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On the morning of June 11th, Crawford returned to his companions in misfortune at the Old Town, but Captain Pipe had preceded him and painted the faces of Dr. Knight and the other nine prisoners black. Upon Crawford's arrival, Pipe painted him also, but without any ferocity of language or manner. On the contrary, he dissembled so far as to assure Crawford that he would be adopted at the Wyandot village. When the Indians marched, Col. Crawford and Dr. Knight were kept back between Pipe and Wingemand, the two Del- aware chiefs, while the other nine persons were sent forward. As they proceeded towards the Tymochtee, Crawford and his friend were shocked to see the bodies of four of the pris
387
ESCAPE OF KNIGHT AND SLOVER.
oners scattered along the path, and were themselves witnesses of the slaughter of the remaining five by a crowd of squaws and boys. Among them was one John McKinley, formerly an officer in a Virginia regiment, whose head was severed from his body by an old hag, and kicked about among the savages. Half a mile further, they reached the spot selected for Crawford's execution, which was attended with all the horrors of savage cruelty. Three hours of torture, during which he entreated Girty in vain for the mercy of a bullet through his heart, elapsed before the unfortunate victim was released from his unutterable anguish.
His companion and friend, Dr. Knight, was compelled to witness the horrible spectacle, and was taunted by Girty with the certainty of a similar fate when he should reach the Shawanese villages on the Mad River, whither, on the next morning, (after passing the night at the house of Captain Pipe, three quarters of a mile north of the scene of Craw- ford's fate,) he started under charge of a Delaware Indian. The first day they traveled about twenty-five miles and en- camped for the night. In the morning the gnats becoming very troublesome, the Doctor requested the Indian to untie him that he might help him make a fire to keep them off. With this request the Indian complied. While the latter was on his knees and elbows, blowing the fire, the Doctor caught up a dogwood stick, about eighteen inches long, with which he struck the Indian on his head, knocking him for- ward into the fire. IIe sprang to his feet, but Knight had seized the Indian's gun, and the latter fled. After twenty- one days of wandering, Knight reached the frontier of Vir- ginia, nearly famished to death.
Another captive, John Slover, who was doomed to the stake at the Shawanese villages, but who made a wonderful
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
escape from his savage persecutors, saw the dead bodies of William Crawford, a nephew of Col. Crawford and of Major Harrison, his son-in-law, at Wakatomika. The unfortunate Crawford had been assured by Pipe, that these relatives would be admitted to mercy, but they, as well as Colonel McLelland, the second in command, were beaten to death soon after reaching the valley of Mad River.
Thus, life for life were the atrocities on the Muskingum avenged at the sources of the Sandusky. It was the cry of vengeance for the Christian Delawares slaughtered at Gna- denhutten, which was raised by Pipe on the banks of the Tymochtee, drowning every appeal or suggestion of mercy for one so estimable as all contemporary accounts represent Col. William Crawford to have been. Although the Mus- kingum proselytes were the objects of persecution by their heathen brethren, yet it was far from being a persecution unto death. It had for its object their restoration to the customs and associations of their former lives, and was en- tirely consistent with warm personal attachments. Loskiel narrates that the wife of Captain Pipe had been strongly moved by the persuasions of the missionaries; and the chief himself, when not instigated by Elliott, Girty or McKee, was disposed to be just and tolerant even to the teachers. He was a magnanimous savage, and his indignant repulse of all compromise with his rude sense of justice-when Girty sought to invoke his influence to save Crawford by an offer of money- gives a heroic air to the dreadful tragedy which followed. "Sir, do you think I am a squaw ?" replied the indignant Delaware. "If you say one word more on the subject, I will make a stake for you and burn you along with the white chief."
With Crawford's defeat, and the carnage at Blue Licks in
389
RESTORATION OF PEACE.
August following, closed the drama of the American Revo- lution upon the wilderness of Ohio. Soon the motive power of British intrigue and gratuities was withdrawn, as the ter- mination and result of the struggle became apparent, and the ravages of their Indian allies also abated. The latter were glutted with vengeance and plunder, and while their villages rang with their savage festivals, there was comparative indis- position to assume the risks of fresh forays upon the frontiers of Pennsylvania.
On the 30th of November, 1782, provisional articles of peace had been arranged at Paris : on the 20th of January following, hostilities ceased : on the 19th of April, 1783, peace was proclaimed to the army of the United States, and on the 3d of September a definite treaty was concluded.
D
CHAPTER XXIII.
SUBSEQUENT MOVEMENTS OF THE MORAVIAN CONGREGATION.
THE removal of the Moravian missionaries to Detroit, and the dispersion of their Indian congregation, did not terminate the labors of Zeisberger, Heckewelder, and their associates in the Western wilderness. There is no doubt that the in- terposition of Col. Depeyster was prompted by a disinterested regard for their safety ; and the departure of the Christian Indians from Upper Sandusky, which soon followed, is com- memorated by Loskiel and Heckewelder as a manifest token of the Divine protection, specially vouchsafed to arrest a repetition of the massacre at Gnadenhutten.
On the arrival of the missionaries at Detroit, Governor Depeyster offered to provide means for the removal of them- selves and their families to Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, but they "resolved, from motives of duty and affection, to use their utmost exertions to gather their scattered flock." In this design, they received the countenance and aid of the English officer. A site was selected, in Michigan, thirty miles distant from Detroit, and on the Huron River. The Chippewas were induced, by the influence of Col. Depeyster, to assent to such an occupation of a portion of their hunting grounds : the settlement was affectionately called New Gnad- enhutten ; and thither the Christian Indians, by messages directed to them on the Scioto and the Miami of the Lake, were invited to come. The Governor accompanied the invi- tation by an assurance, that they should enjoy perfect liberty,
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THE MORAVIANS NEAR DETROIT.
of conscience, and be supplied with provisions and other ne- cessaries of life.
On the second of July, 1782, two families arrived from the Miami, who were soon joined by Abraham, a venerable assistant, and two other families : a seasonable remittance of one hundred pounds sterling by their brethren in London, reached the missionaries about the same time; and on the 20th of July, the new settlement was commenced. On the 5th of November, the missionaries (namely, Zeisberger, Heck- ewelder, Youngman and Senseman, with their families, and the "single brethren," Edwards and Young) had the grati- fication of mecting fifty-three of their converts at the conse- cration of a chapel. Loskiel says that the fugitives to the Shawanese had been in great danger of their lives, and had only escaped by a precipitate flight. The larger portion had sought the protection of their Delaware kindred on the Miami -the personal adherents of Pachgantschihilas, or Bockenge- helas, the great war chief of the Delawares, whose magnall- imous conduct at the Muskingum villages, in 1781, has already been detailed. When Bockengehelas was urged by Captain Pipe "not to suffer the believing Indians to leave his territory," his reply is thus reported by Loskiel : " I shall never hinder any one of my friends from going to their teachers. Why did you expel them ? I have told you be- forehand, that if you drive the teachers away, the believing Indians would not stay. But yet you would do it, and now you have lost the believing Indians, together with their teachers. Who murdered the believing Indians on the Muskingum ? Did the white people murder them ? I say, no! You have committed the horrid deed! Why could you not let them live in peace where they were ? If you had let them alone, they would all have been living at this
392
HISTORY OF OHIO.
day, and we should now see the faces of our friends : but you determined otherwise."
The other Delaware chiefs made extraordinary exertions to dissuade their converted kindred from joining the missiona- ries ; and although forty-three of their number returned in the summer of 1783, yet many relapsed into savage life.
The manner in which the Indian congregation sustained the severe winter of 1784, with other incidents of that period, are thus narrated by the European historian of the Mission : " In the beginning of the year 1784, a most extraordinary frost set in, extending over the whole country about New Gnadenhutten. All the rivers and lakes were frozen, and the oldest inhabitants of Detroit did not remember ever to have seen such a deep fall of snow. In some places it lay five or six feet deep. The long continuance of this severe weather was the cause of great distress. March 6th, the snow was still four feet deep; about the end of the month it began to melt, but the ice on the River Huron did not break till the 4th of April, and Lake St. Clair was not free from ice in the beginning of May.
" As no one expected so long and severe a winter, there was no provision made either for man or beast. The extra- ordinary and early night frosts of the autumn before, had destroyed a great part of the promising harvest of Indian corn, and thus the Indians soon began to feel want ; for what was bought at Detroit was very dear, and the bakers there refused to sell bread at a Spanish dollar per pound. The deep snow prevented all hunting. The Indians were there- fore obliged to seek a livelihood wherever they could get it, and some lived upon nothing but wild herbs. At length a general famine prevailed, and the hollow eyes and emaciated countenances of the poor people were a sad token of their
393
THE MORAVIANS NEAR DETROIT.
distress. Yet they appeared always resigned and cheerful, and God in due season relieved them. A large herd of deer strayed unexpectedly into the neighborhood of New Gnaden- hutten, of which the Indians shot above an hundred, though the cold was then so intense, that several returned with frozen feet, owing chiefly to their wearing snow-shoes." 1
Heckewelder mentions that the cattle were saved from starvation, by the discovery that the deer fed upon a species of rushes, or scrub grass, which grew along the river banks, or the borders of the ponds. "Strange as it may appear," he says in his narrative, "even our hogs lived chiefly upon those rushes, or the sap or juice thereof, for after chewing the stalks, until they had drawn the juicy substance out, they would drop the cud and take a fresh bite. Both these and the horned cattle, were not only saved from starving during the winter, but were in fine order in the spring. Even the fowls would eat it greedily after being cut up in small pieces of the size of a grain of Indian corn : and the Indians say, that they lay more eggs when fed with rushes, than when fed with corn : but to the horses (who are equally fond of it) it proved fatal. A lean horse would get fat on them in four or five weeks, but if left to feed a few weeks longer, they would surely die. On examining into the cause of this, it was discovered, that their stomachs were cut up, or worn quite thin, and full of small holes like a sieve : whereas, with horn cattle and deer who chewed the cud, the roughness or sharpness of the grass had not this effect."2
We resume Loskiel. " They now began again to barter venison for Indian corn at Detroit, and thus were delivered from the danger of suffering the same extremity of distress
1) Loskiel, part iii., p. 199.
2) Heckewelder's Narrative, p. 355.
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
as in Sandusky. As soon as the snow melted, they went in search of wild potatoes and came home loaded with them. When the ice was gone, they went out and caught an extra- ordinary number of fishes. Bilberries were their next re- source, and they gathered great quantities, soon after which they reaped their crops of Indian corn, and God blessed them with a very rich harvest, so that there was not one who lacked any thing.
" Towards the end of May, the Governor of Detroit, Colonel Depeyster, removed to Niagara, and both the missionaries and the believing Indians sincerely regretted the loss of this humane man, their kind friend and benefactor. He recom- mended them to the favor of his worthy successor, Major Ancrom, in whom they found the same benevolent disposition towards them.
" The more the good fame of New Gnadenhutten spread, the more frequent were the visits of the white people, who could not sufficiently admire the expedition with which the believing Indians had raised this pleasant settlement. They also heard here the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which doubtless had a good effect on some. As it happened that no ordained Protestant divine resided in Detroit at that time, the mission- aries, at the request of the parents, baptised several children, when they visited the fort. Some parents brought their children to New Gnadenhutten, to be baptised there, and a trader, who had two unbaptised children, went thither with his wife and whole family, and publicly presented his children to the Lord in holy baptism. But as to the ceremony of marriage, which several persons desired the missionaries to perform, they wished on many accounts to be excused as much as possible.
"The industry of the Christian Indians had now rendered
395
ANOTHER YEAR ON THE HURON.
New Gnadenhutten a very pleasant and regular town. The houses werc as well built as if they intended to live and die in them. The country, formerly a dreadful wilderness, was now cultivated to that extent that it afforded a sufficient maintenance for them. The rest they now enjoyed was par- ticularly sweet, after such terrible scenes of trouble and distress. But towards the end of the year 1784, it appeared that they would likewise be obliged to quit this place. Some of the Chippewas had, the year before, expressed their dis- satisfaction that the believing Indians should form a settle- ment in a country which had been their chief hunting place ; but the governor of Detroit pacified them at that time with good words. Now they renewed their complaints, pretending that they had only allowed the Christian Indians to live there till peace should be established, and even threatened to murder some of them in order to compel the rest to quit the country. After many consultations, it evidently appeared that the complaints and vexatious demands of this nation would not cease. Added to this, the governor of Detroit sent word to the believing Indians that they should not con- tinue to clear land and build, nothing being yet fixed, cither as to the territory or government. The missionaries there- fore thought it most prudent to take steps to return with their congregation to the south side of Lake Erie, and to settle near the river Walhonding. This proposal being approved by the congregation, the governor of Detroit was informed of it, and preparations were made to emigrate in the spring of 1785."
But these preparations were suspended by the unsettled condition of affairs on the Ohio frontier, and another year passed on the Huron River. In May, 1785, the missionaries Youngman and Senseman returned with their families to
396
HISTORY OF OHIO.
Bethlehem, and the mission remained under the care of Zeis- berger, Heckewelder and Edwards. "The latter" (to con- tinue the selections from Loskiel) " went in July, with three Indian brethren, to Pittsburgh, with a view to gain certain information concerning the state of affairs in the Indian country, and to search out a proper situation on the river Walhonding for a new settlement. In Pittsburgh he was told that strictly speaking, not an inch of land to the east of Lake Erie could be called Indian country, the United States having claimed every part of it; and though they did not intend to drive the Indians away by force, yet they would not permit them to live in the neighborhood of the white people. He also received letters from Bishop John de Waterville, who had arrived from Europe to hold a visitation in the congre- gations of the brethren in North America, by which he was informed that Congress had expressly reserved the district belonging to the three settlements of the Christian Indians on the Muskingum, to be measured out and given to them with as much land as the surveyor should think proper. The same intelligence he likewise received from the Philadelphia papers, and hastened home to acquaint the Indian congrega- tion with this unexpected decision in their favor, which occa- sioned universal joy. An Indian is naturally very averse to dwelling in any place where one of his relations has been killed, but the believing Indians had even parted with this kind of superstition, and longed to be there as soon as possi- ble."3
3) The Moravian society at Bethlehem had memorialized Congress on the 28th of October, 1783, to reserve to the remnants of the Muskingum mission their three towns and the surrounding lands. A favorable report was made in March, 1784, and on the 20th of May, 1785, Congress ordered that " the said towns and so much of the adjoining lands as, in the judg- ment of the geographer of the United States, (might) be sufficient for them,
397
THE RETURN TO OHIO.
Immediately after Easter, 1786, New Gnadenhutten was abandoned, and its inhabitants proceeded to Detroit in twenty- two canoes, with the purpose of thence returning to Ohio. They were hospitably received by the governor, and after a parting interview with the Chippewa chiefs, to whom a bundle of some thousands of wampum was presented in token of gratitude, the congregation embarked on the 28th of April, in two trading sloops, the Beaver and the Mackinaw, which had been generously placed at their service by the agent of the Northwest company. Their destination was the mouth of the Cuyahoga, and in twenty-four hours the vessels had reached the Bars Islands of Lake Erie, adjacent to the Sandusky peninsula. Here the winds became adverse, and a detention of four weeks ensued. The sea-sick voyagers pitched their camp upon Cunningham's, or Kelley's Island, going on board at every prospect of release from their bon- dage to the northeast wind. Once they set forward with a brisk and favorable breeze, and were in sight of the coast of Cuyahoga, when the wind shifted and drove them back to their station on the Island. They lived by hunting and fish- ing, and found wild potatoes, onions, and "several kinds of wholesome herbs in abundance." At length this Island was
together with the buildings, &c., (should) be reserved for the sole use of the Christian Indians formerly settled there." Congress passed another ordi- nance, dated 27th of July, 1787, " that the property of ten thousand acres, adjoining to the former settlements of the Christian Indians, should be vested in the Moravian Brethren at Pennsylvania, or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity, in trust and for the uses expressed in the ordinance of May 20, 1785, including Killbuck and his descendants, and the nephew and descendants of the late Captain White Eyes, Delaware chiefs who have distinguished themselves as friends of the cause of America." The three town plats were six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds acres each, making, with the ten thousand above mentioned, twelve thousand acres, which were surveyed in 1797, and pat- ented on the 4th of February, 1798.
398
HISTORY OF OHIO.
cleared of game, and they went to another, ("Hope's Love, or Put-in Bay," according to Heckewelder) where they found " a better haven and good hunting, but a remarkable number of rattlesnakes."
On the 28th of May, a vessel arrived from Detroit to recall the Beaver, and it was determined that the Mackinaw should transport the baggage and a few of the company to Cuya- hoga, while most of them should make the journey along the coast. They were landed at Rocky Point, about eight miles from Sandusky Bay (probably the promontory now known as Scott's Point, or Ottawa City, in Ottawa county). "Here," says Loskiel, "they had to ascend very high and steep rocks, and to cut a way through the thicket to their summit. Heck- ewelder records the capture and cure of "five hundred white fish that had retired, during the high blowing wind, between Rocky Island and the shore, where the water was about two feet deep."
The travelers organized themselves into two divisions. One, led by Zeisberger, proposed to make the journey by land, while the second division of the congregation, led by Heckewelder, constructed canoes of elm bark for a coasting voyage to Cuyahoga. Zeisberger's party " had hardly pitched their camp (proceeds Loskiel) before a party of Ottawas, who were hunting in that neighborhood, rode towards them and expressed great astonishment to find such a large number of people encamped in the pathless desert. The Christian Indians treated them as hospitably as their circumstances would permit, and were in return presented by the Ottawas with some deer's flesh, and informed of the manner in which they might best make a way through the forests through which they had to pass. The day following, they all set out on foot, and every one, the missionary and his wife not
399
SETTLEMENT AT PILGERRUH.
excepted, was loaded with a proportionable part of the pro- visions. Those who formed the van had the greatest diffi- culties to encounter, being obliged to cut and break their way through the thicket. They soon arrived at a large brook running through a swamp, through which all the Indians, both men and women, waded, some being up to their armpits in the water. Some of the children were carried, others swam, and brother Zeisberger and his wife were brought over upon a barrow, carried by four Indian brethren. When they arrived at Sandusky Bay, they hired boats of the Ottawas, from whom also they received frequent visits during their stay. One evening the savages had a dance,4 and none of the Christian Indians appearing at it, as they expected, some came and endeavored to persuade the young people to join them ; but meeting with a refusal, they addressed brother Zeisberger, begging him to encourage them. He replied that the Christian Indians lived no more after the manner of the heathen, having found something better. June 3d, they crossed the Sandusky Bay, and the day after, the river Pet- quotting, in a vessel belonging to a French trader.5 During this journey they celebrated the Whitsuntide holydays, and rejoiced to see many attentive hearers among the heathen.
"June 4th, the second division, led by John Heckewelder, overtook them in slight canoes, the sloop Mackinaw having sailed with the heavy baggage straight for Cuyahoga. The whole congregation now traveled together, one half on foot along the coast of the lake, and the others in canoes, keeping as close to the shore as possible. June 7th, they arrived at
4) Johnson's Island, near the mouth of Sandusky Bay, and separated from the Peninsula by a narrow strait, was a favorite resort of the Otta- was, for festivals and dances. It is probable that the transaction narrated above occurred on that island.
5) Now Huron River.
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
the celebrated rocks on the south coast of Lake Erie. They rise forty or fifty feet perpendicular out of the water, and are in many places so much undermined by the waves, that they seem considerably to project over the lake. Some parts of them consist of several strata of different colors, lying in a horizontal direction, and so exactly parallel that they resemble the work of art." In Heckewelder's narratives, the ceremonies of a party of Chippewas, who sought, by supplications and gifts of tobacco to propitiate the spirits of the winds and waves, are fully described. They preceded the Moravian party, and had scarcely passed the rocky range when a terrific storm arose. When it subsided, Heckewel- der's little fleet also achieved the voyage without accident. Zeisberger's land party reached the Cuyahoga simultane- ously. "The sloop also arrived safely, and drifted so near the shore in a calm, that the baggage could be taken out and carried to land in canoes, upon which the sloop returned to Detroit."
Both the Moravian annalists concur in mentioning " a large store-house filled with flour, at the mouth of Cuyahoga," which, Heckewelder adds, was owned by "Messrs. Duncan & Wilson, of Pittsburgh, who carried on a trade in articles of provisions to Detroit."
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