Though the main armies were lying in a state of inactivity during the present year of pacific negotiation, war still prevailed, and that with unusual severity, on the western frontiers. The Christian Delawares settled on the river Muskinghum, in the present state of Ohio, where they had many flourishing and populous villages, suffered cruelly at this period. Unlike the Indians in general, they had, as followers of Christ, renounced war and the weapons of war, and aimed at preserving throughout these troubled times a perfect neutrality. The hostile Indians, on their way from Detroit and the north-west to the American frontiers, demanded supplies from these Delawares, whose villages lay directly on the war-path, and which they had no means of refusing. Hence they were regarded by the backwoodsmen as “the half-way-house” of the enemy, and compelled, in the autumn of 1781, to abandon their peaceful and prosperous homes, and remove to Sandusky on Lake Erie. The following winter, being reduced to great suffering from the want of provisions, they obtained permission to return to the Muskinghum, to gather in the corn left standing in the fields. Just then some murders being committed, near Pittsburg, by a wandering party of Shawanees, the Delawares, though innocent, were suspected, and about ninety men of the neighbourhood, under the leadership of one Williamson, marched to the Muskinghum to take vengeance. For want of a canoe, they crossed the river in a wooden trough made to hold maple sap, two men at once, and arrived at the centre village, where a party of Christian Indians were gathering in their corn. The Indians of another village were sent for, and a council held to decide on their fate. Williamson referred the matter to his men. Sixteen only voted for mercy, the remainder, holding the faith common on the frontiers, that “an Indian had no more soul than a buffalo,” were for the murder of all. They rushed on their prey, knife in hand, and soon ninety unarmed Indians, avowing, like themselves, faith in Christ, lay bleeding on the ground. Nor did this satisfy them. Flushed with success, continues Hildreth, from whom we take this account, 480 men marched in May, under Colonels Williamson and Crawford, to complete the destruction of the Christian Indians, by assailing Sandusky, which, however, lay in the midst of Indians of a very different character. Waylaid by a hostile party near Sandusky, they were attacked by an overwhelming force, and obliged to retreat with much loss of life. Williamson made his escape, but Crawford and many more fell into the hands of the Indians, who burned him at the stake, together with his son and his son-in-law, in revenge for the murders at the Muskinghum.