Why Weren't the Perpetrators of the Gnadenhutten Massacre Brought to Justice?

If you've been following this series of posts, you already know that the Gnadenhutten Massacre was a horrible and shameful example of frontier violence during the American Revolution (which also makes it part of the Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes). The massacre itself was described in the post just prior to this one.

Those of you who have read my book, Proud and Determined, know that The Stockbridge Mohicans were briefly suspected of arson, kidnapping and murder by their white neighbors in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Those suspicions were short-lived, because of the larger picture: a state of war between the British and the French with the Stockbridge Indians ready to fight for the British. (Those acts of arson, kidnapping, and murder, committed by French-allied Indians, were what brought the French and Indian War to Stockbridge, Massachusetts.)

The Moravian Indians in the Ohio River Valley, however, were in a much different situation. They were associating themselves with German-speaking missionaries. The Moravian missionaries - aside perhaps, from the fact that they were white - really had no standing in American society (and no standing in British society either). The Moravian committment to peace and justice meant on the one hand that the mission communities themselves weren't going to exploit their Native converts. But on the other hand, the Moravian Indians were - in a lot of ways - a lot more vulnerable to outside forces compared with Indians like the Stockbridges who had managed to align themselves with the white American powers-that-be.

The Moravian committment to peace is something that their white farmer neighbors simply didn't understand. In their view - according to Leonard Sadosky (201) - it was impossible for Indians to be neutral in war.

And you probably remember from my last post that that was part of the context in which the Gnadenhutten Massacre occurred.

You'll also remember from earlier posts that Sadosky divides frontier society into three groups: The largest group was made up of common white farmers and the Pennsylvania militia that were guilty of killing ninety-six Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten came from this largest group.

But the smallest group in number, the gentry, or upper class whites, held positions of power and they were the ones who should have brought the perpetrators to justice. Why didn't that happen?

Sadosky's chapter ("Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre") in the book The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, has been very difficult for me to "get my head around" and I think I know why. His topic is an event of great cruelty and racism - but he manages to go beyond the cruelty and racism of the Gnadenhutten Massacre to see more.

According to Sadosky (page 202), "Indian trade, alliance, and coexistence...formed the centerpiece of the Continental commanders' [frontier] strategy" at Fort Pitt. And this rubbed the common white farmers the wrong way. Going back as far as 1779, Sadosky analyses Colonel Daniel Brodhead's roughly two years as commander of Fort Pitt, which ended with the common farmers pressuring General George Washington to relinquish his position.  By the end of 1781, Brigadier General William Irvine was the new commandant at Fort Pitt. When Irvine left to consult with Congress, "the rumble of mutiny and rebellion was heard from inside the walls of Fort Pitt"(197). The enlisted men (the common white farmers) were rebelling against the upper class white officer corps.

When General Irvine returned, he struggled to get everybody onto the same page. His approach to - or avoidance of - the Gnadenhutten Massacre is explained by Sadosky:

Irvine was determined to not become a victim of political pratfalls that had handicapped, and in some cases almost killed, his predecessors. Fortunately for the historian, on several occassions Irvine revealed his inner thoughts... Just weeks after he returned...and learned of the violence...he observed that "The general and common opinion of the people of this country is that all Continental officers are too fond of Indians"(204).

General Irvine wanted to keep his job - and save his skin. That serves as enough of an explanation as to why he kept quiet about the massacre.

In Sadosky's last paragraph he writes that an

adversarial and hierarchichal social structure combined with a potent public policy debate [produced] a combustible situation. Commandants Daniel Brodhead and William Irvine were patrician, autocratic outsiders in a world that valued independence, liberty, and patriarchal authority. Given the anti-aristocratic nature of the American Revolution, the commandants found themselves in a position that offered enormous potential to offend the local populace. The militiamen of Washington County wanted a change in how the Continental commanders made use of the enormous public powers granted them. Violence against the Continental army's Native wards, and threats against its officers were a brutal, but effective way to achieve these ends. Daniel Brodhead's inability to heed the signs of popular discontent resulted in his removal from office and set into motion a series of events culminating in massacre and rebellion.

I've been struggling with Sadosky's nineteen-page chapter for a few weeks now and I'm glad to be done with it. For almost the entire time, I was not able to get past the brutality and racism of the massacre itself to understand what Sadosky was able to add to it with his broader analysis. But that is what sets his work apart from the others.

The final post in this series will be about at least one long-term effect of the shameful day in Gnadenhutten.

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