The Moravian Church traces its ancestry back to the movement of Jan Huss (fifteenth century) in what is now the Czech Republic. One of the tenants of their faith for centuries was public preaching and missionizing. When missionaries such as David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder arrived in Ohio Territory to work among the Delaware/Lenape, they found a people deeply divided by the larger events going on around them. While some Delaware leaders, such as White Eyes, favored peace and cooperation with the Americans, others such as Buckongahelas wanted all settlers out of Ohio Territory. White Eyes helped negotiate and later signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt of 1778, which was intended to create a separate territory in the Ohio Valley for the Delaware and other tribes. The Fort Pitt treaty was never ratified by Congress and the one Native who could have pushed things along, White Eyes, suddenly died of influenza, smallpox, or some other disease. Actually, he died by an American Militiaman's bullet, although authorities in Ohio worked to keep that knowledge quiet to avoid inflaming the Delaware/Lenape. The Treaty of Fort Pitt, which might have given the Natives an enclave in the Ohio Valley to call their own, never saw the light of day.Meanwhile, another group of Delaware found their own solution to the turmoil and accepted the teachings of the Moravians. They lived in villages that the Moravians founded, such as Gnadenhutten, farmed and tried to stay out of harm's way. But it was not to be. While the Revolution dragged on in the East, smaller skirmishes between British, American and Native forces continued. Both sides to the conflict, Britain and America, used Natives of various tribes, or sometimes the same tribe, to do most of the fighting, pitting Native against Native. Raids by Natives working for both sides, or on their own, plagued American settlements. The Settlers, angry and unable, or unwilling, to tell which tribes or members of tribes were working for which side, blamed the Indians en masse for the turmoil on the frontier and became more insistent that their government do something about the Indians, i.e, remove them from the Ohio Valley.
While the Continental Congress dithered, the war continued in the Ohio River Valley. Colonel Daniel Brodhead lead a punitive raid in 1781 against one of the larger Delaware towns, Coshocton, burning it to the ground. There was a Moravian village nearby and he had difficulty restraining his men from burning it, too. As Buckongahelas had tried to warn the Christian Delaware, they were in a precarious situation. British Indian Agents, namely George Elliott and Simon Girty, became convinced that the Moravian missionaries were using their position with the Indians to gain information on the movements of both British and American troops, and providing that information to the highest bidder. Girty was with a force mostly pro-British Delaware and Wyandot raided the various Moravian villages, including Gnadenhutten, arrested Zeisberger and Heckewelder, and removed the Delaware to a new village called Captive Town, on the Sandusky River. Rations were promised until the Natives could regrow the fields. The food never came and the people subsisted on what they had brought from their villages.
Finally, in February, 1782, about 100 Lenape/Delaware returned to Gnadenhutten to retrieve foodstuffs that had been stored in the villages storehouse, as well as any valuables they could trade for food. As they lingered at Gnadenhutten, in March, a force of 160 Pennsylvania militia under Colonel David Williamson descended on the village. Williamson's men accused the Lenape of making raids into Pennsylvania. The villagers denied it, citing their Christian faith. The Pennsylvanians' minds were made up and they decided to kill everyone at Gnadenutten. They divided the men into one building, the women and children into another, and gave them one night to prepare for death. The Delaware spent the evening praying and singing hymns. On March 8, 1782, the Pennsylvanians systematically killed nearly all of the Christian Delaware with clubs, hatchets, bayonets or any other implement they could get their hands on. Afterwards, the bodies were piled into the two buildings were the Delaware had been staying, and the entire village burned down around them. Only two boys, one of whom had been scalped by an American, lived to tell the tale.
The massacre would have tragic consequences for more than just these innocent people. Although the public in general were outraged by the brutality, and Congress made noise about bringing the perpetrators to justice, nothing was done. Nobody was brought to trial for this crime. Although Zeisberger and Heckewelder were acquitted by a British court martial at Fort Detroit of having passed secrets, others were not so lucky. Colonel William Crawford, leading a punitive expedition along the Sandusky River in June, 1782, would be killed in retaliation for this massacre in an incident that would stain Girty's name forever. Later, other Moravians would come to the site, collect the bodies and bury them, but no effort was made to rebuild the mission at Gnadenhutten. An obelisk, with some reconstructed mission buildings, stands on the site today. Feelings among the Delaware and other Native tribes ran deep, as did the mistrust of American authorities. During a meeting between Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison in 1810, almost thirty years later, Tecumseh reminded Harrison:
"You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delaware lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?"
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