the men to defect, Hand resigned in May. Treaty making and fort building Following the escalation of the war in 1777, Americans on the western frontier appealed to the Continental Congress for protection. After an investigation, a Congressional commission recommended in early 1778 that two regiments of the Continental Army be stationed in the West. Furthermore, because a defensive line of forts had little effect on Indian raids into the American settlements, the commissioners called for a fort to be built on the Indian side of the Ohio River, the first in a line of forts which would enable the Americans, it was hoped, to mount an expedition against Detroit. Hollidays Cove Fort was a Revolutionary War fortification constructed in 1774 by soldiers from Ft. Pitt. It was located in what is now downtown Weirton, West Virginia, along Harmons Creek (named for Harmon Greathouse), about three miles from its mouth on the Ohio River. It was commanded by Colonel Andrew Van Swearingen (1741–1793) and later by his son-in-law, Captain Samuel Brady (1756–1795), the famous leader of Brady's Rangers. In 1779, over 28 militia were garrisoned at Hollidays Cove. Two years earlier, Colonel Van Swearingen led a dozen soldiers by longboat down the Ohio to help rescue the inhabitants of Ft. Henry in Wheeling in a siege by the British and Indian tribes in 1777. That mission was memorialized in a WPA-era mural painted on the wall of the Cove Post Office by Charles S. Chapman (1879–1962). The mural features Col. John Bilderback, who later gained infamy as the leader of the massacre of the Moravian Indians in Gnadenhutten in 1782. In order to build a fort in the Ohio Country, the Americans sought the approval of the Lenape Indians. In September 1778, Americans negotiated the Treaty of Fort Pitt with the Lenape, which resulted in the building of Fort Laurens along the Tuscarawas River. American plans soon went awry, however. White Eyes, the Lenape leader who had negotiated the treaty, was apparently murdered in 1778 by American militiamen. His rival, Captain Pipe, eventually abandoned the American alliance and moved west to the Sandusky River, where he began receiving support from the British in Detroit. Furthermore, because of intense warfare in eastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, Congress was unable to provide the manpower for operations against Detroit. Fort Laurens was abandoned in 1779. Clark's Illinois campaign In late 1778, George