THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE, 1779-1782.
The Moravians.
After the Moravian Indians were led by their missionary pastors to the
banks of the Muskingum they dwelt peacefully and unharmed for several
years. In Lord Dunmore's war special care was taken by the white leaders
that these Quaker Indians should not be harmed; and their villages of
Salem, Gnadenhutten, and Schönbrunn received no damage whatever. During
the early years of the Revolutionary struggle they were not molested,
but dwelt in peace and comfort in their roomy cabins of squared timbers,
cleanly and quiet, industriously tilling the soil, abstaining from all
strong drink, schooling their children, and keeping the Seventh Day as a
day of rest. They sought to observe strict neutrality, harming neither
the Americans nor the Indians, nor yet the allies of the latter, the
British and French at Detroit. They hoped thereby to offend neither
side, and to escape unhurt themselves.
But this was wholly impossible. They occupied an utterly untenable
position. Their villages lay mid-way between the white settlements
southeast of the Ohio, and the towns of the Indians round Sandusky, the
bitterest foes of the Americans, and those most completely under British
influence. They were on the trail that the war-parties followed whether
they struck at Kentucky or at the valleys of the Alleghany and
Monongahela. Consequently the Sandusky Indians used the Moravian
villages as halfway houses, at which to halt and refresh themselves
whether starting on a foray or returning with scalps and plunder.
The Wild Indians Hate Them.
By the time the war had lasted four or five years both the wild or
heathen Indians and the backwoodsmen had become fearfully exasperated
with the unlucky Moravians. The Sandusky Indians were largely Wyandots,
Shawnees, and Delawares, the latter being fellow-tribesmen of the
Christian Indians; and so they regarded the Moravians as traitors to the
cause of their kinsfolk, because they would not take up the hatchet
against the whites. As they could not goad them into declaring war, they
took malicious pleasure in trying to embroil them against their will,
and on returning from raids against the settlements often passed through
their towns solely to cast suspicion on them and to draw down the wrath
of the backwoodsmen on their heads. The British at Detroit feared lest
the Americans might use the Moravian villages as a basis from which to
attack the lake posts; they also coveted their men as allies; and so the
baser among their officers urged the Sandusky tribes to break up the
villages and drive off the missionaries. The other Indian tribes
likewise regarded them with angry contempt and hostility; the Iroquois
once sent word to the Chippewas and Ottawas that they gave them the
Christian Indians "to make broth of."
So Do the Americans.
The Americans became even more exasperated. The war parties that
plundered and destroyed their homes, killing their wives, children, and
friends with torments too appalling to mention, got shelter and
refreshment from the Moravians, [Footnote: Heckewelder's "Narrative of
the Mission of the United Brethren," Philadelphia, 1820, p. 166.]
--who, indeed, dared not refuse it. The backwoodsmen, roused to a mad
frenzy of rage by the awful nature of their wrongs, saw that the
Moravians rendered valuable help to their cruel and inveterate foes, and
refused to see that the help was given with the utmost reluctance.
Moreover, some of the young Christian Indians backslid, and joined their
savage brethren, accompanying them on their war parties and ravaging
with as much cruelty as any of their number. [Footnote: _Pennsylvania
Packet_ (Philadelphia, April 16, 1782); Heckewelder, 180; Loskiel's
"History of the Mission of the United Brethren" (London, 1794), P--172.
] Soon the frontiersmen began to clamor for the destruction of the
Moravian towns; yet for a little while they were restrained by the
Continental officers of the few border forts, who always treated these
harmless Indians with the utmost kindness.
They Blindly Court their Fate.
On either side were foes, who grew less governable day by day, and the
fate of the hapless and peaceful Moravians, if they continued to dwell
on the Muskingum, was absolutely inevitable. With blind fatuity their
leaders, the missionaries, refused to see the impending doom; and the
poor, simple Indians clung to their homes till destroyed. The American
commander at Pittsburg, Col. Gibson, endeavored to get them to come into
the American lines, where he would have the power, as he already had the
wish, to protect them; he pointed out that where they were they served
in some sort as a shield to the wild Indians, whom he had to spare so as
not to harm the Moravians. [Footnote: Loskiel, p. 137.] The Half King
of the Wyandots, from the other side, likewise tried to persuade them
to abandon their dangerous position, and to come well within the Indian
and British lines, saying: "Two mighty and angry gods stand opposite to
each other with their mouths wide open, and you are between them, and
are in danger of being crushed by one or the other, or by both."
[Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 41, Vol. III., pp. 78, 79; extract
from diary of Rev. David Zeisburger.] But in spite of these warnings,
and heedless of the safety that would have followed the adoption of
either course, the Moravians followed the advice of their missionaries
and continued where they were. They suffered greatly from the wanton
cruelty of their red brethren; and their fate remains a monument to
the cold-blooded and cowardly brutality of the borderers, a stain on
frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away; but it is
singular that historians have not yet pointed out the obvious truth,
that no small share of the blame for their sad end should be put to
the credit of the blind folly of their missionary leaders. Their only
hope in such a conflict as was then raging, was to be removed from
their fatally dangerous position; and this the missionaries would not
see. As long at they stayed where they were, it was a mere question of
chance and time whether they would be destroyed by the Indians or the
whites; for their destruction at the hands of either one party or the
other was inevitable.
Their fate was not due to the fact that they were Indians; it resulted
from their occupying an absolutely false position. This is clearly shown
by what happened twenty years previously to a small community of
non-resistant Christian whites. They were Dunkards--Quaker-like
Germans--who had built a settlement on the Monongahela. As they helped
neither side, both distrusted and hated them. The whites harassed them
in every way, and the Indians finally fell upon and massacred them.
[Footnote: Withers, 59.] The fates of these two communities, of white
Dunkards and red Moravians, were exactly parallel. Each became hateful
to both sets of combatants, was persecuted by both, and finally fell a
victim to the ferocity of the race to which it did not belong.
Evil Conduct of the Backwoodsmen.
The conduct of the backwoodsmen towards these peaceful and harmless
Christian Indians was utterly abhorrent, and will ever be a subject of
just reproach and condemnation; and at first sight it seems incredible
that the perpetrators of so vile a deed should have gone unpunished and
almost unblamed. It is a dark blot on the character of a people that
otherwise had many fine and manly qualities to its credit. But the
extraordinary conditions of life on the frontier must be kept in mind
before passing too severe a judgment. In the turmoil of the harassing
and long-continued Indian war, and the consequent loosening of social
bonds, it was inevitable that, as regards outside matters, each man
should do what seemed right in his own eyes. The bad and the good alike
were left free and untrammelled to follow the bent of their desires. The
people had all they could do to beat off their savage enemies, and to
keep order among themselves. They were able to impose but slight checks
on ruffianism that was aimed at outsiders. There were plenty of good and
upright men who would not harm any Indians wrongfully, and who treated
kindly those who were peaceable. On the other hand, there were many of
violent and murderous temper. These knew that their neighbors would
actively resent any wrong done to themselves, but knew, also, that,
under the existing conditions, they would at the worst do nothing more
than openly disapprove of an outrage perpetrated on Indians.
Its Explanation.
The violence of the bad is easily understood. The indifference displayed
towards their actions by the better men of the community, who were
certainly greatly in the majority, is harder to explain. It rose from
varying causes. In the first place, the long continuance of Indian
warfare, and the unspeakable horrors that were its invariable
accompaniments had gradually wrought up many even of the best of the
backwoodsmen to the point where they barely considered an Indian as a
human being. The warrior was not to them a creature of romance. They
knew him for what he was--filthy, cruel, lecherous, and faithless. He
sometimes had excellent qualities, but these they seldom had a chance to
see. They always met him at his worst. To them he was in peace a lazy,
dirty, drunken beggar, whom they despised, and yet whom they feared; for
the squalid, contemptible creature might at any moment be transformed
into a foe whose like there was not to be found in all the wide world
for ferocity, cunning, and blood-thirsty cruelty. The greatest Indians,
chiefs like Logan and Cornstalk, who were capable of deeds of the
loftiest and most sublime heroism, were also at times cruel monsters or
drunken good-for-nothings. Their meaner followers had only such virtues
as belong to the human wolf--stealth, craft, tireless endurance, and the
courage that prefers to prey on the helpless, but will fight to the
death without flinching if cornered.
Grimness of the Backwoods Character.
Moreover, the backwoodsmen were a hard people; a people who still lived
in an iron age. They did not spare themselves, nor those who were dear
to them; far less would they spare their real or possible foes. Their
lives were often stern and grim; they were wonted to hardship and
suffering. In the histories or traditions of the different families
there are recorded many tales of how they sacrificed themselves, and, in
time of need, sacrificed others. The mother who was a captive among the
Indians might lay down her life for her child; but if she could not save
it, and to stay with it forbade her own escape it was possible that she
would kiss it good-by and leave it to its certain fate, while she
herself, facing death at every step, fled homewards through hundreds of
miles of wilderness. [Footnote: See Hale's "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,"
the adventures of Mrs. Inglis. She was captured on the head-waters of
the Kanawha, at the time of Braddock's defeat. The other inhabitants of
the settlement were also taken prisoners or massacred by the savages,
whom they had never wronged in any way. She was taken to the Big Bone
Lick in Kentucky. On the way her baby was born, but she was not allowed
to halt a day on account of this incident. She left it in the Indian
camp, and made her escape in company with "an old Dutch woman." They
lived on berries and nuts for forty days, while they made their way
homewards. Both got in safely, though they separated after the old Dutch
woman, in the extremity of hunger, had tried to kill her companion that
she might eat her. When Cornstalk's party perpetrated the massacre of
the Clendennins during Pontiac's war (see Stewart's Narrative), Mrs.
Clendennin likewise left her baby to its death, and made her escape; her
husband had previously been killed and his bloody scalp tied across her
jaws as a gag.] The man who daily imperilled his own life, would, if
water was needed in the fort, send his wife and daughter to draw it from
the spring round which he knew Indians lurked, trusting that the
appearance of the women would make the savages think themselves
undiscovered, and that they would therefore defer their attack.
[Footnote: As at the siege of Bryan's Station.] Such people were not
likely to spare their red-skinned foes. Many of their friends, who had
never hurt the savages in any way, had perished the victims of wanton
aggression. They themselves had seen innumerable instances of Indian
treachery. They had often known the chiefs of a tribe to profess warm
friendship at the very moment that their young men were stealing and
murdering. They grew to think of even the most peaceful Indians as
merely sleeping wild beasts, and while their own wrongs were ever
vividly before them, they rarely heard of or heeded those done to their
foes. In a community where every strong courageous man was a bulwark to
the rest, he was sure to be censured lightly for merely killing a member
of a loathed and hated race.
Many of the best of the backwoodsmen were Bible-readers, but they were
brought up in a creed that made much of the Old Testament, and laid
slight stress on pity, truth, or mercy. They looked at their foes as the
Hebrew prophets looked at the enemies of Israel. What were the
abominations because of which the Canaanites were destroyed before
Joshua, when compared with the abominations of the red savages whose
lands they, another chosen people, should in their turn inherit? They
believed that the Lord was king for ever and ever, and they believed no
less that they were but obeying His commandment as they strove mightily
to bring about the day when the heathen should have perished out of the
land; for they had read in The Book that he was accursed who did the
work of the Lord deceitfully, or kept his sword back from blood. There
was many a stern frontier zealot who deemed all the red men, good and
bad, corn ripe for the reaping. Such a one rejoiced to see his fellows
do to the harmless Moravians as the Danites once did to the people of
Laish, who lived quiet and secure, after the manner of the Sidonians,
and had no business with any man, and who yet were smitten with the edge
of the sword, and their city burnt with fire.
The Moravians Themselves not Blameless.
Finally, it must not be forgotten that there were men on the frontier
who did do their best to save the peaceful Indians, and that there were
also many circumstances connected with the latter that justly laid them
open to suspicion. When young backsliding Moravians appeared in the war
parties, as cruel and murderous as their associates, the whites were
warranted in feeling doubtful as to whether their example might not
infect the remainder of their people. War parties, whose members in
dreadful derision left women and children impaled by their trail to
greet the sight of the pursuing husbands and fathers, found food and
lodging at the Moravian towns. No matter how reluctant the aid thus
given, the pursuers were right in feeling enraged, and in demanding that
the towns should be removed to where they could no longer give comfort
to the enemy. When the missionaries refused to consent to this removal,
they thereby became helpers of the hostile Indians; they wronged the
frontiersmen, and they still more grievously wronged their own flocks.
They certainly had ample warning of the temper of the whites. Col.
Brodhead was in command at Fort Pitt until the end of 1781. At the time
that General Sullivan ravaged the country of the Six Nations, he had led
a force up the Alleghany and created a diversion by burning one or two
Iroquois towns. In 1781 he led a successful expedition against a town of
hostile Delawares on the Muskingum, taking it by surprise and
surrounding it so completely that all within were captured. Sixteen
noted warriors and marauders were singled out and put to death. The
remainder fared but little better, for, while marching back to Fort
Pitt, the militia fell on them and murdered all the men, leaving only
the women and children. The militia also started to attack the
Moravians, and were only prevented by the strenuous exertions of
Brodhead. Even this proof of the brutality of their neighbors was wasted
on the missionaries.
Maltreated by the British and Wild Indians.
The first blow the Moravians received was from the wild Indians. In the
fall of this same year (1781) their towns were suddenly visited by a
horde of armed warriors, horsemen and footmen, from Sandusky and
Detroit. Conspicuous among them were the Wyandots, under the Half King;
the Delawares, also led by a famous chief, Captain Pipe; and a body of
white rangers from Detroit, including British, French, and tories,
commanded by the British Captain Elliott, and flying the British
flag. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 41, Vol. III., p. 77.] With
them came also Shawnees, Chippewas, and Ottawas. All were acting in
pursuance of the express orders of the commandant at Detroit. [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, October 5th and 21st, 1781;
McKee to De Peyster, October 18th.] These warriors insisted on the
Christian Indians abandoning their villages and accompanying them back
to Sandusky and Detroit; and they destroyed many of the houses, and much
of the food for the men and the fodder for the horses and cattle. The
Moravians begged humbly to be left where they were, but without avail.
They were forced away to Lake Erie, the missionaries being taken to
Detroit, while the Indians were left on the plains of Sandusky. The wild
Indians were very savage against them, but the British commandant would
not let them be seriously maltreated, [Footnote: _Do_., December u,
1781.] though they were kept in great want and almost starved.
Also by the Americans.
A few Moravians escaped, and remained in their villages; but these,
three or four weeks later, were captured by a small detachment of
American militia, under Col. David Williamson, who had gone out to make
the Moravians either move farther off or else come in under the
protection of Fort Pitt. Williamson accordingly took the Indians to the
fort, where the Continental commander, Col. John Gibson, at once
released them, and sent them back to the villages unharmed. [Footnote:
Gibson was the old friend of the chief Logan. It is only just to
remember that the Continental officers at Fort Pitt treated the
Moravians even better than did the British officers at Detroit.] Gibson
had all along been a firm friend of the Moravians. He had protected them
against the violence of the borderers, and had written repeated and
urgent letters to Congress and to his superior officers, asking that
some steps might be taken to protect the friendly Christian
Indians. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Jan. 22, 1780 (intercepted letters).]
In the general weakness and exhaustion, however, nothing was done; and,
as neither the State nor Federal governments took any steps to protect
them, and as their missionaries refused to learn wisdom, it was evident
that the days of the Moravians were numbered. The failure of the
government to protect them was perhaps inevitable, but was certainly
discreditable.
The very day after Gibson sent the Christian Indians back to their
homes, several murders were committed near Pittsburg, and many of the
frontiersmen insisted that they were done with the good will or
connivance of the Moravians. The settlements had suffered greatly all
summer long, and the people clamored savagely against all the Indians,
blaming both Gibson and Williamson for not having killed or kept captive
their prisoners. The ruffianly and vicious of course clamored louder
than any; the mass of people who are always led by others, chimed in, in
a somewhat lower key; and many good men were silent for the reasons
given already. In a frontier democracy, military and civil officers are
directly dependent upon popular approval, not only for their offices,
but for what they are able to accomplish while filling them. They are
therefore generally extremely sensitive to either praise or blame.
Ambitious men flatter and bow to popular prejudice or opinion, and only
those of genuine power and self-reliance dare to withstand it.
Williamson was physically a fairly brave officer and not naturally
cruel; but he was weak and ambitious, ready to yield to any popular
demand, and, if it would advance his own interests, to connive at any
act of barbarity. [Footnote: This is the most favorable estimate of his
character, based on what Doddridge says (p. 260). He was a very
despicable person, but not the natural brute the missionaries painted
him.] Gibson, however, who was a very different man, paid no heed to the
cry raised against him.
They Refuse to be Warned and Return to their Homes.
With incredible folly the Moravians refused to heed even such rough
warnings as they had received. During the long winter they suffered
greatly from cold and hunger, at Sandusky, and before the spring of 1782
opened, a hundred and fifty of them returned to their deserted villages.
That year the Indian outrages on the frontiers began very early. In
February there was some fine weather; and while it lasted, several
families of settlers were butchered, some under circumstances of
peculiar atrocity. In particular, four Sandusky Indians having taken
some prisoners, impaled two of them, a woman and a child, while on their
way to the Moravian towns, where they rested and ate, prior to
continuing their journey with their remaining captives. When they left
they warned the Moravians that white men were on their trail. [Footnote:
Heckewelder, 3:1.] A white man who had just escaped this same impaling
party, also warned the Moravians that the exasperated borderers were
preparing a party to kill them; and Gibson, from Fort Pitt, sent a
messenger to them, who, however, arrived too late. But the poor
Christian Indians, usually very timid, now, in the presence of a real
danger, showed a curious apathy; their senses were numbed and dulled by
their misfortunes, and they quietly awaited their doom. [Footnote:
Loskiel, 176.]
It was not long deferred. Eighty or ninety frontiersmen, under
Williamson, hastily gathered together to destroy the Moravian towns. It
was, of course, just such an expedition as most attracted the brutal,
the vicious, and the ruffianly; but a few decent men, to their shame,
went along. They started in March, and on the third day reached the
fated villages. That no circumstance might be wanting to fill the
measure of their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, assured them that
they meant well, and spent an hour or two in gathering together those
who were in Salem and Gnadenhutten, putting them all in two houses at
the latter place. Those at the third town, of Schönbrunn, got warning
and made their escape.
As soon as the unsuspecting Indians were gathered in the two houses, the
men in one, the women and children in the other, the whites held a
council as to what should be done with them. The great majority were for
putting them instantly to death. Eighteen men protested, and asked that
the lives of the poor creatures should be spared; and then withdrew,
calling God to witness that they were innocent of the crime about to be
committed. By rights they should have protected the victims at any
hazard. One of them took off with him a small Indian boy, whose life was
thus spared. With this exception only two lads escaped.
They are Massacred.
When the murderers told the doomed Moravians their fate, they merely
requested a short delay in which to prepare themselves for death. They
asked one another's pardon for whatever wrongs they might have done,
knelt down and prayed, kissed one another farewell, "and began to sing
hymns of hope and of praise to the Most High." Then the white butchers
entered the houses and put to death the ninety-six men, women, and
children that were within their walls. More than a hundred years have
passed since this deed of revolting brutality; but even now a just man's
blood boils in his veins at the remembrance. It is impossible not to
regret that fate failed to send some strong war party of savages across
the path of these inhuman cowards, to inflict on them the punishment
they so richly deserved. We know that a few of them were afterwards
killed by the Indians; it is a matter of keen regret that any escaped.
When the full particulars of the affair were known, all the best leaders
of the border, almost all the most famous Indian fighters, joined in
denouncing it. [Footnote: Col. James Smith, then of Kentucky, in 1799
calls it "an act of barbarity equal to any thing I ever knew to be
committed by the savages themselves, except the burning of prisoners."]
Nor is it right that the whole of the frontier folk should bear the
blame for the deed. It is a fact, honorable and worthy of mention, that
the Kentuckians were never implicated in this or any similar massacre.
[Footnote: The Germans of up-country North Carolina were guilty of as
brutal massacres as the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania. See
Adair, 245. There are two or three individual instances of the barbarity
of Kentuckians--one being to the credit of McGarry,--but they are
singularly few, when the length and the dreadful nature of their Indian
wars are taken into account. Throughout their history the Kentucky
pioneers had the right on their side in their dealings with the Indians.
They were not wanton aggressors; they entered upon vacant
hunting-grounds, to which no tribe had a clear title, and to which most
even of the doubtful titles had been fairly extinguished. They fought
their foes fiercely, with varying fortune, and eventually wrested the
land from them; but they very rarely wronged them; and for the numerous
deeds of fearful cruelty that were done on Kentucky soil, the Indians
were in almost every case to blame.]
But at the time, and in their own neighborhood--the corner of the Upper
Ohio valley where Pennsylvania and Virginia touch,--the conduct of the
murderers of the Moravians roused no condemnation. The borderers at
first felt about it as the English Whigs originally felt about the
massacre of Glencoe. For some time the true circumstances of the affair
were not widely known among them. They were hot with wrath against all
the red-skinned race; and they rejoiced to hear of the death of a number
of treacherous Indians who pretended to be peaceful, while harboring and
giving aid and comfort to, and occasionally letting their own young men
join, bands of avowed murderers. Of course, the large wicked and
disorderly element was loud in praise of the deed. The decent people, by
their silence, acquiesced.
A terrible day of reckoning was at hand; the retribution fell on but
part of the real criminals, and bore most heavily on those who were
innocent of any actual complicity in the deed of evil. Nevertheless it
is impossible to grieve overmuch for the misfortune that befell men who
freely forgave and condoned such treacherous barbarity.
Crawford Marches against Sandusky.
In May a body of four hundred and eighty Pennsylvania and Virginia
militia gathered at Mingo Bottom, on the Ohio, with the purpose of
marching against and destroying the towns of the hostile Wyandots and
Delawares in the neighborhood of the Sandusky River. The Sandusky
Indians were those whose attacks were most severely felt by that portion
of the frontier; and for their repeated and merciless ravages they
deserved the severest chastisement. The expedition against them was from
every point of view just; and it was undertaken to punish them, and
without any definite idea of attacking the remnant of the Moravians who
were settled among them. On the other hand, the militia included in
their ranks most of those who had taken part in the murderous expedition
of two months before; this fact, and their general character, made it
certain that the peaceable and inoffensive Indians would, if
encountered, be slaughtered as pitilessly as their hostile brethren.
How little the militia volunteers disapproved of the Moravian massacre
was shown when, as was the custom, they met to choose a leader. There
were two competitors for the place, Williamson, who commanded at the
massacre, being one; and he was beaten by only five votes. His
successful opponent, Colonel William Crawford, was a fairly good
officer, a just and upright man, but with no special fitness for such a
task as that he had undertaken. Nor were the troops he led of very good
stuff [Footnote: A minute and exhaustive account of Crawford's campaign
is given by Mr. C. W. Butterfield in his "Expedition against Sandusky."
(Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1873). Mr. Butterfield shows
conclusively that the accepted accounts are wholly inaccurate, being
derived from the reports of the Moravian missionaries, whose
untruthfulness (especially Heckewelder's) is clearly demonstrated. He
shows the apocryphal nature of some of the pretended narratives of the
expedition, such as two in "The American Pioneer," etc. He also shows
how inaccurate McClung's "sketches" are--for McClung was like a host of
other early western annalists, preserving some valuable facts in a good
deal of rubbish, and having very little appreciation indeed of the
necessity of so much as approximate accuracy. Only a few of these early
western historians had the least conception of the value of evidence or
of the necessity of sifting it, or of weighing testimony.
On the other hand, Mr. Butterfield is drawn into grave errors by his
excessive partisanship of the borderers. He passes lightly over their
atrocious outrages, colors favorably many of their acts, and praises the
generalship of Crawford and the soldiership of his men; when in reality
the campaign was badly conducted from beginning to end, and reflected
discredit on most who took part in it; Crawford did poorly, and the bulk
of his men acted like unruly cowards.]; though they included a few
veteran Indian fighters.
The party left Mingo Bottom on the 25th of May. After nine days' steady
marching through the unbroken forests they came out on the Sandusky
plains; billowy stretches of prairie, covered with high coarse grass and
dotted with islands of timber. As the men marched across them they
roused quantities of prairie fowl, and saw many geese and sand-hill
cranes, which circled about in the air, making a strange clamor.
Crawford hoped to surprise the Indian towns; but his progress was slow
and the militia every now and then fired off their guns. The spies of
the savages dogged his march and knew all his movements [Footnote:
Heckewelder, 336. Butterfield shows conclusively that there is not the
slightest ground to accept Heckewelder's assertion that Crawford's
people openly declared that "no Indian was to be spared, friend or
foe."]; and runners were sent to Detroit asking help. This the British
commandant at once granted. He sent to the assistance of the threatened
tribes a number of lake Indians and a body of rangers and Canadian
volunteers, under Captain Caldwell. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. May 14,
1782. De Peyster to Haldimand.]
The Fight at Sandusky.
On the fourth of June Crawford's troops reached one of the Wyandot
towns. It was found to be deserted; and the army marched on to try and
find the others. Late in the afternoon, in the midst of the plains, near
a cranberry marsh, they encountered Caldwell and his Detroit rangers,
together with about two hundred Delawares, Wyandots, and lake Indians.
[Footnote: _Do_. Official report of Lt. John Turney of the rangers, June
7, 1782.] The British and Indians united certainly did not much exceed
three hundred men; but they were hourly expecting reinforcements, and
decided to give battle. They were posted in a grove of trees, from which
they were driven by the first charge of the Americans. A hot skirmish
ensued, in which, in spite of Crawford's superiority in force, and of
the exceptionally favorable nature of the country, he failed to gain any
marked advantage. His troops, containing so large a leaven of the
murderers of the Moravians, certainly showed small fighting capacity
when matched against armed men who could defend themselves. After the
first few minutes neither side gained or lost ground.
Of the Americans five were killed and nineteen wounded--in all
twenty-four. Of their opponents the rangers lost two men killed and
three wounded, Caldwell being one of the latter; and the Indians four
killed and eight wounded--in all seventeen. [Footnote: _Do_. Probably
some of this loss occurred on the following day. I rely on Butterfield
for the American loss, as he quotes Irvine's official report, etc. He of
course wrote without knowledge of the British reports; and his account
of the Indian losses and numbers is all wrong. He fails signally in his
effort to prove that the Americans behaved bravely.]
That night Crawford's men slept by their watch-fires in the grove, their
foes camping round about in the open prairie. Next morning the British
and Indians were not inclined to renew the attack; they wished to wait
until their numbers were increased. The only chance of the American
militia was to crush their enemies before reinforcements arrived, yet
they lay supine and idle all day long, save for an occasional harmless
skirmish. Crawford's generalship was as poor as the soldiership of his
men.
Rout of the Whites.
In the afternoon the Indians were joined by one hundred and forty
Shawnees. At sight of this accession of strength the disspirited militia
Rout gave up all thought of any thing but flight, though they were still
equal in numbers to their foes. That night they began a hurried and
disorderly retreat. The Shawnees and Delawares attacked them in the
darkness, causing some loss and great confusion, and a few of the troops
got into the marsh. Many thus became scattered, and next morning there
were only about three hundred men left together in a body. Crawford
himself was among the missing, so Williamson took command, and hastily
continued the retreat. The savages did not make a very hot pursuit;
nevertheless, in the afternoon of that day a small number of Indians and
Detroit rangers overtook the Americans. They were all mounted. A slight
skirmish followed, and the Americans lost eleven men, but repulsed their
pursuers. [Footnote: Who were probably at this point much fewer in
number than the Americans; Butterfield says the reverse, but his account
is untrustworthy on these matters.] After this they suffered little
molestation, and reached Mingo Bottom on the 13th of the month.
[Footnote: As Butterfield shows, Heckewelder's account of Crawford's
whole expedition is a piece of sheer romancing.]
Many of the stragglers came in afterwards. In all about seventy either
died of their wounds, were killed outright, or were captured. Of the
latter, those who were made prisoners by the Wyandots were tomahawked
and their heads stuck on poles; but if they fell into the hands of the
Shawnees or Delawares they were tortured to death with fiendish cruelty.
Among them was Crawford himself, who had become separated from the main
body when it began its disorderly night retreat. After abandoning his
jaded horse he started homewards on foot, but fell into the hands of a
small party of Delawares, together with a companion named Knight.
These two prisoners were taken to one of the Delaware villages. The
Indians were fearfully exasperated by the Moravian massacre [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, June 23, 1782.]; and some of
the former Moravians, who had rejoined their wild tribesmen, told the
prisoners that from that time on not a single captive should escape
torture. Nevertheless it is likely that Crawford would have been burned
in any event, and that most of the prisoners would have been tortured to
death even had the Moravians never been harmed; for such had always been
the custom of the Delawares.
The British, who had cared for the remnants of the Moravians, now did
their best to stop the cruelties of the Indians, [Footnote: _Do_. Aug.
18, 1782.] but could accomplish little or nothing. Even the Mingos and
Hurons told them that though they would not torture any Americans, they
intended thenceforth to put all their prisoners to death. [Footnote:
_Do_. Dec. 1, 1782.]
Crawford Tortured to Death.
Crawford was tied to the stake in the presence of a hundred Indians.
Among them were Simon Girty, the white renegade, and a few Wyandots.
Knight, Crawford's fellow-captive, was a horrified spectator of the
awful sufferings which he knew he was destined by his captors ultimately
to share. Crawford, stripped naked, and with his hands bound behind him,
was fastened to a high stake by a strong rope; the rope was long enough
for him to walk once or twice round the stake. The fire, of small
hickory poles, was several yards from the post, so as only to roast and
scorch him. Powder was shot into his body, and burning fagots shoved
against him, while red embers were strewn beneath his feet. For two
hours he bore his torments with manly fortitude, speaking low, and
beseeching the Almighty to have mercy on his soul. Then he fell down,
and his torturers scalped him, and threw burning coals on his bare
skull. Rising, he walked about the post once or twice again, and then
died. Girty and the Wyandots looked on, laughing at his agony, but
taking no part in the torture. When the news of his dreadful fate was
brought to the settlements, it excited the greatest horror, not only
along the whole frontier, but elsewhere in the country; for he was
widely known, was a valued friend of Washington and was everywhere
beloved and respected.
Knight, a small and weak-looking man, was sent to be burned at the
Shawnee towns, under the care of a burly savage. Making friends with the
latter, he lulled his suspicions, the more easily because the Indian
evidently regarded so small a man with contempt; and then, watching his
opportunity, he knocked his guard down and ran off into the woods,
eventually making his way to the settlements.
Another of the captives, Slover by name, made a more remarkable escape.
Slover's life history had been curious. When a boy eight years old,
living near the springs of the Kanawha, his family was captured by
Indians, his brother alone escaping. His father was killed, and his two
little sisters died of fatigue on the road to the Indian villages; his
mother was afterwards ransomed. He lived twelve years with the savages,
at first in the Miami towns, and then with the Shawnees. When twenty
years old he went to Fort Pitt, where, by accident, he was made known to
some of his relations. They pressed him to rejoin his people, but he had
become so wedded to savage life that he at first refused. At last he
yielded, however, took up his abode with the men of his own color, and
became a good citizen, and a worthy member of the Presbyterian Church.
At the outbreak of the Revolution he served fifteen months as a
Continental soldier, and when Crawford started against the Sandusky
Indians, he went along as a scout.
Slover, when captured, was taken round to various Indian towns, and saw
a number of his companions, as well as other white prisoners, tomahawked
or tortured to death. He was examined publicly about many matters at
several Great Councils--for he spoke two or three different Indian
languages fluently. At one of the councils he heard the Indians solemnly
resolve to take no more prisoners thereafter, but to kill all Americans,
of whatever sex and age; some of the British agents from Detroit
signifying their approval of the resolution. [Footnote: Slover asserts
that it was taken in consequence of a message sent advising it by the
commandant at Detroit. This is doubtless untrue; the commandant at
Detroit did what he could to stop such outrages, although many of his
more reckless and uncontrollable subordinates very probably pursued an
opposite course. The ignorant and violently prejudiced backwoodsmen
naturally believed all manner of evil of their British foes; but it is
singular that writers who ought to be well informed should even now
continue to accept all their wild assertions as unquestioned facts. The
conduct of the British was very bad; but it is silly to describe it in
the terms often used. The year after their escape Slover dictated, and
Knight wrote, narratives of their adventures, which were together
published in book form at Philadelphia in 1783. They are very
interesting.]
Slover's Escape.
At last he was condemned to be burned, and was actually tied to the
stake. But a heavy shower came on, so wetting the wood that it was
determined to reprieve him till the morrow. That night he was bound and
put in a wigwam under the care of three warriors. They laughed and
chatted with the prisoner, mocking him, and describing to him with
relish all the torments that he was to suffer. At last they fell asleep,
and, just before daybreak, he managed to slip out of his rope and
escape, entirely naked.
Catching a horse, he galloped away sitting on a piece of old rug, and
guiding the animal with the halter. He rode steadily and at speed for
seventy miles, until his horse dropped dead under him late in the
afternoon. Springing off, he continued the race on foot. At last he
halted, sick and weary; but, when he had rested an hour or two, he heard
afar off the halloo of his pursuers. Struggling to his feet he continued
his flight, and ran until after dark. He then threw himself down and
snatched a few hours' restless sleep, but, as soon as the moon rose, he
renewed his run for life, carefully covering his trail whenever
possible. At last he distanced his enemies. For five days he went
straight through the woods, naked, bruised, and torn, living on a few
berries and a couple of small crawfish he caught in a stream. He could
not sleep nor sometimes even lie down at night because of the
mosquitoes. On the morning of the sixth day he reached Wheeling, after
experiencing such hardship and suffering as none but an iron will and
frame could have withstood.
Woe on the Frontier.
Until near the close of the year 1782 the frontiers suffered heavily. A
terrible and deserved retribution fell on the borderers for their crime
in failing to punish the dastardly deed of Williamson and his
associates. The Indians were roused to savage anger by the murder of the
Moravians, and were greatly encouraged by their easy defeat of
Crawford's troops. They harassed the settlements all along the Upper
Ohio, the Alleghany and the Monongahela, and far into the interior,
[Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., 235.] burning, ravaging, and
murdering, and bringing dire dismay to every lonely clearing, and every
palisaded hamlet of rough log-cabins.