It was at Ft Ruddell, Kentucky that the Shawnee kidnapped my two great cousins in 1780..........Stephen and Abraham Ruddell.........their father was Major Ruddell of the American army...........Stephen was 12, and Abraham was 6..........................Stephen spent 15 years with the Shawnee, becoming a warrior, and later a chief..............he led 500 Shawnee against the American army, by himself, one day..............Tecumshe and Stephen were both born in 1768............Stephen in Culpepper, Virgina...........and Tecumshe near Chillocthe (sp?), Ohio...........



Despite some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775 Boone blazed his Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains from North Carolina and Tennessee into Kentucky. There he founded the village of Boonesborough, Kentucky, one of the first American settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 European people migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone.[2]

Boone was a militia officer during the Revolutionary War (1775–83), which in Kentucky was fought primarily between the American settlers and the British-aided Native Americans. Boone was captured by Shawnee warriors in 1778, who after a while adopted him into their tribe. Later, he left the Indians and returned to Boonesborough to help defend the European settlements in Kentucky/Virginia.