The massacre occurred on March 8, 1782, at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio. The victims were primarily Lenape (Delaware) and Mohican Indians who had converted to Christianity under Moravian missionaries and practiced pacifism, refusing to take sides in the war.

The Gnadenhutten massacre remains one of the most infamous atrocities of the American Revolutionary War and set the pattern for a long, long list, of massacres. The numbers alone can’t get anywhere near the significance and meaning and devastation of these massacres, that took place across the continent.

On Vashon, the Removal of sx̌ʷəbabš or Swift Water People in 1854, the removal of Indigenous Children from Vashon Schools to Indian Boarding Schools, and the Exile and imprisonment of Vashon’s Japanese Americans during WW II echo these events