My brother and I both got coonskin caps, along with the full Davy Crockett outfits, one Christmas in the 50s, but I believe that the Daniel Boone series, which ran six seasons, had more impact.

One interesting off-series incident was when Ed Ames, who played Boone’s Cherokee friend Mingo, appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson — when the show was really live. Ames did a demonstration “hatchett throwing” at the outline of a man on a large board. Guess where the hatchett got buried?

More interesting was that the Boone series was one of the first to portray Native Americans as people and not as some horde of crazed savages. Ames’s role as Mingo was a sea change from “Tonto” on the “Lone Ranger,” since the character was not only smart, he happened to have attended college in England courtesy his British father. That could be seen as subtly racist, but in fact the Cherokee were frequently marrying European settlers by the mid-1700s. And, like most Native Americans, they considered anyone who chose to live among them and by their cultural norms to be one of them, regardless of ethnic background.

Another interesting character on the series was Cincinnatus, a crotchety-but-lovable old curmudgeon who ran a trading post somewhere along the trails Dan’l and Mingo haunted. I have often wondered if he was a real person and that maybe Cincinnati, Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, was named for him.

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
With an eye like an eagle
And as tall as a mountain was he!

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
He was brave, he was fearless
And as tough as a mighty oak tree!

From the coonskin cap on the top of ol’ Dan
To the heel of his rawhide shoe;
The rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man
The frontier ever knew!

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
And he fought for America
To make all Americans free!

What a Boone, what a do-er,
What a dream come-er true-er was he!