Simon Girty and Frontier Myth

[Matthew S. Schweitzer]

This is one of the most fascinating articles I have come across relating to the infamous white renegade Simon Girty. Girty had been a scout for the Americans at Fort Pitt in the early years of the Revolution but defected to the British after General Hand's disasterous "Squaw Campaign" in Feb. 1778. Girty went on to lead numerous war parties against the American settlements in Kentucky and earned a terrible reputation that persists to this day, though that trend is starting to shift in order to present Girty in a more balanced light. He lived and fought among the Indians in Ohio nearly all his life and was a well respected warrior. Dressed and painted as an Indian, Girty saw action at nearly all the major engagements along the western frontier during the war.

The following article places Girty in the context of the myth of the American frontier and offers an interesting comparison to the traditional heroes of American frontier legend like Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton.

etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH40/barr40.html

[dwightldowson]

I find this article , " Simon Girty and Frontier Myth". to contain very descriptive information, well stated points and consistent with my research. Racist views do create convenient monsters in our national story. Hats off to those here who provided the article. Thank you very much.

[Matthew S. Schweitzer]

I remember reading C.W.Butterfield's "History of the Girtys" which was one of the earliest books written specifically about Simon Girty (that I am aware of) and it painted a rather dark picture of a man who was vilified as a "white savage". The idea that a white man would not only betray his country (like Benedict Arnold), but also engage in Indian raids on white settlements along the frontier earn him an ignominious place in American history. It is interesting to see how his image has changed with the times...especially as we learn more and become more appreciative of the Indian perspective of the frontier wars, in that they were also fighting for their very survival against what they saw as murderous invaders. But as anyone who has watched the early films on the Indian Wars knows, it has only been quire recently that we have stopped looking at the Indians and their allies as barbaric savages and begun to see them as human beings who were fighting for their own justifiable cause. The article also highlights an interesting aspect of the unique American experience in that our ancestors tended to view the wilderness and its inhabitants as dangerous, savage, uncivilized, and devilishly unchristian. Anyone who lived on the frontier needed to protect themselves from the dangerously degenerative effects of such a place lest they become like the red heathen devils that lived there. This view stretches back all the way to the earliest settlement of Massachusetts and the founding of Plymouth. Hawthorn hints at this in his works and one has only to read the accounts of Mary Rowlandson to see the view of the Indians and their environment that pervaded the early American mind. It is no wonder that men like Girty and his brothers were viewed with such fear and contempt...but that is not to say that they may not have earned some of it by their own deeds. Lawless frontiers tend to breed men who may feel they are freed of any sense of humane behavior, especially toward those he views as enemies. Lewis Wetzel is another character who falls into this category, but his story was treated much differently than Girty's. It is interesting to see how they have evolved over time.