The second, also around 150, was commanded by Colonel William Fleming.
Charles Lewis moved more toward the inland side.
Fleming advanced nearer the Ohio River.
These were reconnaissance forces.
They were about to walk directly into Cornstalk's main attack.
The first Virginia line was hit almost immediately
The distance from camp to contact was short.
Isaac Shelby wrote that Charles Lewis had moved only a small distance before warriors opened fire.
The attack was violent.
Charles Lewis was wounded early, reportedly in the abdomen.
He would die several hours later.
His men began falling back under the pressure.
Almost simultaneously, Fleming's force on the Ohio side came under attack.
Fleming was hit repeatedly, including wounds to his arm and body.
He remained in command for a time before becoming too badly injured to continue.
Within minutes, two senior field commanders had been removed.
Both forward columns were under intense fire.
Men who had expected to investigate an enemy presence instead discovered themselves confronting a large organized force.
The opening phase clearly favored Cornstalk.
His warriors had lost perfect surprise, but they still held tactical initiative.
They knew the ground they intended to use.
They were attacking before Lewis could deploy his entire army effectively.
For a time, the Virginians gave ground.
Later accounts put the retreat at roughly two hundred yards before reinforcements stabilized it.
Had Cornstalk broken the two detachments completely and reached the camp while confusion still dominated, the battle might have ended very differently.
Andrew Lewis had to turn a surprised camp into a battle line
Lewis remained near the camp during the opening fighting.
Reports reached him quickly.
The enemy was not a small party.
Charles Lewis was down.
Fleming was badly wounded.
The forward companies were retreating.
Lewis began sending reinforcements.
Colonel John Field went forward with additional men.
Other companies followed.
The militia used trees and fallen timber for cover, firing from individual positions rather than maintaining the kind of close-order formation associated with European battlefield drill.
This was frontier warfare conducted in dense terrain.
The line was never perfectly straight.
Men moved from tree to tree.
Companies blended.
Officers tried to close gaps.
Warriors did the same from the opposite direction.
Individual shooting skill mattered.
So did the ability to use cover without losing contact with neighboring men.
Fighting could become extremely close.
Colonial sources describe periods of near hand-to-hand combat, although later romantic accounts probably exaggerated some episodes.
What is beyond dispute is the intensity.
Colonel William Christian, arriving after the battle, wrote that the Native force had behaved with extraordinary bravery.
Fleming described them as fighting with a boldness he had rarely seen.
Even victorious Virginia accounts did not portray Cornstalk's army as an enemy that broke easily.
Cornstalk's voice became part of the battle's memory
Several later accounts claimed Virginia militiamen familiar with the Shawnee language could hear Cornstalk calling encouragement to his men.
The phrase most often preserved in English is some version of:
"Be strong."
Or:
"Fight and be strong."
The exact wording cannot be treated as a verbatim transcript.
Battlefield memories recorded later are unreliable at that level.
The larger point is credible.
Cornstalk personally directed and encouraged his warriors throughout the fighting.
His command was active rather than distant.
The Native force maintained cohesion even after the surprise assault failed to destroy Lewis immediately.
This mattered because the battle was becoming a test of endurance.
Neither side had an easy tactical exit.
If Lewis retreated into the point, his army might be compressed against the rivers.
If Cornstalk withdrew too early, Lewis could recover, join Dunmore, and invade the Shawnee towns.
Both commanders therefore had reasons to continue.
John Field's reinforcements stopped the first collapse
Colonel John Field and other officers helped rally the Virginia line.
The fresh companies filled gaps and restored enough order for Lewis's force to stop retreating.
By approximately midmorning, the battle had shifted.
Cornstalk had failed to crush the camp immediately.
Lewis had failed to drive Cornstalk away.
The armies now faced each other across an extended wooded front.
Field himself was later killed.
Command increasingly passed to surviving company officers, including Evan Shelby and others.
Casualties among Virginia officers were unusually heavy.
That could have caused serious disorganization.
Instead, junior officers continued the fight.
This is one reason the battle later became important in Virginia frontier memory.
Militia units that had been surprised, lost several senior leaders, and suffered high casualties did not disintegrate.
They reorganized under fire.
That resilience prevented Cornstalk from converting his excellent opening position into complete victory.
The battlefield itself prevented either side from moving freely
Modern Point Pleasant is a town.
The battlefield of 1774 was a wooded river bottom.
The Ohio lay on one side.
The Kanawha defined another.
Creeks and drainage lines cut the interior.
Trees, brush, fallen logs, banks, and uneven ground restricted visibility.
Smoke from hundreds of black-powder weapons accumulated among the trees.
A man might see an opponent clearly for seconds and lose him behind cover immediately afterward.
This environment strongly favored dispersed fighting.
It also made command difficult.
Andrew Lewis could issue orders.
He could not see the entire front.
Cornstalk faced the same limitation.
Messages had to travel by runners.
Companies might continue fighting without knowing what was happening only a few hundred yards away.
Noise added confusion.
Musket and rifle fire did not produce the continuous mechanical sound of later industrial warfare.
It came in irregular explosions.
Shouting mixed with gunfire.
Wounded men called for help.
Officers tried to make themselves heard.
Later participants remembered October 10 as an unusually exhausting and disturbing day.
Colonial Williamsburg preserves one contemporary description calling it a very hard day and remembering the cries of the enemy and groans of wounded men around the battlefield.
The weapons encouraged fighting from cover
Both forces used a mixture of smoothbore muskets and rifles, though proportions varied.
Many frontier militiamen owned long rifles capable of accurate shooting at greater ranges than standard military muskets, but rifles loaded more slowly and lacked bayonets.
Native warriors also possessed firearms obtained through long-established trade networks.
The image of technologically primitive warriors charging gun-armed colonists is completely wrong for Point Pleasant.
Cornstalk's men were experienced gunfighters.
They understood cover.
They understood ambush.
They understood how to use fire and movement in wooded terrain.
Many had decades of experience with European weapons and frontier warfare.
The tactical difference between the opposing sides was therefore much smaller than later mythology sometimes suggests.
This helps explain why nearly equal numbers could fight for almost an entire day without one side collapsing quickly.
By midmorning, Cornstalk's original plan had failed, but Lewis was still in danger
The perfect result for Cornstalk would have been destruction of Lewis's division.
That had not happened.
Yet the Shawnee-led force had accomplished something important.
It had imposed severe casualties.
It had delayed Lewis.
It had forced the Virginians to fight at a time and place chosen by Cornstalk.
Lewis could not simply march away and continue the planned invasion while hundreds of warriors remained in front of him.
The southern division was fixed in place.
Every casualty reduced the force available for later operations.
Every hour gave Cornstalk additional opportunity to inflict losses.
From that perspective, continuing the battle remained rational even without immediate breakthrough.
Lewis also had strategic reasons not to retreat
A retreat from Point Pleasant could become disastrous.
The army's supplies were concentrated near the river junction.
Wounded men could not move quickly.
Pack animals and cattle complicated withdrawal.
The route back up the Kanawha was long and difficult.
Most importantly, retreat would surrender the initiative to Cornstalk and possibly expose frontier settlements again.
Lewis needed to hold.
He also knew Christian's reinforcements were approaching somewhere behind him.
If his army could survive long enough, numerical advantage would increase.
This created the opposite strategic clock from Cornstalk's.
Time gradually favored Lewis.
Time threatened Cornstalk.
That difference became increasingly important in the afternoon.
The Native line did not remain stationary all day
Popular paintings sometimes show the battle as two fixed lines shooting at one another from sunrise to sunset.
Contemporary descriptions suggest a much more fluid fight.
Cornstalk's warriors gradually gave ground.
They used natural defensive positions.
Some men carried away wounded.
Others removed dead whenever possible.
This practice makes Native casualty estimates especially uncertain.
Virginians later counted bodies remaining on the field, but that number could not represent the total killed because Native parties habitually attempted to remove casualties from areas they expected to abandon.
The retreat through successive positions also prevented Lewis from winning quickly.
Each time the Virginians advanced, Cornstalk could use another layer of terrain.
Isaac Shelby described thick undergrowth, steep banks, and logs favoring the Native withdrawal.
After midday, the warriors occupied what Shelby considered particularly advantageous ground. Virginia officers concluded that forcing another direct assault there would be costly.
This is the moment from which the later flanking story developed.