The speech could not have been very satisfactory to the earl; but at least it made it evident that Logan did not intend to remain on the war-path; and so Lord Dunmore marched home with his hostages.  On the homeward march, near the mouth of the River Hockhocking, the officers of the army held a notable meeting.  They had followed the British earl to battle; but they were Americans, in warm sympathy with the Continental Congress, which was then in session.  Fearful lest their countrymen might not know that they were at one with them in the struggle of which the shadow was looming up with ever increasing blackness, they passed resolutions which were afterwards published.  Their speakers told how they had lived in the woods for three months, without hearing from the Congress at Philadelphia, nor yet from Boston, where the disturbances seemed most likely to come to a head.  They spoke of their fear lest their countrymen might be misled into the belief that this numerous body of armed men was hostile or indifferent to the cause of America; and proudly alluded to the fact that they had lived so long without bread or salt, or shelter at night, and that the troops they led could march and fight as well as any in the world.  In their resolutions they professed their devotion to their king, to the honor of his crown, and to the dignity of the British empire; but they added that this devotion would only last while the king deigned to rule over a free people, for their love for the liberty of America outweighed all other considerations, and they would exert every power for its defence, not riotously, but when regularly called forth by the voice of their countrymen.

They ended by tendering their thanks to Lord Dunmore for his conduct.  He was also warmly thanked by the Virginia Legislature, as well as by the frontiersmen of Fincastle,[54] and he fully deserved their gratitude.

The war had been ended in less than six months’ time; and its results were of the utmost importance.  It had been very successful.  In Braddock’s war, the borderers are estimated to have suffered a loss of fifty souls for every Indian slain; in Pontiac’s war, they had learned to defend themselves better, and yet the ratio was probably as ten to one;[55] whereas in this war, if we consider only males of fighting age, it is probable that a good deal more than half as many Indians as whites were killed, and even including women and children, the ratio would not rise to more than three to one.  Certainly, in all the contests waged against the northwestern Indians during the last half of the eighteenth century there was no other where the whites inflicted so great a relative loss on their foes.  Its results were most important.  It kept the northwestern tribes quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and above all it rendered possible the settlement of Kentucky, and therefore the winning of the West.  Had it not been for Lord Dunmore’s war, it is more than likely that when the colonies achieved their freedom they would have found their western boundary fixed at the Alleghany Mountains.[56]