Boone: A Biography (36 page)

In preparation for the march north the Indians scattered dozens of bushels of salt in the snow and mud of the Blue Licks. The prisoners were loaded down with equipment and baggage. One warrior gave Boone a brass kettle to carry, but Boone shoved it back at him. An argument escalated and Boone pushed the kettle away so hard the brave fell down. The other Shawnees laughed at him, and Blackfish stepped forward and indicated that Boone was under his special protection. The huge party of warriors and prisoners marched down the Licking River a few miles and made camp for the night. When Boone noticed the Shawnees clearing a path in the snow, which he recognized as a gauntlet, he reminded Blackfish of his agreement not to torture the prisoners. Through Pompey the chief said, “O, Captain Boone, this is not intended for your men, but for you.” Boone saw that he had been outwitted. He was given the choice of running the gauntlet now or waiting until they reached the Shawnee towns where the women and children could participate. Boone chose to get the ordeal over with, knowing that squaws could be more imaginative and relentless in their torture than the warriors.

After the Shawnees lined up on either side of the cleared path, armed with tomahawks and clubs, Boone braced himself at the opening and began his charge. Crouching forward, the powerfully built Boone jumped this way and that, dodging and zigzagging, feinting and sidestepping so fast it looked as though he could get through the gauntlet unscathed. But he was hit several times, and one tomahawk cut a gash on his head that bled so much the blood almost blinded him. As he neared the end of the run, a brave stepped out in front of him to deliver a deadly blow. Still dashing this way and that, Boone pretended to charge around the warrior but at the last minute butted him in the lower belly with his powerful head, as he had done to the Indian on the Juniata in 1755. The warrior went flying in the snow and the Shawnees roared with laughter as Boone finished his run at the safety post and was congratulated by his would-be torturers. They teased the fallen warrior, calling him
nothing but a “damned squaw
.”

That evening by the campfire Barbee and Lorimier, the two French Canadians working for the British, got into an argument about whether the prisoners should have their ears slit in the Shawnee fashion. The argument turned violent and was stopped, and the salt boilers’ ears were spared. The next morning James Callaway, one of the prisoners, was ordered to carry a salt kettle on his back, but he refused. Baring his head and patting the top of his head, he indicated he would rather be killed now than serve as a beast of burden. The warrior chose not to kill him, knowing a live Kentuckian was worth a hundred dollars, whereas
a scalp brought only fifty dollars
at the British post at Detroit. James Callaway did carry a rifle and auger for the Indians but managed to drop them both in swift-moving water during the march.

The large party crossed the Ohio River by taking turns in a “bull” boat made of buffalo hides, which would carry twenty at a time. The boat was hidden there for their use when they needed to cross the river. In the narrative he dictated to Filson five years later Boone stressed the hardships of the march into Ohio during the harsh weather of February 1778, “
an uncomfortable journey, in very severe weather
.” It took ten days to reach the town of Chillicothe on the Little Miami River, near future Antioch College. He admitted that for the most part the Shawnees treated them well, considering the harshness of the weather and the shortage of provisions. They got so hungry the Indians killed and ate their dogs. After that all were reduced to eating elm bark, which gave them diarrhea. The diarrhea was treated by eating oak bark. Finally the Indians shot a deer and boiled its entrails to make a kind of jelly to counter the extreme effects of the oak bark. When Boone tried to swallow the jelly he threw up, and he was forced to try again and again. As he vomited, the Indians laughed at his weakness. Finally he got some of the jelly to stay down and the concoction opened his bowels. Only then was he allowed to partake of the venison. The Shawnees told him that if he had eaten meat before, “
it would have killed him
.”

The Shawnee town they were approaching was the Chillicothe on the Little Miami River. There had been previous Shawnee villages named Chillicothe, and there would be later ones also. “
The name Chillicothe means
, as the aged Shawanoe chief Black Hawk related to Joseph Ficklin,
Fire that won’t go out
—hence, the town of the sacred council fire.” In effect, Chillicothe meant “capital town” or “central town.” The “
Chillicothes” were the clan from which
the leaders of the Shawnee nation were often chosen. Other clans were the Piquas, the Kiskopos, and the Mequachakes. By 1778 Shawnees built their towns to look pretty much like the white stations, though bigger, with cabins and council house forming a kind of fortress. Everyone who saw the Shawnee towns in Ohio commented on how beautifully they were situated along the rivers.

As the band approached the town of Chillicothe, on February 18, the Shawnees made Ansel Goodman, one of the captives, strip off his clothes in the extreme cold and “
sing as loud as he could holler
. The object of that, he afterwards learnt, was to give notice of their approach.” The Shawnees had not had so many white prisoners since Braddock’s Defeat in 1755. They celebrated with a great war dance, and in the excitement the prisoners were made to run the gauntlet in spite of Blackfish’s promise to Boone. James Callaway, with his considerable anger and strength, knocked two Indians down at the beginning of the run and surprised the rest so much he got through unscathed. William Hancock followed Boone’s example and butted with his head a woman who tried to stand in his way.

It was the custom of the Shawnees to adopt prisoners they liked into their families. The practice may seem strange to us, to take a former enemy into one’s family as a brother, so soon after he surrenders. Few other customs illustrate more clearly the difference between the ideas of kinship in the white and Indian cultures. In Indian wars, the tribes fighting were often closely related by blood and language, belief and tradition. Someone defeated in war, who showed courage and dignity,
when given the correct instruction and initiation, and a new name, could become in effect a new brother or son. The practice illustrates a deep sense of kinship, implicit kinship, with all other people, including a noble, defeated opponent. Some prisoners were chosen to replace sons or husbands who had been killed.

When they captured women and children, and even men in battle, Indians shared their food with the captives and gave them moccasins. They taught the captives not to call out in the forest but to communicate by making noises like animals.
Captured women were rarely affronted
sexually, partly because of an incest taboo protecting someone who might become an adopted “sister” but more often because warriors observed a vow of celibacy until they returned from war to their villages. Among many tribes the crime of rape was punished by death. Those captured, especially adults, were often forced to run the gauntlet after they reached the village. The gauntlet, in the words of James Axtell, was “
a purgative ceremony by which
the bereaved Indians could exorcize their anger and anguish, and the captives could begin their cultural transformation.” The next rite was the ritual bathing in a stream where the squaws scrubbed away the “whiteness” in the captive’s body.

The most important stage of the process of adoption was the last, when the chief or sachem made a solemn speech describing the honor accorded to the adoptee, the duties and behavior expected from the new member of the community.
Such an exhortation might last
an hour or more, as would a sermon by a contemporary white preacher. Once a captive was adopted they became a full member of the tribe. Some adopted males rose to be leaders of the native community. Some became renowned chiefs, including one called Old White Chief of the Iroquois. Others who became famous leaders included Simon Girty of the Senecas and Alexander McGillivray of the Creeks. “
In public office as in every
sphere of Indian life, the colonial captives found that the color of their skin was unimportant; only their talent and their inclination of heart mattered,” James Axtell tells us.

White children adopted by the Indians often chose to remain with their Indian families, even after they were rescued. Adopted women and some men made the same decision. Once they adapted to the Indian lifestyle they were reluctant to return to the settlements, when they were freed or ransomed. Many Europeans became “white Indians.”
On the other hand few Indians chose
to live with the whites, as Crevecoeur noted.

Though all Indians, especially the young, could be cruel to prisoners when they were first brought into the village, the elders encouraged respect, sharing, mutual care. Many adoptees chose to stay with their captors, according to James Axtell, “
because they found Indian life to possess
a strong sense of community, abundant love, and uncommon integrity—values that the European colonists honored, if less successfully. But Indian life was attractive for other values—for social equality, mobility, adventure, and, as two adult converts acknowledged, ‘the most perfect freedom, the ease of living.’” Indian lovers were sometimes called sleeping dictionaries, as a new language was learned quickly from a sexual partner.
Many rescued and returned
to the white community took the first opportunity to escape back to the Indians.

In white culture a sense of identity was defined more in terms of difference, deep indelible difference, of bloodline, religion, class, heritage, not to mention ethnicity and race. To the Shawnees, complete adoption was assumed to be possible because the differences between people were not perceived to be either great or indelible. A common humanity overrode mere tribal differences. To European settlers the differences seemed more essential, permanent, definitive. An analogy might be made between an animistic, metaphoric way of seeing experience. To the mind that thinks in terms of metaphor and myth, all things can seem related and be seen as likenesses, translations, parallels, and symbols of each other. To the more rational, analytical mind, it is the differences that define and make sense of experience. As Shelley puts it succinctly in “A Defense of Poetry,” “
Reason respects the differences
, and imagination the similitudes of things.” For twenty-five
hundred years European culture had developed its analytical, logical way of making sense of the world of experience. At Chillicothe on the Little Miami in February 1778, that worldview would confront a more ancient, poetic, and connective way of defining identity and humanity.

1778

Daniel Boone and sixteen of his company of salt boilers were adopted by the Shawnees. Most of those adopted were selected for their bravery or strength, good looks, or congenial personality. Those who exhibited bad tempers or continued hostility were set aside to be sold to the British.

Because of his compact, powerful body, Boone was named Sheltowee, or “Big Turtle.” From the very beginning, Boone seemed to have a special rapport with Blackfish. It could almost be said Boone worked a charm on the great war chief of the Shawnees. Blackfish told Boone that he had lost a son in war and Boone would replace that son. In some accounts Blackfish’s son was one of the kidnappers of Jemima and the Callaway girls who had been shot.

His adoption by the Shawnees on the Little Miami is perhaps the most complicated episode in Boone’s long career. Nothing illustrates the complexity of his personality and his resourcefulness more than his success as one of the tribe that was planning a massive attack on Boonesborough.

As the adopted son of the great chief, Boone was treated to an elaborate ceremony of transformation and conversion. John Mason Peck, who interviewed Boone near the end of his life, described the ritual in his biography: “
The hair of the head is plucked
out by a
tedious and painful operation, leaving a tuft, some three or four inches in diameter, on the crown, for the scalp-lock, which is cut and dressed up with ribbons and feathers. The candidate is then taken into the river in a state of nudity, and there thoroughly washed and rubbed, ‘to take all his white blood out’. The ablution is usually performed by females. He is then taken to the council-house, where the chief makes a speech, in which he expatiates upon the distinguished honors conferred on him, and the line of conduct expected from him. His head and face are painted in the most approved and fashionable style, and the ceremony is concluded with a grand feast and smoking.” His hair plucked out, all except the topknot that identified him as a Shawnee brave, his whiteness washed away, Boone was given a new name and a new identity.

On March 10, 1778, the ten prisoners who were not adopted into the tribe were taken to Detroit to be traded to Henry “Hair Buyer” Hamilton for a hundred dollars each. As Blackfish’s honored son, Boone got to go along. Likely Blackfish wanted to show off his prize, the great hunter and scout. An older woman of the tribe went along for the journey of several days, apparently in hopes of becoming the wife of one of the prisoners. Rejected by each of the men in turn, she at last attached herself to Nathaniel Bullock. Nathaniel was forced to carry her baggage but dropped behind the group as the woman clung to his arm. Coming to an air hole in a frozen stream, he pushed the woman into the river and she disappeared under the ice. Later he told his captors she had “
stepp’d [to] one side
,” and they apparently thought no more about it. Boone would look back on this journey to Detroit fondly. “
During our travels, the Indians
entertained me well; and their affection for me was so great, that they utterly refused to leave me there with the others, though the Governor [Hamilton] offered them one hundred pounds Sterling for me.”

Boone said several of the English officers at Detroit were touched by his plight and offered him aid. Knowing that Boone was a leader in Kentucky, they no doubt hoped to win him over to the British side.
Boone was so friendly they must have assumed he was not deeply committed to the American cause, and he was content to let them assume what they wanted. But when the officers offered him money, he had to refuse, knowing he could never repay their generosity. One has the impression of a great show of hospitality made toward him, no doubt in part as a gesture of friendship toward Blackfish. After all, Boone was the chief’s adopted son. It is possible that Freemasons among the British officers showed a special consideration for Boone. Many members of the distinguished Hamilton family were known to be Freemasons. And Boone seemed to delight in all the attention. But it is also apparent that Hamilton and Boone had a genuine respect for each other. Three years later, when the tables were turned and Hamilton was a prisoner of the Americans at Williamsburg, it was Boone who tried to help the British officer, who was badly treated by his captors.