On Friday, March 19, 1824, when several local settlers gathered for a house-raising, James Hudson, Thomas Harper, James Bridge and Andrew Sawyer all started drinking and discussing the Indian presence at Big Lick. They saw what they thought was an easy way of gaining valuable furs.
A small party of peaceful Indians established a camp about nine miles east of the falls on Fall Creek near the present-day town of Pendleton Indiana to hunt, trap, and collect maple syrup.
The camp was situated within a stone's throw of the south bank of Deer Lick Creek, a small gently flowing stream that was formed by a series of mineral springs and meandered through the southern region of the newly formed Madison County. The land called the Big Lick by both Indians and settlers encompassed most of the swamps and forests that were drained by the headwaters of this creek. Because the rocks in Deer Lick Creek were constantly washed by the mineral-rich water animals frequented the site and the abundance of game in the area was undoubtedly the reason Indians decided to make camp there. They had obtained a large quantity of pelts.
The band included three men known to local settlers as Logan, Ludlow, and M'Doal or Mingo, three women, two boys, and two girls. A federal Indian agent later identified them as a band of Seneca who had come to the area as part of their winter migration from their home base near Lewis Town Ohio a mixed community of Shawnee and Seneca located on the headwaters of the Great Miami River in modern Logan County Ohio.
Ludlow and his band were seated around their camp fire, when they were approached through the woods on the morning of March 22, 1824. M'Doal was away checking his traps. The white men asked Logan and Ludlow to help with a search for some missing horses offering to pay them a fee of 50 cents each.
The white men, who had been drinking heavily for several days were heavily armed with knives and rifles. The group reached an abandoned cabin where they decided to split up and continued through the woods. Logan joined James Hudson, John Bridge Jr, and Andrew Jones, while Ludlow went in a different direction with Thomas Harper, Andrew and Stephen Sawyer, and John
Townsend Bridge Sr.
As Logan moved ahead, the three white men in his group fell behind and Hudson shot him in the back. Bridge Jr struck Logan in the head with his rifle and stabbed him before the men hid his body in the woods.
In the meantime, Harper shot Ludlow in the back as the others in his group watched. Ludlow's body was never recovered.
In an apparent change of heart, Bridge Jr decided he couldn't go on into the camp and expressed remorse. His father called him a coward, and his uncle reminded him of his relatives who had been killed by Indians. Young Bridge agreed to go onward, but not James Hudson. Hudson commented that he would not take part in the killing of women and children.
When the white men calmly walked back into the Indian camp without Logan and Ludlow, the women knew something was wrong and approached the white strangers nervously.
Using tomahawks, knives, and clubs, Harper's party mutilated the bodies of the women and children in order to give the appearance that the Indian men had gotten drunk and murdered their own families. The ground was soaked in blood, littered with pieces of human brain, and strewn with human flesh. The white men's final act was to strip the bodies of the women and children and throw them into a nearby muddy pond. Their gruesome work finished, they plundered the camp of anything of value, met up with Hudson, and started for home. Harper, the ring leader, left immediately for Ohio. This event became known as the Fall Creek Massacre. The massacre received national attention.
Off in the distance, the third Seneca man, upon hearing the gunshots, bolted toward the Indian camp fearing the worst. Breaking through the underbrush and charging onto the scene, he was met with an explosion of gunfire. A bullet pierced his body but did not prevent him from wheeling around and escaping into the woods. The bodies of the Native Americans were discovered the next day by white settlers on their way to a religious meeting.
News of the atrocity spread, and bands of the white settlers pursued the culprits. Within three days of the killings, the authorities had arrested Bridge, his nineteen year old son, the two Sawyer brothers, Hudson, and Jones.
Of the seven white men who participated in the crime, Andrew Jones and Stephen Sawyer asserted their innocence and along with John Adams, became state's witnesses.
James Hudson was tried separately and was hanged on December 1, 1824. His body hung motionless for thirty-five minutes when it was taken down and placed in a coffin. The next day he was buried in the village burial ground north of the falls.
Nerves were raw in the small log jail at the falls by the end of October 1824. Bridge, Jr broke his silence and insisted that his participation in the Indian murders was at the instigation of his father and uncle. John Bridge and Andrew Sawyer tried to kill young Bridge by choking him to death.
When Bridge Jr was found guilty of murder in the first degree as indicted, members of the community soon began circulating a petition that would be presented to the Indiana governor. Ninety-four petitioners requested that John Bridge Jr because of "his youth, ignorance, and the manner which he was led into the transaction" receive a complete pardon.
Andrew Sawyer, John Bridge Sr. and his 18 year old son John Jr were scheduled to hang on June 3, 1825.
In the spring of 1825, Sawyer and the two Bridge men were brought to the place of execution, where each awaited his turn seated on his own coffin. On the day that Sawyer and the two Bridges were to be executed, large crowds, perhaps thousands ncluding Indians from far and near congregated at the falls on Fall Creek. The two bodies hung about thirty minutes while the crowd, and young John Bridge Jr stood visibly shaken by the drama. Afterward, the bodies were taken down and placed in open coffins
The noose was adjusted about the neck of the younger Bridge. Having just witnessed the execution of his father and uncle, he was nearly demented with grief and fear. At the last minute, Governor James B Ray, after a most spectacular ride, arrived with a pardon for the youth. Bridge could take no more and fainted.
This was the first documented case in which white Americans were convicted, sentenced to capital punishment, and executed for the murder of Native Americans under U.S. law.
In 1872 an old man came to visit the town of Pendleton. Nobody paid much attention to him as he quietly walked the land around the falls and visited the local cemetery. Perhaps the heavily bearded man who was dressed in a black suit and necktie may have even been out looking around the Big Lick. He did not buy anything, talk to anyone, or need anything. He seemed to be on a personal quest. The somber stranger, sixty-six-year-old John Bridge, Jr., did not stay in Madison County long and departed town as quietly as he had arrived. He would die at his home in Delphi, Indiana, four years later in April of 1876.
On the spot where the executions were held rests this large white stone commemorating the event. It is across from the Pendleton Historical Museum on Fall Creek within the city park boundaries. The hill whereon stood both white settlers and Native Americans as witnesses is to the stone's left and is now the location of beautiful Victorian homes.
A stone marker in Pendleton's Fall Creek Park commemorates the site of the hangings.
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