Massacre at Gnadenhutien. 65 



evil, were busily engaged about their domestic concerns, and offering 

 no resistance, suffered themselves to be all taken prisoners, to the 

 number of ninety four. More than half of these were women and 

 children. In the morning, when told what was to be their fate, they 

 mutually prayed, and exhorted each other to be resigned, and ask- 

 ing reciprocal forgiveness, prepared for death. Before the order for 

 massacre was finally issued, some of the more humane men made 

 application to Col. Williamson for liberty to take a child apiece to 

 their homes and save their lives, there being not less than thirty or 

 forty. Williamson, after considering a minute, answered that there 

 were not children enough for them all to have one, and lest there 

 might be any complaining, he thought it better to let them remain 

 on the spot with their parents and relatives : accordingly they were 

 all massacred in cool blood, and after a night's rest for reflection. In 

 the heat of battle, and at the sacking of a town, there may be some 

 excuse for the indiscriminate slaughter that sometimes takes place ; 

 but in the whole annals of American warfare, no scene of deliberate 

 murder can be found that equals this in atrocity. This tragical story 

 was related to me, a few days since, by a man now more than eighty 

 years old, who was present, and one of the number that made appli- 

 cation for liberty to save one of the children. He was well ac- 

 quainted with Williamson, the principal actor, and says that he died 

 poor and miserable, and that a large number of the men perished by 

 violent and untimely deaths. He was one of the party under Wil- 

 liamson and Crawford, at the defeat in May following, on the San- 

 dusky plains, where Crawford was taken prisoner and burnt, and 

 most of his men killed. I also conversed with a man on the spot, 

 for many years a resident here, who said that when a boy he had of- 

 ten seen, with mingled feelings of horror and detestation, the black- 

 walnut stump on which many of the poor Indians were beheaded. 

 He also confirmed the popular impression, by saying, that the larger 

 number of the men engaged in this murderous business, either came 

 to an untimely end, or suffered losses of property and other calami- 

 ties, too striking not to be noticed as marks of the retributive justice 

 of heaven. The alluvial lands at this spot are nearly two miles 

 wide, and very fertile. The Tuscarawas is about ninety yards in 

 width, with low banks and a placid current, gliding gently along, a 

 silent, but a still living witness, of the atrocities committed on its 

 shores. 



Vol. XXXI.— No. 1. 9 



