Cornstalk (Hokoleskwa), from Point Pleasant to Fort Randolph

That war grew out of the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the Iroquois ceded land south of the Ohio River, present West Virginia and Kentucky, to the British without consulting the Shawnees who hunted there.

On October 10, 1774, 252 years ago today, Cornstalk struck Col. Andrew Lewis’s wing of the Virginia army at Point Pleasant, where the Kanawha meets the Ohio, before it could unite with Lord Dunmore’s. Through the day-long battle Virginians heard him urging his men to “be strong, be strong!” The Shawnees had the upper hand at first, but colonial reinforcements arrived, and at nightfall the outnumbered warriors quietly withdrew back across the Ohio. At Camp Charlotte, Cornstalk then apparently accepted the Ohio River as the boundary of Shawnee lands, the peace that opened Kentucky to the settlers of 1775 (that treaty has its own story here), and he gave four hostages, including his son.

A Virginia officer wrote that he had never heard an orator surpass him. When the Revolution began, Cornstalk argued for neutrality, fearing that war with the Americans would be disastrous for the Shawnees, while militant bands under leaders such as Blackfish went their own way.

In the fall of 1777 he went to Fort Randolph, built on the Point Pleasant battlefield, to learn American intentions, and the commander, Matthew Arbuckle, detained him with his son Elinipsico and two other Shawnees. On November 10, after unknown Indians killed a militiaman nearby, soldiers killed all four prisoners. More Shawnees joined the militants after the murder, though historian John Sugden argues it did not by itself bring the Shawnees into the war.

The accused killers were tried and acquitted. Point Pleasant is in West Virginia, so this story has no map pin.