Leonard Sadosky Recounts the Gnadenhutten Massacre

[caption id="attachment_953" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] This is an artist's conception of the Gnadenhutten Massacre. The white militiamen did use hatchets to scalp their victims. However, the killing itself is believed to have been done with a cooper's mallet.[/caption]

My previous post ended with a "To be Continued..."

We were at the point where David Williamson again brought together a militia of white farmers. The horrible massacre itself was still a few weeks away.

I imagine there is no substitute for actually reading Leonard Sadosky's chapter: "Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre: The Contest for Power in the Public World of the Revolutionary Pennsylvania Frontier." (It is found in the book The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814.) Consider this a first look at Sadosky's work.

Again - my disclaimer - the Gnadenhutten Massacre still was what it was. It cannot be explained away. It was certainly what we now would call a crime of war. [Sadosky appropriately cited the sources he used with endnotes which I have not reproduced here.]

 

As you may remember from my previous post, many of the Moravian Indians - and the two missionaries, Zeisberger and Heckewelder - had been taken away from their villages by British-allied Indians in the fall of 1781. Most of them were allowed to return to gather corn in February, 1782. While they were busy in the fields, the Indians of Gnadenhutten were warned by a party of warriors "that they would probably be pursued"(198). Sadosky adds

Some villagers were worried, but the majority reasoned that since the Americans knew they were Christians, and since they needed to finish gathering their corn, they would return to Sandusky only when the enitre harvest was gathered. It was a fatal miscalculation.

Then he goes on to describe the events of that shameful day, March 7, 1782. As Williamson's roughly two-hundred men came near Gnadenhutten, they came upon a young Delaware man and immediately one of the Pennsylvania rifles fired, injuring the man in the arm and knocking him to the ground. Sadosky continues

As the militia came upon him he begged for his life, saying he was Joseph Shebosh, the son of a white Moravian missionary. Another gunshot echoed through the frozen woodland, and Shebosh was dead (198).

And then he was scalped.

The militia rode on into the town where they managed to appear non-threatening to the peaceful Indians, warned them of possible danger, talked about taking them to Fort Pitt for their own safety and then they had the Indians hand over whatever weapons they had.

According to Sadosky, the white farmers' militia found it "odd" that the

Delawares were using axes, pewter bowls, pewter spoons, teakettles, and cups. They observed also that their horses were branded and that other articles were stamped with letters. Surely, they reasoned, these goods were evidence that these Indians had engaged in the plunder of Washington County (PA), or at least were friendly with those who had. Williamson and his men accused the Delawares of theft and murder (199).

Accusers often jump to conclusions when making allegations.

According to Sadosky, "Accounts vary as to what transpired next." But - although the particulars vary from one source to another - together all the sources "present a fairly coherent picture of Gnadenhutten's final day," which included "violent actions that were as cold and calculated as they were brutal"(199).

Wiliamson convened a war council in which about two dozen militiamen advocated the sparing of the Indians' lives. But the majority ruled. The militia informed the men, women and children of Gnadenhutten that they were going to be put to death. The Indians first protested and then resigned themselves to their fate. On page 200, Sadosky quotes Heckewelder who was still being kept prisoner at Sandusky (Heckewelder's own source will be revealed later in this post).

They kneeled down, offering fervent prayers to God their Savior - and kissing one another, under a flood of tears, fully resigned to his will, they sang praises unto him, in joyful hope, that they would soon be relieved from all pains, and join their redeemer in everlasting bliss.

The next paragraph is Sadosky's description of the massacre itself:

Those militiamen who did not wish to participate in the killing left the village. But plenty of Pennsylvanians and Virginians remained to enact the sentance of death. Still singing, still crying, the male Moravians were separated from the women and children, and led to two separate houses. Then, one militiaman seized the mallet of Gnadenhutten's cooper from one of the houses and began striking the men on the head with it one by one. After the first man had killed fourteen, he called for another to take his place. All the Indians were struck, then scalped. Finally the militiamen set the houses afire. Amazingly, two young boys managed to survive the slaughter - one by hiding silently in a cellar, the other by feigning death amidst the pile of corpses in one of the "slaughter-houses." They both escaped, made their way to Sandusky, and their testimony became the basis for the accounts of Moravian historians George Loskiel and John Heckewelder (200).

 

This series on the Gnadenhutten Massacre will continue.
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