Battle of Point Pleasant, The

DESCRIPTION: "Let us mind the tenth day of October, Seventy-four, which caused woe." "Captain Lewis and some noble Captains" engage in battle with the Indians by the Ohio River; "seven score," including the officers, are casualties, but the battle is won
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1913 (Aplington)
KEYWORDS: Indians(Am.) battle death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Oct 10, 1774 - Battle of Point Pleasant
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Pound-AmericanBalladsAndSongs, 40, p. 93, "The Battle of Point Pleasant" (1 text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, p. 213, "The Battle of Point Pleasant" (1 text)
Salt-BuckeyeHeritage-OhiosHistory, pp. 25-26, "The Battle of Point Pleasant" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colonial-Dames-AmericanWarSongs, p. 13, "The Battle of Point Pleasant" (1 text, so different from most of the above that it is very possibly a separate poem)
Roud #4029
NOTES [730 words]: This song is item dA31 in Laws's Appendix II.
The Battle of Point Pleasant was the culmination of "Lord Dunmore's War." John Murray, Earl of Dunmore (1732-1809), was governor of Virginia, but determined to control territories beyond the Appalachians (a plan completely contrary to official British policy). His maneuvers pushed the Shawnee and Ottowa Indians to war.
Europeans had already committed one atrocity, on April 30, 1774, at Yellow Creek. They lured a group of Mingo into their camp and killed ten of them, including several relatives of the chief known as Logan (Mustful, pp, 9-10. For Logan, and Yellow Creek, see "Logan's Lament.")
Logan swore vengeance, and Indian raids became so common and so deadly that the Americans started to abandon their properties west of the mountains. The perception was that either the Americans must fight or they must evacuate (Mustful, pp. 11-12). As a result, the Virginia House of Burgesses authorized Dunmore to go to war against the tribes (Mustful, p. 13).
Dunmore mustered two "divisions," one of about 1300 men which accompanied Dunmore and the other of about 1100 men led by Andrew Lewis. Dunmore's own forces, on October 9, were at Fort Gower (where the Hocking River flows into the Ohio); Lewis was trying to join Dunmore at Pickaway Plains (Mustful, pp. 15-16. Mustful calls Lewis a general; most other sources call him a colonel).
The Battle of Point Pleasant was fought when the Shawnee chief Cornstalk was caught between the two converging columns of Virginia soldiers, led by Dunmore and Lewis. Cornstalk, realizing his plight, attacked Lewis's force at Point Pleasant (at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River). The battle lasted for many hours, and both sides suffered heavy casualties (Thompson, p. 99; Mustful, pp. 17-18), but the Indians abandoned the field, and that made it a victory for the Americans. Mustful, p. 19, believes the Indians suffered more than 200 casualties; the Europeans suffered about 75 killed and 140 wounded. Hoffman, p. 77, agrees with the latter figure but points out that the Shawnee had left 78 rafts behind, hinting that they had 78 killed.
After Point Pleasant, there was little the Shawnee could do, and diplomats had already convinced other tribes to leave them to their fate. Negotiations secured the Europeans free passage of the Ohio and hunting rights in Kentucky.
The battle "resulted in the subjection of western Indian tribes and the advancement of the [European] line of settlement west from the Alleghany (sic.) Mountains to the Ohio river" (Mustful, p. 4), giving the Europeans control of the lands south of the Ohio (Mustful, p. 20). Mustful goes on to call the treaty "supremely advantageous" to the European side. Based on the terms listed on pp. 49-50, I'd agree: The Indians had to give up their prisoners, any "Negroes" who were in their possession (including, I would assume, runaway slaves), and any horses or other property; they could not hunt beyond the Ohio; they had to abide by European commerce regulations; they had to give hostages; and they had to let "white people" hunt on their side of the river. They received nothing in return -- not even explicit recognition of any rights north of the Ohio. It exactly conforms to the bitter old joke "What's ours is ours and what's yours is negotiable."
Chief Cornstalk remained free for a while, but in 1777 he tried to warn the Americans that several tribes were considering going over to the British. For risking everything to offer this help to the Americans, he and few family members and friends with him were taken into custody (Mustful, p. 30); eventually he was murdered by a gang of anti-Indian toughs (Hoffman, p. 119).
There are at least four books about the Battle of Point Pleasant. Two are older (and, I suspect, biased): Virgil A. Lewis, History of the Battle of Point Pleasant, and Livia Nye Simpson-Poffenbarger, Battle of Point Pleasant October 10, 1774: "First Battle of the Revolution"; these are both available on Google Books. The more recent are John Winkler, Point Pleasant 1774: Prelude to the American Revolution, 2014, and Colin Mustful, The Battle of Point Pleasant: A Critical Event at the Onset of a Revolution, 2012. Mustful is listed as a book, but it's only 55 pages, many of them double-spaced; it's really more of a pamphlet, and even the Winkler book is only 96 pages. - RBW
Bibliography Last updated in version 7.0
File: LPnd093

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2025 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.