Andrew Lewis summoned these officers
to an expedition for "reducing our inveterate enemies to reason."
Preston called for volunteers to take advantage of "the
opportunity we have so long wished for...this useless People
may now at last be oblidged to abandon their country." These men
were among not only the bravest but the best of their time; but
this was their view of the Indian and his alleged rights. To
eliminate this "useless people," inveterate enemies of the white
race, was, as they saw it, a political necessity and a religious
duty. And we today who profit by their deeds dare not condemn
them.
Fervor less solemn was aroused in other quarters by Dunmore's
call to arms. At Wheeling, some eighty or ninety young
adventurers, in charge of Captain Michael Cresap of Maryland,
were waiting for the freshets to sweep them down the Ohio into
Kentucky. When the news reached them, they greeted it with the
wild monotone chant and the ceremonies preliminary to Indian
warfare. They planted the war pole, stripped and painted
themselves, and starting the war dance called on Cresap to be
their "white leader." The captain, however, declined; but in that
wild circling line was one who was a white leader indeed. He was
a sandy-haired boy of twenty--one of the bold race of English
Virginians, rugged and of fiery countenance, with blue eyes
intense of glance and deep set under a high brow that, while
modeled for power, seemed threatened in its promise by the too
sensitive chiseling of his lips.
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