On September 7, Shawnee chief Blackfish, who was allied to the British, led an attack on the Kentucky settlement of Boonesborough.

In 1774, the Colony of Virginia defeated a coalition of Native Americans in the Ohio Country, primarily Shawnees, in Dunmore's War.

Henry Hamilton, the British Lieutenant Governor of Canada at Fort Detroit, found willing allies in leaders such as Shawnee chief Blackfish, who hoped to drive the American colonists out of Kentucky and reclaim their hunting grounds.

[1] Unable to dislodge the Kentuckians from their fortified settlements, the Indians destroyed crops and killed cattle, hoping that food shortages would compel the Kentucky settlers to leave.

With the food supply at Boonesborough running low, the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had.

In January 1778, Daniel Boone led a party of thirty men to the salt springs on the Licking River.

Blackfish wanted to continue to Boonesborough and capture it since it was now poorly defended, but Boone convinced him that the women and children were not hardy enough to survive a winter trek as prisoners.

Upon his return, some of the men were unsure about Boone's loyalty, since after surrendering the salt making party he had apparently lived quite happily among the Shawnees for months.

Boone responded by leading a preemptive raid against the Shawnee village of Paint Lick Town on the other side of the Ohio River.

Although this was the largest force yet sent against the Kentucky settlements, taking a fortified position like Boonesborough would still be difficult without artillery to reduce the stronghold.

Boone and Major William Bailey Smith went outside again and told Blackfish that they feared that the trip to Detroit would be too hard on the women and children.

Leaders from the two sides smoked a ceremonial pipe together to mark the peace agreement, and then broke off negotiations for the day.

Based on faulty intelligence received from Hamilton in Detroit, Blackfish believed that there were at least 200 militiamen in the fort, when in fact there were only about 40 effective gunmen inside.

According to one popular interpretation, the Shawnees, having failed to secure the surrender of Boonesborough, attempted to seize the American leaders.

Despite a few injuries, all but one of the Americans managed to scramble back into the fort-the last one had to take cover next to a tree stump by the main gate.

After the initial flurry of shooting, Boone—who reemerged as the natural leader even though as a captain he was outranked by Major Smith and Colonel Richard Callaway—urged the Kentuckians to conserve their gunpowder.

At night, Native Americans ran up to the walls and attempted to throw burning torches onto the roofs of the houses within.

On September 11, Lieutenant Antoine Dagneaux de Quindre, leading 11 men from Detroit Militia, convinced his Indian allies to begin digging a tunnel from the bank of the river towards the fort.

He fashioned a makeshift wooden cannon, reinforced with iron bands, which was fired once or twice at groups of Indians before it cracked.

They separated into scattered war parties and raided other settlements, inflicting far more damage in their traditional mode of warfare than they had done during the siege.

The siege of Boonesborough was dramatized in an episode of the 1964 CBS television series "The Great Adventure", with Peter Graves starring as Daniel Boone.

The events surrounding the Siege of Boonesborough were the subject of Allan W. Eckert's historical novel The Court-Martial of Daniel Boone.