Connecticut Boys in the Western Reserve: A Tale of the Moravian Massacre

by James A. Braden

“Has the white brother not heard?—a great battle, in which my father’s warriors and many more drove the soldiers of the Long-knives even as scared birds before a mighty storm, and—”

It was in the mind of Gentle Maiden to complete the sentence by saying, “and took many, many scalps,” but she wished to spare the white boy’s feelings, and hesitated.

“How do you know this?” Ree questioned, quickly guessing the words left unsaid.

“A runner came to tell of the mighty battle and to call all the people to be ready to drive every Paleface from our lands.”

“Tell me more of the battle,” Ree said, quietly. “Was it long ago? And where was the fighting?”

“There,” answered Gentle Maiden in a hushed but still slightly triumphant tone, pointing to the westward, “a journey of seven suns, it may be, near the river called Wabash. The Paleface chief Sain Clair (General St. Clair) and many soldiers had come into the land of my father’s people and his friends to build their forts and to drive the Indians from their homes. It was at the coming of day that the battle began and the white soldiers and the warriors were many as the trees of the forest. Hard and long was the fighting, but before the sun was in the middle of the sky our warriors had conquered—our warriors had driven the white chief Sain Clair and all the soldiers from their camps, and they fled before my father’s people even as leaves when the winds blow hard.”

“Were many killed?”

Ree asked the question calmly, though he could hardly restrain his feelings or keep from showing the resentment in his heart that the Indian girl should seem to boast of the victory over the white men. And yet he knew that the savages had been abused and imposed upon. He knew that their children were taught to look upon the whites as their enemies and as people of “two tongues,” who would deceive and cheat and steal. Especially was this true in this land of the Ohio, where the awful massacre of nearly a hundred peaceable Indians by white soldiers was still fresh in the minds of the savages.

Gentle Maiden did not at once answer the question, for in her heart she felt that Ree, who had been her father’s friend, was angered by the news she told him and by her tone.

“Many will rise only in the spirit world,” she said at last, “many Palefaces and many warriors. Never has my father told me of any battle where the ground was so covered by the killed.”