The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen

Across thousands of brutal, untamed miles..

...a different breed of founding fathers

fight a revolution...all their own.

Fire!

For more than 70 years..

...they push into the unknown.

...driven by the hope that this vast land

holds a fortune that could be theirs..

...if...they survive.

They fight for a dream..

...to transform a wilderness into a nation..

...the United States of America.

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Deep in the vast, uncharted wilderness

known as the Kentucky Territory

Daniel Boone is running for his life.

He's spent the last two years here

hunting and fur trapping

but he's on land claimed by the Shawnee Tribe.

And now, their warriors are hunting him.

By the early 1770s

only a handful of non-natives have dared

to venture this far west.

Those that do find both danger...and opportunity.

The allure of the frontier is it's a place

where people who have nothing

could go and make a lot of money

trapping beaver and river otter

and hunting for deer hides.

Our term today, like, when you say a dollar or a buck

a buck comes from the value of a deer hide.

At the same time, you're in constant danger

of being killed.

And there's always a very good chance

that you could fail catastrophically.

Boone's lucky to be alive

but every pelt he planned to sell

to feed his family is gone

and he returns home to North Carolina in debt.

In 1773, North Carolina

is one of 13 British colonies

ruled by King George III.

Ten years earlier, he made it illegal for colonists

to permanently settle west of the Appalachians

though hunting was permitted.

That area is home to over two million Native Americans

from over 300 competing tribes.

And Britain wants no trouble with them.

The crown's restriction

infuriates colonists eager for land.

And it doesn't stop men

like North Carolina judge

Richard Henderson.

He's just bought 20 million acres

nearly the whole area of modern Kentucky.

He plans to profit by selling it to settlers

and he doesn't care what law he breaks

or if it's claimed by Native American tribes.

I think people were tired

of constant rules and regulations.

Americans wanted to strike it rich.

They wanted, uh, to make a killing

in land and real estate.

The American frontier always meant dollar signs.

Some of the great famous names of the American Revolution

Ben Franklin, George Washington

were engaged in buying up land in the West.

But you still have, of course, the Native American tribes

who were not about to just accept

all these Americans flooding over the Appalachian Mountains.

If Henderson's going to settle his land

he needs to find someone brave enough to lead the way.

And by sheer coincidence

he's about to meet him.

'Mr. Boone promised to settle his debt'

as soon as he returned, and yet here he is

refusing to make good on his promise.

After his recent disastrous hunting trip

Boone is facing debtor's prison.

Your Honor, I have every intention of settling my debts.

When Boone returned from two years in the wilderness

he was poorer than when he set out.

There are tribes all over Kentucky.

'I spent two years there.'

But he lived on hope

he lived on, on the sense

that things were gonna break for him, you know?

Tracked enough pelts to pay him back ten times over

before the Shawnee tracked me.

Henderson sees a way to solve both of their problems.

The meeting of Daniel Boone

and Richard Henderson

uh, is one of these coincidences

that makes history.

Henderson needs a guy like Daniel Boone

the essential frontiersman.

And he thinks Boone, who is down on his luck

he's in serious debts, is so desperate

that he would actually take on this crazy, uh, scheme.

Mr. Boone..

...I've recently purchased a rge parcel of land..

'...right around here.'

The judge offers Boone a choice.

Work off his debt in hard labor camp

or blaze a trail into the Kentucky wilderness.

For Daniel Boone

it'll be the greatest challenge of his life.

He'll defy British law and lead 30 settlers

farther west than he's ever been.

Straight into Shawnee territory.

As Boone prepares to challenge the crown..

...in New England, another rebellion is brewing.

After nearly a decade of growing anger

at repressive British taxes

Boston rebels are throwing a tea party.

The idea of freedom and liberty

mattered to the colonists.

And their concern was, they were on a slippery slope

to having their rights and privileges eroded

by a tyrannical government

across the seas.

Tensions between crown and colonies are escalating.

As Boone sets out

on a mission that will shape the future of America.

Daniel Boone's foray into the backcountry

at that time would be the equivalent

of landing on the moon.

It was opening up a whole new frontier.

This is before anyone had any knowledge about how far

and expansive this frontier truly was.

It was an opportunity for Americans

to move into this region and to discover

in that process, great wealth

and also, opportunity.

To reach Henderson's claim

Boone and his men must cut a trail through a notch

in the Appalachian Mountains..

...the Cumberland Gap.

There were mountains that had to be gone around

streams that had to be crossed.

The woods were full of Shawnees

and other Indians prowling.

After a grueling 400-mile journey..

...Boone arrives at the edge

of an untapped wilderness.

If I had access to a time machine

I would go back and be with Boone

the first time he went through the Cumberland Gap

and dropped down into the Kentucky hunting grounds.

I mean, this was the Promised Land

that he had been striving for

as a frontiersman his entire life.

The trail Boone blazes

will come to be known as the Wilderness Road.

And over the next four decades

some 300,000 pioneers will follow it west.

Daniel Boone really was an iconic figure

even in his own time.

I mean, these were individuals who could

and had to do it all.

There certainly is something about Americans

that they were always striving forward

relentlessly in search of land that they could own

living by their own self-reliance.

It was their idea of the American dream.

It's an American dream that's about to be born in fire.

Just two weeks after Boone's arrival

colonial rage explodes..

...in the small town of Lexington, Massachusetts.

It's the shot heard round the world.

ramatic music]

1775, a new spirit of independence

is sweeping across America.

And on April 19th..

...the battles of Lexington and Concord erupt

leaving 49 colonists dead.

The first casualties in what will soon be a revolution.

The rebels that were fighting were ordinary people.

They were farmers, just everyday folks

that wanted freedom and they wanted liberty.

And they were willing to fight for it

against this great superpower

and they were willing to die for this.

Four hundred miles west on the Kentucky frontier

that same patriotic spirit inspires Daniel Boone.

He and his men are building a permanent settlement

in defiance of the British crown.

Keep those nice and tight as they go up, yeah?

- 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' - 'Alright.'

'Good work, boys.'

At the same time, Lexington

and Concord is raging in the East

here is Daniel Boone and this small ragtag group of men

cutting through and establishing this settlement.

These seemingly disconnected events

in some sense are wedded

as Americans are beginning to fight for independence.

You also have this process of expanding

what will become the American nation.

Boone knows they're on Shawnee soil