“The settling of this region well deserves a place in history. Most of the memorable events I have myself been exercised in …”
— Daniel Boone, as related to John Filson, Colonel Boone’s Autobiography, 1784
The “Dark and Bloody Ground”
Daniel Boone’s early life—his “long hunts,” skirmishes with the native tribes, periodic uprooting and re-settling in ever-wilder climes—seemed to have been lived in preparation for his migration to the largely unexplored region known as Kentucky. For Boone, Kentucky was to be the Promised Land. Here, he could range the woods at will, hunting animals for food and furs. He could settle his family and neighbors in a pristine and fertile place. And he could find his fortune in the acquisition and sale of vast tracts of available cheap land.
From the time he first entered the region in mid-1769, however, and for years thereafter, Kentucky proved anything but hospitable. Many of the indigenous peoples resented the Anglo interlopers, and Boone’s efforts had resulted in the deaths of his brother-in-law and best friend and—while leading an immigrant train through the Cumberland Gap—his oldest son and several neighbors.
After the attack in which James Boone died, Daniel’s party had broken up and returned home. Despite this setback, the indomitable woodsman reveled in the new country. Game was plentiful, the ground was fertile, and the vistas were magnificent. As he later told biographer John Filson, “I was happy in the midst of dangers and inconveniences. In such a diversity, it was impossible I should be disposed to melancholy. No populous city, with all the varieties of commerce and stately Structures, could afford so much pleasure to my mind as the beauties of nature I found here.”
Meanwhile, several others had begun exploring Kentucky for home sites and investment opportunities. An earlier law had provided that every Virginian was entitled to 500 acres of uninhabited frontier land, with an additional 200 acres for each slave or servant, up to a maximum of 5,000 acres. Far from remaining virgin territory, Kentucky burgeoned with potential settlers, surveyors and land speculators from as far off as London. Unfortunately, to citizens and government alike, the concept of “uninhabited land” pertained only to white settlement, and the tribes who lived and hunted on the land soon reacted strongly to the Anglo incursion.
In May 1774, a series of outrages on both sides resulted in an all-out war against the Shawnee, declared and carried out by Virginia’s governor, James Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore. At one point, Lord Dunmore ordered that an experienced frontiersman be sent into Kentucky to warn a party of surveyors of an imminent danger. Capt. William Russell chose Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner—“two of the best hands I could think of.”
Although the mission was fraught with peril, Boone was virtually fearless. “How unhappy … for a man tormented with fear,” he stated, “which is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, only augments the pain! It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion, with which I had the greatest reason to be affected.”
Boone and Stoner successfully completed their assignment, covering some 800 miles in two months and sending those surveyors whom they found to safety. Upon his return, Boone was commissioned a lieutenant in the colonial militia. He raised a small company and was soon promoted to captain and given command of two frontier forts.
In October of that same year, after much blood had been shed by both the Native Americans and the colonists, the Shawnee were defeated. The subsequent Treaty of Camp Charlotte stipulated free navigation on the Ohio River, a return of all captives, and the release of all Shawnee claims to the lands south and east of the Ohio. Piece by bloody piece, the frontier was opening to expansion.
A Road Through the Wilderness
Daniel Boone was mustered out in November 1774. However, a new opportunity soon presented itself. The following spring, just two years after Boone’s disastrous first attempt to lead settlers into Kentucky, a firm of wealthy land investors calling themselves the Transylvania Company moved to purchase a large piece of Kentucky from the American Indians. The firm’s director, North Carolina judge Richard Henderson, hired Boone as the company’s agent.
Beyond making a fortune for himself, Henderson’s ultimate goal was the establishment of Kentucky as America’s 14th colony. To this end, he signed a treaty with the Cherokee to purchase some 20 million acres—nearly all of Kentucky and a part of Tennessee—for around 10,000 pounds of trade goods. Once they owned the land, which the company would rename Transylvania, it would be parceled out to settlers on a landlord-tenant basis. Acting for the company, Boone, who saw an opportunity to acquire large tracts of salable land for himself, traveled the frontier, encouraging the Cherokee to attend the treaty talks.
Apparently, the plans and actions of the Transylvania Company flew in the face of existing laws and treaties and riled the governments of Virginia and North Carolina, both of which held claims to the territory. North Carolina Gov. Josiah Martin, referring to “Henderson the famous invader” and his “infamous company of Pyrates,” wrote that without effectively stopping them, “such Adventurers will possess themselves soon of all the Indian country.”
However, given the fact that the American Revolution was just weeks away from breaking out, neither colony was willing to commit the necessary troops to stop Henderson. After having bought the land from the Cherokee, Henderson sent Boone to cut a useable trail through the Cumberland Gap. He was then to colonize the region around the Kentucky River by building a palisaded settlement. Consequently, Boone gathered a group of 30 or so men—including his brother and son-in-law—who were handy with axes, and on March 10, 1775, they set off for Kentucky.
The group left the site of what is now Kingsport, Tennessee, taking what was called the Great Warrior’s Path and passing through a gap in the Clinch Mountains. They crossed Clinch River and ultimately entered Powell River Valley, the site of the Native American attack that had marked the bloody end of Boone’s earlier expedition.
Apparently, not all the members of the tribe had accepted the terms of the Camp Charlotte treaty. In an April 1 letter to Henderson, Boone wrote, “My brother and I … found two men killed and sculped [sic] … My advice to you, Sir, is, to come or send [men] as soon as possible … [N]ow is the time to flusterate [the Indians’] intentions, and keep the country whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case.”
In late March, just prior to arriving at the site of the colony, Boone and his men were attacked by a party of Shawnee. After sustaining a few casualties, the whites escaped. Felix Walker, one of the wounded whose life Boone had saved, later wrote, “[L]et me, with feeling recollection and lasting gratitude, ever remember the unremitting kindness, sympathy, and attention paid to me by Colonel Boon in my distress. He was my father, my physician, and friend.”
Discouraged, some of the party turned back; on April 6, the others arrived at their destination on the southern bank of the Kentucky River, site of present-day Madison County. The first phase of Boone’s assignment had been successfully completed.
The clearing of what became known as the Wilderness Road was a remarkable achievement and immediately opened Kentucky to settlement. With the American Revolution looming, the floodgates were thrown wide for colonists determined to move west. Ideally suited for both commercial and immigrant traffic, Boone’s road would accommodate hundreds of thousands of travelers and countless family and produce wagons well into the 19th century.
Carving a Life from the Wilderness
Once they arrived at their destination, Boone’s party immediately undertook the building of a settlement. Although it was sometimes referred to as Fort Boone, the future town already had an official name. Walker wrote, “[W]e made a station, and called it Boonesborough … situated … on the south side of the river, wherein was a [salt] lick with two Sulphur springs.” The setting was ideal, fronting a river, close by a stream, near a salt lick, and on a plain that would require comparatively minimal clearing.
The constant need for vigilance, however, was brought starkly home shortly after their arrival, as Walker matter-of-factly noted, “On the fourth day, the American Indians killed one of our men.”
Henderson had lost no time in taking Boone’s advice and arrived at Fort Boone with his party on April 20. The work of building a settlement went quickly, as the men moved the fort to higher ground, planted a garden, built a powder magazine, and continued to clear the land.
One of Henderson’s men kept a journal, which features such revealing and creatively spelled entries as:
“Wednesday 26th We begin Building us a house & a plais of Defence to keep the Indians off.”
“Satterday 29th We git our house kivered with Bark & move our things into it at Night.”
Boone left for home in mid-June to bring his family to the new settlement. In his absence, the Transylvania Company voted him a gift of 2,000 acres in acknowledgment of the “signal services he had rendered to the Company.” Meanwhile, Henderson’s plans for the immediate settlement of “Transylvania” would have to wait. Boone refused to lead any more immigrant trains until his very pregnant Rebecca delivered their next child, the couple’s ninth.
The baby died soon after birth, and in late August, Daniel guided his family and several would-be settlers to Kentucky. Rebecca and the children, by now accustomed to the occasional move to unsettled country, acclimated well to their new home.
A Dramatic Rescue, and the Growth of a Legend
Then, on the Sunday afternoon of July 14, 1776, an event occurred that would secure Daniel Boone’s reputation as the premier frontiersman of his day. Boone’s 13-year-old daughter, Jemima, was playing with two friends—Elizabeth and Frances Callaway—on the river, when suddenly a mixed party of Cherokee and Shawnee warriors sprang from hiding and seized the girls. As they were dragged into the woods, the girls shouted loudly for help.
Hearing the cries of the girls, Boone and several others ran to the river, too late to prevent the kidnapping. Boone organized the men into groups and sent them both up and down the river, looking for a “sign.” After one group found Native American tracks, the two parties reunited and set off in pursuit. They followed the party for more than 40 miles, frequently losing the trail and relying on Boone’s woods craft for direction.
Finally, they discovered the camp of the unsuspecting American Indians. Each member of the rescue party understood that the natives would tomahawk their captives if attacked. Boone, therefore, ordered a silent approach, and he and his men crept to within a short distance of the kidnappers.
Suddenly, one of Boone’s men, thinking they had been seen, fired at a Native American, impelling the rest of the rescue party to rise and charge the camp, shouting as they ran. In the attack that followed, some of the American Indians escaped, while two fell to the rifles of Boone and a companion. Boone had ordered the girls to lie flat, and none was harmed.
An emotional reunion followed. Late in life, Jemima told her granddaughter that Daniel then addressed the party, saying, “[T]hank Almighty Providence, boys, we have the girls safe. Let us all sit down by them and have a hearty cry.” Jemima added, “There was not a dry eye in the company.”
Several years later, author James Fenimore Cooper, in his classic Last of the Mohicans, would base the dramatic rescue of two white women on the Boone incident. In fact, historians have observed that Natty Bumppo, the main character throughout all of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (he is also known alternately as Pathfinder, Deerslayer, Trapper, la Longue Carabine and Hawkeye) was closely patterned after Daniel Boone.
Losing the Land
By this time, Henderson and his company had doubled their prices for land while offering parcels to friends at much reduced prices and keeping the best tracts for themselves. As a result, they lost the support of the settlers. In addition, land claims had become a source of confusion and, in some cases, violence, as multiple investors laid claim to the same parcels.
Finally, the Virginia legislature repudiated all Transylvania Company claims and in December 1776, over the vigorous protests of Richard Henderson, passed a bill creating the “county” of Kentucky. Although he was named a captain of the militia, Daniel Boone—through a combination of legislation, payment of debts and the workings of dishonest land grabbers—lost the title to the entire 200,000 acres he had claimed and been deeded, as well as the 2,000 acres he had been given in recognition of his “signal services.” His extraordinary efforts were ignored, as Boone went uncompensated and landless in the region he was helping to populate.
Others, including Henderson, managed to hold on to at least some of their property. Boone was relatively untroubled by the loss of land, believing, as one biographer writes, that “the frontier was unlimited. There was always more land ahead.” This would not be the first time Boone’s land had been seized from under him. In the years to come, he would confront the harsh reality that even the frontier was not without bounds.
New Troubles with the Shawnee
Meanwhile, mixed parties of Shawnee, Mingo and Cherokee, encouraged by the British, continued to devil the settlers, killing lone hunters and taking the odd captive. The Native Americans, Boone later stated, “seemed determined to persecute us for erecting this fortification.” They “attacked several forts … doing a great deal of mischief.”
On April 24, 1777, after staging a surprise raid on the Harrodsburg settlement in which some settlers were killed and others, including Boone’s brother, Squire, were wounded, Shawnee Chief Blackfish turned his attention to Boonesborough. Secreting around 100 warriors in a hollow, he sent a small party to attack two men returning to the fort, killing one.
In response, a group of around 15 men, including Daniel Boone and the intrepid frontiersman and scout Simon Kenton, ran from the fort. As they pursued the fleeing American Indians, the larger band emerged from hiding, cutting them off from the safety of the fort. Boone reportedly shouted, “Boys, we are gone! Let us sell our lives as dearly as we can!”
He ordered a charge through the enemy, during which a Shawnee bullet smashed his ankle. Kenton—by all accounts, a huge man—killed two Native Americans who were threatening Boone, heaved his wounded friend over his shoulder, and ran for the gate.
Miraculously, all the men made it to the safety of the fort, although four, including Boone, had been shot. Shortly after, the Native Americans departed, carrying their dead and wounded. Boone’s debilitating wound kept him inactive for more than a month and would cause him pain for the rest of his life.
Over the next few months, Blackfish staged two more attacks on the forts, killing and wounding inhabitants, destroying crops and stock, keeping the men from hunting, and generally leaving the settlements in dire condition for the coming winter. Finally, Virginia answered a call for help, sending an additional 100 men to swell the militia ranks at the various Kentucky forts.
Capture, Adoption and a Dramatic Escape
Predictably, the winter was hard. The most sorely missed commodities were meat and the salt to preserve it. In January 1778, Boone led a party of 30 men to a distant salt lick and left them to boil the salt while he scouted for American Indians and hunted for meat. He found both. After shooting a bear, Boone was surprised by a party of Shawnee, who took him to their camp.
Chief Blackfish informed Boone that the 100-warrior force was on its way to attack Boonesborough. Realizing that the settlers would have no chance of survival, Boone bought time by convincing the chief that the settlers would give up the fort and live with the Shawnee “as one people” if Blackfish would put off the surrender until spring. The chief agreed but informed Boone that if the nearby party of salt boilers failed to surrender as well, both they and he would be summarily killed.
The next day, Boone convinced his party to lay down their weapons. He noted with relief that four had escaped and would bring word back to Boonesborough of their capture. At the Native American camp, he made an impassioned plea for the lives of his party, whom several of the natives wished to kill in revenge for the death of one of their chiefs. Boone convinced the chief to spare his men the customary running of the gauntlet—a double row of armed warriors through whom captives were forced to run, often fatally—volunteering to do so by himself. His subsequent run, in which he avoided all but the most superficial blows, impressed the warriors and their chief.
Boone’s speech, combined with his successful running of the gauntlet, inspired Blackfish to spare the other captives and to adopt Boone as his son, giving him the name “Shel-tow-ee,” or “Big Turtle.”
Boone’s party was well treated; 16 were taken into the tribe. At this time, the Revolution was well underway, and the British were paying American Indians for captured colonists; Blackfish sold the remaining 10 to the British. Boone himself adapted well to Native American life and, according to various accounts, was given a squaw who saw to his various needs. Life was good for Big Turtle, and chroniclers still debate the extent to which Boone willingly took to life among the Shawnee.
In June, however, he observed hundreds of warriors preparing for an attack on Boonesborough, and on the 16th, he decided the time had come for his escape. He had managed to horde a blanket, powder, ball and the workings of a rifle, and, taking up his plunder, he galloped off on a stolen horse.
Boone rode the horse until it dropped from exhaustion. He then took to his feet, covering his tracks by wading in streams and running over rocky ground. Ultimately, having eluded his pursuers, he reached the Ohio River. There, he built a crude raft on which he floated downstream and crossed to the opposite bank.
Boone walked through the woods until nightfall, slept briefly and carried on at first light, after treating his “scalded” feet with a poultice of “oak ooze.” His rifle lacked a stock, which he replaced by carving a sourwood sapling to fit. After reaching the Blue Licks on the 19th, he shot a buffalo with his improvised weapon. He later told a friend, “You may depend upon it; I felt proud of my rifle.” Boone cooked the hump and enjoyed his first meal in two days, smoking and saving the tongue—a delicacy on the frontier—for his 9-year-old son.
Relying on his uncanny sense of direction, Boone reached the settlement in another two days, after fording the Kentucky River. By his own estimate, he had traveled around 160 miles, “during which I had but one meal.”
A Bitter Homecoming
His return, however, was not as he had anticipated. Rebecca, believing her husband dead, had taken their family and moved back to North Carolina, leaving their cabin empty. Only Jemima, who had recently married and made a life at Boonesborough, remained to greet her father.
The settlers themselves now viewed Boone with sullen mistrust. The four who had escaped at the salt licks, not understanding that Boone had saved the others’ lives by inducing them to surrender, had brought word to the fort of what appeared to be Boone’s treachery. Further, when it became known that some of the captured whites had been sold to the British, some considered Boone a traitor, a charge that he later would answer in court. And when later escapees reported that he had promised to turn Boonesborough over to the Shawnee in the spring—again, not comprehending that Boone was only buying time to save the settlement from certain destruction—many saw him as a spy for the Shawnee.
Boone ignored the ill feelings directed toward him and undertook the repairs and strengthening of the fort. Warning his former neighbors that a large Native American force was poised to invade Kentucky, with Boonesborough as its first stop, he ordered the digging of a well within the walls, replaced rotting palisades, and restocked the magazine and supply room. Gradually, he regained the trust of some of the settlers, although others remained firm in their suspicions.
Meanwhile, another escapee from Blackfish’s camp arrived at the fort in July and informed the community that the Shawnee—some 400 strong and supported by British troops—would indeed be attacking the fort within the month. Boone immediately wrote to the commander of the militia requesting reinforcements. “We are in fine spirits,” he added, “and intend to fight hard.”
By late August, neither the American Indians nor the reinforcements had arrived, and Boone led a party of 30 men across the Ohio River to locate the Shawnee. After a brief skirmish with a small band, they located the main war party already south of the river and rushed back to alert the settlement. When Blackfish’s force appeared on Sept. 7, Boone sounded the alarm. As cattle and corn were hurried inside the walls, Boonesborough’s 60 men prepared to defend their homes and families.
Siege
Through a translator, it became clear that Blackfish had arrived to accept the surrender of the fort, as Boone had promised several months before. Blackfish called upon his adopted son to parlay, and Boone left the fort without hesitation, causing yet another ripple of suspicion among the settlers. The chief showed Boone a letter from the British commander at Detroit, who offered pardon and safe conduct to all who surrendered peaceably. Those who refused the offer would be left to the dubious mercies of the Shawnee.
Boone called for a vote, and the men unanimously elected to fight to the death rather than surrender. “Well,” said Boone, “I’ll die with the rest.” He then set about negotiating surrender conditions with Blackfish, stalling in the hope that the militia would arrive. As he did so, uniformed dummies were put in place, and women dressed as men patrolled the ramparts to give the impression of a larger force within.
Finally, Boone informed the chief of the men’s decision. Blackfish requested a meeting over dinner outside the fort to be attended by the fort’s leaders and the tribal council, ostensibly to find a peaceful resolution. Boone and nine key figures sat at a table in a nearby meadow, with three Native Americans to each white man, and matters appeared to go well until the natives attempted to seize the delegates in the hope of forcing a surrender. Suddenly, a pre-ordered round of fire from the fort raked the Shawnee. Boone had anticipated just such a stratagem and had stationed riflemen at the walls with specific orders to fire at the first sign of treachery.
In the confusion, the settlers made it back to the fort. Daniel had received a tomahawk slash across his back, and brother Squire was shot in the shoulder, but all were still alive.
As the last man ran into the fort, others swiftly closed and barred the fort gate. The siege of Boonesborough had begun.
In our concluding chapter in the December/January issue, we will follow the vagaries of Daniel Boone’s later career, from defendant in a treason trial to trader, debtor, slave owner, failed landowner, three-time delegate to the Virginia legislature and, ultimately, American icon.
RECOMMENDED READING
Daniel Boone - Autobiography of Colonel Daniel Boone
John Mack Faragher - Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer
Michael A. Lofaro - Daniel Boone: An American Life
Robert Morgan - Boone: A Biography