Moses Van Campen: Gauntlet at the Western Door

In seventeen eighty-two, Major Moses Van Campen was captured by Seneca warriors in Pennsylvania and marched north, and near this spot in western New York he ran the gauntlet. His captors were the keepers of the Western Door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Van Campen was a veteran frontier ranger who had fought in some of the bloodiest border warfare of the Revolution, and his capture was the culmination of years of raids and counter-raids along the Genesee frontier.

The Seneca brought him to their ancient council house and made him run the gauntlet, a ritual trial by ordeal in which a captive runs between two rows of warriors while they strike at him. Van Campen survived. His captors ultimately released or traded him, and he lived to tell the story.

That council house is now preserved at Letchworth State Park, just to the south. Van Campen went on to serve in the Pennsylvania militia and later became a judge. His story stands at the intersection of two very different worlds colliding violently along the Genesee River.