s which made the settlers
in a sense responsible for them.

It was we [they said] who so kindly received Europeans on their
first arrival into our own country. We took them by the hand
and bade them welcome, to sit down by our side and live with us
as brothers; but how did they requite our kindness? They at
first asked only for a little land on which to raise bread for
their families and pasture their cattle, which we freely gave
them. They saw the game in the woods which the Great Spirit had
given us for our subsistence, and they wanted it too. They
penetrated into the woods in quest of game, they discovered
spots of land which they also wanted, and because we were loath
to part with it, as we saw they already had more than they had
need of, they took it from us by force and drove us to a great
distance from our homes.

At this time there was not community of interest or united action
among the colonies. Pennsylvania and Virginia each claimed authority
in the Indian country. The Pennsylvanians viewed the country from
a trading point of view; the Virginians viewed it as a field for
settlement. So bitter was the feud between the two colonies that
for a time civil strife was imminent. And while this family quarrel
was at its height, the Indian scalping raids grew in frequency and
violence; and the memory of the Pontiac War was still fresh in the
minds of the frontiersmen. Many Pennsylvanians in the west became
alarmed, and soon the passes of the Alleghanies were filled with
fugitive settlers returning to their former homes. The Virginians
of Kentucky were made of sterner stuff. Lord Dunmore, the royal
governor of Virginia, was ambitious for his colony, and determined
to make good by the sword Virginia's claim to the region of which
Fort Pitt was the centre; and, under leaders like the veteran
borderers, Michael Cresap and Daniel Boone, and the youthful and
audacious hunter and surveyor, George Rogers Clark, the Virginians
strengthened their fortified villages and led successful raids
against the tribes north of the Ohio.

For some time the Shawnees had been at peace, but in the latter
part of April 1774, when two Indians suspected of horse-stealing
were put to death near Wheeling, on the Ohio, they threatened war.
A little later a party of Virginians fired upon a band of Indians,
and killed several. Again, thirty-two white men, hitherto friends
of the Indians, set out to attack