Beyond the Frontier: Daniel Boone's Legacy Examined
Thanksgiving brings a time of reflection, and sometimes that means taking another look at a family legacy.
I was researching how to decolonize Thanksgiving because I don’t want to follow tradition if it causes harm or pain for others, and Thanksgiving is a harmful holiday for Indigenous Americans.
One recommendation was to learn the truth about Thanksgiving as part of the work of decolonization. Instead of celebrating a harmful myth, I committed myself to learning the truth about how European settlers treated the Indigenous tribes that had been there first.
After reading about the real first Thanksgiving and what came after, I researched how the Kumeyaay (koo-meh-yigh) were pushed off the land I live on now, starting with the building of a mission by Spanish missionaries and the theft of their resources.
Learning the Kumeyaay’s history reminded me of Daniel Boone and his settlement of Boonesborough 2,000+ miles away in the state of Kentucky.
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone is one of America’s first folk heroes, best known for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, along with his respect for and friendship with various Indigenous tribes in the United States.
He is also a distant great grandfather of mine.
Growing up, I was proud of Daniel Boone’s legacy. His skills, his clever thinking, and his spirit of exploration were all traits that I hoped would be coded into my DNA. I admired Daniel Boone for these things, along with his friendship with the Shawnee. It was impressed upon me, through the many biographies I read to learn more about this person whose genetics have influenced mine, that this willingness to see past prejudices was unusual, and should be lauded.
Now, I revisit his legacy.
Daniel Boone Was A Colonizer
Daniel Boone was, especially for the time period, progressive for his respect for and friendship with the Shawnee, the Cherokee, and other tribes throughout his life; however, today we can look back at his actions and notice the areas where he fell short.
The Proclamation Line of 1763
The Proclamation Line of 1763 was a boundary put into place by the British’s King George III that banned settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and created an “Indian Reserve” (historical term) in the area between the colonies and the land the Spanish had colonized in the Western half of the United States.
In 1775, just a year before the Declaration of Independence would be adopted, Daniel Boone and some axmen blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap on their way to create the settlement of Boonesborough, 15 miles outside of modern day Lexington, KY. This was the hunting grounds of the Cherokee and the Shawnee, and they were not happy to lose their land and resources.
Should Daniel Boone Have Respected the Proclamation Line of 1763?
Daniel Boone knew that Kentucky was the land of the Shawnee and Cherokee before he colonized it. Before he went to explore Kentucky for the first time, he had heard from a friend that the region was fertile hunting ground, and would have known that it was Shawnee and Cherokee land. He spent two years exploring Kentucky on a hunting and trapping expedition, during which he was captured by a party of Shawnee who took the animal skins Daniel Boone had been poaching and told him to leave and never return. Yet return he did, and this time he was cutting a trail deep into Kentucky.
It takes more than a touch of narcissism to believe that it is your right to encroach on another’s land and build on top of it.
I wonder if Daniel Boone ever for a moment considered how his actions could hurt the people who had been there first? Did he ever feel guilt afterwards for pushing the Shawnee and Cherokee off their hunting grounds and making colonization of the rest of the United States possible?
The only thing I’ve ever found on the matter was Daniel Boone saying that the Indigenous Americans he encountered “have always been kinder to me than the Whites,” which says more about the generosity of the Indigenous tribes than anything else.
What Should We Do With This New Understanding?
First, I would like to apologize to members of the Shawnee and Cherokee tribes on behalf of Daniel Boone and other family members for their role in the loss of your land. I would like to apologize to every Indigenous American in this country whose ancestors suffered because of the actions of my many great grandfather.
I call upon representatives across this nation to give back federal and state land to the tribes the land was stolen from. This country should look like Swiss cheese by the time we’re done. This land is stolen land, and we will be haunted by the pain we have caused and are creating until we have made significant effort to make amends.
Another step we must take is to teach the real history of Daniel Boone, not the mythologized version that has been passed down to us by vibrant storytellers, some of whom had an agenda. Daniel Boone was a colonizer, and his actions assisted in the harm of others. We should not ignore this fact when we talk about his life.
We must refocus the narrative we tell to center on the Indigenous tribes and their experience. We should be telling more stories about Blackfish, the Shawnee leader who adopted Daniel Boone after he had been captured, or Tecumseh, who became Chief as well and was a young child when Boone lived with the Shawnee tribe.
What Can I Do?
I hope you will take a moment this Thanksgiving to meditate on the real history behind the holiday and maybe your own ancestors’ roles in colonizing. Here are some resources I found that can help:
11 Ways to Decolonize Your Thanksgiving And Honor Native People
Decolonization Is For Everyone - TED Talk
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