Colony of Virginia

Virginians

The area south of the Ohio river (now West Virginia and Kentucky) was claimed by the powerful Haudenosaunee Nations and other tribes when white colonists from Virginia began settling the area after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. In 1774, a series of bloody encounters that came to be called Lord Dunmore's War occured between the colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo Indians. There were attacks from both sides: a small party including Daniel Boone's son was captured and tortured to death; then, a group of Virginian frontiersmen murdered a dozen Mingos, including women and children, in the Yellow Creek Massacre. Lord Dunmore, the last royal Governor of Virginia, declared war and eventually defeated the Indians and won an uneasy peace from them by reigning in colonial western expansion. His policies, which mirrored those of the British after the defeat of the French in the French and Indian War in 1763, ended with the beginning of the American Revolution. Wheelock and Occom would have been watching these developments carefully because of their interest in the Muskingum Indians who lived in this area.

"Lord Dunmore's War." Ohio History Connection. http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Lord_Dunmore%27s_War_and_the_Battle_of_Point_Pleasant?rec=514