Stickleyville School – James Boone Massacre
The killing of the son of Daniel Boone, James, occurred in this Wallen’s Creek Valley in 1773. Daniel and his family were migrating to Kentucky, and had persuaded William Russell of Castlewood to do so also. On September 25, 1773 they set out, and upon reaching Wolf Hills at present Abingdon, Daniel dispatched his seventeen year old son, James, and the Mendenhall brothers, John and Richard, to leave the main party and to go to Castlewood to pick up Capt. Russell and his party. Daniel continued on down the main Wilderness Trail.
James followed present US Alt. 58 to Castlewood and found that Russell and his party of about forty pioneers was not ready to leave. To carry this news to Daniel, Russell’s seventeen year old son, Henry, and James Boone, along with Isaac Crabtree, the Mendenhall brothers, and two slaves, Adam and Charles, were dispatched ahead of the main Russell party. They traveled down the Clinch Valley till they regained the Wilderness Trail just north of Natural Tunnel.
Daniel and his party camped and waited for the Russell party somewhere near the mouth of Station Creek as it empties into Powell River across Wallen’s Ridge, just to the north of Wallen’s Creek.
The Wilderness Trail at this time was just a foot path. Horses were led and not ridden. The Trail down Wallen’s Creek from Kane Gap was a corridor rather than a single path, as it followed a branching network of buffalo trails. At times of low water the travelers tended to stay on the flat northern bank of Wallen’s Creek, but during muddy and wet times they took the ridge line further to the north of the creek bank. In its earliest version, the Trail went on west down Wallen’s Creek on route #612, to the left of where you are, and on through Slagle’s Gap, which brought them out on to Station Creek just before the trail forded the Powell River. In 1780-81 the State of Virginia improved the trail to make it fit for wagons, and ran the road along old US 58 to Dot. 1773 was before this route change, so it was here near the mouth of Station Creek that Daniel and his party camped in wait for the Russell Party to catch up.
Nightfall of October 8th caught the party of James Boone and Henry Russell still on Wallen’s Creek. They camped for the night at Fannon’s Spring, two and a half miles down Wallen’s Creek from Stickleyville. The spring lies between the road and the creek, and its flow is so great that it boils in a mushroom shape up out of the ground. Its fresh cold water attracts fish as it empties into the creek. It was at this point the trail began its ascent of Wallen’s Ridge on its way to Slagle’s Gap. The site is only three miles from where Daniel was camped.
“Wolves” howled all night around the camp of the James Boone party. The Mendenhall brothers paced up and down all night. At dawn, a mixed party of Shawnee and Cherokee Indians attacked, and shot James Boone and Henry Russell through the hips so that they could not escape. They were tortured with knives. Boone recognized his torturer as Big Jim, a Shawnee who had been a guest at Daniel’s home in the Yadkin. Boone resisted for a while, but with his hands shredded from fending off the knife, he pleaded with Big Jim to kill him and to put him out of his misery.
Russell was clubbed, and his dead body shot full of arrows. The Mendenhalls were killed also. It is not clear how Crabtree made his escape, but he returned to the settlements in the east. Adam hid under a pile of driftwood on the bank of Wallen’s Creek, and witnessed the massacre, and later returned to the settlements where he spread the news. He and Crabtree were the sources of the information that was written into the dispatches of the Holston Militia that wound up as part of the Draper Manuscripts, which provide the documentation of this event. Charles was carried away toward captivity, but the Indians argued over who owned him, and the Chief settled the argument by tomahawking him.
The story varies somewhat at this point. One tradition says that the massacre was discovered by a deserter from Daniel’s party.