During the war he allied with the French against British settlers and engaged with his warrior bands in attacks mostly in the upper Potomac River watershed, in what is now the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.
This is an Algonquian language and the people historically occupied territory along the mid-Atlantic coast, from present-day Connecticut to New Jersey and Delaware, including Long Island in New York.
As the Delaware (Lenape) had a matrilineal kinship system, Bemino would have been considered born into his mother's family and clan, which would have determined his social status.
[2] He may have been born or raised in what is now eastern Ohio, where his father, Sachem (principal Chief) and Spiritual Leader[3] Netawatwees, and family had migrated from the Delaware River Valley by pressure from European (white) colonists.
By the 1740s and '50s, Bemino was well acquainted with white settler families in the valley of the South Branch Potomac River, in what is now the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.
In March or April 1756, Bemino is said to have led Lenape and Shawnee warriors in an ambush (the "Battle of the Trough") of Virginian settlers near Fort Pleasant, in what is now Hardy County, West Virginia.
The survivors quartered his body in a ritual mutilation, putting the parts at the corners of the cabin, and impaled his head upon a fence stake at the front door.
[7] The house, with many additions, still stands with the old Williams family graveyard nearby, at Williamsport, West Virginia (named for the settler), in present-day Grant County.
[8] Several years after the war, Bemino described how he and a band of Indians (probably composed of both Delaware and Shawnee) killed two men near Fort Edwards, not far from the Cacapon River.
Fort Seybert (about 12 miles northeast of present-day Franklin) was occupied by about 30 people, mostly women and children, as only three were reported as adult males.
"[13] During this visit, Bemino related many details of his exploits to the men, who recorded what would otherwise have been lost to history for lack of surviving eyewitnesses.