Daniel Boone

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

Upon the arrival of the party at Detroit Governor Hamilton at once sent for the now famous Kentucky hunter and paid him many attentions. With the view of securing his liberty, the wily forest diplomat used the same sort of duplicity with the governor that had proved so effective with Black Fish. It was his habit to carry a leather bag fastened about his neck, containing his old commission as captain in the British colonial forces, signed by Lord Dunmore. This was for the purpose of convincing Indians, into whose hands he might fall, that he was a friend of the king; which accounts in a large measure for the tender manner in which they treated him. Showing the document to Hamilton as proof of his devotion to the British cause, he appears to have repeated his promise that he would surrender the people of Boonesborough and conduct them to Detroit, to live under British jurisdiction and protection. This greatly pleased the governor, who sought to ransom him from Black Fish for £100. But to this his "father" would not agree, stating that he loved him too strongly to let him go—as a matter of fact, he wished his services as guide for the Boonesborough expedition. Upon leaving for home, Hamilton presented Boone with a pony, saddle, bridle, and blanket, and a supply of silver trinkets to be used as currency among the Indians, and bade him remember his duty to the king.

Returning to Chillicothe with Black Fish, the hunter saw that preparations for the spring invasion of Kentucky were at last under way. Delawares, Mingos, and Shawnese were slowly assembling, and runners were carrying the war-pipe from village to village throughout Ohio. But while they had been absent at Detroit an event occurred which gave Black Fish great concern: one of the adopted men, Andrew Johnson—who had pretended among the Indians to be a simpleton, in order to throw off suspicion, but who in reality was one of the most astute of woodsmen—had escaped, carrying warning to Kentucky, and the earliest knowledge that reached the settlers of the location of the Shawnese towns. In May, Johnson and five comrades went upon a raid against one of these villages, capturing several horses and bringing home a bunch of Indian scalps, for scalping was now almost as freely practised by the frontiersmen as the savages; such is the degeneracy wrought by warlike contact with an inferior race. In June there was a similar raid by Boonesborough men, resulting to the tribesmen in large losses of lives and horses.

Upon the sixteenth of June, while Black Fish's party were boiling salt at the saline springs of the Scioto—about a dozen miles south of the present Chillicothe—Boone managed, by exercise of rare sagacity and enterprise, to escape the watchful eyes of his keepers, their attention having been arrested by the appearance of a huge flock of wild turkeys. He reached Boonesborough four days later after a perilous journey of a hundred and sixty miles through the forest, during which he had eaten but one meal—from a buffalo which he shot at Blue Licks. He had been absent for four and a half months, and Mrs. Boone, giving him up for dead, had returned with their family to her childhood home upon the Yadkin. His brother Squire, and his daughter Jemima—now married to Flanders Calloway—were the only kinsfolk to greet the returned captive, who appeared out of the woods as one suddenly delivered from a tomb.

During the absence of Daniel Boone there had been the usual Indian troubles in Kentucky. Colonel Bowman had just written to Colonel George Rogers Clark, "The Indians have pushed us hard this summer." But Clark himself at this time was gaining an important advantage over the enemy in his daring expedition against the British posts of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, in the Illinois country. Realizing that there would be no end to Kentucky's trouble so long as the British, aided by their French-Canadian agents, were free to organize Indian armies north of the Ohio for the purpose of harrying the southern settlements, Clark "carried the war into Africa." With about a hundred and fifty men gathered from the frontiers of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky, he descended the Ohio River, built a fort at Louisville, and by an heroic forced march across the country captured Kaskaskia, while Cahokia and Vincennes at once surrendered to the valorous Kentuckian.

Meanwhile there was business at hand for the people of Boonesborough. Amid all these alarms they had still neglected to complete their defenses; but now, under the energetic administration of Boone, the palisades were finished, gates and fortresses strengthened, and all four of the corner blockhouses put in order. In ten days they were ready for the slowly advancing host.

Unless fleeing, Indians are never in a hurry; they spend much time in noisy preparation. Hunters and scouts came into Boonesborough from time to time, and occasionally a retaliatory expedition would return with horses and scalps from the Little Miami and the Scioto, all of them reporting delays on the part of the enemy; nevertheless all agreed that a large force was forming. Toward the close of August Boone, wearied of being cooped up in the fort, went forth at the head of thirty woodsmen to scout in the neighborhood of the Scioto towns. With him were Kenton and Alexander Montgomery, who remained behind in Ohio to capture horses and probably prisoners, while Boone and the others returned after a week's absence. On their way home they discovered that the enemy was now at Lower Blue Licks, but a short distance from Boonesborough.

At about ten o'clock the following morning (September 7th) the Indian army appeared before the fort. It numbered fully four hundred warriors, mostly Shawnese, but with some Wyandots, Cherokees, Delawares, Mingos, and other tribesmen. Accompanying them were some forty French-Canadians, all under the command of Boone's "father," the redoubtable Black Fish. Pompey served as chief interpreter.

Much time was spent in parleys, Boone in this manner delaying operations as long as possible, vainly hoping that promised reenforcements might meanwhile arrive from the Holston. Black Fish wept freely, after the Indian fashion, over the ingratitude of his runaway "son," and his present stubborn attitude; for the latter now told the forest chief that he and his people proposed to fight to the last man. Black Fish presented letters and proclamations from Hamilton, again offering pardon to all who would take the oath of allegiance to the king, and military offices for Boone and the other leaders. When these were rejected, the Indians attempted treachery, seeking to overpower and kill the white commissioners to a treaty being held in front of the fort. From this final council, ending in a wild uproar, in which bullets flew and knives and tomahawks clashed, the whites escaped with difficulty, the two Boones and another commissioner receiving painful wounds.

A siege of ten days now ensued (September 8th to 17th), one of the most remarkable in the history of savage warfare. The site of the fort, a parallelogram embracing three-quarters of an acre, had been unwisely chosen. There was abundant cover for the enemy under the high river bank, also beneath an encircling clay bank rising from the salt-lick branch; from hills upon either side spies could see what was happening within the walls, and occasionally drop a ball into the small herd of cattle and horses sheltered behind the palisades; while to these natural disadvantages were added the failure of the garrison to clear from the neighborhood of the walls the numerous trees, stumps, bushes, and rocks, each of which furnished the best of cover for a lurking foe.