Daniel Boone: The Pioneer of Kentucky

by John S. C. Abbott

A few hours afterwards he was supplied with food and water, and was suffered to recuperate for a few days, until he was enabled to attend at the council-house, and receive the announcement of his final doom. It was here decided that he should be made a public sacrifice to the vengeance of the nation. The Indian town of Wappatomica, upon the present site of Zanesville, Ohio, was the appointed place of his execution. Being in a state of utter exhaustion his escape was deemed impossible, and he was carelessly guarded. In despair he attempted it. He was promptly recaptured and punished by being taken to a neighboring creek where he was dragged through mud and water, till life was nearly extinct. Still his constitutional vigor triumphed, and he revived.

Wappatomica was a British trading post. Here Kenton met an old comrade, Simon Girty, who had become a renegade, had joined the Indians, and had so adopted their dress and manners as hardly to be distinguished from his savage associates. Girty cautiously endeavored to save the condemned prisoner. He represented to the band that it would be of great advantage to them to have possession of one so intimately acquainted with all the white settlements and their resources.

A respite was granted. Another council was held. The spirit of Indian revenge prevailed. Kenton was again doomed to death, to be preceded by the terrible ordeal of running the gauntlet.

But a British officer, influenced by the persuasions of the Indian chief Logan, the friend of the white man, urged upon the Indian chiefs that the British officers at Detroit would regard the possession of Kenton, with the information he had at his command, as a great acquisition, and that they would pay for him a ransom of at least one hundred dollars. They took him to Detroit; the ransom was paid, and Kenton became the prisoner of the British officers, instead of the savage chieftains. Still he was a prisoner, though treated with ordinary humanity, and was allowed the liberty of the town.

There were two other American captives there, Captain Nathan Bullit and Jesse Coffer. Escape seemed impossible, as it could only be effected through a wilderness four hundred miles in extent, crowded with wandering Indian bands, where they would be imminently exposed to recapture, or to death by starvation.

Simon Kenton was a very handsome man. He won the sympathies of a very kind English woman, Mrs. Harvey, the wife of one of the traders at the post. She secretly obtained for him and his two companions, and concealed in a hollow tree, powder, lead, moccasins, and a quantity of dried beef. One dark night, when the Indians were engaged in a drunken bout, she met Kenton in the garden and handed him three of the best rifles, which she had selected from those stacked near the house. The biographer of these events writes:

"When a woman engages to do an action, she will risk limb, life or character, to serve him whom she respects or wishes to befriend. How differently the same action would be viewed by different persons! By Kenton and his friends her conduct was viewed as the benevolent conduct of a good angel; while if the part she played in behalf of Kenton and his companions had been known to the commander at Detroit, she would have been looked upon as a traitress, who merited the scorn and contempt of all honest citizens. This night was the last that Kenton ever saw or heard of her."

Our fugitives traveled mostly by night, guided by the stars. After passing through a series of wonderful adventures, which we have not space here to record, on the thirty-third day of their escape, they reached the settlement at the Falls of the Ohio, now Louisville. During the rest of the war, Kenton was a very active partisan. He died in the year 1836, over eighty years of age, having been for more than a quarter of a century an honored member of the Methodist Church.