Note 5 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 3)

Lord Dunmore’s War (1774) was a natural outgrowth of the strained relations which had long existed between the savages and the white colonists in their midst. As our author has made clear, minor hostilities had broken out here and there ever since the Pontiac uprising, but there had been no general campaign since Bouquet’s treaty in 1764. Affairs had come to that pass by the early spring of 1774, that diplomacy was no longer possible, and an Indian war was inevitable. It was merely a question of detail, as to how and when. The immediate cause of precipitation––not the cause of the war, for that lay deeper––was the territorial dispute over the Ft. Pitt region, between Virginia and Pennsylvania. Dunmore, as royal governor of Virginia, had several reasons for bringing matters to a head––he was largely interested in land speculations under Virginia patents that would be vitiated if Pennsylvania, now becoming aggressive, should succeed in planting her official machinery at Ft. Pitt, which was garrisoned by Virginia; again, his colonists were in a revolutionary frame of mind, and he favored a distraction in the shape of a popular Indian war; finally, it seemed as though a successful raid by Virginia militia would clinch Virginia’s hold on the country and the treaty of peace that must follow would widen the area of provincial lands and encourage Western settlements. April 25, 1774, he issued a proclamation in which, after reference to Pennsylvania’s claims, it was asserted that Ft. Pitt was “in danger of some annoyance from the Indians,” and he called on his local military commandant, the fire-eating Dr. John Connolly, “to embody a sufficient number of men to repel any insult.” Connolly, evidently as part of a preconcerted plan, at once (April 26) issued a circular letter to the excited borderers, which was well calculated to arouse them, being in effect a declaration of war against the Indians. The very next day occurred the Pipe Creek affair, then came the Logan tragedy at Baker’s Bottom, three days later, and at once the war was on at full-head.––R. G. T.