Boone: A Biography (35 page)

While those in the forts had come to Kentucky looking for opportunity, adventure, land, what they found was more often danger, and even death. Of this period Sarah Graham later said, “
14 persons, that I knew
their faces, committed suicide.” Because many were killed by Indians out in the forest, only a fraction of those who died were actually buried at Boonesborough. But when someone was killed near the fort, or died of suicide or natural causes, they had to be given a decent burial. A coffin was made of rough boards or poles, sometimes a hollowed-out log, the body wrapped in a sheet or buffalo skin, with the jaws bound by a strap. With no embalming, burials took place sooner rather than later, especially in summer.

The women were not just spinning wool and scrubbing floors. Most took an active part in the defense of the forts and stations. At Logan’s Station, as we have seen, Jane Menifee and Esther Whitley were better shots than most of the men. But it was not just the women at Logan’s Station who were instrumental in the defense of the settlement. At the two forts as well, Reuben Gold Thwaites tells us, the women
took “turns at the port-holes, from which
little puffs of white smoke would follow the sharp rifle cracks whenever a savage head revealed itself.”

The more affluent families at the forts owned slaves, families such as the Callaways and Bryans. Since the records are scant we can only guess at the numbers of African Americans there before tax records were kept. The best-known slave at Boonesborough was Uncle Monk, who belonged to the Estill family. Monk was known as an outstanding hunter and marksman and was a fiddler who played for all the parties and celebrations. He also planted a large apple orchard near Boonesborough. Even more important, he knew how to make gunpowder, and some say he taught the formula to Daniel Boone: six parts saltpeter,
or potassium nitrate, one part charcoal, one part sulfur by weight. The saltpeter was made by boiling down water leached through guano that had been dug out of caves, until only crystals were left. The crystals were crushed to dust to be mixed with willow charcoal and sulfur. The mixture was then boiled and stirred until the saltpeter combined with the sulfur. Ted Franklin Belue tells us the result could be doused with urine, “
rendering it a black, smelly goop
to be mashed flat to sun-dry; urine better oxygenated the mixture and caused the powder to ‘flash’ with surety.” It would be hard to overestimate the importance of this knowledge and skill to an isolated community such as Boonesborough in the late 1770s. Many times the forts and scattered settlements ran desperately low and had to send riders back over the mountains for a new supply of gunpowder. As Kentuckians began to make their own gunpowder they grew increasingly self-reliant.

Besides gunpowder, perhaps the most precious commodity at the time was salt. The first problem was that most settlers had never boiled their own salt before, and they lacked the iron pots and kettles and boiling pans, in which the salty water could be steamed down to a saline residue. Another problem was that most salt springs had such a low content of salt that an enormous quantity of water had to be boiled to get a useful amount of crystals. This was true of the brine spring at Boonesborough. Only a few salt springs, like Drennon’s Lick, Bullitt’s Lick, and those at the Lower Blue Licks to the north, had a strong enough saline content to be practical. The blue in the springs was partly the heavy saline content that made the water throbbing out of the limestone look gray-blue. The real work of salt boiling was not carrying the buckets of water to be evaporated but chopping wood to keep the fires going day after day. Salt was so dear in the frontier settlements it quickly became a medium of exchange. “
There were original notes for salt
which had circulated in place of money,” Robert E. McDowell tells us. Added to the other difficulties was the fact that boiling salt was a dangerous activity. Most of the salt springs were far out in the woods, closer to the Ohio, and salt boilers were especially vulnerable
to Indian attack as they kept the fires blazing under the kettles day after day. There was probably no more dangerous occupation, unless it was surveying, and many salt makers were killed.

Luckily Col. John Bowman, when he arrived at Boonesborough August 1, 1777, with the Virginia militia, had brought several big iron pots. It was a very cold and snowy winter, and there were still threats of Indian raids. It was Daniel Boone who volunteered to lead thirty men to the Lower Blue Licks in the dead of winter. They left Boonesborough on January 1, 1778, with the large kettles Colonel Bowman had brought. The plan was to make enough salt, as quickly as possible, to last the settlements a year, and get back to the safety of the forts to the south. It was assumed they would be safer from Indian attack in the middle of winter. Boone would hunt each day to supply the camp with meat and keep a lookout for Indians. Packhorses would carry the salt to Boonesborough and return with supplies every few days. It is possible Boone chose the Lower Blue Licks rather than Bullitt’s Lick or Drennon’s Lick, which were about the same distance from Boonesborough and might have been safer from Indian attack, simply because he knew the area around the Lower Blue Licks better. He was used to hunting there, and while his crew boiled salt he could do some hunting and trapping on nearby creeks.

The springs at the Lower Blue Licks yielded about ten thousand gallons of water a day. Between five hundred and six hundred gallons had to be boiled to make a bushel, or fifty pounds, of salt. Boone’s crew, working virtually around the clock through all kinds of weather, was able to make about ten bushels a day. In a month they produced several hundred bushels of salt and at least half of it had been packed back to the forts. After a month another crew would come to relieve the first.

Boone was assisted in hunting and scouting by his son-in-law Flanders Callaway and Thomas Brooks. On the cold, snowy Saturday of February 7 Boone hunted south to Hinkston Creek, while Callaway and Brooks headed upriver. Boone killed a buffalo and packed several hundred pounds of meat on his horse. “
A blinding snow-storm was
in progress.” As he was leading the animal along the creek he looked back and saw several Shawnees pursuing him. Hoping to escape on the horse, he tried to untie the tugs holding the meat, but the strings of buffalo hide were frozen. To his horror he found his knife frozen in its sheath. He had not wiped it dry after he cut up the buffalo meat. His only hope was to run into the woods.

The four Shawnees pursuing Boone were much younger than he was. Boone was forty-three. Running in deep snow, he looked back after half a mile and found they were gaining on him. One warrior had cut the meat loose and mounted Boone’s own horse. Bullets kicked up the snow around him and hit the strap of his powder horn. Boone saw escape was impossible and he leaned his rifle against a tree, a gesture of surrender. The warriors shouted with glee and laughed at him.

Though middle-of-the-winter raids were rare for the Shawnees, Blackfish had organized a party to attack the Kentucky forts in revenge for the murder of Chief Cornstalk. The young Shawnee warriors were so angry about the jail-cell execution, Blackfish had given in to their demands for a raid on Boonesborough. His party of more than a hundred warriors, on their way south, was camped on Hinkston Creek. The four scouts who caught Boone had already spotted the company of men boiling salt at the Lower Blue Licks and were on their way to inform Blackfish.

The arrival of Boone in the Shawnee camp was greeted with a great deal of celebration. Besides 120 warriors, there were two French Canadians working for the British and a black man named Pompey, who had been captured in Virginia years before and who served as a translator for Blackfish. Boone recognized among the warriors Capt. Will Emery, who had taken him prisoner eight years before on his first journey into Kentucky. When Boone introduced himself, Captain Will didn’t recognize him at first, and then he said, “Howdydo, howdydo,” and pointed out that Boone had not heeded his warning about the wasps and yellow jackets. Other Indians gathered round to shake hands with the famous hunter.
It was an odd scene
, as all displayed an
exaggerated friendliness, shaking hands and greeting Boone again and again with mock enthusiasm.

Boone was taken to Cottawamago, or Blackfish, who asked Boone what the men were doing at the Lower Blue Licks. Boone hesitated to answer and was told the salt boilers had already been spied. Through the interpreter Pompey, Blackfish told Boone the Shawnees were on their way to attack Boonesborough. With the coolness and cunning he often demonstrated in emergencies, Boone studied on a plan to divert the warriors from marching south, where the stockade at Boonesborough was not complete and where there were few men to defend it. Boone accused Blackfish of working for the redcoats. The chief replied: “
That is not true
. When the Red Coats came to us and offered us much red paint and many guns to fight the Long Knives, we refused. Our great chief Cornstalk went to the fort of the Long Knives on Mount Pleasant on the Ohio River and talked peace with the Long Knives. But the Long Knives murdered him and his son, although they came in peace and without arms. The spirit of Chief Cornstalk calls out from his grave to us to revenge his murder. He cannot rest until we take revenge.”

With friendly calm Boone said that he himself would be happy to go live with his Shawnee brothers in Ohio. He added that nearly all the men from Boonesborough were at the Lower Blue Licks and only women, children, and the sick were left at the fort. But even so, the fort was strong and would be difficult to take in such bad weather. And if the women and children
were
taken and made to march all the way to the Shawnee towns in the snow and cold, many would die.

Boone proposed that instead he would have his men at the Lower Blue Licks surrender to be prisoners, if Blackfish guaranteed they would not be tortured or forced to run the gauntlet. Then when spring came he, Boone, would accompany the Shawnees to Boonesborough with enough horses and supplies to bring the women and children to the Shawnee villages on the Little Miami River. There they would all live together in peace and brotherhood.

Blackfish and the other chiefs agreed to this arrangement. They had
little enthusiasm for marching and fighting in the depths of winter, and Boone’s proposal seemed to satisfy even the angry young men in the band. But they told Boone that if the salt boilers did not submit peacefully, he and they would be killed. These negotiations were conducted with politeness, even cordiality. They camped on Hinkston Creek for the night, and the next morning the large band proceeded through the deep snow to the Lower Blue Licks. It was Sunday, February 8, 1778.

The salt boilers were taking a day of rest, not because it was the Sabbath but because rising water had inundated the salt springs, making it impossible to collect brine to be boiled. They were resting by the fires. When the men saw Boone approach they assumed he was returning with the packhorses that carried salt to Boonesborough. But then Indians were spotted and the men leapt to their feet and grabbed their rifles.

“
Don’t fire—if you do, all will be massacred
!” Boone shouted to the salt boilers. He told them they were surrounded and explained that he had been captured the day before. He told them the war party had been headed to Boonesborough, but he had made an arrangement. All would be treated well if they surrendered. Seeing they were surrounded, the men obeyed. Including Boone, they made twenty-seven prisoners. Flanders Callaway and Thomas Brooks were still out hunting and one man was away with the packhorses. “
I think it was a Saturday
when my father was taken,” Nathan Boone told Draper, “and Sunday when he surrendered up the others.”

But after the salt boilers surrendered, some of the young warriors protested that they should attack Boonesborough anyway. Cornstalk should be avenged immediately. The deal made with Boone was in no way binding. Simon Girty’s brothers James and George were present, and the Frenchmen Barbee and Lorimier. Pompey translated for Boone, but in a voice so low the other prisoners could not follow. Finally Boone was allowed to address the assembly, and according to the testimony of one of the salt boilers, Joseph Jackson, many years later, this is what he said:

Brothers!
What I have promised you
I can much better fulfill in the spring than now. Then the weather will be warm, and the women and children can travel from Boonesborough to the Indian towns, and all live with you as one people. You have got all my young men; to kill them, as has been suggested, would displease the Great Spirit, and you could not then expect future success in hunting nor war. If you spare them, they will make you fine warriors, and excellent hunters to kill game for your squaws and children. These young men have done you no harm, they were engaged in a peaceful occupation, and unresistingly surrendered upon my assurance that such a course was the only safe one for them; and I consented to their capitulation, on the express condition that they should be made prisoners of war and treated well. I now appeal both to your honor and your humanity; spare them, and the Great Spirit will smile upon you.

All Indians, including Shawnees, respected eloquence and oratory. A chief’s ability to “talk the big talk” was one of the things that gave him authority. Several times Boone demonstrated that he had this power also, and his ability with words contributed to Boone’s status among Indians. It was only as the salt makers listened to these words that they realized what the discussion was all about. Many of the warriors were demanding that the prisoners be put to death. The fact that Blackfish permitted Boone to speak at length is evidence that he felt lenient toward him and the other prisoners. Many of the salt boilers later said that it is likely they would have been killed and Boonesborough taken had it not been for Boone’s poise and eloquence on this occasion.

A vote was taken among the warriors, and in some accounts Boone was allowed to vote. Others say it is unlikely a prisoner was permitted to vote.
As a hostage Boone was probably not
entitled to a vote under tribal law. It is thought the Girty brothers voted for leniency. Fifty-nine voted to kill the prisoners and march directly to Boonesborough, and sixty-one opposed that course. Boonesborough and the prisoners were saved.