Origin
The caps were originally a traditional Native American article of clothing, but when European pioneers began settling the Tennessee and Kentucky areas, they made it their own, evolving its use and wearing them as hunting caps.
The coonskin cap eventually became a part of the iconic image associated with American frontiersmen such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Boone did not actually wear coonskin caps, which he disliked, and instead wore felt hats. But explorer Meriwether Lewis wore a coonskin cap during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Joseph L. Meek wore the coonskin cap in the mountains.
An account of actor Noah Ludlow introducing the popular song "The Hunters of Kentucky" while wearing a coonskin cap is shown to be spurious in Ludlow's autobiography. Ludlow recounted that initial performance of 1822: "As soon as the comedy of the night was over, I dressed myself in a buckskin hunting-shirt and leggins, which I borrowed of a river man, and with moccasins on my feet and an old slouched hat on my head, and a rifle on my shoulder, I presented myself before the audience."
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