Books: Elbower

DANIEL BOONE—John Bakeless—Morrow ($3.50).

“All true! Every word true! Not a lie in it!” So Daniel Boone used to crow about Kentucke, the famous Kentucky history which first printed his “autobiography.” It was this alleged autobiography, the orotund work of a neighbor, Schoolmaster John Filson, that first spread Boone’s fame as No. 1 U. S. frontiersman, started the boom in Boone legend. Just how many lies Boone’s “autobiography” contained, biographers have been busy discovering ever since.

Last week, in the first definitive Boone biography, Editor-Biographer Bakeless appeared to have the story straight at last, but the result is far from being a debunking job. Biographer Bakeless drops a number of legends (including one that Boone lived with a Shawnee squaw), moderates a number of storybook feats. But in the main his 480-page dead-eye biography portrays Boone as a deserving hero. Not even adolescents will be disillusioned by the true story of Boone’s escape from Chief Blackfish, his wily strategy in the siege of Boonesborough, his exploits as an officer of the Kentucky militia.

Main new material in Daniel Boone deals with Boone’s career after the Indians were licked, as politician, surveyor, land-hungry businessman. Biographer Bakeless defends Boone’s honesty, says that no proof exists that Boone deliberately swindled clients who lost their land through faulty titles. Boone was only careless, says Biographer Bakeless, and not least careless in failing to anticipate a rush of smart lawyers.

Contemporaries sometimes accused Boone of being a misanthrope who liked Indians better than white men. Biographer Bakeless agrees with Boone that this was a libel. But if Boone got a reputation for claustrophobia it was his own fault; he himself made up most of the jokes about needing elbowroom. (His favorite was the story that when he learned of a new neighbor 70 miles away he turned to his wife Rebecca, declared: “Old woman, we must move, they are crowding us.”) Fact is, says Biographer Bakeless, Boone sought elbowroom in the vain hope of finding a new country where he could make a fortune. His jokes tried to conceal his ambition and his frustration.