Daniel Boone (TV Series) The First Stone (1965) User Reviews

Witchcraft

[gordonl56 · 6/10 · 12 April 2014]

DANIEL BOONE – The First Stone - 1965

This is the 16th episode of the long running 1964-70 series about the life of American frontiersman and explorer, Daniel Boone. The lead is played by Fess Parker. Also in the mix are Albert Salmi, Ed Ames, Patricia Blair, Veronica Cartwright and Darby Hinton.

Daniel Boone (Fess Parker) and Cherokee Ed Ames (Mingo) are out hunting when they come across a woman, Geraldine Brooks and her son, Kurt Russell. The mother and son are being tracked by a party of Shawnee. Parker and Ames grab up the two and whisk them to safety at Fort Boonesborough.

The two are set up in one of the shacks not being used at the moment. Now a man shows up at the fort looking for Brooks and Russell. The man, Gene Evans, is the husband of Brooks and the father of Russell. He has been chasing the two for years. He tells the people of Boonesborough that she is a witch and has been convicted of the crime in New York.

Parker soon has to deal with local residents who are frightened for their children etc. Boone asks what it was that brought the charges. It seems that Brooks is a very good artist with pen and charcoal. She had done some drawings of a native tribe and they were not amused. They thought Brooks had trapped their souls on the paper. They attacked and slaughtered 87 people. The government then charged Brooks. She had grabbed up her son and fled. They have been on the run for years since.

Boone digs up some witnesses to the event and it turns out that it was really Evans who was at fault for the attack.

Not one of the better episodes. Always interesting though to see a young Kurt Russell at the start of his career.

Where is Elizabeth Montgomery when you need her?

[militarymuseu-88399 · 5/10 · 4 December 2023]

Daniel and Mingo find a young mother and son (Geraldine Brooks and Kurt Russell) wandering in less-than-safe Wyandot country, and take them back to Boonesborough. Complications ensue when Mingo runs into a bear attack he views as possibly supernatural-inspired, and a husband (Joshua Craig) shows up to note her previous settlement was destroyed by Indians fearful of her possible witching abilities.

Around-the-fort again this week, and probably a Halloween episode that the production schedule bumped to January 1965. Striking stage and TV genre specialist Geraldine Brooks is the witch candidate, and Russell makes the first of five DB appearances as he begins a long evolution from 1965 Disney child star to laconic action player in 2023. Craig does his workmanlike gruff heavy, but the most intriguing casting is Westerns journeyman Morgan Woodward as a settler. Take a good look at a period portrait of the real elder Boone, and the Woodward profile is much the same. If he had taken the title role in the series it would have lent the effort a very heavy patina of authenticity, but the 1965 handsome leading man requirement is irrevocable.

Draw your own conclusion as to whether the writers are sneaking in a Joe McCarthy/Cold War paranoia parable (and not much of a profile in courage to so by the late date of 1965), but someone decided colonial era = 1692 Salem, Massachusetts witch trials story. Brooks is also an artist, so she must be doubly suspect, though its unbelievable to watch Christian Euro-American settlers buy into the "she captures spirits on paper!" belief. Further credulity is suspended when Cambridge-educated Mingo follows the paranoids to an extent. Daniel of course provides the secularized Enlightenment viewpoint.

In reality, the morning-after shame of the Salem experience discredited witching accusations in the colonies after, and there is no record of serious charges being mounted anywhere in eighteenth-century America. The massacre that Brooks is accused of provoking is said to have taken place at Deerfield, NY. C. the 1760's. There was a French and Indian massacre of much of Deerfield, Massachusetts' English population in 1704, but no witchcraft connection. Deerfield, NY did not originate until 1798. One more lost straw brings the flying broom down - settlers were ill-inclined to listen carefully to Native American religious interpretations.

An interesting stab at making a colonial-era Halloween episode, but out of that context it looks the same as Halloween decorations do in daylight - mostly ridiculous.