That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  Abraham desperately tried to refute the charges. The Moravians, he said, had their own branding irons that they had always used to mark their horses, and as for the goods, those were items that had either been acquired from traders over the years or that their own missionaries had brought to them from the Pennsylvania missions. By this time, however, the volunteers were in an absolute rage, and demanded all the Moravians be put to death.

  At a harsh command from Col. Williamson, all the Christian converts, even the women and children, had their wrists bound behind them. The only exceptions were the women with babies, who were allowed to carry them. The mission and the largest structure in the village—a cooper’s shed—were side by side, and the prisoners were segregated and marched into the two buildings, men and older boys into the former, women, girls, smaller children and babies into the latter. Once inside, they were ordered to sit on the floor, and then their ankles were similarly bound.

  Col. Williamson assembled his men outside and discussed what should be done with the prisoners. The majority by far were clamoring for them to be executed and Williamson at last put it to a vote. All those in favor of taking the Moravians captive to Fort Pitt were invited to step forward. Of the 100 volunteers, only 18, including John McCulloch, took that step. These men were ordered to move off to one side. Then another vote was called for from those who remained as to what manner of execution it should be. After considerable discussion it was agreed they should be struck dead in the buildings where they were, their scalps taken, and then the structures set afire. When the question arose as to what weapons should be used in the execution, Col. Williamson’s opinion was asked, but he simply shrugged and said, “Do as you please about the prisoners.”479

  By this time the party of 50 more Moravians from Salem had come in sight and Col. Williamson, with a detachment, went out to meet them, greeting them with smiles and handshakes and telling them that their brothers and sisters were awaiting them in the mission. He added that Abraham had directed them to turn their arms over to him. Without suspicion of anything amiss, they did so and were escorted the remainder of the way into Gnadenhütten. There, to their dismay, they were peremptorily taken prisoner, bound and led into the buildings. Williamson then put John McCulloch in charge of the 18 who voted against execution and sent them as a detachment to Salem to burn the town and then return here.

  Abraham shook his head sadly as the new prisoners from Salem were brought in, wondering how all this could have happened and what it meant. Unaware of the vote that had been taken outside, he could only assume that they were all to be taken to Fort Pitt and held there as hostages for some purpose. He was thankful that he had not had time to tell Col. Williamson about the remaining 50 Moravians upstream at the Schoenbrun Mission.

  The Moravian leader’s confusion ended when Col. Williamson entered the mission and told him that a vote had been taken and the decision was that all of the Moravians should be executed. Shocked and unbelieving, Abraham finally recovered enough to speak.

  “I call upon God as witness that my people are perfectly innocent of any crime against you. We are prepared and willing to suffer this death. Yet, this much I ask of you: When we were converted from our heathen ways and baptized, we made a solemn promise to the Lord that we would live unto Him and endeavor to please Him alone in this world. But we know, too, that we have been wayward in many respects, and therefore we wish to have the right granted to us to pour out our hearts before Him in prayer and beg His mercy and pardon.”

  Williamson saw no reason why the request should not be granted and said the execution would be put off until the next morning, giving the Moravians the remainder of this day and through the night to make their peace with God. He then left them to themselves. As he passed by the cooper’s shed next door, one of the women captives, a widow named Christiana who could speak English well, cried out to him through the open door, asking him not to imprison them like this and to help her. Williamson paused and looked inside, shook his head and said, “I have no power to help you.” He then walked off.

  As soon as Abraham explained what was to occur and this horrible news jumped the gap to the female prisoners next door, a great wailing of terror arose that only slowly subsided into a prolonged weeping of the women and smaller children. Many questioned among themselves why God was allowing this awful thing to happen to His children, and Abraham reassured them by saying that God worked in mysterious ways and if it was His will that His children should be brought home to Him at this point, then they should accept it and rejoice in the knowledge that they would soon be with their Heavenly Father. He managed to get his back against a wall of the mission and, with difficulty, slid himself up against it until he was on his feet.

  “My children,” he said, “hear me. Our sentence is fixed, and we shall soon all depart unto our Savior. This I say now: I have sinned in many ways and have grieved the Lord with my disobedience, not always walking the path I ought to have walked. But still I will cleave to my Savior, with my last breath, and hold Him fast, though I am so great a sinner. He will forgive me all my sins and not cast me out.”

  Together, then, they prayed long into the night until only he and a few others remained awake. Among those few were Thomas and Abel, two young boys who, back to back, worked throughout the night at loosening each other’s bonds. By daylight they had succeeded in freeing themselves and positioned themselves so that when an opportunity came, they might be able to escape.

  Shortly after dawn this morning, squads of volunteers were assigned to carry out the executions. Twenty men, led by the fat Capt. Charles Bilderback, approached the mission building. By the drawing of lots, he had been given the dubious honor of starting off the executions. At that time someone had remarked that Abraham’s long flowing gray hair would make a fine scalp, and Bilderback had decided that this scalp would be the first one he would collect. In his hands he carried a heavy cooper’s mallet that he had brought along on the expedition in his saddlebag.

  As the door opened and the volunteers filed in, Abraham gave a loud call, awakening those of his followers who were asleep and telling them to come to their knees and sing with him the Twenty-third Psalm. They did so, and their voices, many quavering with the fear that filled them, rose in the dim daylight filtering into the interior. The leading voice of Abraham did not last long. Bilderback, without a word, stepped up behind him and swung his mallet in a heavy blow that caved in the entire back of the chief’s skull. Even as his bound arms and legs jerked spasmodically, Bilderback cut away the scalp and held it aloft triumphantly while his men cheered.

  The psalm-singing faltered but then continued as Capt. Bilderback moved along from Abraham, almost methodically felling and scalping others in succession, each blow making a hideous smacking sound in the gloomy, dim interior of the mission. Then he came to the boy named Abel, who was kneeling beside Thomas. The hoped-for opportunity to escape had not yet come for the two boys, who held their arms behind them as if they were still tied. Bilderback’s mallet struck and glanced somewhat, and Abel fell face forward onto the floor. Bilderback turned, holding the bloody mallet before him and made some comment about it to his fellows, who laughed and engaged in a brief repartee with him. While they were thus distracted, Thomas, with amazing presence of mind, put his hand forward into the puddling blood from his friend and smeared the back of his own head with it, then lay down beside Abel, his movements scarcely visible in the minimal light. When Bilderback turned back to finish his job, it was at the prone form of Thomas he stopped with his knife in hand and scalped him. Steeling himself against the pain, Thomas made no sound or movement. Bilderback moved on to his next victim and struck and scalped him, then moved on again. Following the fourteenth execution, the fat officer blew out a great gust of air and handed his mallet to Pvt. George Bellar.

  “My arm’s failing me,” he said. “You go on in the same way. I think I’ve done pretty well.”

  Bellar answered with a grin and, as Bilderback left, c
arried on, using both hands to bring the mallet down with such heavy blows that often bits of skull and gray matter splattered his clothing. He played out quickly and managed to murder only 11 before he handed the mallet to the next man.

  In the cooper’s shed next door, a small boy named Adam Stroud, only ten years old, had managed to free his wrists and ankles of their bonds. He slipped over to where he knew there was a trapdoor that led down into a small fruit cellar, which had a narrow door in the foundation of the shed leading to the outside. An even smaller window opening was there, covered with the stretched, oilsoaked skin of a rabbit that allowed light to enter but kept moisture out. A slender girl named Esther, a year or two older than he, was lying on the trapdoor without knowing of its presence, and he pushed her to the right in order to open it. To the left was a boy named Peter, a pudgy youngster about Stroud’s age. Working as quickly as he could, young Stroud whispered to Esther that he would drop her down into the cellar, and as soon as she hit the ground below, she was to roll out of the way. She nodded, and he pulled her to the opening and dropped her down feet first. Then he turned to Peter and did the same. A woman of about 30 was next closest, and he began pulling her to the hole, she helping as best she could, but at that moment the executioners entered. Stroud instantly slipped down into the opening, pulling the trapdoor closed above him, and the young woman rolled herself atop it.

  The squad of executioners who entered were led by Capt. William Welch. Without any preliminary discussion, he pulled a tomahawk from his belt and killed seven women and children in succession with blows to the head and then scalped them. Other men, not awaiting specific turns, began to do the same, moving about among the women, girls, small children and babies and striking whomever they found still alive. As a private with a bloody tomahawk approached one of the women holding a baby, she held the infant out toward him beseechingly, silently willing him to take it and perhaps protect it. Instead, he instantly tomahawked it, knocking the baby out of her grip. The woman gasped but then meekly bowed her head for the death blow, which the private delivered just as methodically.480 Nathan Rollins, among the tomahawk-wielders, had previously had his father and uncle killed by marauding Indians; he now took his vengeance by successively tomahawking 19 of the women and children, but when he finished he sat down and wept because what he had done gave him no degree of satisfaction for the deaths of his kin.

  Back in the mission, the low singing was continuing among those still alive. There had been no cries, no pleas for mercy. Incredibly, Thomas felt Abel stir beside him. His friend, not dead from the blow, had come back to consciousness and was struggling to get to his feet. The effort was detected, and the individual presently doing the executing came back and swung a blow so hard that Abel’s head virtually exploded, and this time when he fell, no doubt remained that he was dead. It was too much for Pvt. Otho Johnston, who abruptly vomited and then fled out the door with the laughter of his companions following him.

  In his flight from the building, Johnston had left the door open. This was the opportunity Thomas had been hoping for. As the men moved back along the line and the executions resumed, Thomas waited until a blow was descending and then scrambled to his feet and dashed out of the open door. Blood still streaming from his scalped head, he dashed around the building and was just entering the woods before the cry was raised of his escape. No attempt was made to pursue him. His bloody head made them sure his skull was broken and he would soon die anyway. But Thomas knew he was not going to die; he knew he must get to Sandusky and relate what had happened here. He found a good hiding place and pulled himself into it, then curled into a ball, moaning faintly for the first time with the pain from his head. He planned to remain here until dark and then head for that destination with his grim news.

  In both of the buildings the executions continued until all those inside—save for the three children in the fruit cellar of the house—were dead and scalped. Williamson then ordered his men to search every structure for anything of value and take it, after which they were to burn the town, cabin by cabin, until only the two execution buildings remained—the Gnadenhütten Mission and the large cooper’s shed next to it.

  By early evening the entire town save for those two buildings lay in smoldering ashes. Williamson then ordered those buildings put to the torch, with all the bodies to be left inside. In the encroaching darkness, the blaze caused by the two buildings lighted the sky, reflecting off the low overhanging clouds. Two miles away Thomas, already on his trek to the Sandusky, paused and looked back. The blood coating his skull had coagulated, but his head ached terribly and he winced as he squinted toward the ominous glow on the clouds. He knew what it meant, and now, for the first time since all this began, tears flooded his eyes and dribbled down his cheeks. A barely audible crooning of the death song issued from his lips, and then he turned and continued his journey.

  The three children still in the fruit cellar of the cooper’s shed, Adam Stroud, Esther and Peter, had hoped to remain hidden there until late at night. Adam had removed the cords binding the wrists and ankles of his companions shortly after the three had made their escape into the cellar. Now, with the structure crackling in flames above them, what had at first been a haven might soon become a crematory. They had long before discovered that the single narrow door in the foundation that led to freedom was evidently barred from the outside, as all their efforts to open it had failed. The only hope was to squeeze through the window opening. They ripped away the rabbit skin and were dismayed at how truly small the opening was.

  Adam Stroud volunteered to go through first. With the help of the others behind him, he got his head through and then, with considerable difficulty, his shoulders. With a lot of squirming, as the other two shoved from behind, he finally slid through all the way and fell to the ground outside. He peered around quickly, but the only people he could see were some of the volunteers standing in the clearing in front of the mission and house. He also discovered that the door was not merely barred; it was buried more than knee deep in dense mud that had slid into the cavity due to heavy rains over the winter.

  Adam whispered to them that the door couldn’t be opened, and he told Esther to come through the window next. She started through at once, arms outstretched and hands clasped before her. Adam grabbed her wrists and pulled, and though the framing of the window gouged her flesh deeply, she made no outcry. It was even more difficult for her to get through than it had been for him, but she finally slid free and was out. Then it was Peter’s turn, but his pudginess betrayed him. He managed to get his head and shoulders through as Adam and Esther pulled on his wrists, but then he wedged solidly, able to move neither forward nor back. The floor above the cellar abruptly caved in and filled the little space with burning debris, and only an instant later the burning walls began tumbling down about them. Terrified, Adam and Esther turned and scrambled up out of the inclined hole. They were just in time; the remainder of the wall above them fell, burying the hole—and Peter—beneath fiercely burning timbers.

  The boy and girl fled to the woods only a short distance away and watched a moment longer as the remainder of the burning buildings collapsed into themselves amid the faint cheering of Col. Williamson’s volunteers. The bodies of the 92 men, women and children inside were incinerated.481

  Adam Stroud and Esther, both weeping, turned then and began their run toward Schoenbrun, to warn their Moravian brethren still there.482

  [March 9, 1782—Saturday]

  Great consternation erupted among the 50 remaining Moravians at the Schoenbrun Mission at the arrival of the children, Adam Stroud and Esther, just before one o’clock in the morning. Expecting the whites to come here soon after daybreak, they gathered and loaded up their things, along with the meager amount of corn they had gathered, on their horses and struck out well before dawn, heading directly west for the Sandusky.

  Less than three hours later, Col. David Williamson arrived with his force and found the place abandoned. They put it t
o the torch and then, satisfied with the success of the expedition, headed for home. Williamson was confident that what they had done would be very gratifying to the settlers on the upper Ohio and would now make the hostile Indians curtail their raids on the frontier.

  He was wrong on both counts.

  [April 1, 1782—Monday]

  Thomas Edgington was very glad the work of rebuilding Holliday’s Cove Fort was nearly completed. Already the William Thomas family had returned, and it was apparent they would soon be followed by the others who had gone to Wheeling when the fort had accidentally burned, although such returns might be slowed in view of the retaliation expected for Williamson’s massacre of the Moravians three weeks ago.

  Yesterday was Easter, and they had observed a simple ceremony at the fort and then spent the rest of the day in conversation, although the weather was so beautiful that Edgington would really rather have been out plowing his ground to prepare it for spring planting. To do that he would need his singletree, which he had loaned to the Sappington family at the little fort they were erecting a mile and a half up Harmon’s Creek at the mouth of Sappington’s Run.

  Now on his way there, he felt uncomfortable without his rifle. He had deliberately refrained from taking it when he left his house, simply because if he had, his wife would have thought he was slipping off on another expedition without telling her, as he had done in the past. Knowing she wouldn’t believe he was just going to Sappington’s, he did not want to have to listen to another of her tirades. Besides, the likelihood he would encounter a raiding party between here and there was, he felt, very remote.

  Just about a mile up Harmon’s Creek from home, however, Edgington abruptly found his way barred by a small party of Wyandots who had stepped out into the path ahead of him. He wheeled to flee back the way he had come and discovered others behind him. He leaped into a run through the brush and heard a voice he thought he recognized as Simon Girty’s calling to him to surrender. He paid it no heed and ran, with the Indians in pursuit.