Gnadenhutten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity are killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indian tribes.
The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing of 96 pacifist Moravian Christian Indians (primarily Lenape and Mohican) by U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania, under the command of David Williamson, on March 8, 1782 at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio Country, during the American Revolutionary War.Due to their commitment to Christian pacifism, the Moravian Christians did not take sides during the American Revolutionary War, which caused them to be viewed with suspicion by both the British and the Americans. As the Indians were collecting crops, Pennsylvania militia encountered them and falsely promised the believers that they would be "relocated away from the warring parties." Once they were gathered together, however, the American militia rounded the unarmed Moravians up and said that they planned to execute them for being spies, charges that the Moravians rebutted.The Indians asked their captors to be allowed to pray and worship on the night before their execution; they spent the night before their death praying as well as singing Christian hymns and psalms. Eighteen of U.S. militiamen were opposed to the killing of the pacifist Moravian Christians, though they were outvoted by those who wanted to murder them; those who opposed the murder did not participate in the massacre and separated themselves from the killers. Before murdering them, the American soldiers "militia dragged the women and girls out into the snow and systematically raped them." As they were being killed, the Moravian Christians sang "hymns and spoke words of encouragement and consolation one to another until they were all slain". Believing in nonresistance, they pleaded for their lives to be spared, but did not fight back against their persecutors.Moravian missionary David Zeisberger declared the slain Lenape and Mahican believers as Christian martyrs, who are remembered in Moravian Christianity. More than a century later, Theodore Roosevelt called the massacre "a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away."The shrine to the Moravian Christian Indian Martyrs includes a monument that was erected and dedicated ninety years after the Gnadenhutten massacre by a chief of the Christian Munsee tribe; the graves of the victims contain "bones [which] were gathered by the faithful missionaries some time after the massacre". It also includes a large Christian cross dedicated to the Moravian Christian Munsee and Christian Mahican Martyrs by a member of the tribe and descendant of one of the slain. With the site of the village being preserved, a reconstructed mission house and cooper's house were built there. The burial mound is marked and has been maintained on the site; the village site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.