A Virginia Scout

by Hugh Pendexter

So let us remember that Dunmore’s War was the inevitable outcome of two alien races determined on the same prize, with each primed for a death-struggle by the memories of fearful wrongs. It is useless to argue which race gave the first cause for retaliation; it had been give and take between them for many years. Nor should our children’s children, because of any tendency toward ancestor-worship, be allowed to believe that the whites were invincible and slaughtered more natives than they lost of their own people.

There were white men as merciless and murderous as any Indians, and some of these had a rare score of killings to their discredit. Yet in a man-for-man account the Indians had all the best of it. Veterans of Braddock’s War insisted that the frontier lost fifty whites for each red man killed. Bouquet and other leaders estimated the ratio in Pontiac’s War to have been ten to one in favor of the Indians.

This reduction proved that the settlers had learned something from the lessons taught in the old French War. Our people on the border knew all this and they were confident that in the struggle now upon them they would bring the count down to one for one.[1] So let the youngsters of the new day learn the truth; that is, that the backwoodsmen clung to their homes although suffering most hideously.

Virginia understood she must sustain the full brunt of the war, inasmuch as she comprised the disputed frontier. It was upon Virginia that the red hatred centered. I never blamed the Indians for this hate for white cabins and cleared forests and permanent settlements. Nor should our dislike of the Indians incite sentimental people, ignorant of the red man’s ways and lacking sympathy with our ambitions, to denounce us as being solely responsible for the brutal aspects such a struggle will always display.

It should also be remembered that the men of Pennsylvania were chiefly concerned with trade. Their profits depended upon the natives remaining undisturbed in their ancient homes. Like the French they would keep the red man and his forests unchanged.

Naturally they disapproved of any migrations over the mountains; and they were very disagreeable in expressing their dissatisfaction. We retorted, overwarmly doubtless, by accusing our northern sister of trading guns and powder to the Indians for horses stolen from Virginia. There was bad blood between the two colonies; for history to gloss over the fact is to perpetrate a lie. Fort Pitt, recently renamed Fort Dunmore by the commandant, Doctor John Connolly, controlled the approach to the Ohio country. It was a strong conditional cause of the war, peculiar as the statement may sound to those born long after the troublesome times of 1774.

Pennsylvania accused our royal governor of being a land-grabber and the catspaw or partner of land-speculators. His Lordship was interested in land-speculation and so were many prominent Virginians. It is also true that claims under Virginia patents would be worthless if Pennsylvania controlled the junction of the Monongahela and the Alleghany Rivers and sustained her claims to the surrounding country.

It is another fact that it was the rifles of Virginia which protected that outlying region, and that many of the settlers in the disputed territory preferred Virginia control. Every one realized that should our militia push the Indians back and win a decisive victory our claims would be immensely strengthened. And through Doctor Connolly we were already handling affairs at Fort Pitt.

Because of these and other facts there was an excellent chance for an intercolonial war. I am of the strong opinion that an armed clash between the hotheads of the two provinces would have resulted if not for the intervention of the Indian war.

At the beginning of hostilities the Indians proclaimed they would whip Pennsylvania and would roast Virginians. However, when Benjamin Speare, his wife and six children were massacred on Dunkard Creek early in June, with similar bloody murders being perpetrated at Muddy Creek, all on Pennsylvania soil, by John Logan, the Mingo chief, there was less foolish talk north of the line.