Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was first shown on September 24, 1964, with its theme song announcing that Daniel “…was a big man.” It was the first of many historical inaccuracies which the show would present over the next six seasons. The real Daniel Boone was not a particularly big man, standing about 5’8″, nor did he typically wear a coonskin cap, preferring a slouch hat to cover his head. On the television program the size of his family changes as actors come and go, but he did have a son named Israel (who was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782) and he was a famous hunter and leading citizen of Kentucky.
Over the course of the program’s run, Daniel interacts with George Washington (as President and as a General), Benjamin Franklin, Aaron Burr, and other historic personages, in Boonesborough and in locales ranging from New Orleans to Philadelphia. Boone normally walked during the series, the real Daniel Boone traveled on horseback during his longer trips. The series depicts his extended residence in a cabin outside the fort at Boonesborough, in reality Boone lived there but a short time before moving to nearby Boone’s Station, after which he resided in Virginia (now West Virginia), Limestone, (where he operated a store and tavern, now known as Maysville, Kentucky) and other locations before settling in Missouri.
The series’ many historical inaccuracies led the Kentucky legislature to complain of them formally. The Kentucky of Daniel Boone’s day was originally part of Virginia, and was a slaveholding territory. Many of the early settlers arriving in Kentucky came from Virginia and North Carolina and brought their slaves with them. Boone himself went to Kentucky from the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, though he had been born and spent his youth in Pennsylvania. In 1787, while living in Limestone, he claimed ownership of seven slaves, women and children. The women most likely worked in his tavern as cooks and servers. The Daniel Boone of the television series was virulently anti-slavery.
The Oxford educated Cherokee Mingo, played in the series by Ed Ames, was entirely fictional, and may have been inspired by the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant. The Mingo were a small tribe related to the Iroquois who lived near the Miami River in the Ohio Country. Mingo had an evil twin – a favorite plot device of sixties television – also played by Ames, and despite preferring to wear Cherokee dress he often posed as British officers in redcoat regalia, sang opera on one episode, and was skilled with the bullwhip and the tomahawk. Ames left the show after the fourth season.
Daniel Boone was more family entertainment than history, and it did not follow a straight timeline, but presented episodes covering more than two decades (based on the backdrop of the Revolution) in a non-sequential manner. Some events from the life of the real Daniel Boone, such as the siege of Boonesborough, were depicted but usually in a highly fictionalized manner, and Boone’s lifelong battle with the taxman and failed land speculation are completely ignored. Fess Parker’s Daniel Boone, like his earlier portrayal of Davy Crockett, was based on and added to the myths which swirled around the legendary frontiersman and explorer.