Fort Sandoské had been. The English Fort Sandusky was not built until 1761 and it was constructed in a different location southeast of the bay. The future site of Venice, Ohio developed near here. That fort was overrun and destroyed in 1763 during Pontiac's War. There was much confusion about the affiliation of trading posts and forts around Sandusky Bay. The French briefly used Fort Sandoské to secure supply and communication between Fort Niagara and Fort Detroit. It was already abandoned by 1754, when French lieutenant and engineer Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry passed through the area with forces to reinforce Fort Detroit.
Illinois campaign the region. When the American Revolutionary War began, in 1775, the Ohio River marked the border between the Illinois Country and Kentucky, an area recently settled by American colonists. The British had originally sought to keep American Indians out of the war, but in 1777 Lieutenant Governor Hamilton received instructions to recruit and arm Indian war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements, opening a western front in the war with the rebel colonists. "From 1777 on," wrote historian Bernard Sheehan, "the line of western settlements was under almost constant assault by white-led [Indian] raiding parties that had originated at Detroit."