The Coolidge examiner., 1932-08-12

umphed at last The Revolution is over
Such is the picture which the school histories
have painted in our minds. But the impression
they have given us that the surrender at York
town meant the dawn of peace and the prosper
Gus beginning of a new nation is only half
truth. True il is that 1871 was the last year
Of the Revolution in the main theater of war
the Atlantic seaboard. But there was one peo
pie in the new nation who were TO know an
ether year of the horrors of war such as their
eastern neighbors had never known.
To the scattered border settlements west Of
the Alleghenies there had not yet come a
winged Victory with smooth brow laurelled to
teach us to forget the holocaust" Instead. the
year 1872 was to be a repetition Of 1777, the
year of the bloody sevens" and again, virtually
deserted by those governments to whom they
had a right to look for aid, the pioneers in the
Ohio valley, especially those in Kentucky must
crouch behind the log walls CT their stockaded
forts with the savage war-whooD ringing in
their ears and a shower of Indian arrows and
bullets whistling over their heads. So in its
sesqui-centennial year, we Americans should
not forget what these ancestors of ours who
won the West for US suffered and endured in
17S2. the last year of the Revolution.
1t opened with an affair which must ever be
a blot on our history, the massacre of 96 of the
'Moravian Indians at Gnadenhuetten. Ohio, by
a party of Pennsylvanans, led by Col David
Williamson. Maddened by the slaughter of their
brethren, the Delawares rallied to their aid the
Wyandots and other Indians allied with the
British and waited for a good chance for re-
vence which soon came. In May a body of 4S0
Pennsylvania and Virginia militia gathered at
Mingo Bottom the Ohio and prepared to
march against the Wyandot and Shawnee towns
on the Upper Sandusky.
The commander of the expedition was Vir-
ginian. Col William Crawford personal friend
of Washington, who had won a reputation as a
brave and active officer in the Continental army
but who was utterly untitled for leadership
against such an enemy as the tribesmen he was
ordered to crush Crawford hoped to surprise
the Indians but enemy scouts discovered his
force soon after he started and Indian spies fol-
lowed every movement of his army.
On June Crawford reached one of the Wy.
andot towns but found it deserted. He marched
TO find another and encountered a small
force of Indians and Canadian rangers under
the command of Captain Caldwell. which had
been sent by the British in Detroit to aid the
Indians There was a sharp skirmsh with
neither side gaining any advantage although
Crawford had the superiority in numbers. The
next morning instead of forcing a battle and
crushing the enemy, Crawford's army lay idle
Caldwell also willing to delay proceedings
for he expecting reinforcements They
came in the afternoon in the person of lac
Shawnee warriors.
At the sight of this, Crawfords militia began
to waver and Crawford decided that the only
course left for him to retire from the field
That night his force began a hurried and dis
orderly retreat In the darkness the troops be
came sof:tered and when morning came there