s, too--ranking second to only the
famed Fort Pitt at Pittsburgh. It stood near the river edge of a flat
bluff about a quarter of a mile up the Ohio from the mouth of Wheeling
Creek. Its stockade of sharpened white-oak pickets seventeen feet high
enclosed more than half an acre, with small block-houses or bastions in
the corners, and with a commandant's log house of two stories, in the
middle.

Inland, or east from it, there arose a high hill--Wheeling Hill.
Between the fort and the base of the hill were the Ebenezer Zane cabin
and the other cabins, on the bottom-lands, forming Wheeling.

To this time young Wheeling had been little bothered by the Indians.
But the Ohio River was the border country; it flowed through a No-Man's
Land. On the east and south the white people were pressing toward it,
on the west and north the red people were seeking to keep its banks
clear. The struggle waged back and forth. All the territory of
present Ohio was red, and in Ohio and adjacent Indiana the Shawnees,
Miamis, Wyandot Hurons, the Mingos, the war Delawares, and such, had
their principal towns. The Wheeling settlements in the pan-handle were
within short striking distance of the Indian strongholds.

The War of the Revolution had been in full stride for a year. The
majority of the Indians of the northwest sided with the British, in the
hopes of keeping their country from the Americans. It is said that
Isaac Zane, the white Wyandot, sent the word of danger to the
commanding officer at Fort Pitt. At any rate, on the first day of
August, 1777, Chief White-eyes the friendly Delaware appeared there
with warning that the Indians of the Northern Confederacy, helped by
the British, were making ready "to take Wheeling home with them."

[Illustration: The great leap of Major McColloch. (From an Old Print)]

General Edward Hand of Fort Pitt dispatched a runner to Colonel David
Shepherd, of Fort Shepherd, six miles up Wheeling Creek.

"The Indians are planning to attack Wheeling. You will therefore
remove your forces from Fort Shepherd and rally all the militia of your
district between the Ohio and the Monongahela at Fort Henry."

No regular troops might be spared by General Washington; they were
needed at the front--and these were dark days for the Buff and Blue.
The home guards, or militia, needs must protect the settlements on the
far border. But Fort Henry itself had no garrison of any kind. The
settlers around-about were