Daniel Boone (1964 TV series)

Daniel Boone is an American

An earlier television series based on Daniel Boone appeared on the Walt Disney Presents anthology in 1960, with Dewey Martin as Boone.^[4]

Characters

Main characters

• Daniel Boone – The title character of the series, played by Fess Parker
• Rebecca Boone - Daniel's wife, played by Patricia Blair
• Jemima Boone - Boone's daughter, played by Veronica Cartwright
  (Season 1-2)
• Israel Boone - Boone's son, played by Darby Hinton
• Mingo - Boone's companion and an Oxford-educated half-British Native American - played by Ed Ames (Seasons 1-4)

Recurring characters

• Cincinnatus - The store-keeper and a fixture of Boonsborough village life, played by Dallas McKennon.

Episodes

Background

In contrast, Parker's Boone was less of an explorer and more a family man than Parker's Crockett. Parker as Crockett also generally wore a light beard, whereas his Boone was predominantly clean-shaven. Boone's wife

The series is set in the 1770s and 1780s, just before, during, and after the American Revolution, and mostly centered on fictional adventures in and about Boonesborough, Kentucky. Nearly all of the aspects of the show were less than historically faithful and completely fictional, which at one point led the Kentucky legislature to condemn the inaccuracies. The series' story line does not follow historical events; instead, story lines run back and forth concerning historical events Inconsistencies include episodes such as "The Aaron Burr Story," a second-season episode in which the former Vice President of the United States visits Boonesborough. The episode was based on Burr's raising an armed group, allegedly to commit treason, in 1806. Meanwhile, another episode in the second season hinged on allegations that the Boonesborough settlers were planning insurrection against the British Crown, prior to the American Revolution. Still other episodes took place during the Revolutionary War. No explanation was made for the 30-year discrepancy.

The character Caramingo, shortened to Mingo, was half-Cherokee, but highly educated somewhat in the Tonto mold, but with updated sensibilities and English descent through his father, the fourth Earl of Dunmore. (The 12th Earl now lives in Tasmania, Australia.). (A graduate of Oxford University, Mingo passed as a British officer in at least two episodes, and sang opera in another.) In reality, the Mingo were a small group of natives (and not one man) who were related to the Iroquois.^[8] (However, from the native perspective, mingo is a word for "chief" in the Choctaw native language; in Chickasaw, minko is the word for "chief"). Ames also portrayed Mingo's evil twin brother, Taramingo, in "My Brother's Keeper". His role as Mingo led to a famous tomahawk-throwing demonstration on The Tonight Show, that was rerun on anniversary clip shows for decades afterward, in which Ames threw a tomahawk at a target of a man and the hatchet landed between the cutout's legs, much to host Johnny Carson's amusement;^[9] this incident was later spoofed in a 1980 episode of SCTV.

Mingo's character resembles

Any similarities possibly are coincidental. Boone's character needed an American Indian companion, and as the show was produced in the United States, the character needed to support the rebelling colonists to be believable as Boone's friend. Giving Mingo an education, a better one, incidentally, than Fess Parker's Boone, distanced Mingo from the traditional Western violent, uneducated savage stereotype. If creators were unaware of Moore's Indian Charity School, a British father would have been the easiest way to explain Mingo's background. Status in some Indian tribes is through women. An Indian mother and a British officer father provided status in both worlds. Nothing indicates that Brant was the basis for Mingo, and differences are notable, starting with Brant's stance as a Loyalist, but Mingo closely resembles Brant. (In many ways, having an educated background and a European father was more similar to another Iroquois diplomat, John "Cornplanter" Abeel, the son of a Seneca mother and a Dutch-American father, descended from colonial politician Johannes Abeel.)

One oddity to the show was that Parker's Boone rarely used a horse for transportation. He instead walked to his destinations, sometimes incurring interstate travel.

Production

Parts of the series were filmed in Kane County, Utah.^[10]

Music

The show's main title featured three versions of the theme song written by Vera Matson and Lionel Newman (although the lyrics were written by Ken Darby, credited under the name of his wife Matson).^[11] The third "groovy version" was sung by The Imperials.^[12][13]

Release

Home media

Liberation Entertainment (distributed by Goldhil Home Media) released all six seasons on DVD in Region 1 for the first time between 2006 and 2008.^{[14][15][16][17][18]}

On September 23, 2014,

As of August 2022, Daniel Boone airs on INSP. The series is also occasionally aired on over-the-air broadcast channel Heroes & Icons in weekend binge blocks and FETV.

See also

• List of Daniel Boone episodes
• List of films about the American Revolution
• Cumberland Gap
• Dragging Canoe
• Elizabethton, Tennessee
• Fort Watauga
• Richard Henderson
• Sycamore Shoals
• Transylvania Purchase
• Watauga River
• The Wilderness Road
• Young Dan'l Boone

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Daniel Boone (television series).

• Daniel Boone at
  IMDb
• Daniel Boone TV Series
• Daniel Boone (1960 miniseries) at
  IMDb