By John Tiffany. Daniel Boone was a great American explorer and woodsman of Keltic ancestry—part Scottish, part Welsh. (And one odd and surprising thing about him that hardly anyone knows is that he was a Quaker.) He is a real American hero, but maybe not quite the way you have visualized him.
Daniel Boone is considered so archetypal that it has been said the story of Boone is the story of America itself, a point hammered home in the new Boone: A Biography, by Robert Morgan, the author of 12 books. Certainly Boone’s career, as brought out in Morgan’s fascinating tome, possesses a picturesque, romantic interest that cannot fail to charm the reader. He had his failings, but he was a great hunter, explorer, surveyor and “land pilot.” He had few equals as a rifleman. No whiteman knew the Indians more thoroughly, or fought them more skillfully, than he. And as the legends say, his life was indeed filled to the brim with hair-raising adventures. [Read the entire article as PDF…]
Taken from
The Barnes Review, March/April 2008: Daniel Boone — The Man Versus the Myth