A History of the Daniel Boone National Forest 1770 - 1970

The year 1777 was to prove one of trial and trouble for the settlers in Kentucky. The action of the Virginia Legislature on December 7, 1776, assuming jurisdiction over the entire territory, including that portion claimed by the Transylvania Company, and designating it Kentucky County, Virginia, had left the settlers in doubt as to their legal status and the validity of their land titles. In addition the garrison, which previously had been provided with ammunition and other necessities by the Transylvania Company, were now short of powder and lead and had little assurance that Virginia, already beset by the growing Revolutionary War, would be able to provide these necessities.

Fincastle County, Virginia (Established, 1772)

Kentucky County, Virginia (Established, December, 1776)

On New Year's Day, 1777, the settlers from McClelland's Station, now Georgetown, sought refuge at Fort Boonesborough (with the threat of war imminent, folks just naturally added the word, fort, to Boonesborough), reporting that Indians had attacked their station on December 29, 1776. The defenders of the fort had driven off the attackers, killing their chief, Pluggy. Knowing that the Indians would return and feeling that their position was exposed, they had abandoned the station and were now enroute to the settlements in Virginia. Thus was abandoned the last station north of the Kentucky River. A short time later the settlers from Hinkston's (Ruddle's) Station also passed through Fort Boonesborough on their way back to the settlements. The despair of these people spread, even infecting some of the residents of Fort Boonesborough, 10 of which joined the group when it left for Virginia, leaving but 30 riflemen for the defense of the fort.

Within a short time a total of seven stations were abandoned with nearly 300 residents leaving Kentucky for the eastern settlements and leaving only three stations, Fort Boonesborough, Fort Harrod and Logan's Station, on the entire Kentucky frontier. This readjustment of the situation in Kentucky had some advantages. First, it weeded out the weaklings and the timid souls, leaving a hard core of determined and experienced frontier families who refused to accept defeat and to be driven from the lands they had sacrificed so much to attain. Second, the remaining population was concentrated in three strong forts rather than scattered through a great many weaker ones. Third, the threat of a common danger drew them together in a common cause. As the result of the action of the Virginia Legislature the previous December, Kentucky was now organized as a single large county of Virginia. Organized after the English system, the county had as a chief civil head a county lieutenant. Its defense was provided for by an organized county militia.

In the case of Kentucky County this early spring of 1777, the chief civil officer was John Bowman who can be considered the first Kentucky Colonel, a position formerly occupied by Daniel Boone under the Transylvania Company. One of the two majors of this organized militia was George Rogers Clark, soon to become famous throughout the colonies. Previously, under the Transylvania Company, each settlement had selected its own leader. Now under the county system, these leaders became captains in the organized militia of the county. In this case the captains of the organized militia of Kentucky County, Virginia were Daniel Boone, James Harrod, John Todd and Benjamin Logan.

The Indians, angered at the death of Chief Pluggy in the attack on McClelland's Station, returned to Kentucky in force under the command of Chief Black Fish, a war chief of the Shawnee, determined to rid Kentucky of its white settlements. With a force of about 200 Indians, now armed and supplied by the British, whom the Indians had agreed to join, each of the remaining settlements in Kentucky came under continued surveillance.

The settlers were well aware of the presence of many small bands of Indians in their vicinity. At Fort Boonesborough two hunters were killed as they returned to the fort. At Harrodsburg a party of sugar makers were attacked and one of them, William Ray, was killed. Another was scalped within a hundred yards of the fort as his family watched from the stockade. The settlers were virtual prisoners inside their stockades which no man could leave without imperiling his life.

The first open attack at Fort Boonesborough occurred at sunrise on April 24, 1777. The Indians, numbering about 100 and lead by Chief Black Fish personally, had been able to dispose themselves around the fort before daylight without being detected by members of the garrison.

Their initial maneuver to draw the garrison out of the fort and into an ambush was nearly successful. An Indian tomahawked and scalped Daniel Goodman within sight of the fort. Simon Kenton, who was standing at the gate of the fort with his loaded rifle shot and killed the Indian. Members of the outraged garrison, which at that time numbered only 22 riflemen, pursued the few Indians who were apparently withdrawing with the intention of teaching them a lesson, and thus fell directly into the trap laid by the wily Shawnee chief. Sensing their danger immediately when they saw Indians between them and the fort, the members of the little band fought desperately and regained the refuge of the fort after a sharp hand-to-hand struggle in which four of them, Daniel Boone, Michael Stoner, John Todd and Isaac Hite, were wounded and a number of the Indians killed. The hero of this encounter was Simon Kenton who killed three Indians and, in addition, saved the life of Daniel Boone by carrying him back to the stockade. The Indians withdrew but remained in the vicinity stealing what they could and hoping to pick up an occasional scalp.

On May 23 and 24, this same band of Indians made attacks on Fort Boonesborough, in each case maintaining the attack until nearly midnight. After several attempts to set fire to the fort, the Indians withdrew. Throughout these attacks Daniel Boone, still confined by his wound from the previous attack, directed the battle from his bed.

On July 4, 1777, Fort Boonesborough was subjected to the heaviest and most serious attack it had yet experienced.

Encouraged by British agents and still smarting from his failure to destroy Fort Boonesborough by his previous attempts, Chief Black Fish had laid careful plans to destroy or capture the settlement. With a force of 200 warriors he had crossed the Ohio River and moved rapidly on to Fort Boonesborough, at the same time sending small war parties to harass the other stations with the objective of preventing them from dispatching aid to Fort Boonesborough.

Early on the morning of July 4, 1777, the Indians surrounded Fort Boonesborough and began to attack. This time Daniel Boone and his garrison were not caught napping. Scouts had discovered the attack force soon after it had crossed the Ohio and had warned the settlements well in advance. For two days and nights the attack continued. Constant firing against the stockade and repeated attempts to set fire to the fort by means of fire arrows and by torches thrown over the stockade kept the little garrison at the portholes continually. Women and girls molded bullets, loaded spare rifles, cooked and distributed food, rationed water and attended children and livestock without rest. During this attack the Indians burned Fort Boone in the hollow below the lick, and destroyed the remaining crops near the fort.

On the morning of July 6, the Indians, discouraged by their failure, withdrew before daylight taking with them their dead and wounded. The garrison had definitely identified seven dead Indians from their portholes and felt assured that a number of Indians had been wounded. The garrison had one man killed and two were wounded.

As soon as the scouts reported that the Indians had left the vicinity, the exhausted garrison opened the clumsy gates of the fort and permitted the livestock to return to the grass and water while the people refreshed themselves with the cool fresh water from the lick spring. Hunting parties left immediately to find fresh meat and messengers set out over the Boone Trace to carry the news to Virginia and to request aid, in the form of supplies and reinforcements, from the government of that state.

The two wounded men were given attention, and a solemn burial service added another settler to the little graveyard.

While Boonesborough was not attacked again that year, it was never free of the threat, and individual Indians as well as small bands roamed the country until late fall, maintaining the constant attention of the inhabitants.

On July 25, 1777, reinforcements in the form of 45 frontier riflemen from North Carolina arrived to reinforce the garrison. After a brief stay these men were replaced by a detachment from the 100-man force from the Virginia Militia which Colonel John Bowman had brought to the aid of Kentucky County. Soon these men were again replaced by a small force commanded by Captain John Montgomery of Virginia.

While the stays of these detachments were relatively brief due to the short enlistment period, they did provide the safety which permitted residents the relief to work their farms, hunt food and do other needed jobs. They also served to discourage Indian attacks for the remainder of the year.

The year 1777 was long remembered as one of near disaster on the Kentucky frontier. Because of the continued threat from Indians, little food was raised, and much of that was destroyed by the attacking Indians. By the end of the year the stocks of food were low and the supply of salt and gunpowder was nearly exhausted.

Despite the dangers and hardships, the residents of the three stations on the Kentucky frontier listened eagerly to every scrap of news of the Revolution which trickled in from the settlements. News that General John Burgoyne had been defeated at the Battle of Saratoga in October, 1777, reached Boonesborough in November of that year, and was the cause of widespread rejoicing and celebration. Again the huge bonfire blazed in the center of the fort, and around it were proud and patriotic citizens rejoicing with fiddle music and dancing. Despite Burgoyne's defeat, the hard-pressed settlers of the Kentucky frontier knew the danger from Indian attack was not over. By the year's end the acute shortage of both salt and gunpowder was the cause for worry among the leaders.

At one point during the late fall of 1777, the supply of gunpowder at Fort Boonesborough was completely exhausted. The entire garrison was heartsick and near to panic. Not only the means of securing fresh meat for the community had been eliminated, but an Indian attack at that time would have been disastrous. Again, the skills of Daniel Boone, acquired during his years of exploring distant places and the necessity of maintaining himself hundreds of miles from the settlement, came to the rescue. He had learned how to make gunpowder. Someone remembered a small supply of sulphur and salt peter which Judge Henderson had brought to Boonesborough during the early days of the settlement to meet just such emergencies as this. Since that time these items had lain forgotten in the far corner of the company storehouse in the fort. Now they were brought forth and a supply of gunpowder of satisfactory quality to serve the purpose was produced. One major problem of the settlement was solved for the immediate present.

It was services like these in time of need that caused the people of Fort Boonesborough to turn to the leadership of Daniel Boone and to respect him highly.