Crawford's Defeat by the Indians

Its depiction of a brave officer's death at the hands of fiendish savages drew wide admiration and scenes of a rolling landscape delighted eastern land speculators.

Though a year elapsed before Indian Atrocities: Narratives of the Perils and Sufferings of Dr. Knight and John Slover was printed, the delay apparently did nothing to reduce its appeal.

It depicts the Battle of the Wabash, which was fought on November 4, 1791, in the Northwest Territory between the United States and the Western Confederacy of American Indians.

For instance, the ballad includes several clichés that were common in popular literature at the time, among them, "come all ye good people," and "I make no great doubt."

In his "Historical Account of the Expedition Against Sandusky," Consul Willshire Butterfield indicates that the vast majority of the volunteers were of Scotch-Irish descent.

According to Pennsylvania folklorist Samuel Preston Bayard, when "Crawford’s Defeat" was first issued, it might have undergone oral variations, depending on who it was exposed to.

For example, "A Song on the Death of Colonel Crafford" is one of a collection of ballads gathered by Mary Olive Eddy of Perrysville, Ashland County, Ohio.

[8] Another version of the ballad, entitled "Crawford's Defeat," is included by Frank Cowan in his "Southwestern Pennsylvania in Song and Story."

[9] A new stanza was inserted, with the intention of honoring local heroes: Other portions of "Crawford’s Defeat" can be found in the Draper Manuscript Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

These fragments are significant in terms of what they reveal regarding the progressive alteration which occurred as some stanzas were forgotten or left out, others stitched together, and wholly new verses composed.

[10] The tendency to remake the ballad is also recognized in a fragment recited to Draper in 1863 by Elizabeth Willis of Brown County, Ohio, who was the daughter of a Crawford volunteer by the name of John Gunsaulus.

In general, eighteenth-century ballads were turned out as quickly as possible and sold to printers in order to capitalize on the public's interest in the sensational.

The army actually crossed the Ohio River on Friday, May 24, 1782, and elected its officers, the volunteers distributing themselves into eighteen companies.

Amid the bloodshed of indiscriminate Indian raids, appeals to Philadelphia for regular troops failed to bring significant reinforcements; the feeble response from the seaboard continuing until the slaughter of Arthur St. Clair's army in 1791, which finally jolted President Washington to take action.

It is based on the familiar melody of "Bonnie Dundee" and includes a brief interlude, "Fortune Favours the Strong," written by Paul Kirk, who plays fiddle on the recording.