Volume 18 , Issue 27

Lord Dunmore's War: Battle of Point Pleasant (1774)

What was the Battle of Point Pleasant (1774) and Lord Dunmore's War (1794) and what was it all about? How did these two wars relate to the American Revolution?

We know the Virginia settlers could claim this country (Kentucky) with the greatest justice and propriety. It was within the limits of their charter. The Virginians fought and bled for it. Had it not been for the memorable Battle, at the Great Kanaway those vast regions that had yet continued to be inaccessible in the late 18th century.

This is when the Watauga settlers moved into the spotlight of national history. The inevitable consequence of leasing the territory was the organization of a form of government for the infant settlement.

The Watauga settlers established a government as the first free and independent government, democratic in spirit, representative in form, ever organized upon the American continent. In describing this mimic republic, the royal Governor of Virginia says: "They appointed magistrates, and framed laws for their present occasion, and to all intents and purposes, erected themselves into, though an inconsiderable, yet a separate State." The most daring spirit in this little state was the young John Sevier, of French Huguenot family (originally spelled Xavier), born in Augusta County, Virginia on September 23, 1745. It was from Millerstown in Shenandoah County where he was living the uneventful life of a small farmer, that he emigrated (December, 1773) to the Watauga region.

The failure was portentous in nature of the coming storm back then. The day of stern adventurers was fixed in the desperate and lawless resolve to invade the trans-allegheny country and to battle savagely with the red man for its possession.

It was more thanBoone was the McAfee party, five in number, from Botetourt County, Virginia, who between May 10 and September 1, 1773, safely accomplished a journey through Kentucky and carefully marked well chosen sites for future location.

There was an ominous incident of that time was the veiled warning which Cornstalk the great Shawanoe chieftain, gave to Captain Thomas Bullitt head of a party of royal surveyors, sent out by Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia. Cornstalk at Chillicothe, June 7, 1773, warned Bullitt concerning the encroachments of the whites, "designed to deprive us," he said, "of the hunting of the country, as usual.... the hunting we stand in need of to buy our clothing."

It was during the preceding summer, George Rogers Clark, an aggressive young Virginian, with a small party, had descended the Ohio as low as Fish Creek, where he built a cabin, and in this region for many months various parties of surveyors were busily engaged in locating and surveying lands covered by military grants. Most significant of the ruthless determination of the pioneers to occupy by force the Kentucky area as the action of the large party from Monongahela, some forty in number, led by Captain James Harrod, who penetrated to the present Miller County, where in June of 1774, they made improvements and actually load out a town.

It was at this very time, Patrick Henry, in conjunction with William Byrd 3d and others, was negotiating for a private purchase of lands from the Cherokees. When Wharton, after answering Henry's inquiry as to where he might buy indian goods, remarked, "It's not possible you mean to enter the Indian trade at this period," henry laughingly replied, "The wish-world is my hobby horse."

"From I conclude," adds Wharton, "He has some prospect of making a purchase of the natives but where I know not."

The Battle of the Great Kanawha, at Point pLeasant was fought on 10 October 1774, between Lewis's force, eleven hundred strong,a nd the Indians, under Cornstalk, somewhat inferior in numbers. it was a desultory action, over a greatly extended front and in very brushy country between Crooked Creek and the Ohio.

Throughout the day, the Indians fought with rare craft and stubborn bravery - loudly cursing the white men, cleverly picking off their leaders, and derisively inquiring in regard to the absence of the fifes.

Slowly retreating, they sought to draw the whites into an ambuscade and at a favorable moment to "drive the long knives like bullocks into the river." No marked success was achieved on either side until near sunset, when a flank movement directed by young Isaac Shelby alarmed the Indians, who mistook this party for the expected reinforcement under Christian, and retired across the Ohio.

In the morning the whites were amazed to discover that the Indians, who the preceding day so splendidly heeded the echoing cll of Cornstalk, "Be strong! Be strong!" had quit the battle field and left the victory with the whites.

The Loyal Land Company
"The Loyal Land Company of Virginia was organized in 1748 by a group of private men who obtained a grant of 800,000 acres of land largely for speculative purposes. The governments of Great Britain and Virginia made these grants because they were anxious to get the frontiers settled, partly as insurance against claims to the territory by the French and partly to insure more protection to the few settlers who were there against the Indians."

"The companies to which these grants were made were given a limited time in which to dispose of the land. The Loyal Land Company circulated advertisements throughout the British colonies inviting settlers to come and settle their lands by promising to survey for them the place and quantity of land they should choose, at the cheap rate of three pounds per hundred acres with the surveyors' fees, right or composition money and patent fee; at the same time offering, if required, a reasonable time for payment, in which case the company was to retain the title as security for the purchase money and receive interest after a limited time. The company's work was interrupted and they had to ask for several extensions of time. In 1756 the French and Indian War broke out and they practically ceased work. In 1763 came the King's Proclamation prohibiting any grants of settlements on the west of the Alleghenies. However, some of the company's agents continued to encourage people to come and settle, although official patents could not then be issued. The affairs of the Loyal Company remained in a state of inactivity until 16 December 1773, but in the interval many people settled on the land. On that date the Virginia Council, in anticipation of the reopening of the country to grants, permitted the settlers who were already on the land to obtain surveys from the agents under contracts to pay the original purchase price set by the company."

To know who the players are in the Loyal Land Company. Almost all the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian leaders of the militia in Lord Dunmore's war and the Whig side of the Revolution had family ties to the business of the Loyal Company. This includes the Pattons, Lewis's, Prestons, Christians and Campbells who were intermarried with each other and in two cases married sisters of the famous Patrick Henry. Henry, himself, was involved in land speculation in the area. Other famous participants in the Loyal Company included some wealthy planters from Albermarle County such as Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas Jefferson and Dr. Thomas Walker, the explorer.

Some of the land in the original Loyal Company grant was claimed by the Cherokee, who were the first target these same leaders in the Revolution. Much of the rest of the land was the ancestral home of the Shawnee, who had been driven from northern and central Kentucky by the Iroquois in the 1660s.

Lord Dunmore's War
This hastily organized militia army of slightly more than a thousand Virginians was led by Militia General Andrew Lewis, a native of Staunton, Va. The stout, brown-eyed Lewis, descended from Presbyterian stock that had initially settled in Ireland, was an experienced colonial military commander. He was one of those brave, intrepid souls who had accompanied George Washington to the Forks of the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh) and assisted in the futile defense of Fort Necessity in 1754.

Lewis’s militia force was composed of landholding farmers from the backcountry Shenandoah Valley counties of Augusta, Fincastle, and Botetourt. These spacious, thinly populated counties provided their citizens with freedom from the bonds of authority, encouraging the development of Mr. Jefferson’s ideal “republic of farmers; the bedrock upon which the republic should be based.” Provincially absorbed in local and personal affairs, these stout backwoodsmen were only a few generations removed from their Celtic or Germanic roots.

Since 1768, when a treaty negotiated at Fort Stanwix, NY, altered the land boundaries between settlers and Native Americans, colonial migration westward increased, as had, correspondingly, Indian aggressiveness. This agreement established the demarcation boundary between Indian land and those areas open to settlement at the Ohio River; most of the eastern tribes were compressed into an area north and west of that river’s curving arc. Displeased with white migration, a number of tribes, including the militant Shawnee, formed an alliance under the creative leadership of their war chief, Cornstalk. The Miami, Ottawa, Delaware, Wyndot, and Mingo placed their warriors under his control, an unusual action for tribally conscious Indians. As the two implacable enemies, colonial settlers and native defenders, drew nearer in proximity, the clash of their cultural values brought about open but undeclared warfare—a merciless struggle pursued by both parties to the death. As Indian raids increased east of the Ohio and atrocities demanded redress, Virginia Royal Governor Dunmore requested and received authority from the Virginia House of Burgesses to pursue war with the Shawnee and their allies.

The governor determined to initiate a two-pronged offensive using 2,500 Virginia volunteer militia. He would personally command a division of 1,500 soldiers who would march northwestward to Fort Pitt (the renamed Fort Duquesne). At that point boats and canoes would be assembled to enable the division to float down the broad Ohio to an intersection with the westward-flowing Kanawha.

General Andrew Lewis’s Division, advancing overland through some of the most rugged country on the frontier, would meet Dunmore at the confluence. Together they would advance on the Indian villages across the Ohio, overwhelming them with power or punishing them sufficiently to deter further incursions. To the amazement of the militia, Lord Dunmore marched alongside them on foot, carrying his own knapsack. The Shawnee lurked nearby all along the line of march, and each move of the “long knives” was noted and reported to Cornstalk.

During the early hours of October 10, Cornstalk stealthily crossed the Ohio with an allied Indian force of 800 to 1,100 warriors; they grounded their canoes and rafts in Old Town Creek, less than five miles upriver. Camping within two miles of Lewis’s force, the hostiles prepared to attack at dawn. Painted for war, the Indians slipped quietly through the forest toward the glow of campfires barely seen through an increasing ground fog. Armed with lightweight smoothbore flintlocks obtained from French traders, the Indian warriors were prepared for close combat. These inaccurate trade guns became formidable weapons at close range when loaded with three to ten buckshot and a musket ball. A quick rush of the sentries and the warriors could explode from the fog onto the sleeping militiamen.

Cornstalk’s voice could be heard above the ear-splitting din as he shouted, “Be strong, be strong!” Taller than his followers and easily recognizable, Cornstalk appeared everywhere, first striking down a colonial then racing to bury his tomahawk in the skull of an Indian shirker. Colonial riflemen snapped shots at the Indian leader but without success. The struggle continued hour after hour with first one side rushing forward then the other. Warriors shouted, “Why don’t you whistle now?”, deriding the fifes that called the rifle companies to muster. The Virginians were somewhat in a trap, their backs to the rivers, but this also worked to their advantage. The anchored line precluded the Shawnee’s favored tactic of turning a flank and gaining their enemy’s rear.

Cornstalk accomplished much. He initially attempted to rally his followers to continue the fight. At council in Yellow Hawk’s Town on the Scioto he stated that “we must fight no matter how many may fall or we are undone.” But when he received no affirmation from his allies he realized that the Shawnee could not resist alone. Burying his tomahawk in the ground he angrily shouted: “Since you will not fight I go and make peace.” Wisely he saved his villages by opening negotiations with Dunmore at Camp Charlotte, which he established on the Pickaway Plains about 7 miles east of the Shawnee villages (25 miles from present-day Chilicothe, Ohio). So smoothly did he present his case that Dunmore, as noted, intercepted Lewis and ordered his men to countermarch. Cornstalk promised to surrender all white prisoners held by the assorted tribes and vowed that the Indians would desist in hunting south of the Ohio or harassing boats on the river. Dunmore followed with a promise that no more whites would enter Kentucky and that no settler should set foot north of the Ohio River.

Officially the force was disbanded on November 4, 1774; Lord Dunmore’s little war was over. The governor received an extravagantly complimentary resolution from the Virginia House of Burgesses for his rapid redress of the Indian threat. But the controversy of his leadership and purpose was only beginning.

Cornstalk returned to his role as chief of the Shawnee. Despite his bloody past he refused to deviate from the path of peace once he gave his oath, even resisting English entreaties. In a final attempt to maintain peace he would meet a tragic end.
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