Boone, Daniel | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Boone, Daniel

Born November 2, 1734

Exeter Township, Berks County, near

present-day Reading, Pennsylvania

Died September 26, 1820

Near St. Charles, Missouri

Frontiersman

"Even in his own time the tale of Boone's role as the leader of colonists migrating through the Cumberland Gap into the Kentucky territories had begun to assume larger-than-life status. Boone came to be considered the consummate symbol of the American pioneer."

J. Gray Sweeney, in The Columbus of the Woods: Daniel Boone and the Typology of Manifest Destiny

Daniel Boone is considered the most famous American frontiersman in history. He guided settlers to establish the first American settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains in present-day Kentucky. At the time of Boone's early adventures, Native Americans vigorously defended their homeland west of the Appalachian Mountains against the encroaching waves of white settlers. Boone's efforts to carve out settlements in what he called "the dark and bloody ground" of Kentucky came to symbolize American efforts to tame the West, according to J. Gray Sweeney in The Columbus of the Woods.

Artist George Caleb Bingham captured Boone's legend in one of the most enduring images of the great man, Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap. In the portrait, Boone is illustrated leading a group of settlers over a stormy mountain pass into a lush valley.

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