By 1774, the Earl of Dunmore, then governor of the colonies of New York and Virginia, decided to raise an army of three thousand to go against the Shawnees in their homeland in present-day Ohio.
While on a surveying expedition near the Great Miami River, he disappeared, October 1, 1788, when the party was attacked by hostile Shawnees, and his body was never found.
Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia wanted to retaliate by attacking Pluggy's Town in the Ohio Country, but he canceled the expedition for fear that the militia would be unable to distinguish between neutral and hostile Indians, and thus make enemies of the neutral Delawares and Shawnees.