Among the Virginian colonists in the disputed Ohio Country is Captain Michael Cresap, the owner of a trading post at Redstone Old Fort (now Brownsville, Pennsylvania) on the Monongahela River.

Clark's group arrives to Zanesburg to find the whole area in an uproar.

People are panicked by the stories of the survivors of the native attacks.

They are upset by what they view as native savagery.

Fearing for the lives of women and children, the British colonists from the frontier flock to the tiny town for protection.

Cresap's group is swelled with volunteers spoiling for a fight.

Word of the group's arrival and plans have now reached Fort Pitt and Captain John Connolly, the garrison commander, sends a message asking that the volunteers remain in Zanesburg a few days.

He has sent messages to the local tribes to determine their intentions.

A flurry of correspondence results, first, with the group saying they will wait for further word from Connolly.

Before their message reaches Fort Pitt, Cresap receives a second message from Connolly that says the Shawnee-Ohio tribes have signaled they intend war.

Cresap calls a council on April 26.

After he reads Connolly's letter aloud, the assembly declares war against the natives.

After spotting some native canoes on the river the next day, settlers chase them fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) downriver to Pipe Creek.

There settlers engage them in battle, with a few casualties on each side.

The following day, Clark's party abandons the original idea of proceeding to Kentucky.

Expecting retaliation, they break camp and move with Cresap's men to his headquarters at Redstone Old Fort.

A third and larger group that includes George Rogers Clark, who will later become a general during the Revolutionary War, has gathered at the mouth of the Little Kanawha River (now Parkersburg, West Virginia.)

They are waiting there for the arrival of other Virginians expected to join them before they move  downriver to settle lands in Kentucky.

Clark's group begins to hear reports that hostile native nationals are robbing and occasionally killing traders, surveyors and others traveling down the Ohio.

They conclude that hostile nations of the Shawnee-centered Ohio confederacy are bent on all-out war.

The group decides to attack the Ohio Indian village called Horsehead Bottom, near the mouth of the Scioto River (now Portsmouth, Ohio) and on the route to their intended destination in Kentucky.

Few in the group have experience in warfare.

After some discussion, the group selects Cresap, whom they know is about fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) upriver.

They know he is intending to follow them into Kentucky, and he has combat experience.

They send for Cresap, who quickly comes to meet with the group.

After some discussion, Cresap dissuades them from attacking the Shawnee.

He thinks that while the actions of the Shawnee-Ohio confederates are hostile, he does not believe war is inevitable.

He argues further that if the group carries out its plans, he does not doubt their initial success, but war will then surely come.

They will be blamed for it.

He suggests the group return upstream to Zane's small settlement at "Zanesburg" (the future Wheeling) for a few weeks to see what develops.

If the situation calms, they can resume their journey to Kentucky.

The group agrees.

Ebenezer Zane, who will subsequently win fame as an "Indian fighter" and guide, is engaged at the same time and in the same way with a small party of men on lands which he had taken up at or near the mouth of Sandy Creek (now Ravenswood, West Virginia).

Cresap, under authority of the colonial government of Virginia, had taken control of extensive tracts of land at and below the mouth of Middle Island Creek (now Sistersville, West Virginia.)

He comes here there in the early spring of 1774 with a party of men to settle his holdings.

Kentucky's settlers, as the American Revolutionary War began in the East, had become involved in a dispute about the region's sovereignty.

Richard Henderson, a judge and land speculator from North Carolina, has purchased much of Kentucky from the Cherokee in an illegal treaty.

Henderson intends to create a proprietary colony known as Transylvania, but many Kentucky settlers do not recognize Transylvania's authority over them.

In June 1776, these settlers select George Rogers Clark and John Gabriel Jones to deliver a petition to the Virginia General Assembly, asking Virginia to formally extend its boundaries to include Kentucky.

Clark and Jones travel the Wilderness Road to Williamsburg, where they persuade Governor Patrick Henry to create Kentucky County, Virginia.

Before the Revolution had been a leading land speculator in lands west of the Appalachians where Virginians, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, have sought control from Native Americans.

Clark has been given five hundred pounds (two hundred and thirty kilograms) of gunpowder to help defend the settlements and is appointed a major in the Kentucky County militia.

The Revolutionary War intensifies in Kentucky in 1777.

British lieutenant governor Henry Hamilton, from his headquarters at Fort Detroit, arms and encourages his Native American allies to wage war on the Kentucky settlers in hopes of reclaiming the region as their hunting ground.

The Continental Army can spare no men for an invasion in the northwest or for the defense of Kentucky, which is left entirely to the local population.

George Rogers Clark spends several months defending settlements against the Native American raiders as a leader in the Kentucky County militia, while developing his plan for a long-distance strike against the British.

Clark's strategy involves seizing British outposts north of the Ohio River to destroy British influence among its Native American allies.

In December 1777 Clark presents his plan to Virginia's governor, Patrick Henry, and asks for permission to lead a secret expedition to capture the British-held villages at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes in the Illinois country.

Governor Henry commissions Clark as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia and authorizes him to raise troops for the expedition.

George Rogers Clark's volunteers had departed the Falls on June 24 to begin their military campaign.

In July 1778, Clark and about one hundred and seventy-five men cross the Ohio River at Fort Massac and march to Kaskaskia, capturing it on the night of July 4 without firing their weapons.

Lieutenant Colonel Clark and his officers, after heavy recruiting, have attracted volunteers from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.

The men gather in early May near the Falls of the Ohio, south of Fort Pitt.

The group of one hundred and fifty soldiers, eventually known as the Illinois Regiment spends about a month along the Ohio River preparing for its secret mission.

They set out or the Illinois Country on May 12 from Redstone, today's Brownsville, Pennsylvania, taking along eighty civilians who hope to claim fertile farmland and start a new settlement in Kentucky, and ...