Recently they had been seriously alarmed by the tendency of the whites to encroach on the great hunting-grounds south of the Ohio;[11] for here and there hunters or settlers were already beginning to build cabins along the course of that stream.

The cession by the Iroquois of these same hunting-grounds, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, while it gave the whites a colorable title, merely angered the northwestern Indians.

Half a century earlier they would hardly have dared dispute the power of the Six Nations to do what they chose with any land that could be reached by their war parties; but in 1774 they felt quite able to hold their own against their old oppressors, and had no intention of acquiescing in any arrangement the latter might make, unless it was also clearly to their own advantage.
In the decade before Lord Dunmore's war there had been much mutual wrong-doing between the northwestern Indians and the Virginian borderers; but on the whole the latter had occupied the position of being sinned against more often than that of sinning.

The chief offence of the whites was that they trespassed upon uninhabited lands, which they forthwith proceeded to cultivate, instead of merely roaming over them to hunt the game and butcher one another.

Doubtless occasional white men would murder an Indian if they got a chance, and the traders almost invariably cheated the tribesmen.