by Rob Harper
him home to the Watauga Valley of western north carolina. The three res-
cuers stayed there for several days and attended a horse race along with
colonists from the neighboring holston Valley. One of these, isaac crab-
tree, had survived the attack on the russell party, and he now persuaded
some of the holston crowd to take revenge. two shot Will in the back, kill-
ing him. Ketigeestie and his wife found refuge in one of the houses, where
the Wataugans defended them against crabtree’s vengeful gang until night-
fal , when they escaped. at the first cherokee town they reached, one of
Wil ’s relatives immediately called for a war party to take revenge, but Keti-
geestie dissuaded them, arguing that without the Wataugans’ aid, he and his
wife would have died as wel . Wil ’s murder and scalping seemed to confirm
that Virginians could not be trusted, but cherokee leaders nonetheless
acted quickly and decisively to avoid war with the British, their only source
of gunpowder and shot. Oconostota, their “great Warrior,” voiced the wide-
spread belief that the “White people means bad” but nonetheless assured
British agents that he would wait to resolve the matter through familiar
condolence rituals. at an early september council, he raged against militant
cherokees “till he foam’d at the mouth,” while his civil counterpart, little
carpenter, angrily asked whether they had found a way to live without co-
lonial trade. such pragmatic considerations helped persuade most chero-
kees to remain at peace.27
in Ohio, logan’s initial band of about a dozen warriors remained quiet
patronage, 1773–74
61
for weeks after their early June raids. On 22 June, two full months after yellow
creek, christian averred that connol y had exaggerated indian hostility. But
as dunmore’s forces mobilized, a growing coalition of militant Ohio indians
launched a wider assault on western Virginia. logan’s own motives remained
personal. in a letter dictated to one of his captives, logan explained that he
had forgiven previous colonial atrocities, but that after yellow creek he
“thought [he] must kill too.” he stressed that other indians were “not angry,”
perhaps still hoping to contain the conflict. most of his new allies, though,
fought to oppose Virginian expansion. as hostilities escalated, shawnee mil-
itants reportedly brought a black wampum belt calling for war to the chero-
kees’ Overhill towns, arguing that colonists had “surrounded” them and
would eventual y destroy them if they did not resist. Between late June and
mid- July eight war parties, totaling perhaps one hundred men, carried out
six separate attacks ranging from the monongahela to Kentucky, killing at
least ten colonists. Though the attackers remained few in number, the geo-
graphic breadth of their targets spread terror throughout the region. Just a
few weeks after suggesting that the threat of war was overblown, christian
reported that homesteaders had fled in terror. in early august, the wave of
attacks culminated when three warriors killed five western Virginia
children.28
even so, the attackers remained on the political margins. Key Ohio in-
dian leaders chose to overlook the Virginians’ violence, largely because peace
served their respective political agendas. Throughout 1774, guyasuta threat-
ened western nations with six nations retaliation if they supported the shaw-
nees. his efforts bore fruit: when shawnees sought help against dunmore’s
army, their neighbors rebuffed them. White eyes, having failed to make
peace, now aimed to contain the conflict and establish himself as dunmore’s
most trusted indian al y. he and other delaware leaders had repeatedly tried
to win British recognition of their nation’s sovereignty, with little success.
dunmore’s need for indian allies offered a new opportunity to pursue this
long- standing goal. he also sought to ensure that any Virginian invasion of
Ohio stayed well away from the delawares’ muskingum Valley towns. Over
the months that followed, White eyes worked diligently to restore peace, but
he simultaneously assured dunmore that he could depend on delaware neu-
trality in case of an expanded war.29 he careful y avoided questioning the
governor’s plans for Kentucky or his belligerence toward the shawnees.
rather than halting escalation, his courtship of dunmore isolated the
62
chapter 2
shawnees still further, leaving them all the more vulnerable to Virginian
aggression.
in late July, a man set out from Wakatomica to trade a horseload of goods for
bear grease. On the road, he met a small group of Virginians, one of whom
shot at him. The man raced home, leaving his horse and goods behind. The
hardman and his neighbors prepared for battle: most fled west to the scioto
towns, while the young men prepared to ambush the approaching militia. an
advance party detected the ploy and the four hundred Virginians quickly
overwhelmed the town’s defenders. That night, three delawares and an On-
ondaga appeared and offered to mediate, but negotiations broke down when
the Virginians demanded shawnee hostages. The militia rampaged through
the towns, torched everything they saw, and cut down seventy acres of grow-
ing corn. They also burned hundreds of bushels of dry corn, only to find
themselves short of food. The increasingly hungry Virginians soon turned
for home, leaving Wakatomica a heap of ashes.30
in the wake of the attack, the hardman’s political authority evaporated.
at the scioto Valley shawnee towns, the refugees from Wakatomica no doubt
taxed the resources of their kin, some of whom blamed the growing war at
least in part on the hardman’s militancy. While Wakatomica smoldered, the
scioto shawnees announced that they had “dismissed” him “and chosen an-
other in his place”— cornstalk— whom they instructed to make peace. corn-
stalk in turn asked the delawares to mediate with the Virginians. By
mid- august, indian attacks on Virginia had once again come to a halt.31
But the Virginians had little interest in talking. in pittsburgh, connol y
once again insisted that the shawnees hand over “all those who have com-
mitted murders upon our defenceless Women & children.” he failed to
mention the crimes of greathouse and cresap, who now numbered among
his officers. dunmore’s army continued to mobilize and the governor himself
headed west to take command. in early september, he and his retinue pad-
dled down the monongahela to pittsburgh, where he promptly closeted him-
self with connol y for an evening of heavy drinking. dunmore wholeheartedly
endorsed connol y’s “measures & ways of thinking” regarding the shawnees,
averring that cornstalk’s people had for “a long time . . . maltreated the Vir-
ginians.” When delaware and haudenosaunee spokesmen offered, once
again, to mediate a peace, dunmore failed to respond for five days, then pre-
sented a long list of alleged shawnee crimes: some exaggerated, some misat-
tributed, and others fictitious. he agreed to hear shawnee peace proposals,
patronage,
1773–74
63
but rather than doing so at the traditional council fire of pittsburgh, he in-
vited the shawnees to meet him as he led his army down the Ohio. in re-
sponse, the militant coalition went back to war. On 1 september, thirty
intrepid warriors ambushed four hundred Virginians as they moved down-
river from pittsburgh. Three or four men died on each side. The Virginians
pursued the attackers to an abandoned vil age, where they found the scalps of
their fallen comrades “hung up like colours.” Over the following days, indi-
ans carried out a series of attacks against the mobilizing militia. By mid-
september, small bands, including logan’s, had resumed attacking
homesteads, but most militants now shifted their attention to dunmore’s
invasion.32
as the Virginians approached, the scioto shawnees abandoned negotia-
tion. On 6 October, they sent two separate messages to their delaware neigh-
bors, both accompanied by wampum strings. in one, cornstalk pledged to
keep the shawnees’ long- standing peace with pennsylvania. in another,
shawnee war captains declared they would confront dunmore’s army “with
all their warriors.” The apparent contradiction reflected an emerging consen-
sus. anxious to avoid alienating their British trading partners entirely, shaw-
nees made clear that they planned to fight only the Virginians, because they
were “gathering in great numbers” almost on their doorstep. after debating
for months about how to respond to Bullitt’s surveys and cresap’s murders,
shawnees found unity in the face of imminent invasion. When White eyes
urged the messengers to resume peace talks, they mockingly assured him
that seven hundred warriors would soon “speak with the [Virginian] army”
at the Kanawha. They expected to finish talking “by Breakfast time” and
would then “speak with his lordship” directly.33
Before dawn on 10 October, two men left the Virginian camp at point
pleasant and set out to hunt. about half of dunmore’s army had assembled
there, at the mouth of the Kanawha river, to prepare for their invasion of
Ohio. The hunters stumbled upon a group of shawnees, fled back to camp,
and raised the alarm. Their commander, andrew lewis, dispatched two
companies to investigate. several hundred shawnee warriors quickly re-
pulsed them. The shawnees had planned to descend before dawn and drive
the army into the river, but the early warning gave the more wakeful of the
Virginians time to ral y. They mounted a vigorous defense, leading to a fierce,
chaotic, and inconclusive battle. having lost the advantage of surprise, the
shawnees soon retreated, leaving over two hundred Virginians dead or
wounded and losing a few dozen of their own.34
64
chapter 2
dunmore, accompanied by White eyes, led the other half of his army
down the Ohio from pittsburgh to the mouth of the hocking river. together,
he and lewis commanded perhaps 2,200 men, far more than the shawnees,
but the scarcity of supplies left them little time to strike. anxious to act before
hunger and desertion weakened their forces, dunmore and lewis marched
their armies into Ohio, with dunmore following the hocking and lewis
crossing overland. dunmore, moving more quickly, installed his forces across
the river from chillicothe in a field he dubbed “camp charlotte.” lewis’s
men hurried to catch up. White eyes, determined to avert more bloodshed,
arranged a hasty peace council. addressing the shawnees as his “deluded
brethren,” dunmore insisted that they return all captives, escaped slaves, and
stolen horses; compensate Virginia for all goods taken since 1765; and hand
over six hostages. When cornstalk noted that his people had not begun the
war, the governor recited his litany of alleged shawnee crimes and swore he
would not leave until they met his demands. Facing the imminent destruc-
tion of his people’s towns, cornstalk had no choice but to agree.35
Both indians and colonists resented the peace agreement. some Ohio
haudenosaunee neighbors refused to attend dunmore’s council and instead
planned to flee northward toward lake erie. happy to make an example of
them, the governor dispatched William crawford with 240 men to attack
their towns, forty miles farther up the scioto. The townspeople heard their
predawn approach and most fled in the dark, leaving most of their horses,
guns, and other possessions behind. crawford’s men killed six of the town’s
defenders and captured fourteen women and children, whom dunmore later
freed at White eyes’s request. For their part, crawford’s men auctioned off
their plunder for £400 sterling and divided the proceeds among themselves.
But other members of dunmore’s army were disappointed: lewis’s men in
particular had looked forward to avenging their losses and plundering the
scioto towns. during their march they repeatedly ignored the governor’s or-
ders to stop. rather than marching directly to camp charlotte, lewis took a
road that ran closer to the towns— he subsequently claimed that “the guide
mistook the path”— and sparked widespread panic. as shawnee warriors
prepared for battle, dunmore raced to lewis’s camp and personal y com-
manded him to halt. lewis later reported he had to double the guard around
his tent to prevent his men from killing the governor and White eyes. But
lewis’s men ultimately complied with their orders and returned home with-
out the plunder they coveted.36
The war’s anticlimactic ending cal s into question the notion that Ohio
patronage, 1773–74
65
Valley colonists disdained political authority. however much they hated
dunmore, White eyes, or the shawnees, the militia had reason to comply
with the governor’s commands. lewis and his officers hoped that dunmore’s
favor would secure them rich Kentucky estates. Their men similarly expected
payment for their services in either cash or land. despite widespread resent-
ment at being denied plunder and vengeance, the militia hesitated to jeopar-
dize future opportunities by defying the governor’s orders. so long as violence
enjoyed at least tacit official support, hostilities had escalated. Once dun-
more personal y demanded peace, attacks on indians ceased, for a time.
On his return to Williamsburg, dunmore found a packet of london corre-
spondence excoriating him for his land grants, connol y’s abuses, and the
cresap and greathouse murders. he defended his conduct in a long letter
that was, in the words of the historian richard White, “riddled with lies.” in
particular, dunmore professed himself powerless to rein in what he called
“the emigrating spirit of the americans.” lacking any “attachment to place,”
he argued, the colonists wandered about the landscape, convinced that “the
lands further off, are still better than those upon which they are already set-
tled.” no authority could halt their meandering, as “they do not conceive that
government has any right to forbid” them. When they set out to seize indian
land, or slaughter the indians who lived there, “the efforts of m
agistrates and
government could not in the least restrain” them.37
These excuses resonate widely in both popular and scholarly interpreta-
tions of anglo- american colonialism. But the picture he painted bore little
resemblance to the causes of the war that would bear his name. Between 1765
and 1773, relative peace had prevailed. many indians chafed at the rush of
colonists into the monongahela country, but the prohibition of colonization
west of the Kanawha promised a workable compromise. contrary to dun-
more’s mendacious screed, British colonists largely abided by the Kanawha
boundary. daniel Boone and other “long hunters” visited Kentucky in search
of game, and aspiring speculators pined for land there, but shawnee and
cherokee policing deterred them from establishing homesteads. rather than
an organic tide of independent- minded backwoodsmen, the colonization of
Kentucky began with elite Virginians’ demands for land and with their new
governor’s readiness to comply. The subsequent descent into war reflected
indians’ and colonists’ common desire for the favor of an internal y contra-
dictory imperial state. The lure of dunmore’s patronage enabled him to mo-
bilize an army and secure the loyalty of key indian leaders. The empire’s
66
chapter 2
imminent col apse, meanwhile, offered the region its best remaining hope for
peace.
dunmore’s triumph soon faded. Within eight months of the shawnee
surrender, he fled Williamsburg as Virginia rose in revolution. But the gover-
nor’s western adventures had reshaped Ohio Valley politics and accelerated
colonization. White eyes and cornstalk emerged as preeminent peacemak-
ers, eager to secure their peoples’ remaining territory and to avert another
war. The western alliance that shawnees and others had so long envisioned
had col apsed, thanks largely to guyasuta’s anti- shawnee lobbying. in the
upper Ohio Valley, connol y’s diverse anti- pennsylvania coalition would en-
dure well beyond dunmore’s departure. and the violence of 1774 left many
