In May 1782, Colonel William Crawford led over 450 volunteers across
Ohio to attack British-allied Native Americans who had been raiding the
frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia for years. An experienced yet
reluctant commander, Crawford and his men clashed with a similarly sized
force of British Rangers and Wyandot, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians on
the Sandusky River in early June. After three days, the Americans were
routed in one of the worst defeats American arms suffered on the
frontier during the American Revolution. During the retreat, Native
American warriors captured dozens of men, including Colonel Crawford.
Many were horrifically tortured to death in revenge for the Gnadenhutten
massacre earlier that spring, when American volunteers bludgeoned nearly
one hundred unarmed and unresisting Delaware Indians to death.
The Battle of Upper Sandusky, 1782 places military operations at the
forefront of events in the waning months of the American Revolution on
the frontier. Importantly, it gives long-deserved credit to Native
American leaders, particularly Dunquat of the Wyandot and Hopocan of the
Delaware, for their roles and commands on the battlefield. For over two
centuries, their victory was attributed to the presence of British
Rangers and a few officers, but Dunquat and Hopocan made the critical
decisions before and after the battle while Native American warriors
constituted the bulk of their army.
The book also reconsiders the effectiveness of American operations.
Crawford was an unenthusiastic commander who had to be talked into
leading the campaign to help prevent a repeat of the Gnadenhutten
massacre. Despite his long service on the frontier and experience in the
Continental Army, Crawford failed to unite his ad hoc command, suffered
from constant indecision, and could not put his own stamp on the
campaign. The unprofessional nature of his army also contributed to its
defeat as it lacked organization, experience, leadership, training, and
standardization.
The presence of Simon Girty, demonized by Americans on the frontier as a
turncoat, and the gruesomeness of Crawford's execution focused stories
about the campaign on those two individuals, rather than the military
operations themselves or the Indians who won the victory. Myths were
accepted as fact. Afterward, interest in the campaign and the combatants
faded. The Battle of Upper Sandusky, 1782 gives Crawford's campaign
its proper place as one of the largest battles between frontier forces
and Native Americans during the Revolutionary War.
