On this day 250 years ago Virginia frontiersman were attacking Native Americans on the Ohio River south of Wheeling (then in Virginia and now West Virginia). Two days earlier, a body of 80 to 90 frontiersmen led by Michael Cresap had declared war in the Indian fashion by gathering to strike a pole with their hatchets. They had learned of a public letter issued by John Connolly, Governor Dunmore’s agent at Fort Pitt, declaring that hostile Indians were threatening the Virginia frontier and many frontiersman, as well as Native Americans, interpreted Connolly’s letter as a declaration of war on the Indians. They had also heard the report that Shawnees had fired on a hunting party a day earlier although no one was hurt, and they were aware of the capture and release of Darnell’s party of surveyors by the Shawnees and the threat that if any others traveled down the Ohio again they would be killed. Then that night they heard a rumor that two frontiersmen had recently been murdered by Indians.

Following up on their declaration of war, on April 27 Cresap led a party of 15 frontiersmen that included George Rogers Clark to attack a party of 14 Indians in five canoes at the mouth of Pipe Creek on the western (Ohio) side of the Ohio River a few miles below Wheeling. Cresap’s men killed one of the Indians and wounded others and several of his men were wounded, one seriously. They captured the Indians’ canoes, sixteen kegs of rum, two saddles, bridles and “a considerable quantity of ammunition and other warlike stores.”

Also on this day 250 years ago, Deputy Indian Superintendent Alexander McKee at Fort Pitt recorded in his journal about another attack by Cresap and his men. Two days previously they had attacked a canoe owned by a white trader who had hired a white man named Stephens, a Shawnee and a Delaware to bring trade goods to the Shawnee towns to trade for pelts. The Shawnee and Delaware were both killed but Stephens was not shot and reported back to McKee about the ambush.

Although Michael Cresap was mistaken in assuming that the Indians he attacked in these two incidents were hostile, his attacks provoked Indians raids that sparked Dunmore’s War and continued hostilities with the Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo during the Revolutionary War. He was wrongly identified as a ruthless murderer of innocent Native Americans for many years after his death, but modern historians have proven that he was a peaceful trader with good relations with Native Americans before the war and on many occasions counseled restraint when others were planning attacks on peaceful Indians.

At the start of Revolutionary War in 1775 Captain Cresap led the first company of Virginia rifleman on a rapid march to join Washington’s army besieging Boston, but died in New York City of illness during the march and is buried there.

George Rogers Clark went on to become the greatest hero of the War in the Northwest and was largely responsible for why Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and even Kentucky are now part of the United States.

Source: Williams, Glenn F., Dunmore’s War at pp. 61-67.