Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America by Merideth Brown (2008)

In preparation for my upcoming Flintlock making workshop I decided to get into the proper frame of mind.
I went with a more modern publication because the older stuff is reported to have a lot of myth sprinkled in. Lots of good illustrations of rel event documents.

This version is a little plodding but an historical outline can be that way.

With this however one is able to begin to piece together the American psyche at it's core or at least at it's beginning.

Maybe our fascination with winning the lottery, the robber barrons, discovery, individual dreams, even "finders - keepers" etc. comes from the earliest settlers / immigrants.
These people were keenly aware of the very simple concept of buying land cheap, getting people to move into an area and selling bits off at a time.
This included George Washington and any one with money; all you had to do is "settle" it. by means of buying it or taking from the Indians.
Not that complicated but not that easy. Boone was a skilled outdoors man and with fearless determination went into the wild. He was not successful in becoming rich during this part of the American land grab but everywhere he went people followed.

The American Myth:
America has had a never ending search for a Mythological beginning the earliest version seems to have begun with J F Cooper's fictional writings about a Boone like character named Hawkeye and his American made Rifle, the later version that sticks is O Wister's The Virginian.
Not sure who The Virginian was modeled after but Natty Bumpo was very Boone like.

Both of these fictional heroes take on the self reliant noble individual that is the ideal the hard working every man of America.