1776. The territory of Kentucky. A raiding party of Cherokee kidnaps three girls, one of whom is the daughter of Daniel Boone. This attack is part of a concerted British effort to use the native peoples of North America to harass and distract their rebellious colonists.
Daniel Boone organizes a small party of frontiersman to give chase. For three days Boone and his men travel day and night to catch up. He’s one of the best trackers on the frontier and has no trouble following the signs of his quarry’s passage. Finally, he spots the Cherokee camp. His daughter and the other two girls are there, tied up. Boone calls his men to halt and takes the lead, creeping up with the silence of a master huntsman.
Crack!
Boone’s daughter cries out: “That’s my father’s gun!”
A fierce, old-fashioned frontier shootout ensues and when it’s over Boone leads his daughter and her two friends back to their families in Kentucky. This incident would later be memorialized, and fictionalized, in a famous scene in the novel Last of the Mohicans, in which a character based in part on Boone launches a similar dramatic rescue.
This actually happened. And it’s one of many stories in Boone’s life that sounds like it could have come out of an adventure novel.
. . .
For more, listen to the Podcast episode and check out my book, History Stories for Everyone, where I dive deeper into this and some of history’s other most fascinating and relatable human stories:
