TUSCARAWAS COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY: County History part 2 (published 1882) 
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HISTORICAL COLLECTION OF OHIO By Henry Howe., LL.D., 1888

                        TUSCARAWAS COUNTY PART 2

        Several years previous to the settlement of Ohio, the Moravians had
a missionary establishment in the present limits of this county, which was
for a time broken up by the cruel massacre of ninety-six of the Indians at
Gnadenhutten, March 8, 1782.
        The Moravian Indians were not in ignorance of a probable expedition
against their villages, and were warned to flee to a place of safety, but
knowing themselves to be free from any offence against the whites, they did
not believe they would be molested. Heckewelder says: "Four Sandusky
warriors, who, on their return from the Ohio settlements, had encamped on a
run some distance from Gnadenhutten, gave them notice where they had killed
and impaled on the side of the Ohio river, and supposing that the white
people, in consequence of what they had done, might make up a party and
pursue them, they advised them to be on their guard and make off with
themselves as soon as possible."
                        THE MORAVIAN MISSION.
        The following history of the Moravian Mission was written for our
original edition by Hon. James Patrick, of New Philadelphia. His account we
precede with a personal notice, on the general principle of perpetuating
the memories of those, so far as we are able, who assisted us in that olden
time.
        JAMES PATRICK was born in Belfast, Ireland, August 6, 1792, of
Scotch-Irish parents. At the age of twenty-four he emigrated to American,
and, having learned the printer's trade, engaged in journalism with the
Aurora, in Philadelphia. In 1819 he established the Tuscarawas Chronicle,
the first newspaper in the county. His paper had a wide influence and large
circulation. He held many public offices: was County Recorder, County
Auditor, U.S. Land Agent, and served seven years as Judge of Common Pleas.
In 1846 he retired to private life. He died January 23, 1883. Three sons
and three daughters survived him.
        HATRED OF INDIANS. -The first white inhabitants of Tuscarawas
county were the Moravian missionaries and their families. The Rev.
Frederick Post and Rev. John Heckewelder had penetrated thus far into the
wilderness previous to the commencement of the revolutionary war. Their
first visits west of the Ohio date as early as the years 1761 and 1762.
Other missionary auxiliaries were sent out by that society for the purpose
of propagating the Christian religion among the Indians. Among these was
the Rev. David Zeisberger, a man whose devotion to the cause was attested
by the hardships he endured and the dangers he encountered.
        Had the same pacific policy which governed the Society of Friends
in their first settlement of easter Pennsylvania been adopted by the white
settlers of the West, the efforts of the Moravian missionaries in Ohio
would have been more successful. But our western pioneers were not, either
by by profession or practice, friends of peace. They had an instinctive
hatred to the aborigines, and were only deterred, by their inability, from
exterminating the race. Perhaps the acts of cruelty practiced by certain
Indian tribes on prisoners taken in previous contests with the whites might
have aided to produce this feeling on the part of the latter. Be that as it
may, the effects of this deep-rooted prejudice greatly retarded the efforts
of the missionaries.
        THE MORAVIAN VILLAGES. -They had three stations on the river
Tuscarawas, or rather three Indian villages, viz.: Shoenbrun, Gnadenhutten,
and Salem. The site of the first is about two miles south of New
Philadelphia; seven miles farther south was Gnadenhutten, in the immediate
vicinity of the present village of that name; and about five miles below
that was Salem, a short distance from the village of Port Washington. The
first and last mentioned were on the west side of the Tuscarawas, now near
the margin of the Ohio canal. Gnadenhutten is on the east side of the
river. It was here that a massacre took place on the 8th of March, 1782,
which for cool barbarity is perhaps unequalled in the history of the Indian
wars.
        The Moravian villages on the Tuscarawas were situated about midway
between the white settlements near the Ohio, and some warlike tribes of
Wyandots and Delawares on the Sandusky. These latter were chiefly in the
service of England, or at least opposed to the colonists, with whom she was
then at war. There was a British station at Detroit, and an American one at
Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), which were regarded as the nucleus of western
operations by each of the contending parties. The Moravian villages of
friendly Indians on the Tuscarawas were situated, as the saying is, between
two fires. As Christian converts and friends of peace, both policy and
inclination led them to adopt neutral grounds.
        FORCED REMOVAL. -With much difficulty they sustained this position,
partially unmolested, until the autumn of 1781. In the month of August, in
that year, an English officer named Elliott, from Detroit, attended by two
Delaware chiefs, Pimoacan and Pipe, with three hundred warriors, visited
Gnadenhutten. They urged the necessity of the speedy removal of the
Christian Indians farther west, as a measure of safety. Seeing the latter
were not inclined to take their advice, they resorted to threats and in
some instances to violence. They at last succeeded in their object. The
Christian Indians were forced to leave their crops of corn, potatoes, and
garden vegetables, and remove, with their unwelcome visitors, to the
country bordering on the Sandusky. The missionaries were taken prisoners to
Detroit. After suffering severely from hunger and cold during the winter, a
portion of the Indians were permitted to return to their settlements on the
Tuscarawas, for the purpose of gathering in the corn left on the stalk the
preceding fall.
        RETURN TO HARVEST CROPS. -About one hundred and fifty Moravian
Indians, including women and children, arrived on the Tuscarawas in the
latter part of February, and divided into three parties, so as to work at
the three towns in the corn fields. Satisfied that they had escaped from
the thraldom of their less civilized brethren west, they little expected
that a storm was gathering among the white settlers east, which was to
burst over their peaceful habitations with such direful consequences.
                        WILLIAMSON'S EXPEDITION.
        Several depredations had been committed by hostile Indians about
this time on the frontier inhabitants of western Pennsylvania and Virginia,
who determined to retaliate. A company of one hundred men was raised and
placed under the command of Col. Williamson, as a crops of volunteer
militia. They set out for the Moravian towns on the Tuscarawas, and arrived
within a mile of Gnadenhutten on the night of the 5th of March. On the
morning of the 6th, finding the Indians were employed in their corn-field,
on the west side of the river, sixteen of Williamson's men crossed, two at
a time, over in a large sap-trough, or vessel used for retaining
sugar-water, taking their rifles with them. The remainder went into the
village, where they found a man and a woman, both of whom they killed. The
sixteen on the west side, on approaching the Indians in the field, found
them more numerous than they expected. They had their arms with them, which
was usual on such occasions both for purposes of protection and for killing
game. The whites accosted them kindly, told them they had come to take them
to a place where they would be in future protected, and advised them to
quit work and return with them to the neighborhood of Fort Pitt. Some of
the Indians had been taken to that place in the preceding year, had been
well treated by the American governor of the fort, and been dismissed with
tokens of warm friendship. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising
that the unsuspecting Moravian Indians readily surrendered their arms, and
at once consented to be controlled by the advice of Col. Williamson and his
men. An Indian messenger was despatched to Salem, to apprise the brethren
there of the new arrangement, and both companies then returned to
Gnadenhutten. On reaching the village a number of mounted militia started
for the Salem settlement, but ere they reached it found that the Moravian
Indians at that place had already left their corn-fields, by the advice of
the messenger, and were on the road to join their brethren at Gnadenhutten.
Measures had been adopted by the militia to secure the Indians whom they
had at first decoyed into their power. They were bound, confined in two
houses, and well guarded. On the arrival of the Indians from Salem (their
arms having been previously secured without suspicions of any hostile
intention), they were also fettered and divided between the two
prison-houses, the males in one, the females in the other. The number thus
confined in both, including men, women and children, have been estimated
from ninety to ninety-six.

        -continued in part 3




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