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. The campaign was led by Colonel William Crawford, a former officer in the U.S. Continental Army. Crawford's goal was to destroy enemy Native American towns along the Sandusky River in the Ohio Country, with the hope of ending Native attacks on American settlers. The expedition was one in a series of raids against enemy settlements that both sides had conducted throughout the war.
In late May 1782, Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, mostly from Pennsylvania, deep into Native American territory, with the intention of surprising the Natives. The Natives and their British allies from Detroit had learned of the expedition and gathered a force to oppose the Americans. A day of indecisive fighting took place near the Sandusky towns on June 4, with the Americans taking refuge in a grove that came to be known as "Battle Island." Native and British reinforcements arrived the following day. The Americans, finding themselves surrounded, retreated that night. The retreat became disorganized, with Crawford becoming separated from most of his men. As the retreat became a rout, another skirmish was fought on June 6. Most of the Americans managed to find their way back to Pennsylvania. Around 70 Americans were killed in the fighting and subsequent executions; Native and British losses were minimal.
During the retreat, Crawford and an unknown number of his men were captured. The Natives executed many of these captives in retaliation for the Gnadenhütten massacre that occurred earlier in the year, in which about 100 peaceful Natives 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 Natives and Americans.
Background
When the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, the Ohio River marked a tenuous border between the American colonies and the Natives of the Ohio Country. Ohio Natives—Shawnees, Mingos, Lenapes (Delawares), and Wyandots—were divided over how to respond to the war. Some Native 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.
The border war escalated in 1777 after British officials in Detroit began recruiting and arming Native war parties to raid the frontier American settlements. An unknown number of American settlers in present Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania were killed in these raids. The intensity of the conflict increased in November 1777, after American militiamen murdered Cornstalk, the leading advocate of Shawnee neutrality. Despite the violence, many Ohio Natives 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 that were distributed to Native raiding parties. Adverse weather conditions prevented the expedition from reaching its objective. On the return march, some of Hand's men attacked peaceful Lenapes, killing one man and a few women and children, including relatives of the Lenape chief Captain Pipe (Hopocan). Because only non-combatants had been killed, the expedition became derisively known as the "squaw campaign".
Despite the attack on his family, Captain Pipe said that he would not seek vengeance. Instead, in September 1778, he was one of the signers of the Treaty of Fort Pitt between the Lenapes and the United States. Americans hoped this agreement would enable American soldiers to pass through Lenape territory and attack Detroit, but the alliance deteriorated after the death of White Eyes, the Lenape 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.
