USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume Two > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
From the wigwam came to greet them, Stammering in his speech a little, Speaking words yet unfamiliar; "It is well," they said, "O brother,
That you come so far to see us!"
Then the Black-Robe chief, the prophet,
Told his message to the people, Told the purport of his mission,
Told them of the Virgin Mary,
And her blessed Son, the Saviour,
How in distant lands and ages He had lived on earth as we do;
How he fasted, prayed, and labored; How the Jews, the tribe accursed,
Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him; How he rose from where they laid him, Walked again with his disciples,
And ascended into heaven.
*
* * *
*
*
Then they rose up and departed Each one homeward to his wigwam,
To the young men and the women
7
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
Told the story of the strangers Whom the Master of Life had sent them From the shining land of Wabun.
The result was all that the devoted disciples of the church had a right to expect, though it may not have met their desires. The testimony of history indicates that the conversion of the Indian was ceremonial and superficial, rather than productive of any real change of character or conduct of life. Says a Moravian missionary, one of the first among the Iroquois, in the last days of the Jesuit regime, "The priests seldom induced their still numerous converts to lead even outwardly better lives. Baptized savages strutted among the unbaptized, decorating their persons with rosaries, as though they were strings of wampum, but were carnal and dissolute as before. Genuine con- versions manifested by a sober, righteous, and godly life, were rarely known. Hence the Indians had come to be regarded as brutish savages whose salvation was hopeless." And Ogontz, the famous Ottawa chief, educated by the Catholic priests and for a time a mis- sionary among his people at Sandusky, testified that he found it much easier to make Catholics than Christ- ians of the Indians. They were more willing to observe the forms than obey the laws of Christianity but they grew no better under his preaching.
We have seen how these consecrated missionaries set up their shrines of worship in the farthest fastnesses of the wilderness. Their sincere devotion to their cause, their self-abnegation and self-sacrifice, their privations and sufferings, the latter in every conceivable form of torture and mutilation that fiendish savagery
8
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
could invent, are hardly surpassed in the annals of religious persecution. Not a few fed with their living bodies the flames of martyrdom, while the infuriated savages, at the sight, yelled and danced with a delight more diabolical than that displayed by the Cæsars of imperial Rome, when they walked abroad at night through beautiful gardens, illumined by the blaze of human torches-the pitch-covered quivering flesh of the early followers of the Nazarene.
Such were the Jesuits of North America. Their missions were chiefly among the Iroquois of New York, the Hurons of Canada and the various nations of the upper lakes. While their converts in number were not commensurate with their aims and their efforts, they were many. No less than three thousand, it is claimed, embraced the faith, among the Canadian Hurons. But their work was not without its benign influence. While their purpose seemed chiefly to save a soul by the mere sacrament of baptism, and while they made little direct endeavor to educate the savage, either in mental development, social improvement or industrial or agricultural advancement, they did, unquestionably, by their religious teachings and exem- plary conduct, in no small measure, modify the savagery of the Indian nature.
Opposition in many quarters, chiefly among the licentious favorites of the Bourbon court and the infidelic scholars of France, brought about the suppres- sion of the Jesuits, by the royal edict of Louis XV, throughout the French dominions in 1764, and for reasons, not here to be discussed, in 1773, Pope Clement XIV. by papal decree ordered the suppression of the
9
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
Society in all States of Christendom. These decrees of abolition put an end to the proselyting of the Indians by the Jesuits, though non-Jesuit priests continued their ministrations among the tribesmen.
Aside from the semi-mission of Sandusky, the Jesuits, as previously noted, made no inroads among the Ohio tribes.
But now another Christianizing ministry is to enter the Ohio country and from the date of its entrance is destined to play no small part in the trend of events. This influence is that of the Moravian Missionaries, the Protestant Jesuits to the Ohio redmen. For our authorities on this subject, to which meagre attention has been given by historians, we are chiefly indebted to the publication of the life and various works of David Zeisberger by Edmund de Schweinitz, and similarly by E. F. Bliss; to the life and narratives of John Heckewelder, edited by W. E. Connelley and in the biographical literature concerning Heckewelder by the grandson of the latter, Rev. W. H. Rice, a dis- tinguished minister in the Moravian denomination. Credit is also due to the original manuscripts of Zeis- berger, translated by the Rev. W. N. Schwarze, and made public in the printed annals of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society.
The Moravians as a sect may boast of great antiquity, and an illustrious history. Bohemia was early the refuge and abode of the sturdy, religious, liberty-loving Teutons, who refused to succumb to the sway of the Papal church. The Waldenses in Italy and France, in the pre-reformation period, in large numbers fled to Bohemia and the adjacent Moravia. In order to
10
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
combat and overthrow the faith of the increasing followers of the new heresy, the Papacy established the University of Prague. Its greatest graduate, according to well-known church history, was John Huss, who following the lead of Wickliff of England, became the great reformer of his time, the forerunner of Luther, finally paying (1415) the price of his inde- pendence in martyrdom at the stake. From the ashes of Huss sprang the sect which instituted the organization of the Church of the Brethren, later to be known as the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren, and subsequently, in America, to be called the "Moravian Brethren." The Moravians, therefore, came forth from the earliest struggles against Romanism and ante-date the German Reformation. This church consecrated its first bishop, David Nitschmann, at Berlin in 1735; ten years before that, a band of the Moravians, escaping from oppres- sion in their country, fled to Saxony and in Upper Lusatia, on an estate of Count Zinzendorf, founded the town of Herrnhut and formed the nucleus of a colony in which their sect was to thrive. Soon follow- ing these fugitive emigrants, there came to Herrnhut, from Zauchtenthal, the Zeisberger parents, with their children, one being David, aged five. Herrnhut was not, however, long to be their haven. The rigid government of Saxony was not to their liking and they must move on. They looked far abroad. The English colonies in America had become the refuge of the free-minded in religion and the liberty-loving in civil government.
James Oglethorpe, the noble-hearted philanthropist, had just founded the colony of Georgia, a retreat for
3 1833 02324 118 2
DAVID ZEISBERGER
Born in Austrian Moravia in 1721. Emigrated to Georgia, America in 1737. Missionary to the Iroquois tribes. First visited the Ohio Indians in 1771. Estab- lished the first Moravian settlement at Schoenbrunn, Tuscarawas County, 1772. Died at Goshen, Tuscarawas County, 1808.
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
ЯЗДЯНАRIES CIVAЯ
of botsigind .Ist mi sivstoli arenA mi mod with of the increasing ziospoTI odt of visnofearM Eri ni sonomA sigrost ablished -dstad Irri ni ansibal oidO ont botiaiv fall asditgraduate, idgode ts fromoltt92 fsiVsTOM tard ont bodeil
.808t nudEngland,
the forerunner price of his inde- From the ashes Iluututedthe organization -Im late be known as the ( 8 dal subsequently, 1\wwwian Brethren." laits Jrom the earliest wod inte-dijo the German Broomryand as first bishop, Toninozte, ten years before -ping from oppres- Suony and it Upper Zinzendorf. founded mind the nucleus of a Itive Soon follow- came o Børnkut, yonou, with their tive Herrnhut was kasetu The rigid Lol liking and they 150 daad. The English Lho refuge of the Cherry-loving in civil
free-mine
ils-hearted philanthropist, ar of Georgia, A retreat for
3 1833 02324 118 2
11
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
the prison-confined debtors of England and the Protes- tant refugees of Europe. Thither would the Moravians go, and in 1736 a band of twenty, including the parents David and Rosina Zeisberger, and Bishop Nitschmann, sailed for Georgia. In the same ship were the brothers John and Charles Wesley. The simple, evangelical piety of the Moravians, whom he now met for the first time, made a deep impression on the Church of England Curate, John Wesley. Returning to his home country he sought out the preachers of this primitive sect, both in England and Germany, and this Moravian inter- course was the beginning and largely the cause of Wesley's break from the established church. It was two years later (1738) when David Zeisberger, the son, after years of excellent schooling in Saxony and Holland, joined his parents at Savannah.
In Georgia, the Moravians found a field for mis- sionary labor among the Creek Indians, for the redmen needed most their gospel ministrations. To the con- version of the American savages then would the Mora- vian exiles devote their activities. Their field was suddenly changed by the breaking out of hostilities between England and Spain (1739), the Spaniards of Florida threatening to attack the Georgia colony, which prepared for war. The Moravians, like the Quakers, were disciples of peace and the bearing of arms was contrary to their principles. The disturb- ances thus effecting the Georgia colony, and the lack of harmony over the situation among the Moravians, divided their settlement and a portion of them departed for Pennsylvania.
12
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
It was in the Spring of 1740, when the voyage from Savannah to Philadelphia was made in a sloop, strangely enough, under the direction of George Whitefield, who was also a passenger. This distinguished preacher, then in the Church of England, but like John Wesley to become later a dissenter and a powerful evangelist of the new Methodist sect, was on his errand of estab- lishing an orphan asylum in the new country.
Whitefield engaged the Moravians to build a school- house for negro children, on a tract of five thousand acres of land, which he purchased and located on the "Forks of the Delaware." The little band of twelve Moravians, one of whom was the younger David Zeisberger, began the erection of an edifice, but ere long differences arose between them and Whitefield and the latter ordered them to leave his land "forth- with." Again the little group of wanderers moved on and in the deep snows and intense cold of winter established, in the Lehigh River, their new home in the little hamlet, they called Bethlehem, to be from then until this day the chief seat of the Moravian Church in America.
From time to time members of the sect flocked from Europe to the new Bethlehem, then in a wild country. mainly inhabited by Indians. Again the heathen aborigines appealed to the religious zeal of the new colony, and Zeisberger, consecrated now to the ministry entered upon his work of salvation that was to engross his time and energies for more than half a century. He became a speaker of great power, mastered many of the Indian tongues, and with various confreres made proselyting tours, through Pennsylvania and New York,
13
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
encountering privations and perils, surpassed only by those of the Jesuits in the far west. During a visit to Onondaga, the capital of the Iroquois confederacy, he was adopted into the tribe of the Onondagas and the Turtle Clan, receiving the name of "Ganous- serarcheri," which signifies "On the Pumpkin." With his assistant, Christian Frederick Post, he erected, at Onondaga, a substantial Mission House, with a view to the establishment of a permanent mission center in that section. He won the implicit confidence of the Iroquois confederacy, the Grand Council of which appointed him (1754) keeper of the archives, and deposited in his Moravian Mission House, many belts and strings of wampum, treaties and official documents.
At Shamokin, a chief town of the Indians and the headquarters of Shikellamy, the Executive Deputy of the Grand Council of the Six Nations and real ruler of the Delaware dependencies, Zeisberger began his con- struction of an Iroquois dictionary. In this literary and linguistic work, Zeisberger had the personal assist- ance of Shikellamy, also spelled Shikellimus, Shikelimo and otherwise,-no less than thirty different ways; we follow in the spelling of this name, as in most of the Indian names met with in our history, the orthography adopted by the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Shikellamy was one of the most remarkable men of his race. His Indian name, as designated by the Delawares, was Ongwaterohiathe, signifying "the Enlightener." This influential and high-minded chief was born in Montreal of French parentage and when a child was made a captive and adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Oneida tribe; he married a woman of
14
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
the Cayuga nation, and became an early convert, probably in 1742, to the Moravians, who, as related by Loskiel, at first hesitated to receive him into their church on account of his having been previously bap- tized by a Catholic priest in Canada, but Shikellamy repudiated his Catholic allegiance and at his Moravian baptism is said to have destroyed a "small idol" which he had always worn about his neck.
Shikellamy filled for more than twenty years a large space in the Indian annals of Pennsylvania. He is said to have "swayed almost a vice-regal sceptre over all the inferior tribes south of the Iroquois who paid tribute to that powerful league, or were held by it in subjugation, and he became a kind of resident ambassa- dor of the Five Nations in Pennsylvania."
Shikellamy's son was the famous Mingo chief John Shikellimus, or Shikellamy, better known as Logan. Later on we shall hear much of this Mingo Logan, whose oratorical powers were inherited from his father, like- wise renowned for his gifts of speech.
It was this educational phase of the Moravian apostle- ship, as illustrated in the Indian scholarship of Zeis- berger that gave it a distinctive feature, in contrast with the religious labors of the Jesuits. The Moravians sought to illumine their conversions with the torch of civilization. The learning of the Reformation was the handmaid of Protestant evangelization. The Onon- daga Mission was prospering beyond expectations and the seeds sown had grown and promised a rich harvest in the vineyard of the Master, when Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela presaged the havoc of the French and Indian War.
JOHN HECKEWELDER
Life companion and colaborer with Zeisberger. Born at Herrnhut, Saxony, 1743. Came to Bethlehem, Pa., in 1754. One of the foremost Moravian Missionaries to the Ohio country. With Zeisberger founded the Moravian Missions on the Muskingum, the first Christian Missions in Ohio. He died at Bethlehem, Pa., January 30, 1823.
M
AHOJEWANOCH CHOAND PROGRESS
nsivstol/ 9dt bebrot 1 grodeios diW .vitruos ofrio sifs related enoieaiM nsiferido farht odt , migrridanM odt no anoieliMto their
Lwna di, but Shibellamy Thee and at hila Moravian Theyeda humall idol"! which
me this iscay years = large als w Promowania. He is
is Ise Inquels who paid mchild by it in - of - kas ambassa-
Mus chind Toho
Login, whose ni father, like-
sở tầng sử du Shownian xpoitle- & dorfreais Venire in contrast Unddas. The Moravians kis The torch of
Sullo The Onion-
Ne Meor when Braddock's proreal The havoc of the
15
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
There was an untimely end to the Onondaga Mission and Zeisberger left the unreaped fruitage of his labors and returned to Bethlehem. Here he met one who had arrived in his absence and who was to be second only to himself, if not on equality with him, in their subse- quent joint labors. This one was John Heckewelder, whose father, David Heckewelder, was one of the Moravian exiles who fled to Herrnhut, the Saxon village of refuge. Pushing on to England, the Hecke- welder parents were there residing when John was born (1743). At the age of eleven, the boy, John, with his parents, found a home at Bethlehem (Pa.) where they arrived in 1754.
Young Heckewelder was apprenticed, to learn the cooper trade, to the Rev. Christian Frederick Post, the Indian interpreter, Moravian missionary and zeal- ous assistant to Zeisberger. Post's life was as romantic as it was conspicuous in pioneer annals. He was thirty- three years the elder of Heckewelder. His first wife was a Wamponoag squaw, called, after her baptism, Rachel. Two years after her death Post married a converted Delaware squaw, known as Agnes. Upon her death he married a white woman. We have already, early in our history, noted the important services of Post as an official interpreter at conferences between colonists and the tribesmen, and have made notice of his embassadorial journeys to the Ohio in 1758.
The French and Indian War over, the Bethlehem missionaries resumed their activities and in September, 1761, Post made an effort to establish a mission among the Delawares on the Muskingum River. The Dela- wares were at this time living principally in the Ohio
16
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
country. As we have seen, the Delawares were origi- nally found in the valley of the Delaware River, and about the bay of that name. The white invasions and the wars with other tribes gradually crowded the Dela- wares westward, first into the valley of the Susque- hanna, then to the headwaters of the Allegheny and the banks of the Monongahela, and then below the Forks of the Ohio to the western interior, until by 1748, it is estimated, one-fourth of their nation had located on the western tributaries of the Ohio, chiefly the Tuscarawas and the Muskingum. The Delawares came to Ohio, it is claimed, by invitation of the Wyan- dots, who held, from the Six Nations, permissive title to large part of Ohio. In their new western country, being in contact with the French and supported by the Western tribes, the Delawares began to assert their independence, shaking the vassalage to the Iroquois, refusing to be longer considered "women" and tearing off the "petticoats" put upon them in 1720, by their insolent conquerors the Six Nations.
The Moravians had found a fruitful field among the Delawares of Pennsylvania and they naturally looked to the settlements of the tribes west of the Ohio. Post, moreover, had seen much of these people in his diplo- matic errands to the Ohio for the provincial authorities. He chose for the site of his proposed mission the junc- ture of the Big Sandy and the Tuscarawas, just above the present town of Bolivar. At that point was the ford, on the line of the great Indian trail, running west from Fort Pitt to Fort Sandusky. The site was close to the Indian capital of Tuscarawas, a Delaware village, about a mile down the river, "at which at that
17
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
time the greatest chiefs of the Nation both civil and military resided, with Tamaque (or Big Beaver as called by the whites) at their head" says the narrative of Heckewelder. To this point came Post, undaunted and independent, for this mission was personal rather than one under the authority of the church board, and here he erected, on the banks of the river, a rude cabin. A mile distant "resides a trader, named Thomas Calhoun, a moral and religious man." But Post soon found he could not conduct a mission unaided. He thought of his young and promising apprentice and returning to Pennsylvania secured Heckewelder as his faithful assistant.
The two missionaries met at Lititz, in March, 1762, and together they started for the Ohio country, on a journey that was to take them six weeks, over moun- tains clad with forests, snow-clogged and ice-coated, across swollen streams and along trails that often vanished in the thick tangle-wood or in the wash- ings of overflowing rivers. Heckewelder recounts the trip in his graphic, descriptive manner. The soli- tude of the forest was continually broken by the howling of wolves and wild beasts. Stony Creek was crossed by the use of sugar troughs as canoes. Brad- dock's field, over which they passed, was still scattered with the skulls and bones of the slain. At Fort Pitt the travelers were entertained by Colonel Bouquet. The Indians ferried them over the Big Beaver River and a few chickens were given them by White Eyes later the head chief of the Delawares. On the 11th of April (1762) "we arrived at Tuscarawas [Town] on the Musk- ingum and we entered our cabin singing a hymn."
18
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
Permission was obtained from the Indians to clear a patch of trees and make a garden. Fish and game were in abundance but difficult to secure and "we lived mostly on nettles; which grew abundantly in the bottoms and of which we frequently made two meals a day." The diet "weakened us from day to day." The Delaware Indians often visited them and gave Heckewelder the name "Piselatuple," the Turtle. But now an interruption presented itself.
Before leaving Philadelphia, Post had promised the governor of Pennsylvania that in case his services were needed on an Indian embassy he would return for duty. The emergency arose. The western Indians, especially those in Northern Ohio, were being aroused by Pontiac. Post was summoned by the governor to act in an Indian conference at Lancaster. Hecke- welder, then a lad of nineteen, decided to remain alone at the Tuscarawas cabin. He tells the story of the result in his own modest way, but it is a narrative of dramatic realism. To assist him in passing the time, Heckewelder says, "Post left me a number of old sermons and religious books, requesting me at the same time, never to read or write in the presence of the Indians, and even conceal the books from their sight." The Indians were suspicious of the whites whom they saw reading and writing, especially the latter, believing it concerned them or their territory. "They say they have been robbed of their lands by the writing of the whites."
Post departed and Heckewelder's solitary vigil began. The Indians watched him with suspicious eyes. His canoe disappeared; his ammunition gave out; the
19
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
vegetables were stolen from his garden by passing lawless traders; he became destitute of food; a fever prostrated his strength and gloom possessed his mind; he could not leave his cabin and starvation would have ended his career but for Calhoun, his neighbor, who carried him to his quarters and relieved his dis- tress. The Indians became more hostile, and reported a war would soon break out between the English and the Indians in which the latter would be aided by the French.
Heckewelder's plight was indeed that of the ancient apostles sent forth as lambs among wolves, carrying neither purse nor script. A friendly squaw warned Calhoun of a plot against the life of the missionary, whose cabin, in his absence, had been looted. Hecke- welder fled with a party of traders bound for Pitts- burg. On the third day after their departure, Hecke- welder's party met Post and the Indian agent, Captain Alexander McKee, who were on their way to the Indian country, totally ignorant of the real state of affairs on the Muskingum. The united party beat a hasty retreat for their Pennsylvania destinations, barely escaping a band of Indians returning from the warpath. Heckewelder reached Bethlehem in Decem- ber (1762), so worn with privations, and haggard from disease, that his friends failed to recognize him. His apprenticeship as a missionary had indeed been a test few would have survived. But it had only served to fill his heart with greater courage and more passionate longing to labor for the conversion of the people who had thirsted for his blood.
₹
20
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
The troublous times following the Pontiac conspiracy in the Ohio country have been described. The plan for an Ohio mission had to be abandoned for a more propitious day and Heckewelder intermitted labor at his trade with lending a helping hand in the intercourse between the Indian converts and the home church at Bethlehem. With Post, Zeisberger and others, he made missionary tours to the tribesmen round about, in Pennsylvania and New York, conquering obstacles and facing perils that only further enured him to the work of his life.
Meanwhile Zeisberger, the Paul of the Bethlehem missionaries, carried the Moravian gospel fearlessly and zealously into the Indian centers, establishing missionary stations and making many converts, as may be learned from his own narrations and those of Heckewelder, translated from the manuscripts in the Moravian Archives; and also from the "History of the the Mission of the United Brethren among the North American Indians" by George Henry Loskiel, a German Moravian, who became a bishop in that church in 1802. His history, published in 1794, written from material mainly furnished him by Zeisberger, is one of the lead- ing authorities not only on the Moravian Missions but also the American Indians.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.