The Moravians.

After the Moravian Indians were led by their missionary pastors to the banks of the Muskingum they dwelt peacefully and unharmed for several years.  In Lord Dunmore’s war special care was taken by the white leaders that these Quaker Indians should not be harmed; and their villages of Salem, Gnadenhutten, and Schoenbrunn received no damage whatever.  During the early years of the Revolutionary struggle they were not molested, but dwelt in peace and comfort in their roomy cabins of squared timbers, cleanly and quiet, industriously tilling the soil, abstaining from all strong drink, schooling their children, and keeping the Seventh Day as a day of rest.  They sought to observe strict neutrality, harming neither the Americans nor the Indians, nor yet the allies of the latter, the British and French at Detroit.  They hoped thereby to offend neither side, and to escape unhurt themselves.

But this was wholly impossible.  They occupied an utterly untenable position.  Their villages lay mid-way between the white settlements southeast of the Ohio, and the towns of the Indians round Sandusky, the bitterest foes of the Americans, and those most completely under British influence.  They were on the trail that the war-parties followed whether they struck at Kentucky or at the valleys of the Alleghany and Monongahela.  Consequently the Sandusky Indians used the Moravian villages as halfway houses, at which to halt and refresh themselves whether starting on a foray or returning with scalps and plunder.

    The Wild Indians Hate Them.

By the time the war had lasted four or five years both the wild or heathen Indians and the backwoodsmen had become fearfully exasperated with the unlucky Moravians.  The Sandusky Indians were largely Wyandots, Shawnees, and Delawares, the latter being fellow-tribesmen of the Christian Indians; and so they regarded the Moravians as traitors to the cause of their kinsfolk, because they would not take up the hatchet against the whites.  As they could not goad them into declaring war, they took malicious pleasure in trying to embroil them against their will, and on returning from raids against the settlements often passed through their towns solely to cast suspicion on them and to draw down the wrath of the backwoodsmen on their heads.  The British at Detroit feared lest the Americans might use the Moravian villages as a basis from which to attack the lake posts; they also coveted their men as allies; and so the baser among their officers urged the Sandusky tribes to break up the villages and drive off the missionaries.  The other Indian tribes likewise regarded them with angry contempt and hostility; the Iroquois once sent word to the Chippewas and Ottawas that they gave them the Christian Indians “to make broth of.”

    So Do the Americans.

The Americans became even more exasperated.  The war parties that plundered and destroyed their homes, killing their wives, children, and friends with torments too appalling to mention, got shelter and refreshment from the Moravians, ­who, indeed, dared not refuse it.  The backwoodsmen, roused to a mad frenzy of rage by the awful nature of their wrongs, saw that the Moravians rendered valuable help to their cruel and inveterate foes, and refused to see that the help was given with the utmost reluctance.  Moreover, some of the young Christian Indians backslid, and joined their savage brethren, accompanying them on their war parties and ravaging with as much cruelty as any of their number. Soon the frontiersmen began to clamor for the destruction of the Moravian towns; yet for a little while they were restrained by the Continental officers of the few border forts, who always treated these harmless Indians with the utmost kindness.

    They Blindly Court their Fate.

On either side were foes, who grew less governable day by day, and the fate of the hapless and peaceful Moravians, if they continued to dwell on the Muskingum, was absolutely inevitable.  With blind fatuity their leaders, the missionaries, refused to see the impending doom; and the poor, simple Indians clung to their homes till destroyed.  The American commander at Pittsburg, Col.  Gibson, endeavored to get them to come into the American lines, where he would have the power, as he already had the wish, to protect them; he pointed out that where they were they served in some sort as a shield to the wild Indians, whom he had to spare so as not to harm the Moravians. The Half King of the Wyandots, from the other side, likewise tried to persuade them to abandon their dangerous position, and to come well within the Indian and British lines, saying:  “Two mighty and angry gods stand opposite to each other with their mouths wide open, and you are between them, and are in danger of being crushed by one or the other, or by both.” But in spite of these warnings, and heedless of the safety that would have followed the adoption of either course, the Moravians followed the advice of their missionaries and continued where they were.  They suffered greatly from the wanton cruelty of their red brethren; and their fate remains a monument to the cold-blooded and cowardly brutality of the borderers, a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away; but it is singular that historians have not yet pointed out the obvious truth, that no small share of the blame for their sad end should be put to the credit of the blind folly of their missionary leaders.  Their only hope in such a conflict as was then raging, was to be removed from their fatally dangerous position; and this the missionaries would not see.  As long at they stayed where they were, it was a mere question of chance and time whether they would be destroyed by the Indians or the whites; for their destruction at the hands of either one party or the other was inevitable.

Their fate was not due to the fact that they were Indians; it resulted from their occupying an absolutely false position.  This is clearly shown by what happened twenty years previously to a small community of non-resistant Christian whites.  They were Dunkards ­Quaker-like Germans ­who had built a settlement on the Monongahela.  As they helped neither side, both distrusted and hated them.  The whites harassed them in every way, and the Indians finally fell upon and massacred them. The fates of these two communities, of white Dunkards and red Moravians, were exactly parallel.  Each became hateful to both sets of combatants, was persecuted by both, and finally fell a victim to the ferocity of the race to which it did not belong.

    Evil Conduct of the Backwoodsmen.

The conduct of the backwoodsmen towards these peaceful and harmless Christian Indians was utterly abhorrent, and will ever be a subject of just reproach and condemnation; and at first sight it seems incredible that the perpetrators of so vile a deed should have gone unpunished and almost unblamed.  It is a dark blot on the character of a people that otherwise had many fine and manly qualities to its credit.  But the extraordinary conditions of life on the frontier must be kept in mind before passing too severe a judgment.  In the turmoil of the harassing and long-continued Indian war, and the consequent loosening of social bonds, it was inevitable that, as regards outside matters, each man should do what seemed right in his own eyes.  The bad and the good alike were left free and untrammelled to follow the bent of their desires.  The people had all they could do to beat off their savage enemies, and to keep order among themselves.  They were able to impose but slight checks on ruffianism that was aimed at outsiders.  There were plenty of good and upright men who would not harm any Indians wrongfully, and who treated kindly those who were peaceable.  On the other hand, there were many of violent and murderous temper.  These knew that their neighbors would actively resent any wrong done to themselves, but knew, also, that, under the existing conditions, they would at the worst do nothing more than openly disapprove of an outrage perpetrated on Indians.

    Its Explanation.

The violence of the bad is easily understood.  The indifference displayed towards their actions by the better men of the community, who were certainly greatly in the majority, is harder to explain.  It rose from varying causes.  In the first place, the long continuance of Indian warfare, and the unspeakable horrors that were its invariable accompaniments had gradually wrought up many even of the best of the backwoodsmen to the point where they barely considered an Indian as a human being.  The warrior was not to them a creature of romance.  They knew him for what he was ­filthy, cruel, lecherous, and faithless.  He sometimes had excellent qualities, but these they seldom had a chance to see.  They always met him at his worst.  To them he was in peace a lazy, dirty, drunken beggar, whom they despised, and yet whom they feared; for the squalid, contemptible creature might at any moment be transformed into a foe whose like there was not to be found in all the wide world for ferocity, cunning, and blood-thirsty cruelty.  The greatest Indians, chiefs like Logan and Cornstalk, who were capable of deeds of the loftiest and most sublime heroism, were also at times cruel monsters or drunken good-for-nothings.  Their meaner followers had only such virtues as belong to the human wolf ­stealth, craft, tireless endurance, and the courage that prefers to prey on the helpless, but will fight to the death without flinching if cornered.

    Grimness of the Backwoods Character.

Moreover, the backwoodsmen were a hard people; a people who still lived in an iron age.  They did not spare themselves, nor those who were dear to them; far less would they spare their real or possible foes.  Their lives were often stern and grim; they were wonted to hardship and suffering.  In the histories or traditions of the different families there are recorded many tales of how they sacrificed themselves, and, in time of need, sacrificed others.  The mother who was a captive among the Indians might lay down her life for her child; but if she could not save it, and to stay with it forbade her own escape it was possible that she would kiss it good-by and leave it to its certain fate, while she herself, facing death at every step, fled homewards through hundreds of miles of wilderness. The man who daily imperilled his own life, would, if water was needed in the fort, send his wife and daughter to draw it from the spring round which he knew Indians lurked, trusting that the appearance of the women would make the savages think themselves undiscovered, and that they would therefore defer their attack. Such people were not likely to spare their red-skinned foes.  Many of their friends, who had never hurt the savages in any way, had perished the victims of wanton aggression.  They themselves had seen innumerable instances of Indian treachery.  They had often known the chiefs of a tribe to profess warm friendship at the very moment that their young men were stealing and murdering.  They grew to think of even the most peaceful Indians as merely sleeping wild beasts, and while their own wrongs were ever vividly before them, they rarely heard of or heeded those done to their foes.  In a community where every strong courageous man was a bulwark to the rest, he was sure to be censured lightly for merely killing a member of a loathed and hated race.

Many of the best of the backwoodsmen were Bible-readers, but they were brought up in a creed that made much of the Old Testament, and laid slight stress on pity, truth, or mercy.  They looked at their foes as the Hebrew prophets looked at the enemies of Israel.  What were the abominations because of which the Canaanites were destroyed before Joshua, when compared with the abominations of the red savages whose lands they, another chosen people, should in their turn inherit?  They believed that the Lord was king for ever and ever, and they believed no less that they were but obeying His commandment as they strove mightily to bring about the day when the heathen should have perished out of the land; for they had read in The Book that he was accursed who did the work of the Lord deceitfully, or kept his sword back from blood.  There was many a stern frontier zealot who deemed all the red men, good and bad, corn ripe for the reaping.  Such a one rejoiced to see his fellows do to the harmless Moravians as the Danites once did to the people of Laish, who lived quiet and secure, after the manner of the Sidonians, and had no business with any man, and who yet were smitten with the edge of the sword, and their city burnt with fire.

    The Moravians Themselves not Blameless.

Finally, it must not be forgotten that there were men on the frontier who did do their best to save the peaceful Indians, and that there were also many circumstances connected with the latter that justly laid them open to suspicion.  When young backsliding Moravians appeared in the war parties, as cruel and murderous as their associates, the whites were warranted in feeling doubtful as to whether their example might not infect the remainder of their people.  War parties, whose members in dreadful derision left women and children impaled by their trail to greet the sight of the pursuing husbands and fathers, found food and lodging at the Moravian towns.  No matter how reluctant the aid thus given, the pursuers were right in feeling enraged, and in demanding that the towns should be removed to where they could no longer give comfort to the enemy.  When the missionaries refused to consent to this removal, they thereby became helpers of the hostile Indians; they wronged the frontiersmen, and they still more grievously wronged their own flocks.  They certainly had ample warning of the temper of the whites.  Col.  Brodhead was in command at Fort Pitt until the end of 1781.  At the time that General Sullivan ravaged the country of the Six Nations, he had led a force up the Alleghany and created a diversion by burning one or two Iroquois towns.  In 1781 he led a successful expedition against a town of hostile Delawares on the Muskingum, taking it by surprise and surrounding it so completely that all within were captured.  Sixteen noted warriors and marauders were singled out and put to death.  The remainder fared but little better, for, while marching back to Fort Pitt, the militia fell on them and murdered all the men, leaving only the women and children.  The militia also started to attack the Moravians, and were only prevented by the strenuous exertions of Brodhead.  Even this proof of the brutality of their neighbors was wasted on the missionaries.

    Maltreated by the British and Wild Indians.

The first blow the Moravians received was from the wild Indians.  In the fall of this same year (1781) their towns were suddenly visited by a horde of armed warriors, horsemen and footmen, from Sandusky and Detroit.  Conspicuous among them were the Wyandots, under the Half King; the Delawares, also led by a famous chief, Captain Pipe; and a body of white rangers from Detroit, including British, French, and tories, commanded by the British Captain Elliott, and flying the British flag. With them came also Shawnees, Chippewas, and Ottawas.  All were acting in pursuance of the express orders of the commandant at Detroit. These warriors insisted on the Christian Indians abandoning their villages and accompanying them back to Sandusky and Detroit; and they destroyed many of the houses, and much of the food for the men and the fodder for the horses and cattle.  The Moravians begged humbly to be left where they were, but without avail.  They were forced away to Lake Erie, the missionaries being taken to Detroit, while the Indians were left on the plains of Sandusky.  The wild Indians were very savage against them, but the British commandant would not let them be seriously maltreated, though they were kept in great want and almost starved.

    Also by the Americans.

A few Moravians escaped, and remained in their villages; but these, three or four weeks later, were captured by a small detachment of American militia, under Col.  David Williamson, who had gone out to make the Moravians either move farther off or else come in under the protection of Fort Pitt.  Williamson accordingly took the Indians to the fort, where the Continental commander, Col.  John Gibson, at once released them, and sent them back to the villages unharmed. Gibson had all along been a firm friend of the Moravians.  He had protected them against the violence of the borderers, and had written repeated and urgent letters to Congress and to his superior officers, asking that some steps might be taken to protect the friendly Christian Indians. In the general weakness and exhaustion, however, nothing was done; and, as neither the State nor Federal governments took any steps to protect them, and as their missionaries refused to learn wisdom, it was evident that the days of the Moravians were numbered.  The failure of the government to protect them was perhaps inevitable, but was certainly discreditable.

The very day after Gibson sent the Christian Indians back to their homes, several murders were committed near Pittsburg, and many of the frontiersmen insisted that they were done with the good will or connivance of the Moravians.  The settlements had suffered greatly all summer long, and the people clamored savagely against all the Indians, blaming both Gibson and Williamson for not having killed or kept captive their prisoners.  The ruffianly and vicious of course clamored louder than any; the mass of people who are always led by others, chimed in, in a somewhat lower key; and many good men were silent for the reasons given already.  In a frontier democracy, military and civil officers are directly dependent upon popular approval, not only for their offices, but for what they are able to accomplish while filling them.  They are therefore generally extremely sensitive to either praise or blame.  Ambitious men flatter and bow to popular prejudice or opinion, and only those of genuine power and self-reliance dare to withstand it.  Williamson was physically a fairly brave officer and not naturally cruel; but he was weak and ambitious, ready to yield to any popular demand, and, if it would advance his own interests, to connive at any act of barbarity. Gibson, however, who was a very different man, paid no heed to the cry raised against him.

They Refuse to be Warned and Return to their Homes.

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 circumstances 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. 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.

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 circumstance might be wanting to fill the measure of their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, assured 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 Schoenbrunn, 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 God 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 Massacred.

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 passed 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. 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 massacre.

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 massacre of Glencoe.  For some time the true circumstances 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 chastisement.  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 massacre was shown when, as was the custom, they met to choose a leader.  There were two competitors for the place, Williamson, who commanded at the massacre, 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. Butterfield in his “Expedition against Sandusky.”  (Cincinnati:  Robert Clarke & Co., 1873).  Mr. Butterfield 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. Butterfield is drawn into grave errors by his excessive partisanship of the borderers.  He passes lightly over their atrocious outrages, colors favorably many of their acts, and praises the generalship of Crawford and the soldiership 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 coarse grass and dotted with islands of timber.  As the men marched across them they roused quantities 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; and runners were sent to Detroit asking help.  This the British commandant at once granted.  He sent to the assistance of the threatened tribes a number of lake Indians and a body of rangers and Canadian volunteers, under Captain Caldwell.

    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. 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.

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 generalship was as poor as the soldiership 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. After this they suffered little molestation, and reached Mingo Bottom on the 13th of the month.

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.

These two prisoners were taken to one of the Delaware villages.  The Indians were fearfully exasperated by the Moravian massacre; and some of the former Moravians, who had rejoined their wild tribesmen, told the prisoners that from that time on not a single captive should escape torture.  Nevertheless it is likely that Crawford would have been burned in any event, and that most of the prisoners would have been tortured to death even had the Moravians never been harmed; for such had always been the custom of the Delawares.

The British, who had cared for the remnants of the Moravians, now did their best to stop the cruelties of the Indians, but could accomplish little or nothing.  Even the Mingos and Hurons told them that though they would not torture any Americans, they intended thenceforth to put all their prisoners to death.

    Crawford Tortured to Death.

Crawford was tied to the stake in the presence of a hundred Indians.  Among them were Simon Girty, the white renegade, and a few Wyandots.  Knight, Crawford’s fellow-captive, was a horrified spectator of the awful sufferings which he knew he was destined by his captors ultimately to share.  Crawford, stripped naked, and with his hands bound behind him, was fastened to a high stake by a strong rope; the rope was long enough for him to walk once or twice round the stake.  The fire, of small hickory poles, was several yards from the post, so as only to roast and scorch him.  Powder was shot into his body, and burning fagots shoved against him, while red embers were strewn beneath his feet.  For two hours he bore his torments with manly fortitude, speaking low, and beseeching the Almighty to have mercy on his soul.  Then he fell down, and his torturers scalped him, and threw burning coals on his bare skull.  Rising, he walked about the post once or twice again, and then died.  Girty and the Wyandots looked on, laughing at his agony, but taking no part in the torture.  When the news of his dreadful fate was brought to the settlements, it excited the greatest horror, not only along the whole frontier, but elsewhere in the country; for he was widely known, was a valued friend of Washington and was everywhere beloved and respected.

Knight, a small and weak-looking man, was sent to be burned at the Shawnee towns, under the care of a burly savage.  Making friends with the latter, he lulled his suspicions, the more easily because the Indian evidently regarded so small a man with contempt; and then, watching his opportunity, he knocked his guard down and ran off into the woods, eventually making his way to the settlements.

Another of the captives, Slover by name, made a more remarkable escape.  Slover’s life history had been curious.  When a boy eight years old, living near the springs of the Kanawha, his family was captured by Indians, his brother alone escaping.  His father was killed, and his two little sisters died of fatigue on the road to the Indian villages; his mother was afterwards ransomed.  He lived twelve years with the savages, at first in the Miami towns, and then with the Shawnees.  When twenty years old he went to Fort Pitt, where, by accident, he was made known to some of his relations.  They pressed him to rejoin his people, but he had become so wedded to savage life that he at first refused.  At last he yielded, however, took up his abode with the men of his own color, and became a good citizen, and a worthy member of the Presbyterian Church.  At the outbreak of the Revolution he served fifteen months as a Continental soldier, and when Crawford started against the Sandusky Indians, he went along as a scout.

Slover, when captured, was taken round to various Indian towns, and saw a number of his companions, as well as other white prisoners, tomahawked or tortured to death.  He was examined publicly about many matters at several Great Councils ­for he spoke two or three different Indian languages fluently.  At one of the councils he heard the Indians solemnly resolve to take no more prisoners thereafter, but to kill all Americans, of whatever sex and age; some of the British agents from Detroit signifying their approval of the resolution.

    Slover’s Escape.

At last he was condemned to be burned, and was actually tied to the stake.  But a heavy shower came on, so wetting the wood that it was determined to reprieve him till the morrow.  That night he was bound and put in a wigwam under the care of three warriors.  They laughed and chatted with the prisoner, mocking him, and describing to him with relish all the torments that he was to suffer.  At last they fell asleep, and, just before daybreak, he managed to slip out of his rope and escape, entirely naked.

Catching a horse, he galloped away sitting on a piece of old rug, and guiding the animal with the halter.  He rode steadily and at speed for seventy miles, until his horse dropped dead under him late in the afternoon.  Springing off, he continued the race on foot.  At last he halted, sick and weary; but, when he had rested an hour or two, he heard afar off the halloo of his pursuers.  Struggling to his feet he continued his flight, and ran until after dark.  He then threw himself down and snatched a few hours’ restless sleep, but, as soon as the moon rose, he renewed his run for life, carefully covering his trail whenever possible.  At last he distanced his enemies.  For five days he went straight through the woods, naked, bruised, and torn, living on a few berries and a couple of small crawfish he caught in a stream.  He could not sleep nor sometimes even lie down at night because of the mosquitoes.  On the morning of the sixth day he reached Wheeling, after experiencing such hardship and suffering as none but an iron will and frame could have withstood.

    Woe on the Frontier.

Until near the close of the year 1782 the frontiers suffered heavily.  A terrible and deserved retribution fell on the borderers for their crime in failing to punish the dastardly deed of Williamson and his associates.  The Indians were roused to savage anger by the murder of the Moravians, and were greatly encouraged by their easy defeat of Crawford’s troops.  They harassed the settlements all along the Upper Ohio, the Alleghany and the Monongahela, and far into the interior, burning, ravaging, and murdering, and bringing dire dismay to every lonely clearing, and every palisaded hamlet of rough log-cabins.