After the inhuman murder of the family of Logan, the Indian chieftain, by one Greathouse and his drunken companions (April 30th), Logan, who contrary to romantic views was a blackhearted and vengeful savage, harried the Tennessee and Virginia borders, burning and slaughtering.

Unable to arouse the Cherokees, owing to the opposition of Atta-kulla-kulla, Logan as late as July 21st said in a letter to the whites: "The Indians are not angry, only myself," and not until then did Dunmore begin to give full execution to his warlike plans.

The best woodsmen of the border, Daniel Boone and the German scout Michael Stoner, having been despatched on July 27th by Colonel William Preston to warn the surveyors of the trans-Alleghany, made a remarkable journey on foot of eight hundred miles in sixty-one days.
Harrod's company at Harrodsburg, a company of surveyors at Fontainebleau, Floyd's party on the Kentucky, and the surveyors at Mann's Lick, this warned, hurried in to the settlements and were saved.

Meanwhile, Dunmore, in command of the Virginia forces, invaded territory guaranteed to the Indians by the royal proclamation of 1763 and recently (1774) added to the province of Quebec, a fact of which he was not aware, conducted a vigorous campaign, and fortified Camp Charlotte, near Old Chillicothe.
Andrew Lewis, however, in charge of the other division of Dunmore's army, was the one destined to bear the real brunt and burden of the campaign.

His division, recruited from the very flower of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, was the most representative body of borderers of this region that up to this time had assembled to measure strength with the red men.