tiously agreed to a conference with the enemy; Callaway
alone took the precaution to guard against Indian duplicity.
After a long talk, the Indians proposed to Boone, Callaway, and
the seven or eight pioneers who accompanied them that they shake
hands in token of peace and friendship. As picturesquely
described by Daniel Trabue:

"The Indians sayed two Indians must shake hands with one white
man to make a Double or sure peace at this time the Indians had
hold of the white men's hands and held them. Col. Calloway
objected to this but the other Indians laid hold or tryed to lay
hold of the other hand but Colonel Calloway was the first that
jerked away from them but the Indians seized the men two Indians
holt of one man or it was mostly the case and did their best to
hold them but while the man and Indians was a scuffling the men
from the Fort agreeable to Col. Calloway's order fired on them
they had a dreadful skuffel but our men all got in the fort safe
and the fire continued on both sides."

During the siege Callaway, the leader of the pioneers, made a
wooden cannon wrapped with wagon tires, which on being fired at a
group of Indians "made them scamper perdidiously." The secret
effort of the Indians to tunnel a way underground into the fort,
being discovered by the defenders, was frustrated by a
countermine. Unable to outwit, outfight, or outmaneuver the
resourceful Callaway, de Quindre finally withdrew on September
16th, closing the longest and severest attack that any of the
fortified stations of Kentucky had ever been called upon to
withstand.

The successful defense of the Transylvania Fort, made by these
indomitable backwoodsmen who were lost sight of by the
Continental Congress and left to fight alone their battles in the
forests, was of national significance in its results. Had the
Transylvania Fort fallen, the northern Indians in overwhelming
numbers, directed by Hamilton and led by British officers, might
well have swept Kentucky free of defenders and fallen with
devastating force upon the exposed settlements along the western
frontiers of North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, This
defense of Boonesborough, therefore, is deserving of
commemoration in the annals of the Revolution, along with
Lexington and Bunker's Hill. Coupled with Clark's meteoric
campaign in the Northwest and the subsequent struggles in the
defense of Kentucky, it may be regarded as an event basically
responsible for the retentio