y clearly appear how an Indian
rising would have settled the ownership of Fort Pitt, it is evident
enough where the interests of Virginia and Pennsylvania clashed.
Virginia wanted land for settlement and speculation; Pennsylvania wanted
the Indians left in possession for the benefit of the fur trade. So far
from stirring up the Indians, as his enemies declared, Croghan was as
usual giving away all his substance to keep them quiet. * Indeed, during
this summer of 1774, eleven hundred Indians were encamped about Fort
Pitt visiting him.

* The suspicion that Croghan and Lord Dunmore, the Governor of
Virginia, were instigating the war appears to have arisen out of the
conduct of Dr. John Connolly, Dunmore's agent and Croghan's nephew.
Croghan had induced the Shawanoes to bring under escort to Fort Pitt
certain English traders resident in the Indian towns. The escort was
fired on by militiamen under command of Connolly, who also issued a
proclamation declaring a state of war to exist. Connolly, however,
probably acted on his own initiative. He was interested in land on his
own behalf and was by no means the only man at that time who was
ready to commit outrages on Indians in order to obtain it. As Croghan
lamented, there was "too great a spirit in the frontier people for
killing Indians."

Two hundred thousand acres in the West--Kentucky and West Virginia--had
been promised to the colonial officers and soldiers who fought in
the Seven Years' War. But after making the Proclamation the British
Government had delayed issuing the patents. Washington interested
himself in trying to secure them; and Lord Dunmore, who also had caught
the "land-fever," * prodded the British authorities but won only rebuke
for his inconvenient activities. Insistent, however, Dunmore sent out
parties of surveyors to fix the bounds of the soldiers' claims. James
Harrod, Captain Thomas Bullitt, Hancock Taylor, and three McAfee
brothers entered Kentucky, by the Ohio, under Dunmore's orders. John
Floyd went in by the Kanawha as Washington's agent. A bird's-eye view of
that period would disclose to us very few indeed of His Majesty's loving
subjects who were paying any attention to his proclamation. Early in
1774, Harrod began the building of cabins and a fort, and planted corn
on the site of Harrodsburg. Thus to him and not to Boone fell the honor
of founding the first permanent white settlement in Kentucky.

* See Alvord, "The Mississi