THE SIEGE OF BOONESBOROUGH
We have seen that Kentucky's numerous salt-springs lured wild animals
thither in astonishing numbers; but for lack of suitable boiling-kettles
the pioneers were at first dependent upon the older settlements for the
salt needed in curing their meat. The Indian outbreak now rendered the
Wilderness Road an uncertain path, and the Kentuckians were beginning to
suffer from lack of salt--a serious deprivation for a people largely
dependent upon a diet of game.
Late in the year 1777 the Virginia government sent out several large
salt-boiling kettles for the use of the Western settlers. Both residents
and visiting militiamen were allotted into companies, which were to
relieve each other at salt-making until sufficient was manufactured to
last the several stations for a year. It was Boone's duty to head the
first party, thirty strong, which, with the kettles packed on horses,
went to Lower Blue Licks early in January. A month passed, during which
a considerable quantity of salt was made; several horse-loads had been
sent to Boonesborough, but most of it was still at the camp awaiting
shipment.
The men were daily expecting relief by the second company, when visitors
of a different character appeared. While half of the men worked at the
boiling, the others engaged in the double service of watching for
Indians and obtaining food; of these was Boone. Toward evening of the
seventh of February he was returning home from a wide circuit with his
packhorse laden with buffalo-meat and some beaver-skins, for he had many
traps in the neighborhood. A blinding snow-storm was in progress, which
caused him to neglect his usual precautions, when suddenly he was
confronted by four burly Shawnese, who sprang from an ambush. Keen of
foot, he thought to outrun them, but soon had to surrender, for they
shot so accurately that it was evident that they could kill him if they
would.
The prisoner was conducted to the Shawnese camp, a few miles distant.
There he found a hundred and twenty warriors under Chief Black Fish. Two
Frenchmen, in English employ, were of the party; also two American
renegades from the Pittsburg region, James and George Girty. These
latter, with their brother Simon, had joined the Indians and, dressed
and painted like savages, were assisting the tribesmen of the Northwest
in raids against their fellow-borderers of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Boone was well known by reputation to all these men of the wilderness,
reds and whites alike; indeed, he noticed that among the party were his
captors of eight years before, who laughed heartily at again having him
in their clutches.
He was loudly welcomed to camp, the Indians shaking his hands, patting
him on the back, and calling him "brother"--for they always greatly
enjoyed such exhibitions of mock civility and friendship--and the hunter
himself pretended to be equally pleased at the meeting. They told him
that they were on their way to attack Boonesborough, and wished him to
lead them, but insisted that he first induce his fellow salt-makers to
surrender. Boone thoroughly understood Indians; he had learned the arts
of forest diplomacy, and although generally a silent man of action,
appears to have been a plausible talker when dealing with red men.
Knowing that only one side of the Boonesborough palisade had been
completed, and that the war-party was five times as strong as the
population of the hamlet, he thought to delay operations by strategy. He
promised to persuade the salt-makers to surrender, in view of the
overwhelming force and the promise of good treatment, and to go
peacefully with their captors to the Shawnese towns north of the Ohio;
and suggested that in the spring, when the weather was warmer, they
could all go together to Boonesborough, and by means of horses
comfortably remove the women and children. These would, under his
persuasion, Boone assured his captors, be content to move to the North,
and thenceforth either lived with the Shawnese as their adopted children
or place themselves under British protection at Detroit, where Governor
Hamilton offered L20 apiece for American prisoners delivered to him
alive and well.
The proposition appeared reasonable to the Indians, and they readily
agreed to it. What would be the outcome Boone could not foretell. He
realized, however, that his station was unprepared, that delay meant
everything, in view of possible reenforcements from Virginia, and was
willing that he and his comrades should stand, if need be, as a
sacrifice--indeed, no other course seemed open. Going with his captors
to the salt camp, his convincing words caused the men to stack their
arms and accompany the savages, hoping thereby at least to save their
families at Boonesborough from immediate attack.
The captives were but twenty-seven in number, some of the hunters not
having returned to camp. Not all of the captors were, despite their
promise, in favor of lenient treatment of the prisoners. A council was
held, at which Black Fish, a chieftain of fine qualities, had much
difficulty, through a session of two hours, in securing a favorable
verdict. Boone was permitted to address the savage throng in
explanation of his plan, his words being interpreted by a negro named
Pompey, a fellow of some consequence among the Shawnese. The vote was
close--fifty-nine for at once killing the prisoners, except Boone, and
sixty-one for mercy; but it was accepted as decisive, and the store of
salt being destroyed, and kettles, guns, axes, and other plunder packed
on horses, the march northward promptly commenced.
Each night the captives were made fast and closely watched. The weather
was unusually severe; there was much suffering from hunger, for the snow
was deep, game scarce, and slippery-elm bark sometimes the only food
obtainable. Descending the Licking, the band crossed the Ohio in a large
boat made of buffalo-hides, which were stretched on a rude frame holding
twenty persons; they then entered the trail leading to the Shawnese
towns on the Little Miami, where they arrived upon the tenth day.
The prisoners were taken to the chief town of the Shawnese, Little
Chillicothe, about three miles north of the present Xenia, Ohio. There
was great popular rejoicing, for not since Braddock's defeat had so many
prisoners been brought into Ohio. Boone and sixteen of his companions,
presumably selected for their good qualities and their apparent capacity
as warriors, were now formally adopted into the tribe. Boone himself had
the good fortune to be accepted as the son of Black Fish, and received
the name Sheltowee (Big Turtle)--perhaps because he was strong and
compactly built.
Adoption was a favorite method of recruiting the ranks of American
tribes. The most tractable captives were often taken into the families
of the captors to supply the place of warriors killed in battle. They
were thereafter treated with the utmost affection, apparently no
difference being made between them and actual relatives, save that,
until it was believed that they were no longer disposed to run away,
they were watched with care to prevent escape. Such was now Boone's
experience. Black Fish and his squaw appeared to regard their new son
with abundant love, and everything was done for his comfort, so far as
was possible in an Indian camp, save that he found himself carefully
observed by day and night, and flight long seemed impracticable.
Boone was a shrewd philosopher. In his so-called "autobiography" written
by Filson, he tells us that the food and lodging were "not so good as I
could desire, but necessity made everything acceptable." Such as he
obtained was, however, the lot of all. In the crowded, slightly built
wigwams it was impossible to avoid drafts; they were filthy to the last
degree; when in the home villages, there was generally an abundance of
food--corn, hominy, pumpkins, beans, and game, sometimes all boiled
together in the same kettle--although it was prepared in so slovenly a
manner as to disgust even so hardy a man of the forest as our hero; the
lack of privacy, the ever-present insects, the blinding smoke of the
lodge-fire, the continual yelping of dogs, and the shrill, querulous
tones of old women, as they haggled and bickered through the livelong
day--all these and many other discomforts were intensely irritating to
most white men. In order to disarm suspicion, Boone appeared to be
happy. He whistled cheerfully at his tasks, learning what little there
was left for him to learn of the arts of the warrior, sharing his game
with his "father," and pretending not to see that he was being watched.
At the frequent shooting-matches he performed just well enough to win
the applause of his fellow braves, although, for fear of arousing
jealousy, careful not to outdo the best of them. His fellow prisoners,
less tactful, marveled at the ease with which their old leader adapted
himself to the new life, and his apparent enjoyment of it. Yet never did
he miss an opportunity to ascertain particulars of the intended attack
on Boonesborough, and secretly planned for escape when the proper moment
should arrive.
March was a third gone, when Black Fish and a large party of his braves
and squaws went to Detroit to secure Governor Hamilton's bounty on those
of the salt-makers who, from having acted in an ugly manner, had not
been adopted into the tribe. Boone accompanied his "father," and
frequently witnessed, unable to interfere, the whipping and
"gauntlet-running" to which his unhappy fellow Kentuckians were
subjected in punishment for their fractious behavior. He himself, early
in his captivity, had been forced to undergo this often deadly ordeal;
but by taking a dodging, zigzag course, and freely using his head as a
battering-ram to topple over some of the warriors in the lines, had
emerged with few bruises.[14]
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 L100.
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.
[Illustration: CLIMAX OF THE TREATY.
Indians and British agents treacherously attack treaty commissioners.
(See pp. 161, 162.) Reduced from Ranck's "Boonesborough."]
Such, however, was the stubbornness of the defense, in which the women
were, in their way, quite as efficient as the men, that the forces under
Black Fish could make but small impression upon the valiant little
garrison. Every artifice known to savages, or that could be suggested
by the French, was without avail. Almost nightly rains and the energy of
the riflemen frustrated the numerous attempts to set fire to the cabins
by throwing torches and lighted fagots upon their roofs; a tunnel,
intended to be used for blowing up the walls, was well under way from
the river bank when rain caused it to cave in; attempts at scaling were
invariably repelled, and in sharpshooting the whites as usual proved the
superiors.
But the result often hung in the balance. Sometimes the attack lasted
throughout the night, the scene being constantly lighted by the flash of
the rifles and the glare of hurling fagots. Besiegers and garrison
frequently exchanged fierce cries of threat and defiance, mingled with
many a keen shaft of wit and epithet; at times the yells and whoops of
the savages, the answering shouts and huzzahs of the defenders, the
screams of women and girls, the howling of dogs, the snorting and
bellowing of the plunging live stock, together with the sharp rattle of
firearms, created a deafening hubbub well calculated to test the nerves
of the strongest.
At last, on the morning of Friday, the eighteenth, the Indians, now
thoroughly disheartened, suddenly disappeared into the forest as
silently as they had come. Again Boonesborough was free, having passed
through the longest and severest ordeal of attack ever known in
Kentucky; indeed, it proved to be the last effort against this station.
Within the walls sixty persons had been capable of bearing arms, but
only forty were effective, some of these being negroes; Logan's Fort had
sent a reenforcement of fifteen men, and Harrodsburg a few others. Of
the garrison but two were killed and four wounded, while Boone estimated
that the enemy lost thirty-seven killed and a large number wounded. The
casualties within the fort were astonishingly small, when the large
amount of ammunition expended by the besiegers is taken into account.
After they had retired, Boone's men picked up a hundred and twenty-five
pounds of flattened bullets that had been fired at the log stronghold,
handfuls being scooped up beneath the port-holes of the bastions; this
salvage made no account of the balls thickly studding the walls, it
being estimated that a hundred pounds of lead were buried in the logs of
one of the bastions.
A week later a small company of militiamen arrived from Virginia, and
several minor expeditions were now made against the Shawnese upon their
own soil. These raids were chiefly piloted by Boone's salt-makers, many
of whom had now returned from captivity. Boone is credited with saying
in his later years, although no doubt in ruder language than this:
"Never did the Indians pursue so disastrous a policy as when they
captured me and my salt-boilers, and taught us, what we did not know
before, the way to their towns and the geography of their country; for
though at first our captivity was considered a great calamity to
Kentucky, it resulted in the most signal benefits to the country."
Captain Boone was not without his critics. Soon after the siege he was
arraigned before a court-martial at Logan's Fort upon the following
charges preferred by Colonel Calloway, who thought that the great hunter
was in favor of the British Government and had sought opportunity to
play into its hands, therefore should be deprived of his commission in
the Kentucky County militia:
"1. That Boone had taken out twenty-six men[15] to make salt at the Blue
Licks, and the Indians had caught him trapping for beaver ten miles
below on Licking, and he voluntarily surrendered his men at the Licks to
the enemy.
"2. That when a prisoner, he engaged with Gov. Hamilton to surrender the
people of Boonesborough to be removed to Detroit, and live under British
protection and jurisdiction.
"3. That returning from captivity, he encouraged a party of men to
accompany him to the Paint Lick Town, weakening the garrison at a time
when the arrival of an Indian army was daily expected to attack the
fort.
"4. That preceding the attack on Boonesborough, he was willing to take
the officers of the fort, on pretense of making peace, to the Indian
camp, beyond the protection of the guns of the garrison."
Boone defended himself at length, maintaining that he aimed only at the
interests of the country; that while hunting at the licks he was engaged
in the necessary service of the camp; that he had used duplicity to win
the confidence of the enemy, and it resulted favorably, as he was
thereby enabled to escape in time to warn his people and put them in a
state of defense; that his Scioto expedition was a legitimate scouting
trip, and turned out well; and that in the negotiations before the fort
he was simply "playing" the Indians in order to gain time for expected
reenforcements. He was not only honorably acquitted, but at once
advanced to the rank of major, and received evidences of the
unhesitating loyalty of all classes of his fellow borderers, the
majority of whom appear to have always confided in his sagacity and
patriotism.
Personally vindicated, the enemy departed, and several companies of
militia now arriving to garrison the stations for the winter, Major
Boone once more turned his face to the Yadkin and sought his family. He
found them at the Bryan settlement, living comfortably in a small log
cabin, but until then unconscious of his return from the wilderness in
which they had supposed he found his grave.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Two lines of Indians were formed, five or six feet apart, on either
side of a marked path. The prisoner was obliged to run between these
lines, while there were showered upon him lusty blows from whatever
weapons the tormentors chose to adopt--switches, sticks, clubs, and
tomahawks. It required great agility, speed in running, and some
aggressive strategy to arrive at the goal unharmed. Many white captives
were seriously crippled in this thrilling experience, and not a few lost
their lives.
[15] Account is only taken, in these charges, of the twenty-seven
captives.