ld admit of their going; and destroy all the Indian
towns and villages which they could reach.

About the first of September, the troops placed under the command
[125] of Gen. Lewis rendezvoused at Camp Union (now Lewisburg) and
consisted of two regiments, commanded by Col. William Fleming of
Botetourt and Col. Charles Lewis of Augusta, and containing about four
hundred men each. At Camp Union they were joined by an independent
volunteer company under Col. John Field of Culpepper; a company from
Bedford under Capt. Buford and two from the Holstein settlement (now
Washington county) under Capts. Evan Shelby and Harbert. These three
latter companies were part of the forces to be led on by Col.
Christian, who was likewise to join the two main divisions of the army
at Point Pleasant, so soon as the other companies of his regiment
could be assembled. The force under Gen. Lewis, having been thus
augmented to eleven hundred men, commenced its march for the mouth of
Kenhawa on the 11th of September 1774.[5]

From Camp Union to the point proposed for the junction of the northern
and southern divisions of the army, a distance of one hundred and
sixty miles, the intermediate country was a trackless forest, so
rugged and mountainous as to render the progress of the army, at once,
tedious and laborious. Under the guidance of Capt. Matthew Arbuckle,
they however, succeeded in reaching the Ohio river after a march of
nineteen days; and fixed their encampment on the point of land
immediately between that river and the Big Kenhawa.[6] The provisions
and ammunition, transported on packhorses, and the beeves in droves,
arrived soon after.

When the army was preparing to leave Camp Union, there was for a while
some reluctance manifested on the part of Col. Field to submit to the
command of Gen. Lewis. This proceeded from the fact, that in a former
military service, he had been the senior of Gen. Lewis; and from the
circumstance that the company led on by him were Independent
Volunteers, not raised in pursuance of the orders of Governor Dunmore,
but brought into the field by his own exertions, after his escape from
the Indians at Kelly's. These circumstances induced him to separate
his men from the main body of the army on its march, and to take a
different way from the one pursued by it,--depending on his own
knowledge of the country to lead them a practicable route to the
river.[7]

While thus detached from the forces under Gen. Lewi