General Hand, in the East, had engaged in warfare where it was never difficult to locate the enemy, in large bodies, ready to stand up and fight. In that warfare the colonists did most of the dodging and were the hardest to find.
On the frontier the conditions were reversed, the enemy could not be found yet was ever present. The savages, in small bands, entered the settlements and struck quick but terrible blows, then fled by night into the dense forests.
The only evidence of the presence of these savages were the dead bodies of the victims and ashes of their former cabins, but they left no trail that a white man could discover. The problem was perplexing to General Hand.
Many murders had been committed before General Hand’s arrival, but they became more numerous.
The British commandant, Colonel Henry Hamilton, at Detroit, began about June 1 to equip and send out war parties to attack the settlements of Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania, which parties consisted mostly of Indians of the Wyandotte and Miami tribes of Northern Ohio and Shawnee of Southern Ohio and a few British officers.
At the same time parties of Seneca invaded the Pennsylvania settlements from Western New York.
Beside the bodies of many victims of the raids were found copies of the proclamation by Hamilton, offering protection and reward to all settlers who would make their way to any of the British posts and join the cause of the King.
General Hand soon determined that the one way to fight Indians was to invade their own country and destroy their towns and provisions. The Ohio tribes had permanent villages and grew great crops of corn, beans and pumpkins, which they stored in earth silos. If the Indians lost their crops they would be driven to hunt in the winter and could have no time for the warpath.
General Hand decided to descend the Ohio with a large force of militiamen to the mouth of the Big Kanawha and to march thence overland against the Shawnee towns.
Hand appealed to all the militia commanders of Westmoreland and Bedford Counties in Pennsylvania, and of all the frontier counties of Virginia, to muster men for the expedition.