Gnadenhutten massacre

TheGnadenhutten massacre, also known as theMoravian massacre, was the killing of 96 pacifistMoravian Christian Indians(primarilyLenapeandMohican) byU.S. militiamenfromPennsylvania, under the command ofDavid Williamson, on March 8, 1782, at theMoravianmissionary village ofGnadenhutten,Ohio Country, during theAmerican Revolutionary War.
Due to their commitment toChristian pacifism, the Moravians  did not take sides during the American Revolutionary War, which caused them to be viewed with suspicion by both the British and the Americans.As the Moravians were collecting crops, Pennsylvania militia encountered them and falsely promised the Moravians that they would be "relocated away from the warring parties."Once they were gathered together, however, the American militia rounded the unarmed Moravians up and said that they planned to execute them for being spies, charges that the Moravians rebutted.
The Moravians asked their captors to be allowed to pray and worship on the night before their execution; they spent the night before their death praying as well as singing Christian hymns andpsalms.Eighteen of the U.S. militiamen were opposed to the killing of the pacifist Moravians, though they were outvoted by those who wanted to murder them; those who opposed the murder did not participate in the massacre and separated themselves from the killers.Before murdering them, the American soldiers "dragged the women and girls out into the snow and systematically raped them."As they were being killed, the Moravians sang "hymns and spoke words of encouragement and consolation one to another until they were all slain".Believing innonresistance, they pleaded for their lives to be spared, but did not fight back against their persecutors.
Moravian missionaryDavid Zeisbergerdeclared the slain Lenape and Mahican asChristian martyrs, who are remembered in the Moravian Church.More than a century later,Theodore Rooseveltcalled the massacre "a stain onfrontiercharacter that the lapse of time cannot wash away."
The shrine to theMoravian Christian Indian Martyrsincludes a monument that was erected and dedicated ninety years after the Gnadenhutten massacre by a Chief of the Christian Munsee tribe; thegraves of the victimscontain "bones [which] were gathered by the faithful missionaries some time after the massacre".It also includes a largeChristian crossdedicated to the Moravian Munsee and Christian Mahican Martyrs by a member of the tribe and descendant of one of the slain.With the site of the village being preserved, a reconstructed mission house and cooper's house were built there.The burial mound is marked and has been maintained on the site; the village site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
During theAmerican Revolutionary War, theLenni Lenapebands (also called Delaware) of theOhio Country, bothMunsee- andUnami-speaking, were deeply divided over which side, if any, to take in the conflict. The Munsee were generally northern bands originating from around theHudson Riverand upperDelaware River. The Unami were from the southern reaches of the Delaware.
Years earlier, many Lenape had migrated west to Ohio from their territory on themid-Atlantic coastto try to escape colonial encroachment, as well as pressure fromIroquoistribes based around theGreat Lakesand westernNew Yorkto the north. They resettled in what is now Ohio, with bands in several villages around their main village ofCoshocton.These villages were namedSchoenbrunn,Gnadenhutten, andSalem, and were located on what was then called theMuskingum River.  Modern geography places Coshocton on the Muskingum River and the three smaller villages on theTuscarawas River.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, the Lenape villages lay between the opposing sides, which both had western frontier strongholds: The rebel American colonists' military had an outpost atFort Pitt(nowPittsburgh, Pennsylvania), while the British with their Native American allies were based aroundFort Detroit,Michigan.
Some Lenape decided to take up arms against the American colonials and moved to the northwest, closer to Fort Detroit, where they settled on theSciotoandSanduskyrivers. Those Lenape sympathetic to the Colonists remained at Coshocton, and their leaders, includingWhite Eyes, signed theTreaty of Fort Pittwith the revolutionaries in 1778.Through this treaty, White Eyes intended to secure the Ohio Country as a state to be inhabited exclusively by Native Americans, as part of the newUnited States.
A third group of Lenape, many of them converted Christian Munsee and Unami, lived in several mission villages in Ohio led byDavid Zeisbergerand otherMoravian Christian missionaries. From the mid-Atlantic area, they spoke the Munsee and the Unami dialects ofDelaware, anAlgonquianlanguage. These Christian Lenape, beingMoravians, held toChristian pacifism.
White Eyes, a Lenape chief and Speaker of the Delaware Head Council, negotiated the treaty. When he died in 1778, reportedly ofsmallpox, the treaty had not yet been ratified byCongress. United States officials never pursued it, and the Native American state was dropped. Years laterGeorge Morgan, a colonial diplomat to the Lenape andShawneeduring the American Revolution, wrote to Congress that White Eyes had been murdered by American militia in Michigan.
Many Lenape at Coshocton eventually joined the war against the Americans, in part because of American raids against friendly Lenape bands. In response, ColonelDaniel Brodheadled an expedition out of Fort Pitt and destroyed Coshocton on April 19, 1781. Surviving residents fled to the north. Colonel Brodhead convinced the militia to leave the Lenape at the Moravian mission villages unmolested since they were peaceful and neutral.
Brodhead's having to restrain the militia from attacking the Moravian villages was a reflection of the brutal nature of frontier warfare. Violence had escalated on both sides. Relations between regularContinental Armyofficers from the east (such as Brodhead) and western militia were frequently strained. The tensions were worsened by the American government's policy of recruiting some Native American tribes as allies in the war. Western militiamen, many of whom had lost friends and family in Native American raids against settlers' encroachment, blamed all indigenous  people for the acts of some and did not distinguish between friendly and hostile tribes or bands.
In September 1781 British-allied Native Americans, primarilyWyandotand Lenape, forced the Christian Native Americans and missionaries from the Moravian villages. They took them northwest toward Lake Erie to a new village called Captive Town on the Sandusky River. The British took the Moravian Christian missionariesDavid ZeisbergerandJohn Heckewelderunder guard back to Fort Detroit, where they tried the two men on charges of treason: the British had suspected them of providing military intelligence to the American garrison at Fort Pitt. The missionaries were acquitted during the trial.
The Moravian Christian Indians at Captive Town were going hungry because of insufficient rations. In February 1782, more than 150 were allowed to return to their old Moravian villages (such as Gnadenhutten,SalemandShoenbrunn) to harvest the crops and collect stored food they had been forced to leave behind. The frontier war was still raging. On March 4, 1782, the Pennsylvania raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militiamen led byLieutenant Colonel David Williamsonmarched toward the Tuscarawas Valley and on the morning of March 6, they first saw Joseph Schebosh Jr., a Moravian Christian who was the son of aWelshman andChristian Munsee Indianwoman; he was brutally murdered by the Pennsylvania militia despite the fact that he pleaded for his life before them.After pressing on to the corn fields, the Pennsylvania militiamen acted friendly with the Moravian Christian Indians to gain their trust.The Moravian Christian Lenape fed the American militiamen, who falsely promised them that they would take them to Fort Pitt, where they would be safe.The Indians were requested by the American soldiers to hand over their guns (which they used for hunting) and hatchets.Some militiamen went to the Moravian settlement of Salem, where they acted friendly to the Christian Indians and persuaded them to come to Gnadenhutten.
When they arrived, the American soldiers bound all of the Indiansand accused them of taking part in raids into Pennsylvania.Even though the Moravian Indians, who held to the doctrine ofChristian pacifism, disputed these false charges, the militia held a council and voted to kill them anyway (with the exception of the minority of eighteen militiamen). After the Indians were told of the American militia's vote, they requested time to prepare for death and spent the night praying to God and singing hymns.They were held in two buildings: one for men and one for women and children.While the Indians were worshipping, the Pennsylvania militiamen spent the nightgetting intoxicatedon thecommunion winethey stole from the believers.
The next morning on March 8, the militia brought the Christian Indians to one of two "killing houses", one for men and the other for women and children. The American militia tied the Indians, stunned them with mallet blows to the head, and killed them with fatal scalping cuts. Refusing to take part, some of the militiamen "wrung their hands—and calling God to witness that they were innocent of the blood of these harmless Christian Indians, they withdrew to some distance from the scene of the slaughter."One of those who opposed the killing of the Moravian Indians was Obadiah Holmes, Jr. He wrote:
While waiting to be executed, the Indians sang hymns and prayed, with many praying for their murderers.One example of theirnonresistancewas described in these terms:
An account of theMoravian Martyrsrecalled:
While the massacre was under way, a messenger sent by the Moravian missionaries inSanduskyon March 3 reached Schoenbrunn on March 6, with the news that the missionaries would be moving to Detroit. Two of the Moravian Indians from Schoenbrunn went to inform their brethren in Gnadenhutten but on their journey, saw the mangled body of Joseph Schebosh Jr.They buried his body and quickly returned to warn their brethren in Schoenbrunn as they thought that the others at Gnadenhutten had met the same fate.As a result, Moravian Christian Indians at Schoenbrunn were able to flee to Sandusky, escaping the militiamen who had planned to visit Schoenbrunn and commit another massacre.
In all, the militia murdered and scalped 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. Two Indian boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre. The militia piled the bodies in the mission buildings and burned the village down. They also burned the other abandoned Moravian villages.
The militiamen had looted the villages prior to their burning. The plunder, which needed 80 horses to carry, included everything the people had held: furs for trade, pewter, tea sets, and clothing. A few years later, Moravian Christian missionaryJohn Heckeweldercollected the remains of the Christian Munsee and Christian Mahican Martyrs and buried them in a mound on the southern side of the village.
Obadiah Holmes, Jr., a militiaman who had opposed the Gnadenhutten massacre, rescued one of the Lenape children, whom he raised himself.
The surviving Moravian Christians from Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem etc. moved from Sandusky towards theThames River(present-dayLondon, Ontario).Outraged by the massacre, theU. S. Congressgranted themthree town sitesin 1785.In 1798,David Zeisbergerled many of the Moravian Christian Indians back to Ohio, where they established theGoshen MissionnearSchoenbrunn; there, Zeisberger lived until he peacefully died after which many of the Indians moved back to Ontario (cf.Delaware Nation at Moraviantown) and others to Kansas, along with missionaries who continued to live and work among them.The descendants of both Jacob and Ester, the children of Israel Welapachtshechen (who was martyred during Gnadenhutten massacre), make up the majority of the Christian Munsee tribe in Kansas today.
Reliable accounts regarding the Gnadenhutten massacre come from the Moravian missionaries, as well as the two Moravian Indian boys who escaped—Jacob and Thomas, as well as those who survived such as the Moravian Indians at Schoenbrunn.Many of the soldiers who participated in the slaughter denied their involvement, and neither did their descendants acknowledge their actions.At the time of the massacre, although many settlers were outraged by it, frontier residents generally supported the militia's actions.Despite talk of bringing the murderers to justice, no criminal charges were filed and the conflict continued unabated. However, as "the details of the Gnadenhutten massacre [published by the Moravian missionaries] became generally known, it was recognized as a crime against humanity."
The Lenape allies of the British sought revenge for the Gnadenhutten massacre. When General George Washington heard about the massacre, he ordered American soldiers to avoid being captured alive, as he feared what the hostile Lenape would do to their captives.
Washington's close friendWilliam Crawfordwas captured while leading an expedition against Lenape at Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Crawford had not been at Gnadenhutten but was killed in retaliation.David Williamson, the officer who had led the Gnadenhutten massacre, was also a survivor of theCrawford expedition. In 1814, decades after the war, he died in poverty. The leader of the Home Guard at the time was Captain John Hay who on November 24 led an attack on the Delaware. Captain Charles Bilderback had participated in the Gnadenhutten massacre and was a survivor of the June 1782 Crawford expedition. Seven years later, in June 1789, he was captured and killed by hostile Lenape in Ohio.
In 1810 Shawnee chiefTecumsehreminded future PresidentWilliam Henry Harrison, "You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?"
In 1889, future president Theodore Roosevelt called the atrocity "a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away."
Dedicated by Gerard F. Heath (a member of the Moravian Christian Delaware tribe and the grandson of the man who erected the monument) in 2019, the shrine includes a largeChristian crossand monument to the Moravian Christian Indian Martyrs. The granite obelisk was dedicated ninety years after the massacre by Christian Moses Stonefish, a chief of the Christian Munsee tribe that had migrated toMoraviantown; thegraves of the victimscontain "bones [which] were gathered by the faithful missionaries some time after the massacre".These missionaries includedJohn Heckewelderand David Peter, who buried the remains in 1799.The state reconstructed a typical mission house and cooper's shop on the site of the village. The village site has been preserved and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Gerard F. Heath, a descendant of the Delaware Martyrs and the grandson of Christian Moses Stonefish, stated at the 2019 service held to remember them, that though the area is a site of mourning, it is also a place of "honoring the Christian people who died on the site during the American Revolutionary War."