Kentuckians knew 1777 as the “Bloody Sevens” due to the severity and frequency of Native American attacks. Those raids were difficult in the spring, but only intensified after June, when Henry Hamilton, a Detroit-based lieutenant governor of Quebec, executed his orders to actively promote and support Native American offensives across the Ohio River. In particular, war parties from the Ohio and Great Lakes Indian nations allied with Britain crossed the Ohio and struck the region’s three largest towns: Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and St. Asaph’s/Logan’s Fort. Of the three, the last was the smallest by far, and yet it was the scene of some of the year’s most dramatic moments.
In the spring of 1775, Benjamin Logan led a surveying party into Kentucky and established a “town” of sorts—mostly surveyor’s huts—that they dubbed St. Asaph’s. For his part, Logan built a log cabin and planted a corn crop that later established his land claim. Logan’s group did not remain long as Kentucky was already under attack, but he and several others, including his family, eventually returned in March 1776.[1] A raid on Boonesborough that summer prompted the St. Asaph’s residents to begin fortifying their town. Logan’s family left for the additional safety of Boonesborough, but he remained behind with several enslaved people to continue working on the fort.
Fortified towns were typically established by building two lines of cabins in parallel lines with their fronts face one another. Windows were limited to the front and perhaps the sides, but the rear wall was solid with narrow firing slits. Gaps in between cabins were then closed by digging a trench and standing cut posts in them upright, then filling in the trench and creating a wall. It was a fast means of quickly building a fort. More robust defenses would include blockhouses at the corners with overhanging rooms on a second story enabling defenders to fire down and along walls. There would be a substantial gate on one side and then perhaps a sally port or two along the walls or in a corner blockhouse. The common area between the rows of cabins would often have common buildings and facilities, such as a smithy, herb gardens, a powder magazine, etc. Several buildings, ranging from cabins to storehouses and horse stalls, might remain outside the walls. Residents of the community would then retreat into town when concerned about attack. Logan moved his family back to the fortifying town in February.[2] Logan took the additional step of digging a trench to a nearby spring to create a secure water supply. He then covered it and it was sometimes referred to as a tunnel, even though it was not completely underground.[3] The fort at St. Asaph’s, now more widely known as Logan’s Fort, was completed just in time.
The frontier is inextricably tied to the early development of the United States under its 1789 Constitution. In The Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution, Britain legally ceded its territories north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi Rivers up to the borders of Canada to the United States—the very same territory it had claimed from France at the end of the Seven Years War. While European states might redraw borders, they did not consult the people actually living in the area. Congress proclaimed the area the Northwest Territory and in the following years, native people, particularly the Native nations living in modern Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan fought a lengthy war with the new Unites States, inflicting one of its worst defeats on the United States Army and coming closer than any other Native American coalition to halting, or at least slowing, the spread of white society beyond the Appalachians.
Steven P. Locke, in his new book, War Along the Wabash, chronicles the first major campaign of the United States Army in what has become known as the War of the Northwest Territory. In 1791, frustrated by Indian attacks on frontier settlements that had not stopped after the American Revolution, Congress authorized the Washington Administration to raise an army and conduct a campaign against the Ohio Indians, the Miami, Seneca/Cayuga, Shawnee, Wyandot, Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Delaware. Major General Arthur St. Clair, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, was Governor of the Northwest Territory and took personal command of the army created for the campaign. His objective was simple enough, to launch his army from Fort Washington in modern Cincinnati to Kekionga, a cluster of Native American villages at the portage between the Maumee and Wabash Rivers in modern Fort Wayne. Presumably, Americans ensconced in such a fort would be able to readily overawe the local tribes in their homes, force a Native American recognition of American “ownership” of the Ohio Country, and stop Indian raids along and across the Ohio River. St. Clair received command on March 4, 1791 and was expected to march out of Fort Washington by July 10, hardly sufficient time to recruit, organize, train, and equip an army large enough for the task before him, particularly on the sparsely populated frontier. Federal troops and supplies had to come all the way from the east coast by way of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River, while Kentucky provided militia and filled out some provisional levies.
Despite his intimate experience with the connection between military operations and logistical support, Secretary of War Henry Knox pressed St. Clair all summer to get his troops moving. St. Clair, of course, could not. The Americans had already launched mounted raids into Native American territory, which generally resulted in burned villages and despoiled crops. According to Locke, the speed with which those raids proceeded highlights the cross-purposes under which St. Clair’s campaign would take place. He could either move quickly with a largely mounted force over existing trails or take a more deliberate, plodding approach through the wilderness by building a road, which necessitated infantry and engineers. St. Clair chose the latter, but the pressure from Knox and President Washington never ceased. St. Clair responded by marching the army out of Fort Washington in September and slowly moving northward, building a road, camps, and forts as it moved a little over two miles a day, even before the army had fully assembled at Fort Washington. Indeed, in the first month, St. Clair was not usually with the army, consumed by logistical duties as he shuttled back and forth from Fort Washington or Kentucky gathering supplies and militia and then moving them forward over the newly built, yet still primitive, road.
By November 3, 1791, St. Clair had rejoined his army and reached the headwaters of the Wabash River with one regular infantry regiment, two levy regiments, and assorted militia, artillery, dragoons, teamsters, and camp followers. Altogether, it was about 1,400 men. Mistakenly believing he was closer to Kekionga than was the case and that the Indians would not attack, he did not build breastworks that night, but deployed his army in two lines with some militia thrown across a creek and various outposts scattered around his position. He had detached his best federal regiment and sent it back down the trail to escort a supply train coming up to feed the army. Thus, the United States Army was at its weakest point during the campaign when the Indians of the emerging Ohio Indian Confederacy struck early the next morning.
The Confederacy force of 1,100 warriors applied traditional tactics, quickly routing the forward militia and then moving along the flanks to the rear, essentially surrounding St. Clair and then pressing ever tighter. Sniping from cover, the Indians seemed immune to American fire while inflicting heavy losses on the defenders. St. Clair launched two bayonet charges to restore his lines. As usual, the Native Americans gave way to the bayonet charges and then moved around the charging unit’s flanks as it separated from the main army, bringing each under a withering cross-fire. In a sense, St. Clair carved up his own army and dished out pieces for the Confederacy to consume. By the time St. Clair launched a third bayonet charge to clear his route of retreat, his army had collapsed. He escaped with 500 men, leaving 900 dead, dying, or wounded on the battlefield, including dozens of women and children among his camp followers. (Estimates of American losses vary widely among historians.) The disaster was worse than General Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela in 1755, or Custer’s in 1876. War Along the Wabash is at its strongest when relating and analyzing the battle.
Locke tells the entire tale well, discusses the difficulties of raising an army from virtually nothing, includes small biographies of major “characters” as he introduces them, pays careful attention to logistics, which are often overlooked in campaign histories and were critical in the unfolding of St. Clair’s campaign, analyzes decisions and strategies, and discusses the fallout after St. Clair returned to Philadelphia to defend his decision-making. While most of the story is from the American perspective, which is better documented, Locke makes a serious effort to address Native American perspectives and experiences as they assembled and fought the American army.
All that said, he lapses into odd, avoidable errors from time to time. In my Kindle edition, Locke writes on page 397 that there were approximately 400 commissioned officers in the army (nearly 1 in 3 of the total force) at the beginning of the battle, just 150 of whom remained at the end, meaning 250 commissioned officers were killed during the battle. Yet, on page 429 he notes 69 out of 124 commissioned officers being killed or wounded during the three-hour battle. Collectively—and there are more eyebrow-raising moments—such errors or inconsistencies distract from the book’s overall strengths, which are considerable.
In 1793, during his campaign against the Ohio Indian Confederacy, Major General Anthony Wayne led his army up St. Clair’s trace and built a fort near the battlefield, identifiable by the large number of human remains and camp detritus, which he named Fort Recovery. A town, still named Fort Recovery, grew up there, and the site of the battle largely lies under Wayne Street. (Museums and parks around town commemorate both St. Clair’s defeat and Wayne’s subsequent campaign). War Along the Wabash is an excellent starting point to understand St. Clair’s campaign and the defeat that often bears his name. It will not be the last word, but it sets a high bar that future historians will have to work hard to surpass.
Join us as we discuss the excavation and successful recovery of the remains of 14 veterans of the August 16, 1780, Battle of Camden with James Legg and Steven Smith, Ph.D., the lead archeologists of the Camden Re-Burial Project which began in September 2022. We will discuss the indepth research conducted and the precise archaeological work that was done on the battlefield. Also learn about the reburial ceremony and where the soldiers were finally laid to rest.
This is a great opportunity to learn about a rare discovery on a American Revolutionary War battlefield. The Camden battlefield is a great archaeological site that is revealing multiple stories and helping historians piece together a better understanding of the battle. Grab a drink and join us on our Facebook page for a great evening of archaeology and history!
Thirteen of the Great Britain’s North American colonies moved toward independence in 1775, declaring the fact officially the following year with the issuance of the Declaration of Independence. Perched below these thirteen rebellious provinces was the colony of East Florida. Earned after the Seven Year’s War by Great Britain from Spain, the most populous city an oldest permanently established European metropolis was St. Augustine, which was also the capital of the colony. This colony, through the eight years of the American Revolutionary War, had a tenuous connection with their neighbors to the north. Largely forgotten in the pantheon of history describing this period, from the time of Britain gaining possession in 1763 through the end of the Revolutionary era in this historian’s estimation, in 1785.
Entitled, East Florida in the Revolutionary Era, 1763-1785 and penned by George Kotlik, a historian specializing in 18th century North American history, the publication offers “an accessible and detailed narrative of the East Florida during the American Revolution.” (pg. 8).
What ensues in the following pages is a brief yet complete overview of the military, political, social, and economic history within those years of East Florida. Some of the names in the pages are well known to enthusiasts of the American Revolutionary War era whereas others will be new names to add to the repertoire for further study. From Governor Patrick Tonyn, British general and last governor for England of East Florida to bringing attention to the William Augustus Bowles, a Maryland born Loyalist, sympathetic to the Muscogee Native Americans of East Florida who tried in vain from the last decade of the 18th century, to establish an independent state for the tribe, with British support. These are just two of the historical personas that Kotlik discusses in his narrative, the rest await you within the pages of the book!
Although no major military actions happened within the confines of the colony that does not mean the role of East Florida in relation to the American Revolution should not be marginalized. “Militias were raised, a general assembly was postponed, St. Augustine experienced a heightened British troop presence, planters between the St. Johns and St. Marys Rivers suffered at the hands of George raiding parties, and a constant threat of a Spanish or American invasion” all affected the psyches and lives of East Floridians. (pg. 104-105).
The hope from Kotlik is to provide the launching point for further discussion into the role of East Florida specifically and Florida in general during the revolutionary period. “Such a lack of coverage is a reminder for scholars to to emphasize East Florida’s presence in the war that made America.” (pg. 111). With this history in hand, Kotlik has provided the necessary overview for further exploration.
Publisher: NewSouth Books, University of Georgia Press, 2023 156 pages plus images
In 1774, frontiersman James Harrod led a surveying party from western Pennsylvania to the region south of the Ohio River known as Kentucky. The group laid out a small fort, started their first buildings, and staked out claims to larger farms beyond the town’s walls but left the area with the start of Dunmore’s War between Virginia and the Shawnee Native Americans living north of the Ohio.
Old Fort Harrod Interior
Harrod returned in the spring of 1775 with a group of settlers. Greater numbers made a larger fort and town necessary. Harrod’s return to the area coincided with the outbreak of the American Revolution, which quickly led renewal of intense fighting between Native Americans and whites living on the American frontier. British support for the Native Americans, particularly after 1777, made Kentucky an extraordinarily dangerous place to live. Together with Boonesborough and Logan’s Station, Harrodstown, also known as Harrodsburg, constituted the bulk of white settlement in Kentucky during the war’s early years.
“[T]he poor Kentucky people, who have these twelve months past been confined to three forts, on which the Indians made several fruitless attempts. They [the Indians] have left us almost without horses sufficient to supply the stations, as we are obliged to get all our provisions out of the woods. Our corn the Indians have burned all they could find the past summer, as it was in cribs at different plantations some distance from the garrisons, & no horses to bring it in on. At this time we have not more than two months bread,–near 200 women & children; not able to send them to the inhabitants; many of those families are left desolate, widows with small children destitute of necessary clothing.”
Despite continuing violence on the frontier, the prospect of land and escaping the war in the east led immigration into Kentucky to outpace population outflows while military success under George Rogers Clark ensured that the frontier settlements survived and increased.
Harrodsburg became the capital of Kentucky County when Virginia asserted ownership of the area and is still the seat of Mercer County. To commemorate Kentucky’s frontier history, the state established Old Fort Harrod State Park, which encompasses a recreated fortified town complete with period buildings, furnishings, and crops. Living historians and artisans demonstrate the 18th century skills needed to survive and flourish far from the eastern seaboard. Several exhibits help explain the frontier experience before, during, and after the American Revolution. Additionally, the park incorporates several later buildings as a museum of local history and monuments to George Rogers Clark and Abraham Lincoln’s family.
Old Fort Harrod exterior curtain wall with blockhouse
We are happy to welcome Kate Egner Gruber to our Third Annual Symposium on the American Revolution, co-hosted with Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, The Lyceum and Emerging Revolutionary War. This year’s theme is “The World Turned Upside: The American Revolution’s Impact on a Global Scale. We asked Kate to answer a few questions about their talk and their passion for history.
Kate Egner Gruber is the acting director of curatorial services for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, where she works with a team to grow the collection and broaden the interpretation of early American history at Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. Kate is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington’s Historic Preservation program, where she focused on archaeology and material culture, and holds her masters degree in early American history from the College of William and Mary.
What first attracted you to the study of early American history? What keeps you involved in the study of this history? Do you find these things are the same or different?
I never know how to answer this question. The past has always been a presence in my life—whether I was digging up holes in my mom’s backyard looking for buried treasure (sorry, Mom), enthralled with the stories behind the old things in my grandmother’s upstairs room, or lost in my imagination about the landscape I called home.
I like to say that history doesn’t change—but our relationship to it does. This is what keeps me involved in the study of history of today. There’s always something new to learn, new perspectives to consider, new lenses through which to view the past. This is what keeps me motivated and eager to keep diving in.
Why do you think it is important for us to study the Revolutionary Era?
What we learn about the past helps us better understand our present and create a more perfect union for the future.
What do you think was the most significant foreign impact on the American Revolution?
As someone who studies both 17th and 18th century history, my perspective on this question is flipped—I think the most significant impact on the American Revolution was the colonies’ shared 17th history in the growing English and (later) British empire.
What are some of the important lessons of the American Revolution do you think are still relevant today?
From England’s Glorious Revolution to America’s Glorious Cause, we’re still negotiating our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—or in the words of John Locke, life, liberty, and property!
What was it about the American Revolution that elicited such global interest?
Some of the founders saw their American Revolution through the lens of the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution, all of which had global consequences. The American Revolution isn’t just American history—it’s world history!
Join us for our Third annual Emerging Revolutionary War Symposium on September 24, 2022. Emerging Revolutionary War is excited to continue our partnership with Gadsby’s Tavern Museum and The Lyceum of Alexandria, VA to bring to you a day-long Symposium focusing on the American Revolution.
Registration fee is now only $60 per person and $50 for OHA members and students. If you feel more comfortable attending virtually, the fee is $30. To register visit: https://shop.alexandriava.gov/EventPurchase.aspx
On the afternoon of June 4, 1782 in the grasslands of western Ohio, a Pennsylvania volunteer named Francis Dunlavy spent a portion of his time trying to shoot a Native American he later called “Big Captain Johnny.” For his part, the Indian attempted with equal passion to kill Dunlavy. At some point, they worked themselves into a position on opposite sides of a recently fallen tree at the edge of a wood that adorned a modest, but noticeable rise that could pass for a hill in the surrounding plain. Even dropped on its side, the tree still held a full canopy of leaves, and the two combatants stalked each other around it. Eventually, “Big Captain Johnny” saw his opening. He was close enough to rise and hurl tomahawks at Dunlavy. Fortunately, he missed and Dunlavy survived to relate the tale to his friends and family. In 1872, more than 30 years after Dunlavy passed, his family related the tale to C.W. Butterfield, who wrote the first history of the Crawford Campaign. Before telling the story again, I wanted to confirm it. That meant searching for Francis Dunlavy and Captain Johnny anywhere, and everywhere, they might have left footprints in history.
During the winter encampment at Valley Forge, as thousands of men huddled around drafty wooden cabins, with dwindling supplies, and battled boredom and disease, a relief effort was organized hundreds of miles away.
George Washington, ensconced at the Potts House in the heart of the Valley Forge encampment, was very aware of the dire straights that his forces were exposed to. Throughout the winter he sent missives, directly and through intermediaries, discreetly asking for more aid, for supplies, for changes to military bureaucracy. He even consented to a delegation of congressmen to visit Valley Forge and see first-hand the situation in the winter of 1777-1778.
In a proverbial sense, he did not leave any stone unturned to try and ease the plight of his forces or continue to stay abreast of British designs, less than twenty-miles away in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
After hearing of the contributions of the Oneidas and Tuscaroras at the Battle of Oriskany in New York, Washington sent a letter of invitation for the Native Americans to visit his army. Approximately 50 warriors along with supplies made the few hundred mile journey from upstate New York to eastern Pennsylvania. They left their villages on April 25 and arrived on May 15,1778 in Valley Forge. The leaders of the Oneida party dined with Washington. Five days later some of the warriors participated in the engagement at Barren Hill under the Marquis de Lafayette. Six of the warriors gave their life in service to their ally.
In 2007 historian Joseph T. Glatthaar published a book about the Oneidas and their contributions to the American victory in the war. The title, in part, is Forgotten Allies. A fitting testament to the service and sacrifice this tribe underwent in their partnership with the fledgling American nation.
In 2004 a sculpture was completed of Polly Cooper, Chief Skenandoah, and George Washington (courtesy of King of Prussia Historical Society)
If the Oneidas were the “forgotten allies” than in the winter encampment at Valley Forge there was a forgotten woman that tramped south with her fellow Oneidas. Her name was Polly Cooper.
Along with the warriors, whom Washington wanted to serve as scouts, the Oneidas brought much needed supplies, including bushels of white corn. While the leaders dined at the Potts House, Cooper established a de-facto cooking show. She handed out the white corn to the soldiers and taught them how to use husks to make soup and ground grain to make it palatable.
This much needed food sources, along with an improved supply chain under quartermaster Nathanael Greene rounded out the bleak winter with the glimmer of hope for better supplies in the upcoming campaign season.
The Oneida, including Polly Cooper for her services, refused any and all payment. Friends help friends in need is what the Oneida told Washington and his officers. However, a tradition exists in the history of the Oneida nation. That story, passed down orally from generation to generation, highlights that Marth Washington, in her gratitude for what Polly Cooper did for the rank-and-file of the Continental army, presented the Oneida heroine with a shawl and bonnet.
Another account reads that Cooper was gifted a black shawl that she saw for sale in a store window. The Continental Congress appropriated the money for the clothing item and gifted it as their thanks to her. This shawl is still in the ownership of her descendants and has been loaned to the Oneida cultural center from time to time.
The black shawl that Polly Cooper received for her services to the Continental Army at Valley Forge (courtesy of the Oneida Indian Nation http://www.oneidaindiannation.org)
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness made their way into the American revolutionary project most explicitly in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. So, I hope you’ll forgive my taking of liberties in reviewing a book that starts in the Revolutionary War Era and peaks during the Madison administration. Peter Cozzens’ new book, Tecumseh and the Prophet (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020), is a dual biography of the legendary Shawnee leader and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, aka “the Prophet,” whose mid-life inspiration reawakened nativist aspirations among the Native American nations living in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Together, the two sought to build a pan-Indian movement to resist the growth of the young American nation into the Midwest in the country’s first decades.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes back guest historian Gabe Neville.
In his first book, Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction of Gnadenhutten, 1782, Eric Sterner has taken on a difficult subject. Racial violence is something many writers would shy away from while others might delight in the chance to condemn the perpetrators. Mr. Sterner, laudably, does neither. Instead, he seeks to understand what happened.
It is worth noting that the first known massacre of Indians by white men in what is now the United States occurred long before the events in the book. It happened near Jamestown, Virginia in 1610 when Virginia’s governor, Thomas West, 3rd Baron de la Warr, ordered an attack on the Paspahegh Band of Powhatans. Seventy men attacked the village, killing between 65 and 75 Paspaheghs and kidnapping the village leader’s wife and children. Rowing away, the colonists decided to kill the children, “w[hi]ch was effected by Throweinge them overboard and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.” Three centuries of violence ensued.[1]
Lord de la Warr’s name appears frequently in Mr. Sterner’s story. His name was given to the Delaware River, which in turn lent its name to the Lenape people who have long been known to English speakers as the Delaware Tribe. Mr. Sterner has provided the definitive account of the worst atrocity of the Revolutionary War. In 1782 more than eighty white settlers clubbed, killed, and scalped ninety-six peaceful, Christian Indians as they prayed and sang hymns. The attack on the Moravian mission town of Gnadenhutten (Ohio) was intended as both a punitive and preemptive strike, conducted by settlers whose families and farms had been targeted by other Indians acting as proxies of the British. It is a horrific story that has defied understanding until now.
Histories of conflict between Native and European Americans have often served us poorly, reducing one or both sides to caricatures. Earlier histories, written by white men, put a finger on the scale of historical interpretation such that Indian atrocities were called “massacres” while white atrocities were called “battles” or “raids.” In the last half of the 20th century, the finger moved to the other side of the scale. Territorial expansion, the introduction of Old World diseases, missionary activity, the presumption of Manifest Destiny, and acts of violence large and small were braided together into a narrative of premeditated genocide.
These approaches reveal the eras and ideologies of their writers. More problematic is both schools tendency to gloss over of the complexity of frontier culture. The Gnadenhutten Massacre is not a cowboys-and-Indians story of “white” and “red” men exchanging bullets and arrows. It is far more complicated than that, with many of its actors desiring little more than their own survival. Though never stated, Mr. Sterner’s approach seems inspired by the axiom: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes.” The original expression, appropriately enough, referred to walking “a mile in his moccasins.”
The people in Mr. Sterner’s story can certainly be categorized as “whites” and “Indians,” and for narrative purposes two of the book’s chapters align with these groupings. Still, though racism is an important element of the story, there is plenty to suggest that skin color was not the only matter at issue. The two most prominent white characters –John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger—were Moravian missionaries who lived for decades among the Indians and were wholly dedicated to their welfare. Other whites, British agents, were Indian allies. The killers at Gnadenhutten were white, but acted independently and in defiance of government authority. On the Native American side, the Delaware, Shawnee, Wyandot, and Iroquois tribes were distinct political entities with different alliances, histories, and leaders. Even within these tribes, individual bands (what the author calls “phratries”) disagreed with each other, sometimes sharply, on military and political questions. Some were allied with the British and some with the Americans. The victims at Gnadenhutten were—though Indians—also pious, hymn-singing Christians. The white perpetrators behaved in a decidedly un-Christian manner despite their heritage. History, it turns out, was just as full of contradictions as the present is.
European-American settlers could indeed be brutal, as the events at Gnadenhutten show. Indians could also be ruthless. The first known massacre perpetrated by North American Indians was committed long before Europeans arrived on the continent. The tactic later employed by American armies of destroying villages and burning crops was first used by Indians against the colonists around Jamestown in 1622. Further complexity is found in the fact that even the line between “whites” and “Indians” was sometimes blurred. The Indian victims of the Gnadenhutten Massacre were Christians who dressed and lived much as Europeans did. Conversely, Indian armies—notably at the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant—sometimes had white warriors among them. These were typically men who had been kidnapped as children and adopted into Indian society.
Mr. Sterner takes a dispassionate, investigatory approach to his work. It is refreshingly free of grand economic or social theories. He seeks to comprehend the events as those involved comprehended them and shows little interest in passing judgment. Instead, he seeks to “walk” a mile in their shoes and moccasins. In doing so, he respectfully refers to Natives by the Indian names, uncynically takes the faith of the Moravians at face value, and justly illustrates the terrors experienced by settlers on the frontier. Each of these groups is examined in its own chapter. Then, in his fourth and final chapter, Mr. Sterner tells us what happened at Gnadenhutten. By then the reader is left struggling to reconcile his or her outrage with the realization that what happened was likely inevitable.
The chance to experience this tension between the world that was and the world that ought to have been is a gift to Mr. Sterner’s readers. Conceiving of a world as it ought to have been is easy. Understanding it as it actually was is much harder. Period accounts indicate that even the perpetrators of the massacre wrestled with this tension in real time. One of them, after executing a dozen Moravian Indians, “sat down and cried because he found in it no satisfaction for his murdered wife and children.” Another whose family had been killed by Indians sat down by the river bank and burst into tears, crying, “You know I couldn’t help it!”[2]
Anatomy of a Massacre could have had an epilogue. Shortly after the events at Gnadenhutten, Col. William Crawford was captured and cruelly tortured to death by Delaware tribesmen as payback for the massacre. Crawford had played no part in the earlier atrocity, but men under his command had. Mr. Sterner has written about Crawford’s death for Emerging Revolutionary War and no doubt made a considered decision to let the Gnadenhutten story stand on its own.
The last “massacre” of American Indians occurred in 1911 in Nevada, when state police killed eight members of Mike Daggett’s Band of Shoshones, whom they were pursuing for horse theft and murder. This “Battle of Kelly Creek” occurred three hundred and one years after the massacre of the Paspahegh Band of Powhatans near Jamestown and closed the book on three centuries of racial violence between Native and European Americans. It is a cringe-inducing history, to be sure.
Mr. Sterner’s book suggests two lessons. First is that we should not blame atrocities so much on the perpetrators’ culture and demographics but rather on the killers themselves and on human nature. Culture matters, but people in every culture will do terrible things in terrible circumstances. Second is that we cannot substitute a cartoonish caricature of history for the nuanced reality of what really happened. The consequence of dumbed-down history is not a partial understanding but rather a false understanding. The Moravian Indians and missionaries lived in villages that were both physically and figuratively between two cultures. Though neutral, family and social ties to the war’s combatants remained and neither side could accept or understand them as a unique group. That led the Wyandots and British-allied Delaware to forcibly relocate them, and it motivated the settlers led by David Williamson to kill them.
An analogous refusal to understand the past for what it really was does a different kind of “violence” to history. Mr. Sterner’s book provides hope that historians can in fact focus on real history, avoiding the polemics and theorizing that characterizes so much academic writing. Like Glenn Williams, author of Dunmore’s War, Mr. Sterner seeks to trace the course of events and to understand the subjects of his work as they understood themselves. It’s good history.
Sources:
[1] George Percy, “’A Trewe Relaycon:’ Virginia from 1609 to 1612,” Tyler’s Quarterly, 3 (1921-1922): 259-282, 272. “Weroance” was a title for a “sub-chief” or a village leader.
[2] Eric Sterner, Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction of Gnadenhutten, 1782 (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020), 148.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 