James Smith ( frontiersman ) James Smith ( 1737 – 1812 or 1814 ) was a frontiersman , farmer and soldier in British North America . In 1765 , he led the " Black Boys " , a group of Pennsylvania men , in a nine - month rebellion against British rule , ten years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War . He participated in the war as a colonel of the Pennsylvania militia and was a legislator in the Kentucky General Assembly . Smith was also an author , publishing his analysis of Native American ways of fighting in " Narrative " in 1799 . Early life and capture . Smith was born in what is now Franklin County , Pennsylvania . He had little formal education , but could read and write . In May 1755 , he was helping build the westward road for General Edward Braddock ' s ill - fated expedition against the French when he was taken captive by Delaware Indians . Smith was brought to Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio River , where he was forced to run a gauntlet before being given over to the French . He was eventually adopted by a Mohawk family , ritually cleansed , and made to practice tribal ways — ultimately gaining respect for Indian culture before escaping near Montreal in 1759 . He returned to the Conococheague Valley in Pennsylvania and took up farming , marrying Anne Wilson in May 1763 . During Pontiac ' s War , he fought in the 1763 Battle of Bushy Run and accompanied British officer Henry Bouquet ' s 1764 expedition into the Ohio Country . When the unrest subsided , however , the British allowed trading with the Native Americans to resume , arousing the anger of the colonists . Black Boys Rebellion . In the 1760s , Smith led an unofficial band called the " Black Boys " ( so called because they blackened their faces while engaged in their unauthorized activities ) in protecting settlers in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio from Native American attacks . On March 6 , 1765 , they stopped a pack train and burned illegal goods , including rum and gunpowder , that British official George Croghan was trying to trade to the Native Americans . The British authorities , however , sided with Croghan . This led to the Black Boys Rebellion or Smith ' s Rebellion , armed resistance to British rule in North America . The rebels laid siege to Fort Loudoun . They captured enough soldiers to exchange them two - for - one for settlers imprisoned , rightly or wrongly , for raids on wagon trains . The rebellion died down after the Black Boys succeeded in forcing the British 42nd Highland Regiment to abandon the fort in November . The Black Boys also captured Fort Bedford , the first fort taken from the British by the colonials . Smith left to explore Kentucky the following year . American Revolutionary War and later life . When the American War of Independence broke out , he joined the Pennsylvania militia and was made a colonel in 1777 . He also represented Westmoreland County , Pennsylvania at the 1776 Constitutional Convention . After his wife died in 1778 , Smith moved to Westmoreland County . In 1785 , he married Margaret Irwin . By the late 1780s , he and his family were living in Bourbon County , Kentucky . He served as a member of the Kentucky General Assembly for a number of years . In 1799 , he published his " Narrative " , an analysis of how the Native Americans fought . Smith became a Presbyterian missionary to the Native Americans , aided by the knowledge he had acquired of their customs in his early captivity . His son became a Shaker , but he himself , after living with his son and among the Shakers for a few months , concluded they were a cult and denounced them in a pamphlet entitled " Remarkable Occurrences Lately Discovered Among The People Called Shakers " , printed in 1810 . He died in either 1812 or 1814 . Book , film and television . James Smith was the subject of the 1937 book " The First Rebel " by Neil F . Swanson . He was portrayed by John Wayne in the 1939 movie " Allegheny Uprising " , which was based on the book . A segment in the 2006 PBS miniseries " The War that Made America " shows a reenactment of Smith running the Native American gauntlet following his capture in 1755 .