Lochry's Defeat - Background

Background

In the Ohio River valley, the American Revolutionary War was fought primarily between American colonists south and west of the Ohio River (in present-day Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky) and American Indians with their British allies north of the river (now the Midwestern United States). From Detroit, the British recruited and supplied Indian war parties to attack American forts and settlements, hoping to divert American military resources from the primary theater of war in the East as well as keeping the Indians—and the lucrative fur trade—firmly attached to the British Empire. Indians of the Ohio Country, primarily Shawnees, Mingos, Delawares, and Wyandots, hoped to drive American settlers out of Kentucky and reclaim their hunting grounds, which they had lost in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) and Dunmore's War (1774).

The Americans sought to hold on to Kentucky and to secure territorial claims to the region by launching sporadic expeditions against hostile Indian settlements north of the Ohio River. George Rogers Clark, a Virginia militia officer in Kentucky, believed that the Americans could ultimately win the border war by capturing Detroit. He laid the groundwork for this objective in 1779 by seizing the British outpost of Vincennes and capturing the British commander of Detroit, lieutenant governor Henry Hamilton. "This stroke", said Clark, "will nearly put an end to the Indian War." Clark made preparations for a Detroit campaign in 1779 and again in 1780, but each time the expedition was called off because of insufficient men and supplies. "Detroit lost for want of a few Men", he lamented.