The example of Boone and his companions in making their homes on Kentucky soil was soon followed by others, and within a year or two a number of settlements had been made, at various promising localities.  The Indians did not view with equanimity this invasion of their hunting-grounds.  Their old battles with each other were now replaced by persistent hostility to the whites, and they lurked everywhere around the feeble settlements, seizing stragglers, destroying cattle, and in every way annoying the daring pioneers.

In April, 1777, a party of a hundred of them fiercely attacked Boonesborough, but were driven off by the rifles of the settlers.  In July they came again, now doubled in numbers, and for two days assailed the fort, but with the same ill-success as before.  Similar attacks were made on the other settlements, and a state of almost incessant warfare prevailed, in which Boone showed such valor and activity that he became the terror of his savage foes, who, in compliment to his daring, christened him “The Great Long-Knife.”  On one occasion when two Indian warriors assailed him in the woods he manoeuvred so skilfully as to draw the fire of both, and then slew the pair of them, the one with his rifle, the other, in hand-to-hand fight, with his deadly hunting-knife.

But the bold pioneer was destined soon to pass through an experience such as few men have safely endured.  It was now February, 1778.  For three years the settlers had defied their foes, Boone, in despite of them, hesitating not to traverse the forest alone, with rifle and hunting-knife, in pursuit of game.  In one of these perilous excursions he suddenly found himself surrounded by a party of a hundred Shawnese warriors, who were on their way to attack his own fort.  He fled, but was overtaken and secured.  Soon after, the savages fell in with a large party of whites who were making salt at the Salt Lick springs, and captured them all, twenty-seven in number.

Exulting in their success, the warriors gave up their original project, and hastened northward with their prisoners.  Fortunately for the latter, the Revolutionary War was now in full progress, and the Indians deemed it more advantageous to themselves to sell their prisoners than to torture them.  They, therefore, took them to Detroit, where all were ransomed by the British except Boone.  The governor offered a large sum for his release, but the savages would not listen to the bribe.  They knew the value of the man they held, and were determined that their illustrious captive should not escape again to give them trouble in field and forest.

Leaving Detroit, they took him to Chillicothe, on the Little Miami River, the chief town of the tribe.  Here a grand council was held as to what should be done with him.  Boone’s fate trembled in the balance.  The stake seemed his destined doom.  Fortunately, an old woman, of the family of Blackfish, one of their most distinguished chiefs, having lost a son in battle, claimed the captive as her adopted son.  Such a claim could not be set aside.  It was a legal right in the tribe, and the chiefs could not but yield.  They were proud, indeed, to have such a mighty hunter as one of themselves, and the man for whose blood they had been hungering was now treated with the utmost kindness and respect.