Boone: A Biography.

Hale, Matthew Rainbow

Boone: A Biagraphy, by Robert Morgan. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007. 538 pp. $29.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

ACCLAIMED NOVELIST ROBERT MORGAN'S BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL BOONE is undeniably a labor of love. "Many boys, both old and young, feel a connection with Boone," writes Morgan, "but growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s ... I may have felt the kinship more literally than most" (xx). That sense of connection spills over onto every page and propels the often gripping portrayal of what this mythical frontiersman was up against. Yet it also leads the author to overstate the ways in which Boone foreshadowed later historical developments.

Boone's life brought together many features of early American society, which Morgan presents in great detail. Born in 1734 to pious Quaker parents in Pennsylvania, Boone quickly displayed an ability to shoot a gun and a dislike for farm work. When he was fifteen, his family relocated to the Yadkin River Valley in North Carolina, in part because his father had a falling out with the local Quaker meeting, in part because cheap land beckoned. The move to the Southern backcountry afforded Boone the opportunity to develop his skills as a hunter, and by the time he turned twenty years old, he had developed a reputation as an expert marksman, trapper, and woodsman. Following a short stint as a teamster and blacksmith in Edward Braddock's disastrous Monongahela campaign in the Seven Years' War, Boone returned to the Yadkin River Valley and married Rebecca Bryan, who would give birth to ten children in the decades to come. With a growing family to support, Boone made increasingly long hunting and scouting forays. In 1765, he journeyed to Florida, while two years later he made his first expedition to the territory that would eventually become the state of Kentucky. The latter trip proved crucial because it helped bring him to the attention of the Transylvania Company, which had purchased large tracts of land from the Cherokees. In 1775, Boone accordingly led a Transylvania Company-sponsored crew across the Cumberland Gap. In so doing, Boone pioneered the Wilderness Road, which facilitated the movement of approximately 200,000 Euro-Americans into Bluegrass Country.

During the American Revolution, Boone fought on the patriot side, fought off charges of treason, was captured by Shawnees, and made a dramatic escape after four months of captivity. In consequence of Boone's growing reputation, Virginians honored him with legislative and militia officer posts. In 1784, schoolmaster John Filson wrote the first account of the frontiersman's exploits, The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon [sic], the publication of which helped make Boone an international legend. Legendary status did not prevent Boone from getting involved in land disputes and speculation, however, and by the end of the century, lawsuits brought against Boone resulted in at least one warrant for his arrest. In response, Boone took his family to Missouri in 1799, where he lived out the last two decades of his life as an aging hunter and family patriarch.

Some of the most effective sections of Morgan's biography are those that portray the toil and vicissitudes of eighteenth-century frontier life. The author notes, for instance, that a successful deer kill required a hunter to exert tremendous energy transporting game. If he was lucky, he had a horse that could tote upwards of two hundred pounds of supplies and carcasses. Without a pack animal, the hunter used an Indian technique called "hoppusing," by which the slaughtered beast "was strapped over the hunter's shoulders by strips of hide called tugs" (56). Back in camp, the tough outer skin of the buck had to be scraped and shaved by repeatedly rubbing it across a "staking-board" (100). Pliant, soft hides were then folded together and packed tightly for the long journey home. Even if a great collection of hides had been secured and prepared, Euro-American hunters risked Indian encounters and the loss of their haul. In one 1769-70 venture, Boone and a companion were surprised by a party of Shawnees, who proceeded to take all of the accumulated hides and furs, as well as guns, powder, lead, traps, salt, food supplies, and horses. Boone and his companion stubbornly followed the Shawnees in an attempt to turn the tables, but to no avail. Instead, the Shawnees once again surprised them and gained the upper hand. Apparently attempting to amuse themselves and teach Boone and his partner a lesson in the process, the Shawnees threatened their captives with tomahawks, made Boone wear a bell and "prance around the clearing," and mockingly shouted "Steal horse, ha?" (105). Although Boone and his companion managed to escape--in large part because the Shawnee did not seem intent on taking measures to prevent them from doing so--the episode reveals just how uncertain and dangerous Boone's activities were. Eighteenth-century frontier hunting was not for the faint of heart.

Less dramatic but no less troubling was debt. As Morgan makes clear, Boone was dependent on credit for the supplies needed to sustain long hunting trips and his growing family. If the haul from a winter hunt was sufficiently profitable, Boone could pay off his creditors and purchase luxuries. Too often, however, there simply wasn't enough money to go around, which meant that interest-laden debts compounded. Like so many others living in the backcountry, Boone was thus caught in a vicious cycle of borrowing, partial repayment, and ever-widening debt. In fact, one acquaintance said Boone "had the honor of having more suits entered against him for debt than any other man of his day" (93). Granted, the monies referred to in this instance were "chiefly small debts of five pounds and ... contracted for lead and powder," but they nonetheless demonstrate the way in which Boone found himself financially and legally beholden to others (93).

If Morgan's careful rendering of Boone's year-to-year struggle for economic independence is utterly compelling, his description of the Quaker frontiersman as an ultra-idealist who anticipated "Romantic writers" like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman is problematic (117). Indeed, while Boone may have had a "relish for the unexplored country," there is insufficient evidence to conclude that he investigated the bountiful natural landscape in transcendentalist terms (93). Morgan anachronistically attributes to an uneducated eighteenth-century hunter, therefore, cultural modes of interpretation that arose only in the mid-nineteenth century among a group of well educated clerics, authors, and activists. For all its strengths, this biography thus indulges in a bit of romanticization. Daniel Boone certainly merits attention as a central player in the opening of the trans-Appalachian west, but he should not be viewed as the heroic progenitor of the American penchant for individualistic self-exploration.

In sum, Morgan's Boone reveals both the peril and promise of authorial passion. On one hand, the author's fondness for his subject prompts him to project onto Boone attitudes and ideas that most likely did not occur to the Kentucky hunter. At the same time, the rich portrait of the everyday contingencies of eighteenth-century frontier life stems in large part from Morgan's desire to appreciate and depict the fullness of Boone's humanity. The result is a book that occasionally mischaracterizes even as it illuminates important aspects of an iconic American and his world.

MATTHEW RAINBOW HALE

Goucher College