Volume II Part 8 (1/2)
With incredible folly the Moravians refused to heed even such rough warnings as they had received. During the long winter they suffered greatly from cold and hunger, at Sandusky, and before the spring of 1782 opened, a hundred and fifty of them returned to their deserted villages.
That year the Indian outrages on the frontiers began very early. In February there was some fine weather; and while it lasted, several families of settlers were butchered, some under circ.u.mstances of peculiar atrocity. In particular, four Sandusky Indians having taken some prisoners, impaled two of them, a woman and a child, while on their way to the Moravian towns, where they rested and ate, prior to continuing their journey with their remaining captives. When they left they warned the Moravians that white men were on their trail. [Footnote: Heckewelder, 3:1.] A white man who had just escaped this same impaling party, also warned the Moravians that the exasperated borderers were preparing a party to kill them; and Gibson, from Fort Pitt, sent a messenger to them, who, however, arrived too late. But the poor Christian Indians, usually very timid, now, in the presence of a real danger, showed a curious apathy; their senses were numbed and dulled by their misfortunes, and they quietly awaited their doom. [Footnote: Loskiel, 176.]
It was not long deferred. Eighty or ninety frontiersmen, under Williamson, hastily gathered together to destroy the Moravian towns. It was, of course, just such an expedition as most attracted the brutal, the vicious, and the ruffianly; but a few decent men, to their shame, went along. They started in March, and on the third day reached the fated villages. That no circ.u.mstance might be wanting to fill the measure of their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, a.s.sured them that they meant well, and spent an hour or two in gathering together those who were in Salem and Gnadenhutten, putting them all in two houses at the latter place. Those at the third town, of Schonbrunn, got warning and made their escape.
As soon as the unsuspecting Indians were gathered in the two houses, the men in one, the women and children in the other, the whites held a council as to what should be done with them. The great majority were for putting them instantly to death. Eighteen men protested, and asked that the lives of the poor creatures should be spared; and then withdrew, calling G.o.d to witness that they were innocent of the crime about to be committed. By rights they should have protected the victims at any hazard. One of them took off with him a small Indian boy, whose life was thus spared. With this exception only two lads escaped.
They are Ma.s.sacred.
When the murderers told the doomed Moravians their fate, they merely requested a short delay in which to prepare themselves for death. They asked one another's pardon for whatever wrongs they might have done, knelt down and prayed, kissed one another farewell, ”and began to sing hymns of hope and of praise to the Most High.” Then the white butchers entered the houses and put to death the ninety-six men, women, and children that were within their walls. More than a hundred years have pa.s.sed since this deed of revolting brutality; but even now a just man's blood boils in his veins at the remembrance. It is impossible not to regret that fate failed to send some strong war party of savages across the path of these inhuman cowards, to inflict on them the punishment they so richly deserved. We know that a few of them were afterwards killed by the Indians; it is a matter of keen regret that any escaped.
When the full particulars of the affair were known, all the best leaders of the border, almost all the most famous Indian fighters, joined in denouncing it. [Footnote: Col. James Smith, then of Kentucky, in 1799 calls it ”an act of barbarity equal to any thing I ever knew to be committed by the savages themselves, except the burning of prisoners.”]
Nor is it right that the whole of the frontier folk should bear the blame for the deed. It is a fact, honorable and worthy of mention, that the Kentuckians were never implicated in this or any similar ma.s.sacre.
[Footnote: The Germans of up-country North Carolina were guilty of as brutal ma.s.sacres as the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania. See Adair, 245. There are two or three individual instances of the barbarity of Kentuckians--one being to the credit of McGarry,--but they are singularly few, when the length and the dreadful nature of their Indian wars are taken into account. Throughout their history the Kentucky pioneers had the right on their side in their dealings with the Indians.
They were not wanton aggressors; they entered upon vacant hunting-grounds, to which no tribe had a clear t.i.tle, and to which most even of the doubtful t.i.tles had been fairly extinguished. They fought their foes fiercely, with varying fortune, and eventually wrested the land from them; but they very rarely wronged them; and for the numerous deeds of fearful cruelty that were done on Kentucky soil, the Indians were in almost every case to blame.]
But at the time, and in their own neighborhood--the corner of the Upper Ohio valley where Pennsylvania and Virginia touch,--the conduct of the murderers of the Moravians roused no condemnation. The borderers at first felt about it as the English Whigs originally felt about the ma.s.sacre of Glencoe. For some time the true circ.u.mstances of the affair were not widely known among them. They were hot with wrath against all the red-skinned race; and they rejoiced to hear of the death of a number of treacherous Indians who pretended to be peaceful, while harboring and giving aid and comfort to, and occasionally letting their own young men join, bands of avowed murderers. Of course, the large wicked and disorderly element was loud in praise of the deed. The decent people, by their silence, acquiesced.
A terrible day of reckoning was at hand; the retribution fell on but part of the real criminals, and bore most heavily on those who were innocent of any actual complicity in the deed of evil. Nevertheless it is impossible to grieve overmuch for the misfortune that befell men who freely forgave and condoned such treacherous barbarity.
Crawford Marches against Sandusky.
In May a body of four hundred and eighty Pennsylvania and Virginia militia gathered at Mingo Bottom, on the Ohio, with the purpose of marching against and destroying the towns of the hostile Wyandots and Delawares in the neighborhood of the Sandusky River. The Sandusky Indians were those whose attacks were most severely felt by that portion of the frontier; and for their repeated and merciless ravages they deserved the severest chastis.e.m.e.nt. The expedition against them was from every point of view just; and it was undertaken to punish them, and without any definite idea of attacking the remnant of the Moravians who were settled among them. On the other hand, the militia included in their ranks most of those who had taken part in the murderous expedition of two months before; this fact, and their general character, made it certain that the peaceable and inoffensive Indians would, if encountered, be slaughtered as pitilessly as their hostile brethren.
How little the militia volunteers disapproved of the Moravian ma.s.sacre was shown when, as was the custom, they met to choose a leader. There were two compet.i.tors for the place, Williamson, who commanded at the ma.s.sacre, being one; and he was beaten by only five votes. His successful opponent, Colonel William Crawford, was a fairly good officer, a just and upright man, but with no special fitness for such a task as that he had undertaken. Nor were the troops he led of very good stuff [Footnote: A minute and exhaustive account of Crawford's campaign is given by Mr. C. W. b.u.t.terfield in his ”Expedition against Sandusky.”
(Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1873). Mr. b.u.t.terfield shows conclusively that the accepted accounts are wholly inaccurate, being derived from the reports of the Moravian missionaries, whose untruthfulness (especially Heckewelder's) is clearly demonstrated. He shows the apocryphal nature of some of the pretended narratives of the expedition, such as two in ”The American Pioneer,” etc. He also shows how inaccurate McClung's ”sketches” are--for McClung was like a host of other early western annalists, preserving some valuable facts in a good deal of rubbish, and having very little appreciation indeed of the necessity of so much as approximate accuracy. Only a few of these early western historians had the least conception of the value of evidence or of the necessity of sifting it, or of weighing testimony.
On the other hand, Mr. b.u.t.terfield is drawn into grave errors by his excessive partisans.h.i.+p of the borderers. He pa.s.ses lightly over their atrocious outrages, colors favorably many of their acts, and praises the generals.h.i.+p of Crawford and the soldiers.h.i.+p of his men; when in reality the campaign was badly conducted from beginning to end, and reflected discredit on most who took part in it; Crawford did poorly, and the bulk of his men acted like unruly cowards.]; though they included a few veteran Indian fighters.
The party left Mingo Bottom on the 25th of May. After nine days' steady marching through the unbroken forests they came out on the Sandusky plains; billowy stretches of prairie, covered with high coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and dotted with islands of timber. As the men marched across them they roused quant.i.ties of prairie fowl, and saw many geese and sand-hill cranes, which circled about in the air, making a strange clamor.
Crawford hoped to surprise the Indian towns; but his progress was slow and the militia every now and then fired off their guns. The spies of the savages dogged his march and knew all his movements [Footnote: Heckewelder, 336. b.u.t.terfield shows conclusively that there is not the slightest ground to accept Heckewelder's a.s.sertion that Crawford's people openly declared that ”no Indian was to be spared, friend or foe.”]; and runners were sent to Detroit asking help. This the British commandant at once granted. He sent to the a.s.sistance of the threatened tribes a number of lake Indians and a body of rangers and Canadian volunteers, under Captain Caldwell. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. May 14, 1782. De Peyster to Haldimand.]
The Fight at Sandusky.
On the fourth of June Crawford's troops reached one of the Wyandot towns. It was found to be deserted; and the army marched on to try and find the others. Late in the afternoon, in the midst of the plains, near a cranberry marsh, they encountered Caldwell and his Detroit rangers, together with about two hundred Delawares, Wyandots, and lake Indians.
[Footnote: _Do_. Official report of Lt. John Turney of the rangers, June 7, 1782.] The British and Indians united certainly did not much exceed three hundred men; but they were hourly expecting reinforcements, and decided to give battle. They were posted in a grove of trees, from which they were driven by the first charge of the Americans. A hot skirmish ensued, in which, in spite of Crawford's superiority in force, and of the exceptionally favorable nature of the country, he failed to gain any marked advantage. His troops, containing so large a leaven of the murderers of the Moravians, certainly showed small fighting capacity when matched against armed men who could defend themselves. After the first few minutes neither side gained or lost ground.
Of the Americans five were killed and nineteen wounded--in all twenty-four. Of their opponents the rangers lost two men killed and three wounded, Caldwell being one of the latter; and the Indians four killed and eight wounded--in all seventeen. [Footnote: _Do_. Probably some of this loss occurred on the following day. I rely on b.u.t.terfield for the American loss, as he quotes Irvine's official report, etc. He of course wrote without knowledge of the British reports; and his account of the Indian losses and numbers is all wrong. He fails signally in his effort to prove that the Americans behaved bravely.]
That night Crawford's men slept by their watch-fires in the grove, their foes camping round about in the open prairie. Next morning the British and Indians were not inclined to renew the attack; they wished to wait until their numbers were increased. The only chance of the American militia was to crush their enemies before reinforcements arrived, yet they lay supine and idle all day long, save for an occasional harmless skirmish. Crawford's generals.h.i.+p was as poor as the soldiers.h.i.+p of his men.
Rout of the Whites.
In the afternoon the Indians were joined by one hundred and forty Shawnees. At sight of this accession of strength the disspirited militia Rout gave up all thought of any thing but flight, though they were still equal in numbers to their foes. That night they began a hurried and disorderly retreat. The Shawnees and Delawares attacked them in the darkness, causing some loss and great confusion, and a few of the troops got into the marsh. Many thus became scattered, and next morning there were only about three hundred men left together in a body. Crawford himself was among the missing, so Williamson took command, and hastily continued the retreat. The savages did not make a very hot pursuit; nevertheless, in the afternoon of that day a small number of Indians and Detroit rangers overtook the Americans. They were all mounted. A slight skirmish followed, and the Americans lost eleven men, but repulsed their pursuers. [Footnote: Who were probably at this point much fewer in number than the Americans; b.u.t.terfield says the reverse, but his account is untrustworthy on these matters.] After this they suffered little molestation, and reached Mingo Bottom on the 13th of the month.
[Footnote: As b.u.t.terfield shows, Heckewelder's account of Crawford's whole expedition is a piece of sheer romancing.]
Many of the stragglers came in afterwards. In all about seventy either died of their wounds, were killed outright, or were captured. Of the latter, those who were made prisoners by the Wyandots were tomahawked and their heads stuck on poles; but if they fell into the hands of the Shawnees or Delawares they were tortured to death with fiendish cruelty.
Among them was Crawford himself, who had become separated from the main body when it began its disorderly night retreat. After abandoning his jaded horse he started homewards on foot, but fell into the hands of a small party of Delawares, together with a companion named Knight.