again to my old camp, which was not. disturbed in my absence. I did not confine my lodging to it, but often reposed in the thick cane breaks to avoid the Indians who I believe often visited my camp, but fortunately for me in my absence. In this torment with fear, which is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, only augments the pain. It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion, with which I had the greatest

reason to be affected. The prowling wolves diverted my nocturnal hours with perpetual howlings and the various species of animals in the vast forest and the daytime were continually in my view. Thus, I was surrounded with plenty in the midst of want. I was happy in the midst of dangers and inconveniences. In such a diversity, it was impossible I should be disposed to melancholy. No populous city, with all the varieties of commerce and stately structures, could afford so much pleasure to my mind as the beauties of nature I found here. Thus, through an uninterpreted scene of sylvan pleasures, I spent the time until the 27th day of July following when my brother, to my great velocity, met me, according to appointment at our old camp. Shortly after, we left this place,

not thinking it's safe to stay there any longer, and proceeded to Cumberland River, reconnoitering that part of the country until March 1771 and giving names to the different waters. Soon after, I returned home to my family with the determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise at risk of my life and fortune. End of passage. This is a wild story of Boone's trip into Kentucky. It's important to remember that Phil's... Wilson's biographical chapter is a big part of what made Boone world famous.

It's interesting to think about why. There's lots of stuff inside of there that was new to the thought process of Americans. In Mr. Morgan's book, he made some insightful commentary on the influences in Boone's life and how the old woodsman viewed his life. This is an excerpt for Mr. Morgan's book talking about John Philson's chapter. The style is that of a quest narrative, of a knight-errant in search of a paradise. But it fits the adventure narrative also, as popularized by Defoe in Robinson Crusoe. After the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe was perhaps the most widely read book in North America in the 18th century.

Published in 1719, the book, often called the first novel in English, went through printing after printing and edition after edition. Thought by the public to be a factual memoir, not a work of fiction, Robinson Crusoe was modeled on the true account of the adventures of the Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, as published by Richard Steele in 1713. Though largely unnoticed by scholars and historians writing about Boone, Defoe's novel deeply influenced the way Boone told his story and the way Philson wrote down the narrative. Crusoe's story is told in the first person and not only describes one man's heroic struggle for survival in the wilderness, but is interspersed with moral meditations on the growth of character, humility, and wisdom. After he finds himself alone on the desert island, Crusoe says, As my reason began to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could,

and to set the good against the evil that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse. Describing the period when he was alone in Kentucky after the departure of his brother squire from North Carolina in May 1770, Boone tells us, I was by myself without bread, salt, or sugar, without company of my fellow creatures or even a horse or dog, and I never before was under greater necessity of exercising philosophy and fortitude. Much of Crusoe's story has taken up with the details of his survival, how he built a shelter, enlarged his cave, planted grain, and hunted, but alternating with the descriptions and narrative are passages of philosophical comment. Quote, let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions

in the world that we always find in it something to comfort ourselves from and to set in the description of good and evil on the credit side of the account. Boone also describes in some detail the way he and his brother Squire struggled in the wilderness threatened by Indians' loneliness, the unknown, and then, like that, Like Crusoe, he will turn from narrative to philosophical observation. Thus situated many hundred miles from our families in the howling wilderness, I believe few have equally enjoyed the happiness we experience. I often observed my brother.

You see how little nature requires to be satisfied. Philson and Boone understood, as did the foe, that even an adventure story had to make a moral point. Besides many parallels and technical details about survival, landscape, solitude, there are similarities in the passages of meditation. It's super interesting to know that humans respond in predictable ways to stories told in the right way. Whether conscious or unconscious, Boone and his biographer knew this, and they made their narrative

like one of the best-selling stories of the time period. That's some legit branding from the old backwoodsman. I want to switch the conversation, however, back to Native Americans. And Mr. Morgan has some interesting tidbits to share about the Boone family and the Native American influence on them and a couple others. And Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of the great emancipator, is in this group. Boone also knew the Hanks family. So Abraham Lincoln's grandfather went with Boone to Kentucky. exactly that second

big trip much commerce communication between the Lincoln family and the Boone family all the way back to Pennsylvania and then in Virginia they've known each of for a long time

and important to remember that because I think this is very essential to understanding Lincoln that he was a man of the frontier and that his style was informed, his politics were informed by the way Indian chiefs did things.

Famous situation. Chase, Secretary of State Seward, says to the president, Mr. President, what is your policy? You've got to tell us your policy. And Lincoln says, my policy is to have no policy. This is exactly the way Indian chiefs, the last moment they wouldn't tell you what they wanted to do. He picked that up, you know, in the backwoods. That's the way you act as a leader. There's so many ways that indigenous people, American Indians, influenced American culture, and that's one of them.

And you just described a great example of how Native American culture has influenced the American identity. Are there other examples of that? Well, the most famous is the fact that the Articles of Confederation, Continental Congress, were based on the Iroquois Constitution. Revival preaching. A lot of the famous revival preachers were part Indian. Oral Roberts was Chalk Tall, for instance. The greatest preacher in American history was Tecumpsy. He could mesmerize. He'd combined Indian beliefs with Christian beliefs and could sway anybody. I think American oratory of the 19th century was really influenced by these great Indian leaders for their eloquence. Their oratory was their leadership. Sam Houston could get a move in. anybody was oratory. He'd been adopted by the Cherokees. He was a Cherokee. He was raven of the Highwasi Cherokees. On the topic of Native Americans, I want to continue to look at Boone's relationship with them and restate that Boone was Boone because of Native Americans. With no Native Americans, there's no Daniel Boone national archetype that we know. They seem to have more influence on him

than white culture. Here's Steve and I discussing this very thing. He had a really unique relationship with Indians in that he was, you know, at one point in his life, he was adopted by the Shawnee as a son of blackfish. And he always had this like seemingly deep respect for Native Americans. But just the nature of the times and where he was at and what he was doing, he ended up, you know, being in conflict with him at different times. Yeah, many times. You have to analyze them. I think you have to analyze them. I think you have to analyze that aspect of him in context of his peers. And compared to his peers, he had a very lenient, you know, compared to long hunters or compared

to other military, other soldiers of the time, seems to have had a very tolerant, rather progressive view of relations between the Euro-Americans and the Native Americans, but at the same time did a tremendous amount. in some respects one could say like unintentionally, but knowingly did a tremendous amount to displace those people, but understood the loss that he was inflicting. Dr. Taylor Keane is a graduate of Dartmouth College and has a couple of graduate degrees from Harvard.

He's currently a professor in the Business School of Crichton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Most relevant for this conversation, he's a member of the Cherokee in Omaha Nation. He considers himself a citizen, historian of the Cherokee Nation. I wanted to ask him about the other side of the story of the Cumberland Gap. Meet Professor King.

Professor Kean, I want to tell you an experience that I had while I was in Kentucky. I took my family to the Cumberland Gap. So the Cumberland Gap sits on the border of Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky. and the way that we came through the gap was from the Virginia and Tennessee side. So we came from east to west. And as I'd been thinking about this for so long, I was excited and you kind of drive on this highway and you can see the Cumberland gap. And as I'm there with my boys in the car and my wife, I'm talking to them about how,

you know, this is what Daniel Boone saw. This is exactly what he saw, minus. the buildings and civilization when he came through here. And we went through the Cumberland Gap from east to west. We stayed in Middlesboro, Kentucky that night. And that evening, we decided we were going to drive back through the gap. And when I was driving from west to east, I just had the thought that most likely,

the first humans to ever walk through that gap, came from west to east, most likely. No one really knows where the indigenous people of North America exactly came from, but the best evidence right now, I would say they came from the west and moved into the east. And it was really kind of a moving thought, because as an, as a American, I'm thinking about the European Americans that came from east to west, but the indigenous people's, they would have found that thousands of years before, before Americans did, and the French did, and the white Europeans. And it was, and that's what got me on this train of thought of, you know, we celebrate this path, you know, people passing through this gap. But for the

indigenous people of this country, of this continent, it wasn't something necessarily to be celebrated. And that's why I wanted to talk to you. I just wanted to get your your perspective and just talk about ultimately the impact of of Europeans coming through the Cumberland gap and then just settling the rest of North America. I think that's a fantastic intro. And that's the big question, is it not? How long ago were the first humans to see that? And that's a mind-boggling question for sure.

The theory to which you are indicating is the Bering Strait theory. Correct? There's a couple of them I hear of, but... Yeah, that has an indelible impact on Americans' perceptions of indigenous peoples. Our ancient Cherokee stories say that we come from an island in the east, meaning the Atlantic, and that we were on an island that had volcanoes and big turtles. That's actually a very important part of Cherokee cosmology, those... turtles, but that makes it sound like it's somewhere around the Galapagos or something like that. And then our stories say that that was where we had massive temples and an earlier golden age

that eventually water overcame the island and we had to flee. And that's where our stories of grandmother spider carried our one ember from our one great fire and that we migrated into what would be South America. And the Cherokee is the only tribe that utilize blow dart guns as hunting weapons, as well as double-walled basketry. And so that's an imprint of our time in South America. And then that we migrated up over the great old man, which is the Mississippi River, and then eventually found ourselves up up near the Seneca's,

because that's our most closely related tribal groups. And eventually we were forced down south into what is more often than not viewed as, you know, the Cherokee homelands. But, you know, we were probably immigrants to that area as well. You can look to the other five civilized tribes, the creeks and the Choctaws and the Chickasaws and the Seminoles. That was their homeland. But Cherokee certainly occupied it. The question is for how long? So when we're talking about things like the Cumberland Gap,

time as a continuum makes it really, really messy. Regardless of who discovered that, of course, we'll never know. Most Americans would cite that it was Daniel Boone, who found the signs. I think indigenous peoples had a bigger influence on Daniel Boone and other frontiersmen. than what is more popularly recognized.

Yes. And little things like him basting the turkey with its own juices. And it's something that, you know, we as Americans just take for commonplace. But I was probably, you know, thousands-year-old indigenous practice with, you know, with those great birds that have been here for a very long time, very, very important in tribal cultures. Talk to me about the long-term, like, high-level, over. overview of what happened, what that started to the indigenous people when white Europeans came through that gap?

Well, there's one aspect of indigenous history in the Americas that you can't get around. That's the issue of smallpox and disease, primarily smallpox. However it got here, many scholars would theorize that it came from the Spanish and probably the Spanish conquistadors and whether or not it came directly from human contact or dogs or horses, of course, in these days we all understand the basics of a pandemic. It doesn't matter how it got here. What does matter was the impact on indigenous peoples. Without exception across all of the Americas, whether that's what is now Canada, the United States, Central America, South America, the indigenous peoples were decimated by smallpox. Most conservative estimates,

or around 70%, but the bulk of the data that we do have is 85 to 95% decimation death rates from smallpox. And so we have these fascinating documented encounters with indigenous peoples from, say, the Spanish conquistadors and massive numbers, tribal peoples in the Amazon, Mesoamerica. You can pick your conquistador and follow each story, but the story's pretty much the same. They were outnumbered, in many cases, pushed back, repelled or defeated, came back with larger armies a few years later and found everyone gone. Wow. And so that's the story that I think is so hard for people to get their minds wrapped around. Think of your 100 closest friends and family. And there's only five of you left.

Wow. So at the least, it could only have detrimentally impacted tribal peoples, whether that's a base of headmen and warriors, which is crucial at such times, or the knowledge of agricultural lifeways. 95% of the knowledge was gone. So in many cases, we were kind of faced with almost a cultural amnesia. And so, you know, if you were a child that survived that, no longer do you have 95% of those teachers and storytellers. You have five and they have five percent of what was left. So you have this huge gap and made it an easy story for Euro-Americans coming to America to view it as a vast wilderness when in reality, you know, it's been populated for over 10,000 years for sure. and arguably 20 to 30,000 years.

So there was no wilderness. There was only land in the animals and whether one knew them or not. I'd look at things like the Cumberland Gap and I think easy 10,000 years, maybe 15. And if we go into the number of generations of people, that is, it's just mind-boggling. When we think of American history,

just at a surface level, you think of wars, with indigenous people that would have killed Native Americans. I mean, you know, musket balls and whatnot. But really, that's not the culprit. That's not the main culprit. The main culprit was disease, this hidden warfare that came in just from contact, which is just really such a bizarre thing when you think about it,

because how, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's science behind how these white Europeans were coming from, tightly grouped dwelling places of people so disease was spread around and these indigenous people were living these healthy lives out in the wild so they didn't have disease that's the biggest irony because nearly all of these pandemics as it were smallpox etc all came from domesticated animals so smallpox is a derivation of cowpox and that's why there was a greater immunity towards it with European populations. They were certainly not immune

when you dig deep into American history. You see the impact on, even on the founding fathers themselves. You know, just a personal question, Professor Keene. Like, I mean, you can tell from me doing a podcast series on Daniel Boone, this is a man that, like, I want to celebrate. You see inside the research,

Boone was just a figurehead. He was just an archetype for, for what Americans did. He was just the one that we kind of picked to be our hero, so we're not necessarily picking on Boone. But how do you feel when we celebrate somebody like Boone? I mean, but you're an American as well now. I mean, it's so long past,

but what are your personal thoughts on that? I've just always found it fascinating. I mean, first of all, I consider myself a patriot, and I love our country. And I understand why all cultures need heroes. And so you talked a lot about branding and archetypes. And of course, that's all stuff in our field of business.

So I understand that. And so I acknowledge that he was an icon. He was an archetype of that frontiersman. But I also feel like there should be in history, indigenous peoples that he worked with, learned from, spent time hunting with, that should also be those types of heroes. and we don't know who those are, but guaranteed they were there. He did have a relationship with my tribe, the Cherokees. He did have a relationship with the Shawnees. I'm just glad that podcasts like yours today

bring those aspects of history back up because it only adds to the rich tapestry of really what made those individuals be able to survive. What an incredible perspective from Professor Keane. I want to go back to Mr. Morgan and hear what he has to say about historical revision. I figure he's got some insight. In modern times, people have, they go back into history

and they find faults with people based upon things that we now know were egregious things, like slavery. Like people, we now know worldwide that this was a terrible thing. This is a scar on humanity that we've been a part of this. But it just doesn't seem fair to go back and say that every human that ever was involved in that in any way was an evil person. And at the same time, I'm talking about Boone and want to give him credit for all these things, but we know there was this irony inside of his life for things that were done to Native Americans. And we said that he owned a slave, and not a whole lot of it.

is known about that. Can you speak to that, just kind of like your personal thoughts on how we can deal with that? Well, historical revisionism is the fashion now. And people want to impose on the past the values and the judgments of the present. And we should keep that in mind, you know, our ideals and our ethics as we look at historical figures. But we should also be tolerant because we're all human beings and we all make mistakes and in the future some historian may be looking at us. They inevitably will. So you also want to be more flexible in looking at these figures and not only see what they did wrong but to see what they did right.

And in the case of Boone, to remember why he's important, I mean there's a reason he's so important in American culture and in fact in world culture. We should have it both ways, I think. We should remember that Daniel Boone, believe it or not, raised as a Quaker, actually had slaves, at least at one point. And we should remember that we tend as human beings to act the way other people are acting in a culture. That probably at that time it seemed okay because everybody was doing it to realize that, to remember that Thomas Jefferson owns slaves, but that he also abhorred slavery.

It was a strange paradox to remember that Boone did other things. It wasn't just owning a slave. Right. So it's possible, what I'm hearing you say is that it's very possible for someone to, and this seems so contrary to what we hear happening in society today, but it is possible for someone to have part. of their life that are very honorable and noble and then maybe have one section that wasn't great and that one section doesn't cancel out the honorable and noble.

I don't think we should look at people's lives just over one issue. I mean, you've got to look at, take the thing all around in a way and try to get some understanding of them as a human being with many facets. At the same time, you keep in mind the values of the present, of course, that a historian is looking at things through the lens of the present, always, and through their own biases and values. But you can't be much of a historian or a biographer unless you're able to also see things through the lens of that time. Otherwise, you will be so limited in your approach.

You have to have this sympathetic imagination or empathetic imagination. So you can try to find out how those people saw things. How did the world look to Rebecca Boone, to Michael Stoner, to Simon Kenton. I mean, what were they after? What were they trying to do? Of course, you can't do that perfectly. But the point of historical writing is to try

to imagine what this world was like. What it had been like to have Kentucky there. And we can say, oh, they destroyed the game. they brought slavery into Kentucky. What was Michael Stoner? What was Boone thinking of at that time? And they were probably thinking of this great paradise, this thing available, this thing there.

I can go there. I can become a part of it. We cannot judge in our own time what land meant to these Scotch-Irish immigrants who never had a foot of it. land they could keep. And what that meant to here, you know, to be able to hunt, to be able to own weapons, to have this unlimited continent ahead of you.

And of course, they did things we don't approve of, especially to the Indians. They weren't going to let Indians stand in the way of this, you know, new world they were trying to build. So they were far from perfect people, but they also did wonderful things and created a sense of a new country, a new civilization. Yeah. So historical relativism, I think, is something we shouldn't carry too far. I'm at a bit of a loss while gathering my thoughts on this episode.

We really didn't cover much of Boone's life. In part one, we made it from his birth to his mid-30s, but we're still here in his mid-30s. We dedicated this entire time to the Cumberland Gap because of its significance on Boone, indigenous people, and America. Man, I love Daniel Boone, and I intend to celebrate him in most parts of his life. Boone's passing through the Cumberland Gap was truly a physical feat, romanticized and cherished by backwoodsmen like myself, but it was also deeply metaphorical for America.

I like the tension between man and nature, A narrow mountain pass and this rugged dude duking it out. But I only love it because Boone taught us to love it. It's the story we identify with, the one we were born with. And that version ridiculously embodies Western thought even in its telling. Indigenous people didn't view their lives in conflict with nature. They were simply part of it. I'm speculating, but perhaps

the indigenous view wouldn't see humans passing through the gap as a fight against nature, but rather like the current of a flooding river that couldn't be held back. The one thing that we know for certain as we look at human history is that civilizations rise and fall and very seldom is it just. I suspect these are the treacherous waters will have to weigh through on this side of mortality. Folks, thanks for listening to this episode. You can hear me and the crew distill this down next week on the Bear Grease Render podcast. And after that, we'll put out the third part of our series on Daniel Boone

and we'll cover some more ground in his life. If you've enjoyed this, share it with a buddy. Thanks a ton. First Lights Fieldwear 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 in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts.

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