When the Revolution started, although the Indians believed they had been mistreated by the British, they thought their best hope of keeping their land was with them. In addition, the British had more resources than Americans to bribe tribal leaders. Both sides courted the Indians at the beginning of the war, and the Indians became divided. Carl Waldman summed up the eventual effects the Revolution had on the Indians:
As it was, for their efforts in the American Revolution, the Indians suffered many casualties, experienced the devastation of villages and crops, lost much of their land in cessations, ended the unity of one of the oldest surviving Indian confederacies—the Iroquois League—and alienated the white population around them.84
Winning wars is often a grim business, and losing them is even worse.
ON SEPTEMBER 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Revolutionary War and affirming the independence of the 13 American colonies. Unfortunately, the treasury of the Continental Congress was empty. During the last full year of the war, it had assessed the states to keep the government running. Twelve of the 13 had paid nothing. New Jersey had paid only $5,500 of its $485,679 assessment. A delegate wrote that “our Army is extremely clamorous, we cannot pay them—we can hardly feed them.” Washington recommended that Congress not break up the Continental army, but Congress ignored that recommendation as a practical matter.
In 1784, only a year after the Treaty of Paris, the United States Army consisted entirely of a West Point artillery company of 58 men and 29 others at Fort Pitt, a total of 87 soldiers.85 Trouble on the frontier could be expected, and it occurred.
Mutiny was in the air as well. Some impatient officers, in a group of propositions called the Newburgh Addresses, advocated either refusing to disband when peace was declared or, if the war continued, to “retire to some unsettled country,” leaving Congress with no army. Washington appeared unannounced at a meeting of these officers and gave a critical speech inquiring about the author of the Addresses:
My God! what can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the Army? Can he be a friend to this Country?
When he left, the officers resolved to reject the Newburgh Addresses. There was no further serious talk of insubordination or desertion.86
THE SCOTT family lived on the frontier in Virginia in 1785. One night, several Indians stormed into the house. Mrs. Scott believed they were from the Delaware, Mingo, and 2 other tribes. Mr. Scott jumped out of bed and was shot and killed. An Indian stabbed and cut the throats of the 3 youngest children in their beds, then dashed their bodies on the floor near their mother. The eldest child, a girl of 8, was awakened, ran to her mother, asking her mother to save her. Mrs. Scott pleaded with the Indians to spare the child, but they tomahawked and stabbed the girl while she was in her mother’s arms. Mrs. Scott was taken away by the Indians. On the eleventh day of her captivity, she escaped.87
In 1786, Captain McGary was with a group of soldiers attacking Shawnee villages. When they came to his village, an old chief named Moluntha stepped out with a peace pipe, a cocked hat, and an American flag. McGary asked the chief if he had participated in a battle earlier that year in Kentucky where 70 soldiers led by McGary had been killed. Moluntha had little English, was old, confused, and knew only that the American was asking him something. He nodded his head, saying, “Yes, yes.” McGary took his hatchet, brained the chief, and took his scalp.88
That same year, while working his farm in Kentucky, the grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln—also named Abraham Lincoln—was murdered by an Indian. Tom Lincoln, father of the president, was there at the time. Tom’s older brother, Mordecai Lincoln, saw the attack and shot the Indian, saving their lives. President Lincoln commented years later about his grandfather’s death: “He was killed by Indians, not in battle but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.”89
In 1788, Tecumseh’s brother, Cheesekau, lost his life trying to break into a settler’s log cabin in the Cumberland River Basin after a settler had been killed there.90 Tecumseh* took revenge by raiding a small settlement on Drake Creek. He and his group of Shawnee murdered and scalped 3 men and took several women and children prisoner.92
George Ironside, a Scotch trader, was in Miami and Shawnee country in 1789. One of their warriors showed him a heart he had personally taken from a white prisoner. He kept it fastened behind him with the scalp.93
Charles Builderback, “who had stood literally in Delaware blood and brains while bashing in the heads of the praying Indians at Gnadenhutten,” was rounding up cattle on the Ohio River with his wife the same year. A party of Shawnee captured them, and when they recognized him, they emasculated and dismembered him over a long period of time. Then his skull was smashed with hatchets.94
Charles Johnston was captured by Indians in 1790 while going down the Ohio River just above the Scioto. A white man and a woman were killed during the capture. The dead were scalped and their bodies thrown in the river.95 Johnston was then forced to help the Indians decoy a canoe of 6 settlers. He and 2 other white settlers, Divine and Thomas, were put on the bank of a river. When the canoe was in sight, Divine called out for an ax to repair a boat. As the canoe came close to shore, the Indians opened fire, killing 4 immediately and wounding the other 2, who were dragged to shore and tomahawked. All 6 were scalped and their bodies thrown in the river. Johnston had been captured by a similar ruse performed by Divine and Thomas. Although both had claimed the Indians had forced them to do so, another captive told Johnston that Divine had planned both schemes when the Indians promised they would release him if he got settler prisoners for them. Johnston thought Divine was “perfectly happy” in executing the ax ruse.96
After Johnston had been ransomed, a Shawnee warrior told him his friend and fellow prisoner, William Flinn, had been burnt at the stake and eaten at one of the Miami towns. The Shawnee added that he had shared in the meal and that Flinn’s flesh was even sweeter than bear’s meat, a food in high repute with Indians.97
General Josiah Harmar had been a lieutenant colonel under Washington. It was he who in 1783 brought the ratified Treaty of Paris to France, thereby ending the war. On his return to the United States, he was named commander of the army and assigned to the Old Northwest Territory, where he was the government’s Indian agent to the Ohio Valley tribes. Carl Waldman said of him, “He commanded U.S. forces in the region, clearing Indians from ceded lands and evicting white settlers who trespassed on remaining Indian Territory in violation of treaty agreements.”98 This analysis succinctly states federal government policy toward the Indians throughout almost all of the American-Indian War: Obtain cessation of Indian lands, clear Indians from those lands who have sold but refuse to leave, and evict settlers who trespass on Indian lands in violation of treaties. This was the policy, but frequently it was not followed.
Chief Little Turtle* (part Miami and part Mahican) and his allies had killed around 1,500 settlers in the Old Northwest between 1783 and 1790.100 Washington ordered Harmar’s army into the field.
At the close of the 1700s, it was said that the Miami Indians were savages who massacred women and children, drank the blood of their victims, and made merry as they burned their captives at the stake. It was reported that more settlers were tortured at Kekionga, their principal village at present Fort Wayne, Indiana, than any other place in the state.101
Harmar and his men advanced into Miami territory* in 1790. Secretary of War Henry Knox, concerned about what the British would think of Harmar’s strike, told General St. Clair to tell the British commander at Detroit, Major Patrick Murray, that Knox merely intended to chastise the Indians, but to keep all this secret. Of course Murray told the Indians at once. On the basis of this information, the Indians asked for and got help from other Indian allies. There were bloody skirmishes, and Harmar lost 75 soldiers and 108 militia, while the Indians lost 100 warriors.
Three American prisoners were interrogated, then, after learning what more they
could from them, the Indians killed them. Harmar had to retreat.103 British general Simon Fraser warned one group of American prisoners, who were lightly guarded, that if they should attempt to escape “no quarter would be shown … and those who might elude the guard, the Indians would be sent in pursuit of, and scalp them.”104
Near Cincinnati, Ohio, several tribes surrounded Dunlap’s Station, a fortified community. To weaken the resolve of the defenders, they took a prisoner, Abner Hunt, a surveyor, into a clearing in front of the stockade, tied him to a log on the frozen ground, stretched him out, built a hot fire around him, made knife slits in his body, and put hot coals in the slits. He screamed and cried until nearly dawn.105
Shortly after the ice broke on the Ohio River in the spring of the next year, Indians captured 2 riverboats, killing 24 settlers. Some Shawnee and Mingos recognized 2 of the passengers, brothers Michael and Daniel Greathouse. Daniel was supposedly the leader of the settlers who had murdered part of the family of Mingo chief Logan in 1774. Daniel Greathouse and his wife were stripped. Cuts were made in their abdomens and their intestines tied to a tree. Then they were forced to walk around the tree, pulling out their intestines.106
Americans responded to the murder of the Greathouses in a variety of ways. Houses and barns were booby-trapped. Scalp bounties were offered for any Indian scalp (not just Shawnee and Mingo scalps). Shortly after the Greathouse incident, a ranger party led by Simon Kenton killed 5 Shawnee on the Ohio. All were scalped. The head of a young boy was mounted on a pole along the river.107
Jackson Johonnet was assigned to General Harmar’s army in 1791 with the rank of sergeant. He had come from his native England to Boston when 17. He was unable to find employment until he met an army officer. “After treating me with a bowl or two of punch, I enlisted.” Before he saw any action, he and 10 other soldiers were captured by the Kickapoos* on the Wabash River. After 2 days, one of the soldiers, George Aikins, could go no farther because of hunger and fatigue. Archibald Loudon reported his fate:
The captain of the guard approached the wretched victim, who lay bound upon the ground, and with his knife made a circular incision on the scull; two others immediately pulled off the scalp; after this, each of them struck him on the head with their tomahawks; they then stripped him naked, stabbed him with their knives in every sensitive part of the body, and left him, weltering in blood, though not quite dead, a wretched victim of Indian rage and hellish barbarity.109
The Kickapoos with captive Johonnet reached an Indian village on the upper Miami, where the captives were severely beaten. Soldiers James Durgee, Samuel Forsythe, Robert Deloy, and Uzza Benton all fainted. They were “immediately scalped and tomahawked in our presence [including that of Johonnet], and tortured to death, with every affliction of misery that Indian ingenuity could invent.” Twenty-six days after the capture, Johonnet and a fellow soldier, Richard Sackville, escaped.
Not much later they came upon the newly murdered, stripped, and scalped bodies of an old man, a woman, and 2 children. Not long after that, they accidently discovered 4 Wabash Indians guarding 2 prisoners. They killed 3 of the Indians, but Sackville also died. Prisoner George Sexton told Johonnet that 3 others had been taken captive with him; however, 2 were wounded and were immediately scalped and killed. Sexton was so grateful for being released from captivity by Johonnet that he insisted on staying on watch 23 out of the 24 hours in the day and carrying all their baggage.
Johonnet thereafter fought with distinction with General St. Clair, winning a battlefield commission. His narrative, said Loudon, ended with the statement that it was written for the purpose, among others, of exhorting American youth
to defend the worthy inhabitants on the frontiers from the depredations of savages; whose horrid mode of war is a scene to be deprecated by civilized nature, whose tender mercies are cruelties and whose faith is by no means to be depended on, though pledged in the most solemn treaties.110
RALPH K. ANDRIST has said that “every Indian conflict seems to have some blunder or stupidity that makes it worse than it need be.”111 General St. Clair’s* defeat in 1791 is an example. Logan Esarey characterized it as a “misguided, mismated, misordered, misdirected affair.”113 Its mission was to go north from Cincinnati and fight the Indians under Little Turtle. Bil Gilbert reported that Cincinnati real-estate man John Cleves Symmes saw the troops and said that they had been recruited “from the prisons, wheel barrows [impressed labor gangs] and brothels of the nation at two dollars a month [and] will never answer our purpose of fighting Indians.”114 The army consisted of 2,300 men, half of whom indeed were federal short-term conscripts. In addition, there were about 200 female “cooks,” who had been gathered by the men. St. Clair and his officers were convinced the men would not march without the women, so they were officially ignored.115 The soldiers were never paid. Food was in such short supply that regular army troops had to be detached to guard the supply trains from their own men.116
By the time St. Clair got to the area where he hoped to fight, 600 soldiers had deserted.117 The Indians attacked. The soldiers fought for 3 hours, then the order to retreat was given. The retreat became a rout, and St. Clair lost 623 soldiers and 24 civilian teamsters. Only 580 of his men got home. Twenty-one Indians were killed. “In proportion to the number of men fielded that day,” wrote Axelrod, “it stands as the worst loss the U.S. Army has ever suffered.”118 Robert M. Utley thought it certainly was “the worst disaster in the long history of the Indian wars.”119 St. Clair resigned his commission as a result of this defeat.
St. Clair’s second in command, Richard Butler, was a survivor of that rout for a time. Butler was mortally wounded in a fight around the artillery. He was found by his brothers, Captain Edward Butler and Major Thomas Butler, who were also badly injured. Richard told them he was fatally wounded and that they should leave him, which they did. Two Shawnee later found him. They killed and scalped him. Simon Girty and others identified the corpse. The Shawnee cut out his heart, which was still warm, and divided it into 14 pieces, one for each of the Indian nations fighting there.120
After St. Clair’s defeat, captives were roasted at the stake. Soldiers’ intestines were pulled out bit by bit. Some were flayed alive and their limbs hacked or slowly wrenched away. The brains of children were dashed out against the trunks of trees. Some of the women were stretched naked on the ground and run through with wooden stakes. Other women’s breasts were hacked away, then the women were cut in 2.121
When Washington learned of the defeat, he exclaimed,
O God, O God, he’s [St. Clair’s] worse than a murderer! how can he answer it to his country;—the blood of the slain is upon him—the curses of widows and orphans—the curse of Heaven!122
The year after Johonnet enlisted in the British army, Massy Herbeson and her family were in their home near Pittsburgh. Her husband was away, and many Indians came into their home. She recognized 2 Senecas and 2 Munsees. The Indians then began taking the family away from the house. Her 3-year-old son was unwilling to leave. The Indians took him by the heels, dashed him against the house, then stabbed and scalped him. The next night, a 5-year-old son began to mourn for his dead brother. An Indian tomahawked and scalped him, too. Massy escaped the next morning.123
After the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, some soldiers found 8 warriors looking for food. One warrior was killed and scalped.124
THOSE SETTLERS who had “abandoned civilization” were called white savages. Simon Girty was not the only one. There was also Alexander Outlaw. In 1795 he entered the Indian town of Citico. He murdered a few women and children, according to Bernard W. Sheehan, “exposing their private parts in the most shameful manner, heaving a young child, with both its arms broke, alive, at the breast of its dead mother.” It was reported that he had “done everything in his power to drive the Indians to desperation.”125 Another white savage was Benjamin Harrison, who in 1795 murdered 17 Creeks. He decapitated some of them with a broadax.126
In 1798 Jedidi
ah Morse, “who maintained a scholarly interest in the Indians and held deep sympathies for their welfare,”127 gave this compendium of Indian torture:
They begin at the extremity of his body, and, gradually, approach the more vital parts. One plucks out his nails by the roots, one by one; another takes a finger into his mouth, and tears off the flesh with his teeth; a third thrusts the finger, mangled as it is, into the bowl of a pipe made red-hot, which he smokes like tobacco; then they pound his toes and fingers to pieces between two stones; they cut circles about his joints, and gashes in the fleshy parts of his limbs, which they sear immediately with red-hot irons, cutting, burning, and pinching them alternately; they pull off his flesh, thus mangled and roasted, bit by bit, devouring it with greediness, and smearing their faces with the blood, in an enthusiasm of horror and fury. When they have thus torn off the flesh, they twist the bare nerves and tendons about an iron, tearing and snapping them, whilst others are employed in pulling and extending his limbs in every way that can increase the torment. This continues, often, five or six hours; and sometimes, such is the strength of the savages, days together. They frequently unbind him, to give a breathing to their fury, to think what new torments they shall inflict, and to refresh the strength of the sufferer, who, wearied out with such a variety of unheard-of torments, often falls into so profound a sleep, that they are obliged to apply the fire to awake him, and renew his sufferings. He is again fastened to the stake, and again they renew their cruelty; they stick him all over with small matches of wood that easily takes fire but burns slowly; they continually run sharp reeds into every part of his body; they drag out his teeth with pincers and thrust out his eyes; and, lastly, after having burned his flesh from the bones with slow fires; after having so mangled the body that it is all but one wound; after having mutilated his face in such a manner as to carry nothing human in it; after having peeled the skin from the head, and poured a heap of red-hot coals or boiling water, on the naked skull—they once more unbind the wretch; who, blind and staggering with pain and weakness, assaulted and pounded on every side with clubs and stones, now up, now down, falling into their fires at every step, runs hither and thither, until one of the chiefs, whether out of compassion, or weary of cruelty, puts an end to his life with a club or dagger. The body is then put into a kettle, and this barbarous employment is succeeded by a feast just as barbarous.128
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