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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, and one of the final operations of the conflict. Led by Colonel William Crawford, the campaign's 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.〔For a brief overview of raids and counter-raids on the Western front, see Grenier, ''First Way of War'', 146–62.〕 Crawford led about 500 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 already learned of the expedition, however, and gathered a force to oppose the Americans. After a day of indecisive fighting near the Sandusky towns, the Americans found themselves surrounded and attempted to retreat. The retreat turned into a rout, 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, Crawford and an unknown number of his men were captured. The Indians executed many of these captives in retaliation for the Gnadenhutten massacre that occurred earlier in the year, in which about 100 peaceful Indians were murdered by Pennsylvanian militiamen. Crawford's execution was particularly brutal: he was tortured for at least two hours before being burned at the stake. His execution was widely publicized in the United States, worsening the already-strained relationship between Native Americans and European 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 colonists.〔Downes, ''Council Fires'', 191–93, 197–98.〕 The border war escalated in 1777 after British officials in Detroit began recruiting and arming Indian war parties to raid the frontier American settlements.〔Downes, ''Council Fires'', 195.〕 An unknown number of American settlers in present Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania were killed during these raids. The intensity of the conflict increased in November 1777, after enraged American militiamen murdered Cornstalk, the leading advocate of Shawnee neutrality. Despite the violence, many Ohio Indians still hoped to stay out of the war, which proved difficult because they were located directly between the British in Detroit and the Americans along the Ohio River. In February 1778, the Americans launched their first expedition into the Ohio Country in an attempt to neutralize British activity in the region. 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. However, adverse weather conditions prevented the expedition from reaching its objective. 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".〔Downes, ''Council Fires'', 211; Butterfield, ''History of the Girtys'', 47–48; Sosin, ''Revolutionary Frontier'', 111.〕 Despite the attack on his family, Captain Pipe said that he would not seek vengeance.〔Hurt, ''Ohio Frontier'', 69.〕 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 this agreement with the Delawares would enable American soldiers to pass through Delaware territory and attack Detroit, but the alliance deteriorated after the death of White Eyes, the Delaware chief who had negotiated the treaty. Eventually, Captain Pipe turned against the Americans and moved his followers west to the Sandusky River, where he received support from the British in Detroit.〔Calloway, "Captain Pipe", 369. Calloway argues that while Captain Pipe has often been characterized by writers as being "pro-British" early in the war, Pipe was actually an advocate of Delaware neutrality until about 1779.〕 Over the next several years, Americans and Indians 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.〔Grenier, ''First Way of War'', 159. Grenier argues that "The slaughter the Indians and rangers perpetrated was unprecedented."〕 George Rogers Clark of Virginia responded in August 1780 by leading an expedition that destroyed two Shawnee towns along the Mad River, but did little damage to the Indian war effort.〔Nelson, ''Man of Distinction'', 118.〕 As most of the Delawares had by then become pro-British, American Colonel Daniel Brodhead led an expedition into the Ohio Country in April 1781, and destroyed the Delaware town of Coshocton. Clark then recruited men for an expedition against Detroit in the summer of 1781, but Indians decisively defeated one hundred of his volunteers along the Ohio River, effectively ending his campaign. Survivors fled to the militant towns on the Sandusky River.〔Dowd, ''Spirited Resistance'', 82–83.〕 Several villages of Christian Delawares lay between the combatants on the Sandusky River and the Americans at Fort Pitt. The villages were administered by the Moravian missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder. Although pacifists, the missionaries favored the American cause and kept American officials at Fort Pitt informed about hostile British and Indian activity. In September 1781, to prevent further communication between the missionaries and the American military, hostile Wyandots and Delawares from Sandusky forcibly removed the missionaries and their converts to a new village (Captive Town) on the Sandusky River.〔Nelson, ''Man of Distinction'', 121–22; Olmstead, ''Blackcoats among the Delaware'', 37–39.〕 In March 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen under Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson rode into the Ohio Country, hoping to find the warriors who were responsible for raids against Pennsylvania settlers. Enraged by the gruesome murder by Indians of a white woman and her baby,〔Belue, "Crawford's Sandusky Expedition", 417.〕 Williamson's men detained about 100 Christian Delawares at the village of Gnadenhütten. The Christian Delawares (mostly women and children) had returned to Gnadenhütten from Captive Town in order to harvest the crops they had been forced to leave behind. Accusing the Christian Indians of having aided hostile raiding parties, the Pennsylvanians murdered them all by hammer blows to the head.〔Weslager, ''Delaware Indians'', 316.〕 The Gnadenhutten massacre, as it came to be called, would have serious repercussions for the next American expedition into the Ohio Country. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Crawford expedition」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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