A Frontier of Fear: Terrorism and Social Tension along Virginia's Western Waters, 1742–1775

Fear's Reflection

On a summer day in the wake of General Braddock's defeat along the Monongahela, a small band of Shawnee warriors prepared to strike the Draper's Meadows settlement, located on the western waters of Virginia's frontier. This settlement represented English expansion and foreshadowed the movement of more Europeans into the region. While no major concentration of Amerindians was present in the immediate vicinity, Draper's Meadows was positioned in an area that the Iroquois had claimed until the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster in which they relinquished their purported control over the region and made the area open for European settlement. However, while primarily uninhabited by Amerindians, the newly opened backcountry in which Draper's Meadows was positioned was where the Shawnee and Cherokee, among other tribes, hunted game and through which they traveled when going to war with one another.¹

The Shawnee were familiar with the region, and Draper's Meadows' location made it a relatively easy target. Relying on tried and true tactics, the Shawnee followed the Ohio, Kanawha, and New Rivers until they positioned themselves to strike Draper's Meadows. As the majority of the men in the settlement went into the fields to work, they left behind the influential land speculator James Patton, a few other men, and the women and children; the settlement lay nearly defenseless. Without warning, the Shawnee launched their surprise attack, killing James Patton, Mrs. George Draper, Casper Barrier, and either one or two of John Draper's children. According to one account the Shawnee murdered the child or children by "knocking their brains out on the ends of the Cabin logs." The Shawnee also left wounded James Cull, and they took as captives Mary Draper Ingles, Mrs. John Draper, and Henry Leonard, along with one or two children. The Shawnee burned the settlement and then disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared. In order to instill fear among the survivors, the Shawnee took the time to stop at Philip Barger's home approximately one mile west of Draper's Meadows. The raiders killed Barger, decapitated him, put his head in a sack, and then took it to Philip Lybrook's home where they threw the sack on the porch and told Mrs. Lybrook to open it in order to find an acquaintance. The Shawnee then successfully made their way back to their villages in the Ohio River Valley.²

While the Shawnee raid on Draper's Meadows became the most famous Amerindian attack along Virginia's western waters, due mainly to Mary Draper Ingles's account of her dramatic escape from captivity and four-hundred-mile trek back home, such raids along the backcountry were quite common throughout the French and Indian War. William Preston kept a record of frontier settlers killed, wounded, and taken captive between October 1754 and April 1758. During that time he recorded over three hundred names of frontier settlers who became casualties as a result of Amerindian raids along the frontier. Twenty years later, in the midst of the American Revolution, Preston still viewed the Shawnee as "Our old Inveterate Enemies" as they continued to plague Virginia's frontier.³

With such raids continuing to threaten the region through the American Revolution and into the early national period, the threat of Amerindian attack quickly became a part of frontier life within the New River Valley. Fear came to dominate not only imperial policy, as England began to open the lands west of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1720s to speculators and settlers, but fear also began to shape the New River Valley's society as settlers strove to effectively combat the terror Amerindians offered. This fear helped shape the frontier as settlers looked to the gentry to protect them and as settlers embraced an aggressive stance in relation to Amerindians along the frontier. In essence, the tactics Amerindians resorted to, as they attempted to stem the tide of European encroachment on new lands west of the Blue Ridge Mountains during and following the French and Indian War, created...