The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America

I've been meaning to read Matthew Pearl's book The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped American (#1,349) for quite some time.  I'm only just now getting around to it, but the timing has proven to be perfect, since we are also watching Ken Burns' The American Revolution on television.  I've been amazed at how the stories dovetail.  It's all part of the arc of the American imperative for western expansion and the European politics which aimed to limit that growth with both sides using the native Indians to further their own purposes.

Jemima Boone was close to her legendary father Daniel Boone who never met a boundary he didn't want to push.  He had brought his family to Boonesboro in Kentucky despite warnings from both the British authorities and the Indians themselves, who understood that Kentucky was part of their sacred hunting grounds as set apart by the British monarch.  Neither stricture made much of an impression on Daniel.  Jemima and two other daughters of the fort's other leader were captured from their canoe in plain sight of the settlement in July of 1776.  When the Indian leader of the expedition recognized Jemima as Daniel Boone's daughter, his prize became even more valuable as a bargaining chip.  It set off a series of events which influenced the very outcome of the American Revolution itself and the trajectory of new nation in its greed for new territory.

Pearl's background as a historical novelist infuses this non-fiction work with all the page-turning suspense of those thrillers as he explores a little-known aspect of our common history.