Lord Dunmore's War

Settlement and resistance in the Kentucke country

The area south of the Ohio River and west of the Kanawha River, long called Kentucke country, had been claimed by the Iroquois Confederacy since their 17th-century Beaver Wars conquest. Other tribes also claimed and hunted the region. The Shawnee, the most powerful Algonquin tribe in the Ohio Valley, organized a large confederacy of Shawnee-Ohio Confederated Indians opposed to the British and Iroquois. British officials worked to isolate the Shawnee diplomatically, and when hostilities broke out, the Shawnee faced the Virginia militia with few allies.

After the 1768 treaty, colonial explorers, surveyors, and settlers poured into the region, coming into direct contact with Native Americans of the upper Ohio Valley. George Washington noted in his journal for November 17, 1770, that Indians had hunting camps and cabins along the river for transporting skins to market. In September 1773, Daniel Boone led about 50 emigrants up the Powell River valley in Tennessee in the first white attempt to settle in Kentucke.

On October 9, 1773, south of the Cumberland Gap, Boone's oldest son James and a small group retrieving supplies were attacked by Delawares, Shawnees, and Cherokees, who intended to send a message of opposition to settlement. James Boone and Henry Russell were captured and tortured to death. The brutality shocked frontier settlers, and Boone's party abandoned the expedition. By December, the incident was reported in Baltimore and Philadelphia newspapers.

Dunmore's expedition

In early May 1774, Dunmore received word of fighting at Yellow Creek and other points on the Ohio. He requested the legislature to raise regular military forces, but the House of Burgesses preferred temporary militia forces. The legislature spent its session showing support to Boston and discussing a border dispute with Pennsylvania, failing to renew the expiring militia act. Dunmore dissolved the House of Burgesses on May 26, 1774, and used his executive power under the expiring Invasions and Insurrections Act to mobilize Virginia's county militias.

With the new forces, Dunmore advanced toward the Ohio and split his force into two groups: one of 1,700 men under his command moving down the Ohio from Fort Pitt, and another of 800 troops under Colonel Andrew Lewis traveling from Camp Union, with the two forces to rendezvous at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. Dunmore traveled to Fort Pitt and proceeded down the Ohio, arriving at Fort Fincastle (later Fort Henry) at Zanesburg on September 30.

Lewis's force, now 1,100 strong, proceeded from Camp Union to the headwaters of the Kanawha and then downriver, reaching the river's mouth on October 6 and establishing Camp Pleasant (later Point Pleasant). Not finding Dunmore there, Lewis sent messengers up the Ohio. On October 9, Dunmore sent a dispatch announcing his presence at the mouth of the Hocking River and ordering Lewis to cross the Ohio and meet him at the Shawnee towns on the Scioto.

Fort Fincastle

Dunmore encouraged county militia lieutenants to build small forts for protection. Connolly sent William Crawford to build Fort Fincastle in June 1774 to oversee the mouth of Wheeling Creek, planning to launch offensive operations from there. In the first battle of the war, on July 26, 1774, forces under Angus McDonald crossed the Ohio to attack the villages of Wakatomika. McDonald commanded a battalion of about 400 men divided into eight companies, including Michael Cresap, George Rogers Clark, and Daniel Morgan as company commanders.

Aftermath

The treaty's peace was short-lived. On March 24, 1775, a Shawnee group, likely rejecting the Ohio River as a boundary, attacked Daniel Boone along Kentucky's Wilderness Road. By the time of the colonial victories at Lexington and Concord, Kentucky already held several permanent settlements: Harrod's Town, Boone's Station, Logan's Fort, and Lexington. When the American Revolution started in May 1776, the Shawnee allied with the dissident Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe to renew hostilities against Virginia colonists, sparking the Cherokee–American wars that lasted from 1776 to 1794.

Kentucky became a county in 1776 and later a U.S. state in 1792; its northern region, including Point Pleasant, formed West Virginia. After Dunmore's War, Fort Gower was left vacant, and its remains are now thought to lie submerged near Hockingport, Ohio. Fort Fincastle, later renamed Fort Henry, together with Fort Pitt and Fort Harmar, served as key outposts for pushing the trans-Appalachian frontier during the Cherokee-American and Northwest Indian wars.

Several forts built at Point Pleasant during and after the Revolution were eventually abandoned. The Allegheny region saw little settlement until the Indian wars ended, after which a community grew and was officially incorporated as Point Pleasant in 1794.