Siege of Boonesborough

In September 1778, Boonesborough became the site of a clash tied to the wider American Revolutionary War. Shawnee chief Blackfish, backed by British alliance, launched an assault on the Kentucky outpost on September 7. Earlier that same year, Blackfish had taken Daniel Boone prisoner and folded him into the tribe, an act made notable by Boone's status as the man who had founded the settlement under siege. Boone managed to break free of Shawnee custody in time to organize and lead its defenders. Despite Blackfish's efforts, the siege failed to break the settlement's resistance, and after eleven days the Shawnee force withdrew. In the aftermath, Boone faced a court-martial brought by fellow officers who doubted his loyalty, suspecting Loyalist leanings on his part. Though he was cleared of the charges, he departed Boonesborough not long after.

Negotiations

Blackfish and his warriors appeared before Boonesborough on September 7, 1778. By Boone's reckoning, the assembled force numbered 444 Native Americans alongside 12 white men. Shawnees made up the bulk of the native contingent, joined by smaller groups of Cherokees, Wyandots, Miamis, Delawares, and Mingos. The white participants were French-Canadian militiamen out of Detroit, onetime French subjects now serving the British cause. Though no expedition sent against Kentucky had been larger, the absence of artillery meant that cracking a defended post such as Boonesborough would remain no easy task.

Blackfish summoned Boone from the fort to talk and pressed him on an earlier pledge to hand over the settlement. He produced letters from Governor Hamilton promising fair treatment and safe passage to Detroit for anyone who submitted. Refusal, the letters implied, carried no such guarantees. Boone answered that he would carry the proposal back to his people, explaining that authority had passed to other officers during his time as a captive, so the choice was not his alone to make.

Once inside, Boone laid out matters to the rest of the settlers, who leaned toward resistance over capitulation. They agreed to stretch out the talks with Blackfish for as long as possible, banking on the arrival of Virginia reinforcements. Boone and Major William Bailey Smith returned outside and raised concerns that the journey to Detroit would prove too grueling for the women and children. Blackfish countered that forty horses stood ready to carry anyone unable to travel on foot. Boone requested a further day to confer with the others. The two sides shared a ceremonial pipe to mark a temporary peace, then paused talks until morning. Over the following two days the defenders readied themselves for what was coming. Misled by faulty information from Hamilton, Blackfish assumed the fort held upward of 200 militiamen, though the true number of capable gunmen inside stood at only about 40. To bolster this false impression, some of the fort's women donned men's clothing and carried weapons.

When Blackfish and Boone met again on the evening of September 8, Boone informed him, to his evident surprise, that the settlement would not yield. Blackfish then suggested a full treaty council involving leaders from both camps the next day. That gathering took place on September 9, opening with a shared meal outside the walls before the formal council commenced. Armed men from each side kept watch from a distance in case violence erupted. Blackfish demanded an explanation for what right the settlers claimed to occupy the region. Boone responded that the land had been purchased from the Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals, a claim a Cherokee chief present confirmed as accurate. Satisfied, Blackfish offered terms: if the settlers swore loyalty to King George III, the Shawnees would recognize the Ohio River as a boundary and peace would follow. A written agreement reflecting this arrangement, since lost to history, was signed on the spot.

The Shawnees then moved to shake hands with the Americans and finalize the accord, but what followed remains disputed. One widely circulated account holds that the Shawnees, frustrated by their failure to take Boonesborough, tried to capture the American leaders outright. Historian John Mack Faragher and other scholars, however, find scant support for this version of events. Whatever the cause, a scuffle erupted, and shooters on both sides began firing. Amid the chaos, every American but one raced back inside the fort unharmed apart from minor wounds; the remaining man was forced to shelter behind a tree stump near the main gate. Warriors surged toward the entrance but were repelled by concentrated gunfire. With that, the negotiations collapsed and the siege proper commenced. The stranded settler endured a grueling day pinned down as fighting swirled around him, finally slipping inside after dark when the gate was cracked open just enough to let him through.

Siege

For several days after the first exchange of gunfire, both sides kept up sporadic shooting. Once that initial burst subsided, Boone stepped forward as the man the settlers naturally looked to, even though Major Smith and Colonel Richard Callaway technically held higher rank than his own captaincy. He pressed the Kentuckians to use their powder sparingly. Under cover of darkness, warriors dashed toward the fort's walls, hurling flaming torches in hopes of setting the rooftops ablaze, but the plan failed since anyone attempting it became an easy mark for the sharp-eyed riflemen inside.

By September 11, Lieutenant Antoine Dagneaux de Quindre had arrived with eleven men drawn from the Detroit Militia, and he persuaded his native allies to start tunneling from the riverbank toward the fort's walls. This technique, called mining, involved packing the finished tunnel with kegs of gunpowder positioned beneath a stretch of wall. Once detonated, the explosion would bring the wall down and open a breach for the attackers to storm through. The people sheltering inside caught the sound of digging and responded by carving out a countermine of their own, intending to cave in the enemy's passage before it could be finished. Diggers from both sides traded insults across the shrinking distance between them. In the end, nature intervened, as heavy rainfall caused the attackers' tunnel to give way before it ever reached its target.

Squire Boone, brother to the famous frontiersman, had a reputation for tinkering and invention. Among his creations was a crude cannon carved from wood and strengthened with iron bands, which managed to fire on Indian groups once or twice before splitting apart. He also converted old musket barrels into makeshift squirt guns, useful for dousing fires that broke out on the rooftops. On September 17, the Shawnees mounted what would be their last major push, once more attempting to burn the fort down. Their assault failed, and a fortunate downpour helped extinguish the flames. That single day's fighting cost the Shawnees more casualties than the entire preceding siege combined. By the following day, they had begun pulling back for good, eventually splitting into smaller raiding bands that struck other settlements. Through this familiar style of warfare, they caused considerably more destruction than they had managed during the siege itself. Boonesborough counted only two dead from the whole ordeal: an enslaved man named London and a settler by the name of David Bondurant.

Aftermath

Once the siege ended, Boone found himself accused rather than praised. Colonel Richard Callaway leveled charges against him, claiming that he favored the British side in the conflict. Captain Benjamin Logan, stationed nearby at Logan's Station, joined the accusation. Both men had a personal stake in the matter: their nephews remained captives after being handed over by Boone at the salt licks.

The military tribunal convened at Logan's Fort and considered four separate accusations. First, that Boone had given up the salt making party without offering resistance. Second, that during his time as a prisoner he had agreed to hand Boonesborough over to British forces. Third, that upon returning he organized the Paint Lick expedition, an action that left Boonesborough vulnerable just as Blackfish's forces were anticipated to strike. Fourth, that he had put the fort's officers at risk of ambush by consenting to negotiate with the Indians outside the fort's walls during peace discussions.

The court weighed the evidence presented and cleared Boone entirely, going so far as to elevate him to the rank of major in recognition of his conduct. Yet this official clearing of his name did little to ease the sting of the accusation, and afterward Boone seldom brought up the matter himself. He traveled to North Carolina afterward to bring back his family, who had gone there while he was held captive, presuming him dead. Rather than return to the site of his court-martial once he was back in Kentucky, Boone founded a fresh settlement known as Boone's Station.

During Boone's absence in North Carolina, forces mounted a retaliatory strike in the spring of 1779 against Chillicothe, Blackfish's town. The defense held, but Blackfish took a bullet to the leg in the fighting, and infection from the wound eventually claimed his life. As for Callaway, his fate came on March 8, 1780, when Shawnees caught him outside Boonesborough; they killed him, then scalped and mutilated his body.