[. . .] The Boone narrative, in fact, constituted the first nationally viable statement of a myth of the frontier.
 A myth is a narrative which concentrates in a single, dramatized experience the whole history of a people in their land.  The myth-hero embodies or defends the values of his culture in a struggle against the forces which threaten to destroy the people and lay waste the land.  Myth grows out of the timeless desire of men to know and be reconciled to their true relationship to the gods or elemental powers that set in motion the forces of history and rule the world of nature.  In the case of the American colonies, whose people were not native to the soil, this desire took the form of a yearning to prove that they truly belonged to their place, that their bringing of Christian civilization to the wilderness represented the fulfillment of their own destiny as children of Jehovah (rather than a perversion of that destiny) and of the landís destiny as the creation of God.
 Filsonís narrative, then, to qualify as myth, would have to draw together all the significant strands of thought and belief about the frontier than had been developed in the historical experience of the colonies, concentrate those experiences in the tale of a single hero, and represent that heroís career in such a way that his audience could believe in and identify with him.  Moreover, the tale would have to be constructed in such a way that it could grow along with the culture whose values it espoused, changing and adjusting to match changes in the evolution of that culture.  Otherwise the tale would lose that essential quality of seeming to be drawn from the original sources of cultural experience.  Ultimately, Filsonís take would have to dramatize convincingly the interdependence of Booneís destiny, the historical mission of the American people, and the destiny appointed for the wilderness by natural law and divine Providence.  The evidence suggests that the Boone legend first put before the public by Filson did, I fact, fulfill these requirements.  (269)

 The Boone narrative, though ostensibly Booneís own narration of his adventures, is actually Filsonís careful reworking of Booneís statements and of the legends that Filson had heard about Boone from his fellow frontiersmen.  The narrative is a literary myth, artfully contrived to appeal to men concerned with literature; it is not folk legend.  Filson selects incidents for portrayal and breaks into the strict chronology of events in order to establish in his readerís mind a sense of the rhythm of Booneís experience and to emphasize certain key images and symbols that define the meaning of Booneís experience.  Booneís ëAdventuresí consist of a series of initiations, a series of progressive immersions, that take him deeper into the wilderness.  These initiations awaken Booneís sense of his own identity, provide him with a natural moral philosophy, and give him progressively deeper insights into the nature of the wilderness.  Each immersion is followed by a return to civilization, where Boone can apply his growing wisdom to ordering his community, and by a momentary interlude of meditation and contemplation, in which Boone can review his experience, interpret it, and formulate the wisdom gained from it.  As a result of these rhythmic cycles of immersion and emergence, he grows to become the commanding genius of his peoples, their hero-chief, and the man fit to realize Kentuckyís destiny.
 Filson casts Booneís adventures as a personal narrative, developed by the Puritans as a literary form of witness to an experience of Godís grace.  "The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon" combines the conventions of form of three types of personal narratives--the conversion narrative of the type written by Jonathan Edwards in his "Personal Narrative"; the narrative of personal triumph in battle [. . .]; and the captivity narrative.  (278-79)