During the ensuing months occasional invasions were made by savage bands; but it was not until April 24, 1777, that Henderson's "big fort" received its first attack, being invested by a company of some seventy-five savages.

The twenty-two riflemen in the fort drove off the painted warriors, but not before Michael Stoner, Daniel Boone, and several others were severely wounded.

As he lay helpless upon the ground, his ankle shattered by a bullet, Boone was lifted by Simon Kenton and borne away upon his shoulders to the haven of the stockade amid a veritable shower of balls.

The stoical and taciturn Boone clasped Kenton's hand and gave him the accolade of the wilderness in the brief but heartfelt utterance; "You are a fine fellow." On July 4th of this same year the fort was again subjected to siege, when two hundred gaudily painted savages surrounded it for two days.
But owing to the vigilance and superb markmanship of the defenders, as well as to the lack of cannon by the besieging force, the Indians reluctantly abandoned the siege, after leaving a number dead upon the field.

Soon afterward the arrival of two strong bodies of prime riflemen, who had been hastily summoned from the frontiers of North Carolina and Virginia, once again made firm the bulwark of white supremacy in the West.
Kentucky's terrible year, 1778, opened with a severe disaster to the white settlers--when Boone with thirty men, while engaged in making salt at the "Lower Salt Spring," was captured in February by more than a hundred Indians, sent by Governor Hamilton of Detroit to drive the white settlers from "Kentucke." Boone remained in captivity until early summer, when, learning that his Indian captors were planning an attack in force upon the Transylvania Fort, he succeeded in effecting his escape.