Sandy Creek Expedition
The Sandy Creek Expedition, also referred to as the Sandy Expedition or sometimes the Big Sandy Expedition, (not to be confused with the Big Sandy Expedition of 1851) was a 1756 campaign of Virginia soldiers and Cherokee warriors into what is now eastern West Virginia, against Shawnee warriors who were raiding Virginia farms and settlements. The campaign set out in mid-February, 1756, and was immediately slowed by harsh weather and inadequate provisions. With morale failing, the expedition was forced to turn back in mid-March without encountering the enemy. The expedition was the first allied military  campaign between the British and the Cherokees against the French and their allied Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Background. The defeat of General Edward Braddock at the Battle of the Monongahela in July, 1755, left the Colony of Virginia without a professional military force. Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie decided to form several "ranging companies" to protect settlements from attacks by Native tribes allied with the French. These volunteer ranger units, intended as a defensive force, built and garrisoned forts and reinforced areas expecting attack. The only offensive action of the Virginia Rangers during the French and Indian  War was the Sandy Creek Expedition. The campaign was initiated by Virginia's governor in response to Indian raids on settlements in the New River, Greenbrier River, and Tygart River valleys, during which about 70 settlers were killed, wounded, or captured. Farms and communities were abandoned as survivors retreated east into the Shenandoah Valley. In June, 1755, Shawnee warriors captured Captain Samuel Stalnaker at his homestead on the Holston River, (near present-day Chilhowie, Virginia), and killed his wife and son. In July, Mary Draper Ingles and her children were captured during the Draper's Meadow Massacre, (near present-day  Blacksburg, Virginia). Both later escaped captivity and walked hundreds of miles to return home. After arriving home in November, 1755, Mary Draper Ingles probably informed her husband William Ingles of the general location and layout of Lower Shawneetown, where she had lived as a captive for about three weeks. William Ingles may have suggested to Governor Dinwiddie the idea for an attack on this large settlement. Stalnaker was held at Lower Shawneetown until he escaped in May, 1756. In retaliation, Governor Dinwiddie sent a company of Virginia regulars, a company of minutemen, two companies of Volunteer Rangers (Preston refers to  six companies in total), and about 130 Cherokee warriors to attack Lower Shawneetown, the main Shawnee community at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Scioto River. Colonel George Washington (then in command of the Virginia Regiment) selected Major Andrew Lewis to lead the expedition. Role of the Cherokees. Cherokee leaders had recently been trying to improve trade relations with the Virginia colonial government, and had petitioned Governor Dinwiddie for some assistance in the long-delayed construction of a fort in South Carolina, to protect Cherokee communities from raids by French-allied Shawnee and Catawba Indians. Dinwiddie financed the  construction of the fort, and in return the Cherokees sent 130 warriors to Fort Frederick to support the Sandy Creek Expedition. The Cherokee warriors were under the joint leadership of Captain Richard Pearis and Chief Outacite Ostenaco. Dinwiddie had agreed to supply them with guns and ammunition, but could only obtain older, heavier rifles for the Cherokees, writing on 15 January, 1756: "I have sent 150 Small Arms, Powder and Shott...I know they are too heavy but I have desired they may have the lightest [that] are among our people..." The Cherokees offered to train Virginian soldiers in Indian -style warfare, which favored shooting from behind cover, using stealth and surprise, rather than firing in volleys from assembled ranks. Washington wanted Virginian troops to adopt these tactics, and noted, "...five hundred Indians have it more in their power to annoy the Inhabitants, than ten times their number of Regulars. For, besides the advantageous way they have of fighting in the Woods, their cunning and craft are not to be equalled; neither their activity and indefatigable Sufferings: They prowl about like Wolves; and like them, do their mischief by Stealth...It is in their power to be of infinite use  to us; and without Indians, we shall never be able to cope with those cruel Foes to our Country..." Dinwiddie approved, writing to Washington on 23 January: "You have done very right in ordering the Men to be train'd in the [Indian] Method of fighting..." The Virginians also needed to learn woodcraft and the art of tracking enemies through the wilderness. The son of the Cherokee chief Conocotocko I commented to Dinwiddie: "Our brothers [the Virginians] fight very strong, but can’t follow an Indian by the Foot as we can." Expedition. On 6 February 1756, Dinwiddie wrote to Lewis : "The distance by Evans' map is not two hundred miles to the Upper Towns of the Shawnees, however, at once begin your march." On 9 February 1756, the Virginians assembled at Fort Prince George, near Roanoke, Virginia and marched to meet the Cherokees at the newly built Fort Frederick on the New River. They brought with them over two thousand pounds of dried beef, intended as provisions for the campaign. Among the troops was Lieutenant William Ingles, husband of Mary Draper Ingles, and Captain William Preston, both survivors of the Draper's Meadow Massacre. On 19 February the full contingent  of 340 men and 27 pack horses set out, crossing over the north fork of the Holston River and camping on 23 February at Burke's Garden. Major Lewis decided not to use the shorter and easier route to Lower Shawneetown, which would have been along the Kanawha River, because he was afraid the Shawnee would be more likely to learn about the expedition. Instead, he chose a less-traveled route through uninhabited mountains. The campaign followed a war trail along "Sandy Creek," what is now known as the Dry Fork, Tug Fork, Big Sandy River that flows from Virginia  to West Virginia today. The expedition passed through present-day McDowell County and Mingo County. The decision to launch the expedition in February was based on the assumption that the Big Sandy would be swollen by snowmelt, making it easier and faster to descend by canoe. The Cherokees, led by Outacite Ostenaco, were accustomed to the rugged terrain and the exertion necessary for wilderness warfare, unlike most of the Virginians, who never fought a winter campaign in the mountains. Cutting trails through the thickly-forested valleys, scaling steep slopes, and crossing rivers and creeks repeatedly was slow and exhausting due  to harsh weather and streams swollen with snowmelt and rain. They reached the headwaters of the Big Sandy River on February 28, where Captain William Preston wrote: On 29 February, Captain Preston wrote in his journal: "The creek has been much frequently used by Indians both traveling and hunting on it, and...I am apprehensive that Stalnaker and the prisoners taken with him were carried this way." During the first weeks the troops supplemented their rations with bear meat, deer, and buffalo. They gathered potatoes from abandoned gardens. However, within a few days flour and dried beef ran short and  rations were cut by half. By 3 March, the last of the corn brought to feed the horses was gone. The men hunted, but the few deer and elk they killed were insufficient to feed 340 troops. Lewis suggested that they slaughter and eat their horses, but the men refuused. The weather was extremely cold and snow made progress even slower. Lieutenant Thomas Morton, who kept a diary of the expedition, wrote: The expedition paused on 7 March to build canoes, with the hope that traveling by water would be less tiresome. Captain Preston estimated that by 8 March they  had traveled 186 miles. On 12 March, an accident led to the loss of guns and tents. Captain Preston wrote in his diary for that day: Rations were by now nearly exhausted and men began to desert, trying to make their way home in small groups, most of whom did not survive. On 13 March, Lewis asked which of his troops were willing to continue, but only a small number voted to proceed. Two companies had already decided to turn back, and Lewis himself was finally forced to make the decision to abandon the campaign and return home. Preston's  diary ends with: Aftermath. Alexander Scott Withers (using material from Hugh Paul Taylor) says that on the way home, the troops were attacked by Shawnee warriors on 15 March and two soldiers were killed. Lieutenant McNutt then proposed that they proceed to Lower Shawneetown and complete their mission, in hopes of capturing the town and getting food there, but Major Lewis decided to continue home. They had to kill their pack horses for food and at one point were forced to eat boiled leather and buffalo hide. The troops arrived in Winchester on 7 April and later returned to Fort  Frederick. On 7 April George Washington wrote to Dinwiddie: Lieutenant Thomas Morton noted: Major Lewis was subsequently cleared of any fault in the expedition's failure. A second Sandy expedition seems to have been contemplated, but for some reason abandoned. Lower Shawneetown was moved upriver to the Pickaway Plains in 1758 because the Shawnees were, in George Croghan's words, in "fear of the Virginians." It remains unclear whether the Shawnees learned of the expedition and feared that eventually the town would be attacked, or whether recurrent floods threatened the community. The Sandy Creek Expedition was clearly a failure, but  it served as valuable experience for Andrew Lewis, William Preston, and others who would defend Virginia during the French and Indian War and in the American Revolution. Preston's Rangers would continue to serve until May, 1759. The campaign forged closer ties between the Cherokee people and the Virginia colonial government. Sources. Only two primary sources describing the expedition exist, the diary of Captain William Preston, published in 1906, and a fragment of Lieutenant Thomas Morton's diary, published in 1851. There are some references to the expedition in the correspondence of Governor Dinwiddie and George Washington, but no final  report to the Virginia House of Burgesses by Major Andrew Lewis exists. Alexander Scott Withers states that "a journal of this campaign was kept by Lieut. Alexander McNutt...On his return to Williamsburg he presented it to Lieutenant-Governor Francis Fauquier by whom it was deposited in the executive archives," but it appears to have been lost. Withers' account of the expedition seems to have been partly based on Taylor's "Historical Sketches of the Internal Improvements of Virginia" (1825, now lost) and on an article Taylor published under the pseudonym "Son of Cornstalk" in the "Fincastle Mirror" in 1829 , and has a number of significant errors. Memorialization. In 2015 a driving tour following the route of the Sandy Creek Expedition was developed by Trails, Inc. The route starts on the Virginia-West Virginia border and passes through Vallscreek to Canebrake, Berwind, and into the Berwind Wildlife Management Area to Excelsior, English, Atwell, finishing at Raysal. The tour includes ten points of interest as well as campsites.