"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga, a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to war since; but all the Indians are not angry, only myself.
The frontier was now in a blaze, and the Indians made preparations for war. The Mingos, Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots and outlying Iroquois, especially the Senecas, together with a party of warriors of the Miamis from western Ohio, all banded themselves together, under the command of Cornstalk, the great Shawnee chieftain, and Logan.
Meantime Governor Dunmore was making ready a formidable army with which to overwhelm the hostile Indians. The plan was to raise three thousand men; one half, or the northern wing, was to be under the command of Lord Dunmore in person, while the other, composed entirely of border men, living among the mountains west of the Blue Ridge, was under Gen. Andrew Lewis.
Both wings were ordered to take a position at Point Pleasant, where the Great Kanawha empties into the Ohio. The division led by Lewis reached this place and, having camped on a jut of land between the two rivers, waited the coming of Lord Dunmore and his command.
But the crafty Cornstalk did not propose to wait for the coming of the other wing; through his runners he had full knowledge of the movements of the frontier militia. He was greatly outnumbered; but he had at his command over a thousand warriors, the very pick of the young men to be found among the tribes between the Great Lakes and the Ohio. His foes were divided, and he determined to strike a decisive blow before they were again united. Accordingly, he led his long file of warriors to the mouth of the Kanawha, and attacked the division under Lewis on the morning of October 10, 1774, about daylight.
This battle, known in history by two names--Point Pleasant and the Great Kanawha--was purely an American affair because it was fought solely by the backwoodsmen on one side, and American Indians on the other. It was Greek meeting Greek, or, better still, white American meeting Red, and was one of the most stubbornly fought and bravely contested in the annals of history.