History Alive is a program of first-person portrayals of historical figures by presenters who have conducted scholarly research on their character. Cornstalk was a Shawnee chief who fought in the French and Indian War and carried out raids into the Greenbrier Valley during Pontiac’s Rebellion. On October 10, 1774, he led nearly a thousand Shawnee warriors against an equal number of Virginians at the Battle of Point Pleasant, the major engagement of Dunmore’s War.