CHAPTER VIII 

 LORD DUNMORE'S WAR, 1774 



ON the eve of the Revolution, in 1774, the fron- 

 tiersmen had planted themselves firmly among 

 the Alleghanies. Directly west of them lay the un- 

 tenanted wilderness, traversed only by the war par- 

 ties of the red men, and the hunting parties of both 

 reds and whites. No settlers had yet penetrated it, 

 and until they did so there could be within its bor- 

 ders no chance of race warfare, unless we call by 

 that name the unchronicled and unending contest 

 in which, now and then, some solitary white woods- 

 man slew, or was lain by, his painted foe. But in 

 the Southwest and the Northwest alike, the area of 

 settlement already touched the home lands of the 

 tribes, and hence the horizon was never quite free 

 from the cloud of threatening Indian war; yet for 

 the moment the Southwest was at peace, for the 

 Cherokees were still friendly. 



It was in the Northwest that the danger of col- 

 lision was most imminent; for there the whites and 

 Indians had wronged one another for a generation, 

 and their interests were, at the time, clashing more 

 directly than ever. Much the greater part of the 

 western frontier was held or claimed by Virginia, 

 whose royal governor was, at the time, Lord Dun- 



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