Blackfish, Chillicothe war chief

Shawnee leaders such as Cornstalk had accepted the Ohio River as a boundary. Blackfish did not. In the Revolution, British officials at Detroit encouraged and supplied raids meant to push settlers back north of the river.

On February 7, 1778, after Cornstalk’s murder at Fort Randolph, Blackfish captured Daniel Boone and the men with him at the salt springs on the Licking River, the place Kentuckians call the Blue Licks. Boone persuaded the outnumbered party to surrender.

At Chillicothe, near present Xenia, Ohio, he was adopted into a Shawnee family and named Sheltowee, “Big Turtle.” Tradition says Blackfish himself adopted him; historian John Sugden has suggested another family. Boone escaped in June 1778, when he learned a large force was coming, and warned Boonesborough.

On September 7, 1778, Blackfish reached Boonesborough with a force Boone counted as 444 Native warriors, mostly Shawnee, with Cherokee, Wyandot, Miami, Delaware, and Mingo allies, and 12 French-Canadian militia. The siege was lifted on September 18, after eleven days. Col. Richard Callaway, who defended the fort and later charged Boone, has his own story here. Boone was acquitted.

The next spring Col. John Bowman led Kentucky militia against Chillicothe. Blackfish helped hold the town and was shot in the leg. The wound became infected and killed him. Chillicothe stood in present Ohio and is not pinned here. The map pin is the Boonesborough siege site.