LEONARD DEN --
               SERGEANT


Recorded in the journal of Captain John Van Etten:

"My Serj’t Leonard Den, with 2 men of, for subsistence to Sam’ll Depues, having got within about 2 milds of s’d Depues, s’d Sej’t was shot, the 2 men Return’d and inform’d me of it, where upon an alarm was beat, and the neighbours all gather’d to the fort; myself with 7 men went of immediately and found him Kill’d and Scalp’d, and intirely Strip’d and shamefully cut, that his bowels was Spred on the Ground, I immediately sent of 3 men to s’d Depues for a Wagon, which being come we carried him to s’d Depues, where we kept guarde that night."


It wasn't sufficient that Sgt. Leonard Den was killed and scalped, he also had to be gutted and disemboweled.  Such was the character of the French & Indian War just two miles from Nicholas Dupui's abode.  Lest one think that this event was just a one-off situation, we can also point to the story of militiaman Anthony Swartwout (also a patron at Dupui's store), who similarly had his stomach slit with his entrails fastened to a tree.

While some might describe such actions as terrorist tactics or psychological warfare designed to cause backcountry settlers to flee, the non-normative nature of the savagery points to other possibilities.

Aware that Delaware Indian chief Teedyuscung inaugurated this war by way of a set of attacks specifically directed against the Moravian missionary population, this war from the outset had all the hallmarks that one might associate with native sacred violence.  The disembowelments of both Sgt. Den and Capt. Swartwout might well have been the by-product of a native religious war, a war characterized by unparalleled savage ferocity.