A Forgotten Revolutionary Massacre

In 1782, six months after Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, Patriot militiamen committed one of the most heinous war crimes of the Revolutionary War. On March 8, between 100 and 200 militia and frontiersmen from western Pennsylvania slaughtered nearly 100 peaceful Indians at the small village of Gnadenhutten, on the Tuscarawas River in present day Ohio.[1] The Indians, largely Delaware and Munsey who adopted the pacifist Christianity preached by Moravian missionaries, had struggled to navigate the political currents of violence on the American frontier for years. To the west, British authorities at Detroit sought to mobilize the Ohio tribes (Miami, Shawnee, Huron, Wyandot, Delaware, and Mingo) to raid across the Ohio River into the American settlements in Kentucky, western Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. To the east, Continental, state, and local officials based at Fort Pitt struggled to resist the Indian raids by building frontier forts and conducting punitive raids against Indian settlements. The Moravian Indians were stuck squarely in the middle, trying to appease both sides. Ultimately, their attempt at neutrality led both sides to resent their presence in the no-man’s land of eastern Ohio.