That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  Rose and his men immediately remounted, brought horses to the men who had been the decoys and, gloating with their triumph, galloped after the main army and quickly overtook them. The Rangers and Indians followed but continued to stay just out of rifle range, not only from fear of running into another ambush but because the rain was now falling harder and shooting had become very difficult.

  The army continued heading for the distant grove of trees, towing along with them the horses in tandem that bore litters carrying the wounded. Other individuals were double-mounted with newly wounded men in an effort to carry them to safety.

  Maintaining their lead of about 200 yards ahead of the main body, the trio of privates in the advance entered the quarter-mile-wide grove with some apprehension, expecting at any moment to find themselves in the midst of a hail of bullets. No shots came and they reached the far side unscathed. They were very lucky: A party of some 60 Indians and British Rangers had circled unseen around the Americans during the battle and concealed themselves among the trees flanking the trail. Now they deliberately let the three privates pass by unmolested. Thus far their hastily conceived plan was working perfectly: The attack by their fellows at the stream had been designed not as a major engagement—though it had very nearly assumed that proportion—but for the purpose of driving the main army into the woodland and directly into the jaws of their ambush. The element of surprise, they hoped, would compensate for their fewer numbers—less than a third that of the Americans—and they knew they would be bolstered by the other portion of their force presently harrying the army’s rear. The plan was to pin the army between themselves and their pursuing fellows in a fatal pincer maneuver.

  Col. Williamson’s force, now more tightly bunched than before, entered the grove at a rapid pace, and that probably more than anything else was the Americans’ saving grace. Williamson himself had moved up near the front with Leet’s light horse. At the midpoint of the woodland, the roar of gunfire angling in from ahead sent a barrage of balls whistling among the volunteers, but surprisingly few found their targets, and many of the enemy’s guns, with powder now damp from the steady rain, misfired arid greatly diminished the effectiveness of the ambush. A few men fell, including a private riding beside Thomas Mills on his gray gelding, and Capt. Downing snapped off a shot that found its mark and tumbled a Shawnee subchief who had stepped out of concealment. Capt. James Munn, from his litter between two horses, fired at the same time and was convinced he was the one who brought the subchief down.560

  Realizing that all could well be lost at this point, Col. Williamson, instead of stopping his force to disperse among the trees and fight a standing battle, as his attackers anticipated he would do, wisely put the army into a gallop and continued past the Indians and Rangers before they could reload, thundering through the woods and out the other side. The volunteers fully expected to be pursued, but the enemy, disgruntled that their ruse had failed, followed only to the edge of the woods.

  Well ahead of the army, Pvts. Clark, McBride and Allen had been prevented from rejoining the force by a small party of Indians that cut them off just after they had emerged from the woods. That party began chasing the privates, but when the main army emerged from the woods behind the Indians at a full gallop moments later, they broke off the pursuit and scattered in the tall grass. The three advance privates halted in their flight and waited until the army reached them and rejoined it. Then the whole force continued generally eastward on the trail.561

  At this moment, hardly two miles northeast of them, the three privates whose horses had given out early in the retreat and who had traveled all night and throughout the day thus far—Joshua Collins, Michael Walters and Christopher Coffman—were now fully 25 miles east of the battle scene. Pleased at having gotten away, they were following a small path through a 20-acre grove of trees when they abruptly jerked to a halt at the sight of four Chippewa Indians standing 50 feet ahead with rifles leveled at them—part of the contingent of lake Indians brought down from Detroit by Matthew Elliott to help fight the Americans. The three privates instantly spun around to flee, only to see four more Chippewas with rifles step into the path behind them.

  Walters and Coffman immediately dropped their own guns and held up their hands, but Joshua Collins leaped from the path and into the woods, racing through the trees as swiftly as he had ever run. He expected at least some of the Chippewa warriors to pursue him, but they did not, content with the two captives who had surrendered.

  Leaving nothing to chance, Joshua Collins continued running for over a mile before pausing on a little grassy knoll on the west side of a small island of trees. There he looked back to see if he was being followed. He was not. As he watched his back trail, however, four Wyandots silently emerged from the woods and crept close. As he turned to continue the escape alone, his arms were pinned and his rifle snatched away. For a moment he was sure they were going to tomahawk him, but they merely tied his wrists behind him and started him back toward the Sandusky, arriving just before nightfall at the new Monakaduto’s Town at the mouth of Tymochtee Creek.

  About that same time, Col. Williamson, having led the remains of the army eastward after the Battle of the Olentangy and marched throughout the remainder of the day, found they were entering an area where the trees were becoming more numerous around them and the dense prairie grasses diminishing. He called a halt in a broad clearing in a woods they were passing through and issued the order that, since the Indians obviously knew exactly where they were and there would be no point in making a cold camp, small cookfires could be built on which to prepare some food. He further ordered, however, that the troops eat sparingly of what few provisions they had remaining.

  A larger than normal number of sentinels were placed to remain alert for the enemy and to be relieved every hour. As night closed over them, the groans of the wounded, no longer muted by the sounds of travel, had a very depressing effect on the men. Capt. Charles Bilderback allowed Pvt. Angus McCoy, at his own request, to stay close to the wounded and give what comfort he could. The injury in John McDonald’s thigh had become much worse, and Bilderback was sure the man would not make it back home. At the same time, since Dr. Knight was not on hand to care for any of the wounded, Bilderback asked Angus McDonald to also make some of the other injured men as comfortable as possible.562 Those men, with wounds of varying degrees of severity, lay nearby untended on blankets in the continuing drizzle. Among them was the half-scalped John Hays, whose blood had caked and dried into such a hideous mess on his head and chest that he looked as if he had just crawled from a grave. Now, in the rain, the old blood had become runny and dirty red, making him look, if possible, worse than ever. Amazingly, however, he was more alert this evening than previously, and seemed to be on the mend, since he remarked on how hungry he was and announced his intention of riding a horse when the march resumed on the morrow, rather than be carried in a litter. Angus McCoy, putting aside his own weariness and hunger and holding his gunlock under his armpit to keep it dry, trudged about among the wounded all night, trying to provide them some comfort, but he was himself extremely depressed.563

  [June 7, 1782—Friday]

  With a start, Col. Crawford awoke in the darkness. A glance at the moon and stars showed him that dawn was not far off. So exhausted had he and the five others been from the battle, the flight and the lack of sleep that, shortly after settling down to await nightfall yesterday, they had all fallen into a deep slumber. Now, mentally cursing himself over the loss of valuable travel time under the cover of darkness, the commander quickly awakened the others and, cautioning them to silence—especially the four who had joined them, since their voices had announced their approach before they were seen—he now led them eastward.

  As they strode along single file in the predawn darkness, they crossed a stream running southwest, which Crawford accurately assumed was the headwaters of the Sandusky River.564 Immediately after the crossing they came to a well-traveled trail that, in the poor light, they
mistook for the trail they had followed on the way to reach the Sandusky villages. Convinced that the army they were endeavoring to rejoin could not be very far ahead, they followed it at increased speed, congratulating themselves on their success thus far in their escape.

  They were a bit premature. The trail was not, in fact, the one that they had followed on the way out but was, instead, the main Indian trail from the upper Sandusky villages to the village of the powerful Delaware chief who had been so prominent at the battle, Wingenund. However, so convinced were they that they could only be a short distance behind the army that, as dawn lightened the eastern horizon, they put aside their plan to go into hiding during the daylight hours and continued following the trail. The morning grew brighter, and the air soon was vibrant with the cheerful sound of meadowlarks and robins and other songbirds greeting the new day with their territorial warblings. For over half an hour the men followed the trail as the day gradually became brighter.

  It was close to sunrise when Crawford, becoming progressively more concerned, came to the conclusion that the trail they were following was not, in fact, the one by which they had arrived. It was not quite so broad as that one, and, equally disconcerting now that they could see the ground clearly, there was no evidence that the main army had passed this way. In a low voice Col. Crawford made known his growing fears to the others, cautioned them to be especially on the alert and began looking for a place where they could go into hiding for the day.

  It was already too late for that. A dozen of Wingenund’s warriors, themselves unseen, had glimpsed the six men approaching and instantly realized they were Americans, even though they were walking in single file as the Indians habitually traveled. The Delawares quickly took up a position in hiding near the edge of a fairly open woodland to waylay and capture them.

  Crawford and his men had already decided to hole up for the day in that very woods, and they came to it without pause, wholly unsuspecting of any trouble until the Delawares leaped into view with leveled guns and ordered them to throw down their weapons and surrender. Instantly assessing the situation, the colonel, who was in the lead and most vulnerable, obeyed the command, but behind him the reaction was different.

  “Scatter!” Capt. Biggs shouted, and the five men behind Crawford plunged off the trail and into the woods like startled deer. Dr. Knight treed behind a large oak nearby, but the other four kept going, running at top speed and staying fairly close together. The surgeon snapped off a shot at the leader of the Indians but missed in his haste.

  “Stop shooting!” Crawford called. “It’s no good. Throw down your gun and surrender, or they’ll kill you.”

  Dr. Knight, on the verge of being killed by the Indians, tossed his weapon to the ground and emerged from behind the tree with his hands raised. The leader of the Indians, a tall, well-built young man, gave an order and the gun was snatched up at once. The surgeon was brought back to the trail. At the same time half the warriors raced off in pursuit of the four whites who had escaped.565

  The leader of the six remaining Delawares recognized Col. Crawford and stepped forward and took his hand. The colonel breathed a little easier, taking this as a demonstration of friendship. It was not; rather, it was a public avowal to the other warriors that, as the leader, this warrior was claiming the capture of Col. William Crawford, knowing that when word of it spread, he would receive much acclaim as the captor of their dreaded enemy.

  Crawford and Knight, with two warriors ahead of them and four behind, were now taken the remaining short distance to Wingenund’s Village and confined with nine other soldiers already being held prisoner there, all of whom were greatly heartened at seeing their commander.566 Crawford immediately asked to see Wingenund, whom he knew well from that chief’s numerous visits to Fort Pitt in the past. They had become more than mere acquaintances, and once, in fact, Wingenund had even stayed overnight as a guest in Crawford’s house.

  In a short while Wingenund appeared and shook hands with Crawford, but his expression was grim, his demeanor cold.

  “Don’t you remember me, Wingenund?” Crawford asked.

  “I remember you well, Crawford.”

  “Do you remember that we were friends?”

  “Yes, I remember all this and that we have often drunk together and that you have been kind to me.”

  “Then I would hope,” Crawford said earnestly, “the same friendship still continues.”

  “We would still be friends if you were in your proper place and not here.”

  “What do you mean by that, Wingenund? I hope you would not desert a friend in time of need. Now is the time for you to exert yourself in my behalf, as I would do for you if you were in my place.”

  Wingenund shook his head and made a slashing gesture with one hand. “No! You have placed yourself in a position where your former friends cannot help you.”

  “And how have I done that? Friends are friends, and they should always help one another.”

  “There is the matter,” Wingenund said slowly, “of the cruel murder of some of my people who had become Moravians, who would not fight and whose only business was praying. The Delawares—and the Wyandots and Shawnees, too—are very angry for what happened and are crying aloud for revenge.”

  Crawford nodded. “Your anger and theirs is justified. I myself thought those murders were despicable, and I spoke out strongly against those who committed them. I had no part in them. I, and other friends of yours and all other good men, oppose such acts.”

  “That may be. I believe it. I have always felt that you are a good man, Colonel Crawford. Yet you and these friends and other good men did not prevent him from going out again to kill the remainder of those inoffensive yet foolish Moravian Indians. I say foolish,” Wingenund added, “because they believed the whites in preference to us. We had often told them that they would one day be so treated by those people who called themselves their friends. We told them there was no faith to be placed in what the white men said; that their fair promises were only intended to allure, in order that they might more easily kill us, as they have done many Indians before they killed those Moravians.”

  His surge of optimism oozing away, Crawford shook his head. “I am sorry to hear you say that, Wingenund. As for Williamson’s going out again, when it was known he was determined on it, I went out with him to prevent his committing fresh murders.”

  Wingenund snorted in derision. “This,” he said, a note of irritation in his voice, “the Indians would not believe, even were I to tell them so.”

  “And why wouldn’t they believe it?”

  “Because it would have been out of your power to prevent his doing what he pleased.”

  “Out of my power?” Crawford protested. “Have any Moravians been killed or hurt since he came out?”

  “None. But you went first to their town and finding it empty and deserted, you turned on the path toward us. If you had been in search of warriors only, you would not have done so. Our spies watched you closely. They saw you while you were gathering on the other side of the Ohio. They saw you cross that river. They saw you when you camped at night. They saw you turn off from the path to the Moravian town. They knew you were going out of your way. Your steps were constantly watched and you were allowed to proceed until you reached the spot where you were attacked.”

  Crawford started to interject something, but Wingenund cut him off with another slashing gesture of his hand. “No! What you did, Colonel Crawford, was wrong. You departed from where you should be. You not only made no effort to punish that bad man, Colonel Williamson, now you have gone to war with him against us. Williamson was the man we wanted but unfortunately he ran off with others in the night at the whistling of our warriors’ balls, being satisfied that now he had not Moravians to deal with, but men who could fight and with such he did not want to have anything to do. Now,” he said, and here a tone of regret crept into Wingenund’s voice, “you must pay for Williamson’s crime because you have not attended to the Indian prin
ciple that as good and evil cannot dwell together in the same heart, so a good man ought not to go into evil company.”

  “What will they do with me now?” Crawford asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  “I say, as Williamson has escaped and they have taken you, they will take revenge on you in his stead.”

  “And is there no possibility of preventing this? Can’t you somehow get me off? I promise you, Wingenund, if you can save my life, you’ll be well rewarded.”

  Wingenund shook his head emphatically. “Had Williamson been taken with you, I and some friends, by making use of what you have told me might, perhaps, have succeeded in saving you. But as the matter now stands, no man would dare to interfere in your behalf. The King of England himself, were he to come to this spot with all his wealth and treasure, could not do so. The blood of innocent Moravians, more than half of them women and children, cruelly and wantonly murdered, calls out for revenge. The relatives of the slain, who are among us, cry out and stand ready for revenge. The Shawnees, our grandchildren, have asked for your fellow prisoner,” he pointed at Dr. Knight, “and on him they will take revenge.” His voice rose with wrath. “All the nations connected with us cry out, revenge! Revenge! The Moravians, whom you went to destroy, having fled instead of avenging their brethren, the offense has become national and the nation itself is bound to take revenge.”

  With nothing left to say, Wingenund sadly shook his head and walked away, leaving Crawford crestfallen and without hope.

  Less than an hour later, the Delawares who had set out after Capt. John Biggs and his four men returned bearing five bloody scalps, two of which Crawford recognized as the hair of Biggs and Lt. Hankerson Ashby.567