s, where the horses stuck fast,
and had to be abandoned, and the men themselves sometimes sank to their
necks in the soft ooze. Instead of keeping together, as Crawford advised
but had no power to compel, the force broke up into small parties, which
the Indians destroyed or captured. Many perished in the swamps; some
were followed as far as the Ohio River. The only one of the small
parties which escaped was that of forty men under Colonel Williamson,
the leader of the Gnadenhiitten massacre, who enjoyed the happier
fortune denied to Colonel Crawford.

This ill-fated officer was tormented after the retreat began by his fear
for the safety of his son, his son-in-law, and his nephews, and he left
his place at the head of the main body and let the army file past him
while he called and searched for the missing men. He did not try to
overtake it till it was too late to spur his wearied horse forward. He
fell in with Dr. John Knight, who accompanied the expedition as surgeon,
and who now generously remained with Crawford. They pushed on together
with two others through the woods, guided by the north star, but on the
second day after the army had left them behind, a party of Indians fell
upon them and made them prisoners.

Their captors killed their two companions, Captain Biggs and Lieutenant
Ashley, the following day, but Crawford and Knight were taken to an
Indian camp at a little distance, and then to the old Wyandot town of
Sandusky, where preparations were made for burning Crawford. He seems to
have had great hopes that Simon Girty, who was then at Sandusky, would
somehow manage to save him, and it is said that the renegade really
offered three hundred dollars for Crawford's life, knowing that he would
be many times repaid by Crawford's friends. But the chief whom Girty
tried to bribe answered, "Do you take me for a squaw?" and threatened,
if Girty said more, to burn him along with Crawford. This is the story
told in Girty's favor; other stories represent him as indifferent if not
cruel to Crawford throughout. In any case, it ended in Crawford's return
to the Indian camp, eight miles from the Indian town, where he suffered
death.

The chiefs who had been put in charge of him were two Delawares of great
note, Captain Pipe and Captain Wingenund. They were chosen his guards
because the Christian Indians were of their nation, and the Delawares,
more than any other nation, were held to have been injured and insulted
by the