Daniel Boone is an American action-adventure television series starring Fess Parker as Daniel Boone that aired from September 24, 1964, to May 7, 1970, on NBC for 165 episodes, and was produced by 20th Century Fox Television, Arcola Enterprises, and Fespar Corp. Ed Ames co-starred as Mingo, Boone s Cherokee friend, for the first four seasons of the series. Albert Salmi portrayed Boone s companion Yadkin in season one only. Country Western singer-actor Jimmy Dean was a featured actor as Josh Clements during the 1968–1970 seasons. Actor and former NFL football player Rosey Grier made regular appearances as Gabe Cooper in the 1969 to 1970 season. The show was broadcast in living color beginning in fall 1965, the second season, and was shot entirely in California and Kanab, Utah. The show was highly fictionalized with very little historical accuracy.

An earlier television series based on Daniel Boone appeared on the Walt Disney Presents anthology in 1960, with Dewey Martin as Boone.

Characters

Main characters

• Daniel Boone – The title character of the series, played by Fess Parker
• Rebecca Boone – Daniel s wife, played by Patricia Blair
• Jemima Boone – Boone s daughter, played by Veronica Cartwright (Season 1-2)
• Israel Boone – Boone s son, played by Darby Hinton
• Mingo – Boone s companion and an Oxford-educated half-British Native American – played by Ed Ames (Seasons 1-4)

Recurring characters

• Cincinnatus – The store-keeper and a fixture of Boonsborough village life, played by Dallas McKennon.

Episodes

Season	Episodes		Originally aired		Color	DVD release date
			First aired	Last aired
1	29		September 24, 1964	April 29, 1965	Black & White	September 26, 2006
2	30		September 16, 1965	April 21, 1966	Color	September 26, 2006
3	28		September 15, 1966	April 13, 1967	Color	May 8, 2007
4	26		September 14, 1967	April 4, 1968	Color	June 19, 2007
5	26		September 19, 1968	May 1, 1969	Color	August 7, 2007
6	26		September 18, 1969	May 7, 1970	Color	November 18, 2008

Background

Daniel Boone was one of two significant historical figures played by Fess Parker. He previously appeared as Davy Crockett in a series of episodes of the Walt Disney anthology television series, to considerable acclaim amid the launch of a national craze. For his role as Boone, which lasted much longer, but had far less impact, Parker again wore a coonskin cap, which had been popularized years earlier by the Crockett shows. Daniel Boone s headgear was even mentioned in the show s theme song: From the coonskin cap on the top of ol Dan…. . Efforts had been made to secure the rights to Crockett from Walt Disney, but Disney refused to sell, so the series wound up being about Boone instead.

In contrast, Parker s Boone was less of an explorer and more a family man than Parker s Crockett. Parker as Crockett also generally wore a light beard, whereas his Boone was predominantly clean-shaven. Boone s wife Rebecca (played by Patricia Blair) and son Israel (Darby Hinton) were often featured in the stories. In reality, Boone had 10 children. During the first two seasons, his daughter Jemima was shown (played by Veronica Cartwright), but she disappeared with no explanation toward the end of the second season. Western actor Chris Alcaide appeared twice on the series, once as an Indian, Flathead Joseph. Walter Coy made his last major television appearance in 1970 on Daniel Boone in the role of Chief Blackfish. Rico Alaniz played the Indian Crooked Hand in the 1969 episode The Allies . Med Flory was cast in seven episodes, the last three in the role of the drifter Bingen.

The series is set in the 1770s and 1780s, just before, during, and after the American Revolution, and mostly centered on adventures in and about Boonesborough, Kentucky. Some aspects of the show were less than historically faithful, which at one point led the Kentucky legislature to condemn the inaccuracies. The series story line does not follow historical events; instead, story lines run back and forth concerning historical events .

Inconsistencies include episodes such as The Aaron Burr Story, a second-season episode in which the former Vice President of the United States visits Boonesborough. The episode was based on Burr s raising an armed group, allegedly to commit treason, in 1806. Meanwhile, another episode in the second season hinged on allegations that the Boonesborough settlers were planning insurrection against the British Crown, prior to the American Revolution. Still other episodes took place during the Revolutionary War. No explanation was made for the 30-year discrepancy.

The character Caramingo, shortened to Mingo, was half-Cherokee, but highly educated somewhat in the Tonto mold, but with updated sensibilities and English descent through his father, the fourth Earl of Dunmore. (The 12th Earl now lives in Tasmania, Australia.). (A graduate of Oxford University, Mingo passed as a British officer in at least two episodes, and sang opera in another.) In reality, the Mingo were a small group of natives (and not one man) who were related to the Iroquois. (However, from the native perspective, mingo is a word for chief in the Choctaw native language; in Chickasaw, minko is the word for chief ). Ames also portrayed Mingo s evil twin brother, Taramingo, in My Brother s Keeper . His role as Mingo led to a famous tomahawk-throwing demonstration on The Tonight Show, that was rerun on anniversary clip shows for decades afterward, in which Ames threw a tomahawk at a target of a man and the hatchet landed between the cutout s legs, much to host Johnny Carson s amusement; this incident was later spoofed in a 1980 episode of SCTV.

Mingo s character resembles Joseph Brant; Brant was a Mohawk Indian, who became a captain in the British Army. His sister, Molly, was the consort of Sir William Johnson, of Johnstown, Montgomery County, New York. Johnson took an interest in Molly s younger brother, acting as a surrogate father, and sent him to Moore s Indian Charity School, the precursor to Dartmouth College. Brant was, therefore, well educated for men of his time, and exceptionally well educated for a Mohawk. A project in later years was to work on a Mohawk translation of the Bible. Brant s parents were both American Indians, unlike Mingo. Brant, despite his role in the American Revolution, is largely unknown outside Central New York, although he is a national hero in Canada. In Ontario, along Lake Ontario s shores, between Toronto and Niagara Falls, a town and hospital are named after him. A replica of his Canadian home is located next to Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital.

Any similarities possibly are coincidental. Boone s character needed an American Indian companion, and as the show was produced in the United States, the character needed to support the rebelling colonists to be believable as Boone s friend. Giving Mingo an education, a better one, incidentally, than Fess Parker s Boone, distanced Mingo from the traditional Western violent, uneducated savage stereotype. If creators were unaware of Moore s Indian Charity School, a British father would have been the easiest way to explain Mingo s background. Status in some Indian tribes is through women. An Indian mother and a British officer father provided status in both worlds. Nothing indicates that Brant was the basis for Mingo, and differences are notable, starting with Brant s stance as a Loyalist, but Mingo closely resembles Brant. (In many ways, having an educated background and a European father was more similar to another Iroquois diplomat, John Cornplanter Abeel, the son of a Seneca mother and a Dutch-American father, descended from colonial politician Johannes Abeel.)

One oddity to the show was that Parker s Boone rarely used a horse for transportation. He instead walked to his destinations, sometimes incurring interstate travel.

Production

Parts of the series were filmed in Kane County, Utah.

Music

The show s main title featured three versions of the theme song written by Vera Matson and Lionel Newman (although the lyrics were written by Ken Darby, credited under the name of his wife Matson). The third groovy version was sung by The Imperials.

Release

Home media

Liberation Entertainment (distributed by Goldhil Home Media) released all six seasons on DVD in Region 1 for the first time between 2006 and 2008.

On September 23, 2014, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released Daniel Boone- The Complete Series: 50th Anniversary Collector s Edition on DVD in Region 1 via amazon.com s CreateSpace program. This is a manufacture-on-demand release, available exclusively through amazon.com.

On January 8, 2016, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series in Region 1. They have subsequently released new collector s editions of the first five seasons on DVD. The sixth and final season will be re-released on December 19, 2017.

dvd name	Ep #	Release date
Season One	13	September 26, 2006 April 19, 2016 (re-release)
Season Two	22	September 26, 2006 July 19, 2016 (re-release)
Season Three	20	May 8, 2007 January 24, 2017 (re-release)
Season Four	26	June 19, 2007 March 14, 2017 (re-release)
Season Five	23	August 7, 2007 May 2, 2017 (re-release)
Season Six	23	November 18, 2008 December 19, 2017 (re-release)
The Complete Series	103	September 23, 2014

Syndication

As of August 2022, Daniel Boone airs on INSP. The series is also occasionally aired on over-the-air broadcast channels Heroes & Icons and Decades in weekend binge blocks.

Year	1964
ReleaseDate	1964-09-24
Plot	Frontier hero Daniel Boone conducts surveys and expeditions around Boonesborough, running into both friendly and hostile Indians, before, during, and even after the Revolutionary War.
Awards	Awards, 1 nomination
Stars	Fess Parker, Patricia Blair, Darby Hinton
Series Produced by	Aaron Rosenberg,Joseph Silver,Barney Rosenzweig,George Sherman,Bernard Wiesen,Ted Schilz,Paul King,Cliff Bole,Vincent M. Fennelly,Herman Groves,James Schmerer,Jules Schermer,Fess Parker
Series Music by	Alexander Courage,Irving Gertz,Joseph Mullendore,Fred Steiner,Leith Stevens,Lyn Murray,Harry Geller,Cyril J. Mockridge,Herman Stein,Leigh Harline,Harry Sukman,Lionel Newman,Morton Stevens,Robert Drasnin,Arthur Morton,Van Cleave,Paul Sawtell,Lennie Hayton,George Duning,Jack Elliott,Robert Prince
Series Cinematography by	Jack Swain,Carl E. Guthrie,Paul Ivano,Charles G. Clarke,Dale Deverman
Series Film Editing by	Harry Coswick,Otto Ludwig,Lester Orlebeck,Norman Colbert,Orven Schanzer,Pembroke J. Herring,M. Pam Blumenthal,Jack Gleason,Jerry London,Thomas Scott,Robert Fritch,Robert L. Simpson,Louis R. Loeffler,Marsh Hendry,Victor Lewis,Russell F. Schoengarth
Series Casting By	Ross Brown
Series Art Direction by	Jack Martin Smith,John M. Elliott,Jack Senter
Series Set Decoration by	Walter M. Scott,Frank Wade,James Cane,Robert De Vestel,William F. Calvert
Series Makeup Department	Margaret Donovan,Ben Nye
Series Production Management	William Self,Jack Sonntag,Ted Schilz,Samuel E. Beetley,Gaston Glass
Series Second Unit Director or Assistant Director	Marty Moss,Jack Lannan,Ray DeCamp,Fred R. Simpson,Ted Schilz,Marvin Stuart,Jack Gertsman,George Marshall Jr.,Steven Bernhardt,John G. Behm,Joseph C. Behm
Series Art Department	Craig Binkley
Series Sound Department	Ralph Hickey,Edward Rossi,Ronald V. Ashcroft,Terrance Emerson
Series Stunts	Gary Kent,Ted White,Sol Gorss,Jack Perkins,Fred Carson,Charles Horvath,Roy Jenson,David Perna,Paul Stader
Series Camera and Electrical Department	Ronald Vidor,Cliff Concialdi
Series Editorial Department	Robert Mintz
Series Music Department	Lionel Newman,Vera Matson,Leonard A. Engel,George Korngold,Aubrey C. Lind,Leith Stevens,Alexander Courage,Irving Gertz,Helen Miller
Series Transportation Department	Chris Haynes,Frank Khoury
Series Additional Crew	David Humphreys Miller,Ted Schilz,Joseph Silver,Rick Husky,James Schmerer,Thomas Scott,Robert Mintz,Merwin Gerard,Dick Nelson,Herman Groves,David Silver,Robert D Arcy,John Dako,Jean Hampton,Garson Citron,John Fritz,Lars Hensen,Edwin Rochelle
Genres	Adventure, Western
Companies	Arcola Pictures
ContentRating	TV-PG
ImDbRating	7.3
ImDbRatingVotes	2077
Keywords	red head,redhead,redhead girl,redheaded woman,native american white relationships