The origins of the Shawnee people in West Virginia are not fully known, but by

1600 they had settled in the Ohio River Valley with a large population.

Spiritly, the Shawnee people believed in the highly popular great spirit who had two deities,

one of them being the grandmother, who was in charge of all Indian affairs, the other in charge of the white men who was the grandson.

They held to this basic faith rigidly, but there was another aspect of it they rarely told.

There was an evil spirit they believed in, a dark being. of it

they rarely told. There was an evil spirit they believed in, a dark being named

Motshi Monito who was able to oppress and punish all mankind.

Though as the myth goes, this spirit was weaker than the great spirit and was in subjection to it.

In the 1770s, seven Indian nations formed a confederacy to resist the westward expansion of the white man.

Their chief was a shawny man respected by all.

Cornstalk was his name.

In 1774, he led the Confederacy in a stand against American settlement to protect the valley they called home.

But the tribesmen were no match for the advanced weaponry and organizational tactics of the colonial

military. The Indians were driven back into the untamed lands of

modern Ohio and the Americans erected a fort in the area they had won the decisive

victory. Today that area is known as Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

As time healed the wounds of violence,

Chief Cornstalk and the Colonials made peace with one another.

He proved to be a loyal ally, informing the Americans of a scheme by the British to incite the Indian tribes to violence against the settlers.

Many of the tribes, though, listened to the British and began to plan for a massive attack on that same fort from three years earlier.

Kornstalk, trying to make his intentions of peace clear,

...