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The colonists were molested but once by their enemies during the winter, when one man was killed by a small band of marauding Indians, who suddenly appeared in the vicinity, and as suddenly departed. In the middle summer month, an incident of a thrilling character occurred, which cast a deep but only momentary shadow upon the little society of Boonesborough.
On the very day Christmas, 1779 that Judge Henderson reached the site of the Transylvania Fort, now called Boonesborough, the swarm of colonists from the parent hive at Watauga, under Robertson's leadership, reached the French Lick and on New Year's Day, 1780, crossed the river on the ice to the present site of Nashville.
In 1775 Daniel Boone had built a fort at Boonesborough, on the Kentucky river, and it was not far from this site that Abraham Lincoln, President Lincoln's grandfather, located his claim and put up a rude log hut for the shelter of his family. The pioneers of Kentucky cleared small spaces and erected their humble dwellings.
Meanwhile, he was determined to escape from the Indian village, and return with his warning to his friends on the Kentucky. In spite of the freedom he enjoyed, he knew that it would be extremely difficult for him to escape. At least one hundred and sixty miles of forest and wilderness intervened between the village and Boonesborough.
There was little danger now of an attack upon Boonesborough by the Indians. There were so many settlements around it that no foe could approach without due warning and without encountering serious opposition. On the sixth of October Daniel Boone, with his brother Squire, left the fort alone for what would seem to be an exceedingly imprudent excursion, so defenceless, to the Blue Licks.
All unknown to the Indians, on the sixth day of the returning march the intrepid band passed the red men, and on the seventh arrived safely at Boonesborough. The following day five hundred hideously painted, thoroughly armed Indians appeared at the fort.
The organization of the Watauga association, which constituted a temporary expedient to meet a crisis in the affairs of a frontier community cut off by forest wilderness and mountain barriers from the reach of the arm of royal or provincial government, is not to be compared with the revolutionary assemblage at Boonesborough, May 23, 1775, or with the extraordinary demands for inde pendence in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the same month.
Three days after, we were fired upon again, and had two men killed, and three wounded. Afterward we proceeded on to Kentucky River without opposition; and on the first day of April began to erect the fort of Boonesborough at a salt lick, about sixty yards from the river, on the south side. On the fourth day, the Indians killed one of our men.
Increased to two hundred warriors, this party had returned to the attack of Boonesborough on the fourth of July. On the present occasion, having sent detachments to alarm and annoy the neighboring settlements, in order that no reinforcements should be sent to Boonesborough, the Indians encamped about the place, with the object of attempting its reduction by a regular siege.
Their red chiefs were Black Fish himself, Moluntha, Black Wolf and Black Beard; their captain was a French-Canadian named Isidore Chêne, of the British Indian department at Detroit. Under a white flag, Captain Chêne demanded the surrender of Fort Boonesborough.
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