Hand had hoped to forestall the bloody events of the fall and winter of 1777 by sending an expedition into the Indian country. Only Hampshire County met its quota of men, and Hand, with far less than the two thousand he requested, postponed further action until spring. The only protection he could offer lay in the posting of 150 militiamen in each of the Ohio River counties during the winter.
Mounting Perils. An incident at Fort Randolph added to the tenseness on the frontiers. In November 1777 Cornstalk, with two companions, visited the fort and informed Matthew Arbuckle that the Shawnee had decided to join the British and that he had been unable to dissuade them. Fearing that Cornstalk came for some ulterior purpose, Arbuckle detained him until he could obtain instructions from General Hand, On November 9 Elinipsico, Cornstalk's son, came in search of his father, but he, too, was held. When two hunters from the fort were killed the following day, the enraged militiamen demanded retribution, and in spite of Arbuckle's efforts to restrain them, they killed Cornstalk, Elinipsico, and their companions.
An attack on Fort Randolph on May 16, 1778, was probably not a specific retaliation for the death of Cornstalk. More likely, it was part of a general offensive by British and Indians, which included assaults upon such scattered places as Boonesboro in Kentucky, Fort Stanwix and Oriskany in the Mohawk Valley, and the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. About three hundred Indians, mostly Wyandot and Mingo, demanded the surrender of the fort, but Captain William McKee, who was in charge during Arbuckle's temporary absence, refused to capitulate or to send men outside the stockade. After a frustrating day, in which they killed livestock that ran loose, the Indians announced that they came as friends. McKee directed Nonhelema to read them a proclamation of Governor Patrick Henry, which also expressed a desire for peace. The Indians feigned satisfaction and promised to return to their lands across the Ohio.
When the Indians began to move up the Kanawha, McKee sent John Pryor and Philip Hammond, disguised as Indians, to warn the Greenbrier settlements. Exposed families hastily took refuge at Fort Donnally, which the Indians attacked about dawn the next morning. Dick Pointer, a slave of Andrew Donnally, the owner of the fort, and Hammond, who were on watch, sounded the alarm and prevented the attackers from entering by placing their weight against filled water barrels that had been rolled against the door. The Indians kept up their attack throughout most of the day, but in the midafternoon Matthew Arbuckle and Samuel Lewis arrived from Camp Union with thirty-six men and dispersed the Indians.4
Critical shortages of gunpowder, medicines, and other supplies frequently threatened frontier defenses. As early as July 1776 Captain George Gibson and Lieutenant William Linn undertook a mission to New Orleans, where Spanish officials permitted them to purchase twelve thousand pounds of powder, but insisted that the transaction be conducted in a manner to preserve the illusion of Spanish neutrality. Gibson remained in New Orleans in deference to their wishes, and Linn, with fifty-three men, returned to Fort Pitt in May 1777 with the valuable cargo. About nine thousand pounds of powder, landed at Fort Henry, enabled that post to withstand the assault in September 1777.
In the summer of 1778 Governor Henry dispatched David Rogers and about forty men from the Monongahela Valley to New Orleans on additional “Business of Importance” to Virginia and her western settlers. On October 4, 1779, as he was returning up the Ohio River with powder, medicines, and other supplies, Indians led by Simon Girty attacked his party. They killed Rogers and seized the five bateaux carrying his cargo.
George Rogers Clark and the West. During the winter of 1777-1778 George Rogers Clark convinced Virginia authorities that an expedition into the Illinois country could weaken British control over the western Indians, enable Americans to make greater use of the Mississippi River, and enhance Virginia's claims to the Northwest. On June 26, 1778, Clark left Fort Massac, ten miles below the falls of the Ohio, with 175 seasoned riflemen, about 150 of whom were from the Monongahela Valley.
Proceeding overland rather than by the more commonly traveled rivers, Clark surprised the British at Kaskaskia on July 4 and forced their surrender. He repeated his success at Cahokia. Father Gibault, a priest at Kaskaskia, carried the news of Clark's victories to Vincennes and accepted its surrender. The French habitants, pleased by reports of an alliance between the United States and France, gave Clark support, and even a few Indian tribes responded to his bravado and distribution of gifts.
In October Governor Hamilton, with five hundred men, recaptured Vincennes, but heavy rains prevented his moving against the other posts. Rather than risk their loss, the indomitable Clark set out with 172 men for Vincennes. Traveling in rain and icy streams, he reached the post at about dusk on February 23, 1779. Caught completely off guard, Hamilton surrendered, with the thirty-three men who remained with him, after a night of fighting. Clark sent all of them to Williamsburg as prisoners of war.
Meanwhile, in June the Board of War directed Lachlan Mcintosh, who had succeeded Hand as commandant at Fort Pitt, to move against Detroit, the key to British power in the West, with 3,000 regulars and not more than 2,500 Virginia militiamen. Many Virginians strongly opposed the plan, partly because they believed that Clark would be able to capture Detroit but also because they feared that reduction of that stronghold by Continental forces might jeopardize Virginia's claim to territory northwest of the Ohio River.
After many delays, Mcintosh began his march in October 1778. He paused at the mouth of Beaver Creek to build a large defense, which he named Fort Mcintosh. In November, with twelve hundred men, he pressed on to the Tuscarawas River in the land of the Delaware and built Fort Laurens. Expiration of militia terms and inadequate supplies, however, nullified the effectiveness of Fort Laurens, and it was reduced to the necessity of obtaining food from the Delaware. The expedition proved almost entirely fruitless.
Clark's successes, the alliance with France, and bold moves against the Iroquois by General Daniel Brodhead, who replaced Mcintosh at Fort Pitt, raised American prestige with the Indians to its greatest height since the beginning of the war. In the fall of 1779 delegations of Wyandot and some Shawnee visited Fort Pitt with a view to negotiating peace. Yet American strength was illusory, as letters captured by the Girtys from David Rogers clearly revealed. The Wyandot soon renewed their friendship with the British, and in February 1781 the Delaware joined them. With the defection of the Delaware, American influence over the western tribes plunged to its nadir.
Fearing an attack by the Delaware, Brodhead, with an army of three hundred men, destroyed the tribal towns of Coshocton and Lichtenau. Although his men killed fifteen warriors and took twenty prisoners and much plunder, they refused to engage in further chastisement of the Indians, and Brodhead had to return to Wheeling.
The shift of the main theater of war to the southern states after 1780 seriously affected trans-Allegheny defenses. Military needs along the seaboard of Virginia, for instance, prevented the establishment of a post at Kellys Creek, about midway between Point Pleasant and the Greenbrier settlements. They may also have been responsible for the abandonment of Fort Randolph in 1779 and its subsequent burning by the Indians.
Preparations by Clark for an expedition against Detroit in the summer of 1781 may have spared the trans-Allegheny region even greater dangers from the British and Indians. Clark proposed to attack Detroit with two thousand men, but militiamen from Berkeley, Frederick, Hampshire, Ohio, and Monongalia counties were generally unwilling to leave their homes and families exposed in order to deliver a blow against Detroit. Clark was able to assemble only four hundred men at Wheeling. Even then he suffered so many desertions that he left without waiting for another hundred Westmoreland men under Archibald Lochry. His plan completely collapsed when he learned that Indians led by Alexander McKee and Joseph Brant had attacked Lochry below the mouth of the Miami River and killed or captured every member of his force.
War Weariness in the Eastern Panhandle. Clark's inability to recruit a force for an assault upon Detroit indicated