Siege of Boonesborough The Siege of Boonesborough took place in September 1778 during the American Revolutionary War . The attack on the Kentucky settlement of Boonesborough was led by Chief Blackfish , a Shawnee leader allied to the British . Months before the battle , Blackfish had captured and adopted Daniel Boone , the founder of Boonesborough . Boone escaped the Shawnees in time to lead the defense of the settlement . Blackfish ' s siege was unsuccessful and was lifted after ten days . Boone was then court - martial ed by fellow officers who suspected him of having British sympathies . Boone was acquitted , but he soon moved away from Boonesborough . Background . Settlement of Kentucky . In 1774 , the British Colony and Dominion of Virginia defeated a coalition of Native Americans in the Ohio Country , primarily Shawnees , in Dunmore ' s War . In the treaty that ended the war , the Ohio River was established as the boundary between Shawnee lands north of the river and western Virginia ( present West Virginia and much of Kentucky ) to the south . The Native Americans were not unified , however , and many leaders did not recognize the treaty — which ceded their prime hunting grounds — to be binding . In 1775 , Richard Henderson of North Carolina purchased a large amount of Kentucky land from the Cherokees , who also hunted in Kentucky , on which he intended to establish a colony called Transylvania . Henderson ' s employee Daniel Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail into central Kentucky and built Fort Boone , soon renamed Boonesborough . Boonesborough and the rest of Transylvania became part of Virginia in 1776 . Several families from the east soon settled there . Shawnees to the north were unhappy about American expansion into Kentucky , and they sporadically attacked Boonesborough . Meanwhile , the American Revolutionary War had begun in the east . In 1777 , British officials opened a new front in the war with the American colonists by recruiting and arming Native American war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements . Henry Hamilton , the British Lieutenant Governor of Canada at Fort Detroit , found willing allies in leaders such as Chief Blackfish of the Shawnees , who hoped to drive the Americans out of Kentucky and reclaim their hunting grounds . As the raids intensified , Americans who strayed from fortified settlements like Boonesborough were likely to be killed or captured . American Indians brought 129 scalps and 77 prisoners to Hamilton in 1777 . Capture of Daniel Boone . Unable to dislodge the Kentuckians from their fortified settlements , the Indians destroyed crops and killed cattle , hoping that food shortages would compel the Kentucky settlers to leave . With the food supply at Boonesborough running low , the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had . In January 1778 , Daniel Boone led a party of thirty men to the salt springs on the Licking River . On February 7 , 1778 , when Boone was out hunting meat for the expedition , he was surprised and captured by warriors led by Blackfish . Because Boone ' s party was greatly outnumbered , he convinced his men to surrender rather than put up a fight . Blackfish wanted to continue to Boonesborough and capture it since it was now poorly defended , but Boone convinced him that the women and children were not hardy enough to survive a winter trek as prisoners . Instead , Boone promised that Boonesborough would surrender willingly to the Shawnees the following spring . Boone was improvising , saying anything to keep the Shawnees from attacking Boonesborough . He did not have an opportunity to tell his men what he was doing , however , and many of them concluded that he had switched his loyalty to the British . Boone and his men were taken as prisoners to Blackfish ' s town of Chillicothe . Per Shawnee custom , some of the prisoners were adopted into the tribe to replace fallen warriors . The remainder were taken to Detroit , where Indians received a bounty from Governor Hamilton for each prisoner ( or scalp ) taken . Boone was adopted into a Shawnee family at Chillicothe , perhaps into the family of Chief Blackfish himself . He was given the name Sheltowee , meaning " Big Turtle " . Like most of the other adoptees , Boone was watched closely , but he eventually escaped . On June 16 , 1778 , when he learned that Blackfish was preparing to return to Boonesborough with a large force , Boone eluded his captors and raced home , covering the 160 miles ( 260 km ) to Boonesborough in five days . Upon his return , some of the men expressed doubts about Boone ' s loyalty , since after surrendering the salt making party he had apparently lived quite happily among the Shawnees for months . Boone responded by leading a preemptive raid against the Shawnee village of Paint Lick Town on the other side of the Ohio River . This accomplished little , and the raiding party hurried back to Boonesborough when they discovered that Blackfish had marched south . Negotiations . On September 7 , 1778 , Blackfish ' s force arrived outside Boonesborough . Boone counted 444 Native Americans and 12 white men . The former were mostly Shawnees , with a number of Cherokees , Wyandots , Miamis , Delawares , and Mingo s . The latter were French - Canadian militiamen from Detroit , former French subjects now fighting on behalf of the British Crown . Although this was the largest force yet sent against the Kentucky settlements , taking a fortified position like Boonesborough would still be difficult without artillery to reduce the stronghold . Blackfish called Boone out of the fort for a parley and reminded Boone of his promise to surrender the settlement . Blackfish presented letters from Governor Hamilton which proclaimed that the settlers would be well treated and taken to Detroit if they surrendered . If they did not surrender , there were no guarantees . Boone told Blackfish that he would present the offer to the others . He could not make this decision himself , Boone said , since during his captivity other officers had assumed command . Back in the fort , Boone outlined the situation . The consensus was to fight rather than surrender . The decision was made to prolong the negotiations with Blackfish as long as possible , since reinforcements from Virginia were expected . Boone and Major William Bailey Smith went outside again and told Blackfish that they feared that the trip to Detroit would be too hard on the women and children . Blackfish pointed out that he had brought 40 horses to transport those unable to walk . Boone asked for another day to consult with the others . Leaders from the two sides smoked a peace pipe together and then broke off negotiations for the day . Over the next two days , settlers in the fort prepared for the siege . Based on faulty intelligence received from Hamilton in Detroit , Blackfish believed that there were at least 200 militiamen in the fort , when in fact there were only about 40 effective gunmen inside . The Kentuckians reinforced the illusion of a greater number of men by having some of the women in the fort carry weapons while dressed in men ' s clothing . On the evening of September 8 , Blackfish and Boone met again . Boone told a surprised Blackfish that the fort would not surrender . Blackfish proposed that a formal treaty conference with all of the leaders be held on the next day . The treaty session began on September 9 , with leaders from the two sides sharing a meal outside the fort . Afterwards , the council began . In case of trouble , both sides had gunmen covering the meeting from a distance . Blackfish demanded to know " by what right had the white people taken possession of this country . " Boone replied that they had bought the land from the Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals . A Cherokee chief confirmed that this was true . Blackfish accepted this answer and then proposed that if the settlers would pledge their allegiance to the king of Great Britain , the Shawnees would accept the Ohio River boundary and both sides would live in peace . A treaty to this effect ( which does not survive ) was then signed . The Shawnees then approached the Americans to shake hands and seal the agreement . What happened next is unclear . According to one popular interpretation , the Shawnees , having failed to secure the surrender of Boonesborough , attempted to seize the American leaders . However , as historian John Mack Faragher and others have argued , there is little evidence that this was the Shawnees ' intention . A scuffle broke out , and marksmen from both sides opened fire . Despite a few injuries , all but one of the Americans managed to scramble back into the fort - the last one had to take cover next to a tree stump by the main gate . The Indians rushed the gate but were driven back by heavy gunfire . Negotiations were over ; the formal siege had begun . The last delegate spent a harrowing day with the battle raging around him . He finally managed to crawl inside when someone opened the gate slightly after nightfall . Siege . Gunfire was exchanged over the next several days . After the initial flurry of shooting , Boone — who reemerged as the natural leader even though as a captain he was outranked by Major Smith and Colonel Richard Callaway — urged the Kentuckians to conserve their gunpowder . At night , Native Americans ran up to the walls and attempted to throw burning torches onto the roofs of the houses within . This was ineffective , however , because the warriors made easy targets for the Kentucky marksmen . On September 11 , Antoine Dagneaux de Quindre , in command of the Detroit militia , convinced the Indians to begin digging a tunnel from the bank of the river towards the fort . Known as mining , the goal was to place barrels of gunpowder in the tunnel under a section of the fort ' s walls . When these barrels were exploded , the wall would collapse , leaving a place for the attackers to rush in . When the defenders inside the fort heard the digging , they began to dig a countermine , hoping to collapse the attackers ' tunnel prematurely . The diggers on both sides began to yell taunts at each other . Heavy rains caused the Indians ' tunnel to collapse before it reached the fort . Boone ' s brother Squire Boone was known as an inventor . He fashioned a makeshift wooden cannon , reinforced with iron bands , which was fired once or twice at groups of Indians before it cracked . Squire Boone also made squirt guns out of old musket barrels , which were used to put out fires on the roofs . The Shawnees launched their final assault on September 17 , again trying to set fire to the fort . They were beaten back , and a heavy rain helped to put out the fires . The Shawnees lost more men killed in this attack than on all previous days . The next day , they gradually broke off the siege . They separated into scattered war parties and raided other settlements , inflicting far more damage in their traditional mode of warfare than they had done during the siege . The two Boonesborough fatalities during the siege were a slave named London and David Bondurant . Aftermath . After the siege , Colonel Richard Callaway brought charges against Boone , alleging that Boone " was in favour of the British government . " Joining Callaway was Captain Benjamin Logan from nearby Logan ' s Station . Logan and Callaway both had nephews who had been surrendered by Boone at the salt licks and were still prisoners . In the court - martial proceedings , held at Logan ' s Fort , there were four charges against Boone : After listening to all the testimony , the court found Boone " not guilty " , and even promoted him to major because of his actions . Despite this vindication , Boone was humiliated by the episode and rarely spoke of it again . Boone then went to North Carolina to retrieve his family , who had returned there during his captivity , believing him to be dead . When Boone came back to Kentucky , he established a new settlement called Boone ' s Station rather than resettle in the place where he had been court - martialed . While Boone was in North Carolina , a retaliatory raid was launched against Blackfish ' s town of Chillicothe in the spring of 1779 . Blackfish successfully defended his village but was shot in the leg and later died when the wound became infected . On March 8 , 1780 , Richard Callaway was caught outside Boonesborough by Shawnees and was killed , scalped , and mutilated . In popular culture . The siege of Boonesborough was dramatized in an episode of the 1964 CBS television series " The Great Adventure " , with Peter Graves starring as Daniel Boone . The events are now reenacted yearly at Fort Boonesborough State Park . The events surrounding the Siege of Boonesborough were the subject of Allan W . Eckert ' s historical novel " The Court - Martial of Daniel Boone " ( 1973 , Little Brown & Company , ISBN 0 - 316 - 20870 - 1 ; 2000 paperback reprint edition , Backinprint . com , ISBN 0 - 595 - 08990 - 9 ) .