The hymn before the morning

The story, from several sources

This account blends Rothbard’s chapter with the other sources listed below and has not yet been separated into Rothbard’s own account and the fuller story. Read Rothbard’s chapter 63 for his account.

The Moravian mission towns on the Tuscarawas River, Gnadenhutten among them, were home to Delaware Indians who had become Christians and given up war. Rothbard says they were well known to have been neutral and at peace in every conflict since the French and Indian Wars. In early 1782 British and Indian raids on the frontier resumed in full force, and the settlers of Washington County, Pennsylvania, wanted revenge. In early March a hundred of them marched west and found the Moravians. They told them they would be taken safely to Pittsburgh, and the unarmed Moravians gathered in their chapel. A tiny minority of the settlers pointed out that the Moravians had always been friendly. The overwhelming majority urged that they be slaughtered on the spot, on the frontier axiom that the only good Indian is a dead one. The next morning the settlers took the Moravians two or three at a time to two buildings and killed them. Ninety died by Rothbard’s count, 61 of them women and children, and later counts run higher. The scalps went home as trophies. The settlers burned the three mission towns before they left. The Pennsylvania Assembly called the slaughter an act disgraceful to humanity, but the frontiersmen were pleased. Rothbard sets it in a long frontier tradition: when you cannot handle your powerful enemies, you fall upon the friendly or neutral Indians living nearby. Two boys survived, one scalped and left for dead and the other hidden in a cellar.