72 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
the Virginia militia to invade the Ohio Valley and to "proceed di
rectly to their Towns, and if possible destroy their Towns and maga
zines and distress them in every other way that is possible."41
During "Lord Dunmore's War," Shawnees and other Indigenous
peoples in what the Anglo separatists would soon call the Northwest
Te rritory realized that they were in a life-or-death struggle with these
murdering bands of settlers who were led by a wealthy land specula
tor, intent on destroying their nation and wiping them from the face
of the earth. This realization led to another recurrent factor in the
onslaught of European colonial ventures: the appearance of an ac
commodationist faction within the Shawnee Nation that accepted a
humiliating peace agreement. Dunmore demanded all the Shawnee
hunting grounds in what would later become, following US indepen
dence, the state of Kentucky.4 2 Although Virginia did not get all the
land Dunmore demanded, Dunmore's War was only the beginning
of a three-decade war against the Shawnee Nation and its allies.
That alliance was led militarily in its resistance by the great Te cum
seh, born in 1768, who had grown up in the midst of unrelenting
warfare against his people, along with his brother, Te nskwatawa,
also known as the Prophet and the movement's spiritual leader.43
Dunmore's War pushed the Shawnees into an alliance with the
British against the separatists in 1777· Indigenous warriors struck
scattered squatter settlements throughout the Upper Ohio Va lley
region, driving hundreds of settlers from Shawnee territory. But the
tide of war between the British and the separatists turned, allow
ing the Continental Congress to focus on the Ohio Country and
organize an offensive to annihilate the Shawnee Nation. Five hun
dred separatist fighters, composed of both militiamen and regu
lars, waged a genocidal war. Rampaging against combatants and
noncombatants alike, the ranger force fell on the staunchly neu
tral towns of the Delaware Nation, torturing and killing women
and children. In one particularly twisted incident, the settler troops
slaughtered a Delaware boy who had been bird hunting alone. A
near-riot ensued among the troops over who had the right to claim
the "honor" of the kill. The Continental Congress sent a thousand
more fighters with orders to "proceed, without delay, to destroy such
towns of hostile tribes of Indians as he [Brigadier General Lachlan