These days, we’re having to take a second look at American heroes. Daniel Boone is no different. He accomplished some great things. He blazed a trail into the West for a young country and helped make “manifest destiny” possible—along with all the negatives associated with that. (There were already people there, y’know.) But that’s not really germane to our present subject.
Along with Teddy Roosevelt, Boone represents a credible, respected witness to a Bigfoot encounter. From the book DANIEL BOONE: THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF AN AMERICAN PIONEER by John Mack Faragher: “After the meal one of the men asks Boone for a story, and he begins a tale but is interrupted by a man who claims that his story is ‘impossible.’ With this remark Boone shuts up and despite urgings that he continue, he refuses to speak further. Later that evening, when he has retired to the room he shares with the son of the tavern keeper, the boy asks him about his silence. ‘I dislike to be in a crowd’ Boone explains, and ‘would not have opened my lips had that man remained.’ Well, we are alone now, says the boy, and he presses the old man to tell the story. ‘You shall have it, honey’ says Boone, who has taken a fancy to him, and proceeds to tell of killing a ten foot, hairy giant he called a ‘Yahoo.’ The Yahoos were giant beasts in human shape from Boone’s favorite book, Gulliver’s Travels.” It bears mentioning that the Yahoos of GULLIVER’S TRAVELS were gigantic hairy humanoids, so the name would be fitting for a Bigfoot.