( 2 reviews )
-
( 3 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: May 14 2006
This is one of the great biographies. It remains interesting and entertaining - and scholarly! - from first to last. It is one of those excellent reads that takes you back 200 years so that you can feel the autumn leaves under your feet as you slip silently through the great forests. If only the majority of biographies could be as well-written, well-researched and well-paced as this one. One of the best biographies of anyone that I have had the pleasure of reading. Highly recommended, even in the light of recent biographies of Boone.
-
( 11 of 11 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 17 2005
John Bakeless's biography of Daniel Boone was published in 1939. Except for a brief study by Reuben Gold Thwaites published in 1902, it was the first biography of Boone that was historically significant; many at the time called it definitive. Later biographies of Boone have been published (most importantly John Faragher's LIFE AND LEGEND OF AN AMERICAN PIONEER in 1992), but Bakeless's book is still relevant if no longer definitive. Daniel Boone, the icon of the American pioneer, was born in Pennsylvania (a museum marks the spot of the original cabin in which he was born in Birdsboro) in 1734. Driven by land speculation and problems with the Quaker church, the Boone family moved to the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. Here Daniel attended "the College of the Wilderness," learning all there is to know about hunting and shooting and surviving in the wilds (he had very little formal education and could write barely anything more than his name). After a hunting trip to Florida, Boone in 1769 went on what turned out to be a two-year exploring/hunting excursion to Kentucky via the Cumberland Gap. A few years later, remembering the Gap, he began laying the Wilderness Road through it and settled what became known as Fortress Boonesboro. Conflicts with the Indians were frequent and in 1778 he was captured by the Shawnees, with whom he was a prisoner for three months. He escaped, however, and was back in Boonesboro in time to help defend it from the British and Indians. Land troubles and ever the wanderlust compelled Boone to move from Kentucky with his family to Missouri, near La Charette. Here he farmed and dealt with the Indians and probably thought it too was becoming too tame and "crowded," but before he could move further west, he died in 1820. Bakeless is an old-fashioned narrative historian who paints a large, colorful portrait of his subject and the world he inhabited. He is interested in the STORY of Boone's life and relates events in a narrative context. He doesn't neglect facts (indeed, many later Boone biographers have found little reason to alter his chronology or factual details), but stays away from political, psychological, and sociological analyses. He debunks legends where he can. Bakeless takes his subject seriously and relates his life in an interesting way. Still a joy to read.
