In the year 1773, an event occurred on the Southwest Virginia frontier which greatly influenced the early history of this section. It was a link in the chain of cause and effect which brought Daniel Boone into historical connection with Fort Blackmore and other settlements in the Valley of the Clinch. This event was ominously significant as indicating Indian hostility to further encroachment upon their territory by the whites.

In the summer of 1773, Daniel Boone, on his return from a trip to Kentucky, met Capt. William Russell, of Castlewood, somewhere in Clinch Valley, and at this meeting they seem to have agreed to unite in forming a strong party for the settlement of Kentucky. Boone had in the meantime enlisted the interest of his wife's people, the Bryans, in the enterprise. He also organized a party of five families in his own neighborhood on the Yadkin. These various groups were to assemble in Powell's Valley. On September 25, 1773, after a summer of active preparations, Boone and the North Carolina contingent started for the place of rendezvous in Powell's Valley. On reaching the neighborhood of Abingdon, Boone sent his son, James, 16 years of age, in company with John and Richard Mendenhall, of Guilford County, North Carolina, across country to Castlewood, to notify Captain Russell that the settlers were on their way, and also to obtain a supply of flour and farming tools. At Captain Russell's they were joined by Henry Russell, aged 17, son of Captain Russell, and by Isaac Crabtree and two of Russell's negro slaves Charles and Adam. Heavily laden with supplies, young Boone and Russell started down the Clinch by way of the Hunter's Ford and the Rye Cove to join the main body at the place of rendezvous in Powell's Valley.

The delay, occasioned by the detour to Captain Russell's, permitted the main body to reach the place of meeting in Powell's Valley in advance of young Boone and his party, who missed their way and failing to come up with the main party before nightfall, went into camp about three miles in the rear. During the night wolves surrounded the camp and howled dismally, in which the Mendenhall brothers expressed fear and were twitted with cowardice by Isaac Crabtree, who jocularly told them that in Kentucky, the place to which they were going, they would hear wolves and buffaloes howling in the tree tops.

At daybreak the next morning, the party was attacked by Indians and all killed except Isaac Crabtree, and Adam and Charles, the two negroes. Young Russell was shot through the hips and thus rendered unable to escape. The Indians stabbed him with knives, and at each thrust he grabbed the knife blade with his hands. He was horribly mutilated. His hands were cut to pieces by the knife blades being drawn through them. His "corpse was mangled in inhuman manner and there was left in him a dart of arrows and a war club was left by him." (Draper Manuscripts, 6 C 14.)

Crabtree made good his escape and was the first to return to the settlement. The negro, Adam, watched the butchery of his young master and others from a pile of driftwood. He became lost and wandered about several days before reaching the settlement. He was set free from slavery by the will of Madam Russell many years later. Charles was taken captive, and after traveling about forty miles two of his captors quarreled over possession of him and the leader of the party, to settle the quarrel, tomahawked and killed him.

Capt. William Russell and Capt. David Gass, who had arranged to join the Boone party, had lingered behind in Castlewood to complete some unfinished business. As they journeyed along the path taken by young Boone and his company they came suddenly upon the mutilated bodies. It appeared afterwards that the Indians had followed young Boone's party a considerable distance the day before.

This was not a battle, but a massacre. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that no resistance was made by young Boone and his companions. There is no record that they were armed.

The Cherokees were believed, at the time, to be guilty of the massacre. In fact, Capt. John Stuart, British Indian Agent among the Cherokees, urged them to give up the murderers. As a result of his influence, one chief was put to death and another escaped execution only by fleeing to the Chickasaw Tribe. This band of Indians, however, was probably composed of both Cherokees and Shawnees because some of the books and farming tools carried by the James Boone party were brought in and delivered to the whites by the Northern Indians as a result of the treaty which followed Dunmore's War. (Draper Manuscripts.)

ISAAC CRABTREE, SURVIVOR OF THE JAMES BOONE PARTY
Isaac Crabtree, an eyewitness to the massacre of James Boone and his companions, and the sole white survivor of that ill-fated party, was so incensed against the Indians that he sought to kill every red man who crossed his path, without regard to whether he was friend or enemy.

While in attendance upon a horse race in the Watauga Settlement, Crabtree fired upon and killed one of three Indians who were looking upon the races before the bystanders could prevent the action. The other two Indians, one a squaw, were saved from a like fate only with difficulty. The murdered Indian was named Cherokee Billey and was said to be a kinsman of Oconastota, an influential Cherokee chieftain.

This act of Crabtree's threw the whole border into a panic of fear lest the Cherokee's should go on the warpath to avenge the death of their tribesman. Some of the leading settlers hastened to assure the Indians of their disapproval of Crabtree's conduct. The Magistrates offered a reward of £50 for his arrest. This reward was supplemented by an additional one of £100 by Governor Dunmore of Virginia. Although many people knew of Crabtree's whereabouts, these rewards did not lead to his arrest. In fact, frontier people, having suffered so much from Indian attack and depredation, had no very strong condemnation for the man whose offense was no greater than that of having killed an Indian. For the most part, their fear was that such conduct might provoke the savages to war. It might be surmised that Crabtree, since a reward hung over him, would desist from further hostile acts toward friendly and inoffensive Indians, but such was not the case. On hearing that a party of three Cherokees was hunting near Jacob Brown's on the Nola Chucky River, he hastened thither, it was thought, with intent to attack them. On his arrival, however, he found that instead of three the party consisted of thirty-seven. Acting on the principle that discretion is the better part of valor he returned to his father's at Big Lick, near Abingdon, Va. For a number of years, however, the county officers of Fincastle and Washington feared that some overt act of his and others like him would bring the horrors of savage warfare upon the thin line of settlers on the border. They sought, therefore, to furnish him an outlet for his warlike impulses by arranging that he go upon such military expeditions as were organized upon the border in his time.