Joseph, a mile or two west of the present city of
Niles, Michigan. It would be ungracious to say that this post was
selected for attack because it was without a garrison. At all
events, the place was duly seized, the Spanish standard was set
up, and possession of "the fort and its dependencies" was taken
in the name of his Majesty Don Carlos III. No effort was made to
hold the settlement permanently, and the British from Detroit
promptly retook it. Probably the sole intention had been to add
somewhat to the strength of the Spanish position at the
forthcoming negotiations for peace.
The war in the West ended, as it began, in a carnival of
butchery. Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and
pillagings were everyday occurrences, and white men were hardly
less at fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of all the
recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by
Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized
by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful
community on the Muskingum. This slaughter of the innocents at
Gnadenhutten ("the Tents of Grace") reveals the frontiersman at
his worst.
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