On this day 250 years at Baker’s Bottom in what is now Hancock County West Virginia, across the Ohio River from the mouth of Yellow Creek in Ohio, a group of 20 some White settlers led by a villain named Daniel Greathouse perpetrated a massacre of friendly Native Americans that directly resulted in Dunmore’s War and made the Shawnee and Mingo Nations enemies of the United States for the next 50 years.

Accounts of the massacre differ but all agree that Greathouse’s gang murdered in cold blood four or five members of the family of Tachnechdorus, a Mingo leader commonly referred to by the Colonists as “Logan” who had always been up this point friendly with the Virginian settlers. Many accounts identify the victims as including Logan’s sister Koonay, who was married to a white man John Gibson, his brother Taylaynee (called John Petty by the settlers), Taylaynee’s son Molnah, and in some accounts Logan’s wife Mellana. Logan’s family were visiting their supposed friends in the family of Joshua Baker at Baker’s Tavern directly across the Ohio from the Mingo settlement on Yellow Creek. In many accounts Baker plied Logan’s family with rum and they were all drunk when Greathouse and his gang shot them. The only member of Logan’s family who was spared was the infant daughter of Koonay and John Gibson who was carried away to live with her father.

In addition to Logan’s family, Greathouse’s gang killed another five or so Indians out of a group of about ten who were paddling across the Ohio to the sound of the gunfire — perhaps to try and rescue Logan’s family or perhaps because they were intent on raiding frontier settlements. In some accounts, Koonay had warned Baker’s family the day before that hostile Indians were planning a raid that day. At any rate about ten Indians were killed and no Virginians were even wounded.

The best source is Williams, Glenn F. (2017). Dunmore’s War, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59416-618-1. at pp. 70-73.

A good compilation of the many conflicting accounts of this massacre can be found at https://www.usdeadlyevents.com/1774-april-30-greathouse-va-force-murder-mingos-at-yellow-creekoh-river-ohwv-10/