Gnadenhütten massacre
The Gnadenhütten massacre is primarily the later of two events in two different places:
In November 1755, the settlement Gnadenhütten , Pennsylvania , was attacked by Indians during the French and Indian War .
On March 8, 1782 , at the end of the American Revolutionary War , 96 Christian Indians were killed by American soldiers of the Pennsylvania militia in Gnadenhutten , Ohio .
Historical background
The Moravian or Moravian Brothers came to North America from Germany in 1735 and preached non- resistance and non-violence . The Christian doctrine fell on fertile ground among the indigenous people. The so-called Moravian Indians lived in Pennsylvania in villages with names such as Salem, Bethlehem or Mercy Huts. There they raised horses and cattle, cultivated orchards, tilled their fields, and gathered daily for worship . They dressed like white people and wore their hair like this. In Gnadenhütten on the Mahoning River in Pennsylvania on November 24, 1755, during the French and Indian War, the Moravian mission station was attacked by Indians allied with the French and all missionaries and Christian Lenape were killed.
Although the Moravian Brothers were in contact with many tribes, the conversion of Lenni Lenape was apparently their most important mission goal. They followed this tribe westward from Pennsylvania via Ohio and Indiana to Kansas . In 1772 David Zeisberger from the Moravian Brethren founded the place of Gnadenhütten in Ohio for converted Lenni Lenape on the Tuscarawas River , named after the place in Pennsylvania.
In the American War of Independence (1775–1783), the Lenape disagreed on which side to fight. This question was of crucial importance because their residential area with the main village Coshocton was between two important bases of the two warring parties. On one side there was the American outpost of Fort Pitt , on the other side was the British Fort Detroit with its Indian allies. Some Lenape wanted to fight the Americans, moved near Detroit and made camp on the Scioto and Sandusky Rivers. A second group stayed in Cocoshton and sympathized with the Americans. They signed a treaty with the United States in 1778, hoping to establish an Indian state in Ohio. A third, very small group consisted of Christian Munsee-Delaware , a tribe of the Lenni Lenape, who lived in several villages in this area looked after by the Moravian Brothers.
Chief White Eyes was one of the Lenape people who signed the treaty with the Americans. He was killed by an American militia in 1778. After that, many of the Lenape from Coshocton switched sides. The Americans, led by Colonel Daniel Brodhead, responded in 1781 with the destruction of Coshocton, many residents were able to flee to the English.
The massacre
In September 1781, Indians allied with the British took the Christian Munsee-Delaware and their white missionaries to another village on the Sandusky River for protection. The missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder were brought to Detroit because they were suspected of providing classified military information to the Americans at Fort Pitt. The missionaries were exonerated, but historians later determined that they had, in fact, informed the Americans of British troop movements. In the new Munsee-Delaware village, people were starving and in February over 100 of them returned to Gnadenhütten to harvest the corn that was still in the fields from the previous year.
In early March, a force of the Pennsylvania Militia under the command of Captain David Williamson was on the way to fight enemy Indians. On March 8, 1782, they reached huts and suspected residents of raiding Pennsylvania settlements. They denied the allegations but were surrounded and locked in two buildings (men and women / children separated) overnight. The militia officers held a vote on the fate of the prisoners and a majority voted in favor of execution; some who disagreed with it left the company.
The Indians were informed of the decision and spent the night praying and singing. In the morning, the soldiers took the prisoners to two huts (also separated by sex), made them kneel down, and smashed their skulls with a heavy hammer. Williamson's men murdered 28 men, 29 women and 39 children. The dead were piled in piles in the huts and all the buildings burned down. There were only two survivors; they informed the missionaries of the incident.
The consequences
Many white Americans were outraged when news of the Gnadenhütten massacre became known. Although some of them called for a judicial investigation into the incident, charges were never brought against the guilty party, as US law at the time did not protect the Indians at the border of the settlement . Ohio did not become a US state until 1803.
The Lenni Lenape fighting against the Americans, however, demanded vengeance for Gnadenhütten. When General George Washington heard of the massacre, he warned his soldiers not to allow themselves to be captured alive by Lenni Lenape warriors. Nonetheless, Colonel William Crawford , who had nothing to do with the massacre, was captured by the Lenni Lenape and Wyandot . Since he was given command of the Williamson troops on a later campaign , he was tortured on the stake for two hours and burned alive. Although the war ended shortly thereafter, Crawford's execution received extensive coverage in the United States press, adding to the already bad relations between Native Americans and immigrants.
In 1872 a monument was erected next to log cabins in the original style in the center of the former Indian village. The 11 meter high obelisk bears the inscription: Here triumphed in death ninety Christian Indians, March 8, 1782. Translated into German, for example: Here, 90 Christian Indians triumphed in death, March 8, 1782.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul O'Neil: The Way To The West , Time-Life Books Der Wilde Westen , pp. 93f.
- ↑ Gnadenhutten Massacre
- ↑ Gnadenhütten Massacre: Aftermath
literature
- Gregory Evans Dowd: A Spirited Resistance. The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 1992, ISBN 0-8018-4236-0 ( The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science 109th series, 1991, 4).
- Earl P. Olmstead: Blackcoats among the Delaware. David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier. Kent State University Press, Kent OH 1991, ISBN 0-87338-422-9 .
- Page Smith: A New Age Now Begins. A People's History of the American Revolution. Volume 2. McGraw-Hill, New York NY 1976, ISBN 0-07-059097-4 .
- Paul AW Wallace (Ed.): Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh PA 1958. Reprint: Wennawoods, Lewisburg PA 1998, ISBN 1-88903-713-3 ( The great Pennsylvania frontier series ).
- CA Weslager: The Delaware Indians. A history. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ 1972, ISBN 0-8135-0702-2 .
- Georg Heinrich Loskiel : History of the mission of the Evangelical Brothers among the Indians in North America. Barby, to be found in the Brethren, and in Leipzig in Commission bey Paul Gotthelf Kummer , 1789. In it: Painful events at the Muskingum, 96 believers are murdered, two youths are saved, pp. 717–723 .