ges on the Muskingum. For this purpose a detachment of our men went out under the command of Col. David Williamson, for the purpose of inducing the Indians with their teachers to move further off, or bring them prisoners to Fort Pitt. When they arrived at the villages they found but few Indians, the greater number of them having removed to Sandusky. These few were well treated, taken to Fort Pitt and delivered to the commandant at that station, who, after a short detention, sent them home again.

"This procedure gave great offence to the people of the country, who thought that the Moravians ought to have been killed. Col. Williamson, who, before this little campaign, had been a very popular man, on account of his activity and bravery in war, now became the subject of severe animadversions on account of his lenity to the Moravian Indians. In justice to the memory of Col. Williamson I have to say, that although at that time very young, I was personally acquainted with him, and from my recollection of his conversation, I say with confidence that he was a brave man, but not cruel. He would meet an enemy in battle, and fight like a soldier; but not murder a prisoner. Had he possessed the authority of a superior officer in a regular army, I do not believe that a single Moravian Indian would have lost his life; but he possessed no such authority. He was only a militia officer, who could advise, but not command. His only fault was that of too easy a compliance with popular opinion and popular prejudice. On this account his memory has been loaded with unmerited reproach.

"Several reports unfavorable to the Moravians had been in circulation for some time before the campaign against them. One was, that the night after they were liberated at Fort Pitt, they crossed the river and killed or made prisoners of a

family of the name of Montour. A family on Buffalo creek had been mostly killed in the summer or fall of 1781, and it was said by one of them, who, after being made prisoner, made his escape, that the leader of the party of Indians who did the mischief was a Moravian. These, with other reports, of similar import, served as a pretext for their destruction, although no doubt they were utterly false.

"Should it be asked, what sort of people composed the band of murderers of these unfortunate people ?-I answer, they were not miscreants or vagabonds: many of them were men of the first standing in the country. Many of them were men who had recently lost relatives by the hand of the savages: several of the latter class found articles which had been plundered from their own houses, or those of their relatives, in the houses of the Moravians. One man, it is said, found the clothes of his wife and children, who had been murdered by the Indians but a few days before. They were still bloody yet there was no unequivocal evidence, that these people had any direct agency in the war. Whatever of our property was found with them, had been left by the warriors in exchange for the provisions which they took from them. When attacked by our people, although they might have defended themselves, they did not. They never fired a single shot. They were prisoners, and had been promised protection. Every dictate of justice and humanity required that their lives should be spared. The complaint of their villages being half-way houses for the warriors,' was at an end, as they had been removed to Sandusky the fall before. It was, therefore, an atrocious and unqualified murder. But by whom committed? By a majority of the campaign? For the honor of my country, I hope I may safely answer this question in the negative. It was one of those convulsions of

the moral state of society, in which the voice of the justice and humanity of a majority is silenced by the clamor and violence of a lawless minority. Very few of our men imbrued their hands in the blood of the Moravians. Even those who had not voted for saving their lives, retired from the scene of slaughter with horror and disgust. Why then did they not give their votes in their favor? The fear of public indignation restrained them from doing so. They thought well: but had not heroism enough to express their opinions. Those who did so, deserve honorable mention for their intrepidity. So far as it may hereafter be in my power, this honor shall be done them: while the name of the murderers shall not stain the pages of history from my pen at least."

Thus much for the amiable Doddridge. We leave his plea for the friends and neighbors of his childhood undiminished, committing it freely to the discrimination of the reader. But there was still another construction placed upon this bloody deed-that of the savage fatalists of the woods. As the sad tale passed from village to village of the Ohio tribes, the Indians, particularly the scattered Delawares, recognized with simple reverence a providential design. They said they had envied the condition of their relations, the believing Indians, and could not bear to look upon their peaceful and happy lives in contrast with their own lives of privation and war. Hence they had endeavored to take them from their own tranquil homes, and draw them back into heathenism, that they might be reduced again to a level with themselves. But the Great Spirit would not suffer it to be so, and had taken them to himself.

Soon after the massacre on the Muskingum, the congregation at Sandusky, reduced in numbers and deprived of their teachers, yielded to the solicitations of their Delaware and

Shawanese friends, and abandoned their settlement at Sandusky. They were ordered to do so by Half King, who persisted in holding them in some degree responsible for the fate of his two sons; but in their present situations, it was doubtless a prudent resolution. Loskiel informs us, that on their dispersion, "one part went into the country of the Shawanese: the rest stayed some time in the neighborhood of Pipestown, and then resolved to proceed farther-to the Miami River." Heckewelder is more explicit, and mentions the Scioto and Miami of the Lake, now Maumee, as their respective destinations.

We have previously considered the probability, that Cornstalk and the Shawanese tribe on the Scioto, were disposed to peace, and perhaps to accept Christianity, through the influence of the missionaries. Indeed, after the death of Cornstalk, a tribe of Shawanese removed to the Muskingum and concurred in the pacific policy of the Delaware chiefs, only retiring to the Scioto when that policy was reversed. These Indians doubtless tendered an asylum to the Moravians. Their friends on the Maumee were the band of Delawares, who were the immediate followers of the magnanimous Pachgantschihilas, whose friendly solicitude and timely warning to the missionaries had been so fully justified by recent events as to seem almost prophetic. There is ample evidence that in 1791, nine years afterwards, Delawares inhabited the banks of the Auglaize River near its junction with the Maumee; and here, while the heathen, aboriginal and European, raged around them, the simple-hearted proselytes of a religion of peace, found a refuge from the persecutions of those professing the same benignant faith.

CHAPTER XXII.

PENNSYLVANIA CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE OHIO INDIANS.

THE border war of the Revolution upon the Ohio, consisted of two series of expeditions in retaliation for Indian outrage -those already considered, which issued from the region of Kentucky traversed by the Kenhawa, the Licking and the Kentucky Rivers, usually led by George Rogers Clark, and designed to restrain the inveterate Shawanese, and those which had Wheeling and the vicinity of Pittsburgh for their base of operations, and aimed to chastise the bands of Wyandots, Ottawas, Mingoes, and finally the Delawares, whose villages were scattered upon the sources of the Muskingum and Sandusky Rivers and along the Lake shore. The latter may be called the Pennsylvania Campaigns, from the fact that the western counties of Pennsylvania furnished the volunteer militia, which composed the main force of these expeditions.

To the Coshocton campaign of Col. Daniel Brodhead, incidental allusion has already been made. In the correspondence of that officer recently published,' he says, under date of March 27, 1781, that he had called upon the County Lieutenants for a few of the militia, and intended to surprise the Indian towns about Coochocking-written Goschocking by Heckewelder, and now familiar as Coshocton. Soon afterwards, probably before the close of April, these levies

1) Craig's Olden Time, vol. ii, p. 392.