Here we find ourselves again to some extent in the realms of imagination as to the adventures of Daniel Boone. We meet the ancient anecdote of the capture by the Indians of Boone's daughter, in company with two daughters of the neighboring Calloway family. Some say that the children were out hunting up the cows, others that they were in a canoe on the river, and that the canoe was taken away by a savage who swam out and made them prisoners. We may be sure that Boone and Calloway raised a party in pursuit, and it may be deemed historical fact that they rescued their daughters; though some state that the rescue was effected within a few miles of the post, whereas others place it after a long journey, and state that Boone and Calloway were themselves taken prisoners by the savages, and in turn rescued by their surviving companions only after a bitter struggle. One may suit himself in these matters, yet he must believe that the settlement of Boonesborough was the center of a most savage and relentless warfare.
The civilized necessity for salt was one of the chief causes of danger for these Kentuckians. In 1778 Boone, with twenty-seven companions, was engaged in salt-making at the Blue Licks, when they were surrounded by a large band of Indians. Boone was made captive, with others, and taken north across the Ohio River. These savages were Shawanese, from the Pickaway Plain. Eventually they took Boone as far north as Detroit, where the commandant, Hamilton, pleased with Boone's manly character, undertook to ransom him from the savages. The latter, however, would not hear to this, and after some parleying concluded to make Boone one of their tribe.
He lived with them for some months, his fate meantime quite unknown to his friends at Boonesborough. At length, discovering a war party of more than four hundred savages preparing to invade the Kentucky frontier, he escaped from his captors, journeyed two hundred miles to the southward, and saved not only Boonesborough but all the infant posts of this new commonwealth beyond the Alleghanies. This, were there naught else to commend him, should establish Boone's place as one of the great pillars of the west-bound civilization.
After the savages were at last beaten away in this attack, Boone found that he was a man not without a country, but without a family. His wife, supposing him dead, had returned to the old home on the Yadkin. There is a wide hiatus here in the Boone history, regarding which Boone himself is reticent.