a fairly brave officer and not naturally cruel; but he was weak and ambitious, ready to yield to any popular demand, and, if it would advance his own interests, to connive at any act of barbarity. [Footnote:  This is the most favorable estimate of his character, based on what Doddridge says (p. 260).  He was a very despicable person, but not the natural brute the missionaries painted him.] Gibson, however, who was a very different man, paid no heed to the cry raised against him.

They Refuse to be Warned and Return to their Homes.

With incredible folly the Moravians refused to heed even such rough warnings as they had received.  During the long winter they suffered greatly from cold and hunger, at Sandusky, and before the spring of 1782 opened, a hundred and fifty of them returned to their deserted villages.

That year the Indian outrages on the frontiers began very early.  In February there was some fine weather; and while it lasted, several families of settlers were butchered, some under circumstances of peculiar atrocity.  In particular, four Sandusky Indians having taken some prisoners, impaled two of them, a woman and a child, while on their way to the Moravian towns, where they rested and ate, prior to continuing their journey with their remaining captives.  When they left they warned the Moravians that white men were on their trail. [Footnote:  Heckewelder, 3:1.] A white man who had just escaped this same impaling party, also warned the Moravians that the exasperated borderers were preparing a party to kill them; and Gibson, from Fort Pitt, sent a messenger to them, who, however, arrived too late.  But the poor Christian Indians, usually very timid, now, in the presence of a real danger, showed a curious apathy; their senses were numbed and dulled by their misfortunes, and they quietly awaited their doom. [Footnote:  Loskiel, 176.]

It was not long deferred.  Eighty or ninety frontiersmen, under Williamson, hastily gathered together to destroy the Moravian towns.  It was, of course, just such an expedition as most attracted the brutal, the vicious, and the ruffianly; but a few decent men, to their shame, went along.  They started in March, and on the third day reached the fated villages.  That no circumstance might be wanting to fill the measure of their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, assured them that they meant well, and spent an hour or two in gathering together those who were in Salem and Gnadenhutten, putting them all in two houses at the latter place.  Those at the third town, of Schoenbrunn, got warning and made their escape.

As soon as the unsuspecting Indians were gathered in the two houses, the men in one, the women and children in the other, the whites held a council as to what should be done with them.  The great majority were for putting them instantly to death.  Eighteen men protested, and asked that the lives of the poor creatures should be spared; and then withdrew, calling God to witness that they were innocent of the crime about to be committed.  By rights they should have protected the victims at any hazard.  One of them took off with him a small Indian boy, whose life was thus spared.  With this exception only two lads escaped.