ils me. Go on in the same way. I think I have done pretty well." Among
the women and children the slaughter began with a very old and pious
widow, and soon the sound of the singing and the praying was silenced in
death.

The victims were scalped as they fell, and when the bloody work was
done, the cabins were set on fire and the bodies burned in the burning
buildings. Two boys who had been scalped with the rest feigned death,
and when the murderers had left them they tried to escape. One stuck
fast in the window and was burned, but the other got safely away and
lived to tell the awful tale.

[Illustration: Massacre of the Christian Indians by the Whites 087]

The backwoodsmen themselves seem not to have been ashamed of their work,
though it is said that Williamson could never be got to speak of it. The
event was so horrible that it killed the Moravians' hopes of usefulness
among the Ohio Indians. The teachers settled with the remnant of
their converts in Canada, but the Christian Indians always longed for
Gnadenhutten, where they had lived so happily, and where ninety-six
of their brethren had suffered so innocently. Before the close of the
century Congress confirmed the Delawares' grant of the Muskingum lands
to them, and they came back. But they could not survive the crime
committed against them. The white settlers pressed close about them; the
War of 1812 enkindled all the old hate against their race. Their laws
were trampled upon and their own people were seen drunk in the streets.

Some of the Christians had fallen back into heathen savagery. One of
these, who was found in a war party, painted and armed like the rest for
a foray against the whites, said to a Christian brother: "I cannot but
have bad thoughts of our teachers. I think it was their fault that so
many of our countrymen were murdered in Gnadenhutten. They betrayed
us.... Tell me now, is this the truth or not?" He had lost his children
and all his kindred in that fearful carnage, and yet he could not
believe his own accusations against the Moravians. He added mournfully:
"I have now a wicked and malicious heart, and therefore my thoughts are
evil. As I look outwardly, so is my heart within. What would it avail,
if I were outwardly to appear as a believer, and my heart were full of
evil?"

IX. THE TORTURE OF COLONEL CRAWFORD

The slaughter of the Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten took place
in March, 1782, and in May ol the same year, four hun