Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio, Part 13

Author: Mitchener, Charles Hallowell, ed
Publication date: 1876
Publisher: Dayton, Ohio : Thomas W. Odell
Number of Pages: 380


USA > Ohio > Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio > Part 13


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" Pipe replying in the affirmative, the commandant con- tinued :


"' Well, both the accuser and the accused being present, it is but fair that the accused hear from the accuser the complaints he has against them ; I therefore desire you to repeat what you have told me of these teachers and what you have accused them of.'


" Pipe, standing at the time, now turned to his counselors, telling them to get upon their legs and speak ; but finding them panic struck, he appeared to be at a loss how to act. Once more turning to them, he endeavored to make then sensible that this was the time to speak, and that the oppor- tumity now granted them for that purpose would be lost to them forever, if they spoke not. Finally, seeing them hang their heads and remaining mute, he boldly stood up and de- fended the teachers against the accusations brought against them, saying that ' they were good men; and that he wished his father (the commandant) to speak good words to them, to treat them kindly, for they were his friends, and that he would be sorry to see them treated ill and hard.'


" The commandant still persisting in having the call he had made on Pipe, of repeating what he had told him of the teachers now present, he, greatly embarrassed and casting another glance at his frightened and dejected counselors, who still were hanging their heads, he did repeat, yet adding :


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"'Father, the teachers can not be blamed for this; for living in our country where they had to do whatever we required of them, they were compelled to act as they did. They did not write letters (speeches) for themselves, but for us. We are to blame. We caused them to do what they did. We urged them to it, while they refused, telling us that they did not come here for the purpose of meddling with our affairs, but for the spiritual good of the Indians.'


" The commandant then asking him what he wished him to do with us, whether he should send us out of the coun- try, or permit us to return again to our families and con- gregations, he, contrary to what was expected, advised the commandant to suffer us to return to our homes.


" We being now questioned by this general officer with regard to our ordination and vocation, but particularly with regard to our connection with the American congress, and whether we were dependent on that body, we answered that 'the society to which we belonged had for upward of thirty years labored among the North American Indians for the purpose of bringing them over to Christianity ; that from the commencement of our missions, missionaries had been continually among them, who were sent by the bishops and directors of our church; that congress indeed knew of our being among the Indians for the purpose already stated : but that they never had, either directly or indirectly, inter- fered with our missionary concerns, nor prescribed rules for us to act by. That all we knew of the American congress was that they wished all the Indians to be at peace and not take part in the war on either side ; but follow the example of their countrymen, the Christian Indians, and join them in becoming an agricultural and a Christian people,' &c.


. " The commandant, stepping up to us, declared us ac- quitted of the charges laid against us, assuring us at the same time that 'he felt great satisfaction and pleasure in seeing our endeavors to civilize and Christianize the In- dians, and would cheerfully permit us to return again to our congregation.'


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" On the 23d of November, 1781, they returned to Cap- tivestown, on the Sandusky, where they wintered with their converts, suffering from cold and want of provisions to an almost incredible extent.


" There is not a doubt of these missionaries having been hung or shot, had the British governor have known of their correspondence with the American agents.


"On the 20th of November, 1779, Colonel Brodhead, then in command at Fort Pitt, wrote to David Zeisberger at Schoen- brunn, then called New Schoenbrunn, that his Indians ' can have powder, lead, coffee, sugar, salt, and many articles of clothing, at the old rates.' In the same letter he wishes Zeisberger to employ an Indian spy to go to Detroit and find out its strength, provisions, and stores, and promises to pay the spy 'eighty bucks' (dollars), or 'one hundred,' if necessary.


" On the 12th of December, 1779, Colonel Brodhead again wrote Zeisberger that their friend Joshua was willing to undertake ' this business,' and hopes some one will ' be sent at once.'


"On the 13th he wrote from Fort Pitt to General Wash- ington that his principal reliance in getting news from the enemy at Detroit is on the Moravian missionaries, who have intelligent Indians who can get into Detroit without suspicion, &c.


"On the 10th of April, 1780, he wrote to General Gates that 'he had just received letters from the missionaries inform- ing him that the Indian warriors will soon give much trouble on the frontier.'


"On the 19th of April he wrote to Zeisberger that ' he was sorry the cold winter had kept Joshua from visiting Detroit as a spy.'"-(See Pennsylvania Archives ; also see Sketch of Joshua, the Mohican Spy.


Early in the winter the missionaries at Sandusky heard that a party of Virginians, under Captain Benjamin Biggs, had gone out from the Ohio to Schoenbrunn and murdered a number of Christian Indians found there gathering corn.


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Captain Biggs had been in 1778 and 1779 one of the de- fenders of Fort Laurens, and in the fall of 1781 was sent from Wheeling with a party to ront out and kill the Monsey and other Indian warriors who had, after the missionaries were carried off, taken possession of Schoenbrunn and the other forsaken settlements in the valley. When Biggs got to Schoenbrunn he found only some straggling Christian Indians ; these he took to Fort Pitt, and they had liberty to go and come as they pleased. Biggs' campaign had drawn no blood in the valley, and this dissatisfied the border set- tlers along the Ohio who were continually being raided upon by western Indian warriors, and their families mur- dered or carried into captivity. The abandoned Schoen- brunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem were during the winter made the resting places of the warriors going to or return- ing from the Ohio with scalps and prisoners; and small pursuing parties of whites from the east, as well as parties of Christian Indians who had ran back from Sandusky to the warmer Tuscarawas, made the valley one continual scene of excitement and discordant border warfare until the bloody scenes of 1782 began to unfold.


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CHAPTER VIII.


LEGEND OF THE BLOODY VALLEY-ORIGIN OF THE MASSACRE OF NINETY-SIX INDIANS, MARCH 7 AND 8, 1782.


The British at Detroit and their auxiliaries, Half King, Pipe, and others at Sandusky, used their influence con- jointly in the fall of 1781 to induce the missionaries and their Indian converts to leave the Tuscarawas and join the British. Failing in this, a party of British and Indians came down to the valley, as detailed in a preceding chapter, captured Zeisberger, Heckewelder, and other missionaries, gathered together the converts from Schoenbrunn, Salem, and Gnadenhutten and drove them to the Sandusky coun- try, leaving their cattle, hogs, corn, and other winter pro- visions behind. A portion of the stock was sent to Detroit and sold, not for the captives, but for the captors. A cold winter setting in, and being without provisions, one hun- dred or more of the converts asked and obtained leave to go back to the towns in the valley for provisions. At the same time warriors were sent to the Ohio to rob and mur- der the whites, with intent thereby to exasperate the bor- derers who were in the American interest, and incite them to cross the Ohio, and pursue the raiders to the Tuscarawas towns, where it was expected they would fall in with the Christian Indians gathering corn and dispatch them. Thus was the Williamson expedition planned in reality by the British at Detroit and Sandusky.


A party of warriors discovering Williamson's expedition organizing on the Ohio, to march to the deserted Tusca-


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rawas towns, immediately thereafter murdered a family named Wallace, and fled toward the Moravian towns on the Tuscarawas. Near to and on the west side of the Ohio River they impaled the body of Mrs. Wallace and one child on trees near the trail by which they knew the settlers' expe- dition would take on its way to the Indian country. Arriv- ing at Gnadenhutten these warriors found the Christian Indians at work in their cornfields, getting together the grain they soon intended to carry to their starving brethren in the north-west, they informed them of the murders they had committed. The Christians becoming alarmed for their own safety, remonstrated with the warriors for stopping at their town, and warned them off. Before leaving the town the warriors bartered, among other things, the dress they had taken from Mrs. Wallace to some young and thought- less Indian girls for some provisions. The Christian In- dians, upon the departure of their very unwelcome guests, called a council at Salem for the purpose of deliberating upon the proper course to pursue. At this meeting it was agreed to remain and continue gathering the corn, and if the whites from the settlements came in pursuit of the mur- derers, to trust to the fact of their being known as Christian and peaceable Indians for their safety. As they had by this time secured the crop of eorn, it was agreed to begin pre- parations for the return, and the day of starting was fixed.


While these poor creatures were busily engaged in get- ting ready to carry succor to their famishing brethren on the Sandusky ; feeling perfectly safe, conscious of their inno- eence of any of the cold-blooded acts that were inflaming the settlements east of the Ohio, the Williamson party was on its march toward their towns. On the very day previous to the one fixed for the departure of the Christian Indians, March 7, 1782, and while they were engaged in bundling up their packs, the white party made their appearance, having laid in the forests the night before, within sight and hear- ing of Gnadenhutten. On their way to the town a detach- ment that was to go in from the north met a young half-


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breed, Joseph Shabosh, who was out early in the morning to catch a horse. Young Shabosh was struck down and scalped while begging for his life on the grounds of his be- ing a Christian and the son of a white man. From the spot of Shabosh's death the detachment went to the river bank, from where they expected to get a view of the town, and on the way passed Jacob, a brother-in-law to Shabosh, who was in the standing corn tying up some sacks recently filled. Although they passed within thirty yards of him he was not discovered. He recognized some of the whites, having seen them in the party that took the Christian Indians from Schoenbrunn the preceding fall to Fort Pitt, whence they were released by the commandant and returned home, he having been one of those taken. Jacob was about to hail a man he knew, when the sharp crack of a rifle checked him, and the next instant he beheld one of his brethren drop in his canoe. This so alarmed Jacob that he fled out of the field and into the forest and did not stop until several miles away, where he remained for twenty-four hours.


The Williamson party seeing a number of the Indians in a cornfield, on the opposite side of the river, sent a detach- ment of sixteen men, two at a time, in a large sugar trough for want of a canoe over the river, it being very high. They hailed the Indians as friends and shook hands all round, and then advised them to stop work, recross to the town, and prepare to return with the whites to Fort Pitt, declaring that upon reaching there they would be at once supplied with everything they needed. This being pleasing news to the cars of the Indians they at once repaired with the whites to the town.


While these transactions wern going on at Gnadenhutten, John Martin and his son, Christian Indians, were on the west side of the river, observing from an eminence the In- dians of the town and the white men walking together and conversing in a friendly manner. Martin sent his son over to the town while he went to Salem to apprise the brethren at that place of what was going on. The Salem Indians


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sent two of their men with Martin to Gnadenhutten, where the Williamson men appointed a party of their own num- ber to go with these Indians back to Salem, and assist in bringing those at the lower town to Gnadenhutten. When the main body of the Salem Indians arrived at the river bank, opposite Gnadenhutten, they discovered blood in the sand and on a canoe that was lying at the edge of the water. They had already given up their guns, axes, and knives, be- ing assured that the same would all be returned when they arrived at Fort Pitt. Being taken over to the town they found the inhabitants confined, preparatory to the slaughter that was to take place. The whites now ceased calling them friends and Christians, and charged them with being enemies and warriors. In proof of this averment the whites pointed to the pewter-plates, cups, spoons, tea-kettles, pots, basins, &c., and declared it all stolen property from the set- tlers. They also seized the Indian horses, and pointed to the brands thereon as further evidence that all this property had been stolen from the border families. Finding all this property in their possession, together with the bloody dress that was recognized as having belonged to Mrs. Wallace, they were told to prepare for death, and the execution was fixed for the next day. In refutation of the charges, the In- (lians accounted for the brands on the horses by offering to produce their own branding irons, which were used for the purpose of enabling them to identify their own horses. In regard to the other property, they insisted that most of it was brought by the missionaries from the Pennsylvania mis- sions, and the balance bought from traders who had from time to time visited the towns. Finding all efforts to save their lives fruitless, they begged for a short time to prepare for death. While at their devotions their captors discussed the manner of putting them to death. Some were in favor of burning them alive, and some of killing first, then burn- ing the bodies after scalping. The commander, Williamson, became powerless in the excited and frenzied condition of his men, to whom had been exhibited the bloody dress of


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Mrs. Wallace, which operated on their minds, as history tells us, the bloody robe of Cæsar, when shown to the Ro- mans by Antony, operated on their minds. All Williamson conld do was to submit the matter to a vote, as proposed by the most excited of the men. Upon taking a vote, those who were in favor of saving the Indians and taking them to Fort Pitt, were invited to step out to the front, which was responded to by but eighteen out of about one hundred in all (some accounts put the number at three hundred), the residue voting to kill, sealp and burn the captives. It has never been settled whether Williamson voted or not, the presumption being, from the fact of his being commander, that he did not vote. Those of the men who voted against death, then retired from the scene, at the same time calling upon the Ahnighty to witness that they washed their hands of the erime about to be perpetrated. The victims were then asked if they were ready to die, and the answer being in the affirmative, the work of death commenced. Heckewelder says that the number killed exceeded ninety, all of whom, except four, were killed in the mission houses, they having been tied there-according to Heckwelder's version-and there knocked in the head with a cooper's mallet. One man, he says, taking up the mallet, began with an Indian named Abraham, and continued knocking down until he counted fourteen, he then handed his mallet to one of his fellows, saying, "my arm fails me, go on in the same way; I think I have done pretty well." In another house, where mostly women and children were tied, Judith, an aged and pious widow, was the first victim. After they had finished they retreated a short distance, but on returning to view the dead bodies, and finding one of them named Abel, although sealped and mangled, attempting to raise himself from the floor, they dispatched him, and, having set fire to the house, went off shouting and cursing.


Of the number killed sixty-two were grown persons, one- third of whom were women, the remainder being children. Two youths, who were knocked down and shut up in the


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first house, escaped death. One named Thomas was knocked down and scalped, but being only stunned, after awhile recovered, and on looking around he saw Abel alive, but scalped, with blood running down his face. The lad quickly laid down as if dead, and had scarcely lain a min- ute when the party came and finished Abel by chopping his head with a hatchet. Soon after they went away Thomas crept over the dead bodies to the door, and on getting out, hid himself until dark, when he made his way to the path leading to Sandusky. The other lad, who was in the house where the women were, raised a trap-door and got down into the cellar with another boy, where they lay concealed during the time the butchery was going on. After dusk they attempted to get out through a window opening in the foundation of the house. The first succeeded, but the second stuck fast, and was burned alive, the house being set on fire soon after the poor little fellow got fast. The two who escaped afterward made their way to Sandusky, having fallen in with the Schoenbrunn Indians in their flight.


One of Williamson's party saved a little boy eight years old, took him home, and raised him to a man, when he left and returned to his tribe.


In Zeisberger's version of the massacre, as detailed by his biographer, it is reported as occurring on the 8th of March. He says that the victims were tied, some singly, and others two and two, dragged to the appointed house, and then tomahawked and scalped. When the men and boys were all killed, the women were brought out, taken to the other house, and dispatched in the same manner. He states that Christiana, a widow, who was well versed in the English language, appealed to Colonel Williamson as she was being led away, and he replied, "I have no power to help you." She was killed with the others. The massacre . being over, Williamson and his men returned home to the Ohio and Monongahela with the scalps and about one hun- dred horses. In the valley all was desolation. Not a war-


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rior was afterward found to be following Williamson to piek off his men on their way to the Ohio, which they reached on the 10th of March, two days after the massacre, unmolested. Within a radius of twenty-five miles around the three burned towns, not a human being was known to be alive, while but two or three days' march out on the Sandusky there were, perhaps, a thousand warriors, and they knew of Williamson's expedition having marched west from the Ohio, but no warriors intercepted him going or coming. That was part of the British policy matured at Detroit, of having these peaceable Indians massacred by excited American borderers, in order to bring over to the British side all the Indian tribes united against the colo- nists. How completely it succeeded will be seen.


Simon Girty returned to the Wyandot towns, from which his absence had been short, but sufficiently long to have enabled him, in disguise, to reach the border settlements, and, among his old acquaintances, start and hurry on the expedition against the Moravian towns. On the Sandusky, at the present Fremont, Heckewelder and Zeisberger first heard of the massacre by a convert, who had ran from Cap- tives town to apprise them of the news that had just been brought in by a Wyandot band of warriors, who had crossed the valley with border scalps and stolen horses. This was evidently the party who had killed and impaled the child of Mrs. Wallace, sold her bloody dress at Gnadenhutten to the unsuspecting Indian converts, and then hid in the vicinity until the massacre previously planned was over, when they fled homeward to receive their scalp premiums at Detroit. At the captives' huts, where the residue of con- vert captives were who had not gone down to the death at Gnadenhutten, the news of the slaughter of their relatives had also come in by Jacob, who had escaped from under , the floor of one of the burning houses, and fled to the San- dusky.


Down at the massacre ground the wolves, bears, panthers, and other wild beasts had gathered for a feast, and were


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fighting for a meal off the dead, but the flesh had been so erisped that they could get but little. It was truly an ac- cursed and desolate country, and the Great Spirit passed up and down the valley uttering the war-whoop, which echoed back and back from tree and dell until it reached the war- rior towns of the Shawanese on the Scioto and Miami, the Delawares under Pipe at Sandusky, Monseys under Welendewacken on the Wabash, and other tribes, calling for a revenge in corresponding magnitude to the murders committed on their kin.


This was the kind of double life that Girty gloried in, first on the border, exciting the whites to kill the Christian Indians and burn their towns in the valley; next at the warrior's towns, inciting them to revenge the deaths of those Christians, and he lost no time in fanning the flame in their camp fires. At all their British camps a unanimous deter- mination existed to take a bloody and two-fold vengeance on the Americans. A vow was made that no white man should ever have that valley for a home, but that it should remain uncontaminated by his presence through all time, and that the boundary line of future treaties with the whites should be the Ohio forever and ever.


To carry out their intentions, large bands of picked war- riors started at once to raid afresh on the Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky borders, and each prisoner was to be taken to the place of the massacre, and there dispatched by the tomahawk and fire brand until the two-fold ven- geance had been consummated, as ordered by the Great Spirit, or Manitto .* Here it may be remarked, that revenge is taught by Manitto to be a duty more sacred than all others, and the Indian mind is constantly filled with the


* [Note .- The God of the Lenni-Lennape, or Delawares, was "Kitschi " (hea- venly), "Mannitto" (God)-thus " Kitschimannitto," abbreviated to "Man- nitto, and Manito ; this corrupted to " Maniton," " Manitoa," or " Maniton."


The Algonquins and Chippewas' God is "Kitchi " -- Maniton and Manitoa. The Onondaga God is " Nioh."


The Asiatics have a God, "Kitchi Manoa," hence some writers bring the original Indian from Asia.]


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idea that if he dies without being revenged, for some wrong committed on his friends or relatives, there is no happiness in the spirit land.


The massacre was a month old, and already the vengeance- taking warriors on the Ohio, and its eastern tributaries in Pennsylvania and Virginia, had sunk their hatchets into the skulls of many white borderers, who fought for life, and were killed in their tracks. These deaths were to be counted as no vengeance until the scalps were carried to the mas- sacre ground, dried, painted red or black on the inside, with the picture of a bullet or a hatchet in another color, to indi- cate how its owner died. In like manner were the scalps of those whites who should suffer death by fire to be painted, but in lieu of the bullet or hatchet a bunch of faggots were to be represented on the skin side, indicative of the fire- death.


Over on the Monongahela the ninety odd Indian scalps had been exhibited to the settlers by Williamson's men, and this suggested a raid to the Sandusky to punish the tribes who were still hatcheting the white borderers in Pennsyl- vania and Virginia. On the 25th of April, 1782, General Irvine, who had just assumed command at Fort Pitt (Pitts- burgh), wrote to General Washington, that two days before his arrival about three hundred whites from the Mononga- hela, and among whom were some of Williamson's men, had come, attacked and killed several Christian Indians, who had been captured the preceding fall at Schoenbrunn and brought to Smoky Island, opposite Fort Pitt. This atrocity added fuel to the flame of Indian war, and the gov- ernment at once set about dispatching a large force, under Colonel Crawford, to chastise western Indians. Crawford's army reached the Tnscarawas about the 26th of May, and camped at the ruins of Schoenbrunn, without having seen an Indian warrior, so desolate had the accursed valley be- come. In the night two warriors were seen by the officers who were passing on their "grand round " duty around the camp, and who fired, but the warriors disappeared unhurt.


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The firing alarmed the camp, and Crawford's men rushed out pell-mell in a panic, as if surrounded by all the Indian hosts, who had come to appease the wrath of the great spirit yelling up and down the haunted valley. There were, however, no Indians about, yet the historian says that even Crawford, when he saw his troopers panie stricken that night, foresaw his coming death, and as he lay there amid the ruins of Schoenbrunn, his imagination conjured up the skeletons of the victims of Williamson's men, filing along the trail on the banks of the Tuscarawas, and led by one Ann Charity. Their skulls were mashed in and the bones of some were charred to a crisp. They were singing the Indian song of sorrow, and calling on-not our God-but their Manitto or Great Spirit, to avenge their death.




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