Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/69

 division chiefly from country west of the Blue Ridge to be commanded by Lord Dunmore in person. The southern division mused in counties east of the Blue Ridge, led by General Andrew Lewis. The two armies were to proceed by different routes to the month of the Big Kanawha, unite and from thence cross the Ohio and penetrate the northwest country. defeat the red men and destroy all the Indian towns they could reach. This was the plan made by Dunmore, but which he failed to follow, thereby making his real intentions subject to suspicions which cloud his name yet. It is with the command under General Lewis we have to deal while it was left to meet the onset of the flower of the fighting force of the Ohio tribes in an all-day's desperate action, the Indians being under command of Cornstalk, the famous warrior of his day. Both sides greatly suffered and were completely exhausted, the Indians drawing off, cowed so that their brave leader could get no further tight out of them. The result was their signing of a treaty Governor Dunmore had tried to make in the Scioto Valley on the day of the battle of Point Pleasant, though according to his plan of campaign he should have joined Lewis at Point Pleasant. In the belief about his failure and the brave and successful fight made without him the seeds of distrust of England and her policies were sown which nourished through three generations of family tradition by the frontier settlers of the Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, and Missouri, and reaching Oregon seventy years afterward, nerved the arms and steadied the aims of just such men as mustered under George Rogers Clark at old Vincennes and Jackson at New Orleans. Just such men as settled the Florida and Black Hawk Wars; and just such men as took dominion over Oregon and as marched through Mexico under Doniphan.

The writer was first led into this line of thought on reading a very interesting paper in the West Virginia Historical Magazine of October, 1902, by Miss L. K. Poage, of Ashland, Kentucky, on the leaders who lived after participating in the battle of Point Pleasant, and seventy years later many of the names of whom were found among the pioneers to Oregon.