Dude InAmerica

🇺🇸 Most Badass Americans You Don’t Know: #3 Simon Kenton Simon Kenton is an American Badass He was a 6-foot-2 giant of the frontier who survived being burned at the stake, running the gauntlet nine different times, and unimaginable torture at the hands of the Shawnee. He also saved Daniel Boone’s life. At just 16 years old back in Virginia, Kenton got into a brutal fistfight over a girl. Believing he had killed the other man, he fled west, changed his name to Simon Butler to avoid the law, and never looked back. He became one of the greatest scouts and long hunters in American history. He explored deep into hostile Shawnee territory when few white men dared go there. He claimed over a million acres of land. He fought in countless skirmishes, tracked war parties, and saved settler families again and again. The Shawnee captured him repeatedly. They forced him to run the gauntlet nine different times — a brutal quarter-mile corridor of Indians armed with clubs, sticks, and tomahawks. They sentenced him to death and tied him to a burning stake, only to be saved at the last minute by his friend, Simon Girty, who was a British man living among the Shawnee. They dragged him behind horses in a “Mazeppa ride” through brush and trees that would break most men. Each time he survived — and each time he went right back to fighting. In 1775 he joined the Kentucky militia. In April 1777, during a fierce Shawnee attack on Fort Boonesborough, Daniel Boone was shot in the leg and knocked to the ground. A warrior stood over him, ready to scalp him alive. Simon Kenton charged straight through the chaos, shot the attacker dead, clubbed another warrior who rushed in, then lifted the wounded Boone in his strong arms and carried him safely back inside the fort under heavy fire. Boone later looked at the young Kenton and told him, “Well, Simon, you have behaved like a man today — indeed you are a fine fellow.” In September 1778, while on a spying mission near Chillicothe, Ohio, Kenton was captured again by the Shawnee. He was tortured, forced to run the gauntlet multiple times, and condemned to death. Yet the Shawnee were so impressed by his unbreakable endurance that a widow whose son had been killed adopted him into the tribe. She cared for him for about 20 days until his wounds were healed. They gave him the name Cut-ta-ho-tha, which means “the condemned man.” They then moved him to Upper Sandusky for what was planned as a larger, more public execution at the stake. He had another narrow escape from death at the stake thanks to a dramatic rainstorm and further pleading by Pierre Drouillard (a French-Canadian trader and British Indian Department agent). Drouillard ransomed Kenton with trade goods. He was now a British prisoner of war and sent to Detroit around early November 1778. He escaped, traveling mostly by night through hostile territory for about 30 days facing hunger and near-capture, and reached safety in Kentucky by summer 1779. He next served as a scout under George Rogers Clark in the daring Illinois Campaign. He fought in attacks on Shawnee towns like Chillicothe and Pickaway, repeatedly risking his life spying behind enemy lines. In 1782, he learned the man he thought he killed at age 16 was still alive. He went back to his true name. When the War of 1812 broke out, the 58-year-old Kenton was appointed Brigadier General of the Ohio militia under the command of future President Major General William Henry Harrison. He led militia forces at the Battle of the Thames in Canada in 1813 — the battle in which the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh was killed. When American soldiers wanted to mutilate Tecumseh’s body for souvenirs, Kenton was asked to identify it. Knowing what they planned, he deliberately pointed to another fallen warrior instead, allowing Tecumseh to be buried with honor. He lived to the age of 81 and died in 1836. Simon Kenton is an American Legend 🇺🇸