7mm... thanks for the info on the 1780 murdering of those militia, a little puzzling though that the writer states the captives were taken to Kittanning, I had thought that Delaware town on the Alleghany was sacked in the French and Indian War 24 years earlier (see...
www.15122.com/3rivers/History/CITIES/BlanketHill.htm ...note the reference to one "particularly fearsome" Delaware taking out FOURTEEN of the attacking force before they could kill him.) Maybe there was a new Kittanning in the Ohio Country.
I confess my main source on that region are the many books by Alan W. Eckhert, in particular "That Dark and Bloody River", his comprehensive history of the Ohio Valley Indian Wars.
There were indeed hostile Delawares throughout that era, the confusion of displaced tribes in the Ohio region at that time making the question of the specific tribal affiliation of many of the individual Indian combatants somewhat moot. Also, it is useful to remember that by the American Revolution most of those tribes had been exposed to a century or more of White contact and on a material level lived not very much different from their White frontier counterparts.
Eckhert relates that the main Miami tribe town of Kekionga in Ohio boasted plank sidewalks, two saloons and even a whorehouse. The Miami Chief Little Turtle (who later led the largest defeat ever inflicted on the United States by an Indian force; more than 600 US soldiers and militia killed in a single action) at that time lived in a frame house, complete with furniture, piano, mirrors, fine European china and silverware and a six-hole outhouse out back.
With respect to that sad Tull Hill affair, I figure that likely those marauding warriors were already getting the heck out of Dodge. After all the alarm had gone out, the element of surprise lost and likely a militia force would soon take up their trail, some of which militia would have been as good in the woods as any Indian. The way I see it, the war party came across the unfortunate family and killed them on the run, no time to take captives. If human nature held true, likely the killing was done by only some of the party, for reasons of revenge, trophy, meanness of personality or possibly all three.
Birdwatcher
