The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing of 96 pacifist Moravian Christian Indians (primarily Lenape and Mohican) by U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania, under the command of David Williamson, on March 8, 1782, at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio Country, during the American Revolutionary War.
Due to their commitment to Christian pacifism, the Moravians did not take sides during the American Revolutionary War, which caused them to be viewed with suspicion by both the British and the Americans. As the Moravians were collecting crops, Pennsylvania militia encountered them and falsely promised the Moravians that they would be "relocated away from the warring parties." Once they were gathered together, however, the American militia rounded up the unarmed Moravians and said that they planned to execute them for being spies, charges that the Moravians rebutted.
The Moravians asked their captors to be allowed to pray and worship on the night before their execution; they spent the night before their deaths praying as well as singing Christian hymns and psalms. Eighteen of the U.S. militiamen were opposed to the killing of the pacifist Moravians, although they were outvoted by those who wanted to murder them; those who opposed the murder did not participate in the massacre and separated themselves from the killers. Before murdering them, the American soldiers "dragged the women and girls out into the snow and systematically raped them." As they were being killed, the Moravians sang "hymns and spoke words of encouragement and consolation one to another until they were all slain". Believing in nonresistance, they pleaded for their lives to be spared, but did not fight back against their persecutors.
Moravian missionary David Zeisberger declared the slain Lenape and Mohican as Christian martyrs, who are remembered in the Moravian Church. More than a century later, Theodore Roosevelt called the massacre "a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away."
The shrine to the Moravian Christian Indian Martyrs includes a monument that was erected and dedicated ninety years after the Gnadenhutten massacre by a Chief of the Christian Munsee tribe; the graves of the victims contain "bones [which] were gathered by the faithful missionaries some time after the massacre". It also includes a large Christian cross dedicated to the Moravian Munsee and Christian Mahican Martyrs by a member of the tribe and descendant of one of the slain. With the site of the village being preserved, a reconstructed mission house and cooper's house were built there. The burial mound is marked and has been maintained on the site; the village site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
During the American Revolutionary War, bands of the Lenape (also Delaware) in the Ohio Country, both Munsee- and Unami-speaking, were deeply divided over which side, if any, to take in the conflict. The Munsee were generally northern bands originating from around the Hudson River and upper Delaware River. The Unami were from the southern reaches of the Delaware.
Years earlier, many Lenape had migrated west to Ohio from their territory on the mid-Atlantic coast to try to escape colonial encroachment, as well as pressure from Haudenosaunee Confederacy tribes based around the Great Lakes and western New York to the north. They resettled in what is now Ohio, with bands in several villages around their main village of Coshocton. These villages were named Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem, and were located on what was then called the Muskingum River. Modern geography places Coshocton on the Muskingum River and the three smaller villages on the Tuscarawas River.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, the Lenape villages lay between the opposing sides, which both had western frontier strongholds: The American Continental Army had an outpost at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), while the British with their Native American allies were based around Fort Detroit, Michigan.
Some Lenape decided to take up arms against the Americans and moved to the northwest, closer to Fort Detroit, where they settled on the Scioto and Sandusky rivers. Those Lenape sympathetic to the Americans remained at Coshocton, and their leaders, including White Eyes, signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt with the Americans in 1778. Through this treaty, White Eyes intended to secure the Ohio Country as a state to be inhabited exclusively by Native Americans, as part of the new United States.
A third group of Lenape, many of them Munsee and Unami converts to Christianity, lived in several mission villages in Ohio led by David Zeisberger and other missionaries of the Moravian Church. From the mid-Atlantic area, they spoke the Munsee and the Unami dialects of Delaware, an Algonquian language. These Christian Lenape, being Moravians, held to Christian pacifism.
White Eyes, a Lenape chief and Speaker of the Lenape Head Council, negotiated the treaty. When he died in 1778, reportedly of smallpox, the treaty had not yet been ratified by the Continental Congress. United States officials never pursued it, and the proposed Native American state was dropped. Years later George Morgan, a colonial diplomat to the Lenape and Shawnee during the American Revolution, wrote to Congress that White Eyes had been murdered by American militia in Michigan.
Many Lenape at Coshocton eventually joined the war against the Americans, in part because of American raids against friendly Lenape bands. In response, Colonel Daniel Brodhead led an expedition out of Fort Pitt and destroyed Coshocton on April 19, 1781. Surviving residents fled to the north. Colonel Brodhead convinced the militia to leave the Lenape at the Moravian mission villages unmolested since they were peaceful and neutral.
Brodhead having to restrain the militia from attacking the Moravian villages was a reflection of the brutal nature of frontier warfare. Violence had escalated on both sides. Relations between regular Continental Army officers from the east (such as Brodhead) and western militia were frequently strained. The tensions were worsened by the American government's policy of recruiting some Native American tribes as allies in the war. Western militiamen, many of whom had lost friends and family in Native American raids against settlers' encroachment, blamed all indigenous people for the acts of some and did not distinguish between friendly and hostile tribes or bands.
In September 1781 British-allied Native Americans, primarily Wyandot and Lenape, forced the Christian Native Americans and missionaries from the Moravian villages. They took them northwest toward Lake Erie to a new village called Captive Town on the Sandusky River. The British took the Moravian Christian missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder under guard back to Fort Detroit, where they tried the two men on charges of treason: the British had suspected them of providing military intelligence to the American garrison at Fort Pitt. The missionaries were acquitted during the trial.
The Moravian Christian Indians at Captive Town were going hungry because of insufficient rations. In February 1782, more than 150 were allowed to return to their old Moravian villages (such as Gnadenhutten, Salem and Shoenbrunn) to harvest the crops and collect stored food they had been forced to leave behind. The frontier war was still raging. On March 4, 1782, the Pennsylvania raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militiamen led by Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson marched toward the Tuscarawas Valley and on the morning of March 6, they first saw Joseph Schebosh Jr., a Moravian Christian who was the son of a Welsh man and Christian Munsee Indian woman; he was brutally murdered by the Pennsylvania militia despite the fact that he plead for his life before them. After pressing on to the corn fields, the Pennsylvania militiamen feigned goodwill with the Moravian Christian Indians to gain their trust. The Moravian Christian Lenape fed the American militiamen, who falsely promised them that they would take them to Fort Pitt, where they would be protected. The Indians were requested by the American soldiers to hand over their guns (which they used for hunting) and hatchets. Some militiamen went to the Moravian settlement of Salem, where they similarly feigned goodwill toward the Christian Indians and persuaded them to come to Gnadenhutten.