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The Gnadenhütten massacre on Friday, March 8, 1782 was a Mass Murder of ninety-six Christian Munsee American Indians , including sixty women and children, by American Militia from Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War . The incident took place near Gnadenhütten . BACKGROUND During the American Revolutionary War, the , and the British with their indigenous allies in and around Fort Detroit . Some Delawares decided to take up arms against the Americans, and moved closer to Detroit, settling on the Scioto and Sandusky Rivers. Those Delawares sympathetic to the United States remained at Coshocton, Signing A Treaty with the Americans in 1778, through which they hoped to establish the Ohio Country as a state inhabited by native tribes within the new United States. A third group consisted of Christian Munsees who lived in several nearby villages run by Moravian missionaries. White Eyes , the Delaware leader who had negotiated the treaty with the United States, was apparently murdered in 1778 by American militiamen, and many of the Delawares at Coshocton eventually joined the war against the Americans. In response, Coshocton was destroyed by an expedition out of Fort Pitt led by Colonel Daniel Brodhead on 19 April 1781 , and the residents fled to the north. However, Colonel Brodhead convinced the militiamen to leave the Christian tribesmen at the Moravian villages unmolested, since they were unarmed non-combatants. That Brodhead had to restrain American militiamen from attacking the Moravian villages was a reflection of the brutal nature of Frontier Warfare During The American Revolution . Relations between Continental Army officers from the East (such as Brodhead) and western militiamen were frequently strained, and made worse by the U.S. government policy of attempting to recruit certain American tribes as allies. Western militiamen, some of whom had lost friends and family in brutal Indian raids, often blamed all the Indians for the actions of a few. REMOVAL AND MASSACRE In September 1781, British-allied tribesmen, primarily Wyandots and Delawares, forcibly removed the Christian Munsees and the white missionaries from the Moravian villages, relocating them to a new village ("Captive Town") on the Sandusky River. Missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder were taken to Detroit and tried for treason by the British, who suspected them of providing military intelligence to the American army at Fort Pitt. The missionaries were acquitted, although historians subsequently discovered that Zeisberger and Heckewelder were indeed keeping the Americans informed of the movements of the British and their Indian allies. Meanwhile, the Christian Munsees were going hungry at Captive Town. In February of 1782, over 100 of them returned to their old Moravian villages in order to harvest the crops they had been forced to leave behind. However, the frontier war was still raging, and in early March of 1782 a raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militiamen under Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson rounded up the Christian Munsees and accused them of taking part in the ongoing raids into Pennsylvania. They truthfully denied the charges, but the Pennsylvanians held a council, and voted to kill them all anyway. Some militiamen opposed to this action withdrew from the area. The Munsees, informed of their fate, spent the night praying and singing hymns. The next morning, March 8, the Christian Munsees were killed as they knelt, their skulls crushed with a mallet. In all, 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children were murdered and then scalped. The corpses were then heaped into the mission buildings, and the town was burned to the ground. The other abandoned Moravian towns were then burned as well. Two boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre. AFTERMATH Many White Americans were outraged by the Gnadenhütten massacre. However, many frontiersmen, embittered by a cruel war unlike anything in the East, voiced support for the militia's actions. Although there was some talk of bringing the killers to justice, no criminal charges were filed. The Delawares at war with the Americans sought revenge for Gnadenhütten. When General George Washington heard about the massacre, he ordered that no American soldier allow himself to be taken alive; he knew what would happen should the militant Delawares capture an American. However, Washington's friend, Colonel William Crawford , was captured while leading an expedition against the Indians at Sandusky . Crawford, who had not been part of the Gnadenhütten expedition, was tortured for hours by Delawares and Wyandots before finally being burned at the stake. One participant in the massacre was Captain Charles Builderback. Although he survived Crawford's defeat in June 1782, he would be later captured and killed in Ohio in June 1789 by Indians. (See "Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio", pp. 589–590 Vol 1) SEE ALSO
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