Cornstalk, whose Indigenous name was variously rendered in colonial records as Comblade, Coolesqua, Hokoleskwa, Keightughque, Semachquaan, and Tawnamebuck, may have been a son or grandson of the Shawnee leader Paxinosa, a man known to be friendly to the British. During the first half of the eighteenth century Paxinosa’s band lived at various locales in present-day Pennsylvania, and it is possible that Cornstalk was born in that colony. Some members of this band moved to the Scioto plains north of the Ohio River during the 1740s, and Paxinosa followed in 1760. Little is known of Cornstalk’s life, in part because of a general confusion about the historical antecedents of the Shawnee before the mid-eighteenth century, by which time most Shawnee dwelt on the banks of the Scioto River in what became the state of Ohio.
As the British colonies expanded, both Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed the Ohio Country and formed distinctive policies toward its Native American inhabitants. The French also maintained a presence in the area until the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. There are undocumented reports that Cornstalk led raids into the Virginia frontier on behalf of the French during that war, and he was also said to have led several attacks on settlers in the Greenbrier region during Pontiac’s Rebellion of 1763–1764. The earliest documented reference to Cornstalk is in the record of the peace conference in November 1764 at which Henry Bouquet, a British colonel, held him and five other hostages at Fort Pitt to ensure the Indians’ cooperation. Cornstalk soon escaped and remained a powerful advocate of peaceful relations between Indians and whites.
The years after that conference witnessed periodic violence and acts of retaliation by both sides. On April 25, 1774, the royal governor of Virginia, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, called out the militia of several western counties to defend the frontier settlements from Natives. Dunmore’s action led to an escalation of violence against friendly Indigenous people as well. On April 30 a party of whites killed several peaceable Mingo, including a woman, at Yellow Creek, and infuriated Mingo set out to avenge the deaths, aided by sympathetic members of other tribes. There is evidence that Cornstalk sought to avert open warfare and preserve the neutrality of the Shawnee. Through emissaries he assured Dunmore that the “foolish young people” who desired war were under control, and he sent word to John Connolly, Dunmore’s representative at Fort Pitt (which Connolly called Fort Dunmore), that he would restrain his warriors until he learned the governor’s intentions. Cornstalk also directed three men, including his brother Silver Heels, to escort British traders in the Ohio Valley back to the safety of Pittsburgh.
Acting under Dunmore’s authority, Connolly sent a party of militia after the departing Shawnee. Silver Heels was shot and wounded. As the Shawnee prepared for war, Dunmore led an army southwest from Pittsburgh to rendezvous with a militia force of about 1,100 men commanded by Colonel Andrew Lewis, marching toward the Ohio River from the east. Just before sunrise on October 10, 1774, two of Lewis’s men encountered a combined force of Delaware, Mingo, Shawnee, Wyandot, and others waiting at the mouth of the Kanawha River near Point Pleasant in present-day West Virginia. One escaped to warn the other Virginians. At sunrise the Natives under Cornstalk’s command attacked. Several Virginians identified the loud, clear voice of Cornstalk encouraging his men throughout the battle. After several hours of intense fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, Cornstalk’s forces fell back, using the swampy terrain to cover their retreat.
Having prevented the Virginia armies from launching an invasion of the Scioto, Cornstalk approached Dunmore and asked for peace to protect the Shawnee villages. Some of Cornstalk’s warriors and other chiefs wanted to continue to fight, to which Cornstalk replied that they might as well kill their women and children before fighting to the death themselves. He agreed to terms with Dunmore later that month in the treaty of Camp Charlotte, through which the Shawnee returned white prisoners and property and ceded hunting rights in Kentucky. Cornstalk was reported to have spoken eloquently at the peace talks and to have insisted that the whites share the blame for inciting the violence. Lewis’s son later wrote that his father recalled that Cornstalk was “the most dignified looking man, particularly in council, he ever saw.”
Despite persistent bitterness on both sides after what later historians called Dunmore’s War, Cornstalk evidently adhered to the treaty and continued to advocate nonviolence. He championed neutrality when the Revolutionary War began, even though other Native leaders allied themselves with the British in hopes of dislodging American settlements from the western country. Cornstalk took part in conferences with Connolly at Fort Dunmore in July 1775 and with commissioners appointed by the House of Burgesses that autumn. In the spirit of neutrality, he and Red Hawk, a Delaware, approached Fort Randolph at Point Pleasant in October 1777. According to one account, Cornstalk warned the American officers that most Native tribes were inclined toward the British and that despite his own desire for peace he and his tribe would have to “run with the stream.” In an attempt to ensure Shawnee neutrality, Captain Matthew Arbuckle detained Cornstalk and his companions as hostages. On November 10, 1777, while Cornstalk’s son Elinipsico (Allanawissica) was visiting the fort, Indigenous people shot and killed a soldier nearby. A vengeful mob quickly formed, and despite Arbuckle’s orders, the enraged men stormed Cornstalk’s cabin. They shot everyone inside and killed Cornstalk, his son, and two other Indigenous people.
Governor Patrick Henry denounced the murders and offered a reward for apprehension of the killers. In the spring of 1778 James Hall and three other men were separately examined in the Rockbridge County Court, which then had jurisdiction over all that portion of western Virginia, on suspicion of being responsible. No witnesses appeared to testify against any of the men, however, and the court found them not guilty. One week after Hall’s acquittal, he took the oath of office as a captain in the county militia.
Cornstalk’s known surviving relatives included his sister Nonhelema, also known as the Grenadier Squaw, and a son named Cutemwha, or the Wolf. Cornstalk was buried near Fort Randolph. After builders accidentally unearthed his presumed grave in 1840, the remains were moved to the grounds of the Mason County courthouse, and in 1954 they were moved again to Tu-Endie-Wei State Park on the site of the Battle of Point Pleasant.
