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252 a colony sprung from hell L ate in 1781, William Irvine received a petition signed by 105 “inhabitants of the western country.” The petitioners, who included a cross-section of Washington County landowners and squatters, militia captains and volunteers , and even the former Continental Army chaplain at Fort Pitt, expressed their desire “to represent to your Honor the state of our suffering, our apprehensions of further devastation, and to mention what measures we conceive will be necessary for our defenses.” Citing their belief that “the measures which have hitherto been employed for the defense of the country have been defective in plan,” the petitioners laid out an intricate plan of defense involving the construction of a line of blockhouses west of the Ohio River. The blockhouses, which would be spaced seven to ten miles apart, would hold garrisons of twenty-five men each,who could then patrol the region between the blockhouses to make “the approach of the enemy without discovery impossible” and ensure that “should the enemy do mischief, they can no longer be safe when they have left the river.” If Irvine found such measures to be unworkable, the petitioners asked that the general instead launch a “weighty and formidable” campaign against the Indians involving no less than 1,000–1,500 men divided into two columns to strike the Wyandot and Delaware villages at Sandusky and the Shawnee and Mingo towns along the Scioto River.The petitioners offered to provide provisions for the campaign,“provided money is sent into the country to purchase them.”1 The petitioners further requested that Irvine carry “our representation” to the Pennsylvania government and the Continental Congress, and the general dutifully submitted the petition to both governing bodies during his trip to Philadelphia in early 1782. Thus, while the Washington County· 252 · Ten The Ends of the American Earth the ends of the american earth 253 militia was killing the Christian Delawares at Gnadenhutten, the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania and the Continental Congress were reviewing this frontier petition for aid,which also aimed to explain the nature of the frontier experience to policy makers in the East. In this respect, the petition offered an indictment of the perceived indifference of lawmakers “who have left us exposed to the misdeeds of the savages of the wilderness.” They believed easterners had no understanding of the “murder and butchery ” occurring on the frontier, where “hundreds of families have been cut to pieces.” As such, the petitioners, who defined themselves as “living as it were here on the ends of the American earth,” argued that they had been “to a great degree neglected by [their] brethren beyond the mountains.” The results of this neglect were catastrophic. “Our neighbors, our sons, our daughters, our fathers and those to whom we are most nearly related, in every valley and almost every hill, river, and stream within the line of settlement , have been slaughtered in their homes,” the petitioners explained, “and a great tract of country on all sides is wholly laid waste.”The petition concluded with an appeal for understanding: We hope our brethren beyond the mountains will be engaged to give us guidance [and that] they will come under what it is to see our fellow men, our helpless women and children, every week and hour, in their houses, in their fields, lying hacked by the tomahawk, scalped and hurting, their throats cut by the knife of the savages; they will consider what it is to be every moment under apprehensions of this kind of death, or of being reduced to the necessity of quitting our habitations and leaving means of subsistence behind. We hope they will consider this and make it a common cause against the miseries we have to contend with.2 Irvine was clearly moved by the petition. Not only did he place it before Congress and the state government of Pennsylvania, but on his return to Pittsburgh he chastised his wife for being overly critical of the Gnadenhutten massacre: “How little, my love, you must reflect on the hardships and sufferings that thousands undergo, ten thousand fold more grievous than yours. Consider what anguish must the poor wretched mother feel who has a tomahawk stuck into her infant’s head while in her arms; and what is yet worse, some have their infants carried off they know not where nor for what purpose.” While Irvine did not condone the killing of the Christian Delawares, he had, unlike Congress or the Pennsylvania...

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