Simon Girty

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Simon Girty (1741 – February 18, 1818) was an American colonial of Scots-Irish ancestry who served as a liaison between the British and their Native American allies during the American Revolution. He was portrayed as a villain in many early history texts of the United States.

Born in Pennsylvania, Girty and his brothers were taken prisoners when still children by the Senecas and adopted by them. It would be 7 years before Girty returned to his family, during which time he had come to prefer the Native American way of life. During the American Revolution, he first sided with the Colonial Revolutionaries, but later served with the Loyalists and thus was viewed by American frontiersmen as a renegade and a turncoat.

Girty was present during the torture and execution of Continental Army Colonel William Crawford by Native American leader Captain Pipe. Two witnesses of this torture and execution survived and were later interviewed regarding these events. One of the witnesses suggested that Girty was a pitiless instigator. The other witness claimed that Girty pled with the Indians on Crawford's behalf until threatened with death himself. The former account was popularized and served to vilify Girty during and after his lifetime.

Girty is also credited with saving the lives of many American prisoners of the natives, often by buying their freedom at his own expense.

After the end of the war, Simon Girty settled in Canada. He retired to his farm near Fort Malden (present-day Amherstburg, Ontario) prior to the outbreak of the War of 1812. Girty's son was killed in that conflict, reportedly while trying to rescue a wounded British officer from the battlefield. Despite popular myths to the contrary, Simon Girty had no part in that war, except as a refugee when the British retreated from Fort Malden. Nor was he killed with Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames, as was widely reported. Over sixty years old, he was increasingly infirm with arthritis and had failing eyesight. Girty returned to his farm after the war, and died completely blind in 1818.

[edit] In literature

• Simon Girty served as one of the jury members in Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster. In that story he is described as "the renegade, who saw white men burned at the stake and whooped with the Indians to see them burn" - thus borrowing from his popular image for the story's dramatic purposes, as all members of that jury, called by Satan, are supposed to be the worst villains of American history.

• Canadian playwright Ed Butts wrote a play entitled The Fame of Simon Girty.
• Simon Girty, the outlaw. An historical romance, Jones, U. J. (Uriah James), Philadelphia: G. B. Zeiber, 1846 (fiction)

[edit] References

• Barr, Daniel. "'A Monster So Brutal': Simon Girty and the Degenerative Myth of the American Frontier, 1783-1900." Essays in History 40, ed. Ed Lengel. University of Virginia, 1998.
• Boyd, Thomas. Simon Girty: The White Savage. New York: 1928.
• Butterfield, Consul Willshire. History of the Girtys. Cincinnati: Clarke, 1890.
• Calloway, Collin. "Simon Girty: Interpreter and Intermediary". In Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers, edited by James A. Clifton, 38–58. Chicago: Dorsey, 1989.
• Ferling, John. "Simon Girty". American National Biography. Ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Leighton, Douglas. "Simon Girty". Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, 1983. Retrieved on October 27, 2006.

[edit] External links

• A short biography of Girty by Dan Beard from Boy Pioneers (1909), a handbook written for boys who were members of the Sons of Daniel Boone. Girty, is as "a cruel, unprincipled man, a traitor to his country, a renegade and leader among our Indian foes, a coarse, low type of a Benedict Arnold—the most hated man on the border."