Daniel Boone: The Man versus the Myth

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-Boone1

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

VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 2


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