In 1765, he led the "Black Boys", a group of Pennsylvania men, in a nine-month rebellion against British rule ten years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.

[3][4][9] He was captured by Delaware Indians and brought to Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio River, where he was forced to run a gauntlet before being given over to the French.

[10] He was adopted by a Mohawk family, ritually cleansed, and made to practice tribal ways – ultimately gaining respect for Native American culture.

[3] During Pontiac's War, he fought in the 1763 Battle of Bushy Run and accompanied the 1764 British expedition led by Henry Bouquet into the Ohio Country.

[3] The rebels laid siege to Fort Loudoun in the Pennsylvania mountain country and captured enough soldiers to exchange them two-for-one for settlers imprisoned, rightly or wrongly, for raids on wagon trains.

[13] Later in 1769, while passing through Bedford with two companions, Smith was accosted by several men intent upon his arrest for being the leader of the Black Boys.

[9] In 1799, he published his narrative, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith, consisting of an autobiography and an analysis of Indian culture.

[2][9] Smith became a Presbyterian missionary to the Native Americans,[9] aided by the knowledge he had acquired of their customs in his early captivity.

A segment in the 2006 PBS miniseries The War that Made America shows a dramatization of Smith running the Native American gauntlet, following his capture in 1755.