Simon Girty and the Degenerative Myth of the American Frontier, 1783-1900
"...This graphic account of the torture and death of American militia Colonel William Crawford at the hands of Delaware Indians on July 11, 1782, near the Sandusky River in northeastern Ohio, is ... the cornerstone of one of the most pervasive myths of the nineteenth century -- the degenerative saga of Simon Girty, the infamous frontier renegade and so-called "white savage."
The mythical vilification of Simon Girty grew out of the American frontier experience, and, beginning with the dissemination of the Crawford torture story in the 1780s and 1790s, Girty's name became synonymous with savagery and monstrosity by the turn of the century. Like his contemporary, Daniel Boone, Girty literally became a legend in his own lifetime. Unlike Boone, however, Simon Girty did not have a hand in the shaping of his own legend. Instead, numerous intellectual and popular writers and historians conducted Girty's vilification throughout the course of the nineteenth century, elevating Girty to a mythical status rivaled only by Boone among the legends of the trans-Appalachian frontier. In the process, Simon Girty and, more specifically, the literature that constructed his myth, evolved into an embodiment of American paranoia, fear, and guilt regarding the frontier over more than a hundred years of western expansion.
Unlike other legendary figures of American frontier mythology, such as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, or Kit Carson, Simon Girty is not well-known, although his life was far from obscure. Born Simon Girty Jr. in 1741 near present-day Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Girty, like those other mythical figures, lived the sort of life that lent itself readily to legend.2...
To this point, Girty's military service had been competent yet hardly distinguished. His career took an abrupt turn in March 1778 after serving as an interpreter for General Edward Hand's ignominious "Squaw Campaign." In an attempt to seize British munitions believed to be hidden at an Indian settlement on the Cuyahoga River, General Edward Hand led a force of 500 American militia, which included Girty, deep into the Ohio country in February 1778. However, poor organization and adverse weather conditions prevented Hand's detachment from reaching its objective. On the long return march to Fort Pitt, Hand lost control of his unruly troops, which resulted in an attack on a nearby Indian village. Hand would later lament that the Americans cravenly attacked an enemy that "turned out to be four women and a boy . . . of whom [only] one women was saved."3 Girty was disgusted by the perfidy of the Americans and, soon after returning to Fort Pitt, he defected to the British along with fellow scouts Alexander McKee and George Elliot. For the next sixteen years, Girty was employed in the British Indian Department at Fort Detroit, leading countless Indian excursions against the Americans along the Ohio and Kentucky frontier. It was in this capacity that Girty first earned notoriety as a "white savage," for his highly successful raids were always conducted in the Indian manner of war.4...
Girty, like Boone, is thrust into the violent wilderness, but, unlike Boone, willfully forgoes the path of civilization and resorts to savagery by adopting the lifestyle and customs of the Indians. In so doing, he violates the cultural maxims of his race, and disregards the racial segregation of white and Indian as advocated by D.H. Lawrence: "The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness [while] our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indian. The two ways, the two streams, are never to be united." Consistent with Lawrence's paradigm, Simon Girty, by virtue of his decision to abandon the road to civilization, is thus degenerated, in the estimation of his commentators, into sadistic savagery. It is the perception of his actions, rather than the actions themselves, that degrade Girty until he emerges as little more than a satanic emissary hell-bent upon destroying civilization and rioting in the ruins of white culture and society.8...
The man most responsible for the inception of the Girty myth was Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a frontier lawyer, author, and social critic who held little regard for the trappings of frontier society. Brackenridge spent most of his professional life chastising the supposedly decadent morality of frontier communities and beseeching both the federal and state governments to restrain the excessive democracy prevalent on the frontier. A resident of the fledgling frontier community of Pittsburgh in the 1780s, Brackenridge encountered the name of Simon Girty in 1782 when Dr. Knight and John Slover returned to Fort Pitt following their escape from captivity. Brackenridge gained access to these "sole survivors" of Crawford's disastrous expedition against the Delaware towns on the Sandusky River, and interviewed each man concerning their experiences during the campaign. The result was a short tract titled Narratives of a Late Expedition against the Indians, with an Account of the Barbarous Execution of Col. Crawford and the Wonderful Escape of Dr. Knight and John Slover from Captivity. The account appeared in the Philadelphia-based Freeman's Journal and Northern Intelligencer in the spring of 1783 ...
By the 1880s, the cult of the "noble savage" was in full flower. ...
Renegade white men like Simon Girty were credited with the degeneration of the noble Indians into savagery. ...
Thus, these authors accuse Simon Girty of inciting the Americans to massacre the peaceful Christian Indians in an effort to increase the bloodlust of the Ohio tribes. Again, the pacific nature of the Indians is repressed by the supreme savagery of Girty. ...
Race as a cultural construct was the force that bound the differing versions of the Girty myth together as a cohesive whole. The fundamental issue that the builders of the Girty myth grappled with at each stage of its evolution was always the supposed superiority of the white race. The frontier, best conceptualized as a zone of interaction and exchange between two divergent cultures, severely challenged American racial attitudes. The adoption of Indian customs, military reverses against native forces, and the nature of Indian removal all brought into question the morality and virtue of the supposedly superior white race. In responding to these ideological crises, Americans invented a cultural fabrication -- the Simon Girty myth -- that explained away the inconsistencies of their racist dogma, and revitalized the belief that white Americans were God's chosen people. ...
"... [2] Biographies of Simon Girty are scarce, although he appears in numerous border histories and Indian war narratives. The most reliable accounts of his life include Butterfield, History of the Girtys; and, George Washington Ranck, "Girty, the White Indian: A Study in Early Western History," Magazine of American History 15 (March 1886): 33-59. A sympathetic modern account, although less reliable historically, is contained within Eckert's That Dark and Bloody River, throughout...
[4] The Moravian missionary John Heckewelder is credited with being the first author to immortalize Simon Girty as the "wicked white savage." Heckewelder, John G. E., A Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians; from its Commencement, in the year 1740, to the close of the year 1808 (Philadelphia, PA: M'Carty & Davis, 1820), 192-194..."
http://www.essaysinhistory.com/articles/2012/114
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[see also:]
http://www.amazon.com/Textual-Evidence-American-Revolutionary-Turncoat/dp/0773455124/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402179709&sr=1-10
