Tag: Shawnee

Old Fort Harrod State Park

On By Eric SternerIn Civilian, ERW Weekender, Memory, Monuments, Native American, Photography, Preservation, Uncategorized, Western Frontier1 Comment

In 1774, frontiersman James Harrod led a surveying party from western Pennsylvania to the region south of the Ohio River known as Kentucky.   The group laid out a small fort, started their first buildings, and staked out claims to larger farms beyond the town’s walls but left the area with the start of Dunmore’s War between Virginia and the Shawnee Native Americans living north of the Ohio. 

Old Fort Harrod Interior

            Harrod returned in the spring of 1775 with a group of settlers.  Greater numbers made a larger fort and town necessary.  Harrod’s return to the area coincided with the outbreak of the American Revolution, which quickly led renewal of intense fighting between Native Americans and whites living on the American frontier.  British support for the Native Americans, particularly after 1777, made Kentucky an extraordinarily dangerous place to live.  Together with Boonesborough and Logan’s Station, Harrodstown, also known as Harrodsburg, constituted the bulk of white settlement in Kentucky during the war’s early years. 

“[T]he poor Kentucky people, who have these twelve months past been confined to three forts, on which the Indians made several fruitless attempts.  They [the Indians] have left us almost without horses sufficient to supply the stations, as we are obliged to get all our provisions out of the woods.  Our corn the Indians have burned all they could find the past summer, as it was in cribs at different plantations some distance from the garrisons, & no horses to bring it in on.  At this time we have not more than two months bread,–near 200 women & children; not able to send them to the inhabitants; many of those families are left desolate, widows with small children destitute of necessary clothing.”

Despite continuing violence on the frontier, the prospect of land and escaping the war in the east led immigration into Kentucky to outpace population outflows while military success under George Rogers Clark ensured that the frontier settlements survived and increased. 

Harrodsburg became the capital of Kentucky County when Virginia asserted ownership of the area and is still the seat of Mercer County.  To commemorate Kentucky’s frontier history, the state established Old Fort Harrod State Park, which encompasses a recreated fortified town complete with period buildings, furnishings, and crops.  Living historians and artisans demonstrate the 18th century skills needed to survive and flourish far from the eastern seaboard.  Several exhibits help explain the frontier experience before, during, and after the American Revolution.   Additionally, the park incorporates several later buildings as a museum of local history and monuments to George Rogers Clark and Abraham Lincoln’s family.

Old Fort Harrod exterior curtain wall with blockhouse

Old Fort Harrod State Park

100 S. College Street

Harrodsburg, KY  40330

Review: Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation by Peter Cozzens

On By Eric SternerIn Book Review, Native American, Personalities, War of 1812, Western FrontierLeave a comment

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness made their way into the American revolutionary project most explicitly in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.  So, I hope you’ll forgive my taking of liberties in reviewing a book that starts in the Revolutionary War Era and peaks during the Madison administration.  Peter Cozzens’ new book, Tecumseh and the Prophet (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020), is a dual biography of the legendary Shawnee leader and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, aka “the Prophet,” whose mid-life inspiration reawakened nativist aspirations among the Native American nations living in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.   Together, the two sought to build a pan-Indian movement to resist the growth of the young American nation into the Midwest in the country’s first decades.

Continue reading “Review: Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation by Peter Cozzens” →

“You are a fine fellow”: The April 24, 1777 Attack on Boonesborough

On By erwguestIn Battles, Campaigns, Common Soldier, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, Personalities, Revolutionary War5 Comments

Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes historian Daniel T. Davis. 

1777.

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An elder Daniel Boone (courtesy of the LoC)

The conflict ignited at Lexington and Concord finally reached beyond the Allegheny Mountains as the British stepped up their raids on American settlements in Kentucky. With so many troops dedicated to the colonies, Henry Hamilton, the Lieutenant Governor at Detroit, relied on Native tribes allied with the Crown to carry on the war effort. In March, Shawnees began to harass Harrodsburg, Logan’s Station and Boonesborough. Founded as part of the Col. Richard Henderson’s proprietary colony of Transylvania along the banks of the Kentucky River, Boonesborough derived its name from one of the most famous long hunters of the day and resident, Daniel Boone. Continue reading ““You are a fine fellow”: The April 24, 1777 Attack on Boonesborough” →

Chief Cornstalk’s American Revolution (part two)

On By Eric SternerIn Battlefields & Historic Places, Emerging Revolutionary War, Personalities, Uncategorized2 Comments

Fort Randolph (Wikimedia Commons).jpg

Modern Replica of Fort Randolph in Point Pleasant, WV (Wikimedia Commons)

At Fort Randolph, erected on the old Point Pleasant battlefield, Captain Matthew Arbuckle decided to take matters with the Shawnee into his own hands.  He was already suspicious of the Shawnee in general, and Cornstalk in particular.  In 1776, he reported that Cornstalk had traveled to Detroit and was “Treating with the English.”[i]  Of course, this was William Wilson’s attempt to preserve the neutrality of tribes nearer Detroit by inviting them to a pace conference.  Cornstalk had gone on the mission to lend weight to Wilson’s voice with those tribes.  Arbuckle did not know that.  Continue reading “Chief Cornstalk’s American Revolution (part two)” →

Chief Cornstalk’s American Revolution (part one)

On By Eric SternerIn Emerging Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War, Uncategorized1 Comment

Chief Cornstalk (Wikimedia Commons).jpg

Chief Cornstalk after an 1870 rendering (Wikimedia Commons)

The American Revolution on the frontier was brutal.  Neutrality was difficult position to maintain, but some Native American tribes attempted it.  In the Ohio River Valley, it was particularly challenging.  But, for a time the Shawnee and Delaware tribes in modern-day Ohio sought to navigate their way between British power in Detroit and the Americans in Pittsburgh.  Chief Hokoleskwa, known as Cornstalk among the whites, was a leader of the pro-peace factions of the Shawnee.  Unfortunately, it got him killed. Continue reading “Chief Cornstalk’s American Revolution (part one)” →

Review: Dunmore’s War, The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era by Glenn F. Williams

On By erwguestIn Book Review, Campaigns1 Comment

ERW Book Reviews (1)
Reviewed by guest historian  Robert “Bert” Dunkerly.

Lord Dunmore’s War remains one of the murkier events of the Colonial era.  Historian Glenn F. Williams has produced a book that will set the standard for the study of this conflict.

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Dunmore’s War, the Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era by Glenn F. Williams

Dunmore’s War, The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era by Williams,  explains the complexity of the conflict and goes into detail analyzing the intertwined diplomatic and military events.  The late 1760s and early 1770s were a fascinating and complex time on the frontier.  Violence from the French and Indian War and Pontiac’s War had subsided, tribes were shifting alliances, settlers were moving into the region, and the colonies were still adjusting to the new realities following the Treaty of Paris.  The British regulations that would trigger colonial resistance were already coming, and tensions were slowly building.  Yet the issues which dominated the attention of most colonists were inter colonial rivalries, such as that between Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

Continue reading “Review: Dunmore’s War, The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era by Glenn F. Williams” →