In 1778 the Shawnee sentenced a 23-year-old Kentucky scout to burn. He’d been tied to a wild horse, beaten through the gauntlet, and painted black. Then an old friend walked out of the crowd. Simon Kenton couldn’t read or write a word, but the people around him wrote down what he said: a judge by his fireside, a newspaperman, his children, his neighbors. This is his life told through their records. He was a runaway who believed he had taken a man’s life, the scout who carried Daniel Boone back through the gate, a prisoner saved four times, and an old man jailed for debt on land he had given away.
0:00 Machachack, 1778
1:06 I. The Runaway (1755–1771)
2:12 II. Simon Butler (1771–1775)
3:18 III. The Bloody Year (1776–1777)
4:27 IV. Condemned (1778)
6:18 V. Four Rescues (1778)
8:01 VI. The Long Walk (1778–1779)
9:11 VII. Simon Kenton (1779–1783)
9:54 VIII. The Master Spirit (1784–1798)
11:05 IX. The Unfortunate Years (1799–1827)
11:58 X. Hard Service (1827–1836)
The man who pulled him out of the fire: Simon Girty, full documentary: https://youtu.be/AZ1fosxPZS4
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Sources:
– John McDonald, Biographical Sketches of General Simon Kenton (1838), taken down from Kenton in 1830
– Edna Kenton, Simon Kenton: His Life and Period (1930). It prints Kenton’s Manuscript Statement, Judge John H. James’s 1832 notes, and family and neighbor letters from the Draper Manuscripts.
– F. W. Thomas, “A Visit to Simon Kenton, the Old Pioneer,” Cincinnati Mirror (Dec. 7, 1833)
– Simon Kenton, pension memorial to Congress and supporting papers, file S41719 (Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements)
– James B. Finley, Autobiography (1853)
– Further reading: Allan W. Eckert, The Frontiersmen (1967)
Art: public-domain and CC0 works via Wikimedia Commons (credited on screen). Maps drawn from Natural Earth data. Routes are approximate.
#history #americanhistory #frontierhistory #earlyamerica #simonkenton #danielboone
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