Boone: A Biography (38 page)

Other beliefs and habits of the Shawnees are worth noting also.
To the Shawnees, springs were thought to be
entrances to the underworld. Passing a spring, a Shawnee warrior would stop and sprinkle tobacco around the pool and pray to the spirit of the fountain for success with his mission and a safe return to his village. After shedding human blood, a warrior had to be purified through fasting and ritual. The spirits of those he had killed must be propitiated.
Any man taken in battle expected
to be burned at the stake and made a death song promising his death would be avenged by his people.

As a nation the Shawnees had always been divided. There was no strong unity among the Chillicothe, Piqua, Kispoko, and Mequashake bands.
The Shawnees had moved often
as a way of holding on to their culture, choosing migration and its challenges rather than living near whites. By 1778 their towns included Indians from many other nations, as well as adopted whites. Politically they were divided also. The “Grenadier Squaw,” Nonhelema, as well as her brother Cornstalk, warned whites of attacks. Many Americans thought Shawnees and Delawares held Ohio lands only at the discretion of the Iroquois. That assumption infuriated the Ohio Indians.

Shawnee culture at this time was particularly complex and evolving, a patchwork of traditional beliefs and practices mingling with ideas and methods acquired from the Europeans. Indians had claimed that domesticating livestock “
desecrated the spirituality of animals
,” even as they were beginning to raise herds of their own. Travelers in the
Ohio region had noticed as early as 1760 that Indians had many cattle and demonstrated “
skill in making butter and cheese
.” Missionaries for decades had urged Indians to give up hunting and farm and raise livestock. In some cases their message had been heeded.
But many warriors felt the missionaries
were trying to turn them into women, for farming had traditionally been considered women’s work. Most Indians had little interest in accumulating surpluses or wealth. They cherished the principles of their ancient culture, even as it was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between what was Indian and what was taken from the whites. By 1778 many Indians lived in wooden houses very much like those in the white settlements.

One feature of Indian society the early accounts usually failed to note was the female chief or village leader, who oversaw the lives of the women, organized the field work and harvesting, the feasts and many of the ceremonies.
This woman leader had the responsibility
of informing the male war chief of the view of the women when a consensus had been reached among them. One Shawnee man was heard to explain that women were allowed to speak in the council house, “
because some women were wiser than some men
.”

There are many stories of the precautions Blackfish took to make sure that Sheltowee did not run away. Indians were assigned to shadow him when he went out riding on his horse. When he hunted he was given just enough lead and powder for one or two shots. Even so, he found ways to hoard both lead and powder, killing game with half a charge or half a bullet. Boone’s expertise as a gunsmith especially impressed his Shawnee companions. He seemed able to repair and improve almost any firearm. They liked his sense of humor also. Once he extracted all the bullets from their loaded rifles and pretended to flee, and when they attempted to shoot him their guns fired empty blasts. Boone dumped the lead balls he had taken from their guns at the feet of the startled warriors. At first confused and resentful, they ended by having a good laugh with Sheltowee.

Boone did not complain about the food or the comforts in Blackfish’s
cabin, but he did later mention that his “mother”
let her chickens roost
in the same area where she cooked. In the evenings Blackfish and Sheltowee had philosophical discussions about what the Shawnees could learn from the whites and the whites from the Shawnees. Blackfish thought his people should learn agriculture from the whites, improving the soil, raising cattle, spinning and weaving wool. He was concerned about the future of his people. Under the conditions of war Shawnees did not have the leisure to improve themselves. Blackfish was prescient, for later in Missouri the Shawnees would be known for their large herds of livestock. Always a diplomat, Boone pointed out the felicities of the Indian culture and the skills he had learned from Indians about woodcraft, hunting, the beauty of life in the woods. Blackfish amused Boone by drawing maps of the region, showing him where rivers and villages were. “
Blackfish would also smooth out dirt
and mark out the geography of the country, apparently to amuse my father,” Nathan told Draper. Like Boone, Blackfish had an extraordinary memory for detail and geography. As a sign of familiarity, “
Blackfish would suck a lump
of sugar a while in his mouth, take it out, and give it to Boone, whom he always addressed as ‘my son.’” All his life Boone had aspired to live like an Indian, to hunt with Indians, and during the months at Chillicothe that dream was realized.

On June 1 Blackfish and a party of Shawnees left the village to boil salt at Salt Creek, near the Scioto River. On the way to the salt spring the party stopped at Paint Creek where a white man named Jimmy Rogers lived. Jimmy Rogers had been adopted by the Shawnees when young and he had continued to live with them. Boone agreed to repair Rogers’s rifle and took it along with him to the lick. There Boone repaired the rifle and supplied game for the salt-making group. He later said he “
found the land, for a great extent
about this river, to exceed the soil of Kentucke, if possible, and remarkably well watered.”

A band of Shawnees arrived at Salt Creek who had suffered a defeat from the whites at Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Kanawha River. Blackfish persuaded them to join the expedition against Boonesborough
later in the summer. Their best revenge against the humiliation on the Ohio would be to attack the Kentucky fort. Blackfish assigned Boone to repair the damaged rifles of the war party, and Boone complied, working several days on locks and stocks. As always, Boone’s gunsmithing ability stood him in good stead, for he was able to hide a damaged rifle without a stock among his things and repair it, all except fitting it with a new stock.

As Blackfish talked of the approaching campaign against Boones-borough, Boone knew it was time for him to make his escape, if he was ever going to. He had hoped to escape with the other adopted prisoners, but as it turned out his chance came while he was with the party returning from the salt lick. It was June 16, and as they were returning to Chillicothe with the salt supply, a flock of turkeys was spotted in the trees in the distance. Blackfish and the other warriors grabbed their weapons and hurried to harvest some of the birds. Boone was left with the women and he saw this was the best opportunity he would have for escape. Boone quickly cut the straps that held the baggage on his horse and told his adoptive mother and the other women that he “
wanted to go and see his squaw and children
and dashed off.” That’s what the Shawnees told Joseph Jackson, still a prisoner with the new name of Fish. According to the story Boone later told his children, his Shawnee mother begged him not to go and said the warriors would overtake him and kill him. Boone later told a nephew that as he rode away “
he really felt sorry
.”

B
OONE’S ESCAPE
from the Shawnees and return to Boonesborough is one of the great legends of frontier history. Riding the horse until it collapsed, Boone took off the saddle and hung it on a tree for someone else to use. He took the unstocked rifle and bag of powder and hoarded shot, a bit of jerky, and continued on foot, running down streams and along fallen logs to throw off his pursuers. He later learned the Shawnees followed him for a while but missed his trail and assumed Boone had gotten lost. It is curious that in almost every instance, the
Shawnees assumed the Kentuckians could not find their way through the wilderness. “
Jimmy Rogers said that the Indians
followed his trail some distance and returned, saying he would get lost. But Rogers said he knew better—that he was sure my father would go straight as a leather string home.”

At the Ohio Boone found a dead poplar, which he broke into three pieces and lashed together with a grapevine. Putting his ammunition and damaged rifle on the raft, he pushed out into the stream and was carried a good ways down the river before he touched bottom on the other shore. Once he got into the woods on the south bank, Boone walked until it was dark and then stopped to sleep. During the night something grabbed his toe and woke him. He jumped up but never saw the wolf or fox or whatever it was in the dark. In the morning he rubbed the ooze from oak bark on his blistered feet and started out as soon as there was light. That day he found a sourwood sapling that appeared to be the right size and carved a section as a stock for his broken rifle.
He bound the stock to the metal
with strings made of hide, which had held his blanket and pack to his back. Walking on sore feet and with nothing to eat, he made it to the Blue Licks on June 19. There he shot a buffalo and cooked part of its hump for his first meal in two days. He saved the buffalo tongue for his little son Daniel Morgan, then not quite nine years old. Boone later said he was proud of the rifle he had improvised in the woods. “
It had the very best lock
I had ever had in my life,” he said. He finally arrived at Boonesborough on Saturday, June 20, and shouted across the river for someone to come ferry him over. He had traveled 160 miles through the wilderness in under four days and had eaten only one meal.

But when he reached the fort, Boone was not greeted with the welcome he expected. Rebecca and the children, assuming he was dead, had left Boonesborough in April and returned to the Yadkin. His cabin was empty. And many of the people of Boonesborough were far from friendly. Andrew Johnson had told them that Boone had sold
out his salt-boiling companions and collaborated with the Shawnees. Boone sat down exhausted in his cabin, and the family cat appeared and recognized him. Then Jemima, who had stayed at the fort waiting for her father, burst through the door. Only she had remained at Boonesborough, counting on Boone’s return.

W
HAT SHOULD
have been a joyous homecoming and reunion was dampened by the absence of Rebecca and the other children, and the suspicions of many of his neighbors and associates at Boonesborough. Using Andrew Johnson’s testimony as evidence, Richard Callaway led a faction that whispered rumors of Boone’s treachery, treason, his self-serving duplicity. Many, like Simon Kenton and Nathaniel Hart, had implicit faith in Boone’s integrity and understood the delicacy and difficulty of what he had done to protect Boonesborough. Others like Callaway and Benjamin Logan saw Boone’s actions at the Blue Licks and Detroit in the worst light. It was true he had escaped and returned to Boonesborough at great danger and difficulty to himself, but what were his plans and motives? his detractors wondered. Had he sold out Boonesborough and the Kentucky settlements to the Tories, and was he just waiting for the Shawnees and British to arrive?

Attempting to ignore, to brush aside, the muttered rumors and sullen looks, Boone set about finishing the fortification of Boonesborough. Many of the original pickets, especially those of yellow poplar logs, had already rotted. He warned that the Shawnees under Blackfish were assembling a large army to invade Kentucky, and Boonesborough was their prime target. The palisades had to be repaired or replaced, the fourth side finished, and the blockhouses at each corner completed. A well needed to be dug inside the fort, and the magazine and supply rooms had to be restocked. Luckily Daniel’s brother Squire and his family were still at Boonesborough. Squire was an excellent blacksmith and craftsman. Boone knew that the fort was under constant surveillance by Indian spies from Ohio. While a prisoner at Chillicothe he
had heard many reports of activities back at Boonesborough. John Gass later told John Dabney Shane, “
Boon said, the summer he was
w. the indns., he could hear from Bnsbgh: every week.”

It did not impress Richard Callaway that Boone set about preparing to defend the fort, rather than rushing to the Yadkin for his family. With his hair still plucked like a Shawnee, and his clothes in rags, Boone inspired rage and distrust in Callaway. The danger Boone had exposed himself to in leading the salt makers to the Blue Licks in January, and the risk of the elaborate ruse he had enacted among the Shawnees and the British, did not appease his detractors at all. But luckily many at Boonesborough did trust Boone, heeded his warning about the imminent invasion, and cooperated in rebuilding and strengthening the fort. Finally the fort was completed in the summer of 1778, more or less as it had been planned by Richard Henderson in 1775.

Even so, that summer was tense and embarrassing for Boone. He warned that the Shawnees were coming, but they did not come. The alert, the spirit of alarm that had allowed him to get so much construction and repair done on the fort, died down.

As it turned out, Boone’s escape had so alarmed Blackfish that he postponed the expedition to Boonesborough. Shawnee spies were sent to watch the Kentucky settlements and they informed Blackfish of the defensive preparations at Boonesborough and Harrodsburg and Logan’s Station. Because he had lost the element of surprise, and the expected cooperation of Sheltowee in the surrender of Boonesborough, the war chief decided it was prudent to wait until he had assembled an even larger force before he attacked the trespassers in Kentucky.

William Hancock escaped from the Shawnees and arrived naked and exhausted at Boonesborough on July 17. He had gotten lost in the woods and had lain down to die, only to notice his own initials carved on a nearby tree, proving he was close to the fort. Hancock informed Boone and the others that Blackfish had indeed postponed the raid but would be marching with the British and French and a larger force of at least four hundred Indians to attack Kentucky later that summer.
Both Boone and Richard Callaway sent letters to Col. Arthur Campbell back on the Holston, asking for reinforcements from the Virginia militia. Boone wrote: