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Cover Story
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Daniel Boone was splitting
chestnut fence rails when a band of Cherokee Indians
stopped to capture him. “He calked them into
hdpipg him split the last rail first They grabbed
the crack he'd split in the log, and he knocked the
wedge out, trapped their fitters, and ran away," says
Ronny Smith of Middlesboto, Ky. (pop. 10384 X ‘lt’s
probably not true, but it's a great story.”
BHI
Frontiersman
Daniel Boone
Truth, fiction or exaggeration, heroes such as
Boone, William “ Buffalo Bill" Cody, John Henry
and others captured the imagination of Americans in
the 18th and 19th centuries. Festivals, monuments,
outdoor dramas and museums across the country
still honor them—from the birthplace of Johnny
Appleseed in Leominster, Mass. (pop. 41303), to the
beloved Wallowa Valley of Chief Joseph at Joseph,
Ore. (pop. 1,054). Their names entitle highways,
forests, schools, parks, towns and other landmarks,
while statues and historic markets tdl their stories.
Smith, who works at
Cumberland Gap National
Historical Park, located at
the junction of Tennessee,
Kentucky and Virginia, grew
up hearing his father's yams
about Boone. The stories
about the real explorer and
frontiersman rivaled tall tales
of Pecos Bill lassoing a cyclone
in Texas and Raul Bunyan
digging the Great Lakes for
drinking water.
Myths for a pew patiop
When the United States was young, the fledgling
nation needed a new mythology, says Simon Bronner, a
professor of American studies and folklore at Penn State
University.
“Greek and Roman gods and the Knights of the
Round Table were not going to cut it in this new land,"
Bronner says. So frontier heroes like Boone helped define
what an American should be, while stories such as
George Washington and the cherry tree taught morals.
“An American was someone who was proudly wild
and at the same time civilized,” Bronner says.
Historic re-enactors at Kentucky's Fort Boonesborough
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Historic figures inspired larger-than-life fiction.
"There are stories about what a great Indian fighter
Boone was, but Boone himself said he only killed one or
two Indians," says Nelson Dawson, editor of The Register
of the Kentucky Historical Society.
Boones name is everywhere in Kentucky—the state
he explored and helped settle—from the Daniel Boone
National Forest to Fort Boonesborough State Park, a
working replica of Kentucky’s first white settlement,
near Richmond, Ky. (pop. 27,152). The frontiersman
isn’t forgotten in other states —his family homestead in
Birdsboro, Pa (pop. 5,064), is a museum, and his last
permanent home is part of a living history village in
Defiance, Mo.
Sports stars, actors and astronauts are the modem
counterparts to Boone and other folk heroes. “We’ve
explored all the earth, but people like Neil Armstrong
were frontier heroes if you consider space as the frontier,”
Dawson says.
The patiop's first yardeper
Johnny Appleseed, bom John Chapman in 1774, in
Leominster, Mass., holds up as a modem hero, too, says
Carl Querino, a Fitchburg, Mass. (pop. 39,102), banker
who has portrayed the legend during Leominster's John
ny Appleseed Days Festival, held each September.
Photo: Jean Unglaub. www.kentuckytounsm.com
page 6
•American Profile