Tuscarawas

The Tuscarawas River drains the wooded country of eastern Ohio, flowing south towards the Muskingum. Near its headwaters, an overland carrying path links its watershed to the Cuyahoga and Lake Erie. Along the river, Lenape communities and Moravian missionaries founded settlements including Schoenbrunn and Gnadenhutten in 1772, seeking a place to live and worship together.

During the American Revolution, both sides distrusted the Christian Lenape's neutrality. In 1781 a pro-British war party forced them to move to the Sandusky River. The following spring, some returned to Gnadenhutten to gather crops left in their fields. Pennsylvania militiamen seized them and killed more than ninety men, women and children, despite their having taken no part in the attacks the militia had sought to avenge.