On the evening of October 9, 1774, Andrew Lewis with his force of eleven hundred frontiersmen was encamped on Point Pleasant at the junction of the Great Kanawha with the Ohio. Dunmore in the meantime had led his forces into Ohio and had erected Fort Gower at the mouth of the Hockhocking River, where he waited for word from Andrew Lewis. ¹
[¹] It has been customary to ascribe to Lord Dunmore motives of treachery in failing to make connections with Lewis; but no real evidence has been advanced to support any of the charges made against him by local historians. The charges were, as Theodore Roosevelt says, “an afterthought.” Dunmore was a King's man in the Revolution; and yet in March, 1775, the Convention of the Colony of Virginia, assembled in opposition to the royal party, resolved: “The most cordial thanks of the people of this colony are a tribute justly due to our worthy Governor, Lord Dunmore, for his truly noble, wise, and spirited conduct which at once evinces his Excellency's attention to the true interests of this colony, and a zeal in the executive department which no dangers can divert, or difficulties hinder, from achieving the most important services to the people who have the happiness to live under his administration.” (See American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. II, p. 170.) Similar resolutions were passed by his officers on the march home from Ohio; at the same time, the officers passed resolutions in sympathy with the American cause. Yet it was Andrew Lewis who later drove Dunmore from Virginia. Well might Dunmore exclaim, “That it should ever come to this!”
The movements of the two armies were being observed by scouts from the force of red warriors gathered in Ohio under the great leader of the Shawanoes. Cornstalk purposed to isolate the two armies of his enemy and to crush them in turn before they could come together. His first move was to launch an attack on Lewis at Point Pleasant. In the dark of night, Cornstalk's Indians crossed the Ohio on rafts, intending to surprise the white man's camp at dawn. They would have succeeded but for the chance that three or four of the frontiersmen, who had risen before daybreak to hunt, came upon the Indians creeping towards the camp. Shots were exchanged. An Indian and a white man dropped. The firing roused the camp. Three hundred men in two lines under Charles Lewis and William Fleming sallied forth expecting to engage the vanguard of the enemy but encountered almost the whole force of from eight hundred to a thousand Indians before the rest of the army could come into action. Both officers were wounded, Charles Lewis fatally. The battle, which continued from dawn until an hour before sunset, was the bloodiest in Virginia's long series of Indian wars. The frontiersmen fought as such men ever fought—with the daring, bravery, swiftness of attack, and skill in taking cover which were the tactics of their day, even as at a later time many of these same men fought at King's Mountain and in Illinois the battles that did so much to turn the tide in the Revolution. ²
[²] With Andrew Lewis on this day were Isaac Shelby and William Campbell, the victorious leaders at King's Mountain, James Robertson, the “father of Tennessee,” Valentine Sevier, Daniel Morgan, hero of the Cowpens, Major Arthur Campbell, Benjamin Logan, Anthony Bledsoe, and Simon Kenton. With Dunmore's force were Adam Stephen, who distinguished himself at the Brandywine, George Rogers Clark, John Stuart, already noted through the Cherokee wars, and John Montgomery, later one of Clark's four captains in Illinois. The two last mentioned were Highlanders. Clark's Illinois force was largely recruited from the troops who fought at Point Pleasant.
Colonel Preston wrote to Patrick Henry that the enemy behaved with “inconceivable bravery,” the head men walking about in the time of action exhorting their men to “lie close, shoot well, be strong, and fight.” The Shawanoes ran up to the muzzles of the English guns, disputing every foot of ground. Both sides knew well what they were fighting for—the rich land held in a semicircle by the Beautiful River.
Shortly before sundown the Indians, mistaking a flank movement by Shelby's contingent for the arrival of reinforcements, retreated across the Ohio. Many of their most noted warriors had fallen and among them the Shawano chief, Puck-e-shin-wa, father of a famous son, Tecumseh. ¹ Yet they were unwilling to accept defeat. When they heard that Dunmore was now marching overland to cut them off from their towns, their fury blazed anew. “Shall we first kill all our women and children and then fight till we ourselves are slain?” Cornstalk, in irony, demanded of them; “No? Then I will go and make peace.”
[¹] Thwaites, Documentary History of Dunmore's War.
By the treaty compacted between the chiefs and Lord Dunmore, the Indians gave up all claim to the lands south of the Ohio, even for hunting, and agreed to allow boats to pass unmolested. In this treaty the Mingos refused to join, and a detachment of Dunmore's troops made a punitive expedition to their towns. Some discord arose between Dunmore and Lewis's frontier forces because, since the Shawanoes had made peace, the Governor would not allow the frontiersmen to destroy the Shawano towns.
Of all the chiefs, Logan alone still held aloof. Major Gibson undertook to fetch him, but Logan refused to come to the treaty grounds. He sent by Gibson the short speech which has lived as an example of the best Indian oratory:
I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat: if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said, “Logan is the friend of the white men.” I had even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There remains not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted my vengeance: for my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one. ¹