Boone: A Biography (49 page)

When McGary reached them, Boone and his men were about three-quarters of a mile from the river. Luckily many of the Indians were
intent on grabbing horses, taking scalps and booty, and few noticed Boone’s men fleeing to the left. As he backed away, facing the chaos of the battlefield, guarding his men as they retreated, Boone saw his son Israel nearby. Seizing a horse that belonged to his brother Ned’s widow, he ordered Israel to mount and get away.

“
Father, I won’t leave you
,” Israel answered.

Looking around for another mount for himself, Boone heard a thud behind him and wheeled to see Israel knocked to the ground by a bullet in his heart, bleeding from the mouth and already dying. Boone’s instinct was to pick up his son and carry him toward the river. But it was too late to do anything but leave the body and mount the horse himself and get away.

Later accounts that blamed McGary for the plunge into battle may have been intended to divert attention from the mistakes made by Todd and Trigg. The decision to advance over a half mile of open ground, uphill, below a sharp parallel ridge on the right, toward a concealed enemy at least twice the size of the Kentucky force, ensured disaster. Todd failed by not scouting and probing the enemy to find out its location and numbers. Trigg, a recent arrival in Kentucky with the Land Commission, had almost no fighting experience. No one, including Boone, later wanted to blame the dead colonels. There is no recorded instance of Boone’s blaming McGary. According to his family, Boone blamed himself and George Rogers Clark, commander of the Kentucky militia, who maintained his garrison in Louisville, too far away to protect the Bluegrass region.

Around seventy-seven Kentuckians were killed. Fifteen of the twenty-five officers were killed, including Col. John Todd and Col. Stephen Trigg and Maj. Silas Harlin and Maj. Edward Bulger. Boone later said that of all the terrible things he had witnessed in his life, the death of Israel was the worst. Tears came to his eyes whenever he mentioned the battle. He felt responsible for the disaster at the Blue Licks, and he blamed himself for bringing Israel along when he was not yet completely recovered from a fever. “
Father used to be deeply affected
,
even to tears, when he spoke of the Blue Licks defeat and the death of his son,” Nathan told Draper.

Boone and his company, those that were left, reassembled downstream on the south bank of the river. Upstream, where the main body of the militia was, men already across the river turned to cover those still struggling to cross. Some Indians kept up the attack, right to the edge of the river and into it.
Boone later decided
it was the early loss of their leaders that made the men panic, Nathan Boone explained to Draper.

Benjamin Netherland, one of the mounted militiamen, had already gotten across the river. Though he had fought in a number of battles in the Revolution, including Guilford Courthouse, Netherland was rumored to be something of a coward. At the Blue Licks, however, instead of riding away to safety, he turned his horse and ordered the fleeing men to stop and cover those struggling to cross behind them. “
Let’s halt, boys
, and give them a fire,” Netherland shouted. As many as twenty fleeing militiamen stopped to fire at the pursuing Indians and thereby saved many of their comrades. A half century later Capt. Robert Patterson would commend Netherland, saying, “
I cannot ever forget the part
you acted in the Battle of the Blue Licks.”

Aaron Reynolds, who had been scolded by Patterson earlier for cursing, and then given a quart of whiskey for desisting, saved Patterson that day by seizing a horse and putting the wounded Patterson in the saddle and sending him across the river to safety. Reynolds planned to swim the river himself, but his buckskin pants were soaked and heavy and he sat down to take them off. While he was seated, Indians grabbed him, made him a prisoner, then left him under a single guard while the fight continued. Noticing that the guarding Indian’s rifle was not primed to fire, Reynolds knocked him out with his fists and escaped. Wearing only his shirt, Reynolds swam the river and ran all the way to Bryan’s Station to tell what had happened. Captain Patterson soon arrived on horseback and confirmed his story.
In gratitude the captain awarded him two hundred acres of land, and the once foul-mouthed Reynolds settled down to become a Baptist and a farmer. It was said the story illustrated the good a well-placed gift of whiskey can do.

That afternoon and evening the Indians had an orgy of amusement and torture with the wounded and prisoners taken at the Blue Licks. The bodies were later found with their hands tied, the skin cut and burned in the long hours of torture. One prisoner who later escaped, Jesse Yocum, said he “
did not know how many they burned
but the smell of a human was the awfullest smell he ever [smelled] in his life.” The British officers later claimed they discouraged the torture but were unable to do much about it. Men fleeing from the disaster at the Blue Licks met Logan’s larger army advancing from Bryan’s Station. Logan deployed his men to fight, expecting the Indians to pursue the retreating militia. But the Indians did not appear. They were busy scalping and torturing the prisoners and wounded back at the Lower Blue Licks.

The Blue Licks was the last major battle of the American Revolution, and it was a horrifying defeat for the Americans. In the aftermath of the battle the people of Kentucky were stunned. Many packed up their belongings to head back east. One man offered his whole farm for a horse on which to carry his family away. “
Lawrence offered my father the whole
1400 acres of his preemption, where Lawrence’s station then was, for one little black horse to carry his family back to Virginia,” Sarah Graham told John Dabney Shane. George Rogers Clark blamed the officers who were in charge there. “
The Conduct of those unfortunate Gents
was Extremely reprehensible,” he wrote. As overall commander of forces in Kentucky, Clark said he had primarily intended for officers such as Todd and Trigg to patrol along the Ohio River on the lookout for invading Indians. Instead, they had let a large army reach Bryan’s Station with no warning, and then played into an obvious ambush at the Lower Blue Licks.

Col. Arthur Campbell on the Holston River blamed the militia’s weapons and style of fighting for the defeat, as well as the bad judgment of the officers. Without bayonets and swords, the men at the Blue Licks were helpless once they fired their rifles and the Indians rushed at them with tomahawks and clubs. Campbell wrote on October 3, 1782, to Col. William Davies, “
All our late defeats have been occasion[ed]
thro’ neglect of these [weapons], and a want of proper authority and capacity in the Commanding Officers. Never was the lives of so many valuable men lost more shamefully than in the late action of the 19th of August, and that not a little thro’ the vain and seditious expressions of a Major McGeary [
sic
].”

McGary himself defended his actions at the Blue Licks, writing to Benjamin Logan that though his “bad conduct” was blamed for the defeat, the charge was being made by officers who rushed to confront the Indians without waiting for Logan’s larger force. McGary said, “
Colonels Todd and Trigg were for immediate
pursuit, alleging, that, if they waited for Colonel Logan, he would bear off the laurels of victory.” His behavior at the Blue Licks would not be the last actions for which McGary was censured. Hugh McGary was disliked by many who knew him. John Mason Peck described McGary to Mann Butler: “
He was a fractious, ill tempered
man, hated by the people & constantly engaged in fights and affrays—He followed the current of migration towards the Green River country, but the people would not associate with him.” But in 1782 Hugh McGary defended himself vigorously, arguing, perhaps correctly, that Todd and Trigg were responsible for the massacre.

After such a disaster there is a lot of blame to go around, and though Boone’s name is rarely mentioned in any of the recriminations, Boone did not let himself off so easily. He knew that losing his temper when snarled at by McGary was a serious failure of leadership at a critical moment. That his outburst was so uncharacteristic of him made the episode all the stranger and more painful. All his life he had shown calm good sense in moments of danger. Boone’s relative Abraham
Scholl, who was with the company from Boone’s Station at the battle, said Boone “
rather blamed himself in some degree
for the Blue Licks battle.” For the rest of his life, Boone broke down and wept when he mentioned the battle. It was the greatest failure of his life. It was the occasion when his capacity for clearheadedness deserted him. His son Israel and seventy-six others had been killed as a result of his lapse. He may never have completely trusted himself again. The battle marked the end of the most important period of his life.

In the years after the battle, stories circulated that Israel had been urged to get up from his sickbed to join the pursuit of the Indians. Boone bore the weight of guilt because he had let his son go when he was not well. In some versions of the story Boone had shamed his son into going, saying, “I am sorry to think I raised a timid son.” Many years later Boone’s granddaughter Delinda Boone Craig said it was Boone’s insistence that made him so ashamed the rest of his life. “
Israel ought not to have gone
, and would not but for his chiding,” she said. But Olive Van Bibber Boone maintained just the opposite. She told Draper that Boone had tried to dissuade Israel from joining the militia that pursued the Indians to the Blue Licks. “
Israel had long been sick
previously and had recovered or nearly so, leaving him with a stiff neck, and his father and family tried all they could to persuade him not to go, but he would go.”

There are conflicting stories about where Boone buried his son Israel. Some biographers say he returned to the Blue Licks, found the body, which was so badly eaten by animals and birds and bloated by the heat as to be unrecognizable except for a piece of clothing, or by its location in a thicket. Nathan said that Boone returned to the Blue Licks a few days later with a burial party and
dug a separate grave for Israel there
. Still others report that Israel’s body was thrown into the mass grave with the other bodies that were found mutilated and decaying.

All accounts agree that Boone returned to the scene of the battle with the burial party. As they approached the site they saw buzzards
circling over the river and hillside. Animals were gnawing the scattered bodies and all who were there never forgot the overwhelming stench. Bodies caught on rocks and snags in the river had been partly eaten by fish. Like Israel’s, bodies lying in the sun were so bloated and partly torn by scalping Indians and animals almost none could be identified. In John Bradford’s words: “
A solemn silence pervaded the whole
party as they approached the field of battle. No sound was uttered but the cry of the gorged vulture hovering over their heads . . . The remains of the mangled bodies were so distended by the excessive heat of the weather, or so disfigured by the tomahawk, vultures and wild beasts, that it was impossible to distinguish one individual from another.”

The bodies were laid in a sinkhole across the hilltop, near the scene of the fighting, and
covered with as much dirt and rocks
as they could scrape together without picks and shovels.

The Battle of the Blue Licks has always been rightly described as a terrible defeat for the Kentuckians and the American cause. Few seem to have realized that it was also something of a failure for Girty and the British and their Indian allies also. If the plan had been to draw
all
the Kentucky militias, including Logan’s four hundred men, into the ambush and kill them in one complete victory that would drive the settlers out of Kentucky forever, then it was at best a partial victory. Because Todd, and perhaps McGary, plunged directly into battle, Logan’s larger force was saved, and the forts and stations in Kentucky were saved. Had Todd waited until Logan arrived, many more would have been killed and the Kentucky militia might still have lost the battle. The hundreds of Indians firing from the thickets could well have changed the course of American history in the Ohio Valley.

As he lived with his bereavement and disappointment with himself, Boone did not neglect his duties as colonel of the Fayette County militia. With John Todd dead he was now in command, a full colonel and county lieutenant. Boone wrote letters to officials back in Virginia, describing the recent battle and explaining the desperate needs
of the frontier communities. The defeat at the Blue Licks was the lowest point in his life and also the lowest point in the unfolding story of the western settlements. To many it looked as though Kentucky would have to be abandoned. It was simply too dangerous a place to raise a family. The dreams of prosperity and plenty were apparently coming to an end. “
I know Sir, that your Situation
at present is something critical,” Boone wrote to the governor on August 30, 1782, “but are we to be totally forgotten?” Boone asked the governor for a force of five hundred men. If something was not done quickly, Kentucky would soon be depopulated, Boone wrote. “But I can no longer Encourage my neighbors, nor myself to risque our Lives here at such Extraordinary hazzards.”

On September 2, 1782, a force of Indians attacked Kincheloe’s Station in Jefferson County and killed or captured thirty-seven people. The party of 150 Indians paused with their prisoners near Jeptha’s Knob, as if waiting for the county militia to attack them. But with the example of the Blue Licks ambush fresh in mind and only fifty-four men at his disposal, Col. John Floyd wisely refused to attack.
The Indians and their prisoners retreated
across the Ohio River.

Boone believed that much of the problem was that the defense of the Kentucky settlements was under the leadership of George Rogers Clark, far away in Louisville. In his letter to the governor Boone urged that the men of the Bluegrass region be organized for their own defense under the county lieutenants. “
But if you put them under the Direction
of Genl: Clarke, they will be Little or no Service to our Settlement, as he lies 100 miles West of us, and the Indians north East, and our men are often called to the Falls to guard them.”