On this day 250 years ago in Pittsburgh, Alexander McKee wrote to William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs that young Shawnee warriors had killed six White men and “some Negroes” in the area of present-day West Virginia. McKee also reported that he met with Shawnee chiefs in Pittsburgh and had urged them to “Use their Utmost Strength and Influence” to stop the warriors from committing further attacks. He threatened that they “must not expect that the White People wou’d long lett their Conduct in this matter pass with Impunity” and that the Shawnee could not win if they went on the warpath. Ironically, McKee would become a Loyalist when the Revolutionary War began and fled to Detroit and would encourage the Shawnee to wage war on the American colonists. Of course the Shawnee were eventually defeated and driven from their homeland in Ohio by the Americans.

Source: Williams, Glenn F., Dunmore’s War at 46.