Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio, Part 14

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 14


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Williamson, being second in command, rested in the same tent with Crawford, and shuddered as the latter told what he had seen, then peering out in the darkness he listened, but in vain, for the sound of the gnomes. They had gone on up the trail toward Sandusky. As soon as daylight appeared the two commanders ordered the four hundred troopers into their saddles, and galloped west out of the valley, crossing the Tuscarawas between Stone Creek and Sugar Creek; from thence they plunged into the wilderness toward Sandusky, but on a trail to the left of the one Ann and her spirit comrades had taken. It was now a race be- tween Ann and her skeletons and Crawford, which should reach the huts of the captive Christian Indians first. When he and his troopers arrived within half a mile of the Dela- ware huts, they were found deserted. Ann had outrun him, and he turned toward the Wyandot town, now called Upper Sandusky. It, too, was deserted. After another mile he called a council of war, and they all determined to retreat in case no Indians were found by nightfall. This was at a spot near a trail leading to Half King's residence, and on June 4, 1782, in the afternoon. Scouts soon came report- ing " savages coming," and in a few minutes they were in sight taking shelter in a grove, from which the troopers


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dislodged them, Crawford losing five killed and nineteen wounded. That night and next day desultory firing was kept up, Crawford intending to attack and disperse the savages in the night, but this was frustrated in the after- noon by the appearance of some British troops brought from Detroit. On his south line also appeared two hundred Shawanese not seen before, the whole body of savages ex- ceeding his own force. A retreat was ordered and kept up through the night. In the morning Crawford was missing.


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THE CAPTURE AND DEATH OF COLONEL CRAWFORD.


In the retreat he had become separated from the main body by reason of his horse failing. In the confusion and panie, every man was looking out for himself, so that no other horse could be had. Crawford called for his son John, his nephew William, and his son-in-law William Harrison, who being aids to the colonel, should have been near him in the line of duty, and from one of whom he would have obtained a horse to enable him to push forward and regain his position as commander. But neither answered his call. Doctor Knight, surgeon of the expedition, came galloping up, and both calling for the three men above named and get- ting no response, Crawford requested Knight to remain with him, which he did. Crawford then denounced the troops for disobeying orders. Hot firing was going on in front, toward the south-west, which indicated that the enemy was between him and the main body of his troops, and he and Knight moved east, reaching the Sandusky about midnight, and by daylight of June 6, they were but eight miles away from the battle-field, by reason of darkness and jaded horses. But by two o'clock in the afternoon they made nine miles, and fell in with Captain Biggs and others during the day, and also a wounded officer, Lieutenant Ashley, whom Biggs was carrying. Camping over night, they had gone a short distance next morning (June 7) when they found a dead


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deer, and shortly after met a volunteer who had shot it. Making a meal of the deer, all started on their journey. Crawford and Knight by this time were on foot. When near the present site of Leesville, on the south side of the Sandusky, they were confronted by several Indians, who had ambuseaded them. One Indian took Crawford by the hand, and another the hand of Knight. They were then taken to a Delaware camp, half a mile away, where they remained two days with nine other prisoners. The Indians had killed and scalped Biggs and Ashley, and their scalps and two horses were brought into camp. On the 10th of June Crawford was taken to the Half King's Town, and the other prisoners to another town. In the night Crawford had an interview with Simon Girty, who was at Half King's Town, and whom he offered one thousand dollars to save him, he having known Girty before the latter became a British captain. This offer becoming known to Captain Pipe and the other chiefs, they arranged for his death in the shortest possible time. He was taken to the old town on the morning of June 11, with Knight and the other prisoners, with their faces painted black, indicating their fate. Pipe and Wingenund came and shook hands with Crawford, having known him years before. Pipe then painted Craw- ford's face black with coal and water, and all started on a trail to another Delaware town. Here they halted, and saw five prisoners tomahawked by boys and squaws, and their scalps were thrust into the faces of Knight and Crawford. Here Knight was given over to some Indians to be taken next day to the Shawanese towns. Crawford and Knight were then taken to Pipe's village. In the afternoon, Craw- ford was taken to a spot where a stake had been set in the ground, and a fire kindled about seven feet away. Around ·


were nearly a hundred Indians, mostly squaws and boys. Girty, Pipe, Wingenund, and a British officer in disguise, were near. Knight was present, tied and guarded, but lived to detail these particulars: Crawford was stripped, his hands bound by a rope fastened to the stake and to his


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wrists, with play sufficient to enable him to walk around the post, or sit down. He then asked, after they had beat him, if they intended to burn him, and being answered that they did, he remarked that he would bear it patiently. Pipe then made a speech to the Indians, who took their guns and shot powder into Crawford's flesh from his feet to his neck. They then ent off his ears, and thrust burning sticks into his body. The squaws put burning faggots upon his feet, so that he literally walked on fire. In his pain he called on Girty to shoot him, but Girty replied laughingly that he had no gun. Ileckewelder says that Crawford also called on Wingenund to save him, but the chief replied that the King of England, if on the ground, could not save him. Being almost dead he fell on his stomach, when he was scalped, and a squaw put coals on his head ; then he raised upon his feet again, and began to walk around. Knight was then taken away, but the next morning he was marched by the spot, and told by his Indian guard to look at his "big captain," which he did, and saw only his charred bones in the ashes, around which the Indians had danced all night, wildly singing the scalp song of " Aw-oh-aw-oh-aw-oh."


Knight was taken in charge by a Delaware chief, who was to guard the Doctor to a Shawanese town, more than a day's travel distant. Before starting, Knight was painted black, which meant that he was to suffer torture. The Indian was mounted on a splendid steed, while Knight was compelled to plod along in front of him on foot.


When evening came on they halted for the night, in the vicinity of Kenton, Hardin County, having made con- siderable more than half the journey. The Indian bound the Doctor, and then ordered him to lay down and sleep, · which he pretended to do, but kept awake nearly the whole night watching for the savage to go to sleep so he could make an effort to escape. The chief, however, did not sleep a wink, but closely eyed his prisoner, evidently suspecting the Doctor's intention. Early in the morning the Indian untied Knight and then devoted himself to stirring up the


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fire, preparatory to cooking some breakfast. While at this, and with his back toward him, the Doctor picked up a stick of wood that lay with one end in the fire, and with it struck the Indian a blow on the side of the head which felled him to the ground, and when in the act of drawing back to strike another blow, the Indian scrambled off on his hands and knees until out of reach of Knight, and then jumped to his feet and ran off into the forest. Knight then snatched up the Indian's gun and aimed to shoot him, but in the excite- ment broke the lock in cocking it. He then followed some distance, when he gave up the chase and returned to the camping ground, and gathering up the blanket, moccasins, and amunition which belonged to the chief, started on his way for Fort Pitt.


He traveled on all that day and night, stopping at inter- vals to rest, and until the following evening, when he was compelled to halt from fatigue and hunger. The next morn- ing he threw away the gun, since he was unable to repair it.


His course continued eastward through the present coun- ties of Hardin, Crawford, Richland, Wayne and Tuscarawas, to the Tuscarawas River, which he reached at a point a short distance above the mouth of what is known as Conotten Creek (sometimes called One Leg), where he rested and refreshed himself with various kinds of berries which he found in abundance in the bottoms along the river.


From the Tuscarawas he kept a course almost due east, avoiding all trails and open ground, and arrived at the Ohio River below Fort McIntosh. From here he followed up the river to Fort Pitt, at which place he arrived on the 4th of July, three weeks after making his escape.


On the morning of June 6, Colonel Williamson gathered together all that was left uncaptured or unkilled, of Craw- ford's army, and retreated back to the Tuscarawas, seeking rest and sleep for his wearied troopers a short distance be- low Schoenbrunn. But there was no rest for him. In the midst of the desolation a terrific storm arose, revealing by its lightning Aun Charity and the skeleton spirits filing,


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this time, down the trail, followed by a band of warriors, each dangling from a pole a white man's scalp, all moving toward the massacre ground, while the unearthly scalp yell of the Great Spirit echoed up and down the valley, and silenced for the moment even the thunder of heaven.


Williamson, aroused from the terrific dream, called to horse all his jaded troopers, and at daylight recrossed the Tuscarawas, a short distance above the place of massacre, with all that was intact of Crawford's army, and disap- peared along the Stillwater, over the eastern hills, all cursing, as they spurred their horses onward, the day that brought them first to the haunted valley. In the night, before this day of gloom to Williamson, Ann Charity assembled, by her mysterious power, sixty-nine of the massacre victims, around their burnt ruins at Gnadenhutten, and calling them each by christian name as known in life, Isaac Glikhican and Anna Benigna, his wife; Jonah and Amelia, his wife; Christian and Augustina, his wife; John Martin, Samuel Moore, Tobias, Adam and Cornelia, his wife; Henry and Joanna Salome, his wife; Luke and Lucia, his wife; Philip and Lorel, his wife; Lewis and Ruth, his wife; Nicholas and Joanna Sabina, his wife; Israel, Hannah, Abraham, Catha- rine, Joseph Schebosh, Judith, Mark, John, Christiana, Mary, Abel, Rebecca, Paul, Rachel, Henry, Maria, Susanna, John, Anna, Michael, Joshua, Peter, Bathseba, Gottlieb, Julianna, David, Elizabeth, Martha, Anna Rosina, Salome, Christian, Christiana, Joseph, Leah, Mark, Benigna, Jona- than, Christina, Anthony, Ann Salome, Jonah, Maria Eliza- beth, Gottlieb, Benjamin, John Thomas, Sarah, Hannah, and Anna Elizabeth, she presented each with a soldier's scalp, according to Indian custom, to appease the wrath of the great spirit, and fulfill the vow of vengeance so secretly made by her kinsmen up at the Sandusky when they first heard of the massacre. The mashed heads of the Indians and the white men's sealps were then intermingled in the ruins. Revenge had been taken, and that opened the en- trance of the Indian heaven to all who had participated in


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avenging the massacre. All was again a desolate calm in the haunted valley, save and excepting the noise made by the wild denizens of the forest, the wolves, bears, and pan- thers that had gathered about Gnadenhutten for a feast on the sealps of John Crawford, young William Crawford, William Harrison, Captain Benjamin Biggs, Lieutenant Ashley, and of the other sixty odd officers and soldiers brought down from the Sandusky. battle-ground. Over these the beasts fought, ran howling, sprang at each other, and tore the scalps into fragments, for the flesh on the bones of the Christian vietims had been so roasted and crisped, as to afford not even a meal to the animals that had come out from their lairs, in the surrounding hills of the Tusca- rawas, for a high carnival.


In the midst of this wild tumult Ann Charity disap- peared, no one knew where. But she was no myth. She had lived from childhood at the missions in Pennsylvania, and on the Tuscarawas. Gifted with a mysterious mental power, her religion was half heathen, half Christian. She claimed to be able to call up the dead, and when the mas- sacre took place she resolved to try her power, and revenge her friends and kindred. She came down from the Wabash- no one knew her-and was the first to apprise the western Indians of Crawford's army crossing the valley. When all . was over, she became again a pious Christian on White River, Indiana, and was there burned as a witch about the year 1806 by order of Tecumseh, the prophet.


In a few days after Williamson crossed the valley, John . Slover, Crawford's guide, who had been nearly captured, but escaping his savage pursuers, crossed the Tuscarawas, near the "present town of Port Washington, reaching the Ohio in safety. James Paul, another of the body-guard of Crawford, was captured, painted black, but also escaped death by fire, reaching, on his way home, the Sugar Creek, which he followed to its junction with the Tuscarawas, near the present Dover, where he proceeded up the stream, crossed where the Canton fording place was afterward


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located, and slept at the so-called "Federal Springs," of a later day, where he found a deserted Indian camp, with kegs and empty vessels lying around, which had been cap- tured by the Indians at Fort Laurens three years before, when they stampeded MeIntosh's provision train, and on which provisions the savages had many jolly feasts while the garrison were starving. From this point Paul passed over the edge of the plain, whereon is at this day New Phila- delphia, and reaching Williamson's trail below Schoenbrunn ruins, he arrived safely at Mingo bottom. But how many more of Crawford's troopers re-crossed the haunted valley history saith not, for until 1785 the savage warriors after scalps, in fulfillment of the vow of vengeance, were its only human inhabitants. In that year an, escaped prisoner crossed the river at the massacre town and reached Fort Wheeling, but he reported that he saw no human being in the valley. The bones of the Christian martyrs were scattered around, and the fruit trees planted by the mis- sionaries were in bloom, but the limbs had been broken down by the bears, and the place had become the abode only of rattlesnakes and wild beasts.


At the massacre, the first blood shed was that of a Chris- tian Indian named John Shebosh, who was tomahawked and scalped by Charles Builderback, one of Williamson's men. He was a Virginian, but had settled in Ohio near the mouth of Short Creek. After the massacre he was out with Crawford's army, but escaped the fate of Crawford and returned home. Seven years after, in 1789, he and his wife were captured by Indians near their cabin on the Ohio. . When the Indians first attacked her husband and his brother, she hid in the bushes. The brother escaped; but as soon as Charles was tied the Indians hunted, but failing to find her, they told Builderback to call her by name or they would kill him then and there. At his first call she would not answer, but when he called her again, and told her of his fate if she kept silent, the woman came out. The Indians then retreated west with the two captives. Nearing the


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Tuscarawas, they separated into two bands, one taking him toward Gnadenhutten, and the other, with Mrs. Builder- back, came to the Tuscarawas, higher up the stream, where they encamped at an Indian town, probably "Three-Leg Town," near the present Urichsville. In a short time the other band came up, and an Indian threw into her lap the scalp of her dead husband. The sight so overcame her that she swooned. They laid her against a tree, and when she awoke the scalp was gone. They took her to the Miami Valley, where she remained a captive nine months, but was finally ransomed and sent to her home up the Ohio. In 1791 she married John Green, and moved to Fairfield County, where she died in 1842, near Lancaster, and is said to have given birth to the first white child born in Fairfield County. His captors knew Builderback, and had been watching for him for years, determined to take revenge for the death of Shebosh, their relative, seven years before at Gnadenhutten. Some of his Ohio River friends, who pur- sued these Indians, found his body a short distance from the spot where he had killed Shebosh. Ilis body was terri - bly mutilated, and it was evident to his friends that the In- dians had intended burning Builderback at the massacre ground, but the pursuers were so close after them that they abandoned burning him alive, and made their escape, after tomahawking and scalping him. He was the last white man known to have been in the massacre who paid the forfeit of his life for his connection therewith. Williamson escaped the vengeance of the Indians, although he had crossed and recrossed the valley four times in one year. He returned to Washington County, Pennsylvania, and was soon sent to guard the Ohio border along the river. On the return of peace he became sheriff of his county, had great influence, and regained all his popularity among the border men. Doddridge says that he was a humane man, but brave and courageous to a fault, and when called on to do any aet in discharge of duty, he did it fearlessly as to consequences. Hence, when his men voted nearly unanimously for the


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massacre of the Indians, he carried out their edict merci- lessly, having no power to prevent or avoid killing the Christian Indians. He lived many years afterward, but died in poverty, remeinbered only as the first and last actor in the tragedy of the bloody valley.


CHAPTER IX.


FIFTY MILES OF RUINS ALONG THE ANCIENT RIVER.


Heckewelder, who was at the Sencea capital in 1762, then inhabited by Delawares, called it "Tuscarawas," the word signifying " old town," or ancient place. Boquet, with his army, was there in 1764, and called it by the same name. So did McIntosh in 1778, when he erected Fort Laurens, in close proximity.


Eight miles north, Rogers, in 1761, found a town which he said was called the "Mingo Cabins." Passing up the river, the Mingoes, Chippewas, Ottawas or Cuyahogas, had a town at or near the mouth of each creek emptying into the Tuscarawas. Rogers spent some time in hunting with the Indians, and relates that eight miles south of Beaver- town they shot two elks. They were evidently killed on Sugar Creek, in the vicinity of the present Dover.


From the ancient Seneca capital, on the border of the present Stark County, to Goshockgunk, at the present town of Coshocton, is a distance of fifty odd miles, within which space were " Tuscarawas," Beavertown, the Ottawa town below the fording place, an old town below the mouth of Sugar Creek, Three Legstown, at the mouth of Still- water, King Beaver's hamlet, near the present Gnaden- hutten, Ge-hel-e-muk-pe-chuk, a Delaware capital, fifteen miles south of the "Big Spring, King New Comerstown, at the present town of that name, Old Wyandot town, White Eyes' hamlet, Custaloga's town, White Woman's town, and Goshuckgunk, the present Coshocton, making thirteen,


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and each in its day the scene of Indian glory, or captive's suffering.


Of Christian towns there were Schoenbrunn, old and new, Gnadenhutten, Lichtenau, Salem, and Post's mission house, cach in its day the scene of Christian suffering and heathen persecution.


The struggle had been going on since Gist's visit in 1750 between the pale-faced Christians and the red-faced heathen. the one to obtain, and the other race to retain possession of the valley. The result of the thirty years' conflict was that in 1784, when Virginia coded the territory to the United States, the two races had whipped and scourged each other out of the valley.


The old Tusearawas, which had been flowing down the valley, according to the geologist, Newberry, ever since the carboniferous age, and had cut its channel in many places through eighty thousand years of coal formations, was still there, representing God's grand works for the use of man, but there was no man or audience left, for the nineteen towns of red and white men had been demolished, and of their structures there was scarcely one stone left standing upon the other.


Even the fifty yards square of land, stepped off at Post's hamlet, for the use of the white man and his God, and considered then by the Indians ample for his wants, had returned to its forest again.


True, Fort Laurens stood alone like a great ghoul, look- ing for her defenders, who had ran away in 1779, to come back and take possession anew, but they came not.


Around the ruins of the modern Golgotha, Gnadenhutten, the ashes and bones of the murdered Christians still strewed the ground, and raiding warriors hurried in terror np and down the river trail, either with, or after scalp victims, but that was all of life to be seen along the shores of the ancient river for a distance of tifty miles, with this exception.


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LEGEND OF THE BIG SPRING.


In September, 1782, some four hundred warriors from the north-west, on the way to the Ohio, encamped at Schoen- brunn, as Crawford's four hundred troopers had done when going to the north-west in the preceding JJune. They came back from an unsuccessful raid on Wheeling, as well as along the border, and rested again at Schoenbrunn, as Wil- liamson's routed Crawford army had rested on their way home, the one army having lost Crawford, and the other the celebrated " Big Foot" chief, and the legend is that as the savages stooped to drink at the Zeisberger Spring, the tongues of their victims tied to their neeks as trophies of war, uttered unearthly moans, and the water cast back by reflection the visages of those victims into the warriors' faces, which so horrified the superstitious Indians that they mounted in affright, galloping off on the Sandusky trail as Williamson and Crawford's survivors had gone the other way only one hundred days before. The facts were so won- derfully coincident as to appear supernatural. The legend says that a mist suddenly enveloped the spring, from out of which came the God of the Christian, and Mannitto, the God of the heathen, who, viewing the ruins made by their followers, banished each his kind, obliterated each the ro- maining structures of the other, and decreeing that in the coming time even the spring should shrink from human sight, then each departed to his etherial home to renew their never-ending conflict between Christian and heathen on some other line.


There are men now living who have drank from this historie spring, but after Zeisberger died-after his last In- dian had departed, to return no more, the legend was veri- fied-the water of the spring did shrink from human sight and human use, and remains unfit for use to this day.


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STORY OF THE WHITE SQUAW'S REVENGE.


At the time Fort Laurens was reduced to a garrison of one hundred men, in January, 1779, it will be recollected that the pack-horses bringing provisions in from Fort MeIn- tosh, were stampeded by joyous firing of guns in the fort, and the horses and provisions, to a great extent, lost. A party of Mingo warriors were at the time coming down the Tusearawas trail, which crossed the river at what was after- ward called the Canton fording place, about one mile north of New Philadelphia of the present time, and near the ford was a large spring, since called the Federal Spring. The Mingoes caught some of the pack-horses laden with provi- sions and brought them to the spring, where they camped until the provisions were eaten up. Among them was a warrior chief of great stature, who had with him a white squaw, who had been captured in Pennsylvania, and after many hair-breadth escapes, had become the warrior's wife, out of gratitude, if not love, for having saved her life at the time.


When the Mingoes broke camp, this warrior and wife proceeded on a visit to New Schoenbrunn, about one and a half miles south-cast of New Philadelphia, where they heard Zeisberger preach, and manifesting some outward feelings of religion, the chief and wife were solicited to join the mission. She assented, but the warrior refused, and she would not join without him. The Indian women about the mission then undertook to gain her over by strategy. At the mission was a creole squaw of great beauty, who gave the missionaries much trouble by her lasciviousness. She possessed such fascinating charms that she was the envious terror of the other women, and turned the heads of such men as visited the mission, and it is in tradition that Zeisberger himself, being then unmarried, was nearly ensnared by her conduct and her wanton approaches, but succeeded like Joseph of old in withstanding the temptress.




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