Traders had sent in word that
Shawanoes, Delawares, Mingos, Wyandots, and Cherokees were
refusing all other exchange than rifles, ammunition, knives, and
hatchets. White men were shot down in their fields from ambush.
Dead Indians lay among their own young corn, their scalp locks
taken. There were men of both races who wanted war and meant to
have it--and with it the land.
Lord Dunmore, the Governor, resolved that, if war were
inevitable, it should be fought out in the Indian country. With
this intent, he wrote to Colonel Andrew Lewis of Botetourt
County, Commander of the Southwest Militia, instructing him to
raise a respectable body of troops and "join me either at the
mouth of the Great Kanawha or Wheeling, or such other part of the
Ohio as may be most convenient for you to meet me." The Governor
himself with a force of twelve hundred proceeded to Fort Pitt,
where Croghan, as we have seen, was extending his hospitality to
eleven hundred warriors from the disaffected tribes.
On receipt of the Governor's letter, Andrew Lewis sent out
expresses to his brother Colonel Charles Lewis, County Lieutenant
of Augusta, and to Colonel William Preston, County Lieutenant of
Fincastle, to raise men and bring them with all speed to the
rendezvous at Camp Union (Lewisburg) on the Big Levels of the
Greenbrier (West Virginia).
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