 Historic Prickett’s Fort was built to defend early European settlers of what today is West Virginia from raids by hostile Native Americans, a portion of whose territory the settlers appropriated after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768).After a band of settlers led by Daniel Greathouse perpetrated the Yellow Creek massacre in 1774, initiating Lord Dunmore's War, all settlers in the Ohio River Valley were in peril from Native American attack.Because there was safety in numbers, the settlers built a number of refuge forts, including one on the homestead of Jacob Prickett.