Seasonality of Attacks

Southwest Virginia Project

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Related

Index to Hamilton's Atrocity Stories

Indian Captivity Stories/Index

Discussion

This analysis is based on an inventory of reported Indian attacks in southwest Virginia during the period of Indian Hostilitis, 1773-1792. The inventory used has been extracted from Hamiltons "Indian Atrocity Stories". (See: Index to Hamilton's Atrocity Stories). Hamilton's work is close to being exhaustive, though on occassion, additional reports come to light. As an overall statement it is likely that many attacks were never discovered or reported. The death of an Isolated traveler, killed in the wilderness, for example, may never have been detected by the settlers, and so no record survives of the event. In other cases, the settlers may have known of an event, but it was never described in a record that has survived to modern times. It seems likely KBI and CBI events, if detected, were less likely to go unreported during periods of limit reduced attacks---simply because they would have stood out. ON the otherhand, during periods of peak attacks, specific events may not have been reported simply because there were so many of them.