Dunmore's War

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Dunmore's War (or Lord Dunmore's War) was a war from 1773 to 1774 between the Colony of Virginia and the Indian nations of the Shawnee and Mingo. The House of Burgesses was asked by Lord Dunmore, the British Royal Governor of Virginia, to declare a state of war with the hostile Indian nations and order up an elite volunteer militia force for the campaign.

The context of the conflict resulted from escalating violence between British colonists who in accordance with previous treaties were exploring and moving into land south of the Ohio River—modern West Virginia and Kentucky—and American Indians who held treaty rights to hunt there. As a result of successive attacks by Indian hunting and war bands upon the settlers, war was declared to pacify the hostile Indian war bands. The war ended soon after Virginia's victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774. As a result of this victory, the Indians lost the right to hunt in the area and agreed to recognize the Ohio River as the boundary between Indian lands and the British colonies. Although the Indian national chieftains signed the treaty, conflict within the Indian nations soon broke out between more radical tribesmen who felt the treaty sold out their claims and tribesmen who felt another war would mean only further losses of territory to the more powerful British colonists. When war broke out between the British colonists and the British government, the war parties of the Indian nations quickly gained power and mobilized the various Indian nations to attack the British colonists during the Revolutionary War.

[edit] Background

The area south of the Ohio River had long been claimed by the Iroquois Confederacy. Although they were the most powerful Indian nation in the Northern Colonies, other tribes also made claims to the area and often hunted the region. Thus, when British officials had acquired the land south of the Ohio River in the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix from the Iroquois, Ohio Indians who also hunted the land refused to sign the treaty and prepared to defend their hunting rights. At the forefront of this resistance were the Shawnees, who as the most powerful anti-Iroquois Indian nation soon organized a large confederacy of anti-British, anti-Iroquois Shawnee-Ohio Confederated Indians to enforce their claims.^[1] British and Iroquois officials worked to diplomatically isolate the Shawnees from other Indian nations, however, and so when Dunmore's War broke out in 1774, Shawnees faced the Virginia militia with few allies.

Following the 1768 treaty, British explorers, surveyors, and settlers began pouring into the region. In September 1773, an obscure hunter named Daniel Boone led a group of about 50 emigrants in the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement in Kentucky County, Virginia. On October 9, Boone's oldest son James and a small group of men and boys who had left the main party to retrieve supplies were attacked by a band of Delawares, Shawnees, and Cherokees who had decided, in the words of historian John Mack Faragher, "to send a message of their opposition to settlement…" James Boone and another boy were captured and gruesomely tortured to death. The brutality of the killings sent shockwaves along the frontier, and Boone's party abandoned their expedition. The massacre was one of the first events in Dunmore's War. For the next several years, the Indian nations opposed to the treaty increasingly attacked settlers, mutilated and tortured to death the surviving men, and took the women and children into slavery.^[2]

[edit] "Cresap's War"

Among the settlers was Captain Michael Cresap, who was the owner of a trading post at Redstone Old Fort (now Brownsville, Pennsylvania) on the Monongahela River. Under authority of the colonial government of Virginia, Cresap had taken up extensive tracts of land at and below the mouth of Middle Island Creek (now Sistersville, West Virginia), and had gone there in the early spring of 1774 with a party of men to settle his holdings. Ebenezer Zane, afterwards a famed “Indian fighter” and guide, was engaged at the same time and in the same way with a small party of men on lands which he had taken up at or near the mouth of Sandy Creek. A third and larger group that included George Rogers Clark, who later became a general during the Revolutionary War, had gathered at the mouth of the Little Kanawha River (the present site of Parkersburg, West Virginia), and were waiting there for the arrival of other Virginians who were expected to join them at that point before moving downriver to settle lands in Kentucky.

While waiting for some days on the Little Kanawha, reports began to reach Clark’s group that hostile Indian nationals were robbing and occasionally killing traders, surveyors and others traveling down the Ohio, which caused them to believe that the hostile Indian nations of the Shawnee centered Ohio confederacy were bent on all-out war. With this in mind the group decided to attack the Ohio Indian village called Horsehead Bottom, which was near the mouth of the Scioto River and on the way to their intended destination in Kentucky. The question arose as to who would lead the attack, as few in the group had experience in warfare. After some discussion the group decided on Cresap, whom they knew was about fifteen miles upriver from them and was intending to follow them into Kentucky, and who also had combat experience. Cresap was sent for and he quickly met with the group. After some discussion of their plan, Cresap dissuaded the group from the attack, saying that while the actions of the Shawnee-Ohio confederates were certainly hostile they didn’t indicate that war was inevitable. He further argued that if they carried out their plans he had no doubt of their success, but a war would surely result, and they could justifiably be blamed for it. Instead he suggested the group should return to Wheeling, Virginia for a few weeks to see what would develop, and if the situation calmed they would then resume their journey to Kentucky. The group agreed.

When they arrived at Wheeling they found the whole area in an uproar, panicked by survivors of the Indian depredations who told of their subjection and loss to the Indian savagery. Fearing for the lives of the women and children, the American settlers from the surrounding countryside flocked to the town for protection, and the ranks of Cresap’s group soon swelled with volunteers willing to fight. Word of the group’s arrival reached Fort Pitt, and Capt. John Connolly, commander of the fort, sent a message asking that the group remain in Wheeling a few days, as messages had been sent to the local tribes to determine their intentions. A reply was sent to Connolly saying the group would do as he asked, but before it got to Fort Pitt a second message from Connolly was received, addressed to Cresap, stating the Shawnee-Ohio tribes had signaled they intended war.

A council was called April 26 and after Cresap read Connolly’s letter to the assembly, war was declared. The following day some Indian canoes were spotted on the river, and after chasing them fifteen miles downriver to Pipe Creek the settlers engaged them, and a battle ensued. Both sides suffered a few wounded. The following day, Clark's party abandoned the original idea of proceeding to Kentucky, as they anticipated retaliation would follow for the attack at Pipe Creek. They broke camp and marched with Cresap's men to his headquarters at Redstone Old Fort.

From Captain Hanson's Journal (Surveyor enroute to job site stopped at Point Pleasant this date. He found confirming news he had heard from the Kanawha Cherokee a few days earlier as his team canoed down the Kanawha River that the Ohio Indians were on the war path. It was the talk by the locals all up and down all the rivers.)

[edit] Yellow Creek massacre

Immediately after the occurrence of the Pipe Creek incident came the killing of the relatives of the Mingo Chief Logan, who up to this point had been peaceful towards the settlers. Logan and his hunting party were camped on the west bank of the Ohio at Yellow Creek, about thirty miles above Wheeling (near present day Steubenville, Ohio) across the river from Baker’s Bottom. On April 30 some members of the hunting party (Logan was not among them) crossed the river to Baker’s tavern for their customary ration of rum. With them was a small American child. It was not known if Chief Logan had been involved in the murders and kidnappings of the settler families or whether he had obtained the child from other Shawnee-Ohio Confederates. Nonetheless, word was sent to surrounding settlers. When the Mingos were intoxicated the group of settlers that had been lying in wait killed all of them and rescued the infant child. The settlers who did the killing were under the leadership of Daniel Greathouse, a settler living near the mouth of King's Creek. When word reached Chief Logan he as did others at the time, believed that Capt. Cresap was responsible for attack as he had been considered the primary leader of the American war party. However, several people familiar with the incident (including George Rogers Clark) have stated that Daniel Greathouse and his party were the ones who committed the attack, and Cresap was not involved at all.

The settlers along the frontiers now realized that with this attack the remaining Indian nations of the Ohio would join the Shawnee-Ohio confederacy and the whole frontier would descend into savage warfare. Those settlers who remained on the frontier immediately sought safety, either in blockhouses or by abandoning their settlements and flying eastward across the Monongahela River, with many traveling back across the Allegheny Mountains. This fear was well founded: Logan, whose tribe had served as a partial buffer against the Shawnee-Ohio confederates now rose up and joined the attack on the Virginian frontier settlements killing, pillaging and ravaging all of the settlements on the west side of the Monongahela.

1774 - May 5 1774, The Shawanee then delivered the following Answer to the Condolence Speeches and Message sent them, wanting to speak with Lord Dunmore himself:

[edit] Dunmore's expedition

Early in May 1774, Governor Dunmore received word of the hostilities that commenced at Yellow Creek and other points on the Ohio. In response he immediately requested from the legislature the formation of the general militia forces and funding for a volunteer expedition into the Ohio river valley. With his new forces, the Governor advanced toward the Ohio where he split his force into two groups: one would move down the Ohio from Fort Pitt, under the Governor himself, and another body of troops under Colonel Andrew Lewis would travel from Camp Union (now Lewisburg, West Virginia) to meet Dunmore at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. Under this general plan Governor Dunmore traveled to Fort Pitt and then he proceeded with his forces down the Ohio River, and on September 30 arrived at Fort Fincastle (later Fort Henry) which recently had been built at Wheeling by Dunmore's order. The force under Lewis, eleven hundred strong, proceeded from Camp Union to the headwaters of the Kanawha, and then downriver to the appointed rendezvous at its mouth, which was reached on October 6. Lewis, not finding Lord Dunmore already there, sent messengers up the Ohio to meet him and inform him of the arrival of the column at the mouth of the Kanawha. On October 9 a dispatch was received from Dunmore saying that he (Dunmore) was at the mouth of the Hocking River, and that he would proceed thence directly to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, instead of coming down the Ohio to the mouth of the Kanawha as originally planned. At the same time Dunmore ordered Lewis to cross the Ohio and march to meet him at the Shawnee towns.

On October 10, before Lewis had commenced his movement across the Ohio, he and his 1,100 men were surprised and attacked by warriors under Chief Cornstalk. The Battle of Point Pleasant raged nearly all day and descended into hand to hand combat. Lewis's army suffered about 200 casualties, including Lewis's brother, but the battle resulted in the defeat of the Ohio Confederate warriors, who subsequently retreated across the Ohio River. Dunmore and Lewis advanced from their respective points into Ohio to within eight miles of the Shawnee town on the Scioto and erected a temporary camp called Camp Charlotte, on Sippo Creek. Here they met Cornstalk to begin peace negotiations. Chief Logan, although he stated he would cease fighting, would not attend any of the formal peace talks. The Shawnee accepted the terms but the Mingo did not; Major William Crawford was therefore sent against one of the Mingo villages, called Seekunk, or Salt Lick Town. His force consisted of two hundred and forty men, with which he destroyed the village.

These operations and the submission of the Shawnee and Mingo at Camp Charlotte virtually closed the war. Governor Dunmore immediately set on his return, and proceeded by way of Redstone and the Great Crossings of the Youghiogheny River to Fort Cumberland, and then to the Virginia capital.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Crumrine, Boyd. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882.
• Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8018-4609-9.
• Downes, Randolph C. Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley until 1795. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1940. ISBN 0-8229-5201-7 (1989 reprint).
• Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Holt, 1992; ISBN 0-8050-1603-1.
• Hintzen, William. The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley (1769–1794). Manchester, CT: Precision Shooting Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-9670948-0-1
• Lewis, Virgil A. History of the Battle of Point Pleasant. Charleston, West Virginia: Tribune, 1909. Reprinted Maryland: Willow Bend, 2000. ISBN 1-888265-59-0.
• Lofaro, Michael. Daniel Boone: An American Life. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2003; ISBN 0-8131-2278-3. Previously published (in 1978 and 1986) as The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone.
• Randall, E. O. The Dunmore War. Columbus, Ohio: Heer, 1902.
• Smith, Thomas H., ed. Ohio in the American Revolution: A Conference to Commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the Ft. Gower Resolves. Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1976.
• Sugden, John. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8032-4288-3.
• Thwaites, Reuben Gold and Louise Phelps Kellogg, eds. Documentary History of Dunmore's War, 1774. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1905. Reprinted Baltimore: Clearfield, 2002. ISBN 0-8063-5180-2.