The "Western" American Revolution

While the American Revolution was largely along the eastern seaboard, lesser known but often savage encounters happened in the newly settled regions of the Ohio Valley.  Of the 2.4 million colonists in 1775, only a small percentage of those lived in the Allegheny Valley, and even fewer had gone through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and Tennessee.

To the Continental Congress, the west  (at this time the west was no farther than Kentucky) was of small importance at first.  They doubted the loyalties of the frontiersmen.  On the other hand, settlers had ample reason to distrust both patriots and loyalists. The "no taxation without representation" had little to do with the pioneers, who complained that their interests were ignored in favor of eastern merchant-planter elites.

John Stuart, British superintendent of Indian affair in the south, was warned in 1776 of impending raids on settlers in Tennessee.  The settlers repelled the Indians who attacked isolated farms and settlements in western Virginia, the Carolinas, and eastern Tennessee.  Finally met by a force of militia, their power was temporarily broken.  The situation was repeated in Kentucky.

In the northern Mohawk Valley in New York and Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, Indians attacked farming settlements.  By 1778 many of the fields that fed the Continental Army were ablaze.  Farmers lived in fear of being murdered by the Iroquois and the Loyalists like bloodthirsty John Butler and his Butler's Rangers.  Joseph Brant, Mohawk chief and his Iroquois teamed up with Butler's Rangers to threaten every settlement from New York to Pennsylvania.

Next time...Washington's Plans for the Iroquois
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 5, 1892, the famous Dalton Gang attempts the daring daylight robbery of two Coffeyville, Kansas, banks at the same time. But if the gang members believed the sheer audacity of their plan would bring them success, they were sadly mistaken. Instead, they were nearly all killed by quick-acting townspeople.