50 Years Ago: ‘Daniel Boone’ visits Navajo Reservation

If you asked most elderly Navajos who are in their 60s and 70s and who went to Crownpoint Boarding School in 1965, what they may remember the most from that time is the day they got a chance to meet Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman.

Of course, they didn’t meet the real Daniel Boone since he died in 1820 but they met the next best thing – Fess Parker who played Boone in a television series that was on the air at that time. Parker was better known on the reservation for his portrayal of Davy Crockett in a series of Disney television shows that were so popular they were combined and made into movies.

He visited the school on May 18, 1965 to the delights of hundreds of students at the school.

“Especially pleased,” said the Navajo Times report, “was the beginner’s class of Sandra Timm as it was these children that Fess Parker primarily came to see.”

He gave each of the students in that class Daniel Boone costumes, had lunch with them and gave each of the students their own photograph of him personally autographed.

He was the star of a school assembly that afternoon and then traveled over to the public school in Crownpoint.

Timm, who at 23 was just beginning her teaching career, was responsible for getting Parker to come to the school.

“She said that in attempting to get her children how to speak better English through standard oral methods, she found it difficult to get the children to communicate and in motivating them to want to learn to speak English.”

So in December 1964 she discovered that her kids watched a lot of television in their dorm rooms and one of their favorite shows was “Daniel Boone” with its action and portrayal of Indians.

“Daniel himself,” said Timm, “also provided a good moral example of fairness, honesty and respect.”

She said that after each episode she would talk to her class about that week’s show and they would tell her in English what the story of the show was and she could see that their English was improving.

So in February she wrote to Twentieth Century Fox Studios in the hope of getting some publicity photos of Parker and to her surprise, the cast of the show were soon exchanging letters with members of her class.

Seeing the publicity value of all of this, the studio decided to arrange a personal appearance by Parker at the school.

As for the beginning class, Timm told the Times that since learning of Parker’s plans to visit the school, her children have shown “amazing progress.” They all could sing the theme song to the show, show where Kentucky, Boone’s home was on a map as well as California, where the series was filmed.

She said they also learned the days of the week and how to tell time because of their desire not to miss any episodes of the show.

She added that for many of her students, their favorite character in the show was “Mingo”, Daniel Boone’s Cherokee Indian friend. “They seem to already have grasped the fact that his personal relationship with Daniel Boone is strengthened by his command of the English language,” Timm said.

Timm said she was able to convey to her students that Mingo was well-educated and that he was able to get along with non-Indians which was unusual at that time because he still dressed as an Indian and lived among his own people.

Even Parker said he was impressed at the ability of the students in the class to express their feelings clearly through the letters and said he and the fellow cast members looked forward to getting the letters each week.

They were especially pleased that the students that young could tell that the actors were portraying a character because many young fans of the show had problems telling the actors from the character.

Parker told Timm of a story he heard that happened to George Reeves, the star of the “Superman series” that was playing on the television at that time.

Reeves made an appearance in costume at a local event in some California town and a young fan, probably five or six years old, showed up at the event carrying his father’s pistol so he could tell his friends that he shot Superman and the bullet didn’t hurt him.

Reeves immediately recognized he had a problem one that could cost him his life. He explained to the boy that while he would not be hurt, the bullet would ricochet off his chest and may hit someone else and hurt them. He was able to get the boy to give him the gun and no one was hurt.

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