On May 23, 1777,

43-year-old Daniel Boone stood on the ramparts of Boonesboro

and watched as roughly 200 Shawnee Warriors

streamed out of the woods

around the settlement he had founded two years earlier. The settlement was essentially a fort

with four stockade walls and a guard tower at each corner. Inside, there were 26 cabins full of

settlers, some of whom had joined Boone on the trek from North Carolina

and others from neighboring regions. Exactly one month earlier, roughly 100 Shawnee Warriors

had attacked the settlement. Boone and 13 other men mounted a valiant defense of the compound

and drove the warriors back. Boone had been shot in the ankle, and he had been hobbling

ever since. His friend Simon Kenton had saved his life not once but twice during the first

battle of Boonesboro. No one had any doubt there would be a second battle, and now it was here.

A series of killings and raids by both settlers and Native Americans called Lord Dunmore's War

had plagued the frontier a couple years earlier.

Now in 1777, 13 formerly British colonies were starting the second year of a declared war

of independence.

Along the western frontier of the war,

which was essentially the Appalachian mountain range, the British made allies of many of the

Native American tribes in the region. If the British won the war, they promised to give back the

land which had been taken by the American colonists. On April 24, 1777, the Shawnee had launched their first attack on Boonesboro in support of the British cause.

The Warriors had been repulsed, but now they had returned with double the numbers.

As Daniel Boone stood on the ramparts of his fort and watched the warriors charge,

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