Gnadenhutten Massacre American Revolutionary War 1782
There was no International Convention to establish what was and what was not a war crime at the time of the American Revolution, in which the code of the gentleman was largely used to dictate the behaviors of armies. What happened at Gnadenhutten was not strictly speaking a war crime but it was certainly an atrocity and a forgotten one as far as the history of the Revolution is concerned. It involved the slaughter of unarmed and captive Christian Delaware Indians, including women and children, at the hands of the Pennsylvania militia at a place where the name translates to Huts of Peace.
The Delaware had been residents of the village when they were captured by Wyandot Indians loyal to the British. They were taken to Captive Town, where they had little to eat and about 100 escaped and returned to Gnadenhutten to harvest the crops they had planted earlier in the year, and to recover other food stores such as dried fish and smoked game which had been left behind. That summer members of another branch of the Delaware tribe had been raiding settlements in Western Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania militia launched retaliatory raids.
The peaceful Delaware at Gnadenhutten were taken by surprise when their town was overrun by the militia, and they protested their innocence of any attacks. The militia listened to their pleas and then, by vote, decided that the Delaware were guilty of the attacks and by another vote, that they would be executed for them. Women and children were taken to one hut and the Delaware men to another. Several of the militiamen refused to take part in the executions and were told to leave the area, in order that they could not be called as witnesses.
On the evening of March 7, the militia prepared two execution houses in the village, one for the men and the other for the women and children. In the morning the Indians were led one by one to the houses, had their hands bound, and were either stunned or killed by a blow to the head with a mallet or club. After they were stunned or already dead they were scalped. It was believed that the scalping would cause those still alive to bleed to death. Two of the Delaware, both boys and one of them scalped, somehow survived and managed to crawl to safety in the woods as the slaughter went on.
After the killings were finished, in which 96 Delaware were murdered including 39 children, the militia looted the village of everything the Delaware had which was of any value to the Pennsylvanians. They then stacked the bodies of the dead in some of the huts and burned them and the rest of the village as well. Word of the massacre spread quickly, eventually reaching the headquarters of George Washington outside of New York. Few were critical of the brutality of the massacre and Washington was more concerned about Indian retaliation on the frontier than determining if any crime had been committed.