[Footnote 24:  History of Kentucky.]

CHAPTER X.

Disturbed state of the country in 1775—­Breaking out of the Revolutionary war—­Exposed situation of the Kentucky settlements—­Hostility of the Indians excited by the British—­First political convention in the West—­Capture of Boone’s daughter and the daughters of Colonel Callaway by the Indians—­Their rescue by a party led by Boone and Callaway—­Increased caution of the colonists at Boonesborough—­Alarm and desertion of the Colonies in the West by land speculators and other adventurers—­A reinforcement of forty-five men from North Carolina arrive at Boonesborough—­Indian attack on Boonesborough in April—­Another attack in July—­Attack on Logan’s Fort, and siege—­Attack on Harrodsburg.

The reader will not fail to remark that the period at which Daniel Boone commenced the settlement of Kentucky, was the most eventful one in the history of our country.  In the year 1775 hostilities between Great Britain and her American Colonies commenced at Lexington and Concord, and the whole country was mustering in arms at the time when Boone and the other western emigrants were forming settlements four hundred miles beyond the frontiers of Virginia and the Carolinas.  Encouraged by the treaty of Lord Dunmore with the Indians in 1774, and knowing the Indian titles to the lands they were occupying to have been extinguished, they naturally counted on an unmolested possession of the region they were settling.  But in this expectation they were sorely disappointed.  The English officers and agents in the northwest were indefatigable in stimulating the Indians to attack the American colonists in every quarter.  They supplied them with arms and ammunition, bribed them with money, and aided and encouraged them to attack the feeble settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee.  But Providence overruled these circumstances for the benefit of the Western country.  “The settlement of Kentucky led to the conquest of the British posts in Illinois and Indiana, in 1778, and eventually threw the wide valleys of the West under control of the American Union."[25]

The settlers in Kentucky in 1775, were still acting under the belief that the claims purchased by Henderson and Company from the Cherokees were valid, and that “the Proprietors of the Colony of Transylvania” were really founding a political State.  Under this impression they took leases from the Company, and in the course of the year, eighteen delegates assembled in convention at Boonesborough, and acknowledged the Company as lawful proprietors, “established courts of justice, and rules for proceeding therein; also a militia law, a law for the preservation of game, and for appointing civil and militia officers."[26] This was the first political convention ever held in the Western Valley for the formation of a free government.[27]

The winter and spring of 1776[28] were passed by the little colony of Boonesborough in hunting, fishing, clearing the lands immediately contiguous to the station, and putting in a crop of corn.  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.