Boone: A Biography (41 page)

In theory Richard Callaway was the ranking officer at Boones-borough, but Maj. William Bailey Smith had been commissioned commander of the fort after Boone was captured by the Shawnees. From most reports it appears that Boone was the actual leader. The firing from the outside kept up steadily through that first day and night and then the second day. The Shawnees and British had a considerable supply of powder and lead and they used it willingly. The walls of the fort crackled and thudded with the impact of bullets. Piles of harvested flax were scattered in the fields nearby, and during the night the Indians spread the flax along a fence that led to the edge of the fort. The next day they lit the flax to burn like a fuse that would set the fort on fire. Some men inside the fort risked their lives to crawl out under the kitchen wall and tear down the fence adjoining the palisades. They got back inside and the fence burned up, causing no harm.

On Friday, September 11, things were quiet in the morning.
Some wondered if the Shawnees had retreated
. But the gates remained closed, and later those in the fort looked out and saw the river was muddy below the fort and heard the sound of digging and roots being cut. A long cedar pole was seen moving, as though loosening the ground out of sight by the river. They guessed the Indians and British were digging a trench, or maybe a tunnel, toward the fort and under the wall, to blow up a section of the stockade, then rush into the enclosure. Or maybe they planned to tunnel under the wall and attack in the darkness. It was decided to dig a counter tunnel or trench that would intercept the tunnel from the river. At the same time, the men in the fort built a six-foot structure up over Henderson’s kitchen from which to observe the enemy’s mining. Intense volleys were exchanged all night while the opposing trenches were being dug. A slave named London, who was owned by Henderson and was an excellent marksman, crept out of the fort in the trench to get a better shot at the Indians nearby. In the dark, either side could aim only at the flashes or sounds of the other’s weapons.
London’s gun refused to fire
, and an Indian aimed at the snap of the hammer, or the flash in the pan, and killed him. London was a popular figure at Boonesborough and his
death was a serious loss to the fort. In the heavy firing of the second night, a Dutchman named David Bundrin, an accomplished and courageous marksman, was looking through a porthole on the southwest side of the fort when a bullet struck him in the forehead. He died slowly, blood and brains leaking out of the wound as his wife, delirious with grief, thanked God “that the ball didn’t hit him in the eye.”
Bundrin died before daybreak
, just as Boone was ordering his men to cease firing and save their ammunition.

Jemima Boone was wounded slightly on one of the first days of the siege. She was constantly running back and forth carrying ammunition and drinks of water to the men. Standing in an open door she felt what might have been a slap on her backside. In fact, it was a bullet from the ridge across the river, so nearly spent it made only a shallow wound and fell out when she jerked the cloth of her dress. In the nineteenth century historians had trouble mentioning the wound because of its location. The bullet was sometimes described as hitting “
the fleshy part of her back
.”

During the excitement of the siege, profanity was shouted between the fort and the enemy, but because of the delicacy of Victorian scholars such as Lyman Draper and the Reverend John Dabney Shane, little of the exact phrasing has come down to us. The “blackguarding,” as shouted insults were called, is referred to, but not the words actually used. The most notable of the cussers was perhaps John Holder, son-in-law of the formidable Mrs. Callaway. Holder was one of those who dashed outside the fort to put out a fire the Indians had set, and as he made his sprint and quelled the blaze he hurled colorful language at the attackers. When he came back inside, safe but still swearing, Mrs. Callaway reprimanded him for his oaths, saying it would be more becoming to pray rather than to swear. “
I’ve no time to pray, goddamnit
,” Holder snapped.

F
ROM THE
beginning, the Shawnees had made attempts to set the fort on fire. Without artillery, fire was their best weapon against the log
palisades. The efforts to set the enclosure ablaze intensified on the third night. John Gass would later say, “
They shot arrows, with powder
in a little rag, and a little punk. They set only one house on fire, the only shingled roof house there was there, Col. Henderson’s.” Warrior after warrior ran up to the fort and hurled torches made of hickory bark and gunpowder over the walls. Most of the torches fell harmlessly to the ground. Many Indians were killed because the torches they carried made them easy targets in the dark. Even if they carried the torches behind blankets, they had to expose themselves to throw them.
When the burning arrows hit roofs
, they could be swept off with poles because the roofs sloped inward, as Nathan Boone explained to Draper.

Anticipating the attempts to set the walls and roofs on fire, Squire Boone, always a resourceful tinkerer, had made squirt guns out of spare rifle barrels and bags of water that could quench blazes several feet away. Squire had even made a wooden cannon, with a gum tree log hollowed out with an auger and wrapped with iron bands, filled with powder and buckshot. While Squire was recovering from his wound, others took aim with his cannon at the Indians in the field. The results were not notable, and on the second try the whole thing exploded into splinters. From then on the Indians would taunt the fort, asking, “
Why don’t you fire your big wooden gun
again?”

As the trench from the river got closer, men climbed on the new platform over Henderson’s kitchen and hurled stones at the diggers. The rocks falling on their heads infuriated the Indian tunnelers. “
Come out and fight like men
,” they shouted, “and not try to kill them with stones, like children.” An old woman, Mrs. South, who heard the Indians cursing, asked the men not to throw any more rocks “
for they might hurt [the Indians]
and make them mad and then they will seek revenge.” The men roared with laughter and kept repeating her warning as a joke for days.

Though he was not a digger, Pompey, the translator, seemed to participate in the tunnel building and was seen to watch the fort from
a trench leading into the tunnel. His head would pop up one place, duck as men from the fort fired, then pop up at another place while they reloaded. A number of men had fired and missed him. His game was to show that he was too quick for them. The riflemen reloaded and each aimed at a different place along the rim of the trench. Finally, Pompey’s head appeared just where a rifle was pointed, the trigger was squeezed, and his head appeared no more.
According to Draper, it was William Collins
who pulled the trigger. In other accounts it was William Hancock who killed the black interpreter.

The men in the fort began calling, “Where’s Pompey?” The Indians answered in English or Shawnee, “Pompey gone hog hunting,” or “Pompey ne-pan,” meaning “Pompey is asleep.” Before the siege was over they would admit, “Pompey nee-poo,” meaning “
Pompey is dead
.”

A rumor grew later that it was Boone who killed Pompey. But this is almost certainly not true. Boone was too busy organizing and directing the efforts to lie in wait for hours to shoot the interpreter. However, another story of the siege may have some truth in it. It seems a Shawnee brave liked to climb a tree within sight of the fort and turn, lifting his breechclout, then pat his backside, saying without need of a translator, “Kiss my ass.” The tree was almost two hundred yards away, and though several men had shot at the taunting brave, they had missed.

The legend is that Boone took his finest rifle, which Draper says he called Tick-Licker because it could flick a tick off a bear’s snout at a hundred yards, put in an extra load of powder, and resting the barrel on a loophole sill, took careful aim at the Shawnee mocker. When he touched the trigger the brave fell from the tree, crashing through the limbs until the body thumped on the ground. The butt patter was seen no more. Draper says, “
Such a fatal shot deterred
the other Indians from venturing up to remove the body . . . till after nightfall, and the hogs meanwhile rooted around the corpse.” It is a colorful story, but again it is unlikely Boone was the rifleman, and the fort had many superb marksmen.

An American flag, likely an early version of the stars and stripes
with the stars in a circle, called the 1777 National Flag, flew on a fifty-foot pole at the center of the fort. Firing at the pole hundreds of times, the Indians finally broke the top off. Those inside took down the pole, replaced the flag on a repaired shaft and planted it in the sky again. The flag remained there.

One of the stranger anecdotes of the siege concerns a Shawnee warrior who had a wooden false face decorated to look like an Indian wearing war paint. Hidden behind a large sycamore log about a hundred yards from the fort, he raised the false face on a stick to draw fire from the fort, then dropped the false face and fired at the exposed marksman in the loophole. He did this a number of times, until finally the men in the fort caught on. Watching the log carefully, a marksman aimed not at the false face but at the visible part of the body holding it up. When he fired, the Indian crawled away and the painted wooden face was seen no more above the log. Draper tells us, “
After the siege, signs of blood
were found at the spot, as well as the veritable false-face punctuated with two or three bullet holes.”

The determined marksmanship from the walls took its toll on the Shawnees. One Indian had his knee shattered while hiding behind a stump close to the wall. Another was shot by three riflemen while lounging on a fence as much as three hundred yards away. The advantage of the long rifle over the British musket was proven again and again. It took longer to reload the rifle than the musket, but even that problem had been lessened. Neal O. Hammon has written, “
Some unknown genius discovered
that a greased patch placed over the bullet lessened the time needed to reload, and became a gas check to utilize the full force of the exploding powder . . . shot for shot, the rifle would kill more men at a greater distance using only half the powder and lead.”

Finally, on Thursday night, September 17, ten days after Blackfish’s army had arrived, the Shawnees made their maximum effort to burn the fort. Fire seemed their only hope, and again and again they rushed forward to fling torches onto the roofs. They had, however, learned
their lesson and tried to conceal the torches with blankets until the last moment before the torch was thrown. Fire arrows were shot also, but they had little effect. The firing from both sides was so intense the sky was lit up with exploding gunpowder. Moses Boone, who was ten, later recalled that the light was so bright “
any article could be plainly seen
to be picked up, even to a pin.”

William Patton, who had been away hunting when the siege began, hid in the woods watching the assault from a distant hill. The fires were so bright, the shouting so intense, the whoops of the Indians and screams of the women and children in the fort so loud, he was sure Boonesborough had fallen and made his way to Logan’s Station to announce the sad news. In fact, the roofs of several cabins were set afire that night. Men and women rushed to tear away burning boards, throw water on burning logs. Luckily it began to rain during the night. And many Indians who had carried torches to the walls were killed. As the rain put out the last fires, all got quiet.

On Friday morning the Shawnee camp in the peach orchard appeared to be abandoned. A few shots were fired from here and there, but the firing got more and more distant. Some bands of Indians seemed to be going north toward the Ohio, others southwest toward Logan’s Station and Harrodsburg, and still others south. Fearing a ploy, those in the fort waited until afternoon before opening the gate and venturing out. They saw where the tunnel from the river had caved in because of the heavy rain, and found the remains of several large torches that had been intended to set the stockade on fire. They discovered the camp in the peach orchard really was deserted. The Shawnees and the British militia had gone. They had taken with them all the bodies of Indians killed but left Pompey’s body lying near the river.

Boone examined the tracks and found that about thirty Indians, probably Cherokees, had headed south. Other bands had dispersed toward the other settlements. It was later learned that Blackfish had agreed that the warriors could take some scalps and lives from the other settlements so as not to return empty handed to their Ohio
towns. Blackfish knew from the beginning it was unlikely he could take Boonesborough in a siege. There is only one instance in Kentucky history of Indians, or anyone else without artillery, taking a palisaded and defended fort—Kincheloe’s Station on September 2, 1782. That’s why the chief had been willing to negotiate, hoping for a surrender. His attempt to seize hostages at the “treaty” ceremony was his best hope for victory. Siege had never been a Shawnee style of warfare. They were most effective at small raids, ambushes, and surprise attacks on isolated cabins and settlements. Their genius was for the decoy and ambush. After the siege was called off, the scattered warriors were more successful at taking scalps and killing whites than the big army assembled at Boonesborough had been.

Boone and the residents of Boonesborough
picked up 125 pounds of lead
on the ground and stuck in the logs of the fort. For eleven days Blackfish and the British had thrown everything they had at the defenders. And Boonesborough had survived. Later on that Friday the people at Logan’s Station saw a group of horsemen approaching. Assuming it was Indians coming to attack, now that Boonesborough had fallen, the settlers were astonished to recognize their own men who had gone to help Boonesborough. “
Why, they are our boys!
” a woman shouted. The returning fighters said they could understand why William Patton had thought Boonesborough was defeated, with all the firing and screaming of the night before.