Crawford expedition

Crawford expedition
Part of the American Revolutionary War
Burning of Colonel Crawford, Frank Halbedel, 1915
Date May 25 1782 – June 12 1782 Location Ohio Country (present U.S. state of Ohio) Result American Indian and British victory
Belligerents
American Indians, Great Britain	Pennsylvania militia (United States)
Commanders and leaders
William Caldwell Captain Pipe Matthew Elliott Blacksnake Alexander McKee	William Crawford † David Williamson Gustave Rosenthal
Strength
340 American Indians 100 British rangers	480 mounted militia
Casualties and losses
6 killed, 11 wounded	~70 killed, including many who were captured and executed

The Crawford expedition, also known as the Sandusky expedition and Crawford's Defeat, was a 1782 campaign on the western front of the American Revolutionary War, one of the final U.S. operations of the conflict. Led by Colonel William Crawford, the goal was to destroy enemy American Indian towns along the Sandusky River in the Ohio Country, with the hope of ending Indian attacks on American settlers. The expedition was one in a long series of raids against enemy settlements which both sides had conducted throughout the war.

Crawford led 480 volunteer militiamen, mostly from Pennsylvania, deep into American Indian territory, with the intention of surprising the Indians. The Indians and their British allies from Detroit had learned about the expedition in advance, however, and brought about 440 men to the Sandusky to oppose the Americans. After a day of indecisive fighting, the Americans found themselves surrounded and attempted to retreat. The retreat turned into a route, but most of the Americans managed to find their way back to Pennsylvania. About 70 Americans were killed; Indian and British losses were minimal.

During the retreat, Colonel Crawford and an unknown number of his men were captured. Indians were outraged by the Gnadenhütten massacre earlier in the year, in which about one hundred Indian non-combatants were murdered by Pennsylvania militiamen. In retaliation, the Indians executed many of the American captives. Crawford's punishment was particularly brutal: he was tortured for at least two hours before being burned at the stake. Although the war ended shortly thereafter, Crawford's execution was widely publicized in the United States, worsening the already strained relationship between Indians and Americans.

Background

When the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, the Ohio River marked a tenuous border between the American colonies and the American Indians of the Ohio Country. Ohio Indians—Shawnees, Mingos, Delawares, and Wyandots—were divided over how to respond to the war. Some Indian leaders urged neutrality, while others entered the war because they saw it as an opportunity to halt the expansion of the American colonies and to regain lands previously lost to the Americans.

The border war escalated in 1777 after British officials in Detroit began recruiting and arming Indian war parties to raid American settlements. Unknown numbers of American settlers in present Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania were killed in these raids. The intensity of the conflict increased after enraged American militiamen murdered Cornstalk, the leading advocate of Shawnee neutrality, in November 1777. Despite the violence, many Ohio Indians still hoped to stay out of the war. This was a difficult task because they were located directly between the British in Detroit and the Americans along the Ohio River.

In an attempt to neutralize British activity in the region, in February 1778 the Americans launched their first expedition into the Ohio Country. General Edward Hand led 500 Pennsylvania militiamen on a surprise winter march from Fort Pitt towards the Cuyahoga River, where the British stored military supplies which were distributed to Indian raiding parties. Adverse weather conditions prevented the expedition from reaching its objective, however. On the return march, some of Hand's men attacked peaceful Delaware Indians, killing one man and a few women and children, including relatives of the Delaware chief Captain Pipe. Because only non-combatants had been killed, the expedition became derisively known as the "squaw campaign".

Despite the attack on his family, Captain Pipe said that he would not seek vengeance. Instead, in September 1778, he was one of the signers of the Treaty of Fort Pitt between the Delawares and the United States. Americans hoped that this agreement with the Delawares would enable American soldiers to pass through Delaware territory and attack Detroit. However, White Eyes, the Delaware leader who had negotiated the treaty, was murdered in 1778 by American militiamen. Captain Pipe eventually abandoned the American alliance and moved west to the Sandusky River, where he began receiving support from the British in Detroit.

Over the next several years of the war, both sides launched raids against each other, usually targeting settlements. In 1780, hundreds of Kentucky settlers were killed or captured in a British-Indian expedition into Kentucky. The Virginian George Rogers Clark responded by leading an expedition in August 1780 which destroyed two Shawnee towns along the Mad River, but doing little damage to the Indian war effort. Following this raid, Clark recruited men for an expedition to Detroit, but a detachment of one hundred of his men were killed or captured along the Ohio River by Indians, ending his campaign. With most Delawares now pro-British, in April 1781 American Colonel Daniel Brodhead led an expedition into the Ohio Country and destroyed the Delaware town of Coshocton. Survivors fled to the militant towns on the Sandusky.

Between the combatants on the Sandusky River and the Americans at Fort Pitt were several villages of Christian Delawares. The villages were administered by the Moravian missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder. Although non-combatants, the missionaries favored the American cause and kept American officials at Fort Pitt informed about hostile British and Indian activity. In response, in September 1781, Wyandots and Delawares from Sandusky forcibly removed the Christian Delawares and the missionaries to a new village (Captive Town) on the Sandusky River.

In March 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen under Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson rode into the Ohio Country, hoping to find the Indian warriors who were responsible for ongoing raids against Pennsylvania settlers. Enraged by the gruesome murder by Indians of a white woman and her baby, Williamson's men detained about 100 Christian Delawares at the village of Gnadenhütten. The Christian Delawares had returned to Gnadenhütten from Captive Town in order to harvest the crops that they had been forced to leave behind. Accusing the Christian Indians of having aided Indian raiding parties, the Pennsylvanians killed the 100 Christian Indians—mostly women and children—with hammer blows to the head. The Gnadenhütten massacre, as it came to be called, would have serious repercussions for the next American expedition into the Ohio Country.

Planning the expedition

Lacking the resources to conduct a Continental Army campaign, General William Irvine helped volunteers launch the Sandusky expedition.

In September 1781, General William Irvine was appointed commander of the Western Department of the Continental Army, which was headquartered at Fort Pitt. Although a British army under Lord Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781, the war on the western frontier continued. Irvine quickly learned that the Americans living on the frontier wanted the army to launch an expedition against Detroit in order to end ongoing British support of American Indian war parties. Irvine investigated the matter, and wrote to George Washington, the American commander-in-chief, on December 2 1781:

It is, I believe, universally agreed that the only way to keep Indians from harassing the country is to visit them. But we find, by experience, that burning their empty towns has not the desired effect. They can soon build others. They must be followed up and beaten, or the British, whom they draw their support from, totally driven out of their country. I believe if Detroit was demolished, it would be a good step toward giving some, at least, temporary ease to this country.

Washington agreed with Irvine's assessment that Detroit needed to be captured or destroyed in order to end the war in the west. In February 1782, Irvine sent Washington a detailed plan for an offensive. Irvine estimated that with 2,000 men, five cannons, and a supply caravan, he would be able to capture Detroit. Washington replied that the bankrupt U.S. Congress would be unable to finance such a campaign, however, writing that "offensive operations, except upon a small scale, can not just now be brought into contemplation."

With no resources available from either Congress or the Continental Army, Irvine granted permission for volunteers to organize their own offensive. Detroit was too far and too strong for a small-scale operation, but militiamen such as David Williamson believed that an expedition against the American Indian towns on the Sandusky River was feasible. It would be a low budget affair: each volunteer had to provide his own horse, rifle, ammunition, rations, and other equipment at his own expense. Their only payment would be an exemption from two months of militia duty, plus whatever plunder was taken from the Indians. Because of ongoing Indian raids—the wife and children of a Baptist minister were killed and scalped in western Pennsylvania on May 12, 1782—there was no shortage men willing to volunteer.

Because of Washington's reservations, Irvine did not believe he was authorized to lead the expedition himself, but he did what he could to influence the planning of the campaign. Irvine wrote detailed instructions for the (as yet unselected) commander of the volunteers:

The object of your command is, to destroy with fire and sword (if practicable) the Indian town and settlement at Sandusky, by which we hope to give ease and safety to the inhabitants of this country; but, if impracticable, then you will doubtless perform such other services in your power as will, in their consequences, have a tendency to answer this great end.

Organizing the expedition

Colonel William Crawford, a longtime friend of George Washington and a veteran Indian fighter, came out of retirment to lead the Sandusky expedition.

On May 20, 1782, the volunteers began gathering at the rendezvous point at Mingo Bottom (present Mingo Junction, Ohio), on the Indian side of the Ohio River. They were mostly young men of Irish and Scots-Irish ancestry, and came primarily from Washington and Westmoreland counties in Pennsylvania. Given the daunting nature of the task ahead of them, many of the volunteers made out their "last wills and testaments" before leaving.

Because this was a volunteer expedition and not a regular army operation, the men elected their officers. The two candidates for the top position were David Williamson, the militia colonel who had commanded the Gnadenhütten expedition, and William Crawford, a Continental Army colonel who was not then on active duty. Crawford, a friend and land agent of George Washington, was an experienced soldier and frontiersman. He was a veteran of these kinds of operations, having destroyed Mingo villages during Dunmore's War in 1774. He had also taken part in the "squaw campaign" debacle. The fifty year-old Crawford had been reluctant to volunteer, but he did so at the request of General Irvine. Williamson, although popular with the militia, was in disfavor with regular army officers like Irvine because of the Gnadenhütten massacre. Irvine made it known that he favored Crawford's election as commander. The election process was acrimonious. It was a close vote: Crawford received 235 votes to Williamson's 230. Colonel Crawford took command, and Williamson became his second-in-command with the rank of major.

At Crawford's request, Irvine allowed Dr. John Knight, a regular army officer, to accompany the expedition as surgeon. Another volunteer from Irvine's staff was a young man who called himself "John Rose". Rose, a foreigner with an aristocratic bearing, offered to serve as Crawford's aide-de-camp. Unknown to the men of the expedition, and even to General Irvine until several years later, "John Rose" was actually Baron Gustave Rosenthal, a nobleman from the Russian empire who had fled to America after killing another man in a duel. Rosenthal was perhaps the only Russian to fight on the American side of the war.

Journey to the Sandusky

Route of the Crawford expedition.

The 480 volunteers left Mingo Bottom on May 25, 1782, carrying 30 days of provisions. In planning the operation, General Irvine estimated that the 175-mile journey to Sandusky would take seven days. The expedition began with high expectations. Some of the men boasted that they intended "to extermenate the whole Wiandott Tribe."

As was often the case with militia, who were not professional soldiers, there were difficulties maintaining military discipline. The men wasted their rations, and often fired their muskets at wild game, despite orders to the contrary. They were slow to break camp in the mornings, and often skipped their turn at guard duty. Despite his qualifications, Crawford turned out to be a less capable leader than expected. Rose wrote that in councils Crawford "speaks incoherent, proposes matters confusedly, and is incapable of persuading people into his opinion...." The column often halted while the commanders debated what to do next. Some of the volunteers began to desert.

The journey through the Ohio Country was mostly through woods. They initially marched in four columns, but the thick underbrush compelled them to form a single group. On June 3, the volunteers emerged into the open country of the Sandusky Plains, a prairie region just south of the Sandusky River. The next day they reached the Wyandot village where they expected to find the enemy, only to discover that the log huts had been abandoned. The officers held a council of war. Some argued that the abandoned village meant that the Indians knew about the expedition and were concentrating their forces elsewhere. Some of the men expressed a desire to call off the expedition and return home. The officers decided to continue the march for that day, but then to go no further. Just as the council was ending, a scout came in with the news that a large force of Delawares and Wyandots was nearby and was advancing towards the Americans.

British and Indian preparations

While planning the expedition, General Irvine had advised Crawford that, "Your best chance of success will be, if possible, to effect a surprise" against Sandusky. The British and Indians, however, had learned about the expedition even before Crawford's army had left Mingo Bottom. Thanks to information obtained from a captured American soldier, on April 8, British agent Simon Girty relayed to his superiors at Detroit an accurate report of Crawford's mission.

Thus forewarned, officials of the British Indian Department in Detroit prepared for action. The commander at Detroit was Major Arent Schuyler DePeyster, who reported to Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Governor General of British North America. DePeyster used agents such as Girty, Alexander McKee, and Matthew Elliott, all of whom had close relations with American Indians, to coordinate British and Indian military actions in the Ohio County. In a council at Detroit on May 15, DePeyster and McKee informed a gathering of Indians about the Sandusky expedition and advised them to "be ready to meet them in a great body and repulse them." McKee was sent to the Shawnee villages in the Great Miami River valley to recruit warriors to oppose the American invasion. Captain William Caldwell was dispatched to Sandusky with a company of mounted Butler's Rangers as well as a number of Indians from the Detroit area supervised by Matthew Elliott.

Unbeknownst to the Americans, therefore, Indian scouts had been watching for the expedition from the very beginning. As soon as Crawford's army was spotted moving into the Ohio Country, the alarm was sent back to Sandusky. As the Americans approached, the women and children from the Wyandot and Delaware towns were hidden nearby, while British fur traders packed up their goods and hurried out of town. On June 4, Captain Pipe brought 200 Delawares to the Sandusky Plains to oppose the Americans. Reinforcements were nearby, although the Shawnees from the south were not expected to arrive until the next day.

Battle of Sandusky

Depiction of the action at "Battle Island" by Frank Halbedel, c. 1880.

June 4

The first battle of the Crawford expedition began at about 2 p.m. on June 4, 1782. Having finally found the enemy on the Sandusky Plains, the Americans formed up and moved towards the Delawares, who had taken cover in a grove of trees about a mile away. Crawford ordered men to dismount and drive the Indians out of the woods. After some hot firing, the Americans took possession of the grove, later known as "Battle Island".

After the Americans had driven Captain Pipe's Delawares out of the woods and onto to prairie, the Delawares were reinforced by Wyandots under Zhaus-sho-toh. Also arriving on the scene was Elliott, who coordinated the actions between the Delawares and Wyandots. Pipe and the Delawares skillfully outflanked the American position on the right, and then attacked them in the rear. Some Indians crept up to the American lines in the tall grass of the prairie; the Americans countered this by climbing trees in order to get a better shot. After three and a half hours of intense fighting, the Indians gradually broke off the attack with the coming of nightfall. That night, both sides slept with arms at the ready, and surrounded their positions with large fires in order to prevent surprise night attacks. After the first day of fighting, the Americans had 5 killed and 19 wounded; while the British and Indians had 5 killed and 11 wounded. The Americans scalped some of the Indian dead.

June 5

Firing began again on the morning of June 5. This time, however, the Indians did not close, but instead remained at a distance of two or three hundred yards. The long range firing inflicted little damage to either side. The Americans believed that the Indians held back because they had suffered greatly on the previous day, but Indians were actually buying time, waiting for reinforcements. Instead of ordering an immediate attack, Crawford planned to make a surprise attack on the Indians after nightfall. Although surrounded, the Americans were still confident of success.

That afternoon, however, the Americans were dismayed when they noticed that there were about 100 British rangers in the battle. Unaware that the expedition had been thoroughly monitored by the British and Indians from the outset, the Americans were surprised that British troops from Detroit had been able to make it to the battle on such short notice. While the Americans were discussing this development, Alexander McKee arrived with about 140 Shawnees under the leadership of Blacksnake. The Shawnees took up a position to Crawford's south, effectively surrounding the Americans. With so many enemies gathering all around them, the Americans decided that they would retreat after nightfall rather than make a stand. The dead were buried and the severely wounded placed on biers in preparation for the withdrawal.

Retreat

On the night of June 5, the Americans began to silently withdraw from the battlefield. Indian sentries detected the movement of the American army and attacked, creating much confusion. Many men became lost in the darkness, separating into small groups. In the chaos, Crawford became concerned about the whereabouts of his family members—his son John, his son-in-law William Harrison, and his nephew, also named William Crawford. With Knight, Crawford remained on the battlefield while his men passed, calling out for his missing relatives but not finding them. Crawford became angry when he realized that the militia, contrary to his orders, had left some of the wounded behind.

After all the men had passed, Crawford and Knight, with two other stragglers, finally set off. One of the men, who was elderly, lagged behind and was finally lost; Knight believed he had been killed or captured by Indians. Their horses were in poor condition, and Crawford and his men eventually had to leave them behind. The next day, June 6, they fell in with three more stragglers, one of them seriously wounded. On June 7, Crawford and the men were traveling south along the Sandusky River in present Crawford County, Ohio, about 28 miles east of the battlefield, when they came upon a party of Delawares. Knight raised his gun, but Crawford told him not to fire. As it turned out, Crawford and Knight knew some of these Delawares, who were a part of band led by a war chief named Wingenund. While Crawford and Knight were taken prisoner, the four other Americans made their escape, but two of them were later killed and scalped.

Meanwhile, as the sun was coming up on June 6, about 300 Americans had eluded capture and made it to the abandoned Wyandot town. Because Colonel Crawford was missing and presumed killed or captured, Williamson was now in command. Fortunately for the Americans, the pursuit of the retreating army had been disorganized because Caldwell, the overall commander of the British and Indian forces, had been shot in the legs during the battle. As the retreat continued, a force of Indians finally caught up with the main body of Americans at about 2:00 p.m. On the eastern edge of the Sandusky Plains, near a branch of the Olentangy River, the Indians attacked from all sides. In the "Battle of the Olentangy", three American were killed and eight were wounded; Indian losses are unknown.

The Americans buried their dead and resumed the retreat, with the Indians and British Rangers pursing and firing from a distance. Williamson and Rose worked to keep the retreat orderly, hoping to prevent a rout, which would have made them easy targets. The Americans retreated more than 30 miles, some of them on foot, before making camp. The retreat resumed the next day, and two Americans were captured and presumably killed, but the Indians and Rangers finally abandoned the pursuit. The main body of Americans reached Mingo Bottom on June 13; many others stragglers arrived in small groups at different times. In all, about 70 Americans never returned from the expedition.

Captives

Captives taken by American Indians during the American Revolutionary War could be ransomed to the British in Detroit, adopted into the tribe, or killed. After the Gnadenhütten massacre, however, Ohio Indians had resolved to execute all American prisoners who fell into their hands. The exact number of Americans who were executed after the Sandusky expedition is not known, because the details were usually recorded only if one the prisoners survived to tell the story.

Prisoners were sometimes quickly executed, but some were tortured before being killed. The public torture of prisoners was a traditional ritual in many American Indian tribes of the Eastern Woodlands at the time. Captives might have to endure excruciating torture for hours and even days. Although American frontiersmen often killed Indian prisoners, they regarded Indian culture as barbaric because of their use of torture. Because torturing and killing prisoners was controversial, the British Indian Department used its influence among the Indians to discourage this activity.

Crawford's execution

Crawford and Knight were taken to Wingenund's camp on June 7, where there were nine other prisoners. On June 11, Captain Pipe painted the faces of the prisoners black, which was the sign that they were to be put to death. The prisoners were marched to the Delaware town on Tymochtee Creek, near the present village of Crawford, Ohio. Four of the prisoners were killed with tomahawks and scalped along the way. When the party stopped, the seven remaining prisoners were made to sit, with Crawford and Knight a short distance away from the other five. A group of Delaware women and boys killed the other five with tomahawks, beheading one of them. After scalping the bodies, the boys slapped the bloody scalps in the faces of Crawford and Knight.

File:Ohio Historical Marker at the Colonel William Crawford Burn Site Monument.jpg

The Ohio Historical Society's marker at the Colonel Crawford Burn Site Monument in Wyandot County, Ohio.

A crowd of about one hundred men, women, and children had gathered at the Delaware village to witness the execution of the American commander. A few Wyandots were present, including Dunquat, the Wyandot "Half-King", as well as Simon Girty and Matthew Elliott. Captain Pipe, who knew Crawford from the 1778 Fort Pitt treaty, made a speech to the crowd, pointing out that Crawford had been captured while leading many of the men who had committed the Gnadenhütten murders. Crawford had not taken part in the massacre, but he had taken part in the "squaw campaign" in which Pipe's family members had been killed, and Pipe may have mentioned this as well. After Pipe's speech, Crawford was stripped naked and beaten. His hands were tied behind his back, and a rope tied from his hands to a post in the ground. A large fire was lit about six or seven yards from the pole. Indian men shot charges of gunpowder into Crawford's body, and then cut off his ears. Crawford was poked with burning pieces of wood from the fire, and hot coals were thrown at him, which he was compelled to walk on. Crawford begged Girty to shoot him, but Girty replied that he had no gun. After about two hours of torture, Crawford fell down. He was scalped, and a woman poured hot coals over his head, which revived him. He began to walk about insensibly as the torture continued. After he finally died, his body was burned.

The next day, Knight was marched towards the Shawnee towns, where he was to be put to death. He escaped along the way after striking his captor with a log. He traveled across country on foot, finally reaching Fort Pitt on July 4.

Wapatomica executions

On the same day that Crawford was executed, at least six American prisoners were taken to the Shawnee town of Wapatomica on the Mad River, in present Logan County, Ohio, in two different groups. These prisoners included Crawford's son-in-law, William Harrison, and his nephew, the younger William Crawford. Four of the six, including Harrison and Crawford, were painted black. The villagers, made aware of the coming of prisoners by a messenger, formed two lines. The prisoners were made to run the gauntlet towards the council house, about 300 yards distance. As the prisoners ran by, the villagers beat them with clubs, concentrating on those who had been painted black. The blackened prisoners were then hacked to death with tomahawks and cut into pieces. Their heads and limbs were stuck on poles outside the town. One of the prisoners, a scout named John Slover, was taken to Mac-a-chack (near present West Liberty, Ohio), but escaped before he could be burnt. Still naked, he took a horse and rode it until it gave out, and then ran on foot, reaching Fort Pitt on July 10, the last survivor to come in.

Aftermath

The failure of the Crawford expedition caused alarm along the American frontier, as many Americans feared that the Indians would be emboldened by their victory and launch a new series of raids. Even more defeats for the Americans were yet to come, and so for Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains, 1782 became known as the "Bloody Year". On 13 July 1782, the Mingo leader Guyasuta led about 100 Indians and several British volunteers into Pennsylvania, destroying Hannastown and killing nine and capturing twelve settlers. It was the hardest blow dealt by Indians in Western Pennsylvania during the war.

In Kentucky, the Americans went on the defensive while Caldwell, Elliott, and McKee with their Indian allies prepared a major offensive. In July 1782, more than 1,000 Indians gathered at Wapatomica, but the expedition was called off after scouts reported that George Rogers Clark was preparing to invade the Ohio Country from Kentucky. The reports turned out to be false, but Caldwell still managed to lead 300 Indians into Kentucky and deliver a devastating blow at the Battle of Blue Licks in August. With peace negotiations between the United States and Great Britain making progress, Caldwell was ordered to cease further operations. Similarly, General Irvine had gotten permission for a Continental Army expedition into the Ohio Country, but this was cancelled. In November, George Rogers Clark delivered the final blow in the Ohio Country, destroying several Shawnee towns, but inflicting little damage on the inhabitants.

News of the pending peace treaty arrived late in 1782. In the final treaty, the Ohio Country, the land that the British and Indians had successfully defended, had been signed away by Great Britain to the United States. Great Britain had not consulted the Indians in the peace process, and the Indians were nowhere mentioned in treaty's terms. For the Indians, the struggle would soon resume in the Northwest Indian War, though this time without their British allies.

Crawford's torture and death were widely publicized in the United States, increasing racial antipathy towards American Indians. When the narratives of Knight and Slover were first published in 1783, the publisher made explicit his intentions in his introductory comments:

But as they [the Indians] still continue their murders on our frontier, these Narratives may be serviceable to induce our government to take some effectual steps to chastise and suppress them; as from hence, they will see that the nature of an Indian is fierce and cruel, and that an extirpation of them would be useful to the world, and honorable to those who can effect it.

In the American national memory, the lurid details of Crawford's death usually overshadowed American atrocities like the Gnadenhütten massacre. The image of the savage Indian became a stereotype; the peacekeeping efforts of men like Cornstalk and White Eyes were all but forgotten.

References

Articles

• Belue, Ted Franklin. "Crawford's Sandusky Expedition". The American Revolution, 1775–1783: An Encyclopedia 1: 416–420. Ed. Richard L. Blanco. New York: Garland, 1993. ISBN 082405623X.
• Calloway, Colin G. "Captain Pipe." American National Biography. 4: 368–69. Ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0195127838.
• Clifton, James A. "Dunquat." American National Biography. 7: 105–07. Ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0195127862.
• Quaife, Milo Milton. "The Ohio Campaigns of 1782". Mississippi Valley Historical Review 17, no. 4 (March 1931): 515–529.

Books

• Anderson, James H. Colonel William Crawford. Originally published in Ohio Archæological and Historical Quarterly, vol 6. Columbus: Ohio Archæological and Historical Publications, 1898. Address delivered at the site of the Crawford monument on 6 May 1896.
• Boatner, Mark Mayo, III. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History, 2nd ed. 2 vols. Edited by Harold E. Selesky. Detroit: Scribner's, 2006. ISBN 0684315130.
• Butterfield, Consul Willshire. An Historical Account of the Expedition against Sandusky under Col. William Crawford in 1782. Cincinnati: Clarke, 1873.
• Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521471494 (hardback).
• Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8018-4609-9.
• Downes, Randolph C. Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley until 1795. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1940. ISBN 0-8229-5201-7 (1989 reprint).
• Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814. Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-84566-1.
• Horsman, Reginald. Matthew Elliott, British Indian Agent. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964.
• Howard, James H. Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and its Cultural Background. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981. ISBN 0821404172.
• Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-253-33210-9 (hardcover); ISBN 0-253-21212-X (1998 paperback).
• Nelson, Larry L. A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999. ISBN 0873386205 (hardcover).
• Nester, William. The Frontier War for American Independence. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004. ISBN 0811700771.
• Sipe, C. Hale. The Indian Chiefs of Pennsylvania. Orig. pub. 1927. Wennawoods reprint, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1999.
• Sosin, Jack M. The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763–1783. New York: Holt, 1967.
• Sugden, John. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. ISBN 0803242883.
• Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, ed. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. ISBN 0806120568. Maps which locate Indian villages and Crawford's route.
• Trigger, Bruce. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, 1969. ISBN 030795508.
• Weslager, C. A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972. ISBN 0-8135-1494-0.

Further reading

Published primary sources

• Brackenridge, H. H., ed. Indian Atrocities: Narratives of the perils and sufferings of Dr. Knight and John Slover, among the Indians during the revolutionary war, with short memoirs of Col. Crawford & John Slover. Cincinnati, 1867. Knight and Slover's narratives, often reprinted under various titles.
• Butterfield, C.W., ed. Washington-Irvine correspondence: The official letters which passed between Washington and Brig-Gen. William Irvine and between Irvine and others concerning military affairs in the West from 1781 to 1783. Madison, Wisconsin: Atwood, 1882.
• Rosenthal, John Rose, Baron de. Journal of a Volunteer Expedition to Sandusky. 1894. New York Times, 1969.

Articles

• Bailey, De Witt. "British Indian Department". The American Revolution, 1775–1783: An Encyclopedia 1: 165–77. Ed. Richard L. Blanco. New York: Garland, 1993. ISBN 082405623X.
• Brown, Parker B. "Reconstructing Crawford's Army of 1782". Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 65 (January 1982): 17–36.
• ———. "The Fate of Crawford Volunteers Captured by Indians Following the Battle of Sandusky in 1782". Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 65 (October 1982): 323–39.
• ———. "The Battle of Sandusky: June 4–6, 1782". Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 65 (April 1982): 115–151.
• ———. "The Search for the William Crawford Burn Site: An Investigative Report". Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 68 (January 1985): 43–66.

Books

• Allen, Robert S. His Majesty's Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defense of Canada. Toronto: Dundurn, 1992. ISBN 1550021842.
• Mann, Barbara Alice. George Washington's War on Native America. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2005. ISBN 0275981770.
• Olmstead, Earl P. Blackcoats among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier. Kent State University Press, 1991. ISBN 0873384229.
• Wallace, Paul A. W., ed. Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder. Originally published 1958, Wennawoods reprint 1998.
• Wetter, Mardee de. Incognito, An Affair of Honor. Barbed Wire Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1881325822. A biography of Baron Rosenthal ("John Rose").