The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America by Matthew PearlRead about the other entries on the list.
Matthew Pearl’s “The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America” is not directly focused on the Revolution but on an event that occurred during that time: the 1776 kidnapping of the daughter of famed frontiersman Daniel Boone by Cherokee and Shawnee raiders. Though the book’s subtitle overstates its case, the highly readable account, written with the flair one would expect of a novelist, tells a dramatic story while also elucidating the complicated relationships among Native Americans, Colonial settlers, and British Loyalists.
While there had long been violent clashes surrounding Colonial incursion on Native land, Hanging Maw, the Cherokee leader behind the kidnapping, was “a political rather than military operative,” Pearl writes. His hope was for Jemima and the two friends seized with her to “be held hostage to negotiate terms for the invaders to retreat from Boonesboro,” the Kentucky settlement founded by Jemima’s father. That hope was dashed when Boone’s rescue party recovered the girls days later; in any case, and contrary to Pearl’s suggestion, it would surely have taken more than a successful kidnapping plot to halt America’s relentless westward push.
--Marshal Zeringue
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