A poetic, pioneering look at Daniel Boone

“Boone: A Biography”

by Robert Morgan

Algonquin, 538 pp., $29.95

While growing up in the mountains of Western North Carolina during the 1940s and 1950s, Robert Morgan enjoyed “hunting and trapping, fishing and wandering the mountain trails.” Morgan’s father found frontiersman Daniel Boone fascinating, and sometimes quoted his words to Robert. Furthermore, Robert developed the impression that a blood relationship might exist, given that Boone’s mother carried the birth name of Sarah Morgan.

As an adult, while researching what became his novel “Brave Enemies,” Morgan studied the American Revolution as it played out in the Carolinas. “I grew more and more preoccupied with life on the frontier, where white settlers mingled and fought with and learned from the Native population,” Morgan says. “I came to see what an extraordinary story that was, the collision of different worlds right in my own backyard, as British confronted French, Indians fought Indians … and finally Americans fought the Crown.” Boone’s name cropped up again and again.

In the introduction to his Boone biography, Morgan explicates each of the previous major accounts about the frontiersman, wisely concluding that Boone “has been both lucky and unlucky in his biographers.” With Morgan, Boone definitely lucked out.

Like many other historical figures, Boone has been mythologized so frequently in so many directions that a casual reader cannot easily separate fiction from fact. Never a president of the United States or a famous author or a celebrity for other obvious reasons, Boone became a legend in large part because he attempted so many difficult tasks in a nation drunk with expansion but unsure what lay out West. A humble man, Boone let others spread the word about his skills as a scout and a hunter and a militia commander and a legislator and a guardian for the less fortunate in American society.

Now comes Morgan, primarily a poet and novelist, as an entrant in the Boone biographical sweepstakes. The result is stunning, and perhaps determinative in settling the frontiersman’s reputation.

Boone (1734-1820) moved around a lot. Many readers probably identify him most closely with Kentucky and Missouri. (Not so incidentally, I live in Boone County, Mo.) But he started his life in Pennsylvania, moved to Virginia with his family, then settled in North Carolina at age 16. Not until 30 years later did he head west.

No biographer can ignore Boone’s restless, peripatetic existence. But, after that is said, just how to portray Boone is problematic. Morgan, who teaches at Cornell University, realized that hundreds of books purporting to explain Boone’s life had already been published, but found each one he read unsatisfactory. He decided to construct a biography around Boone’s daily existence, rather than emphasizing allegedly heroic acts of Indian fighting and Western exploration that seem to have been mythologized by authors seeking unadulterated heroes.

Morgan is fond of Boone. Thankfully, though, he is not compromised by hero worship. On the first page of the Introduction, Morgan discloses that Boone “was at different times accused of treason, fraud and hypocrisy … He was blamed for dishonest and incompetent land surveying, and sued again and again for debt.”

Boone established, and lost, a variety of businesses, including a warehouse, a tavern, a fur trade and a horse trade. Using old documents wisely, however, Morgan demonstrates that as a landowner, surveyor and business owner, Boone was “sometimes careless with clerical and legal work,” not dishonest or incompetent.

Boone’s reputation also suffered during his lifetime because of his attitude toward Indians. He demonstrated so much empathy for them that racist critics called Boone a “white Indian.” Actually, he fought and killed Indians when he believed they were unjustified aggressors, including altercations within the borders of North Carolina. Boone understood, however, that Indians were generally sensitive, needy human beings, not savages. He befriended them rather than shedding their blood whenever practical.

Morgan writes with flair. His talents as a poet and novelist enhance a biography that, like so many previous Boone biographies, could have read in a dry manner. Morgan’s detailed descriptions of people and places are memorable. Even his generalizations sound pitch perfect: “All his life Boone’s troubles appeared to come in waves. The good periods seemed to happen when he started out in the wilderness and experienced an idyll of hunting and trapping and exploration of new territory, digging ginseng, making maple syrup, boiling salt, clearing some land. But then misfortune caught up with him and his troubles accumulated and compounded.”

Steve Weinberg’s book, “Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller,” will be published by Norton in March.