Gnadenhutten and Fort Pitt on the Frontier of the American Revolution

[caption id="attachment_935" align="aligncenter" width="300"] "Gnadenhutten" is German for "Huts of Grace."[/caption]

A lot of people won't be able to get past the fact that ninety-six Christian Indians - including women and children - were killed at Gnadenhutten Ohio. I myself didn't want to write another post about it. What good can come out of it, I was thinking. And what point is there to give the massacre context. It still was what it was, right?

If you remember one thing about Gnadenhutten, it should, of course, be the massacre itself and it goes without saying that it was a shameful, horrible atrocity.

The concepts of "crimes against humanity" and crimes of war" had not been conceived yet back in 1782. But they describe what happened at Gnadenhutten, Ohio.

While the context surrounding the Gnadenhutten Massacre will not explain it away, it would be too easy for me to just tell myself that with all the emotion surrounding the Gnadenhutten Massacre, I should just call it a war crime and then move on to another topic. No. My subject in Algonkian Church History is Christian Indians and if I'm going to give Gnadenhutten its fair weight, then I need to go into a lot more detail.

So here goes. Here are some relevant facts or context, or whatever:

According to historian Leonard Sadosky, the goings-on at Fort Pitt are an important element in knowing more about the Gnadenhutten Massacre. In his chapter "Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre," Sadosky goes into a lot of detail about Gnadenhutten's context.

Sadosky tells us that Fort Pitt was run by white American oligarchs, or the upper-class. At that time, white America could be divided into the upper class (or gentry) and the common farmers. Furthermore, Sadosky notes, one of the themes of the American Revolution itself was of the common white man trying to liberate himself from the upper class. On the frontier back then (as Sadosky tells it), there were a lot of common whites, less Indians, and the smallest group of all were the white oligarchs, the gentry, or upper class. The upper class whites understood the need for diplomacy with the Indians. But the farmers had their own needs and didn't place much value on the importance of getting along with the Indians. The militia responsible for the Gnadenhutten massacre was made up of lower class white farmers.

Let's try to follow Sadosky's line of thought:

He says there was a "popular antipathy toward commerce and diplomacy with Indians [that] became manifest at several points during the years leading up to the Gnadenhutten Massacre"(193).

Sadosky understands the significance of Gnadenhutten being on the frontier during wartime:

War for American Independence placed the Moravian villages in a precarious poisition. they found themselves almost directly between the Anglo-American faming communities of western Pennsylvania, and the numerous British-allied Native villages of the Great Lakes Basin. Caught in the middle of this geopolitical vortex, the Moravian Delawares attempted to placate both sides in order to maintain their neutrality (196-197).

And how did the Moravian villages placate both sides"? According to Sadosky

The Moravian towns often provided a way station for British-allied Indians raiding the Pennsylvania farms, while Moravian leaders, such as the Reverend John Heckewelder and the Reverend David Zeisberger, provided intelligence to the Continental commanders at Fort Pitt (197).

Next comes some action:

British-allied Indians had taken the Moravian missionaries and many of the Indians as prisoners in 1781.

White farmer David Williamson gathered up a militia and toured the Moravian villages, in November, 1781, but, of course few people were around, because they were being help by the British-allied Indians.

Williamson's militia captured the few Indians they found and took them to Fort Pitt.

As soon as the commandant at Fort Pitt learned they were from the Christian communities, he released the prisoners that Williamson's militia had rounded up.

Per Sadosky (197), "The fact that the Indians' release was soon followed by attacks against farms on the western edge of Washington County raised the ire of many of the County's residents."

By early February of 1782, the enlisted men at Fort Pitt were threatening mutiny, stemming from a "lack of pay and no provision for clothing"(197). And

At nearly the same time, a raiding party from Sandusky, probably of Wyandots and Mingoes, entered the western townships of Washington County. They attacked and raided several blockhouses, killing some Pennsylvanians and taking others prisoner. Ostensibly desiring to recover the prisoners, the men of Washington County mustered into a militia unit in the latter part of February in order to pursue the Indians (198).

 

To be continued.....

 

Sadosky's chapter is part of the book The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814

Citation:

Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.

 

 
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The Stockbridge Bible, Gift of the Rev. Francis Ayscough

Francis Ayscough with the Prince of Wales (later King George III) and Edward Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, by Richard Wilson (died 1782), given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1900.

The gift of the Rev. D. Francis Ayscough, to the Indian Congregation at Housatonnic in New England. MDCCXLV

Those are the gold-embossed letters on the cover of both volumes of the Stockbridge Bible. ("MDCCXLV," by the way, is "1745" in Roman numerals.)

It has already been a few years since I wrote a series of blogposts on the Stockbridge Bible, but a few days ago my own "discovery" of the Stockbridge Bible was written up in the Oshkosh Northwestern. So more people are finding out about the Stockbridge Bible for the fist time. Yesterday one of my co-workers asked me about how the Stockbridge Mohicans got their special two-volume Bible.

Before I answer that question here, I want to emphasize that the edition the tribe was given is "generally acknowledged as the most magnificent Bible printed in England." And we can count that as one of several reasons why the Stockbridge Bible is a big deal. But another reason why it has been a big deal is where it came from. That is the story I'm going to re-tell in the remainder of this post.

My source is a book that was printed in 1753. The title is so long that it is usually shortened to "Historical Memoirs," or it may be shortened to "Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatunnuk Indians." It is available via the Internet Archive (see pages 128 to 132).

 

When our story begins, the elder John Sergeant was the Stockbridge Mohicans' missionary. Timothy Woodbridge was the teacher for an integrated school. But plans were being made for boarding schools for the children of neighboring tribes. An Isaac Hollis of London offered to bankroll the funds for a boys' boarding school and John Sergeant wrote up some kind of a formal open letter, a proposal or "scheme" for raising money to support a similar boarding school for girls.

John Sergeant was fortunate that his letter somehow reached Thomas Coram, a retired sea captain, who had established the world's first incorporated charity, a hospital for orphans. Coram had connections and knew how to raise money.

In Corum's own words he was "charm'd" (page 129) by John Sergeant's idea of a boarding school for girls and he had a book bound, a "subscription book,"  in which his wealthy contacts would essentially sign-up as contributors or subscribers. Coram got a number of wealthy Brits interested, they told him they wanted to contribute, but wanted somebody else to sign his or her name first.

So Captain Coram sought a donation from the Prince of Wales.

Coram was familiar with the protocol of asking the prince for money.  He wrote up a petition and sent it - along with the subscription book - to Colonel John Shute, the Privy Purse to his Royal Highness, who happened to be one of his regular contacts.  However, since John Shute was away from London, he sent Coram's petition and subscription book to Rev. Francis Ayscough, the Clerk of the Closet, essentially a personal chaplain and tutor to the prince.

Ayscough brought the petition and suscription book to Frederick, the Prince of Wales, who put his name at the head of the subscription book, giving twenty guineas to the Stockbridge boarding school project. Meanwhile, Rev. Ayscough

also let him know that he himself designed to make a present of a Bible to the congregation at Stockbridge, which he soon after did; one of the largest sort, finely gilt, bound up in three Vol., large Folio, which now adorns the pulpit at Stockbridge and is made use of for the benefit of the congregation every Lord s Day (page 131).

If anything about this is confusing to you, it might be that there were "three Vol.," not two volumes. At one point there actually were three volumes, the third being the apocraphal books of the Bible which the Puritans in America had no use for. The point at which the three volumes became two volumes can only be speculated on.

However that may be, the two volume Stockbridge Bible meant a lot to the "Indian congregation" over the years. Interpretated strictly, that first congregation was taken over by whites well before the tribe left Massachusetts. Nevertheless, the Stockbridge Bible was a big deal for a long, long time.

 

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How Does Black Hoof Compare with Other Chiefs?

[caption id="attachment_897" align="alignnone" width="233"] Painting of Black Hoof by Hal Sherman, 2010.[/caption]

We Americans have named towns, libraries, and a brand of small engines after Tecumseh, the Shawnee war chief. An essential part of Tecumseh's popular appeal, of course, is that he fits into the "noble savage" stereotype. He was a traditionalist. And there is something appealing about that to both Indians and non-Indians in today's modern world.

But Tecumseh was only one of many Native leaders that had integrity. For example, Captain Hendrick Aupaumut of the Stockbridge Mohicans had integrity. He wanted to keep his people away from alcohol, and wanted them to learn to read and farm. To Captain Hendrick, "civilization" was the way to bring his people out of bad times. The fact that he turned to alcohol late in life was really not due to any weakness of his own, but rather to his discouragement over not being given a fair chance to establish an all-Indian territory at Indiana's White River - despite his loyalty to the United States.

The Miami war chief Little Turtle is another relatively unsung hero of roughly the same times and places as Tecumseh and Captain Hendrick. A brilliant military tactician, Little Turtle routed both the French and the United States on the battlefield. When he became an advocate for peace with the United States, it was a practical judgement based first on an improved US fighting force and later on an appreciation of the whites "civilization" and the possibility that the Miamis could succeed as farmers.

 

The two most well-known Shawnees are the war chief Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, known often simply as "the Shawnee Prophet." The Shawnee brothers' opposition to the United States in the War of 1812 certainly gives them an important place in American History and nobody can take that away.

On the other hand, in a book chapter called "Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812," R. David Edmunds points out that the majority of the Shawnees supported the United States.

Understandably, of course, many Shawnees tried to remain neutral as long as they could. Also, by 1800 most of the Shawnees were already west of the Mississippi (here, of course, we're only concerned with the Shawnees that remained in the Great Lakes region).

Edmunds points out that in the October 1813 Battle of the Thames, "more Shawnee warriors served in [William Henry] Harrison's army than fought with Tecumseh" (338).*

Why? well, we need to back up several years. By 1795 the Shawnees had been at war for over twenty years and many of them were sick and tired of fighting. As a part of what we might call the Miami confederacy, the Shawnees were on the losing side at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. This loss led to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville in which most of Ohio was ceded to the United States.

While the treaty of Greenville was distasteful to Tecumseh and other more militant or traditional Shawnees,  the terms of that same treaty were welcomed by those who were ready to stop fighting. Once a feared warrior, but now in his fifties, Black Hoof was the chief that the peace-oriented Shawnees followed. According to Edmunds

[Black Hoof] subscribed to the government's acculturation programs. In response, federal Indian agents recognized him as the spokesperson for the Shawnees, and channeled their annuities through his village.... In the decade following the Treaty of Greenville, he visited Baltimore and Washington upon several occasions, repeatedly soliciting agricultural assistance both from federal officials, and from the Society of Friends.... By June, 1808, Black Hoof's people had split rail fences, erected log cabins, and planted over 500 acres with traditional crops such as corn, beans and squash and pumpkins, but they also planted turnips, cabbage, and potatoes. In addition, they nurtured several small orchards of apples and had acquired a herd of hogs, three cattle, and two yokes of oxen.... Construction was begun on both a sawmill and a gristmill and...travelers... described the Shawnees' well-groomed fields and 'comfortable houses of hewn logs with chimneys.' Others commented upon the Shawnees' sobriety ("a matter of surprise to those who are acquainted with Indians"), and, in the fall of 1808, the War Department received a petition from white citizens near Dayton who praised the Shawnees and commented that "We find them sober and civil... and look upon them as a watchful safeguard to our habitations (339-340).*

Maybe those things are not as romantic as the things that Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were up to during that same time, but maybe chiefs like Black Hoof should also be admired - or at least respected - for their integrity and leadership.

 

*Source:

Edmunds' chapter (Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812) is on pages 337-341 in

Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great
Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.



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What was the Sixty Years' War?

You know the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, but have you heard of the Sixty Years' War?

Is the Sixty Years' War completely "made-up"?

Well, it consists of several very real military conflicts punctuated by periods of varying levels of tension among a number of groups of people. The Sixty Years' War was simply a power strugle for the Great Lakes. However, to bolster the argument that it was "made-up," let me point out that during the actual 60 years of 1754 to 1814, nobody ever spoke of the "Sixty Years' War."

Instead, the term "Sixty Years' War" was coined by modern academic historians.

Let's go back to ancient Greece when the historian Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War. It was a conflict between the Athenian and Spartan Empires from 431 to 404 B.C. As David Curtis Skaggs writes in his overview of the Sixty Years' War (page 1), the Peloponnesian War "consisted of a series of subconflicts, interrupted by shaky peace, political intrigue, and policy decisions." So Skaggs' reading of Thucydides led to the insight that something similar to the Peloponnesian War occurred on this continent. As Skaggs tells it, a

broader reading of the great Greek historian...brought me to see the multifaceted struggle to control the great freshwater lakes and their basins... not as unconnected events, but rather as part of a broader sequence of episodes involving the Native Americans and Europeans of French, British, and Creole backgrounds for control of the finest bodies of fresh water in the world.

Complicated stuff.

To help you wrap your mind around the Sixty Years' War, it may help to know the names of the conflicts. I'm sure you're familiar with at least some of them.

1. The French and Indian War
2. Pontiac's Rebellion
3. Lord Dunmore's War
4. Frontier Skirmishes associated with the American Revolution
5. The Northwest Indian War (Miami Confederacy vs. The United States)
6. The War of 1812 (western theater)

So, was the Sixty Years' War an important piece of American history?  ....Yes!

I think we're onto something here.

Source:
Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.

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The Gnadenhutten Massacre: Introduction

This monument in Gnadenhutten, Ohio honors the 96 massacre victims.

 

I don't know if I can put enough weight on how sad, how shameful, or how unjust the Gnadenhutten Massacre was. But maybe just a description of the uncontested facts will be enough to make you upset - no matter if you are an Indian or non-Indian, Christian or something else. I'm going to quote the description of the Gnadenhutten Massacre from Proud and Determined:

The Stockbridges were keenly aware that a whole village of Christian Indians had already been claimed by frontier violence. The Moravian mission town of Gnadenhutten in what is now Ohio had fallen prey to a raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militiamen under Colonel David Williamson in March of 1782. The peaceful Indians...were faithful to the end; even after being told they would die the next day, they spent their last night praying and singing hymns. A total of 96 innocent Indians, including men, women and 39 children were murdered by blows to the head with a [cooper's] mallet and scalped by the militia. No attempt was made to bring them to justice.

 

*  *  *

 
I used the following sources at the time:

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 390.

Olmstead, Earl P. Blackcoats Among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991, 330-335.

Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, 75-78.

 

But since I wrote Proud and Determined, I've become aware of another more current source. Leonard Sadosky wrote a book chapter called "Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre."  For the sake of clarity, I'll repeat myself here: ninety-six innocent Indians were massacred. Nobody, including Sadosky, questions that. And maybe that is all that matters to you.

I haven't read all of Sadosky's chapter yet, but early on he gives us a clear tipoff of what it is about:

The massacre has figured prominently in several recent histories of the Revolutionary frontier and Indian-white relations, but it has yet to be put in its appropriate context. Thomas Slaughter describes the massacre as a product of "frustration" on the part of the western Pennsylvanians, and it was but one of many events that prefigured the Whiskey Rebellion that was to follow. For Richard White, the massacre was prime evidence of an omnipresent, almost pathological feeling of "Indian-hatred" that permeated the society of the American frontier. Although the descriptions of the Gnadenhutten Massacre offered by these and other historians are generally accurate, their explanations of the massacre are unsatisfactory.

 

I haven't read much beyond that point myself. But I'm inclined to suspect that it will be fodder for at least one more post, if not several.

By the way, Sadosky's chapter starts on page 187 of the following book:

Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great
Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.

 

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From Stockbridge, Massachusetts to...not only New Stockbridge, New York

Pictured above: The Berkshire mountains (hills) of western Massachusetts.

The Munsee Indians by Robert Grumet covers a people who had - to a large extent - intermarried with other tribes by the end of the Revolutionary War. It seems the Munsees were most likely to mix-in with Mohicans (Mahicans) and other scattered Algonquian-speaking people. So I was not surprised that Gromet appears to do as good a job of anybody in following the Stockbridge Mohicans from their town in Massachusetts to their next home, which, he points out, wasn't New Stockbridge, New York for everybody.

Some Stockbridgers also moved north to the Abenaki town of St. Francis Odanak. A few trekked west to join with the Delaware Indian main body in Ohio. Family traditions also affirm that a small number of families refusing to leave settled in remote hollows in the mountainous country about Stockbridge [Mass.] (page 279).

It shouldn't really surprise us that the make-up of a tribe would change somewhat with each migration. To some extent, it also explains how the "people of many trails" came to be made up of many tribes.

I was surprised that Grumet doesn't cover the Gnadenhutten Massacre. I'm saving that shameful event in American history for a later post, but I hoped that Grumet would at least mention it and weigh in on the somewhat controversial issue of whether the victims at Gnadenhutten were Delawares or Mohicans. Nevertheless, the tone of the whole book suggests that by 1782, the Munsee Delawares were so inter-married with other tribes that it might be pointless for him to argue whether they were Mohicans or Delawares: they must have been both.

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Stockbridge Chiefs and Matrilineality

April 14, 2014.
Bloggers' note: Yesterday Robert Shubinsky made a comment in response to this post (originally blogged last month) and his comment is so important that I'm going to quote it here and ask you to read it before you read my original blogpost:

I was reading the book ‘Samson Occom and the Christian Indians’ and it states that in 1777 Joseph Quanaukaunt or Quinney became sachem.
His three councilors were Peter Pauquaunaupeet son of Peter the 1st deacon of same name, Hendrick Aupaumut and lastly John Konkapot also called John Stockbridge. Joseph was the son of King Ben’s granddaughter and a brother in law to Hendrick Aupaumut who was married to Lydia Quinney.

And here also is my response:

Thanks for your comment Bob.

[The] more complicated “line of chiefs,” [that you get when you add Joseph Quanaukaunt] is evidence that matrilineality continued to a large extent after the Stockbridge mission was founded.

Admittedly, I had an abbreviated list of chiefs. I’d been aware of that passage that you mention, but forgot where it was. History has largely forgotten Joseph Quanaukaunt and I’m sorry that I had also forgotten his place in the order.

At the same time, I appreciate your comment because it bolsters one of the [important] points that I made in the post: the point that the Christian church should not be blamed for coercing matrilineality out of the Stockbridge Mohicans.

I decided not to scrap this post entirely. It may still be considered a worthwhile read, if you keep in mind that the chiefs who - in my own 21st century opinion - were important in history were the ones that I mentioned in the post. Their Christian names (easier for me to spell and type) were Ben, Solomon, and Hendrick. The one that I left out, Joseph Quanaukaunt, in spite of whatever remarkable and good qualities he may have had as a leader or otherwise, might have been wiped off the historical record save for the mention he gets as once being the head chief.

Another thing that has come to mind is that I once attended the Algonquain Peoples' Conference in Albany, New York where I listened to various experts talk about a number of things. One said that Konkapot was the head chief at Stockbridge, MA and another said that Umpachenee was the head chief at Stockbridge, MA. I bring that up here to make the point that not all sources are in agreement about everything. Bob Shubinsky was kind enough to give me/us the source he had used. I think I was using Stockbridge Past and Present by Electa Jones, plus my own memory which, of course, is fallible. Anyway, Thanks again for your input Bob!

 

What follows is my original and unedited blogpost:


Pictured above: Schematic diagram of Cherokee kinship system and British royal succession, both of which are matrilineal --> Source: https://hiddencause.wordpress.com/2011/02/

 

What began - for me -  as a list of who was the head chief of the Stockbridge Mohicans, became a discussion of how one chief succeeded another.

 

"King Ben" Kokhkewaunaunt served for at least thirty years, resigning in 1771. He passed the title of big chief on to his son, Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut. As I understand it, prior to white contact, clan mothers would pick the new chief from the nephews of the old chief - in other words, the clan mothers would pick one of their sons.

The previous sentence is my understanding of matrilineal succession, maybe my explanation or definition of it isn't exactly correct, if it isn't, please let me know. If anybody can add anything to that it would be appreciated. Nevertheless, prior to the Christian era, the Mohicans did not keep written records. So how do we know for sure exactly how things were done? I think the closest we can come is to call it "matrilineal succession" which may have some variations. But seriously, if you know more than that please comment.

But by the time written records were kept, Stockbridge Mohican chiefs were chosen via patrilineal succession, or something close to it.

Leadership went from "King Ben" to his son Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut and then on to his son, Hendrick Aupaumut and again on to Captain Hendrick's son, Solomon U. Hendricks, whose untimely death - and other factors - appear to have disrupted the string.

I have the impression that Shirley Dunn, author of The Mohican World, and some of the tribe's female elders think that patrilineal succession was imposed or "forced upon" the Stockbridge Mohicans. But, in my view, it was something that the men in the tribe welcomed - maybe they borrowed it from the whites, but I think they borrowed it willingly. Why else would "King Ben" name his son "Solomon"?

I know. That raises other questions. 1) Did Indians call him "King Ben" or just whites? I imagine that Indians only called him by his Indian name, but I don't think that matters at all in this particular discussion. 2) Did "King Ben" have enough knowledge of the Bible to be making a point by naming his son "Solomon'? A good question, arguably a relevant one  to this discussion, but even if he had to be told who "King Solomon" was in the Bible, the fact that he and his wife still named their son "Solomon," at least suggests that they wanted the symbolism that went with the name of a great monarch who was, in turn, the son of another great monarch. 3) Who gave the Indians their Christian names? Answer: Christian parents could pick a Christian name for their Christian infants. Adults who were baptized could pick a Christian name. Those who weren't baptized used only their Indian names unless (or until) they felt they needed an English name.

Anyway, maybe patrilineal succession was different from how things were before, but Indians were already making lots of changes. Not all of those changes were made against their will. I don't think there is anything immoral or "un-Indian" about a chief who wants his son to take his place - unless you want to make the point that women should have as much a chance of taking political leadership as men. Okay, let's take a look at that.

I've read about how the Iroquois had some kind of balance of power between the sexes that continued to some extent into historical times. And maybe the Algonquian-speaking Native nations also had some kind of system that balanced power between genders. (Maybe matrilineality itself was that system.)  However, by the time the Mohicans welcomed a mission into their midst, whatever balance of power between genders there might have once been was already gone. So if there ever was an Algonquian balance of power it was wiped out by the fur trade, not by missionaries.

 

Please use the link below to comment here - I've gotten rid of the old plug-in that made commenting difficult for many of you.

 

Sources include Electa Jones' Stockbridge Past and Present, as well as other sources, including what we might call common knowledge.
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