closeup from cover of 'blood and treasure'

Book Review: ‘Blood and Treasure–Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier’

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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Reviewed by Kent Masterson Brown, President, Witnessing History Education Foundation, Inc. Lexington, Kentucky

Over the years, such notables as Lyman Draper, Reuben Gold Thwaites, Lucile Gulliver, John Bakeless, John Mack Faragher, and Meredith Mason Brown, to name some, have crafted compelling biographies of Daniel Boone. Born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, myself, and introduced to the numerous sites related to Boone’s life in central Kentucky as a boy, I, too, became enamored with his story.

So much of my understanding of Daniel Boone’s life was derived from reading and re-reading Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness by John Bakeless, published in 1939 (mine was the Stackpole edition published in 1965), a book I treasure to this day. My own fascination with Daniel Boone’s story I poured into the two-hour documentary I produced for public television, in 2014,“Daniel Boone and the Opening of the American West.”

Book cover of 'Blood and Treasure--Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier'

It seems almost every generation since the late Nineteenth Century has had its own Boone biography. Meredith Mason Brown (no relation) published the last one in 2002.

Now, we have a new one: Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. Drury and Clavin are the authors of the best-selling books Valley Forge, The Heart of Everything That Is, Halsey’s Typhoon, and many others.

I must confess, I was skeptical of Blood and Treasure when I was presented with a review copy. With so many biographies to choose from, did readers need yet another book about Daniel Boone?

As I began reading Drury’s and Clavin’s work, at first, I felt that my skepticism was justified. Blood and Treasure begins with a graphic description of the horrific killing of Daniel Boone’s oldest son, James, and young Henry Russell on the Virginia frontier in October 1773 at the hands of a Shawnee warrior named Big Jim, whom the Boone’s had befriended –and entertained at their home– not long before.

The authors then go back in time to relate the story of the Boone family in Pennsylvania, Daniel’s birth and early childhood, and the Boones’ subsequent long migration up the Shenandoah Valley to, eventually, the Yadkin River Valley in North Carolina. Once Daniel Boone is grown, the authors describe his service as a wagoner on General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated expedition to the Forks of the Ohio River, his meeting with John Findlay, and his eventual return home and marriage to Rebecca Bryan. They convey in wonderful detail Boone’s early hunting expeditions and explorations of what is now Kentucky, particularly the remarkable expedition into the level plain of Kentucky along with Findlay.

But then, in what at first appears as an unrelated thread, the authors provide chapters about the Native American tribes in the territory of what is now Ohio; the Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, Wyandot, and Miami, among others, and, in what is now eastern Tennessee and north Georgia, the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw.

Native peoples of the Northwest Territory, 1792
Native peoples of the Northwest Territory, 1792

Those tribes’ brutal wars with other Native American tribes as well as their migrations are described in great detail for the reader. Chapters are even devoted to Chief Pontiac and his rebellion, the Iroquois Confederacy, and Sir William Johnson in New York, fascinating stories in and of themselves. I thought while reading those chapters that, perhaps, the authors may have been too ambitious, because I lost Daniel Boone in the extensive narratives. They soon proved me wrong, however, as those chapters provide a key to understanding the “Fight for America’s First Frontier.”

As Blood and Treasure returned to those familiar scenes of Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner warning surveyors of the outbreak of Lord Dunmore’s War against mostly the Mingo and Shawnee tribes north of the Ohio River, the Treaty-signing with the Cherokee at Sycamore Shoals in present-day eastern Tennessee, Boone’s efforts to open what became known as the Wilderness Road, and the settlement of and later the nine-day siege of Boonesboro, I felt that I had been given by the authors the key to understanding the context in which such events took place. The earlier chapters provided a much needed tutorial on the complexity of the Native Americans’ experience in the years leading up to King George III’s Proclamation of 1763 and the eventual American Revolution, fought, in part, to nullify that royal edict.

Those scattered, disunified tribes of Native Americans fought brutal wars against one another. Their migrations were so frequent and vast that they were, in reality, no more native to the regions they defended than their white enemies. Although the unification of all the tribes to confront their enemies was feared by the white settlers more than anything, it was never realized because of the tribes’ past rivalries and bloody conflicts. Even where alliances existed between some tribes, the alliances failed to resist the onward push of settlements.

The authors’ extensive efforts give crucial context to why Boone’s years in Kentucky were, at almost every stage, lived in the constant backdrop of “Indian troubles,” some leading to the brutal killing, dismembering, and scalping of Boone’s younger brother, Edward, and the ghastly scenes of death at the Battle of Blue Licks, where Boone’s second son, Israel, was felled by gunshots and then mutilated with an axe and scalping knife as his father watched from afar.

Written on border: "Kentucky pioneers defeated Aug. 19, 1782 by Indians & Canadians [i.e. British]." Source: Heroes and hunters of the West : comprising sketches and adventures of Boone, Kenton, Brady, Logan, Whetzel, Fleehart, Hughes, Johnston, etc. (Philadelphia : H. C. Peck Theo. Bliss, 1859).
Written on border: “Kentucky pioneers defeated Aug. 19, 1782 by Indians & Canadians [i.e. British].” Source: ‘Heroes and hunters of the West : comprising sketches and adventures of Boone, Kenton, Brady, Logan, Whetzel, Fleehart, Hughes, Johnston, etc.’ (Philadelphia : H. C. Peck Theo. Bliss, 1859).

The book ends with the fates—some ignominious—of many of the actors in the drama that was Daniel Boone’s life. The authors aptly point out that the deaths among those who settled lands west of the Appalachians during the Revolutionary War were far greater than among those who fought as rebels in the east. Yet, for those who fought in the Revolution west of the Appalachians, the killing continued in “America’s First Frontier” well after the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

There were armed operations against Shawnee villages in present day Ohio. At an attack against one village along the Mad River, Boone witnessed the killing by Simon Kenton of none other than Big Jim, the warrior who killed Boone’s first son, James, thirteen years before. There too, he witnessed the Shawnee chief, Black Hoof, brutally felled with an axe wielded by Hugh McGary, the very man whose intemperance led to the Kentuckians, after dismissing Boone’s cautions, to cross the Licking River and march into a deadly crossfire of the Indians and their British provincial allies, Butler’s Rangers, at Blue Licks.

Boone, the authors aptly assert, was never able to realize his dream of living out his life with his family in Kentucky, the land he had sacrificed so much for himself and family, and countless others, to hold. He lost most of his lands to better claims and claimants, and, in the end, faced so much debt that he finally packed up his wife and followed his sons to present day Missouri, settling lands that were then completely outside the United States. During his lifetime, Boone would never be recognized for his efforts for Kentucky by Kentuckians.

Blood and Treasure is a splendid book, well-researched and beautifully written, by two very fine authors. I heartily recommend it.

More articles about Daniel Boone:

Did Daniel Boone’s Ghostwriter Let Us See the Real Boone?(Opens in a new browser tab)

‘Daniel Boone’ opens at the Palace(Opens in a new browser tab)

New documentary ‘Daniel Boone and the Opening of the American West’ releases(Opens in a new browser tab)

Yeahoh, Yahoo or Bigfoot?(Opens in a new browser tab)

5 comments

  1. I’m as interested in Boone’s mother, as she figures in my family history.

  2. My family, the Neeley’s, came down with Boone. They ended up at Neely’s Bend at what is now Nashville. Indians were a menace to them also with a number of them kilt.

  3. This book may provide some background in my genealogical quest. My ancestor, John Douglass, was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks. Boone’s wife was of the Bryan family, and John Douglass’s wife was Mary Bryan, obviously related to Rebecca.

  4. Boone was with Gist on the Upper Kentucky River Mountains and Hills linked to our Cherokee families long before he was in the Bluegrass area. Boone was adopted into Cherokee Tribe. cherokeeempire.bravehost.com

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