Girty, Simon

Girty, Simon

(1741–1818) soldier; born near Harrisburg, Pa. Illiterate and brutal, he deserted the Continental army in 1778 to fight with the British and their Indian allies in the Northwest Territory. Known as "the great renegade," Girty had many atrocities charged to him, including the burning at the stake of a captured American officer. He fled to Canada after the war, from where he continued to foment Indian resistance to European settlement in Ohio and Michigan.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.