A force of about 260 Wyandot, Shawnee, Mingo and Lenape attacked Fort Henry, an American fortification at what is now Wheeling, West Virginia.

Built in 1774 during Lord Dunmore's War on a bluff above the Ohio River, Fort Henry protected the settlers who began moving into the area in 1769.

Before 1782, the most significant was a brief siege in September 1777 that saw a few hundred Wyandot, Mingo, Shawnee, and Lenape attempt to storm the fort.

In August, several hundred of these warriors crossed the Ohio River with Captain William Caldwell's company of Butler's Rangers and attacked Bryan Station.

In September, roughly 260 warriors and 40 Butler's Rangers under the command of Captain Andrew Bradt besieged Fort Henry.

[2] John Lynn, an American scout, spotted Bradt's expedition a few hours before it reached Fort Henry.

Ebenezer Zane elected to remain in his fortified house along with a few family members, friends, and two slaves, while his brother Silas took command of the fort.

Silas had fewer than 20 men to defend the fort, while roughly forty women and children sheltered inside.

In History of the Early Settlement And Indian Wars of Western Virginia, published in 1851, Wills De Haas recorded that a group of Indigenous warriors attempted to make a cannon from a tree trunk.

"[1] De Hass also erroneously credited Simon Girty, the "white savage," with organizing and leading the attack on Fort Henry.

[7] Poet and politician Thomas Dunn English, who feuded with Edgar Allan Poe, wrote "Betty Zane," a long narrative poem in iambic rhyming couplets that was included in his 1879 anthology American Ballads.