USA > Kentucky > Madison County > Boonesborough > Boonesborough; its founding, pioneer struggles, Indian experiences, Transylvania days, and revolutionary annals; > Part 5
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I Clark's journal and Marshall.
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attention, and there was a mournful burial in the grave- yard adjoining the station.
Boonesborough was not besieged again this year, but life was made almost a burden to its inmates all the same, for Indians either as skulkers or in small bands haunted the locality until freezing weather. Pent up, stagnant, half-starved, exposed to sudden death whenever they ventured from the station, the settlers wearily waited for the relief they had sent for. It came at last on the 25th of July," when forty-five riflemen from North Caro- lina rode in among the wornout but rejoicing people. A week after these men were succeeded by a detachment from a force of a hundred Virginia militia, which Colonel John Bowman2 brought to the aid of the county, and these in turn were replaced by a smaller body commanded by the adventurous pioneer, Captain John Montgomery.3 While each of these militia reliefs, being under short enlistment, soon returned home, they were nevertheless such a strength and encouragement that the settlers were often enabled to take the offensive, while hunters were at least given a chance to seek big game, for ammunition was too scarce to use, except in cases of extreme neces- sity, on squirrels, rabbits, and birds. Often the danger
* Boone.
? Clark's Memoirs.
3 From Botetourt County, Virginia.
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was such that no game of any kind could be sought, and the sole dependence was such corn, potatoes, and turnips as could be raised so close to the station as to be almost under the rifle barrels of its defenders. Late in the fall pawpaws and wild grapes were a blessing, and big stores of walnuts and hickory nuts were laid in. Once the gunpowder was entirely exhausted, and the whole garrison got heartsick, when a little hoarded store was remembered of the brimstone and saltpetre that Henderson brought in. Some charcoal was made, and Boone and a couple of frontiersmen, who, like himself, had taken lessons from dire necessity, soon manufactured enough powder,' scant as that was, to tide the settlement over the emergency. But salt, almost as great a need as ammunition and to secure which the pioneers often risked captivity and death, was again distressingly low. The dwellers in the log cabins of Boonesborough always remembered the year 1777 for its varied and long-continued trials. ] It was a year of sieges, minor engagements, and single combats, of tragedies, romantic adventures, and great suffering, but the men and women of Boonesborough were too busy
1 Gunpowder was manufactured several times at Boonesborough. A few months after this when Boone was a prisoner at Detroit he surprised Hamilton by making his own powder, and the fact did not encourage the governor as to the capabilities and resources of the Kentucky settlers. (Howe's Ohio, page 191.)
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struggling for existence to make more than a casual record of the events that crowded it, and what should have been one of the richest pages of pioneer history is a blank. But through it all the settlers listened with the keenest interest for every echo of the Revolution that might penetrate the wilderness. About the middle of November they heard with exultation and renewed hope of the surrender of Burgoyne. That night a bonfire of dry cane was made in the center of the spacious stockade, where a crowd of rejoicing men, women, and children, singing negroes, and capering dogs was gathered. Every cabin door was open, and from each came the feeble light of a tallow dip or rude bear's oil lamp, or the brightness of blazing logs in a yawning fireplace. It was all that the patriotic but hard-pressed settlers could do in the way of celebrating, and they did that with the fort gates securely barred, with their horses and cattle all penned inside the pickets, and with scouts continually on the watch.
Among the pioneer conveniences and features that had gradually accumulated at Boonesborough by this time were sheds for corn and fodder and for the storing of peltry, rough but indispensable hand-mills or mortars, stock troughs made from hollow logs, skins of wild ani- mals pegged to the palisades to be cured, hulled walnuts and hickory nuts spread out to dry, a bare but all-impor-
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tant blacksmith shop, the usual assortment of pack- saddles, ploughs made up with irons "brought through the wilderness" and of wood fashioned in the fort, and the home-made rain barrels fed by bark gutters from the cabin roofs, for neither well nor cistern had yet been made inside the log walls by the strangely negligent gar- rison, and the springs and the river were still the main dependence for water. Most of the cabins were provided with a slab table, either a feather bed or a buffalo one, hickory chairs with deerskin seats, iron pots, ovens, and skillets, and gourds, big and little, that were used for every thing, from dippers to egg baskets, and to hold every thing, from cornmeal and soft soap to maple sugar. Bucks' antlers and wooden pegs held rifles, powder-horns, and fishing-poles, sun-bonnets and saddle-bags, bundles of dried herbs, strings of red pepper, and "hands" of tobacco. A shelf over the fireplace was reserved for medicine, the whisky jug, tinder box, ink bottle, and quill pens, the Bible, almanac, and a few other books, which, in some cabins, included The Pilgrim's Progress and Shakespeare.
Before December ended the stock of salt was exhausted at Boonesborough and the other stations also, and the slim rations of cornbread, turnips, and venison were not only insipid, but sickness was threatened. The long trip
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to the North Holston wells was not to be thought of, and, as the Indians seldom went on the warpath in midwinter, the pioneers determined to make their own salt at the ancient springs now known as the Blue Licks, to which the buffaloes, ages before, had guided the red men as they afterward guided their pale-faced foes.1 A Captain Watkins arrived at Boonesborough about this time from Virginia with a few militia to aid in the defense of the county, and it was arranged for his force to alternate with another under Daniel Boone in making the desired salt,? and on the ist of January, 1778, Boone, with a party of thirty men made up from the three forts, started on a long, cold ride for the "Lower Salt Spring," with a few pack-horses carrying the crudest of manufacturing outfits in the shape of the largest iron kettles then in domestic use in the settlements, together with meal, fod- der, and axes. As for meat, they relied solely on their rifles for that. The work at the salt camp, which was slow and difficult 3 enough, was made more so by the cold
" One of the principal buffalo traces of the Kentucky wilds led to the Blue Licks, in what is now Nicholas County.
2 McDonald's Kenton.
3 As from five hundred to eight hundred gallons of this water was required for a bushel of salt, one can fancy the time consumed in making even a moderate supply of it with such a makeshift as cooking kettles. One bushel of salt at this time was-worth a cow and calf in barter, and no telling how much in depreciated Continental currency. It was sold by measure-a half-bushel measure being used. Two bushels, with a few light
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weather and the constant efforts to secure game, so that many days elapsed before any salt was sent back to the settlements, but it went at last on pack-horses and in charge of three of the men, who got through safely. The work had dragged on for five weeks, when, on the 7th of February, it was suddenly ended by a band of a little over a hundred Indians, which included the Shawanese Chiefs Black Fish and Munseka, and two of Governor Hamilton's French employes, Lorimer and Charles Baubin. The weather was very severe, and Boone, who was several miles from camp hunting game for the men, and who was helpless from cold, was easily secured. He soon dis- covered that the object of the expedition was the capture of Boonesborough. To save the fort, which he was con- vinced could, under the circumstances, be taken, he pre- tended great loyalty to the Crown, offered to prove it by the surrender of his men already surrounded, expressed deep regret that Boonesborough was too strongly gar- risoned for so small a body to expect any thing but defeat, and suggested its capture a little later by a larger force. The stratagem was a desperate one, but it succeeded.2
articles, was the usual load of a led pack-horse. For years after peace was declared there were extensive salt-works at both "the Upper and the Lower Spring " on the Licking.
1 Haldimand manuscripts, April, 1778; Boone and Marshall.
2 Hamilton says in Haldimand manuscript : " The savages could not be prevailed upon to attempt the fort, which, by means of their prisoners, might have been easily done with success."
10
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Boone obtained good terms for his men, whose surrender the next day so convinced the Indians of his friendship and sincerity that the attempt on Boonesborough was aban- doned, and the greatly elated savages retired with their prisoners across the Ohio. Later on some of the captives were ransomed and some escaped,' but a few were heard of no more. Boone was adopted as a son by Black Fish, who gave him the name of "Big Turtle,"2 and he seems to have been kept with the Shawanese during his entire captivity. The disaster was almost immediately discovered by Brooks3 and another scout in advance of the Watkins force that had started to relieve the salt-makers. They found a deserted camp and so many significant Indian signs that they hastily gave warning to the advancing men, and all turned back with heavy hearts. This loss of twenty-seven men, including such a leader, out of so small a fighting force was by far the greatest calamity that had yet befallen the pioneers, and caused consterna- tion, grief, and discouragement at all the stations, and especially at Boonesborough. As days went by without bringing news from the ill-fated men the discouragement increased, and when spring had fairly opened and still no
I One of them at least, Joseph Jackson, it is known was still a pris- oner in the spring of 1780.
2 Lossing, and Thwaits in Withers' Chronicles.
3 McDonald's Kenton.
RELICS OF DANIEL BOONE.
Rifle, Hunting Shirt, Powder Horn, Tomahawk, and Hunting Knife. (From the Originals, owned by Colonel R. T. Durrett, President Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky.)
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tidings came they were given up for dead, and Mrs. Boone and all of her immediate family except Jemima, who remained with the family of her uncle, Squire Boone, together with some of the relatives of the other missing settlers, loaded up their pack-horses and made their weary and dangerous way back to North Carolina.
The veteran Indian fighter, Richard Calloway, was now the leading spirit at Boonesborough, and did his best to cheer up its inmates, but it was no easy task, for not only was Boone, their tower of strength, gone, but W. B. Smith was absent doing imaginary recruiting for Clark in Holston, the rollicking and adventurous "Butler"I was scouting for the same leader, and many old friends had gone back across the mountains. In addition to the pent-up and isolated life of the fort, which was hard enough of itself, skulking savages waylaid the hunters so persistently when they went for game that the people were at times reduced almost to starvation, and it was well indeed for the Kentucky settlements that an Indian army did not swoop down upon them during the gloomy spring of 1778.
Summer commenced dolefully enough, enlivened only by the preparations of Clark at the Falls of the Ohio for the expedition to Kaskaskia. It was the first summer
I He did not resume his real name - Kenton - until 1782.
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that had opened yet at Boonesborough without Daniel Boone. But the great woodsman, though missed and duly mourned, was far from dead. For four months he had been forced to lead the wild and uncertain life of his self-constituted Shawanese kinsmen, who, in their varied wanderings, had carried him along to Detroit, headquarters of the British for the Northwest, on one of their trips to get rewards for scalps and to dispose of some of their prisoners. There he won the friendship of Governor Hamilton,' who tried to ransom him, and who treated him with a kindness and consideration that Boone, stead- fast and grateful, never forgot. But, unfortunately for Boone, the Indians were too much charmed with him to let him go at any price, and when they turned their faces again toward the Ohio country he knew his only hope was in the desperate chance of escape. But the chance did not come, and the beginning of summer found him appar- ently contented but exceedingly watchful and patiently boiling salt for the Black Fish family at a secret spring 2 a few miles from the favorite old Indian haunt, Chilli- cothe.3 It was to this familiar region that the fighting force of the Shawanese returned on the 15th of June, exasperated over an unsuccessful foray against Donelly's
* Boone's Nar. Peck et al.
2 Said to be located in the present Fayette County, Ohio.
3 Old Chillicothe.
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Fort,' on the Greenbrier River, and determined to avenge its insulted dignity by an immediate surprise and capture of Boonesborough. Keenly observant as he was, and familiar with the Indian tongue, Boone quickly scented the impending danger, determined to escape at once at all hazards and warn his friends, and before another sunrise he had left the salt spring far in the rear. On a horse that Hamilton had given him he moved swiftly down the silent channel of track-obliterating streams, forced his way through dense reaches of encompassing cane, and, with face turned toward the Ohio River, entered a leafy wilderness as vast as the ocean itself. On the 20th of the month, after an almost incredible journey, which left him emaciated and starving, he arrived at Boonesborough, which greeted him as one just risen from the dead. The whole population rushed up to him with astonishment and delight. There was an eager minis- tering to his wants, a thousand questions asked, sympathy in his bitter disappointment at the absence of his family, and no little alarm and consternation at his news. For about ten days there was great anxiety and activity. The posterns and bastions were strengthened, badly needed repairs were made, and the garrison actually began to dig
I Campbell's Virginia, and Volume I, American Pioneer. This fort was about ten miles north of Lewisburg, in what is now West Virginia.
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a well,' but when the scouts reported no signs of an advance of the enemy the pioneers, with their usual strange but characteristic carelessness, abandoned the effort to secure a regular supply of water inside the stockade. In the meanwhile Clark's little force had left Kentucky for the Illinois country, and Boone, anxious as he was about his family, would not abandon the settlements, now weaker than ever in riflemen and threatened with an invasion which he was sure would sooner or later occur.
Early in July a party of riflemen made a venturesome march to that camp-ground on the Licking that seemed ever to be a fatal spot to the pioneers, and recovered the kettles that were so sadly needed. Later on "Simon Butler" returned with the inspiring news of the capture of Kaskaskia, to which was soon added the tidings of the arrival of the French fleet, causing the rejoicing garrison to almost forget its danger, when another prisoner of Black Fish -Stephen Hancock -reached the fort, after six months of privations, bringing the depressing informa- tion that the savage movement against Boonesborough was liable to occur at any time, and had only been tem- porarily delayed by the flight and warning of Boone.
1 Western Review, Volume I. This stupidity in failing to provide wells inside of stations was not monopolized by the Kentucky pioneers. It was a common omission. Even Vincennes had no well within its walls at this time. See Haldimand manuscripts.
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After this, in August, the scouts reported that the war parties of the Shawanese were again concentrating at Chillicothe, and the settlers were on the lookout for the invasion, but for some reason it did not occur, and about the middle of the month hearts were made lighter by intelligence of the capture of Vincennes and of the friendly feeling so plainly exhibited to Americans, since the French alliance, by the unstable French residents of the North- west, who were especially noted for their intimacy with the Indians.
But the fall of Vincennes was the very thing that pre- cipitated the long-deferred invasion, for Hamilton, terribly mortified and exasperated by Clark's success, energetically urged on the lagging Ohio savages to action against the "rebels of Kentuck."
Boone, who had already sent a messenger to the Hol- ston settlements' announcing the threatened danger and asking for aid, determined, though no reinforcements had yet arrived, to acquaint himself clearly with the move- ments of the enemy. Heading a party, which subsisted on parched corn and such provisions as were secured on the way, he crossed the Ohio, scouted about the familiar spring and town of his captivity, and after a skirmish, in
I Colonel Arthur Campbell, Washington County, Virginia, was the mili- tary commandant.
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which one savage was killed, discovered that the Indians had not only concentrated but had actually begun their march. He at once ordered a rapid retreat, evaded the advancing enemy, and, with all his men except Butler and Alexander Montgomery, who expected to catch up after one more adventure, reached Boonesborough in safety.
The invading expedition, which was the largest that had yet threatened the Kentucky settlements, consisted, according to the conservative Boone, of four hundred and forty-four Indians and twelve Frenchmen.1 The savages, with a few exceptions, were Shawanese, and the whole force was under the command of one of the ablest and most eloquent chiefs of that tribe, the veteran Black Fish,2 son of Puckashinwa, who fell at Kanawha in
I Several imaginative writers make the force number six hundred, and two aged pioneers, many years after the event, ran the figures up to a thousand. We give Boone's estimate because he was personally familiar, from recent captivity, with the fighting strength of the Shawanese, and because his statement is substantially confirmed by contemporary evidence, viz : Hamilton's own letter of September 5, 1778, in Haldimand manuscripts.
2 See Nathaniel Hart, in Shane's Collection ; Captain John Carr, in " Indian Battles ; " John Bradford's "Notes," and Lossing. Boone's Nar- rative only says, in a vague and general way, that "the Indian army was commanded by Captain DuQuesne(?), eleven other Frenchmen, and some of their chiefs," but J. M. Peck, who subsequently wrote an accurate and valuable life of Boone from data given him by the old pioneer himself, makes Black Fish the commander. Doctor L. C. Draper, who was backed by much manuscript contemporary information on this point, says posi- tively in his manuscript on Boone that the French and Indians were "all under the command of Black Fish."
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1774. As already related, Black Fish had participated in Kentucky expeditions twice, if not oftener, before this. His principal aide and adviser was Lieutenant Antoine Dagnieau DeQuindre, a French Canadian of the Detroit Militia, and the leader of the above-mentioned squad of his countrymen, which Hamilton had detailed to carry a stock of ammunition to the Indians and to otherwise assist them in this expedition.1 DeQuindre was thirty-five years of age, and, though a resident of Detroit, was a native of Montreal. He is the same person who, through some error, was mentioned in Boone's Narrative as "DuQuesne," a misspelling of the name and a confusion of the identity of DeChaine (Isadore), who was a mem- ber of the squad, but who was conspicuous only in his usual capacity of interpreter.2 The mistake was perpetu- ated for more than a century. Peter Douiller, a trader well known at Detroit, was also connected with the French contingent. Each of the principal Indian colleagues of Black Fish was, like himself, a veteran. One was Black Bird,3 called by Governor Patrick Henry "the great Chip-
I Haldimand manuscripts.
2 The mythical name, "DuQuesne," used for the first time in Filson's Boone of 1784, was accepted for more than a hundred years as the cor- rect name of the leader of the French squad. The real name, DeQuindre, was established beyond a doubt by the publication, only a few years ago, by the Canadian Government of the exceedingly interesting and valuable Haldimand manuscripts.
3 This chief's name is correctly given as above in Clark's Diary.
II
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pewa Chief," and who very shortly after this changed to the American side. Another was Moluntha, a leader of the Shawanese in all the serious movements against the Kentucky posts, and still another was the sagacious and distinguished Catahecassa, or Black Hoof, who was already a mature warrior when he participated in Braddock's defeat of 1755, and who was probably the only Indian who could claim to be a native of Kentucky,' as he was born on the margin of what was afterward known as Lulbegrud Creek, in Clark County, where his Shawanese parents had a temporary hunting-camp. One negro was along, a man named Pompey, captured, doubtless, from some settlement, but none the less a slave, and mainly useful to the Indians because he could speak English.2 As usual, the savages were scantily equipped, with a view only to a short campaign. No warrior carried any thing heavier than a flint-lock rifle and a buckskin wallet of parched corn,3 for wild game was depended on for meat,
I Harvey's History of the Shawanese. History of the Indian Tribes. Black Hoof revisited his birthplace in 1816. He died in 1831, after attaining a wonderful age, estimated at one hundred and twelve to one hundred and twenty years.
2 Some of the Indians kept negro slaves, and frequently sold them. Of the population of. Detroit at this time, one hundred and twenty-seven were slaves worth each from £180 to {260 in New York currency, says Hal- dimand's manuscripts.
3 They did not expect to secure corn in Kentucky, where they had made it almost impossible for the settlers to cultivate it that season.
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but a train of pack-horses was along devoted mainly to the carriage of extra ammunition and of such provisions and conveniences as were absolutely necessary to the simple-habited but less seasoned militia. But, as will be seen later on, the pack-horses were expected to do still more important service.
And so, with scalp-locks befeathered and their more than half-naked bodies streaked with the war-paint they so delighted in,' the savages moved swiftly to the Ohio, crossed it near the mouth of Cabin Creek,2 from whence they followed the ancient war road of their race to a point beyond the Upper Blue Licks, where they entered a great buffalo trace which extended toward and far beyond the stockaded posts of their enemies. The Indians made a rapid march, and Boone and his scouting party made a narrow escape. The hunters galloped into the fort some time before sunset on the afternoon of the 6th of September, and that night the savages camped on the north bank of the Kentucky.
Early on the morning of the next day, Monday, Sep- tember 7, 1778, the dusky crowd crossed the river about
I The savages used immense quantities of paint in the decoration of their persons. Hamilton, in a report for this very month (September) of goods on hand at Detroit for the Indian department, mentions "eighty pounds of rose pink and five hundred pounds of vermilion."
2 Near the present Maysville, Kentucky.
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half a mile below the present ferry,' at a point still known as "Blackfish Ford," climbed the steep southern bank, passed to the rear of "Hackberry Ridge," marched along its base until nearly opposite Boonesborough, and then crossing it, came down to a cover of trees and under- growth within rifle shot of the fort. The position was gained without the firing of a gun. The settlers were too utterly weak for any contest outside of their wooden
I We give September 7th as the date of the commencement of this siege, because it is the only date supported by contemporary evidence, that is, documents written at the time. Colonel John Bowman, in his letter (see Appendix Y) of October 14, 1778, less than a month after the siege, forwarded from Harrodsburg to Colonel George Rogers Clark, says that the Indians and French appeared at Boonesborough September 7th. The British contemporary account points the same way, for before Bowman wrote, Governor Hamilton, in a letter of September 16, 1778, reports to Sir Frederick Haldimand that the Shawanese, with DeQuindre, had gone to attack the forts on the " Kentucke," and on September 26th, before he could have heard of the outcome of the expedition, says " the Shawa- nese have not yet broke up their little siege." (See Haldimand manu- scripts.) Two, at least, of the leading participants in the siege afterward stated the time of its commencement, viz : Daniel Boone, who gave it as the 8th of August in his Narrative, dictated six years after the event, and William Bailey Smith, who (in Volume III of Western Review), after a still longer interval, gave the same date as Bowman. Boone may be said to have substantially corrected his date when, some years after the publi- cation of his Narrative, he and another eye-witness of the siege, Flanders Calloway, furnished Reverend Mr. Peck the facts for his Life of Boone, which gives the time as September 7th, but Marshall, Bradford, and other historians, who did not have the benefit of the Bowman, Hamilton, and Peck data, adopted and long perpetuated the date as given in the first life of Boone. The evidence quoted fixes the date as September 7th, the date also given by the late Lyman C. Draper, after a full and careful investigation.
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