Boone: A Biography (87 page)

Daniel Boone’s First View of Kentucky.
William T. Ranney. Oil on canvas, 36″ × 56 1/2″. 1849. Painters throughout the nineteenth century loved to portray Boone at the moment of his first sight of the promised land of the Kentucky Bluegrass region, often called his Pisgah vision. (Courtesy Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK.)

Cherokee Delegation Brought to London in 1730 to Enter into Articles of Friendship and Commerce with His Majesty.
Isaac Basire. Engraving. Ca. 1730. From a painting by Markham
, Seven Delegates to London.
The figure on the right is the future legendary chief Attakullakulla, or the Little Carpenter, so called because it was said he could join quarreling factions into a consensus. (Courtesy Smithsonian National Anthropological Archives.)

Colonel John Floyd 1751–1783.
Artist unknown. Drawing. Ca. 1886. Floyd was said to owe his dark good looks to an Indian ancestor, but neither his charm nor his Native blood protected him from violent land disputes and being killed by Indians in 1783. (Courtesy Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY.)

Oval medallion with profile of Col. Richard Henderson. Designed by George H. Honig. 1929. Monument at Henderson, Kentucky, Courthouse. (Photo: Benjamin R. Morgan.)

John Filson.
Artist unknown. Painting. Ca. 1884. From Reuben T. Durrett
, John Filson: The First Historian of Kentucky
(Filson Club Publication No. 1), 1884. Though Filson (1753–88) was killed by Indians his book took on a life of its own, creating the Boone legend. (Courtesy Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY.)

Lyman Copeland Draper.
Daguerreotype. 1858. Draper (1815–91) devoted most of his life to collecting documents and information about the frontier history of the Ohio Valley. He planned biographies of George Rogers Clark, Boone, and many others, but published only one book
, Kings Mountain and Its Heroes,
1881, and a number of articles in newspapers. His unfinished manuscript
, The Life of Daniel Boone,
has proved to be a treasure for later scholars and writers, as is the vast collection of documents, letters, and interviews he assembled at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. (Courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society: Image 35.)

Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap.
George Caleb Bingham. Oil on canvas, 36 1/2″ × 50 1/4″. 1851–52. Deservedly one of the best-known portraits of Boone, this painting gets many details right, including the hat. (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Gift of Nathaniel Phillips, 1890.)

Capture of the Daughters of D. Boone and Callaway by Indians.
Karl Bodmer.
Lithograph, 17 1/8″ × 22 1/8″. 1852. (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Transfer from Special Collections, Olin Library, Washington University, 1988.)

Monk Estill. Drawing. From Zachary F. Smith
, History of Kentucky,
1895. Monk Estill played his fiddle for the dances at Boonesborough. For his actions at the Battle of Little Mountain, March 22, 1782, in which his owner James Estill was killed, Monk was given his freedom by the Estill family. (Courtesy Kentucky Historical Society.)

Col. Daniel Boone.
James Otto Lewis. 1820. Stipple engraving, 8 3/16″ × 13 9/16″. In the years after his death Boone became an icon of popular American culture. Magazines, books, and newspapers featured his image, sometimes with some accuracy, as in this Lewis engraving. (Courtesy Saint Louis Art Museum.)