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Updated: June 29, 2025
At the distance of only a mile from the Point, Cornstalk was met by a detachment of the Virginians, under the command of Colonel Charles Lewis, a brother of the general; and here, about sunrise on the 10th of October, 1774, commenced one of the longest, severest, and bloodiest battles ever fought upon the Western frontiers.
While unused to horses and largely ignorant of the country, they had good officers and they stood firm. The Southern charge, meeting a second volley from the breech-loading rifles, broke upon their front. Harry, almost by the side of Sherburne, felt the shock as they galloped into the battle smoke, and then he felt the Virginians reel.
The Cherokees had been showing signs of hostility for some time. They had murdered two Virginians the previous year; and word was brought to the settlements, early in the summer of '76, that they were undoubtedly preparing for war, as they were mending guns, making moccasins and beating flour for the march. In June their ravages began.
Jefferson was correct in stating that Virginians moved forward to war with greater unity and with fewer examples of Torism than any other colony. Robert Calhoon, historian of loyalism, notes Virginia Loyalists consisted "of a handful of Anglican clergymen, the members of a moribund Royal Council, and several hundred Scottish merchants, and were ... not a very formidable coalition."
The Virginians knew a brave man when they saw one, and they carried him tenderly into their lines and wrote his last messages, and that night they sent the honored body back to his brigade, and so the stricken father found and brought home all that was left of the gallant boy in whom his hopes were centred.
As a result the planters had an abundance of spare time, which they devoted to cock-fighting, horse-racing, fishing, shooting, and fox-hunting, all, save the first, wholesome and manly sports, but which did not demand any undue mental strain. There is, indeed, no indication that the Virginians had any great love for intellectual exertion.
A party of light horsemen followed, and last of all another body of Virginians brought up the rear. The men marched in silence, six feet from one another, ready, if any part of the force halted, to face outward, and prepare to meet an attack.
The Virginians, less particular, but more ambitious, sought the best lands for grain and tobacco; consequently they were more diffused, and their improvements, from their superior wealth, were more imposing. Wealth in all communities is comparative, and he who has only a few thousand dollars, where no one else has so much, is the rich man, and ever assumes the rich man's prerogatives and bearing.
One of the most bloody battles was then fought, which ever occurred in Indian warfare. Though the Virginians with far more potent weapons repelled their assailants, they paid dearly for their victory. Two hundred and fifteen of the Virginians fell dead or severely wounded beneath the bullets or arrows of their foes. The loss which the savages incurred could never be ascertained with accuracy.
But it was a fine army, two British regiments under Halket and Dunbar, their numbers reinforced by Virginia volunteers, and five hundred other Virginians, divided into nine companies. There was a company of British sailors, too, and artillery, and hundreds of wagons and baggage horses.
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