The Strange End of Chief Cornstalk!
Chief Cornstalk was Shawnee. He was known as a vicious Shawnee warrior who terrorized the settlers in western Virginia during the 18th century.
As thousands of immigrants flooded the port in Philadelphia and hitched oxen to wagons that would deliver them across the wilderness trail to free land in the far west, unfriendly tribes of Indians prepared to greet them with their bows and arrows, hatchet axes, lances, tomahawks, and knives. During the 17th century, the Shawnee occupied Pennsylvania but a century later had spread into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
They were hunters on the Great Plains, hunters of buffalo, deer, bear, and wild turkey.
On October 10, 1774, the Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunsmore, called outall of the militia companies in Virginia to battle the Shawnee. The two militia companies in Botetourt County paddled the Mississippi River to the Great Kanawha River where it was joined by the Ohio River. The other Virginia militia companies would not arrive in time. As soon as the militia were on the ground, Chief Cornstalk attacked. The fight lasted all day, with many casualties on each side. Cornstalk conceded with the signing of a Peace Treaty, which he did not honor. The Shawnee continued thieving, marauding, scalping and taking white women as slaves. Two years later, the Shawnee were fitted with rifles from the…
