The western theater of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) was the area of conflict west of the Appalachian Mountains, the region which became the Northwest Territory of the United States as well as what would become the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Spanish Louisiana. The western war was fought between American Indians with their British allies in Detroit, and American settlers south and east of the Ohio River, and also the Spanish as allies of the latter. Background At the conclusion of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), Great Britain won uncontested influence over the region between its Atlantic Coast colonies and the Mississippi River. The Ohio River marked a tenuous border between the American colonies and the American Indians of the Ohio Country. The Proclamation of 1763 forbade British colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains in order to prevent conflict between Indians and colonists in the vast territory newly acquired from France. Settlers and land speculators in Britain and America objected to this restriction, however, and so British officials negotiated two treaties with American Indians in 1768—the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and the Treaty of Hard Labour—which opened up land for settlement south of the Ohio River. Thereafter, tensions between British officials and colonists over western land policy diminished. As the Revolution approached, tensions grew in the Ohio Valley. The Grand Ohio Company was built on speculation in Native American lands, and Great Britain granted tracts of Native land to veterans of the French and Indian War to pay off debts. But in 1772, Great Britain redeployed many of its western forces to the East Coast due to the increasing tensions with the colonists, removing a deterrent to illegal squatters. In 1774, Great Britain determined that these land grants could not be granted to colonial veterans, meaning that colonial veterans who had invested heavily in land speculation (such as George Washington) would lose their investment. That same year, the Quebec Act placed the lands between the Ohio River and Great Lakes under the jurisdiction of Quebec. That Spring, a group of settlers led by Daniel Greathouse committed the Yellow Creek massacre, in which thirteen women and children were killed, including the wife and pregnant sister of Tachnechdorus, who had been friendly to settlers until that time. In a particularly brutal act, Koonay, the sister of Tachnechdorus, was strung up by the wrists while her unborn baby