Daniel Boone had first reached Kentucky in the fall of 1767 when on a long hunt with his brother Squire Boone, Jr.

While on the Braddock expedition years earlier, Boone had heard about the fertile land and abundant game of Kentucky from fellow wagoner John Findley, who had visited Kentucky to trade with natives.

Boone and Findley had happened to meet again, and Findley had encouraged Boone with more tales of Kentucky.

News had arrived at the same time about the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the Iroquois had ceded their claim to Kentucky to the British.

This, as well as the unrest in North Carolina due to the Regulator movement, had likely prompted Boone to extend his exploration.

Boone had begun a two-year hunting expedition in Kentucky on May 1, 1769.

He and a fellow hunter had been captured on December 22, 1769, by a party of Shawnees, who had confiscated all of their skins and told them to leave and never return.

The Shawnees had not signed the Stanwix treaty; regarding Kentucky as their hunting ground, they consider white hunters here to be poachers.

Boone, however, had continued hunting and exploring Kentucky until his return to North Carolina in 1771, and had returned to hunt there again in the autumn of 1772.

Boone packs up his family and on September 25, 1773, with a group of about fifty emigrants, begins the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement in Kentucky.

Boone is still an obscure hunter and trapper at this time; William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry, the most prominent member of the expedition.

Boone's eldest son James and a small group of men and boys who had left the main party to retrieve supplies are attacked on October 9 by a band of Delawares, Shawnees, and Cherokees.

Natives in the region had been debating what to do about the influx of settlers following the Treaty of Fort Stanwix.

This group had decided, in the words of historian John Mack Faragher, "to send a message of their opposition to settlement…."

James Boone and William Russell's son Henry are captured and gruesomely tortured to death.

The brutality of the killings sends shock waves along the frontier, and Boone's party abandons its expedition.

The massacre is one of the first events in what is to become known as Dunmore's War, a struggle between Virginia and primarily Shawnees of the Ohio Country for control of what is now West Virginia and Kentucky.

For the next several years, native nations opposed to the treaty will continue to attack settlers, ritually mutilate and torture to death the surviving men, and take the women and children into slavery.

The Iroquois, who claim sovereignty over what is now Kentucky, had ceded their claims to this land to the British Crown in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768.

Shawnees to the north and Cherokees to the south, who both use Kentucky as hunting grounds, had not been consulted in the Stanwix treaty.

Violence erupts as American settlers begin moving into the region, resulting in Dunmore's War in 1774, which is fought primarily between Shawnees and the British colony of Virginia.

The Shawnees lose the brief war, and are compelled to cede their claim to Kentucky.

A multi-cultural group of natives called the Mingo has settled the Ohio Valley in the eighteenth century.

They lack a central government and, like all other natives within the region at this time, are subject to the control of the Iroquois Confederacy (comprising the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora people) headquartered in Upstate New York.

The Mingo originally lived closer to the Atlantic Coast, but European settlement had pushed them into western Virginia and eastern Ohio.

During the French and Indian War, the Mingo had sided with the French.

When the French lost and subsequently ceded their holdings to Britain, intensified settlement of the Ohio valley by their former enemies has led to conflicts.

By 1774, tension between the settlers and the native tribes has increased; there had been killings on both sides.

The rivalry between Pennsylvania and Virginia over the site of Pittsburgh increases these unsettled circumstances.

Scouts returning to Fort Pitt report that war is inevitable, and John Connolly sends word for settlers in outlying settlements to be on their guard for an attack.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

One settler, Joshua Baker, operates an inn or tavern of sorts, selling grog to both whites and natives, at the mouth of Yellow Creek, small tributary of the Ohio River located on the western (Ohio) bank about forty miles above Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) and about forty miles (sixty-four kilometers) west northwest of Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh).

Many of the inhabitants of the area have already evacuated, due to the warning sent by John Connolly.

Baker is likewise preparing to leave when an Indian woman tells him that natives are preparing to murder him and his family.

Baker gets out word that he needs help.

Daniel Greathouse, leading a group of twenty-one men, comes to his aid.

The group reaches Baker's on April 30, 1774, and are concealed by Baker in a back room.

Seven natives come across the river to Baker's place, including the brother of Logan, a prominent warrior of the Mingo tribe, and two women and a child, also related to Logan.

The natives begin to drink.

When Logan's brother puts on a hat and coat belonging to one of the settlers, the settler shoots and kills him.

Greathouse's men who had been concealed in the back room rush out and kill all the remaining natives except for the child.

As they leave the tavern, they see two canoes of native men painted and armed for war, coming across the river.

Greathouse's group fire on them, killing most of the occupants of one of the canoes; the others turn back.

It is said that Greathouse took the scalps of his native foes and dangled them from his belt, scalping being a declaration of war among the natives.

This massacre, following a series of incidents, is the final break in relations between the white settlers and the natives and is considered the immediate cause of Lord Dunmore's War of 1774, in which the natives will wreak terrible vengeance on the white settlers.

As a result of the murders, Logan wages war on the settlements along the Ohio and in western Pennsylvania, killing, perhaps, nearly thirty men, women and children.

Chief Logan incorrectly blames Colonel Cresap for his brother's death and in turn, Cresap despises and hates Greathouse for his part in the affair.

Lord John Murray Dunmore, the British Royal Governor of Virginia, raises an army and appoints Cresap to the rank of Captain.

Greathouse will die of the measles in 1775 in Yohogania County, Virginia at about twenty-three years of age.

Cresap will die the same year.