The Wild Frontier (28 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
The captain of the guard approached the wretched victim, who lay bound upon the ground, and with his knife made a circular incision on the scull; two others immediately pulled off the scalp; after this, each of them struck him on the head with their tomahawks; they then stripped him naked, stabbed him with their knives in every sensitive part of the body, and left him, weltering in blood, though not quite dead, a wretched victim of Indian rage and hellish barbarity.
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The Kickapoos with captive Johonnet reached an Indian village on the upper Miami, where the captives were severely beaten. Soldiers James Durgee, Samuel Forsythe, Robert Deloy, and Uzza Benton all fainted. They were “immediately scalped and tomahawked in our presence [including that of Johonnet], and tortured to death, with every affliction of misery that Indian ingenuity could invent.” Twenty-six days after the capture, Johonnet and a fellow soldier, Richard Sackville, escaped.
Not much later they came upon the newly murdered, stripped, and scalped bodies of an old man, a woman, and 2 children. Not long after that, they accidently discovered 4 Wabash Indians guarding 2 prisoners. They killed 3 of the Indians, but Sackville also died. Prisoner George Sexton told Johonnet that 3 others had been taken captive with him; however, 2 were wounded and were immediately scalped and killed. Sexton was so grateful for being released from captivity by Johonnet
that he insisted on staying on watch 23 out of the 24 hours in the day and carrying all their baggage.
Johonnet thereafter fought with distinction with General St. Clair, winning a battlefield commission. His narrative, said Loudon, ended with the statement that it was written for the purpose, among others, of exhorting American youth
to defend the worthy inhabitants on the frontiers from the depredations of savages; whose horrid mode of war is a scene to be deprecated by civilized nature, whose tender mercies are cruelties and whose faith is by no means to be depended on, though pledged in the most solemn treaties.
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R
ALPH K. ANDRIST
has said that “every Indian conflict seems to have some blunder or stupidity that makes it worse than it need be.”
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General St. Clair’s
*
defeat in 1791 is an example. Logan Esarey characterized it as a “misguided, mismated, misordered, misdirected affair.”
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Its mission was to go north from Cincinnati and fight the Indians under Little Turtle. Bil Gilbert reported that Cincinnati real-estate man John Cleves Symmes saw the troops and said that they had been recruited “from the prisons, wheel barrows [impressed labor gangs] and brothels of the nation at two dollars a month [and] will never answer our purpose of fighting Indians.”
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The army consisted of 2,300 men, half of whom indeed were federal short-term conscripts. In addition, there were about 200 female “cooks,” who had been gathered by the men. St. Clair and his officers were convinced the men would not march without the women, so they were officially ignored.
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The soldiers were never paid. Food was in such short supply that regular army troops had to be detached to guard the supply trains from their own men.
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By the time St. Clair got to the area where he hoped to fight, 600 soldiers had deserted.
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The Indians attacked. The soldiers fought for 3 hours, then the order to retreat was given. The retreat became a rout, and St. Clair lost 623 soldiers and 24 civilian teamsters. Only 580 of his men got home. Twenty-one Indians were killed. “In proportion to the number of men fielded that day,” wrote Axelrod, “it stands as the worst loss the U.S. Army has ever suffered.”
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Robert M. Utley thought it certainly was “the worst disaster in the long history of the Indian wars.”
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St. Clair resigned his commission as a result of this defeat.
St. Clair’s second in command, Richard Butler, was a survivor of that rout for a time. Butler was mortally wounded in a fight around the artillery. He was found by his brothers, Captain Edward Butler and Major Thomas Butler, who were also badly injured. Richard told them he was fatally wounded and that they should leave him, which they did. Two Shawnee later found him. They killed and scalped him. Simon Girty and others identified the corpse. The Shawnee cut out his heart, which was still warm, and divided it into 14 pieces, one for each of the Indian nations fighting there.
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After St. Clair’s defeat, captives were roasted at the stake. Soldiers’ intestines were pulled out bit by bit. Some were flayed alive and their limbs hacked or slowly wrenched away. The brains of children were dashed out against the trunks of trees. Some of the women were stretched naked on the ground and run through with wooden stakes. Other women’s breasts were hacked away, then the women were cut in 2.
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When Washington learned of the defeat, he exclaimed,
O God, O God, he’s [St. Clair’s] worse than a murderer! how can he answer it to his country;—the blood of the slain is upon him—the curses of widows and orphans—the curse of Heaven!
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The year after Johonnet enlisted in the British army, Massy Herbeson and her family were in their home near Pittsburgh. Her husband was away, and many Indians came into their home. She recognized 2 Senecas and 2 Munsees. The Indians then began taking the family away from the house. Her 3-year-old son was unwilling to leave. The Indians took him by the heels, dashed him against the house, then stabbed and scalped him. The next night, a 5-year-old son began to mourn for his dead brother. An Indian tomahawked and scalped him, too. Massy escaped the next morning.
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After the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, some soldiers found 8 warriors looking for food. One warrior was killed and scalped.
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T
HOSE SETTLERS
who had “abandoned civilization” were called white savages. Simon Girty was not the only one. There was also Alexander Outlaw. In 1795 he entered the Indian town of Citico. He murdered a few women and children, according to Bernard W. Sheehan, “exposing their private parts in the most shameful manner, heaving a young child, with both its arms broke, alive, at the breast of its dead
mother.” It was reported that he had “done everything in his power to drive the Indians to desperation.”
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Another white savage was Benjamin Harrison, who in 1795 murdered 17 Creeks. He decapitated some of them with a broadax.
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In 1798 Jedidiah Morse, “who maintained a scholarly interest in the Indians and held deep sympathies for their welfare,”
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gave this compendium of Indian torture:
They begin at the extremity of his body, and, gradually, approach the more vital parts. One plucks out his nails by the roots, one by one; another takes a finger into his mouth, and tears off the flesh with his teeth; a third thrusts the finger, mangled as it is, into the bowl of a pipe made red-hot, which he smokes like tobacco; then they pound his toes and fingers to pieces between two stones; they cut circles about his joints, and gashes in the fleshy parts of his limbs, which they sear immediately with red-hot irons, cutting, burning, and pinching them alternately; they pull off his flesh, thus mangled and roasted, bit by bit, devouring it with greediness, and smearing their faces with the blood, in an enthusiasm of horror and fury. When they have thus torn off the flesh, they twist the bare nerves and tendons about an iron, tearing and snapping them, whilst others are employed in pulling and extending his limbs in every way that can increase the torment. This continues, often, five or six hours; and sometimes, such is the strength of the savages, days together. They frequently unbind him, to give a breathing to their fury, to think what new torments they shall inflict, and to refresh the strength of the sufferer, who, wearied out with such a variety of unheard-of torments, often falls into so profound a sleep, that they are obliged to apply the fire to awake him, and renew his sufferings. He is again fastened to the stake, and again they renew their cruelty; they stick him all over with small matches of wood that easily takes fire but burns slowly; they continually run sharp reeds into every part of his body; they drag out his teeth with pincers and thrust out his eyes; and, lastly, after having burned his flesh from the bones with slow fires; after having so mangled the body that it is all but one wound; after having mutilated his face in such a manner as to carry nothing human in it; after having peeled the skin from the head, and poured a heap of red-hot coals or boiling water, on the naked skull—they once more unbind the wretch; who, blind and staggering with pain and weakness, assaulted and pounded on every side with clubs and stones, now up, now down, falling into their fires at every step, runs hither and thither, until one of the chiefs, whether out of compassion, or weary of cruelty, puts an end to his life with a club or dagger. The body is then put into a kettle, and this barbarous employment is succeeded by a feast just as barbarous.
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Morse makes it clear that this is a summary of Indian torture of a hypothetical victim, not an actual victim. Most of the types of torture he described unfortunately actually occurred.
The ship
Manchester
from Philadelphia was captured by the Nootka Indians of Canada around 1803. The chief told captive John Rodgers Jewitt that 7 of the crew had tried to run away but were captured and put to death. Four Indians held each man on the ground, forced his mouth open, and choked him by ramming stones down his throat.
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Jewitt, an English armorer, was one of only 2 survivors of the brig
Boston
, which was captured as well. After the capture, he was confronted with a line of 25 heads. The chief asked Jewitt whose each was, but Jewitt had to tell him some were mangled beyond recognition.
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Medicine man Tenskwatawa, younger brother of Tecumseh, made some rousing speeches to the Delaware Indians in 1806. He said that those who spoke or acted against him were probably possessed by evil spirits, were witches, and must be reeducated or eliminated. The Delaware invited him to come to their communities on White River in Indiana in 1806 to help them purify the people. He went there and punished 5 witches. An old woman named Coitos was roasted over a slow fire for 4 or 5 days, then confessed she could secretly fly long distances in the air. She was killed. Then Joshua, a Christian Mohican, was found to have a giant man-eating bird. He was clubbed and burned. Two Christian Delaware subchiefs, Teteboxti and Billy Patterson, were found to have trafficked with evil powers, so they too were clubbed and burned. Billy Patterson’s wife was also accused and convicted. As she was being tied to the fire stake, her young brother freed her and led her out of the building. Then he came back and declaimed, “The devil has come among us, and we are killing each other.”
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The witch hunt was suspended.
In 1807 Mary Jordan, her husband, and their 6 children were at home when 40 or 50 Indians broke in and dragged them naked from the house. Twenty Indians were ordered to take them to the Indian village 200 miles away. The rest stayed behind to pillage and fire the house. The family was marched 40 miles through wilderness the first night. Anyone who slackened the pace was beaten and threatened with death. They made another 40 miles the second day. They then were joined by the pillaging party, which had found and consumed part of the husband’s keg of spirits. The children were beaten, cut with knives, and scorched with brands of fire.
The Indians decided the children could not walk farther. They dug holes in the earth and placed dried branches around them. The husband
broke the ropes with which he was bound and attempted to escape, but was brought back. He was placed in a hole as were the 6 children. All 7 were buried in earth nearly to their necks. The branches were then set on fire. All were burned to death in less than 15 minutes.
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T
HERE ARE
a number of recorded atrocities during this period whose dates cannot be determined, but most of them probably happened between 1770 and 1810, and the last (Blackwell) a few years before 1865.
Mrs. Boggs, with a suckling child, was captured by the Indians. The child was not permitted to nurse. It was thrown in the road from time to time. Sometimes the Indians kicked it before them. After treating the baby in this fashion for 3 days, it was carried in the woods, where it was murdered and scalped.
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George Woods was forced to witness an Indian torture. The Indians cut holes in a man’s cheeks, passed a small cord through the holes, then tied the cord to a small sapling. Two Indians with heated gun barrels seared his naked body. His scalp was torn from his head, then hot ashes and coals were applied to his skull. His abdomen was opened, one end of his bowels cut and tied to a tree, then red-hot irons again were applied to his body to make him move around the tree until his bowels were all drawn out. His genital organs were cut off. A hot gun barrel was thrust into his heart, finally killing him. Woods also recounted that sometimes the Indians opened the wrists and ankles and then, with a forked stick, twisted out the sinews.
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Bookseller and whiskey dealer James Potts was a sutler in the rear of a 2-division army during the Revolution. The 2 divisions were a few miles apart. Potts decided to move to the forward division in order to improve his sales. He was captured by Indians while on the way. The Indians killed and scalped him, hung him upside down by a sapling, and cut him open so that his intestines hung down over his head. The rear division found him in that condition as it marched by.
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Another victim in a torture was stripped naked and tied to a pole with a grapevine. Before being tied to the stake, he was beaten by women and children with dry canes or pitch pines in a most barbarous manner. When the death signal was given, the victim’s arms were tied and a vine was fastened around his neck, with the other end at the top of the pole. Clay was put on his head to secure his scalp from the torches. Women came at him from all sides with burning torches. Fire burned his body. He was then doused with water so the burning could start again. When he fell unconscious, he was scalped, dismembered, and all the extremities
of his body, including his genital organs, were carried off in triumph.
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