CHAPTER IX.
Victories and Defeats.
Situation of the Fort.—Indian Treachery.—Bombardment.—Boone goes to North Carolina.—New Trials.—Boone Robbed.—He Returns to Kentucky.—Massacre of Col. Rogers.—Adventure of Col. Bowman.—New Attack by the British and Indians.—Retaliatory Measures.—Wonderful Exploit.
There were but fifty men in the garrison at Boonesborough. They were assailed by a body of more than ten to one of the bravest Indian warriors, under the command of an officer in the British army. The boldest in the fort felt that their situation was almost desperate. The ferocity of the Indian, and the intelligence of the white man, were combined against them. They knew that the British commander, however humane he might be, would have no power, should the fort be taken by storm, to save them from death by the most horrible tortures.
General Duquesne was acting under instructions from Governor Hamilton, the British officer in supreme command at Detroit. Boone knew that the Governor felt very kindly towards him. When he had been carried to that place a captive, the Governor had made very earnest endeavors to obtain his liberation. Influenced by these considerations, he consented to hold the conference.
But, better acquainted with the Indian character than perhaps Duquesne could have been, he selected nine of the most athletic and strong of the garrison, and appointed the place of meeting in front of the fort, at a distance of only one hundred and twenty feet from the walls. The riflemen of the garrison were placed in a position to cover the spot with their guns, so that in case of treachery the Indians would meet with instant punishment, and the retreat of the party from the fort would probably be secured. The language of Boone is:
"We held a treaty within sixty yards of the garrison on purpose to divert them from a breach of honor, as we could not avoid suspicion of the savages."
The terms proposed by General Duquesne were extremely liberal. And while they might satisfy the British party, whose object in the war was simply to conquer the colonists and bring them back to loyalty, they could by no means have satisfied the Indians, who desired not merely to drive the white men back from their hunting grounds, but to plunder them of their possessions and to gratify their savage natures by hearing the shrieks of their victims at the stake and by carrying home the trophies of numerous scalps.
Boone and his men, buried in the depths of the wilderness, had probably taken little interest in the controversy which was just then rising between the colonies and the mother country. They had regarded the King of England as their lawful sovereign, and their minds had never been agitated by the question of revolution or of independence. When, therefore, General Duquesne proposed that they should take the oath of allegiance to the King of Great Britain, and that then they should be permitted to return unmolested to their homes and their friends beyond the mountains, taking all their possessions with them, Colonel Boone and his associates were very ready to accept such terms. It justly appeared to them in their isolated condition, five hundred miles away from the Atlantic coast, that this was vastly preferable to remaining in the wilderness assailed by thousands of Indians guided by English energy and abundantly provided with all the munitions of war from British arsenals.