Daniel Boone Was a Man...Yes, a Big Man!

Yes, the Tour Marm finally came up with the right answer for my Wordless image. Go check out her history puzzles here. My Wordless Wednesday this week referred to the nickname members of the Shawnees gave larger-than-life Daniel Boone.

My young historians will soon be leaving our studies of American government behind, and now the settlement of the West looms before us….Now don’t be confused. I’m not speaking of the sweeping vistas of Monument Valley as seen in John Wayne westerns-----I’m referring to our "first" west that I wrote about back in June titled
It's Important to Know Your Frontier.

Yes, Daniel Boone is a larger-than-life figure. There are as many myths and incorrect stories about his exploits as there are true ones. I could go on and on and on but here are five interesting facts about Boone that aren’t commonly known.

1. Daniel Boone was born into a family of Quakers---his father had come to the colonies from England in 1713 and settled in Pennsylvania. Later the Boone family left the Quakers and relocated to the Yadkin River Valley of North Carolina. It seems that Mr. Boone’s children kept marrying outside their faith and sometimes a child would be on the way before the actual marriage ceremony.

2. As some of us older types remember in the Daniel Boone series on television he was married to Rebecca and did have a daughter named Jemima, but what many historians now agree on is Jemima was actually fathered by Daniel’s brother Ned. Boone knew this but brought Jemima up as his own along with the many other children he and Rebecca had together. It seems that the relationship started between Rebecca and the brother after Boone was thought to be dead on one of his lengthy trips in the wilderness.

3. Boone was captured by Native American groups several times. Once when he was captured by the Shawnees he was made to run the gauntlet and having survived he was adopted into the tribe to replace a fallen warrior. He was given the name sheltowee, or Big Turtle because he carried a large pack and moved very slow. Boone stayed with the Shawnees for such a long time before escaping that his family went back to North Carolina thinking he was dead. His fellow frontiersmen hesitated to trust him after his “sojourn” with the Indians and for his troubles Boone had to undergo a failed courtmartial proceeding.

4. Boone wasn’t just a hunter, trapper, guide, and adventurer. He saw military action in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and many other Indian conflicts such as Dunmore’s War. In his lifetime he was a tavern owner, surveyor, land speculator, legislator, horse trader, and slave owner.

5. Boone spent his final years living in Missouri. He moved there in 1799 when it was still part of Spanish Louisiana. There he was appointed as “judge and jury” as well as military leader of the Femme Osage district.

Boone is known to have said, “I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.”

Yep, he was brave, he was fearless and as tough as a might oak tree!