In August, no enemy presenting himself, Boone and a small party left the fort and marched against an Indian village on the Scioto. The braves belonging to this camp were encountered in full war paint, some distance from the town, and evidently on the march to join some larger band. The whites fell upon them and routed them, though outnumbered two to one. Suspecting that a large movement of the savages was taking place, Boone sent out a couple of scouts to get news. They soon returned saying that these suspicions were correct; and the frontiersmen hurried back toward Boonesborough in all haste.
On the day after their arrival at the fort, a great band of Indians, flying the British colors and commanded by a French-Canadian named Duquesne, made their appearance out of the forest.
The fort was summoned to surrender, but its defenders refused. They were sixty and the savages were fully five hundred; but they made up their minds to fight to the last.
The Indians, directed by their most famous chiefs, and now having the advantage of Duquesne’s skilled military direction, began their attack. Never was the marksmanship of the Kentucky riflemen more brilliant than it was in that battle. Duquesne soon saw that he was the greatest sufferer by this, as his Indians were falling all around him; so he set about mining under the river bank, meaning to blow up the fort.
However, Boone discovered this and set his men to countermining, flinging the freshly dug earth over the walls of the fort. The British leader saw by this that his plan had failed, and abandoning it began an attack as before.
This failed because of the unerring aim of the settlers; and then the attackers became besiegers, sitting down before the fort, out of rifle range, meaning to starve it into surrender. But in this he also failed; the defenders had more food than the Indians; and so, there being no way of feeding so large a band in a protracted siege, Duquesne gave up the attempt, and marched away, leaving Boonesborough once more victorious.
This was the last heavy blow aimed at the historic stockade. In spite of the war, emigrants poured into the new territory; Boone brought back his family and set to farming his acres like the others.
However, all during the affair with England, Kentucky continued to merit the name of “the dark and bloody ground.” Fierce battles were frequent, and the farmer tilled his hard won field with his long rifle always ready at hand. And even after peace had been declared, the Indians, under their own chiefs and under the renegade, Simon Girty, ranged the settled places and strove to stem the tide of immigration. But the whites were not to be denied; they pressed on and on until the territory was completely won.
Through a fault in the deeds and grants, the settlements in the new country were later thrown into disorder. Boone lost all his land, and moved into Virginia with his family, taking up his home on the Kanawha near to the place where the great battle was fought in the Dunmore War. Later he journeyed westward toward Missouri, where he reëstablished himself. As old age and ill health came on, Boone applied to Congress to recover his land; a part of it was made over to him. His old age, and he lived to be well on to ninety, was spent roaming the woods with his rifle. He died at the home of his son-in-law, Flanders Collaway, some distance from the city of St. Louis, in September, 1820.
Another Book to this Series is:
IN THE ROCKIES WITH KIT CARSON