Lord Dunmore's War

(1774) Attack by Virginia militia on the Shawnee in Kentucky.

The militiamen seized Fort Pitt on the western border, renaming it after their royal governor, Lord Dunmore, who had ordered attacks against the Shawnee, seen as a threat to white settlers then spreading into the Indian hunting grounds. Defeated at the Battle of Point Pleasant, the Shawnee signed a treaty giving up their hunting grounds. The war was probably started to divert Virginians from disagreements with royal administrators; as such, it has been called the first battle of the American Revolution.

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▪ United States history

      (1774), Virginia-led attack on the Shawnee Indians of Kentucky, removing the last obstacle to colonial conquest of that area. During the early 1770s the Shawnee watched with growing distress the steady encroachment upon their rich Kentucky hunting grounds by white trappers, traders, speculators, and settlers. In early 1774 the Virginia militia seized Fort Pitt and renamed it Fort Dunmore (Dunmore, John Murray, 4th Earl of, Viscount Of Fincastle, Lord Murray Of Blair, Moulin, And Tillemot) for their royal governor, John Murray, 4th earl of Dunmore. Securing frontiersmen behind colonial forts, Lord Dunmore joined Colonel Andrew Lewis in carrying the aggression against the Indians, who they felt threatened white settlers. The Moravian-influenced Delaware Indians remained peaceful, but the inflamed Shawnee sprang to the defense of their homelands. The major confrontation occurred October 10 at the Battle of Point Pleasant, in which the Shawnee under Chief Cornstalk were decisively defeated. To protect their families from attack, Shawnee chiefs quickly agreed in the Treaty of Camp Charlotte to relinquish their hunting grounds to the white settlers.

      Lord Dunmore was widely accused of commencing the war to divert Virginians from differences with the royal administration of that colony, and for this reason the fighting at Point Pleasant has sometimes been called the first battle of the Revolution.

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