Daniel Boone

Abbott wrote this life of Daniel Boone in 1872 for his American Pioneers and Patriots series, and it opens wider than the title suggests: Columbus sails in chapter one, Boone is born in 1734 in chapter two, and chapter three detours through the discovery of Louisiana. The rest of the fourteen chapters run through camp life beyond the Alleghanies, the sufferings of the pioneers, Boone’s capture with twenty-seven of his men and his adoption by the chief Blackfish, the Revolutionary fighting and its British-allied war parties, Kentucky’s organization as a state, and his last move across the Mississippi into Spanish territory. The preface protests the picture of Boone as a coarse backwoodsman, calling him mild, unboastful, and seemingly incapable of fear. The book is warm toward its subject and dated in its view of the Native nations Boone fought.