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 Moravians 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 Moravians were collecting crops, Pennsylvania militia encountered them and falsely promised the Moravians 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 Moravians 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 Moravians, 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. As they were being killed, the Moravians 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 as Christian martyrs, who are remembered in the Moravian Church. 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 sometime after the massacre". It also includes a large Christian cross dedicated to the Moravian Munsee and Christian Mohican 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.
This is a Cemetary so Please daylight caching only.
To get credit for this virtual please do the following task.
Email Me the Following answers.
1 How Many Miltiamen were opossed to the Massacre?
2. What are the last 2 words on the stone on the Mound?
3. According to the Historical Marker how many survived the Masacre?
4. Post a Picture of the Monument with your log. Pictures with you in them are encouraged but not required.
"The Monument is not the mound or the historical marker. There is a waypoint for the Monument."
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