children
died. To keep themselves and their little ones from starving, parties
stole back from Sandusky throughout the winter to gather the corn left
standing in the fields beside the Muskingum.

In March a larger party than usual returned to the deserted villages
with a number of women and children, all unarmed, except for the guns
that the men carried to shoot game. But in February the savages had
fallen upon a lonely cabin and butchered all its inmates with more than
common cruelty, and the whole border was ablaze with fury against the
redskins, whether they called themselves Christians or not. A hundred
and sixty backwoodsmen gathered at Mingo Bottom under the lead of
Colonel David Williamson, who had once disgraced himself among them by
preventing them from killing some Moravian prisoners, and who now seems
to have been willing to atone for his humanity. They marched swiftly to
the Muskingum, where they stole upon the Indians in the cornfields, and
seized their guns. They told them at first that they were going to take
them to Fort Pitt, and at the vote held to decide whether they should
burn their prisoners alive or simply tomahawk and scalp them, there
was really some question of their transfer to Pittsburg. This plan was
favored by the leaders, and it is believed that if Colonel Williamson
could have had his way, it would have been carried out. But there is no
proof of this, and the rest, who were by no means the worst men of the
border, but some of the best, voted by a large majority to kill their
prisoners.

They gave them the night to prepare for death. One poor woman fell on
her knees before Williamson and begged for her life, but the most of
them seem to have submitted without a word. They spent the night in
prayer and singing, and when their butchers sent at daybreak to know if
they were ready, they answered that they had received the assurance of
God's peace. Then the murderers parted the women and children from the
men and shut them up in another cabin, and the two cabins they fitly
called the slaughterhouses. One of them found a cooper's mallet in the
cooper's shop, where the men were left, and saying: "How exactly this
will answer for the business," he made his way through the kneeling
ranks to one of the most fervent of the converts, and struck him down.

While the Indians still prayed and sang, he killed twelve more of them,
and then passed the mallet to another butcher with the words: "My arm
fa