h the Indians, and asking
assistance. In the month of May, the excitement among the Indians was
still further increased by the murder of the Delaware sachem, "Bald
Eagle," and the wounding of "Silver Heels," a popular chief of the
Shawanoe tribe. Bald Eagle was an aged, harmless man, who was in the
habit of visiting the whites on the most friendly terms. At the period
of his death, he was returning alone, in his canoe, from a visit to the
fort at the mouth of the Kanawha. The individual who committed the
murder, having scalped him, placed the body in a sitting posture in the
canoe and suffered it to float down the stream, in which condition it
was found by the Indians. Silver Heels was returning from Albany to the
Ohio, having been to that city as the voluntary escort of some white
traders, who were fleeing from the frontiers. He was fired upon and
dangerously wounded while crossing Big Beaver in a canoe. Such were
some of the causes which called into action the vindictive feelings of
the Indians.
The distinguished Mingo chief, Logan, was roused to action by the
murder of his relatives at Yellow creek; and in the course of the
summer, led some war parties against the whites, and destroyed several
families. The Earl of Dunmore, then governor of the colony of Virginia,
made arrangements for a campaign against the Indians, but it was not
until September, that his forces were brought into the field. He
ordered three regiments to be raised west of the Blue Ridge, the
command of which was given to general Andrew Lewis. A similar army was
assembled from the interior, the command of which the Earl assumed in
person. The mouth of the Great Kanawha was the point at which two
divisions of the army were to meet; from whence, under the command of
governor Dunmore, they were to march against the Indian towns on the
north side of the Ohio. General Lewis' division amounted to eleven
hundred men, most of whom were accustomed to danger, and with their
officers, familiar with the modes of Indian warfare. On the eleventh of
September, general Lewis moved from his camp, in the vicinity of
Lewisburg, and after a march of nineteen days, traversing a wilderness
through the distance of one hundred and sixty-five-miles, he reached
the mouth of the Kanawha, and made an encampment at that point. Here he
waited several days for the arrival of governor Dunmore, who, with the
division under his command, was to have met him at this place.
Disappoint
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