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DUNMORE'S WAR WITH THE INDIANS.

CHAPTER X.

DUNMORE'S WAR WITH THE INDIANS.

In the year 1773, the Indians killed two white men on the Hockhocking River, to-wit, John Martin and Guy Meek, (Indian traders), and robbed them of about £200 worth of goods. About the 1st of May, 1774, they killed two men in a canoe on the Ohio River, and robbed the canoe of its contents.* There were other similar occurrences, which left no doubt upon the minds of the western people, that the savages had determined to make war upon them; and of course acts of retaliation were resorted to on the part of the whites.

The late Col. Angus McDonald, near Winchester, and several other individuals, went out in the spring 1774, to survey the military bounty lands, lying on the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, allowed by the King's proclamation to the officers and soldiers of the army, for their services in a preceding war with the Indians, but were driven off.

Col. McDonald forthwith waited on Gov. Dunmore in person, and gave him an account of the hostile disposition of the Indians. The governor authorized him to raise a regiment of four hundred men, and immediately proceed to punish the enemy. He soon succeeded in raising his little army; in the month of June marched into the Indian country, destroyed several of their villages, cut off their corn, and returned. He had two or three running fights with the Indians, but there was little blood shed on either side.

This act of war produced a general combination of the various nations northwest of the Ohio; and hence arose the necessity of speedily raising a powerful army to save the western people from being entirely cut off, or driven from their habitation.

Lord Dunmore issued his order to Col. A. Lewis, of Augusta county, to raise a body of one thousand men, and immediately proceed to the Ohio River, where he (Dunmore) would join him with an equal number, to be raised in the northern counties of Virginia. Dunmore very soon raised the requisite number of men, principally volunteers from the counties of Berkeley, Hampshire, Frederick and Shenandoah.† Capt. Daniel Cresap went to South Carolina, and brought in one hundred and twenty Catawba Indian warriors at his