Source: National Museum of the United States Army, Lord Dunmore's War, 1774 with Dr. Glenn F. Williams, U.S. Army Museum
Lord Dunmore's War in 1774 gave Virginia a new level of control over the Shawnee living in the Ohio River Valley.
Shawnee towns along the Ohio River housed members of the Delaware tribe who had been forced off their traditional lands in eastern Pennsylvania. The blatant unfairness of the Walking Purchase in 1737 caused many Delaware to abandon the hopes of negotiating with the Quakers and coexisting with the settlers in Pennsylvania. The Delaware built Shannopin's Town at the Forks of the Ohio.
The two Algonquian-speaking tribes were joined by Mingoes, predominantly Iroquois-speaking members of the Seneca who migrated westward and were resistant to control of the Iroquois Council based at Onondaga.1
The Haudenosaunee claimed they owned the Ohio River Valley, and asserted in negotiations with the British that they spoke for the residents there. The Haudenosaunee appointed Shikellamy, living in Shamokin, to represent their interests along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Tanaghrisson, also known as Half-King, and his associate Scarroyady oversaw the Mingoes and others living along the Ohio River. Tanaghrisson settled in Logstown, located 18 miles downstream from the Forks of the Ohio.
Tanaghrisson joined George Washington in 1753 when he traveled to Fort LeBoeuf to deliver Governor's Dinwiddie warning against trespassing on British-claimed lands in the Ohio River Vally. The Half-King was also with Washington in 1754 when he brought troops to force the French away from the Forks of the Ohio. It was Tanaghrisson who sank a tomahawk into the skull of a wounded Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, killing the French ensign and sparking the French and Indian War.2
Since the Iroquois claimed they owned the land occupied by the Shawnee and refugees of various tribes who had moved away from colonial settlement, colonial officials requested that they ensure peace in the Ohio River Valley. However, the Iroquois were unable to control the western tribes.
After France was expelled from North America at the end of the French and Indian War, the British Governor General in North America Jeffrey Amherst sought to minimize costs of occupying the western lands. He had little understanding of Native American cultures, and in the name of economy ended the fundamental tradition of gift-giving to maintain relationships with the tribes. Pontiac's Rebellion was the result.
By June 1763, all British forts in the west had been overrun except forts Niagara, Detroit, and Pitt. The war ended in 1765 after the Native Americans were unable to obtain weapons and gunpowder from the French, and British officials modified their approach to dealing with Native American groups. 3
In 1774, Lord Dunmore was the royal governor and responsible for the military defense of the colony of Virginia. The Shawnee and Delaware had lost patience with British efforts to restrain unauthorized settlement. Their raids on those settlements at the western edge of the colony gave Dunmore the opportunity to unite the fractious colonists in a military response.
British officials had provided no soldiers ("Redcoats") for Dunmore to defend the colony. By 1774 military expenses in North America were being minimized after the British won the French and Indian War (Seven Years War). The French had been expelled from North America in 1763 and were no longer a military threat, and the immense debt incurred to pay for that war had to be repaid.
Attempts to economize backfired. After the English reduced subsidies for Native American tribes who were no longer needed to fight the French in an attempt, a pan-tribal war erupted in the western backcountry in 1763. Pontiac's Rebellion united tribes between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. They no longer had the option of enlisting the French to use diplomacy and trade to maintain a balance of power in the backcountry, so going to war was the next best alternative. The only other option was to abandon their homelands and move west.
King George III responded to the uprising led by Pontiac by issuing the Proclamation of 1763 in hopes of slowing westward expansion to a rate which the Native Americans would accept. The proclamation defined the western edge of authorized colonial settlement as the watershed divide between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River. All lands in the watersheds of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers were reserved for the Native Americans until the British could negotiate land sales in later negotiations.
the Proclamation of 1763 established an Indian Reserve intended to be free from colonial settlement
Source: Library of Congress, Cantonment of His Majesty's forces in N. America according to the disposition now made & to be compleated as soon as practicable taken from the general distribution dated at New York 29th. March 1766
The proclamation was a temporary measure - at least as viewed by land speculators in Virginia and Pennsylvania - to ensure peace. The text issued by King George included a key qualifier (highlighted below):4
The 1763 paper blockade against colonial settlement helped Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department, convince the tribes that settlement would be controlled. Johnson negotiated an end to Pontiac's Rebellion at the 1766 Treaty of Fort Ontario.
The 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix was the major negotiation to alter the edge of the reserved lands, modifying the boundary established in 1763. The Haudenosaunee (Six Nations of the Iroquois) ceded claims to all territory south of the Ohio River, as far west as the mouth of the Tennessee River.
In the eyes of the British and the Iroquois, the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix legitimized the farms of most colonists who in 1763 already lived west of the boundary line or had chosen to ignore it in the last five years. In the eyes of the land speculators in the Ohio, Loyal Land, and Greenbrier companies, the treaty affirmed the legitimacy of their efforts to survey and sell western lands.
The Shawnee, Lenape/Delaware, and Mingo who lived along the Ohio River did not agree. They used the lands south of the river as hunting grounds, and received no compensation in return for the supposed right of colonists to displace them.
The representatives of those tribes had not been not allowed to speak during the negotiations at Fort Stanwix in 1768. The English and the Iroquois had claimed they were dependent tribes and the Iroquois, by right of conquest, could determine their fate. Though the Mingo were Iroquois originally, they had moved west beyond the traditional territory of the Seneca and no longer felt obliged to take direction from the Six Nations. The Delaware in eastern Pennsylvania and the Susquehanna River valley had acknowledged Iroquois supremacy, but those who moved west across the Allegheny Front felt they had escaped that control.5
the Shawnee signed the Treaty of Camp Charlotte on Sippo Creek in 1774 because Virginia's militia was poised to destroy Chillicothe and other towns
Source: Cincinnati Public Library, A map of the Indian towns, villages, camps and trails in the Virginia Military District and south-western Ohio (Richard G. Lewis, 1902)
The myth of George Washington includes the claim that he could not tell a lie. In reality, he was quite capable of prevarication. In a 1767 letter to George Crawford, his surveyor scouting lands along the Ohio and Kanawha rivers, he suggested filing land claims in separate actions to bypass the acreage limits that might be imposed by officials at the land office in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
He also made clear that he was racing to survey and patent the good land even though the Proclamation of 1763 prohibited settlement:6
In Williamsburg, Governor Dunmore received reports of "outrages" along the western edge of the colony. Warriors from the Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami settlements (many of them mixed together) were killing unauthorized settlers. Settlers who had developed a hatred towards Native Americans did not discriminate in their retaliation, or when initiating conflicts.
On April 30, 1774, Jacob and Daniel Greathouse led other settlers in the unprovoked murder of the family of a Mingo leader named Logan. Logan blamed Michael Cresap for the Yellow Creek Massacre, but practiced collective justice in his retribution. He led war parties against multiple settlements with no direct connection to the Greathouse brothers or Cresap.
Dunmore saw the opportunity, but in 1774 most British troops in North America were stationed in New York and in Boston in respond to the destruction of tea in the December 16, 1773 Boston Tea Party. Fort Pitt had been abandoned, in an effort to reduce costs. British warships were stationed in the Chesapeake Bay, but Lord Dunmore had no Redcoats at his disposal for military action.
Dunmore could not get the House of Burgesses to authorize funding for recruiting soldiers. He had prorogued the colonial legislature after it had expressed support for the Massachusetts colony and opposition to the Coercive Acts passed by Parliament.
So he used his authority to call out the militia in order to organize an attack on the Shawnee and others living downstream from Pittsburgh. He made clear that the soldiers would get, in addition to regular pay, and opportunity to plunder the Shawnee.
Dunmore's goal was to force the Native Americans through military power to move westward and permit colonists to purchase the lands along the Ohio River which were claimed by the Ohio Company and other land speculators. In addition, Dunmore through conquest could strengthen Virginia's claims to western lands being contested by both the French and by the Pennsylvanians. 7
The military strategy involved sending two columns westward. Andrew Lewis organized one column and marched along the Kanawha River. Lord Dunmore went to Pittsburg and organized the other column, in order to lead it down the Ohio River. The plan was to meet at the Shawnee towns on the Scioto River. Raiding them would provide an opportunity for the soldiers to capture horses and obtain other plunder, while forcing the Native Americans to retreat westward.
The Shawnee recognized the threat. Their leader Cornstalk decided to attack Andrew Lewis' column before it could unite with Dunmore's troops. A surprise attack on the militia camp at Point Pleasant ended up being unsuccessful, and Dunmore reached the edge of the Scioto River towns unmolested. Cornstalk chose to avoid a fight and the Shawnee agreed to the Treaty of Camp Charlotte on October 20, 1774. In it, they gave away their claim to Kentucky, which was their hunting territory south of the Ohio River.8
Source: West Virginia Humanities Council, Little Lectures - "Dunmore's War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era"
Source: Native American History, The Battle Of Point Pleasant - Shawnee vs Virginia Militia