Lord Dunmore's War, also known as Dunmore's War, was a brief conflict in fall 1774 between the British Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo in the trans-Appalachian region of the colony south of the Ohio River. Broadly, the war included events between May and October 1774. The governor of Virginia during the conflict was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, who in May 1774, asked the House of Burgesses to declare a state of war with the Indians and call out the Virginia militia.

The Shawnee are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language.