Archetypal American frontiersman much fictionalised by subsequent generations, though the impression I get from his wikipedia page is that he spent so much time out in the backwoods because he was avoiding his creditors…
25 August 2022
EXXO
The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article is one of the most shocking carpet-brushings of a chapter of genocide that I have ever read.
“Despite resistance from American Indians, for whom Kentucky was a traditional hunting ground, in 1775 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road…”
Kentucky is 80% of the size of England. But it was just a “traditional hunting ground.” Nobody really lived there :-), Boone just helped people claim it.
25 August 2022
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
UNKY DAN’L!
I’ve been waiting for a couple of months for my dear old uncle to show up in the A to Z, and now before I can even brag about it, scoundrels have already set in to disparage his good name. So it goes in the 21st century.
And to be completely honest, he’s not my blood uncle, but he did marry my great-great-great-great-great-great-however-many-times aunt, so that does make him my uncle, at least until she died. His father emigrated from Bradninch in Devon, which seems like the kind of place that ought to warrant a mention in a HMHB song.
And as far as his role as a genocidist, it was and is well-known that he co-existed quite peacefully with the natives, even being adopted by the Shawnees for a time. The fact that so many of his fellow PEOPLE OF ENGLISH ANCESTRY took a violent approach to them is not my dear uncle’s fault. Let us all agree that there will be no further debate upon this topic.
“With an eye like an eagle, and as tall as a mountain,” he was the “rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man the frontier ever knew” (with the possible exception of Yosemite Sam, of course).
As you were.
26 August 2022
EXXO
I didn’t say he had a role as a genocidist. I said that paragraph, and so much written about that chapter of history, brushes genocide under the carpet. The colonial powers used the Kentucky natives against each other in a battle for land, then Britain used them against settlers who were on the side of independence. We don’t know how many tens of thousands of natives the settlers who came on Boone’s route killed, often in hand-to-hand self-defence (like Boone’s famous description of the settler woman with the axe ) but it was brutal and it is hard to argue that it was not genocide in the wider view of the movement westwards. Did he kill some natives himself? Yes. Were they threatening or attacking him at the time? Very probably. Does this exempt him from a significant role in facilitating genocide? The debate will continue.
26 August 2022
dr desperate
I shall be indisposed (He’s in the what?) at the Lincoln Steampunk Festival over the weekend, but here’s a micro-quiz to change the mood a little: which HMHB-referenced character appeared in the ‘Daniel Boone’ TV programme as the titled father of rhyming-named twins?
26 August 2022
LUX inferior
Looks like I timed my site visit perfectly for your micro-quiz, Doc.
That would be Walter Pidgeon.
26 August 2022
IDIOT SAUL
Pixies song from their 2019 ‘Beneath the Eyrie’ album: “And I floated toward the moon And I noted from on high That the Lord Howe reef Looks like Daniel Boone And he was showing me his smile”
Lord Howe Island sits in the Tasman Sea. In satellite images, the reef resembles a face in profile, looking towards Australia, with the island providing the coonskin cap, as worn by Fess Parker in the TV series, even though Steve’s Unky Dan’l apparently preferred a felt hat.
26 August 2022
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
Sorry Exxo, my comments were meant to be facetious, I’m sorry they didn’t come off that way. Of course he was guilty of genocide, there wasn’t a white person on the North American continent in the 18th and 19th centuries who wasn’t, and his actions as a trailblazer probably make him even guiltier than most. I don’t think there’s much debate to be had.
Professor Abelazar Woozle
Archetypal American frontiersman much fictionalised by subsequent generations, though the impression I get from his wikipedia page is that he spent so much time out in the backwoods because he was avoiding his creditors…
25 August 2022
EXXO
The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article is one of the most shocking carpet-brushings of a chapter of genocide that I have ever read.
“Despite resistance from American Indians, for whom Kentucky was a traditional hunting ground, in 1775 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road…”
Kentucky is 80% of the size of England. But it was just a “traditional hunting ground.” Nobody really lived there :-), Boone just helped people claim it.
25 August 2022
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
UNKY DAN’L!
I’ve been waiting for a couple of months for my dear old uncle to show up in the A to Z, and now before I can even brag about it, scoundrels have already set in to disparage his good name. So it goes in the 21st century.
And to be completely honest, he’s not my blood uncle, but he did marry my great-great-great-great-great-great-however-many-times aunt, so that does make him my uncle, at least until she died. His father emigrated from Bradninch in Devon, which seems like the kind of place that ought to warrant a mention in a HMHB song.
And as far as his role as a genocidist, it was and is well-known that he co-existed quite peacefully with the natives, even being adopted by the Shawnees for a time. The fact that so many of his fellow PEOPLE OF ENGLISH ANCESTRY took a violent approach to them is not my dear uncle’s fault. Let us all agree that there will be no further debate upon this topic.
“With an eye like an eagle, and as tall as a mountain,” he was the “rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man the frontier ever knew” (with the possible exception of Yosemite Sam, of course).
As you were.
26 August 2022
EXXO
I didn’t say he had a role as a genocidist. I said that paragraph, and so much written about that chapter of history, brushes genocide under the carpet. The colonial powers used the Kentucky natives against each other in a battle for land, then Britain used them against settlers who were on the side of independence. We don’t know how many tens of thousands of natives the settlers who came on Boone’s route killed, often in hand-to-hand self-defence (like Boone’s famous description of the settler woman with the axe ) but it was brutal and it is hard to argue that it was not genocide in the wider view of the movement westwards. Did he kill some natives himself? Yes. Were they threatening or attacking him at the time? Very probably. Does this exempt him from a significant role in facilitating genocide? The debate will continue.
26 August 2022
dr desperate
I shall be indisposed (He’s in the what?) at the Lincoln Steampunk Festival over the weekend, but here’s a micro-quiz to change the mood a little: which HMHB-referenced character appeared in the ‘Daniel Boone’ TV programme as the titled father of rhyming-named twins?
26 August 2022
LUX inferior
Looks like I timed my site visit perfectly for your micro-quiz, Doc.
That would be Walter Pidgeon.
26 August 2022
IDIOT SAUL
Pixies song from their 2019 ‘Beneath the Eyrie’ album:
“And I floated toward the moon
And I noted from on high
That the Lord Howe reef
Looks like Daniel Boone
And he was showing me his smile”
Lord Howe Island sits in the Tasman Sea. In satellite images, the reef resembles a face in profile, looking towards Australia, with the island providing the coonskin cap, as worn by Fess Parker in the TV series, even though Steve’s Unky Dan’l apparently preferred a felt hat.
26 August 2022
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
Sorry Exxo, my comments were meant to be facetious, I’m sorry they didn’t come off that way. Of course he was guilty of genocide, there wasn’t a white person on the North American continent in the 18th and 19th centuries who wasn’t, and his actions as a trailblazer probably make him even guiltier than most. I don’t think there’s much debate to be had.
26 August 2022