Making Sense of Torture in Early America

The Artist in American History

Not the faint hearted. Â We head back to early America for this episode, as we explore anti-Indian propaganda in literature from the 1780s. In 1782 Colonel William Crawford led a military expedition into the Ohio Valley. Â His campaign was defeated by the people he had come to attack and the Colonel was taken into captivity, tortured, and executed. The gruesome details of Crawford's death were published in an account written by eyewitness John Knight in a volume published by noted Indian hater Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Â The resultant document is a potent piece of anti-Indian propaganda that is needs to be understood in the troubling context of the time which produced it.