Yellow Creek massacre
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40°34′25″N 80°40′06″W / 40.573642°N 80.668234°W The Yellow Creek massacre was a brutal killing of several Mingo Indians by Virginia frontiersmen on April 30, 1774. The atrocity occurred across from the mouth of the Yellow Creek on the upper Ohio River in the Ohio Country, near the current site of the Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort. It was the single most important incident contributing to the outbreak of Lord Dunmore's War (May-October 1774). It was carried out by a group led by Jacob Greathouse and Daniel Greathouse. The perpetrators were never brought to justice.
This incident was all the worse because Mingo leader Logan was a good friend of the English-speaking settlers in the region. Chief Logan was away on a hunt but his wife Mellana, his brother Taylaynee (called John Petty by many English speakers), Taylaynee's son Molnah and their sister Koonay were among the slain. Koonay was also the wife of John Gibson , a prominent trader between the English and various Native American groups. At the time of the massacre, these groups were on a trading expedition to the Shawnee.
The Greathouse group lured the Mingo group under Taylaynee into their camp with a promise of liquor and sport. Then they sprung an ambush on the Mingos and shot them dead. After the killings many of the bodies were mutilated. In a particularly brutal killing, Jacob Greathouse ripped open Koonay's abdomen and removed and scalped her unborn son. The only member of the first group who was not killed was Koonay's two-year-old daughter who was eventually returned to the care of her father, John Gibson, after she had for a time been in the care of William Crawford.
Daniel Greathouse died of measles in 1775. Jacob Greathouse was killed in the ambush of William Foreman Company in September 1777. It was Jonathan Greathouse who was killed 1791 while moving his family west. They were abducted by Native Americans on the Ohio River.
References
- A Man of Distinction Among Them, Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier" by Larry L. Nelson, pp. 78-81
- Letters From Yellow Creek 1774
- Alexander Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare pp 148-150
- The History of Yellow Creek, Lawrence J. Fleenor Jr, Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail, Feb. 2004, retrieved 25 March 2014.