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council, noting, “i should not be able to speak my mind so free if so many
people were present.” dunquat urged Brodhead to avoid sandusky when he
attacked detroit, suggesting that he sail across lake erie instead. But apart
from evacuating the untenable “fort noncence,” Brodhead largely ignored
the Wyandots’ demands. he insisted on holding the council at pittsburgh
with all his soldiers present. he had proved a steady friend to the delaware,
but he had little interest in negotiating with erstwhile British allies, whom he
described as “the wolves of the forest.” even as he exchanged goodwill mes-
sages with the Wyandots, he resolved to avoid making peace “until they are
sufficiently drubbed for their past iniquities.” in late august, in coordination
with a continental army campaign to the east, he carried out such a drub-
bing against the allegheny Valley senecas and munsees. The Westmoreland
volunteers had tried and failed to attack these towns the year before. now
Brodhead’s larger and better- organized campaign caught them off guard. The
inhabitants fled just hours ahead of his army’s arrival, enabling the troops to
burn 130 houses and cut down over 500 acres of corn. in his report, Brodhead
gleeful y described leaving the senecas “quite destitute of food.”43
Brodhead’s belligerence left little chance of a successful treaty. When Wy-
andot, delaware, and mekoche shawnee delegations assembled for the long-
planned council, they found Brodhead still absent. he returned a few days
later, showing off plundered horses, deerskins, and other goods. The visitors
watched him auction off his booty and distribute the proceeds among his six
hundred soldiers and militia. preening with triumph, Brodhead opened the
council by declaring that “the wicked every where must be punished.” hop-
ing to foment a haudenosaunee- Wyandot war, he demanded that his guests
help him “destroy” the British and senecas. appalled, the Wyandots turned
to the familiar protocols of great lakes diplomacy. chiding Brodhead for his
militancy, principal chief duyenty tried to clear a metaphorical “stoppage
from [his] ears” so he could hear “the friendly speeches of your brothers.” he
pledged to return all american captives “safe and wel ” and to never again aid
the British. But rather than joining Brodhead in war, duyenty declared his
people “love[d] all the nations and hate[d] none.” he urged the americans
not to attack the shawnees until they heard the Wyandots’ cal s for peace.
echoing dunquat, duyenty asked that american troops avoid Wyandot
towns and insisted that the United states respect Wyandot territory, the
boundaries of which he described in detail.44
Brodhead, still reveling in his destruction of seneca crops, conceded
nothing. he mocked his guests for assuming “that a few flattering words
reluctance, 1777–79
117
would, with giving up our prisoners, secure to them their lives, the lives of
their women & children, & their lands.” to make peace, he insisted, any in-
dian nation must leave “some of their great men” as hostages until they had
“killed & taken as many from the english & their allies as they have killed &
taken from the americans.” in marching on detroit, he declared he would
“take [his] choice of roads,” and he flatly refused to stop any attacks on “the
wicked shawnese.” like mcintosh, the predecessor he despised, Brodhead
badly overestimated his strategic position, in large part because of his con-
tempt for the indians with whom he negotiated. By refusing to recognize
Wyandot territory, keep their armies away from Wyandot towns, or respect
the Wyandots’ wish for peace, both mcintosh and Brodhead left Ohio indi-
ans little reason to negotiate. even the unreliable British offered them more
than the stubborn and hostile americans. at the close of the council Brod-
head congratulated himself for his unbending performance, but he had actu-
al y set the stage for further bloodshed. When the snows melted the next
spring, the peoples he thought he had conquered went back to war.45
despite their mutual antipathy, Ohio Valley indians and colonists had many
reasons to avoid war. political disunity, logistical problems, and the vulnera-
bility of noncombatants all discouraged large- scale conflict. They mobilized
in 1777 because both the British empire and the nascent United states used
their resources to overcome these obstacles. British and american initiatives
led directly to a devastating wave of violence, mostly against noncombatants.
imperial and continental officers denounced their allies’ brutality in writing
but nonetheless accepted it as a cost of mobilization. For years, delaware
leaders tried to mediate a peace between their indian and colonial neighbors.
Wyandots and others periodical y welcomed these overtures. Though they
chose different means, the delaware and Wyandot pursued similar ends:
physical security, territorial sovereignty, and preserving their long- standing
friendship with one another. continental army commanders repeatedly
spurned their proposals, confident they could force an unconditional surren-
der with brute force. Their obstinacy, together with an inability to carry out
their threats, doomed the region to several more years of horror.
meanwhile, the moravian experiment at lichtenau came to an end. With
delaware neutrality a dead letter, and the promise of army protection a mi-
rage, Zeisberger and his followers put distance between themselves and their
unconverted neighbors. By drawing lots, the moravians determined that god
wanted them to reestablish two older mission towns upstream, at a seemingly
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safe distance from both “fort noncence” and goschachgünk. in June 1779,
dunquat declared he could no longer protect them against Britain’s remain-
ing indian allies, further hardening their resolve. Over the spring and sum-
mer most of the congregation rebuilt and moved to schönbrunn and
gnadenhütten. The following winter, as the Wyandots rejoined the British
alliance, the last residents abandoned lichtenau to establish a new mission,
called salem. as all their neighbors resolved on war, they sought security in
isolation. Their days as peacemakers were over.46
Chapter 5
horrors, 1780– 82
in mid- april of 1782, a man calling himself John Bull asked congress for in-
formation about a rumored “massacre of a number of christian indians” at
the muskingum Valley mission of gnadenhütten. Bul , an assistant moravian
missionary, had heard that his son Joseph “fell [as] the first sacrifice” of
nearly one hundred murdered men, women, and children. Born to an en-
glish Quaker family in pennsylvania, Bull had joined the moravians as a
young man and soon met and married another recent convert, a mohican
woman baptized christiana. much as she had taken a european name, he
adopted the mohican name schebosh, meaning “running water,” in place of
his english one. Through thirty- five years of marriage, schebosh and christi-
ana raised three children while e
nduring the mission community’s repeated
displacements. in the early 1770s, they helped build new mission towns in the
muskingum Valley, at the invitation of the delaware nation. They inhabited a
multicultural and multilingual world, living in a mohican family, serving a
german church, and periodical y contending with english officials, all while
living in delaware country. But now, the news of his son’s murder convinced
schebosh there was no place for his family in the land of their birth. in his
grief, he told congress he would soon “set out [from philadelphia] for pitts-
burg and from thence . . . go as far as god will permit him.”1
The mass murder at gnadenhütten both resulted from and epitomized a
war of attrition that tore apart the Ohio Valley in the early 1780s. This conflict
featured few conventional clashes between opposing armies. instead, British
governor Frederick haldimand and continental commander- in- chief
george Washington sought to burden one another with droves of hungry
refugees. Both sides eschewed large- scale campaigning in favor of short for-
ays against noncombatants. rather than embracing colonists who, in their
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commanders aimed to drive the migrants “back upon their Brethren” in the
seaboard colonies, where they would drain rebel supplies. For their part, rev-
olutionary forces emulated the 1779 Brodhead and sullivan campaigns, which
“laid waste the whole of the senecca towns their crops & their country” and
forced thousands of haudenosaunees “to flee to niagara for refuge.”2
These mirroring strategies caused great suffering on all sides, but they
yielded different long- term outcomes. as British- allied indians pushed colo-
nists eastward, Virginian land policies pulled them back. early in the war,
dunmore’s land grants and the transylvania scheme had drawn hundreds of
colonists to Kentucky. expansion- minded Virginia signaled it would honor
their claims, spurring thousands more to follow suit. even when hostilities
escalated, the lure of legal title to fertile land persuaded many to move west.
Then, in 1779, Virginia enacted a land law that explicitly rewarded colonists
who had seized land preemptively. in practice, convoluted procedures and
overlapping claims left many landless, but the legal incentive only accelerated
migration to Kentucky. some moved north of the Ohio river, hoping a simi-
lar policy would someday apply there. By contrast, colonial attacks repeat-
edly and permanently displaced many Ohio indian communities. By war’s
end, the delawares and shawnees of southern and eastern Ohio— including
schebosh’s moravians— had abandoned their old homes and created new
polyglot communities closer to lake erie. There, they increasingly relied on
British support, which they could maintain only by bringing in colonial pris-
oners and scalps. and so the horrors continued, until the old empire made
peace with the new one.3
schebosh’s mentor, david Zeisberger, liked to depict his missions as re-
mote islands of godliness, caught between christian- hating indians and
indian- hating colonists. revolutionary officials, meanwhile, depicted the
gnadenhütten murderers as an independent band of thugs with no regard
for their authority. Both were wrong. like schebosh, moravian indians had
lived for years in a multicultural world, in which they bridged ethnic, cul-
tural, and religious divides. Though church doctrine aimed to shield mission
communities from outside influence, both missionaries and converts partici-
pated actively in regional politics and diplomacy. British- allied delawares
and Wyandots regarded them as kin, while the continental army valued
them as allies. moravian indian leaders like isaac glikhican and israel
Welapachtschiechen commanded widespread respect and had often served
as go- betweens and peacemakers. Their close ties to both sides of the conflict
played a pivotal role in the events leading to the catastrophe.
Figure 5. Th e Ohio Valley, 1780–82.
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The actions of the murderers similarly reflected their ties to the wider
world. rather than acting independently, or in rebellion against more hu-
mane american officials, the murderers set out for the mission towns on the
orders of a state- appointed militia commander. moreover, they mobilized
under pennsylvania militia law, a tool that the nascent revolutionary state
had placed at their disposal. They modeled their “campaign” on previous ex-
peditions led by continental army officers. in the massacre’s aftermath, con-
tinental commanders col aborated with the murderers to plan similar forays
against the Wyandots and delawares of sandusky. in this light, the familiar
story of remote frontier barbarity proves closely intertwined with the struc-
tures and policies of the emerging anglo- american state. rather than an ex-
ceptional tale of hatred- fueled cruelty, the gnadenhütten massacre reflected
the systematic brutality of state- sponsored frontier war.
in september 1779, Fort pitt commandant daniel Brodhead failed to make
ish alliance, with dire consequences for Ohio Valley colonists. after a sum-
mer of relative peace, sandusky Wyandots resumed attacking camps and
homesteads, along with haudenosaunee and shawnee allies. The ensuing
winter, Ohio indians gathered at Wakatomika to renew their commitment to
the war. The piqua shawnee Wryneck, a proponent of neutrality just a year
before, now rallied the allies to fight. From the northwest, the st. Joseph
potawatomis, who had previously ignored the British call to arms, now sent
dozens of warriors to join them. in march and april five or six parties of
British- allied indians carried out attacks from the outskirts of pittsburgh to
the stockades of Kentucky. Within eight weeks, the Wyandots and their allies
killed or captured forty- three men, women, and children in the upper Ohio
counties alone. dunquat himself ambushed a sugar camp a few miles from
Fort pitt, killing five men and capturing six children and teenagers, one of
whom he later adopted into his family. in Kentucky, raiders carried out thir-
teen attacks in different locations, killing about a dozen men and capturing
several more. On the Ohio, a multiethnic party attacked two boatloads of
Kentucky- bound migrants, killing two men and capturing twenty- three,
mostly children. The captives included an enslaved woman and her owner.
By one account, the captors dressed the slave in her owner’s clothing and
forced the owner to “act as her waiter.” From detroit, the British comman-
dant arent de peyster declared he had armed about two thousand indians
for war, and he boasted that his delaware and shawnee allies were “daily
horrors, 1780–82
123
bringing in scalps & prisoners.” in mid- 1779, Brodhead had boasted that the
Wyandots had “bid farewell to the english forever”; a year later, all Wyandot
men from both detroit and sandus
ky, “except the aged, and part of them,”
had reportedly taken up arms for the crown.4
This resurgent militancy stemmed from Ohio indians’ recent dealings
with both contending armies. Throughout the war, different indian commu-
nities had allied with one side or the other, or neither, or both, but their di-
verse strategies reflected common underlying concerns. They sought first
and foremost the physical security of their people, towns, and crops, as well
as official recognition of their territorial boundaries. equal y important, they
strove to maintain peace and friendship with their indian neighbors, even
when they adhered to opposing alliances. Final y, they required access to eu-
ropean trade for tools, weapons, blankets, and sometimes food. Brodhead’s
rejection of the Wyandots’ proposals, and insistence that they wage war on
neighboring nations, made clear that they could expect no peace or trade
from pittsburgh. so they turned again to Britain, hoping the king’s men
might start fulfilling their promises. Unlike Brodhead, British officers in the
great lakes and canada increasingly sympathized with their native allies’
needs. Questioned about his expenses, de peyster insisted on furnishing
food, clothing, and canoes to “the familys of all the indians” who visited his
post. From Quebec, general haldimand called for driving colonists out of
Kentucky in order to “secure to the indians their natural right to that coun-
try, confirmed to them by treaty.”5 if nothing else, de peyster and haldimand
understood what their allies wanted to hear.
But British understanding often failed to yield effective material support.
time and again, Ohio indians heard promises of troops “to protect [their]
Women & children,” but they only rarely received substantial aid. in the fall
of 1779, indians representing all the Ohio nations repeatedly asked for British
troops to defend against Brodhead’s threatened assault. de peyster had no
men to spare. meanwhile, haldimand continual y pressed his subordinates to
minimize “the vast treasure lavished upon these people,” noting that “how-