Amateur Archaeology and the Mystery of Daniel Boone’s Footprints: Persistent Myths Collide with Native American Indian Archaeology

Upon discovering that his farm in central Kentucky was once occupied by Native American Indians, the author unknowingly began a time journey that would lead directly to Daniel Boone. The journey would take him to not only where Boone traveled in Kentucky, but to exactly where the famous explorer’s feet touched the ground and to the discovery that Boone’s feet were certainly not the first. Daniel Boone was a legendary trailblazer, hunter, teacher and Indian figure; he also discovered in Kentucky a vast network of highways, roads, paths, trails and traces which were omitted in the voluminous Boone narrative written during and after his life. Though mentioned briefly in passage of Boone history, the explorer himself never wrote of the vast infrastructure already in place upon his arrival. He eventually concludes that almost every ancient path ever created in Kentucky is still safely in place, though often disguised and will require a vast assortment of tools to re-discover and map. If completed, the resulting map of Kentucky’s ancient infrastructure would shed new light on Daniel Boone and other early explorers and pioneer settlers of Kentucky, the roughly 12,000-year Bison migration routes in the Central Bluegrass, and the Native American presence in Mercer County. This would allow for a fuller understanding of today’s historic era societal and physical infrastructure and its 250-year history in Kentucky. These are the foci of this research.