Revolution reopened the long series of Indian wars along the western
frontiers. Encouraged and financed by the same British agents who had
once acted in behalf of the former colonists, the Cherokees and Shawnees,
particularly, seized upon the unsettled conditions to strike back at the
steadily advancing waves of settlers moving southwestward along the
Clinch, Holston, French Broad, and Watauga Rivers. Throughout 1775 and
1776 Virginian, North Carolinian, and Georgian frontiersmen fought the
Cherokee in a series of bloody battles. The culminating attack by 2,000
riflemen under Colonel William Christian destroyed the major Cherokee
villages and compelled the Cherokees to sign "humiliating" treaties with
the southern states in 1777. The determined Cherokee chieftain, Dragging
Canoe, moved westward, regrouped his warriors at Chickamauga, and
launched another series of frontier raids. North Carolina and Virginia
riflemen under Colonel Evan Shelby in 1779 and Colonel Arthur Campbell in
1781 battled the undaunted Cherokees. Finally, in 1782, the Indians
yielded their territory to the frontiersmen. Little noticed, this series
of battles involved a high percentage of the western Virginians in nearly
constant battle readiness.

George Rogers Clark and the Winning of the West

In the Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois country the Revolution was a
continuation of the long series of bloody battles, ambushes, and
deceptions which the Indians and whites had been perpetrating against
each other since the settlers had pushed over the mountains in the early
1770's. The British had merely replaced the French as the European ally
of the Indians. The principal opponents were the tough, well-organized
Shawnees who had been the main targets of Dunmore and Colonel Andrew
Lewis during Dunmore's War in 1774. The Shawnees were joined by the
Miami, Delaware, and Ottawa Indians. These Ohio Indians needed little
encouragement from Lieutenant Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British
commander at Fort Detroit. Amply supplied with munitions, guns, and money
for patriot scalps received from Hamilton, known among the frontiersmen
as the "Hair Buyer", these Indians swarmed across the Ohio River in 1775,
1776, and 1777. No quarter was asked by either side; none was given.
Conditions became especially critical in 1777 when the Indians were
angered and embittered by the foolish and senseless murder of Cornstalk,
the captured chief of the Shawnees.

Complicating an