Book Review: ‘The Taking of Jemima Boone’ by Matthew Pearl


There is no reason to question that the warriors were treating the girls as best they could under these circumstances, but the rumor that Hanging Mouth was in love with Boone’s daughter appears to be a fiction of all-white settler gossip in consulted published and unpublished sources. Pearl. More revealing are the parallel accounts of captured settlers that Pearl weaves into her narrative to provide historical context, notably the well-known story of Mary Jemison who was abducted with her family in rural Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century and adopted by the Seneca Indians. His biography reveals the inadequacy of the traditional depiction of westward expansion, which includes white victors and convicted Native American insurgents. Jemison provides a window into a frontier world where blurred family lineages and shifting loyalties vanish as white captives are sometimes accepted by tribe members as compensation for relatives lost in border wars.

Pearl painstakingly reconstructs this world of tribes and settlers as they interact in a Kentucky that for a brief moment functions almost as a “common space,” sandwiched between British and American military ambitions. “The Taking of Jemima Boone” is a fascinating story of frontier Kentucky, where, simultaneously with violence and brutality, Native Americans and settlers married, raised interracial offspring, traded, shared survival skills and changed alliances, and all struggled for survival. presents the picture.

Jemima’s rescue takes place less than halfway through the book and recedes into the background as the story moves into the conflict between Daniel Boone and the two men: Shawnee leaders Blackfish and Richard Boone, whose son was presumably killed by Boone during the rescue, competing for the leadership of Boonesboro and then fighting him. Callaway, who will accuse him of trying to sell the fortifications to the British. These conflicts are intertwined with the geopolitical ambitions of Britain and the United States in the War of Independence; As the two nations competed for control of Kentucky, the survival of Boonesboro was seen as crucial to the outcome.

All this is too much for the reader. Pearl opens “The Taking of Jemima Boone” with a quote that a novelist may appeal to her imagination, a historian being “chained to previous records.” But effective historiography is more than just putting facts together, and a novelist’s techniques can and should be used. In his historical mysteries, Pearl deftly introduces the story, taking the reader on the emotional journey of a main character whose private musings move seamlessly between the present and the past. By contrast, “The Taking of Jemima Boone” tends to abruptly introduce the essential historical context into the story, distracting us from the characters and events at hand. Even in the midst of action sequences such as those about Boone chasing three girls, new characters are frequently introduced with their back stories, resulting in a puncture of tension and loss of narrative momentum.

Pearl writes that literary and artistic interpretations of Jemima’s abduction fail to fully capture the “enthusiasm, excitement, and risks” of these original events, in fact telling us that fact is often stranger than fiction. This is true, but the truth is also often much more complex. This is a challenge for historians who want to tell a compelling story, and their problems are compounded if, as Pearl did, they choose a period and events that have fallen out of common knowledge.

An exciting and revealing chapter in the history of America’s westward expansion, the story of Jemima’s abduction deserves to be retold. Pearl resists oversimplifying a history so often presented as a frontier romance, showing us that it plays a role as much about women, children, and Indians as the famous men who make it happen. remembered.



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