Читать книгу West Virginia - Otis K. Rice - Страница 10

The Lure of Transmontane Lands. The English victory over the French in 1763 did not open the Ohio Valley to settlement. On the contrary, in the very year that Forbes occupied the Forks of the Ohio, Sir William Johnson, acting in behalf of Pennsylvania, promised the Iroquois in the Treaty of Easton to close the part of the colony west of the Alleghenies to settlement. Colonel Henry Bouquet, the commandant at Fort Pitt, later extended that commitment to include transmontane Maryland and Virginia.

Angered by the promises of Johnson and Bouquet, Virginia speculators fell back upon a proclamation of Governor Robert Dinwiddie in 1754 setting aside two hundred thousand acres of land west of the mountains for Virginia military officers in the French and Indian War. Several of the officers, including George Washington and George Mercer, declared that they would “leave no stone unturned” in order to acquire the forbidden lands.¹ Governor Francis Fauquier later interceded with the English Board of Trade, but it refused to approve the military grant.

Fauquier achieved more success with respect to the claims of the Greenbrier and Loyal companies. Their lands had been “tolerably seated for some time” but had been vacated during the French and Indian War. The Board of Trade took refuge in ambivalence, declining to render “any explicit Opinion” and enjoining the governor from any action that might arouse the Indians.² Both companies and prospective settlers took advantage of official uncertainty to reoccupy their lands. In 1762 Archibald Clendenin settled two miles west of Lewisburg, and Frederick See and Felty Yocum took up tracts on Muddy Creek. By the summer of 1763 more than fifty persons were again living in the Greenbrier region.

Pontiac's Uprising. The British victory in the French and Indian War produced great anxiety among the western Indians. Settlers, often in the guise of hunters, continued to move into the region around Fort Pitt and other parts of the Ohio Valley. Moreover, reports reached the Indians that Amherst had advocated infecting the tribes with smallpox and that Bouquet had urged the use of trained dogs to hunt and destroy them. When Amherst announced in 1762 that the customary presents to the tribes would not be distributed during the coming winter, unrest reached a head.

Led by Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, the western Indians laid plans for surprise military attacks that would undermine British power in the Ohio Valley and confine their settlements to areas east of the Allegheny Mountains. On May 7, 1763, Pontiac struck at Detroit, and later that month Shawnee and Delaware laid siege to Fort Pitt. Bands of Indians assaulted other posts, and by the end of July only Detroit, Fort Pitt, and Fort Niagara remained in British hands. An expedition under Captain James Dalyell relieved besieged Detroit, and another, under Bouquet, defeated the Indians at Bushy Run and raised the siege of Fort Pitt. By the summer of 1764 the British had broken the power of the Indian confederacy, but Pontiac did not make peace until the following year.

The Shawnee carried Pontiac's War to the West Virginia frontiers with attacks in the Greenbrier region and on the upper Potomac, particularly along the South Branch and the Cacapon. In the summer of 1763 about sixty Shawnee led by Cornstalk entered the Greenbrier region. Posing as friends, small parties visited the Muddy Creek settlements, including the homes of Frederick See and Felty Yocum, and killed or captured every person there. They moved on to the Big Levels, present Lewisburg, to the house of Archibald Clendenin, where about fifty persons had gathered to feast on three elk that Clendenin had killed. The unsuspecting settlers invited the Indians to join them. After they had eaten, the Shawnee sprang their attack. One man made his escape, but the Indians killed or captured all the other settlers. Governor Fauquier ordered a thousand militiamen under Colonel Adam Stephen and Major Andrew Lewis to man small forts, establish guards at mountain passes, and pursue Indians making forays into the settlements. Peace did not return to the West Virginia frontiers, however, until Bouquet defeated the Indians at Bushy Run and Sir William Johnson concluded peace with the tribes at Niagara.

The Prodamation of 1763. Stunned by Pontiac's uprising and groping for some policy that might mitigate the fury of the Indians, the British government on October 7, 1763, issued a sweeping proclamation forbidding settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. Its actions angered both prospective settlers and land speculators. The only redeeming feature that they saw in the proclamation was a provision for later review and possible extension of the Indian boundary westward. Their pressures induced Lord Shelburne, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, on January 5, 1768, to authorize the drawing of a new line of demarcation. On March 12 Lord Hillsborough, the new Secretary of State for the American Department, directed Sir William Johnson and John Stuart, the two Indian superintendents in the colonies, to arrange the necessary conferences with the Indians.

Hillsborough instructed Johnson and Stuart to negotiate a boundary running from the Susquehanna River westward to the Ohio, along the Ohio to the mouth of the Kanawha, and from there in a straight line to Chiswell's Mine, on the New River. The proposed boundary cleared the military grant promised by Dinwiddie in 1754 and most of the lands claimed by the Greenbrier and Loyal companies.

During the autumn of 1768 Johnson and Stuart conducted simultaneous negotiations with the Iroquois and Cherokee, respectively. Stuart, the Indian superintendent for the Southern District, or the colonies south of Pennsylvania, concluded the Treaty of Hard Labor on October 17, by which the Cherokee gave up their claims to lands north of a line drawn from Chiswell's Mine to the mouth of the Kanawha. In the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of November 5, Johnson, the superintendent for the Northern District, or colonies from Pennsylvania northward, went far beyond his instructions. Instead of negotiating the release of Iroquois claims to lands north of the mouth of the Kanawha River, he obtained on November 5 a treaty by which they gave up lands south to the Tenneseee River, confirmed an earlier grant of 200,000 acres to George Croghan, Johnson's deputy, and stipulated that a large tract must be provided a group of Philadelphia merchants calling themselves the Suffering Traders.

Johnson's violations of his instructions produced widespread dissatisfaction. The governments of both Pennsylvania and Virginia refused to recognize the grants to Croghan and the Suffering Traders. Lord Hillsborough informed Johnson that the Crown had no intention of permitting settlement beyond the mouth of the Kanawha. Johnson, however, offered the weak defense that if he had not accepted the provisions for Croghan and the Suffering Traders, as well as the Tenneseee River line, the Iroquois would not have made any agreement. Johnson's action led to pressures to acquire additional territory from the Cherokee.

On October 18, 1770, Stuart concluded the Treaty of Lochaber, by which the Cherokee agreed to a new boundary, which ran from the Virginia-North Carolina border to a point near Long Island in the Holston River and thence in a straight line to the mouth of the Kanawha. The treaties of Hard Labor, Fort Stanwix, and Lochaber completely extinguished the rights of the Iroquois and Cherokee to West Virginia, except a small Cherokee claim in the southwest corner of the state.

A Wave of Trans-Allegheny Settlements. The treaties of Hard Labor and Fort Stanwix opened the floodgates to settlement of the trans-Allegheny region from the northern part of Pennsylvania to the headstreams of the Tennessee River. Beginning in the spring of 1769, thousands of pioneers occupied lands in the Greenbrier, Monongahela, upper Ohio, and Kanawha valleys, as well as choice sites in intervening areas.

The movement into the Greenbrier Valley, the third attempt at settlement, was led by John Stuart, Robert McClanahan, Thomas Renick, and William Hamilton, who located near Frankford in 1769. Within the next six years, at least three hundred families, drawn largely from the Scotch-Irish population in the southern part of the Valley of Virginia, moved into the Greenbrier area. They included the Boggs, Burnside, Clendenin, Donnally, Handley, Johnson, Keeney, Kelly, Kincaid, Lewis, Mathews, McClung, Nichols, Skaggs, Swope, and Woods families.

Even before 1768, intrepid men had made their way into the Monongahela Valley. In 1761 John and Samuel Pringle, deserters from the garrison at Fort Pitt, took up residence in a large hollow sycamore tree near Buckhannon. Three years later John Simpson arrived in the Clarksburg area. These men, and a few others, lived by hunting and trapping. They were the counterparts of Daniel Boone and other noted Long Hunters who ventured into Kentucky and Tennessee about the same time.

Monongahela Valley settlers originating in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and parts of Maryland and Virginia followed Forbes's or Braddock's roads to the middle Monongahela and then made their way upstream, while those from the upper Potomac, particularly the South Branch, threaded their way through the mountains to the waters of the Cheat and Tygart Valley. Conspicuous family names along the Monongahela and its West Fork and Cheat tributaries included Cobun, Collins, Davisson, Dorsey, Haymond, Ice, Judy, Martin, Miller, Nutter, Parsons, Pierpont, Scott, Shinn, Stewart, and Wade. Among the early pioneers were Zackwell Morgan, Michael Kerns, and John Evans, who located at Morgantown in 1772.

Like Daniel Boone in Kentucky, the Pringle brothers later turned immigrant guides. They led numerous settlers into the Tygart Valley, which abounded in game animals, wild fruits, and fertile lands. The accretions to the Buckhannon and Hackers Creek settlements were so great in 1773 that the grain crops were insufficient to feed the people, and they suffered a “starving year.” Early settlers in the Tygart Valley included the Connelly, Hadden, Jackson, Nelson, Riffle, Stalnaker, Warwick, Westfall, Whiteman, and Wilson families.

Most writers have credited the first settlements in the upper Ohio Valley section of West Virginia to Ebenezer, Silas, and Jonathan Zane, who allegedly arrived at Wheeling in 1769, or even earlier. George Washington, who in his own search for lands passed the site of Wheeling on October 24, 1770, made no mention in his journal of any inhabitants there. Moreover, Ebenezer Zane, David Shepherd, John Wetzel, and Samuel McCulloch, all among the earliest residents of the Wheeling area, stated later that they made their settlements in 1772. Fears that the claims of the Suffering Traders, later known as the Indiana Company, might be upheld retarded occupation of lands between the Ohio and Monongahela rivers.

In 1773 Walter Kelly, and possibly John Jones and William Pryor, settled in the Kanawha Valley. Kelly, a refugee from the Carolina backcountry and a man “of bold and intrepid disposition,” located at Cedar Grove, where he was killed by Indians the following year.³ Shortly afterward, William Morris acquired the tomahawk rights (based on notching of trees along the boundary) of Kelly's widow, who, with the remainder of the family had returned to the Greenbrier settlements prior to the attack. With his large and prolific family, Morris established the first permanent settlements in the Kanawha Valley.

The Proposed Colony of Vandalia. For a time it appeared that the trans-Allegheny settlements of West Virginia would become part of Vandalia, a proposed fourteenth colony. Vandalia had its origins in the grant made to the Suffering Traders, or Indiana Company, in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. In 1769 the company sent Samuel Wharton to London to press its claim. Through tact and skillful maneuvering, Wharton won the support of several cabinet officials and members of parliament, including Thomas Walpole, an influential London merchant. Some of the English supporters, including Walpole, became members. The organization then took the name of the Grand Ohio Company, but it was more commonly known as the Walpole Company, in honor of its chief English supporter.

The Grand Ohio Company endeavored to purchase 2.4 million acres from the territory ceded by the Iroquois and offered the Crown 10,640 pounds, the exact amount that the government had paid the Indians for the entire cession. Its members were astonished when Lord Hillsborough, whom they expected to place impediments in their path, suggested that they enlarge their request to 20 million acres, or sufficient land to establish a separate colony. Hillsborough probably expected to wreck the scheme by pushing the price up to about 100,000 pounds and by raising further opposition from Virginia. Wharton and Walpole reached an understanding with the Treasury Commissioners on January 11, 1770, however, by which the price remained at 10,640 pounds.

The company proved equally adroit in overcoming opposition in Virginia. Excited by prospects that he might become governor of the new colony, George Mercer negotiated the merger of the Ohio Company of Virginia, of which he was the agent, into the Grand Ohio Company. In addition, the Grand Ohio Company agreed to set aside two hundred thousand acres in one tract for the military grant promised by Dinwiddie in 1754. It eased the fears of men such as Andrew Lewis and Thomas Walker by recognizing the rights of earlier grantees, including the Greenbrier and Loyal companies.

On July 1, 1772, the Committee on Plantation Affairs approved the Grand Ohio Company grant. Lord Hillsborough, who steadfastly opposed the move, was forced out of office, and on the very day that he left, the Privy Council gave its approval. The new colony, named Vandalia in honor of Queen Charlotte, who claimed descent from the Vandals, included all of trans-Allegheny West Virginia, the part of Pennsylvania between the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, and all of Kentucky east of the Kentucky River.

Although the setting of the royal seal on the document was the only official action that remained, Vandalia never became a colony. Complaints about vagueness in its boundaries and possible problems in the collection of quitrents arose, but the greatest deterrent was the rapidly developing hostility between England and her American colonies. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the Intolerable Acts of the following year wrecked all hopes for Vandalia.

Lord Dunmore and the Land Speculators. Virginia experienced a new surge of land speculation in the wake of the treaties of Hard Labor and Fort Stanwix. Speculators found a warm friend in John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, who arrived as governor on December 12, 1771. When the prospects for Vandalia dimmed, Virginia speculators, encouraged by Dunmore, sprang to action. On the basis of the Dinwiddie commitment of 1754 and the Proclamation of 1763, Dunmore made several important military grants in West Virginia. They included 21,941 acres on the Kanawha between the Coal and Pocatalico rivers to John Fry and others: 51,302 acres at the mouth of the Kanawha to George Muse, Adam Stephen, Andrew Lewis, Peter Hog, and others; 28,400 acres at the mouth of the Little Kanawha to Robert Stobo, Jacob Van Braam, and others; and 26,627 acres along the Ohio and Big Sandy rivers to John Savage and fifty-nine associates.

George Washington, who acquired the rights of numerous French and Indian War veterans, was a prominent beneficiary of Dunmore's policies. In the fall of 1770 Washington personally selected tracts totaling nearly thirty-five thousand acres in the Ohio and Kanawha valleys. On the largest of his tracts, situated on the Kanawha River above Point Pleasant, the proposed capital of Vandalia, he planned to settle immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, and the German states. He promised settlers passage money to America, suspension of quitrents for a period of years, and religious freedom. In 1775 he sent James Cleveland and a work party to the Kanawha tract, where it built dwellings, cabins, and a barn and planted a variety of crops and two thousand peach trees. The approach of the American Revolution and the increasing hostility of the Indians forced Washington to abandon his plans.

By the spring of 1773 the land fever in Virginia reached a new intensity. With the blessings of Dunmore, surveying parties led by Thomas Bullitt and James McAfee began to lay off lands in central Kentucky. Bullitt had previously gone to the Shawnee at Chillicothe and gained permission for surveying and settling of lands east of the Kentucky River if the Indians were paid for their claims and retained their hunting rights. Bullitt violated his pledge, however, by surveying tracts as far west as Louisville, some of which Dunmore granted to John Connolly, his agent at Fort Pitt, and to relatives and associates of George Croghan. The provocations in Kentucky did more than anything else to incite the hostilities that broke the peace on the upper Ohio in 1774. Dunmore also upheld the claims of the Greenbrier and Loyal companies by instructing law enforcement officials to evict trespassers on their lands.

The Virginia-Pennsylvania Boundary Dispute. Dunmore, as might have been expected, forcefully asserted Virginia's claim to land around the Forks of the Ohio. The territory had been in dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for years, but the influx of settlers after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix gave the problem a new urgency. The charter of Pennsylvania defined her western boundary as five degrees west of the Delaware River, without specifying whether it should follow the meanderings of the Delaware or run due north from a point five degrees west of its mouth. If the former were true, Virginia had a strong claim to the disputed territory; if the latter were the case, Pennsylvania's right was well nigh incontestable.

Pennsylvania made the first moves. In 1769 she opened a land office west of the Alleghenies. Two years later she created Bedford County but designated the town of Bedford, east of the mountains, as its seat. In 1772 she established Westmoreland County, which included all territory west of the Alleghenies. Some six hundred Virginians, led by young Michael Cresap, opposed her assertion of authority and appealed to Virginia to provide them with a government.

In the summer of 1773, Lord Dunmore visited Fort Pitt, ostensibly for a firsthand view of the situation. If he had not already formed that opinion, he now convinced himself that Virginia had jurisdiction over the lands and the right to make grants there. On October 11, after his return to Williamsburg, the council created the District of West Augusta to include all Virginia territory west of the Alleghenies. The Revolutionary War muted the Virginia-Pennsylvania dispute, and in 1784 it was resolved by a westward extension of the Mason-Dixon Line.

At Fort Pitt, Dunmore formed an alliance with George Croghan and John Connolly. Bitter over the refusal of Pennsylvania to recognize his grant from the Iroquois in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and disappointed in the outcome of the Vandalia project, Croghan accepted the dominion of Virginia over the territory around the Forks of the Ohio in return for which Dunmore honored his title. The governor named Connolly, Croghan's nephew, his agent in charge of both civil and military affairs on the upper Ohio. Dunmore's alliance with Croghan placed at his disposal a man of unsurpassed influence with the Indians, but his liaison with Connolly, who lacked Croghan's tact and judgment, proved disastrous to peace in the Ohio Valley.

Hostilities on the Upper Ohio. The movement of settlers into the trans-Allegheny region and the activities of surveyors in Kentucky led to reprisals by the Shawnee, who had never relinquished their claims. In April 1773 Indians killed George Yeager, who with Adam Strader and sixteen-year-old Simon Kenton, had a hunting camp at the mouth of the Elk River. A band of Shawnee attacked a surveying party under John Floyd at the mouth of the Little Guyandotte and held several of the men for three days. Another party fired upon Kentucky-bound surveyors at the mouth of the Kanawha. The irate men chose Michael Cresap as their leader and urged him to move at once against the Shawnee towns. Cresap prevailed upon them to return to Wheeling until they could find out what steps Virginia authorities proposed to take with regard to the attacks. When Connolly issued an inflammatory circular calling upon residents of the trans-Allegheny region to be prepared to defend themselves, Cresap overcame his reluctance to act. During the ensuing weeks he and his followers participated in several small encounters, commonly known as “Cresap's War.”

The most serious and indefensible action on the upper Ohio was the killing of the family of Logan, a Mingo chief, at the mouth of Yellow Creek on April 30. Contemporary accounts vary, but it seems clear that the killing of two Mingoes on the north side of the Ohio River the previous day started the unfortunate chain of events. Four Indians, angry over the killings, crossed the Ohio to a tavern kept by Joshua Baker, where a band of whites led by Daniel Greathouse arrived and plied them with whiskey. While the Indians were in a semidrunken state, Greathouse and his companions killed them. They also killed four other Indians who came to make inquiries. The dead included a brother and a sister of Logan. Their loss turned Logan, an old friend, into an implacable enemy, and he took at least thirteen scalps in retaliation.⁴

Numerous attacks by both Indians and whites occurred during the spring and summer of 1774, and a general war appeared imminent. Responsible officials such as Guy Johnson, John Stuart, and George Croghan became convinced that Dunmore actually desired war with the Indians. Certainly Dunmore's close association with Connally and aggressive Virginia speculators did nothing to ease tensions. Stuart and Johnson used their influence with the Cherokee and Iroquois, respectively, to prevent their participation in a general war. Croghan worked with chiefs such as Kiasutha of the Seneca and Grey Eyes and The Pipe of the Delaware to help restrain most of the tribes northwest of the Ohio River. Isolated, the Shawnee and their friends were almost certain to lose any war with the Virginians.

Dunmore's War. In the summer of 1774 Dunmore took the initiative. In addition to Fort Pitt, now renamed Fort Dunmore, he proposed other defenses. At his direction, Major William Crawford began work on Fort Fincastle at Wheeling. There Colonel Angus McDonald assembled an army of about four hundred men for a strike against the Shawnee. McDonald proceeded without mishap until July 26, when, within six miles of its destination, his army was ambushed by some thirty Indians. Recovering from the surprise, it moved on to the Indian towns, but it found them deserted. McDonald succeeded only in destroying the Indian dwellings and supplies of corn that they had left.

Already, Dunmore had plans for a far larger expedition to “Breake the [Indian] Confederacy.”⁵ He gathered a force of more than a thousand men, mostly from Frederick, Berkeley, and Hampshire counties, and moved to Fort Dunmore and from there down the Ohio River. On his orders, Andrew Lewis assembled about eleven hundred men from Augusta, Botetourt, and Fincastle counties at Camp Union, at Lewisburg, and moved down the Kanawha Valley to Point Pleasant, with the expectation of continuing up the Ohio to join Dunmore. Their combined forces would then strike the Indian villages.

When Lewis arrived at Point Pleasant on October 6, he found awaiting him a message from Dunmore, who instructed him to join Dunmore's army about twenty-five miles from Chillicothe. Lewis's men opposed leaving the mouth of the Kanawha undefended, since it was a key point on a much-used Indian trail into Augusta, Botetourt, and Fincastle counties.

Meanwhile, Cornstalk, the Shawnee chief, had watched the movements of Dunmore and Lewis carefully. Ascertaining their intentions, he decided to attack Lewis before he could join the governor and then strike at Dunmore as he advanced along the Hocking Valley. Cornstalk concealed between eight and eleven hundred warriors in a densely wooded area along the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Kanawha. During the night of October 9 he crossed the river to the West Virginia side. About dawn on October 10 some of his warriors fired on Valentine Sevier and James Robinson, who had left Lewis's camp in search of wild turkeys. The two men rushed back to camp and informed Lewis that Indians were lurking about in the woods.

Lewis ordered two parties of about 150 men each, under his brother Charles and William Fleming, to reconnoiter along the Ohio and Kanawha rivers. About sunrise the Indians, consisting of Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo, Ottawa, and others, attacked Charles Lewis's men in full force and mortally wounded Lewis. Realizing the magnitude of the assault, Andrew Lewis dispatched another force under Colonel John Field, who also met his death. By then Fleming's men had also given way, and Fleming had suffered severe but not mortal wounds.

From dawn until evening the battle raged, with Cornstalk calling upon his men to destroy the Virginians. Cornstalk, however, mistook a flanking movement by Isaac Shelby along Crooked Creek for the arrival of more Virginia troops and concluded that he could not win the battle. During the night, therefore, the Indians retired across the Ohio. Lewis lost forty-six men killed and eighty wounded. Indian losses could not be ascertained, since they placed the bodies of their slain in the Ohio River.

Cornstalk now faced one of the most crucial decisions in the history of his tribe. He hastened to his villages on the Pickaway Plains and proposed to his people that they either kill all their women and children and fight to the last warrior or that they sue for peace. The warriors favored the latter course. Cornstalk then sent Matthew Elliott, a white man, to Lord Dunmore to arrange a meeting with the governor.

Unaware of the battle of Point Pleasant and assuming that Lewis was in no danger, Dunmore had meanwhile left a garrison of a hundred men at Fort Gower, a small blockhouse he had thrown up at the mouth of the Hocking River, and moved with the remainder of his army toward the Indian towns. About fifteen miles from his destination, he was met by Cornstalk's emissaries. Dunmore agreed to meet with Cornstalk and the other chiefs and hastily set up quarters known as Camp Charlotte, where he quickly came to terms with the Indians. He sent a messenger to inform Lewis, who, with a hundred men, was en route to find Dunmore. Angry over the governor's action, Lewis's men insisted upon attacking the Indian villages. Dunmore, with about fifty militiamen, and John Gibson, a respected trader, arrived, however, and persuaded the men to return to Point Pleasant.

The Treaty of Camp Charlotte was a temporary agreement. By its terms the Indians gave up all captives; surrendered horses, slaves, and other property that they had taken; and promised to cease hunting south of the Ohio. They also assented to a general conference to be held at Fort Dunmore the following spring for the purpose of concluding a definitive treaty.

The defeat of the Indians and the Treaty of Camp Charlotte did not end the necessity for strong defenses in the trans-Allegheny region. Dunmore placed a garrison of seventy-five men under John Connolly at Fort Dunmore. He directed William Russell to replace the small stockade built by Andrew Lewis at Point Pleasant with Fort Blair, a rectangular structure with blockhouses at two corners. The forts at Pittsburgh and Point Pleasant, along with the one at Wheeling, remained the major bastions of West Virginia frontier defense throughout the Revolutionary War.

Significance of Dunmore's War. The claim made by some writers that Point Pleasant was the first battle of the Revolutionary War has no basis in fact. The defeat of the Indians in the battle and the agreements made at Camp Charlotte and Fort Pitt later had the effect of causing most western tribes to remain neutral in the Revolutionary War until 1777, a circumstance of no small importance.

To deny that Point Pleasant was the first battle of the American Revolution does not necessarily imply that there were no connections between them. As John Shy has pointed out, the long-term causes of Dunmore's War and the Revolutionary War were closely intertwined. Shy emphasizes confusion over western policy within the British government, which allowed Dunmore to pursue his own designs in the trans-Allegheny region. Moreover, the problems of frontier defense and efforts to make the Americans pay part of the costs led to troubles on the seaboard, which in turn accelerated withdrawal of British power from the West, “which predictably blew up in 1774. “⁶ When viewed in a larger context, the battle of Point Pleasant appears as a major event in the advance of the American frontier. Yet even in these larger dimensions, it has no great significance in Revolutionary War history. At the time it was considered frontier aggressiveness and was condemned rather than applauded by other colonies.

¹Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., Letters to Washington and Accompanying Papers, 5 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898-1902), vol. 2, 159.

²Quoted in Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial Policy, 1760-1775 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 45-46.

³The only contemporary description of Kelly is in John Stuart, Memoir of Indian Wars, and Other Occurrences (Richmond: Viginia Historical and Philosophical Society, 1833; Parsons, W.Va.: McClain Printing Company, 1971), 8-9. The author of this account, a pioneer in the Greenbrier region, is not to be confused with John Stuart, Indian superintendent of the Southern District.

⁴For a summary of events surrounding the killing of Logan's family and responsibility for the murders, see the Introduction to John J. Jacob, A Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Late Captain Michael Cresap (Cumberland, Md., 1826; Parsons, W. Va.: McClain Printing Company, 1971), 1-48.

⁵Reuben Gold Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg, eds., Documentary History of Dunmore's War, 1774 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1905; Harrisonburg, Va.: C.J. Carrier, 1974), 97.

⁶John F. Shy, “Dunmore, the Upper Ohio Valley, and the American Revolution,” in Thomas H. Smith, ed., Ohio in the American Revolution, Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial Conference Series, no. 1 (Columbus, 1976), 13-16.