Virginia Looking Westward: From Lord Dunmore’s War through the Revolution

Taxation without representation has been the traditionally accepted cause of the American Revolution. Such an understanding of the Revolution, while valid, does not give credit to its complexity. An often-neglected aspect of Virginia’s American Revolution experience is the importance of the frontier. Soil exhaustion, a recurrent problem of Virginia’s tobacco economy, turned planters into land hunters. Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, and Cherokee checked Virginian expansion into the Ohio country. Western expansion did not cause the Revolution, but from Lord Dunmore’s War of 1774 to the conclusion of the American Revolution in the west with the campaigns of George Rogers Clark, western expansion figured significantly in Virginia’s experience of the Revolution, resulting in increasingly militarized relations with their Indian neighbors.

Virginians always considered their boundary to lie somewhere westward of the Appalachian Mountains. For this reason, Virginia’s leaders usually supported the Western movement. When early settlers needed gunpowder for defense, Virginia supplied it. When frontier communities needed additional manpower, Virginia called up the militia to defend the frontier. Virginia’s charter extended its boundary westward indefinitely, leaving the western lands open to unlimited settlement. The Virginian elite, from the establishment of the Jamestown colony until after the American Revolution, made fortunes in land speculation to the west. At the same time, new emigrants to Virginia frequently moved to the frontier because of its promise of opportunity. Indian land became the basis of the future republic’s commercial agricultural expansion.

Scholars of the American Revolution point to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 as causing worsening colonial-British relations. The proclamation forbade the subjects of George III in the colonies from “settling west of a line drawn along the crest of the Appalachian Mountain range from Nova Scotia in the North to Georgia in the South.”[1] Many colonists, however, viewed the proclamation as a temporary prohibition. George Washington wrote, “I can never look upon that Proclamation in any other light … than as a temporary expedient to quiet the Minds of Indians and must fall of course in a few years especially when those Indians are consenting to our Occupying the Lands.”[2]

Washington’s opinion proved true when in 1768 Sir William Johnson, the Crown’s Superintendent for Indian Affairs, arranged a congress of Indian tribes at Fort Stanwix, New York. The resultant treaty called for the surveying and establishment of an Indian boundary line. This new line, located further westward than the Proclamation Line of 1763, opened up large new areas for white settlers. Virginians used the Fort Stanwix treaty of 1768 as the basis of their claim to the Kentucky country. The Six Nations in this treaty ceded to the whites the lands south of the Ohio as far west as the Tennessee River, disregarding the opinions of those tribes living in that area. Johnson warned the Six Nations, “I find that there are some of your Dependents who live by your toleration, and who never had any Title to the soil, who talk, as if they were dissatisfied with your Act, or doubted your authority. It is therefore incumbent on you, to see into, and make diligent enquiry ab’ it, and to shew these people … their Folly.”[3] The Six Nations, through their diplomatic skills and close relations to the British, convinced the British of their control over these tribes. Considering the resulting diplomatic efforts and military struggles over the treaty, the Six Nations overemphasized their control over tribes like the Shawnee.

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix provided the main cause for discontent for the Shawnees and other tribes it affected. White authorities often found it expedient to bargain with one group for lands claimed or actually occupied by another group. Violence often resulted from these disagreements, in this case leading to Lord Dunmore’s War of 1774. The Shawnee protested the right of the Cherokee to sell their hunting rights in Kentucky and also contested the right of the Iroquois to dispose of their holdings along the left bank of the Ohio River up the Tennessee.[4] The Six Nations received ten thousand pounds in presents in return for the land treaty. The tribes actually living in the area covered by the treaty were not present at the congress that created it, nor were they compensated for their loss of land.

Within a year of the treaty, the Indian agent at Fort Pitt, George Croghan, reported that the Ohio Indians were restless and buying up ammunition. In the fall of 1769, a party of Ohio Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware held a private council with other western tribes, at which they complained of the British purchase of their lands from the Six Nations. Sir William Johnson, at the same time, justified the land purchase “at Fort Stanwix by arguing that the Six Nations as ‘Lords of the Soil’ had the right to sell the land.”[5] Increasing intertribal cooperation led the British to fear local conflict could result in a general Indian war.

Commanders of British army garrisons and agents of the Indian department “had been aware that the white advance into the Indian country was leading to a general coalition of the tribes in the North and South and that a union of the two groups to resist further white encroachment seemed imminent by the spring of 1774, when the Virginia frontier movement reached the Ohio River.”[6] Traditionally hostile tribes seemed to be putting aside their differences to unite against the common white enemy. Indian trader Edward Wilkinson informed Alexander Cameron, deputy Indian agent, that the Shawnee and Ottawa to the north had sent the Cherokee a message of military cooperation against white settlers.

Whites moving into Indian lands caused Lord Dunmore’s War. Indians protested whites settling and possessing lands south of the Ohio River and west of the great Kanawha, the Kentucky country. The white expansion of settlement into the Kentucky country directly challenged the rights of the Shawnee and Cherokee to hunt those lands. A Shawnee warned Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman and leader of Kentucky settlers, in 1769 “to go home and stay there. Don’t come here any more, for this is the Indians’ hunting ground, and all the animals, skins, and furs are ours.”[7]

Conflicting visions of land ownership, a key difference between white and Indian societies, featured in the prelude to this conflict. The Indians viewed land in a collective sense and saw land reserved for hunting as being productively used. White Virginians viewed land as individually owned and managed, cultivated for its agricultural potential. Lord Dunmore once said, “They do not conceive that Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a Vast tract of Country, either uninhabited, or which Serves only as a Shelter to a few Scattered Tribes of Indians.”[8] Lord Dunmore, similar to many other whites, mischaracterized Indians’ living patterns in this statement. Northwestern tribes, as many Eastern woodland tribes, lived in semi-permanent towns. These towns featured lodges, cabins, or less permanent wood-framed, skin-covered structures. These tribes, while they supplemented their diets with hunting, also practiced extensive agriculture. Corn formed the basis of their diets. White military expeditions into Indian country targeted cornfields and towns, burning and looting them.

White rhetoric of Indian land as uninhabited and unproductive misrepresented the actual conditions but served white interests in justifying their seizure of Indian lands. The initial stages of settlement always featured parties of surveyors, marking and measuring the lands. Afterwards, the colonial government tried to establish law and order. Lord Dunmore found it necessary to protect the frontier settlements, despite the fact they went beyond colonial boundaries. Dr. John Connolly, who had been commissioned justice of the peace of Augusta County, had been sent to establish government. Virginia aggressively asserted their control over territory nominally under Pennsylvanian authority. Connolly began the work of organizing a militia, reconstructing Fort Pitt and renaming it Fort Dunmore, and negotiating with Indians in support of the surveying and settling ventures in Kentucky.[9] Connolly later sent a message to Capt. Michael Cresap, a known Indian fighter, that he feared an Indian war. In a later message, he wrote Cresap that he “had been informed, by good authority, that the Shawanese were ill disposed towards white men, and that he, therefore, required and commanded them to hold themselves in readiness to repel any insults that might be offered to them.”[10] Expected hostilities frequently led to actual preemptive actions that initiated hostilities on the frontier.

The expectation of an Indian war resulted in the first acts of conflict that would later emerge as Lord Dunmore’s War. Cresap, in Wheeling, conveyed the contents of Connolly’s message to white settlers in the area. One contemporary wrote that “this letter fell into the hands of Cresap, and he says that it was in consequence of this letter, and the murder committed by the Cherokees on Mr. Butler’s people, that he committed the hostilities” that resulted in the war.[11] This may refer to an attack on a white canoe by Cherokees, an incident that Cresap used to justify attacks upon Shawnees. Whites frequently incorrectly identified Indian attackers as members of other tribes in order to justify conflict with the other tribe, stemming from preexisting sources of discontent. The white survivor of the attack upon Butler’s canoe, in which two Indians were killed and goods stolen, expressed his conviction that “the above murder was done by some of said Cresap’s associates.”[12] The most brutal attack upon Indians resulted in the deaths of Logan’s relatives. Logan, a famous Mingo chief and orator, and other relatives of murdered Indians avenged these deaths by killing an equal number of whites in raids along the frontier. War seemed unavoidable.

Lord Dunmore issued orders on June 10, 1774 that since the Mingo and Shawnee attacks provided “good grounds to believe that hopes of a pacification can be no longer entertained,” the county militias should be mustered.[13] After a period of defensive military action, financial pressures led to plans for an invasion of Indian country. Lord Dunmore said, “The Expense of the Numerous scouting Parties in the Different Counties forming an Expensive (expansive) Frontere Will soon exceed the Expences of an Expedition against their Towns which will be much more effectiual.”[14] Other factors, besides cost, also influenced Dunmore’s decision to invade the Indian lands. Lord Dunmore wrote a letter to Col. Charles Lewis, dated July 24, 1774, informing him that “You justly observe acting on the Defensive is Employing our men to very little Purpose for which Reason I am Determined to proceed immediately to Ft Dunmore or the mouth of Wheeling with 250 or 350 good men as many more as can be spared in order to compel the Indians to a lasting peace.”[15]

Similarly, the lure of plunder also appealed to the militia who doubted the capability of the colonial government to pay them in full. Col. William Preston said, “The House of Burgesses will without all Doubt enable his Lordship to reward every Vollunteer in a handsome manner, over and above his pay, and the plunder of the Country will be valluable, & it is said the Shawnee have a great Stock of Horses.”[16] While Dunmore and frontiersmen readied themselves for war, critics in Williamsburg suspected them of land jobbing.

They suggested that the Indian attacks “have been grossly magnified & misrepresented; and that it is possible some may find their Interest in doing it.”[17] The Virginia Gazette kept the population informed of the war’s events. An article of June 13, 1774 set a fearful tone in which Virginians expected an attack upon their frontier by the Shawnee: “The shawanese themselves say that they have nothing against Pennsylvania, but only Virginias; but we may depend, as soon as they strike Virginia, they will also fall open us.”[18] Such opinions from the frontier justified Lord Dunmore’s call of the militia and the aggressive invasion into Shawnee country. An article of August 18, 1774 informed Virginians of the strategy employed in the war, stating, “An Expedition is planned against some of their other Towns, which, if successful, will probably put an End of the War.”[19] A later article described the implementation of this strategy: “From this town we proceeded to the rest, five in Number, all of which we burnt, together with about 500 Bushels of old Corn, and every other Thing they had. We also cut down and destroyed about 70 Acres of standing Corn.”[20] American forces employed such tactics against Indians many times, famously during Gen. John Sullivan’s 1777 expedition against the Iroquois, many of whom were allied with the British in the Revolution, and during George Rogers Clark’s expeditions against the northwestern tribes.

Dunmore sent out three columns into Indian country. A force of one thousand men under Col. Andrew Lewis marched to the mouth of the Great Kanawha where a force of around three hundred Shawnees and a small number of Delaware ambushed them at Point Pleasant. The Indians retreated across the Ohio with little loss while the Virginians lost eighty-one men killed and around one hundred forty wounded. Dunmore then marched his force overland to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, where the outnumbered Indians sued for peace. The treaty that concluded the war conceded Shawnee rights to hunt in Kentucky.

An examination of letters written to the Virginia Gazette in 1775, influenced by the coming of and start of the Revolutionary War, provides interesting perspectives on the popularity of Lord Dunmore’s War. Many letters expressed admiration and thanks for Dunmore’s role in securing the frontier. A letter of January 7, 1775 expressed such a sentiment: “While we applaud your Lordship’s Moderation, in giving Peace to a merciless Foe, we cannot but exult in the Happiness of our Fellow Subjects on the Frontiers, who, by your unremitted Zeal and spirited Conduct, have acquired the Blessings of Ease, Security, and domestick Enjoyment.”[21] A similar letter noted the strained relations that existed between Great Britain and the colonies but similarly expressed thanks for the conduct of the late frontier war. The letter even personally complimented Dunmore for leaving Williamsburg to conduct the campaign himself and “cheerfully undergoing all the fatigues of the campaign, by exposing your person, and marching on foot with the officers and soldiers.”[22]

On the other side of the spectrum, other letters expressed doubts, similar to the critics in the House of Burgesses, that Dunmore used the frontier incidents to justify a war and subsequent land grab. One letter writer raised suspicion that “Lord Dunmore encouraged that war, and sent the Shawanese to attack col. Andrew Lewis.” The letter supported this theory with the alleged confession of Indians of the veracity of this statement. The letter also suspected Lord Dunmore wished the Indians would rout Lewis’s force, thereby allowing him to call on the Indians who then could lay “waste our frontiers, butchering innocent women and children, and perhaps thousands of poor souls who are utterly unacquainted with, and having had no share in the dispute with Great Britain.”[23] Political sympathies, undoubtedly, had a strong impact on the tone and contents of the letters. Their opinions, however, still shed light on the differing views of Lord Dunmore’s War.

Many historians agree that Dunmore’s War resulted from aggressive Virginian policies. Antagonism between the frontiersmen and the Shawnee has distracted historians, however, from examining the issue between Pennsylvania and Virginia. Pennsylvania and Virginia both considered the Ohio River valley as their own. The Pennsylvania land speculators kept the peace and trade with the Shawnee north of the Ohio. The Virginians feared Pennsylvania merchants “would get the land south of the Ohio River, so the Virginians hoped to drive the Shawnee out of the territory north of the Ohio River and claim that land under the Virginia law that awarded land to veterans of the French and Indian War.”[24] Washington and other Virginia speculators had purchased these claims, expecting to turn them into vast land grants. In anticipation of this, they advanced into the Ohio River valley, settling and fighting the Shawnee.

Dunmore did not face the feared Indian coalition of Northwestern tribes thanks to the impressive diplomacy conducted by the British Indian Department. The British and the Indians employed the strategy of divide and conquer. American Indians previously played French and British interests off each other. They even manipulated relations between rival British colonies. During the Revolution, the majority of northwestern tribes sided with the British against the rebellious colonies. Not until 1777, did major conflict between the newly independent Virginians and northwestern tribes recommence. Initially, the Shawnee, the major military force along the northwestern frontier, remained neutral during the Revolution. Given the overwhelming importance of the Shawnee, a deeper understanding of the Shawnee proves useful.

The Shawnee have a history of erratic movements. Historians speculate Iroquois militarism drove Ohio Valley Indians out in the mid-seventeenth century. The Iroquois treated the Shawnee who later resettled there as a dependent tribe. Colin Calloway, a noted historian on the Shawnee, wrote that “the Shawnee tribes reassembled in southeastern Ohio by the middle of the eighteenth century, settling on lands set aside for them by the Wyandots.”[25] The Shawnee traditionally comprised five divisions, each with their own responsibilities. Tribal identities such as the Shawnee or Cherokee hide inner complexities and divisions within these large tribes.

The Shawnee had fought for their freedom long before Lexington and Concord. The conflict between Virginians and the Shawnee during the American Revolution occurred during a longer conflict, sometimes called the Twenty Years’ War, in which the Shawnee continued to struggle against white land encroachments until 1795. The Shawnee chiefs told the Virginians in July 1775, “We are often inclined to believe there is no resting place for us and that your Intentions were to deprive us entirely of our whole Country.”[26] At the outset of the Revolution, the Shawnee remained divided on whether or not to join the conflict on the side of the British. Tribes allied to the British, especially the Mingo, threatened the Shawnee with attack if they pursued peace with Virginia. Cornstalk, an influential Shawnee chief and military leader during Lord Dunmore’s War, advocated peace. His murder by American militia in 1777 drove many Shawnee to embrace the British and war. There is a recurring pattern in American Indian history of pro-peace chiefs dying at the hands of Americans, stimulating increased Indian military resistance.

In the same year, 1777, Shawnee warriors accepted a war belt from Gov. Henry Hamilton at Detroit and joined the Mingoes in raiding the American frontier. Black Fish’s winter raid of 1777-8, the first major Shawnee raid of the Revolution, captured Daniel Boone and twenty-six other whites. Despite the beginning of raiding, the Shawnee remained divided over the question of continued, seemingly endless, resistance to the Americans. In 1778, George Rogers Clark, a young military leader on the frontier who had served in Lord Dunmore’s War, traveled to Williamsburg where Gov. Patrick Henry approved his plans for an offensive beyond the Ohio.[27] The Shawnee would frequently find themselves fighting off expeditions led by Clark. Similar to Dunmore, desire for western lands and advancement appealed to Clark and motivated him in his conduct. Historian George M. Waller speculated that Clark’s march to the Mississippi and the envisioned attack on Detroit “may have originated as much with leading Virginia land speculators as with Clark.”[28]

Clark’s correspondence to Governor Henry described the situation of the settlements in the Mississippi Valley, specifically the town of Kaskaskia. He described the town as containing “about one hundred families of French and English, and carry on an extensive trade with the Indians.”[29] He further stated, “The principal inhabitants are entirely against the American cause, and look on us as notorious rebels that ought to be subdued at any rate, but I don’t doubt but after being acquainted with the cause they would become good friends to it.”[30] Marching westward and taking this territory would in theory protect Virginia’s frontier, and possibly more importantly, give Virginia a claim to these western lands. Clark described the area as being easily taken and worthwhile to attack given the significant number of English who could convince the Indians to attack Kentucky settlements.

The war on the frontier did not strike the Shawnee and other northwestern tribes as anything revolutionary or new. The war on the frontier occurred like Indian wars before it had. Different tribes and different members of the same tribe raided at different times, with differing frequencies and aggressiveness. The Delaware remained peacefully inclined for many years, influenced by the proselytizing of Moravian missionaries. Attacks during 1777 came from small bands of Mingo and renegade, warlike Shawnee and Delaware. By the spring of 1777, “the Cherokee had been subdued along the Holston frontier.”[31] A force of over one thousand men, including militia, Continentals, and Catawba scouts, invaded the Cherokee lower towns in the summer of 1776, completely overwhelming the Cherokee, “ending their effectiveness as a cohesive fighting force for several years.”[32] The Cherokee conflict began with a series of attacks along the frontier in response to white encroachment, led by Dragging Canoe’s militant faction, despite the disapproval of the British Indian Department and input from traditional chiefs. Dragging Canoe and his followers remained hostile after 1777 and retreated further into the interior.

Large numbers of the Indians in British-held lands, the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Wyandot, and Potawatomi, joined in attacks rarely and only in small numbers. Only a few hundred “were the most who took part in any siege or battle out of the thousands presumably controlled by the British.”[33] If the Indians had not given as much help as they had, the British cause would undoubtedly have been weakened.

American forces almost annually invaded Shawnee country, wreaking havoc on Shawnee communities, destroying towns and cornfields. In 1780, the Shawnees burned Chillicothe themselves rather than let it fall to George Rogers Clark. Clark conducted this expedition in retaliation for the fall of “the defenseless Kentucky stations, Martin’s and Ruddle’s on the Licking River.”[34] The Shawnees lured the Americans to Piqua on the Mad River where they attacked. Despite Clark’s numerous incursions into Indian country, he had never previously engaged a large Indian force. Not until this raid of 1780 did any Indian force fight Clark.[35]

Clark described the town as “composed of well built cabins located along the river, each surrounded by a strip of corn.”[36] Clark’s description of Piqua could easily apply to many other northwestern Indian towns. This description hardly concurs with Dunmore’s depiction of Indian country as uninhabited. Clark’s men took two entire days to burn the cornfields and plunder Shawnee graves for burial goods and scalps. Both sides rewarded the taking of scalps with monetary bounties. The British at Detroit reported Shawnee and other Indians arrived daily with scalps.[37] Shawnee losses at Piqua were slight, but such invasions left the women and children “destitute of Shelter in the Woods or Food to subsist upon.”[38]

As the Shawnee had been frustrated with French aid during the French and Indian War, they expected more from their British allies. Wry Neck urged the British to gather soldiers and muster tribes around the Great Lakes, such as the Ottawa, to support the Shawnee war effort, commenting, “We see ourselves weak and our arms feeble to the force of the enemy … Tis now upwards of Twenty Years since we have been alone engaged against the Virginians.”[39] Wry Neck’s comment emphasizes the number of years the Shawnees have found themselves defending Indian country against the tide of white settlement. Years of warfare severely affected Shawnee social order.

Invasions and forced migration weakened Shawnee society, disrupting the preservation of customs and ceremonies. The loss of crops increased the reliance on hunting. Unfortunately, the hunters frequently were at war, meaning increased reliance on the British for food. Mingoes, Senecas and Cherokees who joined the Shawnee mitigated the loss of Shawnee men to war and relocation. Moravian missionary Reverend John Heckewelder reported, “The Shawnees lost many of their men during these contests; but they were in a manner replaced by individuals of other nations joining them.”[40] The Shawnee also underwent a political shift in power during this twenty-year period of warfare.

Traditionally, Shawnee chiefs advocated peace. Traditionally, village chiefs claimed precedence in council while war chiefs assumed temporary powers during a military expedition. The endemic warfare of the period, however, trumped traditions. The importance of war chiefs increased as wars swept along the frontier. Virginia’s Indian commissioners believed that of all the tribes, Shawnee chiefs exercised the least control over their warriors. They attributed it to the bad influence the Mingoes had on these Shawnee warriors. The generation of warriors who came of age during the Twenty Years War undermined the previously dominant elder chiefs. At the Treaty of Fort Finney in 1786, Richard Butler commented on this warlike generation, stating they “have a great attachment to the British; … the chiefs of any repute are and have been averse to the war, but their influence is not of sufficient weight to prevent them from committing mischief.”[41]

Despite the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, American invasions into Indian country persisted. Even the Treaty of Paris in 1783 did not conclude fighting in the area, further indicating that the frontier war was an Indian war. Kentucky and Virginia militia forces staged regular incursions across the Ohio. The strategy of burning crops and towns produced terrible suffering but did not eliminate the will to resist. George Rogers Clark recognized the futility of the strategy “when they can get four fold what they lose from the English.”[42] The British and allied Indians did get victories during this time. The battle of Blue Licks, fought in August 1782, dealt the Americans their biggest loss on the Kentucky frontier, with around seventy-five Virginians killed.[43] Some blamed Clark for the loss, “alleging that the disaster was the result of Clark’s failure to build additional forts along the Ohio River as protection for the inland settlers.”[44] Clark responded to this blame by casting aspersions on the conduct of the officers in the party. Many historians identify the battle of Blue Licks as the last of the American Revolution. Neal Hammon and Richard Taylor correctly disagreed, pointing out that “the power and practice of the Northern Indians to launch attacks in Kentucky did not effectively end until General ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne’s victory at the battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.”[45]

During this period of chaotic warfare and western expansion, Virginia’s future boundaries had yet to be established by Congress. A majority of congressmen expressed support for the new nation “to extend its border to the Mississippi.” Unfortunately for Virginia, many of them claimed that Virginia’s border should end at the Appalachian Mountains. The reasons they cited included Virginia’s existing large size and the wealth that would flow to Virginia from the selling of all this land. James Monroe rebutted and wrote that Congress sought “to wrest that country from us & we further know that if they can do it they will & that without making us a recompensation of the immense expense we have been at [defending it].”[46] The Spanish claimed the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi as their own land, which they would reserve for the Indian tribes. Many frontiersmen in Kentucky, including Clark and Boone, signed a petition that expressed concern over being removed from Virginia, “particularly since so many had already paid Virginia for Western land.”[47] At the same time, Clark pleaded to Richmond for funds to pay his troops. Men who served along the frontier felt alienated by the eastern elites who failed to pay them.

Interestingly, despite the fact Virginia found itself fighting a revolution against the British during much of the period, around eighty thousand non-Indians entered into Shawnee country.[48] Clearly, the Revolution did not drastically upset a long tradition of western expansion. Rather, the Revolution identified these northwestern tribes as not only savages impeding white settlement, but also allies of the British, seeking to destroy their newly declared independence. The frontier warfare, seen before and during the Revolution, would continue in this region through the War of 1812. Tecumseh would historically continue the Shawnee’s struggle against white encroachment of Indian lands and famously gather a large confederation of allied Indian tribes. Native attachment to their historic homelands and white commercial agricultural expansion conflicted and produced a tragic history of loss and suffering.

[1] Eugene M. Del Papa, “The Royal Proclamation of 1763: Its Effect Upon Virginia Land Companies,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83 (1975): 406.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Randolph C. Downes, “Dunmore’s War: An Interpretation,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Authority 21 (1934): 316.

[4] Jack M. Sosin, “The British Indian Department and Dunmore’s War,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 74 (1966): 38.

[5] Ibid., 39.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Downes, “Dunmore’s War,” 312.

[8] Ibid., 312-313.

[9] Ibid., 321.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 322.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., 326.

[14] Ibid.

[15] “The Preston Papers,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 26 (1918): 366.

[16] Downes, “Dunmore’s War,” 327.

[17] Sosin, “British Indian Department,” 46.

[18] “To Which His Honor was Pleased to Return the Following Answer,” Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, June 23, 1774.

[19] “An Express from the Frontiers,” Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, August 18, 1774.

[20] “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman,” Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, October 13, 1774.

[21] “To the Right Honorable John Earl of Dunmore,” Dixon & Hunter’s Virginia Gazette, January 7, 1775.

[22] “Williamsburg,” Purdie’s Virginia Gazette, April 6, 1775.

[23] “Let no Tory Plume Himself on Lord Dunmore’s Success,” Purdie’s Virginia Gazette, October 27, 1775.

[24] Walter S. Dunn Jr, Choosing Sides on the Frontier in the American Revolution (Westport, Praeger Publishing, 2007), 128.

[25] Colin Calloway, “We Have Always Been the Frontier: The American Revolution in Shawnee Country,” American Indian Quarterly 16 (1992): 40.

[26] Ibid.

[27] George M. Waller, “George Rogers Clark and the American Revolution in the West,” Indiana Magazine of History 72 (1976): 5.

[28] Ibid., 19.

[29] “George Rogers Clark and the Kaskaskia Campaign, 1777-1778,” The American Historical Review 8 (1903): 492.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid., 18.

[32] Neal Hammon and Richard Taylor, Virginia’s Western War: 1775-1786 (Mechanicsburg, Stackpole Books, 2002), 44.

[33] Waller, “George Rogers Clark,” 18.

[34] Ibid., 8.

[35] Ibid., 18.

[36] Calloway, “American Revolution in Shawnee Country,” 43.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid., 45.

[41] Ibid., 46.

[42] Ibid., 47.

[43] Hammon and Taylor, Virginia’s Western War, 164-165.

[44] Ibid., 166.

[45] Ibid., 166-167.

[46] Ibid., 172.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Calloway, “American Revolution in Shawnee Country,” 47.