The Big Bottom massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by Lenape and Wyandot warriors against American settlers on January 2, 1791.

Following the American Revolutionary War, the United States government was selling land in the Ohio Country, mostly to companies that promised to develop it.

The Ohio Company of Associates sought to provide greater protection for settlers in the Northwest Territory, as the conflicts became more widespread.

The Ohio History Connection manages the three-acre Big Bottom Park site, which has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the Gnadenhutten Massacre of 1782, Revolutionary militia forces had killed ninety-six unarmed Christian Lenape men, women and children, although this group were considered friendly and were neutral in the war.

The Ohio Company of Associates, formed by a group of several New England veterans of the American Revolution, organized for land speculation and development.

Early settlers on these lands followed national guidelines for settling the West and respected the government a great deal, likely because of their role in the Revolution.

In late December 1790, Colonel William Stacy, a war veteran, ice skated 30 miles up the frozen Muskingum River to warn two of his sons at the Big Bottom settlement about the risk of an attack.

[9] Congress offered a 100-acre lot free to any male, eighteen or older, who "would actually settle on the land at the time the deed was conveyed.

Two years later, despite warnings of native American hostility, an association of thirty-six Company members moved north from Marietta to settle "Big Bottom," a large area of level land on the east side of the Muskingum River.

The Big Bottom Massacre marked the outbreak[10] of four years of frontier warfare in Ohio, which only stopped when General Anthony Wayne and the Indian Tribes signed the Treaty of Greenville.