mail: Bill Thayer

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Hero's Rest

Every American schoolchild knows the name of Daniel Boone. Not for me then to give you the story of his life: how this Pennsylvanian spent most of his life exploring the new West and blazing trails into it from the old colonies, including the Cumberland Gap which for many years would be the gate to American continental expansion, pushing ever westward. (The details of his story are beautifully and accurately told by Constance Skinner in Pioneers of the Old Southwest, chapters 5 and 11.)

True to himself then, late in life — finding his new home state "crowded", with fewer than two hundred thousand people spread over more than a hundred thousand square kilometers! — he emigrated to Missouri, to die there in 1820 at the age of 85; and so was buried there, on his new farm near Marthasville.

Yet Dan Boone had become identified with Kentucky. Much of his life had been spent there, exploring, fighting Indians during the Revolutionary War, surveying, farming, and publicizing it in one of the most successful pieces of literary boosterism in American history. It was only natural that he should be buried here, in the state capital of Kentucky; and so his remains were brought to Frankfort in 1845, along with those of his wife Rebecca who had died in 1813. Or at least, maybe they were: in the best Old World tradition, where his relics really lie is a matter of pride, contention, doubt, and maybe deceit; the studious reader will find a hint of the confusing details in the website linked below.

The four white marble high-relief panels, seen here clockwise starting with the front of the monument on the west side, seem to be more in the nature of generic vignettes than episodes of a specific story; this by way of confessing that if they do tell a story, I don't know what it is:

The color differences are an artifact of the lighting at the time I took these pictures; the south and west sides were in the sun, the north and east in the deep shade of approaching sunset. As it turns out though, the vigorously lit sides tell of conflict — the huntsman kills a deer, he fights an Indian — and those in shadow depict peaceful subjects: a conversation, and Rebecca Boone milking a cow.

The monument was erected in 1880, and these reliefs were carved around that time; but the carving has already had time to wear differently depending on its exposure: the contrast between the west panel, which fronts onto the windy cliff, and the much more sheltered east panel, is particularly noticeable in the details of the foliage.

Even more noticeable to some will be the famous coonskin cap, shown three times in these reliefs. Yet historians repeatedly set us on our guard: that cap was the trademark of Davy Crockett, not of Daniel Boone; but by 1880 the confusion had already set in.

Needless to say, if you have good information to fill in my gaps, I'd be happy to hear from you.

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