The best and, without doubt, most horrible example of this kind of warfare by the white colonists occurred on the Ohio frontier in 1782. Late the year before, several groups of Christian Delaware Indians, who had been converted by Moravian missionaries, were ordered by Major Arendt DePeyster, the British commander in Detroit, to move west for their own protection, away from their villages along the Tuscarawas River in eastern Ohio. These Christian Delawares were forced to leave their homes on short notice and had to leave behind not only many of their possessions but also crops that would be badly needed during the coming winter. By February, the Delawares’ plight was becoming serious, as the food supplies in their new village on the Sandusky River were inadequate. Fearing starvation, they begged the chief of their Seneca hosts, Half King, to allow them to return to their villages and harvest the corn that was still standing in their fields. Although Half King had his doubts about the idea, he allowed them to go out of pity. The next day, about 120 hungry men, women and children began their trek across central Ohio, leaving a pathway through the deep snow that covered the wooded hills and open prairie. Upon reaching the Tuscarawas, 96 of the party went to their main settlement at Gnadenhutten and began to harvest their frozen crops.
About the same time the Christian Delawares were arriving in Gnadenhutten, an Indian raiding party made an unusual winter attack on isolated settler homesteads in western Pennsylvania. The settlers believed the Christian Delaware villages had somehow been involved in these attacks, when nothing could have been further from the truth. As a result, a group of one hundred American colonial militiamen under the leadership of Colonel David Williamson gathered at Mingo Bottom, about seventy-five miles downriver from Fort Pitt, and set out for the Tuscarawas River villages.
These converted Delawares were dedicated pacifists and posed no threat to anyone. Further, they had maintained a long and friendly relationship with the region’s white settlers. Evidently, that did not matter—they were Indian, and that was all Williamson needed as proof of their complicity in the attacks. Late in the afternoon of March 6, 1782, Williamson and his militia arrived at Gnadenhutten and encircled the town. As they approached, they came upon six Delaware men and women working in the fields and immediately killed them, despite the fact that they were all wearing European-style clothing and clearly were not warriors.
When the remainder of the village saw Williamson’s men approaching, they did not attempt to flee, believing they had nothing to fear. In fact, some of the Delaware recognized a few militiamen as neighbors with whom they had shared food and shelter in the past. Williamson told them that he and his men had come to take them to Fort Pitt, where they would be provided food, shelter and protection. The Delaware had no reason not to trust the militia commander and willingly handed over their hunting weapons. Indeed, some thought this was a good offer, as, given their history of friendship with the Americans, they believed they would receive far better treatment at Fort Pitt than the British had provided on the Sandusky. However, what they received in return for their honest friendship and faith was a savage betrayal.
Williamson proceeded to herd the men and older boys into one cabin, while he locked up the women and children in another. He then announced to their leaders that he was certain they had perpetrated the attacks in Pennsylvania, and, as a result, he would execute every member of the village. Of course, the Delawares protested their innocence and pleaded for their lives, but it was to no avail. Williamson held a council with his officers not to formally agree on whether or not to kill all the Delawares but rather to decide how best to carry out the process of execution. Some men actually protested and refused to be a party to the killings. As one militiaman recalled, “They wrung their hands—and calling God to witness that they were innocent of the blood of these harmless Christian Indians, they withdrew to some distance from the scene of slaughter.”90 When told of their impending deaths, the Delawares asked for time to prepare themselves, to which the cold-hearted Williamson agreed. The air was soon filled with the sounds of wailing and prayers, and a mixture of Delaware death songs and Christian hymns. Saddest of all, however, were the tearful goodbyes that echoed out in the chilly night air, as husbands, wives and children called out to one another between the two buildings in which they were imprisoned.
At dawn on March 8, the killing began. First, the militia dragged the women and girls out into the snow and systematically raped them. Then, they began a cold, methodical process of brutal murder using two additional cabins, which they designated as “slaughterhouses.” Two or three captives were hauled into the cabins at a time, where a militiaman would cave in their skulls with a large wooden cooper’s mallet. When the first executioner’s arm tired, he was eagerly replaced by another militiaman.
None of the Delaware resisted, but a few did try to run and were quickly shot down, falling forward into the snow, their blood staining the cold white powder. Meanwhile, the rape and murder continued unabated until eighty-eight of the remaining Indians were dead, of which some thirty-five were children. Then Williamson’s men piled the corpses high in the slaughterhouses and set the entire mission village afire. Within a few hours, the village of Gnadenhutten, whose name meant “Houses of Grace,” was reduced to ashes along with the remains of its peaceful residents.
Unbeknownst to the militia, however, two of the Delaware boys they scalped and left for dead survived and fled to spread the news of what had happened. The outrage it produced throughout the Indian nations was virtually without precedent. To be sure, the Indians had seen similar depredations by the settlers and their soldiers over the decades since the first Englishmen arrived in North America. Nevertheless, this was different—these were Indians who had converted to the European’s Christian god, renounced the warrior culture and made a supposed permanent peace with the settlers. If these Indians were not safe and could not trust the settlers, then no one could. The only answer for the rest of the woodlands nations was to continue their war against the American settlers and respond to white atrocities with the same brand of brutality exacted at Gnadenhutten.
Colonel David Williamson’s Pennsylvania militia murder the innocent Christian Delawares of Gnadenhutten. Ohio Historical Society.
Yet despite this and unlike their white counterparts, the woodland Indians never adopted wanton slaughter of noncombatants as “policy” or employed it as a standard strategy or tactic. While it might occur as a matter of military expedience, there were only rare cases where the killing and scalping of women and children was actually the planned outcome of an attack. Rather, during the American Revolution, Indian leaders sometimes found themselves at odds over the Law of Innocence when dealing with their British allies. For instance, during discussions of an upcoming frontier campaign, one senior British officer casually instructed his Wyandot counterpart that his warriors were to “Kill all the rebels,” to “put them all to death, and spare none.” The Wyandot war chief objected strenuously and requested a clarification. Surely, the British really “meant that they should kill men only, and not the women and children.” However, the response he received from the British commander was as ironic as it was perverse: “No, no,” he was told, “Kill all, destroy all; nits breed lice!”91
ANGLO-AMERICAN-INDIAN RELATIONS AND THE ALLEGHENY PLATEAU: GERMS, TREATIES AND LIES
While widespread, direct confrontation between settlers and Native Americans on the Allegheny Plateau would not begin in earnest until the middle of the eighteenth century, the effects of a European presence on the plateau’s tribes began almost as soon as the British colonists arrived at Jamestown in 1607. Like ripples moving outward from a pebble dropped in a placid pool, the Jamestown colony triggered calamity and upheaval beyond the Alleghenies that would continue for almost two hundred years.
Even before the first white trapper had set foot on the Allegheny Plateau, his germs had already arrived, providing the first link in a disastrous and tragic chain of events. The Shawnee, Moneton, Monongahela and Fort Ancient tribes w
ere struck by what became known as “virgin soil” epidemics. Having never been exposed to diseases such as measles and smallpox, hundreds of plateau Indians died. Today’s archaeologists believe it likely that Susquehannock Indians from eastern Maryland and Virginia first contracted these diseases from the English colonists and then inadvertently transmitted them during hunting and trading expeditions into the Indian lands west of the Alleghenies.92 For example, evidence of widespread death from disease was found at the site of a seventeenth-century village in the Kanawha Valley where archaeologists discovered several mass graves, with the largest containing close to forty bodies. Given that the remains exhibited no evidence of trauma, researchers concluded that these Indians had most likely died from diseases imported from the new British settlements east of the mountains.93
The next event that put pressure on the Indian tribes of the plateau, as well as those of the upper Ohio Valley, came from war. However, it was not war against the new colonists but war with the Iroquois nation. Interestingly, this, too, was a product of the growing European presence in North America. Not long after the French arrived on the upper St. Lawrence, they established a vibrant fur trade with the Iroquois, with beaver skins being the most highly prized product. These luxurious pelts were soon in such demand in European markets that the Iroquois could not provide too many. In addition, the Iroquois quite naturally began to crave the European goods they received in exchange for the furs. With items such as guns, powder, lead, cloth, blankets, colorful wool stockings and small brass kettles being especially valued, the Iroquois’ cravings quickly turned into dependence. As a result, they harvested more and more beaver, and the voracious appetite for the pelts drove the beaver population in what is now upper New York to near extinction. In the Iroquois’ minds, their only recourse was to expand their hunting grounds into the territories of neighboring nations.
Beginning around 1640, the Iroquois launched a series of “Beaver Wars” that saw the Iroquois Confederation attack tribes from Lake Huron to the Ohio Valley and the Alleghenies, one after another. The first target was the great Wyandot Confederacy, whom they savagely drove from their homeland around Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, scattering them southwest toward the Detroit region. After that, they simply moved like locusts through the woodlands and, by 1662, they were raiding Shawnee villages in the upper Ohio Valley and, within a few years, began attacking the villages of the Allegheny Plateau. By the end of the seventeenth century, with the unrelenting pressures of disease and war pressing down on them, the Shawnee had dispersed across the map from Illinois to South Carolina, with only a few hundred still along the Ohio River and on the Allegheny Plateau.94
Not surprisingly, the Iroquois became the dominant nation of the northwest, and in the mid-eighteenth century, when the British began negotiating for lands and the French looked for allies against English incursions, it was primarily the Iroquois with whom they dealt. Historians have long seen fit to describe the Iroquois and the other Indian nations within their sphere of influence as “pawns” or, worse, “puppets” in the wars for empire between Britain and France. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth. During this time, the Iroquois, who used their dominion over the other tribes to speak for them, were adept at playing one European power against the other. In some cases, they merely desired an alliance in order to restock supplies of guns, lead and powder. However, in other situations, they desired to conduct what one historian describes as a “parallel war,”95 in which they concluded a temporary alliance that suited their immediate need to fight a common foe.
As discussed in an earlier chapter, the French and Indian War was a seminal event on the frontier that forever altered the fabric of life there. The Indian role during the war as French allies is the ideal example of the “parallel war” concept. The Indian nations clearly saw the difference between the French and British approaches to their colonization of North America, and that left them with an obvious choice in terms of an ally. While British settlers voraciously seized every bit of land in their path and threatened the Indians’ very way of life, the French asked for nothing but good trade. In 1758, an “old Indian on the Ohio” named Ackowanothio gave a speech to the colonists in Pennsylvania that provided a clear, unambiguous explanation for why the Ohio Valley Indians had allied with the French:
You wonder at our joining with the French in this present War. Why can’t you get sober and once think Impartially? Does not the law of Nations permit, or rather Command us all, to stand upon our guard, in order to preserve our lives, the lives of our Wives and Children, our Property and Liberty?…I will tell you, Brethren, your Nation always shewed [sic] an eagerness to settle our Lands, cunning as they were, they always encouraged a number of poor people to settle upon our Lands: we protested against it several times, but without any redress or help. We pitied the poor people: we did not care to make use of force, and indeed some of those-people were very good people, and as Hospitable as we Indians, and gave us share of what little they had, and gained our affection for the most part; but after all we lost our hunting Ground, for where one of those people settled, like pigeons, a thousand more would settle, so that we at last offered to sell it, and received some consideration for it: and so it went on ‘till we at last jump’d [sic] over Allegeny [sic] Hills, and settled on the waters of Ohio. Here we tho’t [sic] ourselves happy! We had plenty of Game, a rich and large Country, and a Country that the Most High had created for the poor Indians, and not for the White People. O [sic] how happy did we live here! but alas! not long. O! your covetousness for Land at the risque [sic] of so many poor souls, disturb’d [sic] our peace again. Who should have thought, that that Great King over the Water, whom you always recommended as a tender Father to his People, I say, who should have thought that the Great King should have given away that Land to a parcel of covetous Gentlemen from Virginia, called the Ohio Company, who came immediately and offered to build Forts among us, no doubt, to make themselves Master of our Lands, and make slaves of us.96
During the course of the war, the Indians proved to be a valuable fighting force for the French, albeit one not as easily controlled as some in Paris might have preferred. The Indians considered themselves allies of the French but definitely not subordinates. They could not be ordered to undertake a military operation; rather, they had to be consulted with and convinced of its soundness in terms of both purpose and planning. Its outcome had to be presented as having some benefit for the Indians, and of course, a risk of high casualties was never acceptable.
However, by 1758, Indian support for France began to wane as the British cleverly undertook a series of actions designed to close the frontier to settlement, beginning with the Council of Easton. No sooner was the ink dry on that treaty’s paper than the British sought to spread the word of its provisions restricting settlement. Immediately after the council, they sent Frederick Christian Post and the Delaware sachem Pisquetomen from Easton across Pennsylvania to Fort Duquesne, where the French and Indians were preparing to attack advancing British forces under General John Forbes. The two men carried a message from Forbes urging the Indians to withdraw immediately from Duquesne:
I Embrace this Opportunity by our Brother Pesquitomen, who is now on his return Home with some of your Uncles of the Six Nations from the Treaty at Easton, of giving you Joy of the happy Conclusion of that great Council, which is perfectly agreeable to me, as it is for the mutual Advantage of our Brethren the Indians, as well as the English Nation!
I am glad to find that all past Disputes and Animosities are now finally settld [sic] and amicably adjusted, and I hope they will be forever buried in Oblivion, and that you will now again be firmly united in the Interest of your Brethren the English. As I am now advancing at the Head of a large Army against his Majesty’s Enemies the French on the Ohio, I must strongly recommend to you to fend immediate Notice, to any of your People who may be at the French Fort, to return forthwith to your Towns, where you may sit by your Fires with your Wives and Childre
n, quiet and undisturbed, and smoak [sic] your Pipes in Safety. Let the French fight their own Battles, as they were the first Cause of the War, and the Occasion of the long Difference which hath subsisted between you and your Brethren the English; but I must intreat [sic] you to restrain your young Men from crossing the Ohio as it will be impossible for me to distinguish them from our Enemies, which I expect you will comply with without Delay, left by your Neglect thereof, I would be the innocent Cause of some of our Brethren’s Death. This Advice take and keep in your own Breasts, and suffer it not to reach the Ears of the French.97
When the Shawnee and Delaware gathered at the fort read Forbes’s message and realized that the new treaty closed the frontier to further settlement, they quickly abandoned the French and terminated the alliance. For the Indians, the objectives of the war with Great Britain had been achieved, and there was no further reason to fight. With almost all of their Indian support crumbling, the French destroyed Fort Duquesne and abandoned the mouth of the Ohio, surrendering control of the Allegheny region to the British.
A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier Page 6