Page images
PDF
EPUB

ments of the Moravian converts.

A description of it in its highest prosperity is given by Schweinitz as follows:

It embraced twenty-nine log-houses, with windows and chimneys, like the homesteads of the settlers, and thirteen huts, forming one street, in the center of which stood the chapel, 32 by 24 feet, roofed with shingles, and having a school-house as its wing. Immediately opposite, on the left side of the street, was the mission house. Each lot had a front of 32 feet, and between every two lots was an alley 10 feet wide. Back of the houses were the gardens and orchards, stocked with vegetables and fruit trees. The entire town was surrounded by a post-and-rail fence, and kept scrupulously clean. In summer a party of women passed through the street and alleys, sweeping them with wooden brooms and removing the rubbish. Stretching down to the river lay 250 acres of plantations and meadows, with 2 miles of fences; and moored to the bank was found a canoe for each household of the community. The converts had large herds of cattle and hogs, and poultry of every kind in abundance. They devoted more time to tilling the ground than to hunting, and raised plentiful crops. Their trade was considerable in corn, maple-sugar, butter and pork, which they sold to the Indians; as also in canoes made of white pine and bought by the settlers living along the Susquehanna, some of them as far as 100 miles below Friedenshütten. The population had increased from the remnant that left the Philadel phia barracks to one hundred and fifty souls.1

3

The land on which Friedenshütten was built was obtained by Pennsylvania through the treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768), and thus this mission lost the title to its lands.2 In 1771 the Indian inhabitants consulted with their preachers on the expediency of their removing to some other place; and the opinion was unanimous that, as their lands were sold and the whites becoming troublesome through the introduction of liquor and otherwise, they could not enjoy undisturbed peace in their present location, and would therefore accept an offer to locate on the Muskingum, in Ohio. The removal took place the following June, when over two hundred Christian Indians left Friedenshütten and its tributary mission for another land of promise. The govern ment granted them £125 for their improvements, and Quaker friends added $100.

Missionary work had been commenced in western Pennsylvania durduring the continuance of the mission on the Susquehanna. The first mission was established in 1768 on the Alleghany River, in a village noted for its wickedness. As soon as the effects of missionary instruc tion were realized, a bitter opposition arose and the station was removed some 3 miles up the river. The conversion of Glikkikan, a famous Delaware warrior and orator, occurred there, and resulted in an invitation being extended to the mission to remove to the seat of his tribe on the Beaver River. Fifteen canoes carried the Christian Indians down the Alleghany and Ohio Rivers and up the Beaver to their destination." The settlement was made under auspicious circumstances, but the beautiful valley of the Tuscarawas in Ohio and its thriving congregations induced the Christian Indians to make it a common home.

1 Schweinitz: Life of David Zeisberger, p. 316. 2 Ibid., p. 348. 3 Heckewelder: Narrative of the Mission among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians, p. 116. 'Schweinitz: Life of David Zeisberger, p. 376. Ibid., p. 353. Ibid., p. 359.

S. Ex. 95———6

The first Moravian town in Ohio was begun May 4, 1772. It took its name, Schönbrunn (Beautiful Spring), from the natural feature of its location. A mission-house was completed on the 9th of June, and before many months the town contained more than sixty houses of squared timber, besides huts and lodges. The rules adopted for the mission illustrate the religious and domestic duties of the converts. They included the following:1

Statutes agreed upon by the Christian Indians at Languntontenünk and Welkik Tappeek in the month of August, 1772.

I. We will know no other God but the one only true God, who made us and all creatures, and came into this world in order to save sinners; to Him alone we will pray. II. We will rest from work on the Lord's Day and attend public service.

III. We will honor father and mother, and when they grow old we will do for them what we can.

IV. No person shall get leave to dwell with us until our teachers have given their consent and the helpers [native assistants] have examined them.

V. We will have nothing to do with thieves, murderers, whoremongers, adulterers, or drunkards.

VI. We will not take part in dances, sacrifices, heathenish festivals, or games.

VII. We will use no tshapiet, or witchcraft, when hunting.

VIII. We renounce and abhor all tricks, lies, and deceits of Satan.

IX. We will be obedient to our teachers and to the helpers who are appointed to preserve order in our meetings in the towns and fields.

X. We will not be idle, nor scold, nor beat one another, nor tell lies.

XI. Whoever injures the property of his neighbor shall make restitution.

XII. A man shall have but one wife, shall love her, and provide for her and his children. A woman shall have but one husband, be obedient to him, care for her children, and be cleanly in all things.

XIII. We will not admit rum or any other intoxicating liquor into our towns. If strangers or traders bring intoxicating liquor the helpers shall take it from them and not restore it until the owners are ready to leave the place.

XIV. No one shall contract debts with traders or receive goods to sell for traders, unless the helpers give their consent.

XV. Whoever goes hunting or on a journey shall inform the minister or stewards. XVI. Young persons shall not marry without the consent of their parents and the minister.

XVIL Whenever the stewards or helpers appoint a time to make fences or to perform other work for the public good we will assist and do as we are bid.

XVIII. Whenever corn is needed to entertain strangers or sugar for love-feasts we will freely contribute from our stores.

XIX. We will not go to war, and will not buy anything of warriors, taken in

war.

Says a popular writer:

Under these laws a people fiercely free became meek and obedient, changed their wild unchastity and loose marital relations for Christian purity and wedlock; left their indolence for continual toil; learned to forego revenge and to withhold the angry word and hand; eschewed the delights and deliriums of drunkenness; and, above all, in a time and country where all men, red and white alike, seemed born to massacre and rapine, set their faces steadfastly against war, and did no murder. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1869, p. 104.

1Ibid., pp. 378-379.

A second Indian town was soon established 8 miles from Shönbrunn by emigrants from the Beaver Valley, among whom were many Mohegans,' and it was called Gnadenhütten. A third town, Lichtenau,2 was begun in 1776 at a place chosen by the Delaware chiefs on account of its being near their principal village. At the close of the year the population of the Christian towns was 414. Schools were kept up regularly in each of the settlements, and the missionaries were preparing new books for the use of the pupils. The inhabitants had become for the most part husbandmen, and possessed large fields and gardens, suitably fenced, excellent orchards, and herds of cattle, horses, and hogs. Their prosperity was endangered by the hostilities of the Revolutionary War, and for a time all the inhabitants of the settlement were at Lichtenau. In the spring of 1779 those that had lived at Gnadenhütten and and Schönbrunn returned to their former place of residence, as the crowded conditior of Lichtenau did not permit the proper care of their large herds of horses, cattle, and hogs, and the principal war-path of the hostile Indians extended through the town. For the latter reason the removal of its congregation was decided upon and accomplished in 1780. The new location, called Salem, was 6 miles from Gnadenhütten. The fortunes of war were turning against the British, and their emissaries incited their Indian allies to renewed violence. The destruction of the Moravian settlements was determined, and in the autumn of 1781 the Christian Indians were removed by force to the desolate banks of the Sandusky River, in northern Ohio. Says Heckewelder:

Never did the Christian Indians leave a country with more regret. The three beautiful settlements-Gnadenhütten, Schönbrunn, and Salem—were now to be forsaken, together with many of their young cattle that were in the woods, with some hundred head of hogs; and at least 300 acres of corn ripe for harvesting, exclusive of a great quantity of old corn, potatoes, turnips, cabbages, etc., were now lost to them, together with books that were burnt, many of which were for the instruction of the youth.9

The sad journey into exile brought the captives into a cheerless and empty wilderness at the beginning of a severe winter. 10 Man and beast alike suffered from the terrible famine.

The missionaries could give the members of their families only a pint of corn a day each, and the Indians fared even worse. As the winter advanced the exiles scattered, and not a few returned to their old home in the Tuscarawas Valley, there to meet the most melancholy fate that ever awaited an Indian mission.

An American party had set out from the Monongahela Valley to avenge the murder of a neighboring family." The murderers had passed through Gnadenhütten on their return, and left there part of the spoil.

Loskiel: History of the Mission to the Indians, Part III, p. 82. 2 Schweinitz: Life of David Zeisberger, p. 320. 3 Heckewelder: Narrative of the Mission Among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians, p. 143. 4 Ibid., p. 144. Ibid., p. 157. 6 Ibid., p. 183. "Ibid., p. 194. *Schweinitz: Life of David Zeisberger, chap. 31, p. 531. Heckewelder: Narrative of the Mission among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians, p. 270. Ibid., p. 232. "Schweinitz: Life of David Zeisberger, 537-552.

10

The avengers assumed the guilt of the peaceful Indians and condemned them to death. Two buildings were chosen as slaughter houses, one for the men and the other for the women; and a cold-blooded butchery ended the lives of ninety innocent and unresisting Christians, and gave the death-blow to the Moravian Indian missions. Mr. W. D. Howells, in writing of Gnadenhütten, gives the following account of the massa cre of its inhabitants:

The house in which the men were confined had been that of a cooper, and his mallet, abandoned in the removal of the preceding autumn, lay upon the floor. One of the whites picked it up, and saying, "How exactly this will answer for the business," made his way among the kneeling figures toward Brother Abraham, a convert, who, from being somewhat lukewarm in the faith, had in this extremity become the most fervent in exhortation. Then, while the clear and awful music of the victims' prayers and songs arose, this nameless murderer lifted his weapon and struck Abraham down with a single blow. Thirteen others fell by his hand before he passed the mallet to a fellow assassin with the words, "My arm fails me, go on in the same way; I think I have done pretty well." In the house where the women and children awaited their doom the massacre began with Judith, a very old and pious widow; and in a little space the voices of singing and of supplication failing one by one, the silence that fell upon the place attested the accomplishment of a crime which, for all its circumstances and conditions, must be deemed one of the blackest in history.

The surviving Indians were disheartened by their misfortunes and sufferings, and dismayed by the terrible death of their brethren. Settlements were attempted in Ohio, Michigan, Canada, and again in Ohio. A New Salem sprang up on the shore of Lake Erie in 1787, and flourished for several years. It had abundant harvests in 1789, and fed multitudes during the ensuing winter, whose crops had failed, and demonstrated to their hungry guests the benefits of civilization. In 1791 its inhabitants were scattered to Michigan and Canada. At length the aged missionary Zeisberger, who had la bored faithfully for half a cen tury among the Indians, was allowed to return to the valley where his work had most prospered, and, with his assistants, to build there near the former site of Gnadenhütten, another town for Christian Indians. It was named Goshen, and its church had seventy-one members in 1800. Its prosperity was never great, and after about twenty years it was abandoned, and the little remnant of converts joined the more promising mission in Canada.3 Schweinitz, summing up the labors of Zeisberger, speaks of the communities he established in the following language:1

They were the wonder of all who saw them, whether white men or natives; and they seem even to us, who can only read of them, miracles of energy and faith. A hunter and a warrior, the Indian was constrained to give up his wild habits and cruel ways; to quench all the instincts of his savage nature; to change most of the customs. of his race; to acknowledge woman as his equal; to perform the labor himself which for generations had been put upon her; to lay aside his plumes, paint, and traditional ornaments of every kind; to assume the dress which white men wore; to plow and plant and reap like any farmer; to rove no longer through the wilderness at pleasure, building lodges here and there, but to remain with his family in one town; and, above all, to submit to municipal enactments, which were of necessity so stringent that nothing could be more galling to the native pride of American aborigines. !Schweinitz: Life of David Zeisberger, p. 603.

4 Ibid, p. 679.

Ibid., p. 613. 3 Ibid., p. 696.

NEW YORK.

The Six Nations for a time seemed to hold the balance of power dur. ing the troublesome times which fell upon the colonies in the eighteenth century. These tribes were subjected to contending interests, none of which contemplated what might be the effect of the alternatives offered upon the future of the Indian people. There was little regard manifested for them, except to keep them safe and friendly towards the settlers and vigilant and vengeful towards those who interfered with the colonists and their plans. The care for the Indian himself found expression in the missionary efforts. These, as elsewhere, became either abolished or enfeebled, because of persecution or political conflicts. The work, however, was not wholly lost, and has since spread to regions beyond the present limits of New York.

Missions among the Iroquois.'-The history of Protestant missions among the Iroquois dates from 1700, when the Earl of Bellamont, governor of New York, made a representation to the Lords of Trade and Plantations in London "that there was great want of some ministers of the Church of England to instruct the Five Nations of Indians on the frontiers of New York." This necessity was laid before Queen Anne, and her council recommended "that two Protestant ministers be appointed, with a competent allowance, to dwell among them, in order to instruct them in the true religion and confirm them in their duty to Her Majesty." The execution of the project was referred to the archbishop of Canterbury, and intrusted by him to the recently established Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

The hardships and difficulties of Indian missions were well known to the society, and care was taken to secure competent leaders for the enterprise. Mr. Dellins, who had been a minister at Albany for some time, "useful in instructing and converting some of the Indians who used to resort to that place," and had gained some knowledge of their language, was requested to undertake the mission, but declined. Mr. Freeman, of Schenectady, who had received a salary from Governor Bellamont for instructing the Indians,2 and had translated portions of the Scripture into their language, also declined. Mr. Thorough good Moor was sent from England in 1704, and was received favorably by the governor at New York and the Indians at Albany. The latter professed great pleasure at being remembered by those disposed to give them religious instruction; yet they postponed active co-operation. Mr. Moor did not seem to have the tact and persistency essential to missionary success, and at the expiration of a year gave up his efforts without having achieved any apparent results.

The authorities mainly relied on in the preparation of this sketch are: Notices of the Church of England missions to North American Colonies, previous to the inde. pendence of the United States, by Ernest Hawkins, London, 1845; and an Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, by David Humphreys, D. D., London, 1730.

Clark: Onondaga, Vol. I, p. 212.

« PreviousContinue »