As a young man, he fought in Lord Dunmore's War, in which he was wounded, and gained a reputation as a marksman and "Indian killer."
[1] His father was a large landowner who moved his family from Fauquier County to western Pennsylvania when John was twelve years old.
[2] In August 1774, at the outset of Lord Dunmore's War, Virginia militiamen led by Angus McDonald invaded the Ohio Country and destroyed several Native towns on the Muskingum River.
Hardin took part in this expedition as a private in a company from Monongalia County led by Captain Zackquill Morgan.
[6] In August 1789, he led another militia expedition to Terre Haute, where he attacked a Shawnee party of twenty-two men, women, and children.
[7] Hardin paraded through Vincennes, but Major Jean François Hamtramck lamented that the uneasy peace he had brokered with the Wabash nations would soon end due to the "provocation" of this "Kentucky affair.
In 1790, he led a detachment of the Kentucky County militia in the disastrous Battle of Heller's Corner (also known as "Hardin's Defeat").
In 1791, Hardin led a force of sixty mounted militiamen, destroying a large Kickapoo village near the mouth of the Big Pine Creek.
[9] In May 1792, General James Wilkinson sent Hardin as an emissary to carry American peace terms to the Natives along the Sandusky River.