Over the years, such notables as Lyman Draper, Reuben Gold Thwaites, Lucile Gulliver, John Bakeless, John Mack Faragher, and Meredith Mason Brown, to name some, have crafted compelling biographies of Daniel Boone. Born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, myself, and introduced to the numerous sites related to Boone’s life in central Kentucky as a boy, I, too, became enamored with his story.

So much of my understanding of Daniel Boone’s life was derived from reading and re-reading Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness by John Bakeless, published in 1939 (mine was the Stackpole edition published in 1965), a book I treasure to this day. My own fascination with Daniel Boone’s story I poured into the two-hour documentary I produced for public television, in 2014,“Daniel Boone and the Opening of the American West.”

Book cover of 'Blood and Treasure--Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier'
It seems almost every generation since the late Nineteenth Century has had its own Boone biography. Meredith Mason Brown (no relation) published the last one in 2002.

Now, we have a new one: Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. Drury and Clavin are the authors of the best-selling books Valley Forge, The Heart of Everything That Is, Halsey’s Typhoon, and many others.

I must confess, I was skeptical of Blood and Treasure when I was presented with a review copy. With so many biographies to choose from, did readers need yet another book about Daniel Boone?

As I began reading Drury’s and Clavin’s work, at first, I felt that my skepticism was justified. Blood and Treasure begins with a graphic description of the horrific killing of Daniel Boone’s oldest son, James, and young Henry Russell on the Virginia frontier in October 1773 at the hands of a Shawnee warrior named Big Jim, whom the Boone’s had befriended –and entertained at their home– not long before.

The authors then go back in time to relate the story of the Boone family in Pennsylvania, Daniel’s birth and early childhood, and the Boones’ subsequent long migration up the Shenandoah Valley to, eventually, the Yadkin River Valley in North Carolina. Once Daniel Boone is grown, the authors describe his service as a wagoner on General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated expedition to the Forks of the Ohio River, his meeting with John Findlay, and his eventual return home and marriage to Rebecca Bryan. They convey in wonderful detail Boone’s early hunting expeditions and explorations of what is now Kentucky, particularly the remarkable expedition into the level plain of Kentucky along with Findlay.

But then, in what at first appears as an unrelated thread, the authors provide chapters about the Native American tribes in the territory of what is now Ohio; the Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, Wyandot, and Miami, among others, and, in what is now eastern Tennessee and north Georgia, the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw.

Native peoples of the Northwest Territory, 1792
Native peoples of the Northwest Territory, 1792
Those tribes’ brutal wars with other Native American tribes as well as their migrations are described in great detail for the reader. Chapters are even devoted to Chief Pontiac and his rebellion, the Iroquois Confederacy, and Sir William Johnson in New York, fascinating stories in and of themselves. I thought while reading those chapters that, perhaps, the authors may have been too ambitious, because I lost Daniel Boone in the extensive narratives. They soon proved me wrong, however, as those chapters provide a key to understanding the “Fight for America’s First Frontier.”

As Blood and Treasure returned to those familiar scenes of Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner warning surveyors of the outbreak of Lord Dunmore’s War against mostly the Mingo and Shawnee tribes north of the Ohio River, the Treaty-signing with the Cherokee at Sycamore Shoals in present-day eastern Tennessee, Boone’s efforts to open what became known as the Wilderness Road, and the settlement of and later the nine-day siege of Boonesboro, I felt that I had been given by the authors the key to understanding the context in which such events took place. The earlier chapters provided a much needed tutorial on the complexity of the Native Americans’ experience in the years leading up to King George III’s Proclamation of 1763 and the eventual American Revolution, fought, in part, to nullify that royal edict.

Those scattered, disunified tribes of Native Americans fought brutal wars against one another. Their migrations were so frequent and vast that they were, in reality, no more native to the regions they defended than their white enemies. Although the unification of all the tribes to confront their enemies was feared by the white settlers more than anything, it was never realized because of the tribes’ past rivalries and bloody conflicts. Even where alliances existed between some tribes, the alliances failed to resist the onward push of settlements.

The authors’ extensive efforts give crucial context to why Boone’s years in Kentucky were, at almost every stage, lived in the constant backdrop of “Indian troubles,” some leading to the brutal killing, dismembering, and scalping of Boone’s younger brother, Edward, and the ghastly scenes of death at the Battle of Blue Licks, where Boone’s second son, Israel, was felled by gunshots and then mutilated with an axe and scalping knife as his father watched from afar.

Written on border: "Kentucky pioneers defeated Aug. 19, 1782 by Indians & Canadians [i.e. British]." Source: Heroes and hunters of the West : comprising sketches and adventures of Boone, Kenton, Brady, Logan, Whetzel, Fleehart, Hughes, Johnston, etc. (Philadelphia : H. C. Peck Theo. Bliss, 1859).
Written on border: “Kentucky pioneers defeated Aug. 19, 1782 by Indians & Canadians [i.e. British].” Source: ‘Heroes and hunters of the West : comprising sketches and adventures of Boone, Kenton, Brady, Logan, Whetzel, Fleehart, Hughes, Johnston, etc.’ (Philadelphia : H. C. Peck Theo. Bliss, 1859).
The book ends with the fates—some ignominious—of many of the actors in the drama that was Daniel Boone’s life. The authors aptly point out that the deaths among those who settled lands west of the Appalachians during the Revolutionary War were far greater than among those who fought as rebels in the east. Yet, for those who fought in the Revolution west of the Appalachians, the killing continued in “America’s First Frontier” well after the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

There were armed operations against Shawnee villages in present day Ohio. At an attack against one village along the Mad River, Boone witnessed the killing by Simon Kenton of none other than Big Jim, the warrior who killed Boone’s first son, James, thirteen years before. There too, he witnessed the Shawnee chief, Black Hoof, brutally felled with an axe wielded by Hugh McGary, the very man whose intemperance led to the Kentuckians, after dismissing Boone’s cautions, to cross the Licking River and march into a deadly crossfire of the Indians and their British provincial allies, Butler’s Rangers, at Blue Licks.

Boone, the authors aptly assert, was never able to realize his dream of living out his life with his family in Kentucky, the land he had sacrificed so much for himself and family, and countless others, to hold. He lost most of his lands to better claims and claimants, and, in the end, faced so much debt that he finally packed up his wife and followed his sons to present day Missouri, settling lands that were then completely outside the United States. During his lifetime, Boone would never be recognized for his efforts for Kentucky by Kentuckians.

Blood and Treasure is a splendid book, well-researched and beautifully written, by two very fine authors. I heartily recommend it.

An in depth look into the life of Daniel Boone. Times were very hard; it was each man for himself.
I learned things I did not know.
The book is very interesting and informative and great for history buffs and people wanting to know more about the frontier life.


I was given a complimentary copy of this book.
All opinions expressed are my own.

Blood and Treasure does an awesome job of separating the fact from the myths when talking about Daniel Boone. And as a Kentucky with ancestry ties to North Carolina I knew I had to read this one. I was not disappointed. And as a reader and lover history especially Kentucky history I learned even more about the history. Though I have to warn readers that some facts are reviled in this book that might cause readers to look at Boone and his family in a different light. Especially facts about Jemmia Boone which most scholars agree was the child most like him.

This was a fantastic book. I feel I’ve learned a lot from reading this. I had heard the name Danial Boone before from movies, etc. but this really introduced me to a historical figure I’m surprised I didn’t know more about. Boone didn’t have an easy life. It just mystifies me how brutal man can be to man. Very well written.

Well researched, highly detailed book that provides the reader with both American history in a more general sense and looks into a legendary American figure, in Daniel Boone. I appreciated the author's effort to educate the reader on fact from fiction, as the tales of Boone have crossed the generations. This book is geared to history lovers, as it is not a light read filled with tall tales.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC of this book in return for my honest review, and sorry to both for taking so long to get around to reading and reviewing the book.
A very good book, but at times a bit tedious as authors tried to use unnecessarily obtuse wording. Well researched and brought to the fore a lot of facts and stories that one never learns about Daniel Boone who is one of our lesser known early American folk heroes. This book also does a fine job in telling those early frontier wars between settlers, British, French and American Indians. A book I recommend to all lovers of history, but for the casual reader it certainly is not as readable as those History books by H.W. Brands. For my full review follow me at www.viewsonbooks.com

This the true story of Daniel Boone and his place in the history of the fight to expand America West. This tells the true version on Daniel Boone, not the characterization that has been put out there and told and retold. Have you ever wondered about some of the tales, well this book will set them all straight. Sometimes the true is stranger than fiction.

loved getting to learn about the real Daniel Boone, you always hear the legends so it was nice to learn about the real man. It was a great read and I really enjoyed going through this book.

I had thought this was going to be more of a biography of Daniel Boone, but it was more a general history of the time he was alive.

Blood and Treasure is one of my favorite books of 2021. An excellent source on the early American frontier, Blood and Treasure follows the life and adventures of Daniel Boone, viewing many events during early America, especially the conflicts of the Native Americans, during the period leading up to the American Revolution. Drury and Clavin bring new life to Daniel Boone and a rich layer of depth to a character who is largely a myth and legend in American history. The depth of their research is evident in the level of detail included in their descriptions of the frontier conflicts, highlighting the important players on all sides - British, American rebels, frontiersmen, and the various Native American tribes. Drury and Clavin also have a very strong sense of American geography at this time, much of which was unknown to me prior to reading this book. Blood and Treasure is a true American treasure, a historical book that should be read by all Americans who desire to know more about the American frontier, and a great resource of American narrative history.

Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America's First Frontier was a fascinating read. Five stars.

Blood and Treasure is an excellent look at the life of Daniel Boone on the frontier, a vivid, fully wrought account of the man (as opposed to the myth) and his intersection with major events of the time, such as the war between France and Britain, the opening of America’s first frontier to settling, and the American Revolution. While the authors cover his childhood/youth, and very briefly recap post-Revolution years, the focus is on the middle decades of his life.

Two strengths of the text stand out: its sharply realized depiction of frontier life and the way in which the authors take the time to lay out the events of Boone’s life in a greater context of history, culture, politics, and more. Both make their appearance immediately felt as the authors open with a jolt: “Daniel Boone was too far away to hear his oldest boy’s screams as the tall Indian tore out the sixteen-year-olds fingernails one by one.” After conveying the horrific scene in a few more pages of detail, the authors place it in the larger context of how “From nearly the first moment European emigrants set foot on the New World’s fatal shores, white men and red men had engaged in constant, bloody, and usually one-sided combat … By the time Daniel Boone and his migrating pioneers were preparing for their journey into Kentucky, Native American tribes … were being swept from their ancestral lands [in a] slow motion genocide.”

Thus the pattern is set for the text going forward: an immersive moment-to-moment conveyance of singular events (Boone rescuing a girl captured by Indians, Boone escaping his own lengthy captivity, a bloody fight outside a besieged stockade) interspersed with delvings into the various alliances and conflicts amongst/between Native American groups, between Native Americans and Americans/Europeans, between Americans and Europeans, and between Europeans. The authors do an excellent job of showing multiple points of view on events, nor do they oversimplify by presenting group views as monolithic. For instance, instead of pretending “Native Americans” had a singular view at a particular time, the authors offer up a more complex and more accurate explanation of how those Native American views depended upon particular tribes (or subsets of tribes) and even then sometimes changed depending on the most recent events. The authors also take their time with this context, moving as far back in time as needed and detailing the important figures and how they became important.

The level of contextual detail also means beyond a fuller view of Native Americans, Americans will also get a better, more full sense of the Revolutionary War, which when covered in school rarely travels so far west. For instance, the authors note how more lives were lost in the frontier during the War than in the better-known battle areas. Some readers may, admittedly, wish for a little less detail when it comes to the fight scenes. The authors do not shy away in the slightest from the brutality of the time period, and they are careful as well to show how that brutality occurred on both sides: torture, massacres, mutilation, slaughtering of women and children. There is no romanticism of the west here.

As for the main focus, Daniel Boon comes wonderfully alive here, whether it be as a hunter, an Indian fighter (a sobriquet he “despised”), a grieving father, a failed businessman, a land speculator, a respected figure, a mistrusted figure, a captive (several times), a war hero, a man ambivalent about the Revolution, a man who killed Indians but also greatly respected them and had excellent relations with many. The authors dispel some myths (no coonskin cap, for instance, he preferred a hat that made him look taller), but also take pains to note that while “some would attempt to deconstruct the myth of Daniel Boone as merely a creation of his early biographers … his lifetime of adventures and achievements were very much real.”

It’s hard to imagine a better book to make that clear. Compelling, exciting, detailed, informative, an excellent work of depth and breadth, Blood and Treasure is a fantastic work of historical non-fiction and highly recommended.

Daniel Boone - now there is a name that is legendary! What do you know about him? How much of what you know is fact versus how much is fiction? Born in Pennsylvania, trekked to North Carolina with his father, he is known for trailblazing a path to Kentucky and settling that state while fighting Native Americans during the American Revolution. But those facts do not tell the whole story.

Bob Drury and Tom Clavin provide an interesting biography of Daniel Boone in relation to the crossing the Appalachian Mountains, settling Kentucky, and the course of the American Revolution on the far western frontier. They divide his life into four parts - The Frontier, The Explorers, The Settlers, and The Conquest. The Frontier covers Boone's early life, his move to North Carolina, his involvement with the Braddock disaster during the French and Indian War, his marriage, and his first ventures across the mountains. The Explorers includes the Pontiac Indian War, the Royal Proclamation regarding settlers, Boone and party finding the Cumberland Gap, and early experiences trapping and exploring Kentucky. The Settlers discusses Lord Dunmore's War, Logan's Lament, Boone and company moving across the mountains and the early settling of Kentucky with the kidnapping of his daughter, Jemina Boone, and two Callawy girls amidst rounds of assaults on white settlements. The Conquest opens with the capture of Daniel Boone by the Shawnee, his escape to warn settlers of the British and Indians' forthcoming attack, his service as legislator in the Virginia House of Burgesses, his role in the Blue Lick disaster, and his later life.

In Blood and Treasure, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin provide the reader a life of Daniel Boone that is sympathetic without being a hero-worshiping hack job. Boone is shown in context of events rather than being an isolated life. The reader finishes Blood and Treasure more knowledgeable of the settling of the "West" and the surrounding events then in many other Boone biographies.

This is a good historical read. Not sure who the intended audience is that author is trying to reach.. However, the vocabulary is somewhat exclusionary unless reader is well educated.

The book is overall interesting. I was expecting more on the life of Daniel Boone. It is an excellent book int he historical events on the opening of the Western Frontier.

Thank you #NetGalley, #St.Martin’sPress, #BobDrury and #TomCalvin for the advance reader’s copy for my honest review.

This book is as much about Daniel Boone as it is 18th century American history and how "Americans" came to fight and claim this land. This is written more like a history textbook that uses Boone's life as the through line to tie all of these violent acts together. I went in expecting more of a biography of Boone (which they do reference John Mack Faragher’s biography of Boone), but I got more of a biography of the American frontier during Boone's life.

Content Warning: This book covers the violence between Native Americans and white settlers and the violence that both sides performed against one another.

Enjoyed reading “Blood and Treasure.” If one likes to read about America’s history then grab this book. A lot of the material was familiar to me but it’s never boring to read about legends from our past.

Daniel Boone’s story is legendary, but few of us know any of the particulars of his life and achievements, beyond the forging of the Cumberland Gap. When I saw this book, I leapt at the chance to read it. My thanks go to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Boone’s life is often held up as a testament to what an individual can accomplish if he is hardworking and determined; yet though he was both of those things, this bit of lore is also partly myth. Boone is born into a well-to-do family, pioneers to be certain, but not ones forced to build fortunes from scratch. After parting ways with the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the family moves south. Daniel is in love with the wilderness, and his physical strength, health, and stamina, combined with courage, resourcefulness, and a capacity to think on his feet make him a natural born explorer. He is an excellent hunter, and so he makes his living by selling animal pelts; also, it turns out that bears are delicious. (Sorry, Smokey.) But as others move westward, the game begins to dry up, and so he moves further westward than anybody else.

Boone is renowned as an Indian fighter, but the truth is complicated, and it’s political. There were a great many tribes involved, and often as not they were enemies with one another, at least in the beginning. In some cases, land was sold by a tribe that actually had no claim to it in the first place. This explodes the notion taught to us as children, that the Native peoples found the notion of selling land incomprehensible because of its sacredness; we see one tribe for whom this is true, but there were plenty of instances where a treaty was knowingly made, yet other factors also made it unenforceable. Most of all, Caucasian Americans failed to understand the lack of a top down decision-making structure within the tribes, and so often a chief or other leader would sign, but others within his tribe weren’t bound by his individual decision.

Then too, there’s the little matter of the American Revolution. Alliances are constantly made and broken, involving the British, French, Spanish, and Patriots. At one point, Boone loses his considerable acreage because his land is granted him by the Spanish, but the Louisiana Purchase renders his title null and void.

But it is the detailed recounting of Boone’s explorations (almost never alone, except in an emergency, so there goes the myth of the rugged individual) that makes this book fascinating. The scrapes he gets into, and how he gets out of them; the harrowing fates that befall those around him. He is captured and escapes multiple times. And although the women in his life get little ink, my heart goes out to Rebecca, his wife, who is left alone with the younger children for months and months on end, often without any idea as to where his travels have taken him, and whether he’s coming back. There are so many ways to die out there, and it’s not like anyone can send her a telegram to let her know if everyone is killed. At one point, she gives him up for dead, and when he finally shows up, she is pregnant, and the baby cannot be his! She tells him that she believed herself a widow, and so she turned to his brother; Boone decides this is understandable, since that’s pretty much what widows are expected to do, and since his brother looks like him, it won’t be obvious to others that he isn’t the father.

Even more interesting, however, is his daughter, Jemima. Her strength and cunning in dangerous circumstances—particularly when she is kidnapped and plays a part in her own rescue—make me wish she had her own biography. Were gender roles not so restrictive, she would have made an outstanding lieutenant, and perhaps successor to her father.

I initially didn’t believe I could give this work a five star rating, because the sources provided aren’t well integrated, and Clavin has relied tremendously on one source, a biography written long ago by Draper. But after I read the endnotes, I realized that even if he had been merely rewriting Draper’s book for a modern audience, it would be a great service. The social and political perspectives dominant when Draper’s book was written would make most of us blanch today, particularly with regard to race and gender, and yet, Draper did a masterful job with research, extensively reviewing Boone’s family and others still living at the time. I came away convinced that Clavin knows his subject well, and though I taught American history and government for decades, I learned a great deal from this one nifty book.

Highly recommended.

So, I think pretty much everyone alive has heard of Daniel Boone. The name is so iconic that it has continued to resonate through the ages over 100 years after his death. That said it has become painfully obvious to me after reading this book that there is so much that I didn’t know. This whole story is fascinating, from the Boone family’s early days where young Daniel wandered the wilderness perfecting his skills as a tracker to his time spent as a somewhat unwilling Indian captive. He had such a remarkable life and it’s quite amazing to me that he lived to be 85! This book also covers the early years of a fledging United States of America. If there is one critique it is that there is so much information in the book that it almost becomes overwhelming. A really interesting look into a fascinating person in the history of our infant nation. Review posted to Goodreads, Litsy, Amazon and LibraryThing.

We know the legend of Daniel Boone, but do you know his entire story? The real man?
Bob Drury takes us through the life and times of Daniel Boone - his struggles, family life, ups and downs, and so much more.
We don't hear about the hard times that he went through, or the stain that was sometimes fixed to his name. This book takes you through his entire life - from birth, the deaths of some of his children, ups and downs with the native tribes, and his eventual death.

Overall, I loved this book! It was full of great information, and some of it I was not aware of. I found this to be one of those books that you want to add to your research shelf, for future perusing and use.

For lovers of history, this is one that you don't want to miss!