litical and economic calculations contributed as wel . great lakes indians
depended heavily on access to trade that the British controlled. hamilton’s
offer of food, blankets, gunpowder, and other supplies served important
needs that could not be met otherwise. The call to arms also brought diplo-
matic opportunities. dunquat’s Wyandots in particular aimed to secure Brit-
ish recognition of their boundaries, including territory they hoped to
decolonize, insisting that “what lands they should drive the rebels from
should be vested in them as by right of conquest.”6
in early 1778, daniel Boone led twenty- eight men to a salt spring called
Blue licks. The people of Boonesborough desperately needed salt to preserve
meat, their primary food source until the following year’s harvest. as the
men boiled down the brine at their kettles, Boone went out to check his bea-
ver traps. he ran into about one hundred shawnee warriors, marching on the
town that bore his name. eighteen months before, near the same spot, he had
recaptured his daughter and two other girls from a handful of shawnees and
reluctance, 1777–79
99
cherokees. now the tables had turned, thanks to British support. The coloni-
zation of Kentucky offended shawnees no less in 1776 than in 1778, but impe-
rial backing persuaded a critical mass to endorse a war to defend their
land— including the land on which Boonesborough now stood. Boone saved
his town by persuading his woeful y outnumbered saltmakers to surrender
and pledging that the rest of the community would follow suit in the spring.
When the prisoners reached chillicothe, shawnee families adopted many of
the men. at least one, Joseph Jackson, lived with them for over twenty years,
seemingly content. Others, including Boone, later escaped and returned to
Kentucky, where the people of Boonesborough flatly refused the shawnees’
terms.7 This failed attempt at compromise gave shawnees all the more reason
to embrace the British alliance.
British support and encouragement had spurred this escalation of vio-
lence, but British officers largely failed to dictate its nature and scope. ger-
main asked hamilton to protect loyalists from attack, but he placed a greater
priority on “crushing the rebellion,” using “every means . . . that providence
has put into his majesty’s hands.” accordingly, although hamilton prom-
ised safe passage and sanctuary to the King’s “faithfull & loyal subjects,” his
allies’ indiscriminate attacks gave colonists little reason to trust him. On one
occasion, British- allied warriors left his proclamation alongside the charred
remains of a burnt homestead, whose occupants they had taken as captives.
indians complied with British cal s for restraint only as far as they coincided
with their own priorities. rather than handing over prisoners as hamilton
asked, his allies preferred to adopt them. Of seventy- three taken in 1777,
only twenty reached British hands. Of the nearly thirty saltmakers captured
with Boone, shawnees delivered only four to detroit. to indian families,
ransoming an adopted captive amounted to selling a blood relative. in 1778,
indians captured an upper Ohio colonist named peggy West and her two
daughters. a year later, one of the daughters reached detroit, where the
British commandant and his wife took her in. They attempted to track down
her mother and sister, whom delaware families had adopted, but their fate is
unclear.8
hamilton’s war dance formed a coalition uniting British patrons who
wanted indians to wage war, and indians who wanted to gain supplies and
reclaim lost territory. The British got the war they wanted, spreading terror
across the Ohio Valley, but driving colonists from Kentucky proved more dif-
ficult. as the fighting dragged on, British- allied indians began to question
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their choice of patron. Fortunately for the British, colonists’ atrocities against
indians seemed to leave little room for doubt.
cheykapeecci and her family left home to make sugar. They traveled to an old
town site about fifty miles north of pittsburgh, where they planned to collect
maple sap, boil it down, and pack the sweet residue for the year ahead. days
of heavy rain slowed their progress. Then, without warning, they heard a
burst of gunfire and saw several hundred white men descending on their
camp. micheykapeecci’s son, the only man in the group, fired his gun once,
wounding an attacker, before he himself was shot. as he fel , one of the white
men ran up and “sunk [a] tomahawk in his head.” an old woman met the
same fate. The dying man’s wife and children escaped into the woods. as mi-
cheykapeecci tried to follow, a gunshot tore off the end of her little finger.
Then one of the white men grabbed her. later, she told the interpreter simon
girty that a munsee delaware group was camped at a nearby salt spring.
girty and a group of the white men found them, killed three more women
and a boy, and took a fourth woman captive. micheykapeecci and the mun-
see woman traveled to pittsburgh as prisoners but were soon released. The
american commander expressed regret for his men’s “savage conduct,” but
kept the precious kettles and other plunder.9
much like the capture of Boone’s saltmakers, the attack on micheykap-
eecci’s family displayed a scale of mobilization the Ohio Valley had not seen
since dunmore’s War. it also heralded a wave of similar attacks on neutral
and allied indians. most accounts attribute these atrocities to “indian haters”
whom “american officials could not control.” The categorical bloodlust of
Ohio Valley colonists, in this view, overwhelmed the pragmatic diplomacy of
congress and the continental army.10 many colonists, to be sure, wanted
indians dead, but the distinction between enlightened officialdom and hate-
ful killers obscures the real roots of escalation. however much congressional
agents and army officers opposed such atrocities in principle, they them-
selves had made them possible. emerging revolutionary governments pro-
cured the money, food, and ammunition necessary to mobilize colonists to
fight indians. like their British counterparts, revolutionary officials repeat-
edly failed to direct or control the violence they enabled. militia recalcitrance
stymied both basic defensive measures and grandiose plans to capture de-
troit and niagara. nonetheless, by organizing, arming, and deploying hun-
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dreds of colonial militia, revolutionary governments enabled indian haters
to kill.
a year before the assault on micheykapeecci’s camp, the congressional
indian agent george morgan reported that upper Ohio colonists were eager
to wage war on indians. They had plotted “to massacre our known Friends at
their hunting camps” and threatened visiting indian diplomats, whom mor-
gan lodged “in my own chamber for their security.” some, he alleged, longed
to fight indians “on account of the[ir] f
ine lands.” This hostility, he warned,
could lead to a large- scale conflict that the embattled revolutionary move-
ment could not win. The United states could have abandoned indian haters
to kil , or be killed, on their own. But ignoring the Ohio Valley jarred with the
ambitions of american land speculators, morgan included. congress could
tighten its grasp on the region only with the help of colonists on the ground,
and the prospect of war threatened to send them packing. “if the inhabitants
once get alarmed,” one official warned, “there will be no stopping of their
Flight, & the country will be soon depopulated.” to avoid that calamity, con-
gressional agents recommended stationing continental troops in forts along
the Ohio and giving the region’s colonists gunpowder and shot. Of course,
encouraging colonists to stay risked antagonizing Ohio indians, many of
whom still hoped to reverse the loss of Kentucky, but the agents believed they
could appease native nations by “buying . . . their friendship” with gifts. mor-
gan similarly urged congress to appoint “an Officer of abilities,” someone
“cool & experienced” with “a liberal mind,” to supervise frontier defense and
diplomacy.11 he trusted that rational and enlightened authority figures,
backed with the requisite military force, could bring unruly westerners to
heel. The state- appointed commanders of the new county militias sympathized
with morgan’s desire for order. pennsylvania entrusted Westmoreland coun-
ty’s defenses first to William lochry, a longtime magistrate and prominent
pro- pennsylvania partisan, and then to his brother archibald. dorsey pente-
cost, a prominent landowner and erstwhile pennsylvania official, now ac-
quired an array of appointments under Virginia, including command of
yohogania county’s militia. Ohio county’s david shepherd, another veteran
of the local courts, belonged to a family of Virginia merchants who supplied
the militia garrisons he commanded. These men varied considerably in back-
ground and education, and backed opposing factions in the still rancorous
boundary dispute, but they shared a desire to cement their positions in the
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upper Ohio Valley’s emerging political and economic elite. They could do so
only with the friendship and patronage of eastern officials.12
state authority also proved critical to militia effectiveness. in the first half
of 1777, revolutionary governments established the legal framework for
county militias, stipulating that on- duty militia receive the same wages as
regular troops and empowering officers to fine delinquents. across the upper
Ohio Valley, commanders used this system to garrison a string of small forts
at key river crossings. even in remote Kentucky, Virginia officials organized a
formal county militia. Virginia governor patrick henry dispatched ammuni-
tion, authorized powder magazines, and ordered local militia officers to keep
their men’s “arms and accoutrements . . . in the best possible order.” in april,
general edward hand of the continental army arrived at Fort pitt with a
small force of regulars. in a series of meetings, hand and local militia officers
implemented defensive measures and began planning a campaign across the
Ohio against British- allied indians.13
morgan and others hoped these measures would preserve order, but in-
stead they fueled more violence. sending large bodies of armed and un-
trained men to distant corners of the region made attacks on neutral and
allied indians all the more likely. actual violence corresponded with the scale
of mobilization. When militia companies merely occupied small forts and
maintained defensive patrols, attacks on indians remained sporadic and op-
portunistic. in June, a band of white people— likely a Westmoreland militia
patrol— killed several senecas returning home from a pittsburgh council.
another group of indians quickly retaliated, killing two or three of the at-
tackers. in late July, when indians killed a militia sergeant on the Ohio, the
victim’s companions threatened two delaware messengers who happened to
pass nearby. John gibson, a veteran trader and interpreter turned army offi-
cer, saved the messengers’ lives only “with the utmost difficulty.” But other
delaware messengers continued to pass back and forth without interference.
militia patrols occasional y found and skirmished with British- allied raiders,
but they were too few, too scattered, and too disorganized even to defend
their communities effectively, let alone carry out large- scale attacks.14
That changed in august, when general hand called for two thousand
men to march on British- allied Wyandot and haudenosaunee towns. he
asked each of the four upper Ohio counties to raise two hundred men to ren-
dezvous at Fort pitt. From there they would embark downriver to point
pleasant, where hundreds of western Virginians would join them. The plan
foundered almost immediately. congress had recently ordered the county
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103
militias to send one third of their available men to the continental army,
leaving commanders hard- pressed to raise more. in addition, they insisted
on leaving some at home for local defense. Of the few men available, many
objected to hand’s demand that they serve a six- month tour of duty. Others
complained about delayed payments for prior militia service. With western
counties so “considerably drain’d of men,” officers had scant hope of recruit-
ing the number that hand required. Feeding the army proved another obsta-
cle. The general argued that the state governments should bear the cost of
provisions, but Virginia commissary William aylett countered that congress
ought to pay. caught in between, militia commanders raised supplies on
their personal credit. Finding and paying for horses, oxen, and wagons pre-
sented still more difficulties. at least one militia company could not even
supply its men with guns. By early november, only a few hundred militia had
assembled at Fort pitt. hand abandoned his plans and assigned the men to
defensive duty. he then headed downriver to make similar arrangements for
the two- hundred- odd Virginians who had assembled at point pleasant,
where food supplies were already running low.15
meanwhile, mekoche shawnee leaders, anxious to keep hand’s army
away from their towns, sent two messengers to point pleasant themselves.
For more than two years, the fort there had repeatedly welcomed shawnee
diplomats. a recent attack, though, made the Virginian commander mat-
thew arbuckle wary of the shawnees’ goodwil . rather than reassuring the
messengers of his friendship, arbuckle “thought proper to detain” them. per-
plexed, the veteran diplomat cornstalk sent his son elinipsico for an expla-
nation. arbuckle offered none, but he insisted on seeing cornstalk and other
shawnee leaders as soon as possible. cornstalk came alone. arbuckle con-
fined him with the others, explaining that he was “well satisfied the sha-
wanese are all our enemies.” When the militia arrived for hand’s expedition,
&nb
sp; cornstalk and the messengers remained as hostages. shortly thereafter
elinipsico returned, concerned for his father’s well- being, and joined him in
captivity. The next day, the shawnees heard a loud commotion outside the
fort. The wife of the fort’s interpreter, herself an adopted shawnee, warned
them that indians had killed a militiaman named gilmore, who had gone out
hunting to feed the increasingly famished garrison. gilmore’s friends, who
had arrived with him only a few days before, demanded vengeance. arbuckle
briefly defended his prisoners but backed down when the militia “cocked
their guns [and] threatened [him] with instant death.” cornstalk met them at
the door and took “seven or eight bullets” through his body. elinipsico fell
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behind him. a third hostage attempted to escape through the chimney “but
was shot down.” The fourth “was shameful y mangled” and tortured before
he died. rather than taking action against the murderers, arbuckle found
witnesses to testify that “it was not in his power” to stop the slaughter. When
hand arrived a week later, he, too, concluded that “it would be vain for me to
bring the perpetrators of this horrid act to justice.” instead he dismissed the
assembled militia. The killers and their companions “returned home shortly
before christmass.”16
a few months later, a similar string of events led to the attack on mi-
cheykapeecci’s sugar camp. after returning to Fort pitt, hand learned that
the British had stockpiled supplies on the cuyahoga river. eager for some
kind of victory, he raised several hundred militia to seize the goods. They set
out on the one- hundred- mile overland journey in the middle of February, a
season when, hand reasoned, indians “might suppose us to be inactive.” The
flaw in his plan became apparent when “heavy rains . . . together with the
melting of the snow” rendered the rivers impassible. after turning back,
the damp militiamen stumbled upon the tracks of micheykapeecci’s family.
scouts followed the tracks to a town large enough to house fifty to sixty peo-