Colonel Crawford was a Revolutionary War hero and a friend of George Washington. His heroism and his fortitude under incomprehensible and inhuman torture made him an inspiration.
Now he's another casualty of the Culture War.
Crawford was a surveyor and a war hero. He died when he was captured while trying to lead his men to safety and tortured hideously to death by American Indian insurgents. The usual shallow media stories describe it as "retaliation" for a supposed massacre that he had nothing to do with. Despite the horrifying tortures inflicted on him, which included castration, scalping and slowly roasting him alive, he showed extraordinary courage in the face of terrible suffering.
They then crowded about him, and to the best of my observation, cut off his ears; when the throng had dispersed a little, I saw the blood running from both sides of his head in consequence thereof.
The fire was about six or seven yards from the post to which the Colonel was tied; it was made of small hickory poles, burnt quite through in the middle, each end of the poles remaining about six feet in length. Three or four Indians by turns would take up, individually one of these burning pieces of wood and apply it to his naked body, already burnt black with the powder These tormentors presented themselves on every side of him with the burning fagots and poles. Some of the squaws took broad boards, upon which they would carry a quantity of burning coals and hot embers and throw on him, so that in short time he had nothing but coals of fire and hot ashes to walk upon.
In the midst of these extreme tortures he called to Simon Girty and begged of him to shoot him; but Girty making no answer,..
Col. Crawford, at this period of his sufferings, besought the Almighty to have mercy on hi soul, spoke very low, and bore his torments with the most manly fortitude. He continued in all the extremities of pain for an hour and three-quarters or two hours longer, as near as I can judge, when at last, being almost exhausted, he lay down on his belly; they then scalped him, and repeatedly threw the scalp in my face, telling me that “that was my great captain.” An old squaw (whose appearance every way answered the ideas people entertain of the devil) got a board, took a parcel of coals and ashes and laid them on his back and head, after he had been scalped; he then raised himself upon his feet and began to walk round the post; they next put a burning stick to him, as usual, but he seemed more insensible to pain than before.
Colonel Crawford was a far better man than the left is capable of concieving.