Point Pleasant. In the dark of
night, Cornstalk's Indians crossed the Ohio on rafts, intending to
surprise the white man's camp at dawn. They would have succeeded but for
the chance that three or four of the frontiersmen, who had risen before
daybreak to hunt, came upon the Indians creeping towards the camp. Shots
were exchanged. An Indian and a white man dropped. The firing roused
the camp. Three hundred men in two lines under Charles Lewis and William
Fleming sallied forth expecting to engage the vanguard of the enemy but
encountered almost the whole force of from eight hundred to a thousand
Indians before the rest of the army could come into action. Both
officers were wounded, Charles Lewis fatally. The battle, which
continued from dawn until an hour before sunset, was the bloodiest in
Virginia's long series of Indian wars. The frontiersmen fought as such
men ever fought--with the daring, bravery, swiftness of attack, and
skill in taking cover which were the tactics of their day, even as at
a later time many of these same men fought at King's Mountain and
in Illinois the battles that did so much to turn the tide in the
Revolution. *

* With Andrew Lewis on this day were Isaac Shelby and William
Campbell, the victorious leaders at King's Mountain, James Robertson,
the "father of Tennessee," Valentine Sevier, Daniel Morgan, hero of the
Cowpens, Major Arthur Campbell, Benjamin Logan, Anthony Bledsoe, and
Simon Kenton. With Dunmore's force were Adam Stephen, who distinguished
himself at the Brandywine, George Rogers Clark, John Stuart, already
noted through the Cherokee wars, and John Montgomery, later one
of Clark's four captains in Illinois. The two last mentioned were
Highlanders. Clark's Illinois force was largely recruited from the
troops who fought at Point Pleasant.

Colonel Preston wrote to Patrick Henry that the enemy behaved with
"inconceivable bravery," the head men walking about in the time of
action exhorting their men to "lie close, shoot well, be strong,
and fight." The Shawanoes ran up to the muzzles of the English guns,
disputing every foot of ground. Both sides knew well what they were
fighting for--the rich land held in a semicircle by the Beautiful River.

Shortly before sundown the Indians, mistaking a flank movement by
Shelby's contingent for the arrival of reinforcements, retreated across
the Ohio. Many of their most noted warriors had fallen and among them
the Shawano chief, Puck-e-sh