Indian Attacks in Southwest Virginia

Commencing with the attack on the Boone-Russell party in October 1773, and culminating in "The Last Indian Raid Upon the Western Frontiers of Virginia", attacks and the threat of attack were an ever present fear among the settlers. Emory Hamilton gathered extensive data on these attacks for a series of newspaper articles under the collective title of Indian Atrocities along the Clinch, Powell, and Holston Rivers of Southwest Virginia, 1773-1794. Hamilton's articles describe well over 400 such attacks. ^[1] Nonetheless, they do not capture every attack made in southwest Virginia. Many attacks undoubtedly went unrecorded; and even where they were recorded, we are often left without knowing the identities of the individuals involved, the exact time, or the exact location of the attack. Hamilton does an admirable job of extracting the available information from the surviving documentation. As a first step in a detailed study of these attacks, Hamilton's articles have been examined to create a preliminary database of attacks. The following articles are based on this examination.

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