2. Attacks in Kentucky and Western Virginia continued throughout the Revolutionary War
The isolated settlements of Kentucky and along the Ohio and its tributaries were attacked in hit-and-run raids, the settlers slaughtered, their cabins and farms burned. Some were taken as hostages to the British fort at Detroit. Raids were common in the western portions of North Carolina, where Daniel Boone was raised and learned his woodland skills. His son Israel was born there, in the Yadkin Valley, and there he spent the early years of his life. His father’s early expeditions to Kentucky were long hunts, during which the elder Boone explored the fertile land of the bluegrass, the hills and mountains, and along the rivers and streams.
In 1773 Boone made his first attempt to settle in Kentucky. In October his eldest son, James, was a member of a hunting party which was attacked by Indians, likely Delaware and Shawnee. James was captured and tortured to death. It was an event which led to Lord Dunmore’s War. The war ended when Virginia militia crushed a Shawnee war party near Point Pleasant, and the Shawnee ceded their lands in Kentucky. Following the victory, North Carolina’s Richard Henderson sent Daniel Boone to visit the Cherokee towns in North Carolina and Tennessee to help negotiate a treaty through which the Indians would give up their hunting grounds in Kentucky.