The Crawford expedition, also known as the Sandusky expedition and Crawford’s Defeat, was a United States campaign from May to June of 1782 on the western front of the American Revolutionary War. The goal was to destroy enemy Native American towns along theSandusky River in the Ohio Country, with the hope of ending Indian attacks on American settlers. Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, mostly from Pennsylvania, deep into American Indian territory. The retreat turned into a rout, but most of the Americans managed to find their way back to Pennsylvania.
About Crawford expedition in brief
The Crawford expedition, also known as the Sandusky expedition and Crawford’s Defeat, was a United States campaign from May to June of 1782 on the western front of the American Revolutionary War. It was one of the final operations of the conflict. The goal was to destroy enemy Native American towns along theSandusky River in the Ohio Country, with the hope of ending Indian attacks on American settlers. Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, mostly from Pennsylvania, deep into American Indian territory. The Indians and their British allies from Detroit had already learned of the expedition, and gathered a force to oppose the Americans. The retreat turned into a rout, but most of the Americans managed to find their way back to Pennsylvania. About 70 Americans were killed; Indian and British losses were minimal. During the retreat, Crawford and an unknown number of his men were captured. 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 Native Americans and European Americans. In 1775, the Ohio River marked a tenuous border between the American colonies and the American Indians of theOhio Country. The border war escalated in 1777 after British officials in Detroit began recruiting and arming Indian war parties to raid the frontier American settlements. Over the next several years, Americans and Indians launched raids against each other, usually targeting settlements. Despite the violence, many Ohio Indians 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.
As a result, many of the Indian towns were destroyed by pro-British American Colonel Daniel Brodhead in 1781, effectively ending his campaign. Several villages of Christian Delawares lay between the combatants at Fort Pitt and Sandusky River. Survivors fled to the villages of Moravian missionaries and John Zeavis, who administered the villages for the next few years. The expedition was one in a long series of raids against enemy settlements which both sides had conducted throughout the war. It ended in 1782 with the defeat of the British-Indian expedition against Detroit in the summer of 1781 but decisively defeated one hundred of one hundred American volunteers along theOhio River, effectively end his campaign to defeat the Indians. It also led to the formation of the U.S. State of Ohio, which became the state of Ohio in 1783. The campaign was followed by the Battle of Sandusky, in which the Americans destroyed two Indian towns on the Ohio and destroyed the Delaware towns of Cocton and Coshocton. The American settlers in present Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania were killed during these raids. The Americans launched their first expedition in February 1778, in an attempt to neutralize British activity in the region. In February 1780, the Americans launched a first expedition into the Ohio country in an attempts to neutralized British activity. In March 1778 the Americans attacked peaceful Delaware Indians, killing one man and a few women and children, including relatives of the Delaware chief Captain Pipe.
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This page is based on the article Crawford expedition published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
