by Rob Harper
wrote, “unless guarded by a million of soldiers,” could prevent Kentucky’s
colonization. imperial officials could avert disaster only by granting land to
Washington and his ilk: reliable gentlemen who could be trusted to manage
colonization wisely. This self- serving logic had little basis in reality: by 1773,
reports of Kentucky’s fecundity had circulated for years, and yet the docu-
mentary record yields negligible evidence of colonial homesteads west of the
Kanawha. But dunmore sympathized with the speculators— he himself cov-
eted a 100,000- acre western estate— and slowly embraced their expansion-
ism. in 1772 he created a new western county that encompassed Kentucky.
later that year, one of Washington’s fellow officers, anticipating imminent
patronage, 1773–74
49
grants, advised his friends to survey lands preemptively. When Bullitt pub-
licly advertised his plans, dunmore made no effort to stop him. Washington,
connol y, and many other holders of officers’ certificates eagerly commis-
sioned Bullitt to reserve choice tracts for themselves.6
among Ohio indians, Bullitt’s visit to chillicothe raised fears of re-
newed hostilities. his surveys confirmed the hardman’s suspicions that eu-
ropeans sought only “to deceive the indians, to take their land and
possessions.” several hundred shawnees, convinced that “they wou’d soon
be hemmed in on all sides by the White people,” left the scioto towns and
moved west, possibly to the little miami and mad river valleys in western
Ohio. Then a group of Ohio haudenosaunees set upon one of the survey-
ors’ supply parties, killing one man, capturing another, and taking their
loaded packhorses. The attack placed shawnee leaders in a difficult posi-
tion, as they had invited the culprits to Ohio just two years before. They
persuaded the attackers to hand over their prisoner and sent British traders
home for their protection. in september, cornstalk sent a speech to
croghan laying out the shawnees’ grievances while reaffirming their com-
mitment to peace. The hardman then led a shawnee delegation to pitts-
burgh, where croghan had invited them and six other western nations for a
council. he likely hoped that the veteran diplomat would put the wayward
Virginians in their place.7
Unfortunately for the shawnees, nothing at the council went according to
plan. croghan intended to introduce the governor of the new Vandalia col-
ony, but unbeknownst to him that scheme had col apsed. With no guidance
or support from his patrons, he could only apologize and scramble to buy
food for his four hundred guests. meanwhile, British traders presented corn-
stalk’s speech, which accused the Ohio haudenosaunee of planning “mi[s]
chief” and called on guyasuta, as “a headman of these people,” to rein them
in. guyasuta— a longtime proponent of Kentucky’s colonization— countered
that the shawnees had “hatched” the recent troubles “amongst themselves at
scioto.” When the hardman final y arrived, he found the council united
against his nation. croghan, no doubt relieved to divert attention from his
own embarrassment, publicly accused the shawnees of speaking “with a dou-
ble tongue.” They declared their people’s innocence, but guyasuta had suc-
cessful y turned the tables, equating their objections to Bullitt’s surveys with
militant resistance. in september, superintendent William Johnson called
the shawnees “the most attentive to the six nations councils of any [indians]
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to the southward,” but guyasuta soon convinced him that they had “been
always a disaffected people.” Where they had hoped to win imperial support,
the shawnees instead found themselves on the defensive.8
perhaps hoping to repair the damage, the hardman and his companions
stayed for the winter across the river from pittsburgh, where they met regu-
larly with colonial leaders. in late January, they watched with alarm as eighty
white men marched into the town waving “red Flaggs” and firing guns into
the air. in front of the empty fort, abandoned by the British army over a year
before, the crowd rolled out a keg of rum, leading to much “drunkenness and
confusion.” pennsylvania officials ordered the men to disperse, with little ef-
fect. When the raucous gathering final y broke up, some of the men fired
shots at the shawnee camp. The pennsylvanians assured the shawnees that
the colonists’ “constant assembling” and “warlike appearance” involved
“Business intirely relative to themselves,” but the hardman understandably
concluded that war was “still uppermost in their minds.”9
much like the dispute over Kentucky, the mayhem at pittsburgh resulted
from the machinations of lord dunmore. during the previous summer,
while Bullitt stirred controversy at chillicothe, the governor had visited the
upper Ohio country and met the ambitious John connol y. together, the two
men concocted a plan to seize the entire Ohio Valley for Virginia. in the first
week of 1774, posted advertisements declared that dunmore had appointed
connol y “commandant of the militia of pittsburgh and its dependencies”
and announced a general muster at Fort pitt. pennsylvanian officials arrested
and jailed connol y, but dozens of men showed up anyway, leading to the
raucous scene that so alarmed the shawnees. connol y soon escaped from
jail; his supporters increasingly “insulted” pennsylvania officials “in the most
indecent and violent manner.” On 30 march, he and his growing militia reoc-
cupied Fort pitt— dubbing it “Fort dunmore”— and claimed civil and mili-
tary authority under Virginia law. Though he initial y promised to cooperate
with pennsylvania magistrates, his “parties of armed men” continual y ha-
rassed them and their friends. On 6 april, as the Westmoreland court con-
vened in hannastown, he appeared at the head of 150 armed men, “with
colours flying” and “swords drawn,” and shut down their proceedings. Three
days later, his men dragged three pennsylvania judges from their homes and
marched them to prison in staunton, Virginia, more than two hundred miles
away.10
connol y achieved this coup by building a coalition of mutual y antago-
patronage, 1773–74
51
nistic allies. during his 1773 visit, dunmore had quietly assured george
croghan that Virginia, unlike pennsylvania, would respect his land claims.
The governor similarly reached out to Washington’s partner William craw-
ford, a pennsylvania official and croghan foe, promising him land and a lu-
crative post as an official surveyor. connol y, meanwhile, cultivated allies
among anti- pennsylvania colonists, who had bedeviled crawford for years.
The secrecy of these dealings won them a disparate collection of friends
without having to address the animosities among them. in november, dun-
more began issuing Kentucky land grants to Virginia officers, just as Wash-
ington had hoped, and insisted that officials approve connol y’s claim
around the Fal s. When connol y returned to pittsburgh in January, h
e
brought a stack of blank commissions, empowering him to handpick the mi-
litia officers and magistrates of the newly created “district of West augusta.”
he doled these out strategical y to pittsburgh traders like John gibson and to
the friends and family of croghan and crawford. With similar encourage-
ment, dorsey pentecost, an erstwhile pennsylvania magistrate, and abra-
ham teagarden, a longtime anti-pennsylvania agitator, joined forces, ral ying
monongahela colonists for dunmore. This distribution of patronage, to-
gether with the hope that dunmore would reward loyalty with land, trans-
formed a set of longtime adversaries into a skeletal local government.
crawford, who had repeatedly butted heads with teagarden, suspected that
such men “would be equal y averse to the regular administration of justice”
under Virginia. But he and others set aside such misgivings in hopes of win-
ning dunmore’s favor.11
meanwhile, at his camp outside pittsburgh, the hardman grappled with
the news that shawnees had killed “several White people.” The previous fal , a
group of delawares, cherokees, and shawnees had stumbled upon a Virgin-
ian camp near cumberland gap. noting that the strangers had brought extra
horses, cattle, and other supplies, they correctly identified them as prospec-
tive colonists bound for Kentucky, part of a land- grabbing venture inspired
by Bullitt’s surveys. The indians attacked before dawn, killing an enslaved
african- american and four white men, including the sons of the speculator
William russell and the hunter daniel Boone. in the eyes of the attackers, the
russell party had trespassed on lands that the king had reserved for indians,
but the story that reached pittsburgh omitted such details. The indian agent
alexander mcKee urged the shawnee delegation to go home and “put a stop
to such flagrant Outrages” or face “the resentment of the numerous White
people settled now upon this river.” The hardman and his companions
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responded with the familiar rituals and rhetoric of frontier diplomacy: public
condolence ceremonies and speeches blaming the attack on a few miscreants.
But they also drew colonists’ attention to “the very great numbers of your
people going down this river beyond the bounds fixed for them.” This prob-
lem, the shawnees noted, had brought about “all our disturbances,” includ-
ing the attack on the russell party.12
These events might suggest frontier mayhem, but all involved stressed
their adherence to British policies. Both shawnees and cherokees faulted
colonists for flouting imperial restrictions on colonization. a shawnee party
warned Virginian surveyors, in english, that george croghan had encour-
aged them “to kill all the Virginians they could find on the river & rob &
whip the pennsylvanians.” The shawnees perhaps exaggerated croghan’s
words, but he and other indian agents had repeatedly told them that the king
had barred colonists from Kentucky. most colonists, though, believed that
the russell venture was legal. pointing to dunmore’s recent land grants, they
insisted that the government “much encouraged” the colonization of Ken-
tucky. news of the killings was soon “in every ones mouth.” From Williams-
burg, dunmore himself demanded that the nations involved hand over the
perpetrators or face “the certain Vengeance of the Virginians.”13 Both colo-
nists who coveted Kentucky and indians who aimed to stop them found sup-
port in the words of Britain’s appointed officials.
militant opponents of colonization tried to exploit these growing ten-
sions to build support for war, but they faced strong opposition. embassies
to the cherokees and other nations urged them to “unite and oppose the
progress of the White people.” to overcome widespread aversion to war,
they claimed that a mysterious French trader called sang Blanc (“white
blood”) had promised that a massive French and spanish army would soon
free indians “from the tyranny of the english.” militants hoped to use a
spring conference at the scioto towns to build support, using moderate
leaders’ “good speeches” as a cover while they promoted war behind the
scenes. But they failed to win over the six nations or the cherokees, without
whose support they had little hope of success. guyasuta spent the winter
and spring visiting western nations to denounce the shawnees and declare
that the six nations wanted nothing to do with war. cherokee leaders con-
demned the attack on the russell party and eventual y executed one of the
perpetrators. even those who favored killing “those people gone down the
river” balked at a general conflict with the British colonies.14 notwithstand-
patronage, 1773–74
53
ing the killings at cumberland gap, the united front necessary for war re-
mained elusive.
in mid- april, the hardman and his shawnee delegation left pittsburgh, no
doubt glad to put distance between themselves and connol y’s rowdy militia.
They paddled down the Ohio at a leisurely pace, stopping for a time at a sen-
eca town at the mouth of Beaver river. perhaps alarmed by news of events
upriver, the senecas decided to follow the shawnees to the scioto. neither the
shawnees nor the senecas showed any apprehension of danger: the senecas
camped for several days at the mouth of yellow creek, across the Ohio from
a colonist’s improvised tavern. Farther downstream, the fourteen shawnees
stopped to buy food from a colonial homestead. to their surprise, the colo-
nists there refused to sell them anything, telling them that white people had
killed two indians on the river the day before. now more wary, the hardman
and his companions paddled to the mouth of grave creek, camped in the
bushes, and prepared to defend themselves. late in the day, shots rang out
and Othawakeesquo, a shawnee leader the British knew as Ben, fell dead. The
shawnees fired back, killing one of the attackers, then fled into the woods,
abandoning the farewell gifts their pittsburgh hosts had given them just days
before.15
to the shawnees, the attack seemed to come out of nowhere, but it, too,
resulted from dunmore’s intrigues. That winter, a Virginia official, William
preston, had publicly announced a new surveying expedition, led by John
Floyd, to begin in mid- april at the mouth of the Kanawha. many hurried to
join Floyd or raced ahead to claim their own tracts first. “no time should be
lost in having [the land] surveyed,” Washington warned, “lest some new rev-
olution should again happen in our political system.” Thomas cresap’s son
michael assembled eighty or ninety men at the mouth of the little Kanawha,
planning to join Floyd downriver. all involved understood that many shaw-
nees, cherokees, and others opposed their surveys. preston insisted that at
least fifty men accompany Floyd to guard against indian assault. pittsbur-
ghers assumed shawnees would attack the surveyors because colonial expan-
sion was “a thorn in their eye.” shawnees did drive off some trespassers, as
they had done for yea
rs, but without killing anyone. in early april, one party
captured seven surveyors and held them for three days, then released them.
a few weeks later, another indian party similarly “Orderd” three of the sur-
veyors “off the river.” By the end of april, most land jobbers were “almost
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daily retreating,” but Floyd continued surveying, going well beyond even the
limits that preston had prescribed.16
meanwhile, events near pittsburgh raised new fears of war. Four chero-
kees attacked two white traders on the upper Ohio, about forty miles down-
stream from pittsburgh, killing one man, wounding the other, and making
off with the canoe and its contents. By all accounts, the motive was greed:
richard Butler, who owned the canoe and employed the two victims, de-
scribed the event as an isolated crime. Both in pittsburgh and the scioto
towns, indian leaders quickly began the familiar rituals of containment: ex-
pressing regret, condemning the culprits, and offering to help find them. But
on the same day, a shawnee man warned mcKee that militant indians
planned to “strik[e] the english” that spring. mcKee shared the report with
croghan, who in turn passed it on to connol y, who had just seized power in
pittsburgh. such reports of imminent attack, like occasional robberies of
traders, were a familiar part of Ohio Valley diplomacy, and British officers
had long since learned to treat them with skepticism. But connol y, a politi-
cal novice, instead penned a general alert warning colonists to “guard
against” shawnee hostility. panic ensued. in a separate notice, he urged
friendliness “towards such natives as may appear peaceable,” but this mes-
sage got far less attention than the threat of imminent attack.17
connol y’s warning traveled downstream from pittsburgh just as rumors
of shawnee resistance spread upriver from Kentucky, growing more alarming
with each telling. The stories met at the mouth of Wheeling creek, where
over one hundred land jobbers were assembling their own surveying parties.