The Killing Houses: Not Even Taught in the State Where it Happened

The Most Brutal Massacre in American History?

Bwsmith84 at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

March 8, 1782 — The sun rose over Gnadenhutten, but it brought no warmth. One by one, the villagers were led to the “killing houses.” They were told to kneel. The militia stunned them with mallet blows, then scalped them. No age was spared. A girl of twelve pleaded for her life. Her voice was silenced by the axe. You might think this massacre took place somewhere other than America; you likely never even heard about it.

Some soldiers recoiled, calling God to witness their innocence. They withdrew, unable to stomach the carnage. Others continued, methodically, until the buildings were filled with blood.

In all, 96 were murdered: 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. Two boys survived — one scalped, one hidden — bearing witness to the horror. The militia burned the village and the bodies. They left behind ashes and a legacy of betrayal.

Henry Howe (1816–1893), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

It isn’t a competition; there are multiple other massacres in American history where more people were killed, like at Wounded Knee and the Tulsa Race massacre. Individual killings have been more invasive, like the lynching of Nat Turner and others, where the body was dissected and parts sold for souvenirs, including his head and penis. But marching in 96 men, women, and children, having them kneel and then striking them with a mallet until they were unconscious, and then taking their scalps after listening to them pray and sing Christian hymns throughout the night seems to be a winner.

I had never heard of the Gnadenhutten Massacre. I grew up in Minnesota and never learned about it in school. It isn’t part of the current curriculum unless an individual teacher brings it up in an Advanced Placement (AP) course. I wasn’t surprised it isn’t required teaching in Florida, where I currently reside, or Texas, where the focus is on American Exceptionalism. I was surprised to find it isn’t required learning in Ohio, the State where it occurred, especially given who was murdered and who did the killing.

The victims were members of the Lenape (Delaware) people, an indigenous group native to the Mid-Atlantic region, including present-day Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of New York.

In the 1740s–1770s, Moravian missionaries, especially David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder, began evangelizing among the Lenape, emphasizing nonviolence, communal living, and Christian pacifism. Many Lenape converted and formed Christian villages, including Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem, in what is now Tuscarawas County, Ohio.

These villages were multi-ethnic, including Lenape, Mohican, and German Moravian settlers. These villages were multi-ethnic, including Lenape, Mohican, and German Moravian settlers. The Moravian Lenape adopted nonresistance, refusing to take sides in the Revolutionary War. Their neutrality made them targets of suspicion from both British-allied Native groups and American militias.

Their killers came from across state lines from Pennsylvania. While schools there, like the other states, do teach about the American Revolution, Native American relations, and colonial settlement, the 1782 massacre — where 96 Christian Lenape were murdered by Pennsylvania militiamen in Ohio — is typically not included as a core event unless a teacher chooses to incorporate it.

The Revolutionary War was winding down, and the last major combat had taken place six months earlier, when General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in Virginia. My research consistently pointed out to me that the Pennsylvania Militiamen were not under the command of General George Washington, despite having been called up to serve under Washington’s forces at multiple points during the Revolutionary War. With the war in the process of ending, the Pennsylvania Militiamen had no missions against the British. They took to settling scores with Native American communities, some of whom had sided with the British during the conflict.

Lt. Col. David Williamson was a man with an army and a grudge against Native Americans. He claimed to be targeting those who sided with the British and attacked frontier settlements, but he attacked indiscriminately, attacking even those who sided with the Americans. From Western Pennsylvania, he took his militia into Ohio to attack villages of the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo tribes. Moravian missionaries had thoroughly colonized the Moravian Lenape. They had sworn off conflict and focused on agriculture and their faith in God.

The Lenape had been relocated several times. After increasing pressure from settlers and colonial authorities, Moravian missionaries led Lenape converts westward from Pennsylvania to establish Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem in the Tuscarawas River Valley of Ohio.

During the Revolutionary War, both British and American forces distrusted the Moravian Lenape’s neutrality. Captain Pipe, a pro-British Lenape leader, forcibly relocated them to Wyandot territory near the Sandusky River, fearing they’d be targeted by American militias.

A group of Lenape returned to Gnadenhutten to retrieve stored crops during a harsh winter. The Lenape were starving and needed the crops they’d previously grown before being forced to leave. It was then that they were captured and massacred by Pennsylvania militiamen.

The night before the massacre, the tribe members were separated by gender into two buildings and told they were going to die. No trial. No mercy. They did not scream. They did not beg. They asked only for time to prepare their souls.

Inside the dim mission house, the men knelt in prayer. Psalms echoed through the wooden walls, soft and resolute. In the other building, mothers held their children close, whispering hymns of comfort. Some sang in Munsee, others in Unami. Their voices braided together like the rivers they had once called home.

Outside, the militia drank communion wine stolen from the church. They rifled through the villagers’ belongings — tea sets, pewter, furs, and clothing. Eighty horses would be needed to carry the plunder. Some laughed. Others wept. One soldier, Nathan Rollins, who had lost family in earlier raids, tomahawked nineteen of the Moravians. Afterward, he sat down and cried. “It was no satisfaction,” he said.

Another soldier gave an account of the slaughter:

“One Indian female, who could speak good English, fell upon her knees before Williamson, the Commander, and begged most eloquently and piteously for his protection; but all her supplications and pleadings were unheeded by the heartless and dastardly wretch, who ordered her to prepare for death.”

As Williamson and his unit were returning from the Gnadenhutten massacre, he and his militiamen massacred the peaceful Delaware Indians at Killbuck Island, where forty of them were living. These Indians were allies of the United States and provided intelligence to the Americans at the nearby Fort Pitt. Chief Gelelemend and a few others (mainly women and children), in addition to a Christian Indian named Anthony who was in Pittsburgh, were able to escape by swimming away; they headed to Upper Sandusky and joined the Christian Munsee, with Chief Gelelemend becoming a prominent member among the Moravians. Thirty U.S.-friendly Delaware Indians perished during the massacre at Killbuck Island.

It would be nice to say that there was swift justice for the slaughtered Christian Lenape. None of the Pennsylvania Militia were ever charged for the deaths. Lt. Col. Williamson was elected to several terms as the Sheriff of Washington County, Pennsylvania; however, his attempts at various business ventures failed, and he died in poverty in 1814.

The Moravian Lenape’s journey is a reminder that history is not only measured in battles won or treaties signed, but in the lives uprooted and voices silenced along the way. Their story — of faith betrayed, of relentless displacement, of hymns rising even in the shadow of death — forces us to confront the gap between America’s ideals and its actions. The story of the killing houses has all but been erased from American history and is not generally taught in our schools. We cannot allow the bad parts of our history to be erased so that we can feel better about ourselves; otherwise, we will never learn from these tragic events.