USA > Pennsylvania > Beaver County > History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and its centennial celebration, Volume I > Part 48
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Early in 1782 several Indian descents were made upon the borders of Pennsylvania. On the Ioth of February the farm of Robert Wallace, on Raccoon Creek, in the present township of Hanover, Washington County, was attacked during his absence and his wife and three children carried off. Mrs. Wallace and her youngest child, an infant daughter, were, soon after the capture, tomahawked and scalped. The other two, who were boys, were taken to Sandusky, where the older one died. The younger boy was finally rescued by his father.2 The war-party which had done this outrage passed, on its retreat, through the Mora- vian towns, selling the property of their victims while encamped near Gnadenhütten. The guileless Moravians purchased some of the household utensils from the Wallace home, and a young squaw came thus into the possession of the blood-stained dress of Mrs. Wallace. It was perhaps the intention of the savages to divert suspicion from themselves onto the Moravians in this manner, and if such was their plan it succeeded only too well, as will presently be seen. A captive white urged the Moravian
1 Washington-Irvine Cor. (Butterfield) p. 60.
2 Id., p. 318; History of Washington County, Pa. (Crumrine) pp. 103-4.
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Indians to flee, for he was sure, as he said, that pursuit would be organized, and as the war-party would be tracked to their settlement, they would certainly be destroyed. But it was decided by them in a council that they would remain, "relying, in the event of the appearance of the American militia, on their innocence and their common religion." 1
THE MASSACRE OF THE MORAVIAN INDIANS AT GNADENHÜTTEN 2
The attack upon the Wallace family threw the whole border into a frenzy of excitement, and the frontiersmen had begun to organize an expedition into the Indian country, when fresh fuel was added to the flames of popular indignation, and suspicion definitely directed toward the Moravian converts. Shortly after the outrage on the waters of the Raccoon, a man named John Carpenter, living in the western part of Washington County (Doddridge says near Wellsburg in Virginia) had been captured by another war-party and carried toward the Musk- ingum. A day or two afterward he escaped, and made his way in safety to the Ohio at Fort McIntosh. On reaching his home Carpenter reported that in the party which had taken him were two Indians who called themselves Moravians, and who spoke good Dutch (German).3 This confirmed the sus- picion which had for some time been entertained by many that the Moravian towns on the Tuscarawas were "half-way houses" for the marauding parties of the savages. It was known also that the Moravians had returned, as above stated, to their towns, and the desire now became strengthened to move at once to these towns and so lay them waste that they could not, in the future, afford harborage to the war-parties coming from San- dusky, and at the same time to kill any hostile savages who might be discovered there and drive the Moravians away or take them to Fort Pitt. Beyond this, it is claimed, there was,
1 The Germans in Colonial Times (Bittinger) p. 292
2 For accounts of this affair see Pennsylvania Archives (1781-83) vol. ix., pp. 523-525, 540-542; Doddridge's Notes on the Early Settlements and Indian Wars, Munsell's Ed. Albany, 1876, pp. 248-262; Washington-Irvine Correspondence (Butterfield) pp. 67, 99, 100-102, 236-246, 282, 288-289; History of Washington County (Crumrine) pp. 103-110: Loskiel's History, Part III., pp. 175-184; De Schweinitz's Life of Zeisberger, pp. 537-558; The Germans in Colonial Times, pp. 291-296; Heckewelder's Indian Nations, pp. 184-283 ; Heckewelder's Narrative, pp. 311-326; Life of Heckewelder (Rondthaler) pp. 90-98; The Winning of the West (Roosevelt), vol. ii., pp. 142-157.
3 These were probably Wyandot or Shawanese warriors who were trying in this way to arouse the whites against the Moravians.
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at first, no intention (at least among the leaders) of making the expedition a punitive one.
Acting under the authority afforded him by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania (in instructions contained in circular letters to lieutenants of the western counties, dated January 8, 1782 1), Colonel James Marshel, county lieutenant of Washington County, yielded to the popular demand, and promptly called out from the militia of that county one hundred and sixty men to go to the Tuscarawas. This force was a mounted one, and was placed under the command of Colonel David Williamson 2 of the Third Battalion. In the morning of the 4th of March (1782) the expedition crossed the Ohio River to the Mingo Bottom, two and a half miles below the present town of Steubenville. Thence they marched by the direct trail to the Moravian villages, arriving late in the evening of the 6th of March close to Gnadenhütten, where they encamped for the night. Shortly after leaving the river they had passed the spot where the captors of Wallace's family had killed his wife and infant, and discovered that the mutilated body of the mother had been impaled on the sharpened trunk of a sapling. That this ghastly sight should have filled them with rage and made them, as the French say, "see red," was natural; but it is strange that they should have found in it, as they did, additional evidence of the guilt of the Moravians. Men capable of reasoning would have seen that had the latter been the murderers, they would not have placed this bloody index of their crime in the very path to their settlements, but now and in all the succeed- ing stages of their proceedings these were men bereft of reason.
With the dawn of the morning of the 7th, Williamson's men moved in two divisions, and in strict military order, toward Gnadenhütten. They found the river swollen and filled with ice, and with difficulty attained the western side. Here they first discovered a young half-breed named Joseph, son of an
1 Col. Rec., vol. xiii., p. 169.
2 David Williamson, was a son of John Williamson, and was born near Carlisle, Pa., in 1752, coming to the western country when a boy. His parents later followed him and set- tled upon Buffalo Creek, about twelve miles from the Ohio, in what was subsequently Wash- ington County. From the beginning of the Indian troubles Williamson was active in the defense of the western border, and was very popular. In 1787 he was elected sheriff of the county, having previously been county lieutenant. He married Miss Pollie Urie, daughter of Thomas Urie, of Hopewell township, Washington County, by whom he had four sons and four daughters, descendants of whom are still living. Williamson died in 1814, and was buried in the old burial ground in the borough of Washington.
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elder of the Moravian congregation known as Shebosch, or John Bull. Him they instantly shot, breaking his arm, and while, according to the account given by the murderers themselves, he was begging piteously for his life, telling them that he was the son of a white Christian man and a minister, they killed and scalped him. The main body of the Moravian Indians were at work gathering their corn some distance away, and seem not to have heard the shot when young Shebosch was fired upon. These the militia surrounded quietly, and, assuming a friendly manner, told them to go home and to have no fear. They even pretended to pity them on account of the injuries done to them by the English and the Shawanese, assured them of the pro- tection and friendship of the Americans, and announced the purpose of their coming to be the removal of the Moravian congregations to Fort Pitt, where they would be safe from their enemies. Believing this declaration the gentle Moravians sur- rendered their guns, hatchets, and other weapons cheerfully, and set about preparing for their departure and for the present entertainment of the white men.
In the meantime John Martin, one of the assistant teachers, was sent to Salem to tell the news of the arrival of the deliverers of the Christian Indians and to summon them to Gnadenhütten. The Indians of the latter place were then placed under guard in two houses some distance apart, and when the Salem Indians arrived they were disarmed and confined with their brethren. A council of the officers was then held to decide the fate of the prisoners, but these refused to make any decision, well know- ing that the wishes of their men for the death of the Indians could not be resisted. Williamson now referred the decision to the men themselves, drawn up in line, and the question was formally put to them, "Shall the Moravian Indians be taken as prisoners to Fort Pitt or put to death here?" Those in favor of saving them were ordered to step three paces to the front, and eighteen did so, remaining there until the commander an- nounced the fatal result. They then withdrew, calling upon God to witness that they were innocent of the blood about to be shed. Among the majority opinion was now divided as to the mode of"execution, whether to shut the Indians up in their houses and burn them alive, or tomahawk and scalp them.
1 Withers's Chronicles of Border Warfare, p. 323.
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The latter mode was at last decided upon, and the Indians were informed that they were to die on the following morning, and that, as they were Christians, they would be given the night for preparing themselves for their end. They answered by renew- ing their declarations of their innocence of any crime, but affirmed themselves ready to die without fear, assured of their acceptance with God through the merit of Jesus Christ. They then spent the night in expressing their love for one another and for Christ, and in prayer and praise, and the morning found them calmly awaiting the messengers of death.
The work of butchery was done in the forenoon of the 8th of March. The militia chose two houses which they grimly and appropriately called "the slaughter houses," and into these the poor Indians were dragged with ropes around their necks, some singly, some bound together two by two, and there butchered like sheep. One of the murderers took up a cooper's mallet which lay in sight, saying "how well this will answer the busi- ness." He then began knocking down one after another until he had killed fourteen, when he handed the mallet to one of his fellow-butchers, saying, "My arm fails me; go on in the same way; I think I have done pretty well." In a few moments the two houses were veritable shambles, ninety-two persons "of all ages and sexes, from the aged, grey-headed parents down to the helpless infant at its mother's breast, being dishonored by the fatal wounds of the tomahawk, mallet, war-club, spear, and scalping-knife." Four others, supposed to be warriors, were tomahawked and scalped at some distance from the houses. Of all the Indians in the two lower towns-Gnadenhütten and Salem-only two, youths about fifteen years of age, escaped. One of these boys managed to hide himself in the cellar of the house in which the women were killed, where he lay till night undiscovered, and then crept out and fled to the woods. The other, who was named Thomas, received a blow on the head and was scalped, but after some time regained consciousness. Among the bleeding corpses by which he was surrounded he saw another boy named Abel, who had been wounded and scalped, still alive and struggling to rise. Thomas prudently lay quite still, feigning death, and was saved by this caution, for soon after a militiaman looked into the room and, seeing Abel's move- ments, dispatched him. Though suffering the most exquisite VOL. I .- 28.
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tortures, Thomas remained motionless until dark, when he crawled over the dead bodies to the door, and seeing the way clear, escaped to the forest. Here he found the other youth who had escaped, and together they traveled safely to Sandusky. Before they left the neighborhood of Gnadenhütten, from the place of their concealment in the thickets, they saw the mur- derers rejoicing over their bloody work, and at last setting fire to the two houses filled with the bodies of their victims.
The Indians who were at the upper village of Schönbrun escaped the massacre by the fortunate circumstance that a mes- senger going to Gnadenhütten came upon the mangled body of Joseph Shebosch, and gave the alarm. The Schönbrun people immediately fled to the woods, where they lay concealed while a party of Williamson's men came to their village. The latter finding the place deserted, set fire to the houses and returned to Gnadenhütten without attempting pursuit, and having also com- pletely burned the settlements of Gnadenhütten and Salem, they started for their homes. They took back with them all the horses of the Indians and all the articles which they could plun- der from the villages, and on the 10th of March reached and crossed the Ohio River.
There are only two facts in all this bloody tragedy that afford relief to the heart, which even now, when more than a hundred years have passed, is oppressed by the thought of it; one is found in the action of the eighteen men who had courage enough to oppose the brutal deed, though we wish that they had been brave enough to have interposed with arms to prevent it 1; the other is the fortitude with which these "browne or tawny sheep of Jesus Christ" met their fate. Never did one- time savages act more like Christians than these martyred Moravians! Never did professed Christians act more like sav- ages than their murderers! However we may seek to find in the agonies endured by the borderers from the cruelties of their foes some extenuation for the excesses which they sometimes committed in taking reprisals, in this case our charity fails. There was here no noble Berserker rage. The conduct of these militiamen was not only cruel, it was cowardly; it was not only bloody, it was base. They ate the salt of the Moravians and
1 Neither history nor tradition has preserved the names of any of these men. Tradition says that one of them took off with him a little Indian boy, whose life was thus saved.
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then shed their blood. They conversed with them upon "spir- itual subjects " and "praised the Indians for their piety." The half-grown youths of the frontier levy played with the Moravian boys, who taught them how to make Indian bows and arrows. And pedlar-like, when they got back to Washington County the murderers held a vendue of the spoil they had taken, and boasted of their prowess as freely as if they had overthrown and looted a camp of Shawanese or Wyandot warriors instead of a few half- starved peace Indians.
Some slight attempt at an official inquiry into this atrocious massacre was made in Congress and by the Supreme Executive Council of the State, but nothing came of it, and nothing was ever done to punish its perpetrators. Outside of Washington County the best leaders and bravest Indian fighters joined in execrating the murderers.1 In their own neighborhood a few men, indeed, had courage enough to denounce their conduct, but it is doubtful if the majority of the people did so, and by many they were lauded as heroes. Williamson,2 who as its leader, must be held chiefly responsible for the results of the expedition, failed by only five votes of being chosen as com- mander of the force of four hundred and eighty men which was shortly afterwards organized to go against the Delawares and Wyandots on the Sandusky River, and five years later he was elected sheriff of Washington County. This shows him still in esteem among his fellow citizens. Moreover, men of such high standing as Colonel Dorsey Pentecost, a member of the Supreme Executive Council, and General Irvine, commandant of Fort Pitt, discouraged inquiry into the facts of the crime, the latter even refusing to express an opinion on it.3 But for some at
1 Col. John Gibson, called them "a set of men, the most savage miscreants that ever degraded human nature": Slover, in his Narrative speaks of Williamson as a " disgrace to the State of Pennsylvania." See also letter of Col. Edward Cook, county lieutenant of Westmoreland County to President Moore (Sept. 2, 1782) Penna. Arch., 1781-83, p. 629.
2 The Rev. Dr. Doddridge, who, as a child, knew Williamson, says of him that "his only fault was that of too easy compliance with popular prejudice," and thinks that his "memory has been loaded with unmerited reproach." How can any reproach be too heavy for a leader who did not resist with all his power such a deed of shame as that of which he was, as far as the record shows, a passive witness? And yet his conduct in the Crawford campaign, in which he was second in command, proved him a humane as well as a brave and capable officer.
$ On the 9th of May, following the massacre, General Irvine wrote to the president of the Supreme Executive Council, saying,-
"SIR :- Since my letter of the 3d instant to your Excellency, Mr. Penticost and Mr, Canon * have been with me; they and every intelligent person whom I have conversed with
* This was Col. John Canon, the founder of Canonsburg, Washington County, Pa.
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least of the men who had taken part in the murder of the Mora- vians a day of retribution was at hand. In the ranks of the militia which made up Crawford's fated expedition to Sandusky were many, if not most of those who had been concerned in that diabolical affair, and when any of them fell into the hands of the Delaware warriors after Crawford's defeat, they were tor- tured to death with fiendish cruelty. Poor Crawford himself, who had no connection with the Moravian massacre, was told by his friend Wingenund that he was powerless to save him because of the presence in his ranks of Williamson and others who had been involved in its guilt.1 So fearfully exasperated
on the subject are of the opinion that it will be almost impossible ever to obtain a just account of the conduct of the Militia at Muskingum [meaning the Tuscarawas branch of that stream]. No man can give any account except some of the party themselves. If, therefore, an inquiry should appear serious, they are not obliged, nor will they give evidence. For this and other reasons I am of opinion further inquiry into the matter will not only be fruitless, but in the end may be attended with disagreeable consequences."
On April 12th Irvine had written from Fort Pitt to his wife saying:
"Things were in a strange state when I arrived [from Philadelphia]. A number of the country people had just returned from the Moravian towns, about one hundred miles dis- tant, where, it is said, they did not spare either sex or age. What was more extraordinary, they did it in cool blood, having deliberated three days, during which time they were industrious in collecting all hands into their churches (they had embraced Christianity), when they fell on them while they were singing hymns and killed the whole. Many children were killed in their wretched mother's arms. Whether this was right or wrong I do not pretend to determine.
"People who have had fathers, mothers, brothers, or children butchered, tortured, scalped, by the savages, reason very differently on the subject of killing the Moravians [i. e., the Moravian Indians], to what people who live in the interior part of the country in perfect safety do. Whatever your private opinion of these matters may be, I conjure you by all the ties of affection and as you value my reputation that you will keep your mind to your- self, and that you will not express any sentiment for or against these deeds; - as it may be alleged, the sentiments you express may come from me or be mine. No man knows whether I approve or disapprove of killing the Moravians." (Wash .- Irvine Cor., pp. 343,344.)
Pentecost was nearly as politic as Irvine. On the 8th of May he wrote from Fort Pitt to the president of the Council as follows:
"Dr Sir :- I arrived home last Thursday without any particular accident; yesterday I came to this place, have had a long conference with Gen. Irwin and Col. Gibson on the sub- ject of public matters, Perticularly respecting the late excurtion [expedition] to Kushacton [meaning the Moravian settlements], that affair is a subject of great speculation here, some condemning, others applauding the measure; but the accounts are so various that it is not only Difficult but almost Indeed Entirely Impossible to learn the real truth; no person can give Intelligence but those that were along, and notwithstanding there seems to have been some difference amongst themselves about that business yet they will say nothing, but this far I believe may be depended on, that they killed the Innocent with the guilty, and its likely the majority was the former. I have heard it Insinuated that about thirty or forty only of the party gave their consent or assisted in the Catastrofy. It's said here, and I believe with truth, that Sundry articles were found amongst the Indians that was taken from the Inhabitants of Washington County, and that the Indians Confessed then- selves that when they set out from St Duskie, Ten warriors came with them who had went into the Settlements, and that four of them were then in the Towns who had returned. If those Indians that were killed were really friends, they must have been very Imprudent to return & settle at a place they knew the white people had been at and would go to again, without giving notice & besides to bring warriors with them who had come into the Settle- ments & after murdering would return to their Towns and of course draw people after them filled with revenge, Indignation & sorrow for the loss of their friends their wives & their Children. . (Penna. Arch., 1781-1783, vol. ix., p. 540.)
To the charge of imprudence which is here made it may be answered that the Moravian Indians had not returned to their towns to settle, but had come to gather the corn that was needed to keep them from starving at Sandusky whither they had been carried by the Wyandots and Shawanese.
1 Western Ar:nals, p. 382
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were the wild tribesmen by the fate of their Moravian kinsmen, that they told Crawford's men whom they had taken that from that time on not a single American captive should escape tor- ture.' Bitterly did Crawford and others realize the force of this resolve.
We have dwelt at some length upon the story of the Mora- vian massacre, because the history of the Friedenstadt Mission would be incomplete without it, and because such atrocities deserve the stamp of eternal infamy. On the spot at Gnaden- hütten where these Christian martyrs fell, a shaft has been erected commemorating their sufferings. Many of them, while still untutored savages, wandered over the hills and through the woods of Beaver County, and by the banks of its beautiful stream they afterwards heard the story of Christ's love for them, and gained the faith which enabled them to leave behind a bright testimony to his saving power. No spot in western Pennsylvania is more worthy to be counted sacred than that on which stood their "City of Peace." There, too, some me- morial ought to be built to the men whose labors and self-sacri- fice made it sacred, a monument whose inscriptions should raise the thought and touch the heart of generations yet to come.
PRESBYTERIANISM
The bulk of the emigration into this region was, as we have already seen, Irish, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish. It will not be invidious, therefore, to affirm that Presbyterianism was the pre- vailing type of religious faith in western Pennsylvania in the early period of its history, as it is still one of the strongest in- fluences in the religious life of the region. The Presbyterian Church-using the term Presbyterian in its broad sense as in- clusive of the Associate, the Associate Reformed, and the Re- formed Presbyterian bodies, as well as the Presbyterian body proper-was the pioneer church of the West.2 The pioneer min- isters who came into these settlements did not come, like the Jesuit Father Virot and the Moravians, as missionaries to a people without a knowledge of the Gospel. They found, and
1 Winning of the West, vol. ii., p. 156.
2 The Moravian Mission was earlier in the field, but its work was directed towards the Indians and had but a brief connection with this region.
The same remark applies to the French Catholic Mission under Father Virot.
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expected to find, families and individuals from the older settle- ments whom they had known or known of previously, or new- comers from Scotland or Ireland who had been trained in the doctrines of the "Kirk." The journal of Dr. John McMillan, one of the first of the noble band, both in point of time and in point of evangelistic ability, shows that wherever he went, on both sides of the Monongahela River and through the valley of Virginia, in his visits of 1775 and 1776, he met acquaintances and friends and even relatives. And so with the other minis- ters. From the church of the Rev. James Finley alone thirty- four families, mostly young married persons, moved to western Pennsylvania and settled at first within an area, the extreme boundaries of which were not more than forty miles from each other. This, together with the emigration hither of members of his own family, led to his leaving his church at East Notting- ham in 1783 and settling among his former parishioners in the western region of the State. Of the thirty-four families re- ferred to, who had emigrated from his former charge, twenty- two of their heads became ruling elders in different churches at their first organization in western Pennsylvania.I
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