Draper's Meadow massacre

Draper's Meadow Massacre
Location	Draper's Meadow, Virginia
Date	July 8 or July 30, 1755
Attack type	Mass murder
Deaths	5-8 killed
Perpetrators	Shawnee

In July 1755, a small outpost in southwest Virginia, at the present day Blacksburg, was raided by a group of Shawnee Indian warriors, who killed at least five people including an infant child and captured five more. The Indians traveled back with their hostages to a Shawnee village in Kentucky. One of the captives, Mary Draper Ingles later escaped and returned home on foot through the wilderness. Although many of the actual circumstances of the incident, including the date of the attack is uncertain, the event remains a dramatic and inspirational story in the history of Virginia.

The original 7,500 acre (30 km²) tract that became known as Draper's Meadow was awarded sometime before 1737 by Governor Robert Dinwiddie to Colonel James Patton, an Irish sea captain turned land speculator. This land was bordered by Tom's Creek on the north, Stroubles Creek on the south and the Mississippi watershed (modern-day U.S. Route 460) on the east; it approached the New River on the west. The settlement was situated on the present day campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. At the time of the attack, the area had been populated by a group of around twenty settlers who were a mix of migrants from Pennsylvania of English and Germanic origin. A marker commemorating the massacre is located near the Duck Pond on the Virginia Tech campus.

Rising tensions between the natives and western settlers were exacerbated by fighting in the French and Indian War and the encroachment on tribal hunting grounds. Recent victories by the French over the British, although north of Virginia, had left much of the frontier unprotected. In the summer of 1755 several settlements had been ravaged by the Indians. On July 9 a force of about 1300 British soldiers under the command of General Edward Braddock had been decisively defeated by French troops and Shawnees at the Battle of the Monongahela, which encouraged further violence against settlers in the region.

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