These backwoods soldiers were attacked by a thousand of the bravest Indian warriors, commanded by Cornstalk, a Shawnee chief. It was a fierce struggle and both sides lost many men, but the pioneers held their ground, and the red men, when they had had enough fighting, went away. This battle at Point Pleasant finished what is sometimes known as Lord Dunmore’s War, so called because it was carried on under Lord Dunmore, the last governor that the English king sent out to Virginia. The successful white men were now free to go down the Ohio river and settle on the Kentucky lands. Among the patriots fighting for their frontier homes were our old friends James Robertson and John Sevier of Watauga, and another young man, Isaac Shelby. We are to hear again about all these, for they were men likely to be found whenever something important was to be done. The Great Kanawha is the same stream that we have called the New river where it crosses the Great Valley in Virginia. We are learning how many great rivers help to make up the Ohio, and what an important region the Ohio valley was to the young country east of the mountains. The settlements of which we have just read were all south of the Ohio river, for north of the river the Americans did not possess the land. This means that the country which now makes up the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois was in foreign hands. The people were largely French and Indians, but they were governed by the British. In order to defeat the Americans, the British, in all the years of the Revolutionary War, were stirring up the Indian tribes against the patriots. Just as St. Leger had Indian allies in New York, so British agents bribed the Indians of the West and South to fight and make as much trouble as possible. George Rogers Clark was a young Virginian who had gone out to Kentucky, which then belonged to the mother state. He heard that Colonel Henry Hamilton, who commanded the British at Detroit, was persuading the Indians of that region to attack the frontier. He set out for Virginia, saw Patrick Henry, the governor, Thomas Jefferson, and other leading men, and gained permission to gather an army. This was in 1777, the year of Oriskany and Saratoga. He spent the winter enlisting soldiers, gathering his forces at Pittsburg. Late the next spring they went in boats down the Ohio to the point where the muddy waters of the Mississippi come in from the north. This alone was a journey of a thousand miles. [Illustration: FIG. 60. GEORGE ROGERS CLARK] Up the Mississippi from that place was Kaskaskia, on the Illinois side. It is now a very small village, but it is the oldest town on the Mississippi river and was the first capital of Illinois. In the time of the Revolution it was governed by the British, although most of the people were French. Clark and his little army soon seized the place and made the people promise obedience to the new government.