Hanging Maw took the lead in protecting them, and it is at this juncture that Pearl introduces another, romantic thread into the narrative.
The surprising intimacy of life on the frontier, despite a backdrop of violence and mayhem, is encapsulated in the moment the captives were brought to shore, where the Cherokee leader Hanging Maw awaited them: “The fact that he and Jemima already knew each other could mean salvation or death.” The abduction of the three girls took place 10 days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and was a continuation of a struggle over lands west of the Appalachians involving settlers and Native American tribes, as well as politicians and armed forces, both British and American. Native Americans had already issued a brutal warning against settler incursion into the Kentucky region in a 1773 attack that involved the torture and killing of Boone’s son James. The girls were taking a risk by straying from the wooden fortification of Boonesboro that their families - led by Daniel Boone - had carved out of the wilderness only the previous year. Once a popular subject of 19th-century artists and authors, and the inspiration for James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans,” the episode will be less familiar to most 21st-century American readers.Īs Pearl’s narrative opens, 13-year-old Jemima Boone is canoeing on the Kentucky River on an idyllic summer day, along with the two teenage daughters of a fellow settler, Richard Callaway. In “The Taking of Jemima Boone,” the historical mystery author Matthew Pearl makes his nonfiction debut with a factual thriller about the kidnapping of the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone’s daughter Jemima in 1776. THE TAKING OF JEMIMA BOONE Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America By Matthew Pearl
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