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THE MORAVIAN CAMPAIGN.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MORAVIAN CAMPAIGN.

This ever memorable campaign took place in the month of March, 1782. The weather, during the greater part of the month of February, had been uncommonly fine, so that the war parties from Sandusky visited the settlements, and committed depredations earlier than usual. The family of a William Wallace, consisting of wife and five or six children, and John Carpenter taken prisoner. These events took place the latter part of February. The early period at which these fatal visitations of the Indians took place, led to the conclusion that the murderers were either Moravians, or that the warriors had had their winter quarters at their towns on the Muskingum River. In either case, the Moravians being in faults, the safety of the frontier settlements required the destruction of their establishments at that place.

Accordingly between eighty and ninety men were hastily collected together for the fatal enterprise. They rendezvoused and encamped the first night on the Mingo Bottom, on the wet side of the Ohio River. Each man furnished himself with his own arms, ammunition and provisions. Many of them had horses. The second day's {apostrophe added march brought them within one mile of the middle Moravian town, where they had encamped for the night. In the morning the men were divided into two equal parties, one of which was to cross the River about a mile above the town, their videttes vedette also vidette 1. A mounted sentinel stationed in advance of an outpost.
2. A small scouting boat used to observe and report on an opposing naval force.
vidette. Dictionary.com.
The American HeritageŽ Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vidette
(accessed: July 25, 2008) having reported that there were Indians on both sides of the River. The other party was divided into three division one of which was to take a circuit in the woods, and reach the River a little distance below the town, on the east side. Another division was to fall into the middle of the town, and the third at its upper end.

When the party which designed to make the attack on the west side had reached the River, they found no craft to take them over, but something like a canoe was seen on the opposite bank. The River was high with some floating ice. A young man of the name of Slaughter swam the River and brought over, not a canoe, but a trough designed for holding sugar water. This trough could carry but two men at a time. In order to expedite their passage, a number of men stripped off their clothes, put them into the trough, together with their guns, and swam by its side, holding its edges with