The Wild Frontier

by William M. Osborn

  George Rogers Clark was a surveyor in Kentucky before he became a captain in the Virginia militia. With the support of Virginia governor Patrick Henry, he mounted a military expedition against pro-British Indians in Illinois and Indiana. In 1779, Lieutenant Colonel Clark, with 350 Virginia militiamen, was trying to get Lieutenant Colonel Henry Hamilton to surrender the fort at Vincennes, Indiana, along with its 175 soldiers and 60 Indian warriors. By some psychological maneuvering, Clark persuaded Hamilton that he faced a greater force than he actually did. Clark attacked the fort, Hamilton asked for a cease-fire, the 2 met, and Hamilton asked for time to talk with his officers. Clark gave him an hour. During that time, his men captured 4 Indians, who were taken to a place in view of the fort, where Clark’s men tomahawked them to death. This had an unsettling effect on the Indians in the fort. Hamilton surrendered. Clark was made a brigadier general the next year.45

  General Washington ordered General John Sullivan* to invade Iroquois territory after the effective British-Iroquois raids on the settlers. There is some disagreement concerning what Washington specifically told Sullivan to do. Carl Waldman reported that Sullivan’s instructions were that Iroquois country should not “be merely overrun but destroyed.”47 This might imply that no prisoners were to be taken. Page Smith, who has written more extensively about the Revolution than Waldman, said Washington instructed Sullivan that there was to be “the total destruction and devastation” of the Iroquois settlements and “the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.”48 There is no factual basis for asserting, as some Indian advocates have done, that Washington ever favored extermination of all Indians at any time or place.

  In 1779, a force of about 2,500 men under Sullivan attacked the Iroquois in Pennsylvania and New York. Towns and crops were destroyed. Even though they suffered few casualties, the Indians’ cultural base in New York was destroyed.49 Two Indians who had been killed were skinned to make boot tops.50 James Wilson, in The Earth Shall Weep, asserted that during the Sullivan campaign Colonel Daniel Brodhead and his troops massacred hundreds of Iroquois women and children in a “squaw campaign.”51 (No other reference to a massacre of 200 or more Iroquois women and children has been found to confirm this assertion, and the Wilson book has no source notes.)

  As Sullivan invaded Iroquois country in 1779, his advance guard under Lieutenant Thomas Boyd was ambushed. Pro-American Oneida chief Hanyerry was killed, his body hewn to pieces, and his scalped head impaled on a branch. Boyd himself was wounded and captured by the Indians. He was whipped, his fingernails pulled out one at a time, his nose and tongue cut off, an eye gouged out, his genital organs cut off, and his body pierced with spears in several places. He was then skinned alive and his head cut off. Sullivan’s men found the body. General Sullivan wrote that there had been other tortures “which decency will not permit me to mention.”52

  That same year American colonel Archibald Lochry and 100 men were on their way down the Ohio River to join George Rogers Clark. Mohawk chief Joseph Brant captured part of an advance party and learned about Lochry’s movement, which allowed him to ambush them. Lochry and several others were captured and tortured to death.53 (For some reason, Wilson contended that “Joseph Brant … scrupulously avoid[ed] unnecessary killing.”54 This cannot be reconciled with the Cherry Valley, the Minisink, the Goshen, or the Lochry atrocities.55)

  In 1779, General Sullivan ordered Major Henry Dearborn* and others to destroy Cayuga towns. Dearborn burned 6 towns and took a crippled Indian boy and 3 women prisoner. The officer in charge ordered that a house be left to shelter them. As the troops were moving out, some of the soldiers, unobserved, made the door secure, then set the house and its inhabitants on fire.57

  Quaker Benjamin Gilbert and his family lived on a farm in Pennsylvania. In 1780, 11 Indians appeared who had abandoned their territory on the approach of Sullivan’s army. Two were Mohawk, 3 Cayuga, 1 was Delaware, and 5 were Seneca. They took 12 captives at the farm, including the children, then went to an adjoining farm, where 3 more were captured. After all the buildings were burned, the group headed for Montreal. They came to a place where 4 Indians had been killed a few days earlier. They told the settlers that they too would be killed and scalped that night. One captive was so terrified he managed to escape. The others were treated harshly after the escape. The Mohawk leader

  threw the Gilbert boy down and tried to strike him with his tomahawk, but his mother put her head on her son’s forehead, pleaded with the Indian, and prevented it. He was so enraged, however, that he tied both of them to a tree by their necks.

  As was the custom, the captives were beaten with clubs and stones as they entered Indian towns. They reached the St. Lawrence and were put on a boat in a steady rain. A shelter was made for father Gilbert, who was 69 and ill, to make him more comfortable. Then he was moved inside, but he died. His widow feared the French who operated the boat would throw the body overboard, and she appealed to British officers, who were in a following boat. They arranged for the boat to stop at a garrison the next morning, where a son was permitted to go to the commandant, get a coffin, and bury Mr. Gilbert under an oak tree near the fort.58

  Ten male settlers from the Virginia and Kentucky border areas were captured by the Wyandots in 1781. One was 18-year-old Henry Baker. They were all forced to run the gauntlet. They were then taken to the Wyandot council house and condemned to be burned at the stake, one each day. Baker was to be last. When it was Baker’s turn, the Indians came to get him and took him to the charred stake. At the last moment, the renegade Simon Girty saved his life.59

  Colonel Brodhead was leading an expedition toward the Delaware town of Coshocton in 1781 when his scouts discovered Indians. They fired at them, but 2 escaped to warn the others. The troops ran into a heavy rain and managed to take Coshocton without firing a shot. They herded the occupants together, killed 15 braves with spears and tomahawks, then scalped them.60

  The next morning, the Delaware chief asked to talk to Brodhead from the other side of the river. Brodhead told him to speak. The chief said, “Peace.” Brodhead wanted some chiefs to come over, but the chief said he feared one would be killed. Brodhead assured him that would not happen. One of the chiefs then crossed the river in a canoe and started talking with Brodhead. But just as the Delaware had feared, the chief was killed from behind by a tomahawk wielded by a civilian traveling with the troops. “That ended the peace parley.” Brodhead began the march back to Fort Pitt. The militiamen found the prisoners they had taken to be a nuisance and began murdering them.61

  In 1782, Indians murdered John Fink in Ohio, took Mrs. Robert Wallace and her 3 children captive, and scalped the mother and the infant child. They also captured John Carpenter (who claimed 2 of his captors were Moravians), wounded, scalped, and mutilated William White within sight of the fort, and captured Timothy Dorman and his wife.62

  Moses Van Campen was captured a second time in 1782 when his unit of 20 or 25 men was attacked by 85 Indians. The chief warrior came before the captives. The 5 Indians killed in the skirmish were laid nearby. The chief warrior consulted the Great Spirit about whether to kill the prisoners immediately or spare their lives. Van Campen remembered the Indians he had killed recently “and thought that if I was discovered to be the person responsible, my case would be a hard one.” The chief warrior then announced that he “came to the conclusion that there had been blood enough shed; as to the men they had lost, it was the fate of war, and we must be taken and adopted into the families of those whom we had killed.” This spirit of generosity was not found very often in this war.

  Van Campen then had to run the gauntlet. Young Indians with whips came after him. Two young Indian women came up with whips. He knocked them down and saw they had beautiful yellow underdresses. He was then adopted by Colonel John Butler, the British commander of the Wyoming Valley Massacre, whose son, Captain John Butler, had been killed by the Americans. In that capacity, he was confined to a private room but not put under guard. He w
as offered a British commission equal to his own, but he refused. Later, he was taken to a military prison in Montreal, where he found 40 or 50 other officers. On the Fourth of July, they managed to get some brandy and “we had a high time.” The British found this very offensive. Two months later, he was paroled to return home.63

  In response to attacks on American settlers by Delaware and other tribes in 1782, a force of 300 Pennsylvania Continental militia under Colonel David Williamson attacked the peaceful Moravian mission at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Williamson told the Indians that they would be put to death because of the conduct of the Delaware.64 Almost all of the 90 Delaware Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten were killed, including women and children.65 It is reported that one of the militia, Charles Builderback, killed 14 Indians with a cooper’s mallet.66

  Williamson got the wrong Indians. British captain Matthew Elliott, who was in charge of Detroit in 1781, had destroyed all the possessions of the Christian Indians, then ordered them to leave. Because of a harsh winter and famine, they obtained British permission to move temporarily back to their original towns. They arrived at Gnadenhutten just after the Mohawk and Delaware had conducted unusually brutal raids in the area. The Pennsylvania legislature condemned the massacre, but did not reprimand Williamson in any way.67

  The massacre inevitably led to acts of vengeance by the Delaware. Colonel William Crawford, a friend of General Washington, was sent with some soldiers to try to destroy Moravian, Delaware, and Wyandot towns along the Upper Sandusky River.68 Crawford requested Dr. John Knight, who related these events, to go along as surgeon. Knight was a Virginian who served in the Revolution and learned medicine while in the army.69 There were 465 men when they started out, but some soon returned home when they lost their horses. After some skirmishes during which both sides took scalps, Colonel Crawford, Dr. Knight, and some others were captured by the Delaware. Delaware chief Pipe painted the faces of all the captives black. Five of them were seated together some distance from Dr. Knight. A number of adult females and boys fell on these 5 and tomahawked them.70

  “There was a certain John M’Kinley amongst the captives, formerly an officer in the 13th Virginia regiment, whose head an old squaw cut off, and the Indians kicked it about upon the ground…. Almost every Indian we met struck us either with sticks or their fists.”71 Dr. Knight described in detail what happened next:

  When we were come to the fire the colonel [Colonel Crawford] was stripped naked, ordered to sit down by the fire, and then they beat him with sticks and their fists. Presently after I was treated in the same manner. They then tied a rope to the foot of a post about fifteen feet high, bound the colonel’s hands behind his back and fastened the rope to the ligature between his wrists. The rope was long enough either for him to sit down or walk around the post once or twice and return the same way. The colonel then called to [Simon] Girty and asked if they intended to burn him?—Girty answered, yes. The colonel said he would take it all patiently. Upon this Captain Pipe, a Delaware chief, made a speech to the Indians, viz: about thirty or forty men, sixty or seventy squaws and boys.

  When the speech was finished they all yelled a hideous and hearty assent to what had been said. The Indian men then took up their guns and shot powder into the colonel’s body, from his feet as far up as his neck. I think not less than seventy loads were discharged upon his naked body. Then they crowded about him, and to the best of my observation, cut off his ears; when the throng had dispersed a little I saw the blood running from both sides of his head in consequence thereof.

  The fire was about six or seven yards from the post to which the colonel was tied; it was made of small hickory poles, burnt quite through in the middle, each end of the poles remaining about six feet in length. Three or four Indians by turns would take up, individually, one of these burning pieces of wood and apply it to his naked body, already burned black with powder. These tormentors presented themselves on every side of him, so that whichever way he ran round the post they met him with the burning faggots and poles. Some of the squaws took broad boards, upon which they would carry a quantity of burning coals and hot embers and throw on him, so that in a short time he had nothing but coals of fire and hot ashes to walk upon.

  In the midst of these extreme tortures, he called to Simon Girty and begged of him to shoot him; but Girty making no answer he called to him again. Girty then, by way of derision, told the colonel that he had no gun, at the same time turning about to an Indian who was behind him, laughed heartily, and by all his gestures seemed delighted at the horrid scene….

  Colonel Crawford at this point of his sufferings, besought the Almighty to have mercy on his soul, spoke very low, and bore his torments with the most manly fortitude. He continued in all the extremities of pain for an hour and three quarters, or two hours longer, as near as I can judge, when at last, being almost exhausted, he lay down on his belly; they then scalped him and repeatedly threw the scalp in my face, telling me “that was my great captain.”—An old squaw (whose appearance every way answered the ideas people entertain of the devil) got a board, took a parcel of coals and ashes and laid them on his back and head, after he had been scalped; he then raised himself upon his feet and began to walk round the post; they next put a burning stick to him as usual, but he seemed more insensible of pain than before.

  The Indian fellow who had me in charge, now took me away to captain Pipe’s house, about three-quarters of a mile from the place of the colonel’s execution. I was bound all night, and thus prevented from seeing the last of the horrid spectacle. Next morning, being June 12th, the Indian untied me, painted me black, and we set off for Shawanese town…. We soon came to the spot where the colonel had been burnt, as it was partly on our way; I saw his bones laying amongst the remains of the fire, almost burnt to ashes; I suppose after he was dead they had his body on the fire.

  The Indian told me that was my Big Captain, and gave me the scalp halloo.72

  Dr. Knight escaped from his captor the next day, before he could be delivered to Shawanese town for his execution.73 (Washington wrote that “I learned the melancholy tidings of Colonel Crawford’s death…. The manner of his death was shocking to me.”)74 After his escape, Dr. Knight was discharged from service, married Crawford’s niece, and raised a large family.75

  On a Sunday in 1782, Reverend John Corly and his family were walking to his church when they were attacked by Indians. His wife was carrying a baby being breastfed. The baby was killed and scalped. His wife was struck, but did not fall, so an Indian shot her through the body and scalped her. They sank the hatchet into the brains of his 6-year-old son and killed him. Another daughter besides the baby was killed and scalped. One daughter hid in a hollow tree and came out when she thought the Indians were gone. They were not. They knocked her down and scalped her, but she survived. A final daughter was also scalped, “on whose head they did not leave more than an inch round, either of flesh or skin, besides taking a piece out of her skull.” She also survived. The Reverend Corly fainted. He was rescued by a friend.76

  John Slover was captured by the Miami Indians before 1773 when he was 8, after his father and 2 little sisters had been killed. He was a captive of the Miamis for 6 years. Then Slover was sold to a Delaware and finally to a Shawnee, with whom he lived another 6 years.77

  During this time, another prisoner was taken and stripped and blackened with coal and water, the Indian sign that he was marked for death. He was made to run the gauntlet, and while he was doing this he was beaten and cut with tomahawks, and guns fired loads of powder into his body. Blood gushed from a wound in his shoulder. He got to the council house, where he thought he was safe. When he realized he was not safe there, he tried to grab a tomahawk, but was too weak. For a long time after that he was beaten, then finally killed.78

  That evening a third prisoner was cut into pieces and his limbs and head put on poles. Slover also saw 3 other bodies in the same condition. He was told they had been killed the same way. These 3 bodies were dragged out o
f town, given to the dogs, and their limbs and heads stuck on poles.79

  Alexander McKee,* an agent of the British Indian Department who had led Indians in many attacks against Americans, was present at most of the council meetings known to Slover. The animosity of tribes toward the settlers was shown at these council meetings, which were attended by several tribes—the Mingo, Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Munsee, and some Cherokee—and which lasted 15 days. All warriors could attend, but only chiefs could speak. On the next to the last day of the council, a speech sent from the British commander at Detroit was read. The commander said in part, “When any of our people fall into the hands of the Rebels, they show no mercy—why then should you take any prisoners? My children, take no more prisoners of any sort—man, woman, or child.” Two days later, Indians from every nation in the area determined to take no more captives of any kind. It was decided that if an American child only 3 inches long should be found, it would be shown no mercy. At the end of the council, all tribes present agreed that if any nation not present did take prisoners, the nations present would rise against them and put the prisoners to death.81

  About the time of the meetings, 12 men were brought in from Kentucky. Three were burned that day. The remainder were distributed to other Indian towns. Slover was told they were also burned. At the final council meeting he was to attend, the Indian woman with whom he was living hid him, apparently because she didn’t want him to know it would then be decided he too was to be burned.82

  The next morning, about 40 warriors and Girty surrounded the house where he was living, put a rope around his neck, tied his arms behind his back, and “blackened me in the usual manner.” He was tied to a post; the flame was kindled. It was a clear day, but just as the fire began to blaze, there was a hurricane, extinguishing the fire. He was told he would be burned the next morning. He was tied with buffalo hide, but he got loose and stole a horse. He rode it until it tired, abandoned the horse, and then ran. He was lashed by nettles and bitten by mosquitoes because he was naked except for a piece of rug he had stolen as he escaped. He eventually reached Wheeling and was saved.83