Since the treaty signed with the twenty-two tribes of Pontiac, in 1765, there had been general peace between the red men and the white men in America. This peace was not to continue. For instance, Bald Eagle, a friendly old Delaware chief, who frequently came in, by canoe, to trade for tobacco and sugar, was killed, without cause, by three white men, in southern Pennsylvania. They propped him, sitting, in the stern of his canoe, thrust a piece of journey-cake, or corn-bread, into his mouth, and set him afloat down the stream. Many settlers who knew him well saw him pass and wondered why he did not stop for a visit. Finally he was found to be dead, and was brought ashore for burial. There were bad Indians, too, who murdered and stole. For this, the good Indians suffered. Western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio were a wild and lawless country. Up to 1774 these tit-for-tats had not brought on war. But the French of Canada and the Great Lakes country still secretly urged the Indians to drive out the settlers. The Americans were becoming annoyed by the harsh laws of the English king. There were English officials who desired an Indian war. That would give the Colonists something else to think about. Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, was one of these officials. He had claim to land extending into Pennsylvania; Fort Pitt, at present Pittsburg, was garrisoned by Virginia troops, and he wanted to keep them there, to help his land schemes. April 25, 1774, he issued a proclamation calling upon the commander at Fort Pitt to be ready to repel the Indians. The commander called on the border settlers. There was great excitement. Almost at once the peace chain that Logan had received from his father Shikellemus was broken. He and his wife and relatives, and a number of Shawnees and Delawares, were encamped along Yellow Creek. This emptied into the Ohio River a few miles below Beaver Creek, his former home. On the very day after the commander at Fort Pitt had issued his notice to the border people to arm, from Wheeling, on the Ohio in West Virginia, Captain Michael Cresap led a party of militia and frontiersmen to hunt Indians. They promptly killed two friendly Shawnees at Pipe Creek, fourteen miles below Wheeling. The Shawnees had no time in which to make resistance. The next Indians who were attacked, fired back; one white man was wounded. Among the Indians killed in these two meetings was a relative of Logan. Captain Cresap started north to wipe out Chief Logan's camp. He well knew that as soon as the word of the killings reached the camp, trouble might break. On the way his heart failed him. He was a hot-headed man, he hated Indians--but he balked at shooting women and children. So he turned aside, with his party.