This avenging campaign so depressed the Indians that they made no farther attempt for the organised invasion of Kentucky. The termination of the war with England also deprived them of their military resources, and left them to their own unaided and unintelligent efforts. Still miserable bands continued prowling around, waylaying and murdering the lonely traveler, setting fire to the solitary hut and inflicting such other outrages as were congenial with their cruel natures. It thus became necessary for the pioneers always to live with the rifle in hand.
Colonel Boone had become especially obnoxious to the Indians. Twice he had escaped from them, under circumstances which greatly mortified their vanity. They recognised the potency of his rifle in the slaughter of their own warriors at the Blue Lick; and they were well aware that it was his sagacity which led the army of General Clarke in its avenging march through their country. It thus became with them an object of intense desire to take him prisoner, and had he been taken, he would doubtless have been doomed to the severest torture they could inflict.
Mr. Peck, in his interesting life of Boone, gives the following account of one of the extraordinary adventures of this man, which he received from the lips of Colonel Boone himself. On one occasion, four Indians suddenly appeared before his cabin and took him prisoner. Though the delicacy of Colonel Boone's organization was such, that he could never himself relish tobacco in any form, he still raised some for his friends and neighbors, and for what were then deemed the essential rites of hospitality.
"As a shelter for curing the tobacco, he had built an enclosure of rails a dozen feet in height and covered with canes and grass. Stalks of tobacco are generally split and strung on sticks about four feet in length. The ends of these are laid on poles placed across the tobacco house, and in tiers one above another, to the roof. Boone had fixed his temporary shelter in such a manner as to have three tiers. He had covered the lower tier and the tobacco had become dry; when he entered the shelter for the purpose of removing the sticks to the upper tier, preparatory to gathering the remainder of the crop. He had hoisted up the sticks from the lower to the second tier, and was standing on the poles which supported it, while raising the sticks to the upper tier, when four stout Indians, with guns, entered the low door and called him by name.
"'Now, Boone, we got you. You no get away more. We carry you off to Chilicothe this time. You no cheat us anymore.'
"Boone looked down upon their upturned faces, saw their loaded guns pointed at his breast, and recognising some of his old friends the Shawanese, who had made him prisoner near the Blue Licks in 1778, coolly and pleasantly responded:
"'Ah, old friends, glad to see you.'
"Perceiving that they manifested impatience to have him come down, he told them he was quite willing to go with them, and only begged that they would wait where they were, and watch him closely until he could finish removing the tobacco.
"While thus parleying with them, Boone inquired earnestly respecting his old friends in Chilicothe. He continued for some time to divert the attention of these simple-minded men, by allusions to past events with which they were familiar, and by talking of his tobacco, his mode of curing it, and promising them an abundant supply. With their guns in their hands however, they stood at the door of the shed, grouped closely together so as to render his escape apparently impossible. In the meantime Boone carefully gathered his arms full of the long, dry tobacco leaves, filled with pungent dust, which would be blinding and stifling as the most powerful snuff, and then with a leap from his station twelve feet high, came directly upon their heads, filling their eyes and nostrils, and so bewildering and disabling them for the moment, that they lost all self-possession and all self-control.