The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1916, Page 19

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

: E

The Lutheran Pioneer.

19

by an English officer, came with three hundred war-
riors to Gnadenhuetten, and urged the Christians
to remove farther westward. When the Christian
Indians refused to do this, the savages resorted
to force. ‘They killed the cattle of the Christian
Indians, partially destroyed their crops, and im-
prisoned their missionaries, so that they were com-
pelled to leave their crops and all their possessions
behind and remove to the banks of the Sandusky.
After suffering much from cold and hunger during
the winter, some of them were permitted to go
back to gather in the corn left on the stalk in the
preceding fall.

In the latter part of February a larger number,
about one hundred and fifty, including women and
children, returned to their villages. Happy in being
back home again, they little expected that a storm
was gathering which was to burst over their peace-
ful villages with such awful consequences. Fear-
ing nothing, they separated into three parties, each
party working in one of the three village corn-fields.

Just a few weeks before their return some hos-
tile Indians had cruelly butchered the family of
a white settler not far away, and the whole border
was in a blaze of excitement. Every settler along
the frontier was ready to kill an Indian wherever
he might meet him, whether he be a Christian or
a heathen, a peaceful Christian or a hostile Wyan-
dotte. A company of more than hundred men,
under the command of Colonel Williamson, set out
for the Christian Indian villages to avenge the
murder of the whites by the murder of their inno-
cent inhabitants. Without any difficulty they ap-
proached the unsuspecting Indians working in their
corn-fields. They told the Indians that they had
come to take them to Fort Pitt, where they would
be safe from the Wyandottes, and the Indians will-
ingly surrendered their arms, and gladly consented
io accompany the whites. At the request of the
whites they sent an Indian messenger to one of the
other villages to tell the members of the party work-
ing there of .the new arrangement, and to invite
them to come to Gnadenhuetten and get ready for
the journey to Pittsburgh. In the mean time the

village was reached, and those Indians first decoyed

into their power were bound by the whites and con-
fined in two houses. The Indians from the other
village, upon their arrival at Gnadenhuetten, were
treated in the same way. ‘The number thus con-
fined in the two houses, the men and boys in one,
the women, girls, and infants in the other, is esti-
mated to have been ninety-six.

Having thus secured their poor victims, the

captors informed them that they would be given ~

the hours of the night to prepare for their death,
which would take place the next morning. One
woman, who could speak good English, knelt be-
fore Colonel Williamson and begged for protection ;
but her prayer was in vain. The others submitted
to their fate without a word. They spent the night
in prayer and singing. ‘The sound of these Indian
Christians’ prayers and singing found an echo in
the surrounding forest, but no responsive feeling
in the breasts of their white captors. Never did
Christians bear their martyrdom moré meekly and
with greater fortitude. One of their number, Abra-
ham by name, spoke thus to his brethren: “Dear
brethren, we shall all soon depart to our Savior,
for our sentence is fixed. You know that I have
been an untoward child, and have often grieved
the Lord and our brethren by my disobedience, not
walking as I ought to have done; but still I cleave
to my Savior with my last breath, and hold Him
fast, though 1 am a great sinner. I know He will
forgive me all my sins, and will not cast me out.”
When the morning came, and with it the time for
the dreadful slaughter, Abraham, whose long, flow-
ing hair had the day before attracted the atten-
tion of his captors, and elicited the brutal remark
that it would “make a fine scalp,” was singled out
as the first victim. One of the white captors, seiz-
ing a cooper’s mallet from the floor of the cooper’s
shop where the men were confined, exclaimed, “How
exactly this will answer for the business!’ Be-

ginning with Abraham, he felled fourteen to the
ground, then passed the instrument to another

butcher, saying, “My arm fails me; go on in the
same way; I think I have done pretty well!” With
gun and spear, hatchet and scalping-knife, the work
of death went on in the two slaughter-houses, till
not a sigh or moan was longer to be heard. All
had perished. save two boys, who, after being scalped,
feigned death, and thus got safely away to tell the
awful tale of the white man’s savage cruelty towards
their unfortunate race. Thus were more than ninety
Christian Indians butchered in cold blood by those
who should have been their friends and protectors.

After committing this savage act, Williamson
and his fellow-murderers set fire to the two houses
containing the dead, and then marched off to
Schoenbrunn, the third and most distant Indian
town. “But the news of their atrocious deed had
preceded them here, and the inhabitants had fled.

The missionaries, with the remnant of their