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 $E-UNIVERS/A vvlOS-ANGELfj>
 
 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 
 
 BY 
 REV. WM. H. RICE, 
 
 PASTOR MORAVIAN CHURCH, GNADENHUTTEN, OHIO. 
 
 Moravian Publication Concern, 
 Bethlehem, Pa.
 
 Copyright, 1897, 
 
 BY 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND 
 EDITION. 
 
 THE first edition having been sold, the Special 
 Moravian Publication Fund Committee of Bethle- 
 hem, Pa., has kindly approved a Second Edition, in 
 response to urgent calls for the book. 
 
 As these lines are written, "The John Hecke welder 
 Memorial Moravian Church," erected by the mem- 
 bership of the Gnadenhutten Moravian Church, 
 with the efficient aid of the members and friends of 
 the Moravian Church in America, is approaching 
 completion. 
 
 V! H. R. 
 
 GNADENHUTTEN PARSONAGE, 
 Christmas, 1902. 
 
 448943
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The preparation of these pages has been interrupted 
 by our transfer from the Moravian pastorate at New 
 Dorp, on Staten Island, N. Y., to the pastorate at 
 Gnadenhutten, the historic region made illustrious for 
 all aftertime by the imperishable labors of Zeisberger 
 and Heckewelder, and their co-laborers. 
 
 It is a special privilege to write these lines in sight 
 of the monument that marks the place of the martyrdom 
 of 1782. w. H. R. 
 
 Gnadenhutten Parsonage, I 
 November 17, 1897. t
 
 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 
 
 " If I have only succeeded with an Indian so far as to bring 
 him to the cross of Christ, I have then been able to lead him by a 
 thread wherever I pleased, and where no one with a whip could 
 have driven him, whilst in his wild and unconverted state." 
 DAVID ZEISBERGER. 
 
 THE report was spread through the city of New 
 York on February 22, 1745, that two spies had been 
 arrested in the Mohawk Valley, where they had been 
 found as guests in the lodge of Hendrick, the king of 
 the Mohawk tribe ; that they had been brought to 
 Albany, and forwarded thence, under military guard, to 
 the capital, which they had reached on that day, and 
 had been committed to the jail of the City Hall. 
 
 The report added fuel to the excitement which 
 already filled the mind of the authorities and of the 
 public over the apprehended outbreak of Indian hos- 
 tilities. 
 
 Men breathed more freely when they knew the two 
 Moravian Brethren, Christian Frederick Post and David 
 Zeisberger, to be safely in the hold of the Government 
 of the Province of New York.
 
 6 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 On the next day Gov. Clinton and his august Coun- 
 cil ordered Zeisberger to be brought before them. He 
 was the younger of the two spies, a man of slight stat- 
 ure, not yet twenty-four years old. 
 
 " How long have you been in this Government ?" 
 
 " Since last New Year's day, when we passed through 
 here." 
 
 " How far did you go into the country ?" 
 
 "As far as Canajoharie." 
 
 " Who sent you thither ?" 
 
 " Our church." 
 
 "What church is that?" 
 
 " The Protestant Church of the (Moravian) United 
 Brethren." 
 
 " Do you all do what she commands you?" 
 
 " With our whole heart." 
 
 " But if she should command you to hang your- 
 selves, or to go among the Indians and stir them up 
 against the white people, would you obey in this ?" 
 
 " No, I can assure your Excellency and the whole 
 Council that our church never had any such designs." 
 
 "What did she command you to do among the 
 Indians?" 
 
 " To learn their language." 
 
 " Can you learn this language so soon ?" 
 
 " I have already learned somewhat of it in Pennsyl- 
 vania, and I went up to improve myself." 
 
 " What use will you make of this language ? What 
 is your design when you have perfected yourself in it ? 
 You must certainly have a reason for learning it"
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 7 
 
 " We hope to get liberty to preach among the Indians 
 the gospel of our crucified Saviour, and to declare to 
 them what we have personally experienced of His grace 
 in our own hearts" 
 
 " Did you preach while you were among them 
 now?" 
 
 " No, I had. no design to preach, but only to learn 
 their language.' ' 
 
 " You will give an account to your church when 
 you go home [Bethlehem, Northampton County, Penn- 
 sylvania] of the condition of the country and of the 
 land?" 
 
 " I will. Why should I not ? But we do not con- 
 cern ourselves about the land ; we have land enough of 
 our own we do not need that." 
 
 " You observed how many cannon were in the Fort 
 [William's], how many soldiers and Indians in the cas- 
 tle, and how many at Canajoharie ?" 
 
 " I was not so much as within the Fort, and I did 
 not count the soldiers or the Indians." 
 
 " Whom do you acknowledge for your king ?" 
 
 " King George of England." 
 
 " But when you go up among the French Indians, 
 who is your king then ?" 
 
 " I never yet had any mind to go thither." 
 
 " Will you and your companion swear to be faithful 
 subjects of King George, acknowledge him as your 
 sovereign, and abjure the Pope and his adherents ?" 
 
 "We own ourselves to be King George's faithful 
 subjects ; we acknowledge him as our sovereign ; we
 
 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 can truly certify that we have no connection at all with 
 the Pope and his adherents, and no one who knows 
 anything of us can lay this to our charge. With regard 
 to the oath, however, I beg leave to say that we are 
 not inhabitants of this Government (colony), but trav- 
 ellers, and hope to enjoy the same privilege which is 
 granted in other English colonies, of travelling unmo- 
 lested without taking the oath." 
 
 " You design to teach the Indians, and we must 
 have the assurance that you will not teach them disaf- 
 fection to the king." 
 
 " But we have come, at this time, with no design to 
 teach." 
 
 " Our laws require that all travellers in this Govern- 
 ment shall swear allegiance to the king and have a 
 li cense from the governor." 
 
 " I never bef^ e heard of such a law in any country 
 or kingdom of the world." 
 
 " Will you or will you not take the oath ?" 
 
 " I will not." 
 
 The clerk of the court then read to the prisoner the 
 recent enactment of the New York Colonial Assembly 
 against " Every Vagrant Preacher, Moravian, Disguised 
 Papist, or any other person presuming to reside among 
 and teach the Indians " without having taken the oath 
 of allegiance and secured the governor's license. Every 
 such an one " shall be treated as a person taking upon 
 him to seduce the Indians from his Majesty's interest," 
 and shall be punished with fine and imprisonment. 
 
 " Do you understand this ?"
 
 MICHAEL, THE SHEKOMEKO ELDER.
 
 I0 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 " Most of it, but not all." 
 
 " Will you take the oath now ?" 
 
 " I hope the honorable Council will not force me to 
 do it." 
 
 " We will not constrain you ; you may let it alone 
 if it is against your conscience ; but you will have to go 
 to prison again." 
 
 " I am content." 
 
 After his companion, the intrepid Post, had under- 
 gone a similar examination, there followed seven weeks 
 of imprisonment. During this time they were cheered 
 in their prison life by visits from their fellow-Moravians, 
 Thomas Noble, a godly merchant of the city, and his 
 young clerk, Henry Van Vleck, and by Rev. Peter 
 Boehler (John Wesley's friend). Christian people of 
 other denominations visited them in prison who were 
 not in sympathy with the enemies of the missionary 
 work which the Moravian Brethren had been carrying 
 on for the past five years, with marked success, in the 
 border counties of the provinces of Connecticut and 
 New York the present counties of Dutchess and Litch- 
 field. 
 
 The signal triumph which had attended the preach- 
 ing, by Christian Henry Rauch, of the word of the 
 cross to the Indians of Shekomeko in Dutchess Coun- 
 ty, the conversion of their Chief Job (sometimes written 
 Tschoop), a drunken profligate, and the conversion to 
 Christ of many of his fellow- Indians, had awakened the 
 bitter hostility of the white neighbors who traded upon 
 the vices of the red men, especially by the sale of rum.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. II 
 
 Advantage was taken of the public alarm as to impend- 
 ing Indian hostilities, and the apprehended plottings of 
 Jesuit missionaries, to excite public sentiment against 
 the work of the Moravian missionaries. 
 
 During the session of the New York Colonial As- 
 sembly in the preceding fall this sentiment had found 
 expression in the enactment of a law which placed Mo- 
 ravians in the same category with Jesuits, who were said 
 to be preparing the Indians for a general massacre of 
 the English colonists. 
 
 Gov. Clinton, when ordered by the Board of Trade 
 in London to state the reasons why a law had been 
 passed against the Moravian missionaries residing 
 among the Indians, described the Moravians as " Sim- 
 ple illiterate persons infatuated with a certain degree of 
 Enthusiasm or Folly, Sufficient for Qualifying them for 
 the plantation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," " though 
 unqualified as to the knowledge of the Indian language 
 or any other but their own Mother-tongue." 
 
 The persecution of these Moravian missionaries by 
 the government and people of the New York and Con- 
 necticut colonies led to the parliamentary enactment in 
 England, of March 12, 1749, formally acknowledging 
 their church, exempting them from taking the oath, 
 allowing simple affirmation, and excusing them from 
 military and jury duty. 
 
 Meanwhile the success which had attended the first 
 preaching of the gospel to the Indians of Shekomeko 
 stimulated the Foreign Missionary Board of the recently 
 established congregation at Bethlehem to plan for a
 
 12 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 vigorous prosecution of the work in the large field that 
 seemed to lie open before them. 
 
 Within three years after the first settlement of Beth- 
 lehem, in February, 1744, a class of candidates for 
 the Indian mission was formed under the tutelage of 
 Rev. John C. Pyrlaeus, a recent graduate of Leipsic 
 University. He had come from Germany eager to 
 help the work begun by Rauch at Shekomeko in 1740. 
 After his marriage in Philadelphia to Susan, youngest 
 daughter of the merchant John Stephen Benezet, Pyr- 
 laeus had spent a summer in the log cabin of a German 
 settler in the Mohawk County, with his youthful bride, 
 to learn the Mohawk language. Of the young men 
 constituting this class, Pyrlaeus soon found the aptest 
 linguist to be David Zeisberger. 
 
 Zeisberger followed his parents to America in 1737, 
 when but a youth of sixteen. David and Rosina Zeis- 
 berger had left their home and kindred in Austrian 
 Moravia for conscience' sake. One night in July, 1726, 
 taking their five-year-old David by the hand, father 
 and mother left their house and farm with all their be- 
 longings and fled to the mountain border which sep- 
 arates Moravia from Saxony. They sought a refuge at 
 Herrnhut, the newly founded settlement of the exiled 
 descendants of the old Moravian and Bohemian Breth- 
 ren's Church. Ten years later, 1736, they joined a 
 party of Herrnhut colonists, who went to Georgia and 
 founded a colony near the present site of Savannah. 
 
 The child David was left behind, a schoolboy at 
 Herrnhut, to finish his studies. He was the brightest
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 13 
 
 Latin scholar of his class, a diligent student who showed 
 a natural facility for acquiring languages. 
 
 Soon after his parents had left for America, David 
 was sent to Holland, to a new church settlement near 
 Utrecht, to be an errand boy. The quick-witted lad 
 soon acquired the use of the Dutch language. He was 
 distinguished by his alert, cheerful ways and the punc- 
 tuality with which he attended to all his duties. He 
 soon became a favorite with all except his immediate 
 superiors. They deemed it their duty to stem the nat- 
 ural outflow of the bright lad's disposition. When 
 falsely accused, upon occasion, of an act of theft, David 
 was mercilessly beaten with the rod. 
 
 For having won the good-will of a gentleman visit- 
 ing Heerendyke whom David was directed to accom- 
 pany as a guide to the neighboring Ysselstein, and who 
 at parting from the lad insisted upon his accepting a 
 handful of silver coins as a reward for his very satisfac- 
 tory services, the lad was accused on his return home 
 of having stolen the money, on the ground that it was 
 incredible that any one would pay a mere boy so lib- 
 eral a reward. In spite of his protestations he was to 
 receive due punishment for his suspected dishonesty. 
 This act of injustice finally decided the boy to leave his 
 employers. 
 
 After secret preparation for his departure, having 
 secured as a companion one of the other lads of the 
 establishment, named Schober, he left Heerendyke. 
 The fixed determination of Zeisberger to join his pa- 
 rents, who had gone to America the year before, de-
 
 14 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 cided Schober to change his plan of a return to Sax- 
 ony. The two lads made their way to London, where 
 Zeisberger quickly made himself friends who introduced 
 him to Gen. Oglethorpe as a youth desirous of joining 
 the Moravian colonists in Georgia. Furnishing them 
 with clothing and money, he forwarded the youthful 
 immigrants by a ship just ready to sail. 
 
 David's unexpected arrival was a great joy to his 
 parents in their wilderness home. He had almost grown 
 out of their recollection, so that they barely recognized 
 their son when he first stood before them. He ar- 
 rived in August, 1737. Born April n, 1721, he was a 
 little more than sixteen years old. 
 
 It was a great change in his surroundings which 
 was wrought by the sudden transition from the soft 
 luxuries of European civilized life to the hard privations 
 of a settlement in the primeval forests of America. But 
 it fell in with the free spirit of the determined youth. 
 It was a providential preparation in the school of fron- 
 tier life for the calling to which Providence had des- 
 tined Zeisberger. 
 
 In reference to this period in his early life it is 
 pleasant to hear him say in after years, as he casts a 
 backward glance upon the way by which the Lord led 
 him, " From the day I left Heerendyke to the time of 
 my arrival in Georgia the Lord preserved me from all 
 harm to body or soul in the face of great temptations 
 into which I might have fallen. He held his hand over 
 me. I often thank him for his protecting care amid the 
 dangers which then I did not realize. In all those expe-
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 15 
 
 riences I now see the guidance of the Lord's good 
 hand." 
 
 One feature in his life in Georgia was the intimate 
 association into which it brought him with the devoted 
 leader of the colony, the apostolic Peter Boehler, who 
 had come to this church colony fresh from his blessed 
 intercourse and fellowship with the Wesleys at Oxford 
 and in London. 
 
 The formative years of the boy's mental and physi- 
 cal constitution, from sixteen to twenty-two, were thus 
 spent in outdoor life, amid the trials and privations of 
 an early settler's home. In less than three years he left 
 Georgia with the rest of the Moravian colonists, for 
 Eastern Pennsylvania, landing at Philadelphia in April, 
 1740. He did his share of the hard work incident to 
 the clearing of the land and the building of the first 
 houses on the Whitefield tract, and in connection with 
 the beginning of the Bethlehem settlement in 1741. In 
 this school of rough experience was developed and 
 strengthened that intrepid will which " no wilderness, 
 however tangled, could keep from the Indians, and no 
 peril, however imminent, could keep from duty." 
 
 In January, 1743, when Zinzendorf was about to 
 return to Germany after his fourteen months' stay in 
 Pennsylvania, David Zeisberger was notified by the 
 Elders of the church that it had been determined to send 
 him back to Europe. As the ship " James," on which 
 the company was to sail from New York, was about to 
 cast off its lines, Bishop Nitschmann, Zeisberger's coun- 
 tryman and namesake, came up to say good-by to Da-
 
 1 6 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 vid. He noticed the young man's downcast look and 
 made inquiry, " Are you glad to go back to Europe ?" 
 
 " No ! I am not ! I would much prefer to remain in 
 America. I long to be thoroughly converted to Christ 
 and to serve as a missionary to the Indians in this 
 country." 
 
 Surprised, and no doubt delighted, Nitschmann said, 
 
 " Then, if I were you, I 'd at once go back to Beth- 
 lehem !" 
 
 Without another word Zeisberger jumped ashore, 
 saved a second time to the work for which he was des- 
 tined. 
 
 He returned to Bethlehem in a state of deep spir- 
 itual concern and of longing for the assurance of the 
 pardon of his sins. Brother Biittner, whose work 
 among the Indians of the Shekomeko Mission had been 
 so abundantly blessed of God to the conversion of souls, 
 was on a visit to Bethlehem about this time. The en- 
 couragement which Zeisberger received from a search- 
 ing and tender interview with Biittner, only four years 
 his senior, greatly forwarded the seeker on his way to- 
 wards the light. Some days thereafter, during the 
 singing by a company of young men in the Single 
 Brethren's house at Bethlehem of a familiar hymn of 
 praise to Jesus, the Saviour of sinners, a great light 
 came into his soul, and Zeisberger realized the joy of 
 thorough conversion in the assurance that his Saviour 
 had taken all his sins away. He spent all that day in 
 tearful ascription of joyous praise and thanksgiving to 
 his Redeemer.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 17 
 
 From that day forth Zeisberger consecrated him- 
 self, body, soul, and spirit, to his Saviour's service. 
 And now this bright, resolute, active young man, thor- 
 oughly consecrated to the service of his newly found 
 Redeemer, gave in his name to the Elders as a candi- 
 date for mission service among the Indians. 
 
 As such we find him, in February, 1744, at the head 
 of the class of young missionary candidates whom Pyr- 
 laeus was instructing in the language of the Mohawk 
 Indians, one of the Six Nations of the great Iroquois 
 Confederacy. For several years he had been exerting 
 his natural gift in the acquisition of the Delaware In- 
 dian language, by intercourse with the Indians who 
 visited Bethlehem. So rapid was his progress in this 
 labor of love that he soon came to act as official inter- 
 preter for the civil authorities of the neighborhood, as 
 well as for the Elders of the church. 
 
 Zeisberger's first appointment upon any mission 
 into the Indian country was that which took him into 
 the Mohawk Valley, as the companion of the illustrious 
 Christian Frederick Post, with a view to perfecting 
 himself in that language in which Pyrlaeus, the Leipsic 
 graduate, had already given him considerable instruc- 
 tion. It was on this journey that the youthful mission- 
 ary enthusiast was arrested, and after having been sub- 
 jected to shameless treatment at the hands of the offi- 
 cials, suffered seven weeks' imprisonment in New 
 York city, being at last set free as a vagrant Moravian 
 preacher. 
 
 These experiences only served to bring out the fine
 
 1 8 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 grain of the texture of this resolute and consecrated 
 spirit. He was learning the lesson of intrepid obedi- 
 ence to his Master's guidance, and of absolute depend- 
 ence upon Him amid appalling dangers and grievous 
 deprivations. The Rev. John Heckewelder (his illus- 
 trious associate in the care of the Indian church, some 
 twenty years his junior), says of him in his Manuscript 
 Biography of Zeisberger, that to the end, through all 
 the subsequent sixty years of heroic missionary service, 
 in the wilderness of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and 
 Canada, he bore himself with unflinching steadfastness 
 and unchallenged consistency as a humble, joyous ser- 
 vant of the crucified Jesus, gaining many rich trophies for 
 the Master among the aborigines of the land. He called 
 the converts his " brown Brethren." For their conver- 
 sion he spent more than sixty years of toilsome mission- 
 ary service, equalled by few laborers in the annals of 
 Christ's kingdom and surpassed by none. 
 
 Zeisberger was ordained to the gospel ministry in 
 1749. During the four years which intervened since 
 his first journey to the Mohawk Valley he was the 
 companion of Bishop Spangenberg, Mack, and Watte- 
 ville, in longer and shorter journeys of exploration of 
 the wilderness. With Spangenberg he paid his first 
 visit to Onondaga, the capital of the Iroquois Confed- 
 eracy in what is now Onondaga County, New York. 
 Their journey from Bethlehem, in Eastern Pennsylva- 
 nia, led them through the very sparsely settled regions 
 of Central Pennsylvania, as far as Shamokin, on the Sus- 
 quehanna the present town of Sunbury in Westmore-
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 19 
 
 land County. Thence they made their perilous way 
 through the wild region which now constitutes the 
 counties of Lycoming and Tioga, and crossed the New 
 York line into what are now the counties of Tompkins, 
 Cayuga, and Onondaga. Their way is described as 
 leading them through forests in many parts impen- 
 etrable to the sun, with thick undergrowth entangling 
 the travellers on every side, the ground, for miles, a 
 morass into which the horses sank up to their knees ; 
 tall trees, uprooted by the storm, were often found lying 
 across the trail. They nearly perished with hunger, 
 their provisions having given out, and their almost 
 miraculous deliverance from death by starvation is 
 recorded. 
 
 During their stay at the Iroquois capital Zeisberger 
 was "adopted" into the tribe of the Onondagas and 
 the Clan of the Turtle ; he received the Indian name 
 Ganousseracheri (On the Pumpkin). 
 
 On his tour with Mack along the upper branches of 
 the Susquehanna they came upon deserted Indian vil- 
 lages that had been depopulated by the small - pox 
 scourge. 
 
 In the laying out of Gnadenhuetten (Tents of Grace), 
 a village settlement planned by the Bethlehem Mission 
 Board for the accommodation of the exiled Indians of 
 Shekomeko, Zeisberger took an active part. The site 
 of this Christian Indian village was fixed at the conflu- 
 ence of the Mahoning Creek and Lehigh River, in what 
 is now Carbon County, on a tract of land of about 1,400 
 acres, purchased by the Board. The town lay on the
 
 20 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 declivity of a hill upon whose gently rising slope the 
 houses of the Indian converts were built, along three 
 streets, arranged in the form of parallel arcs. A fourth 
 street bisected these arcs ; in the middle of this street 
 stood the church and parsonage. The farm-buildings, 
 with grist and saw-mills, stood at the foot of the hill, 
 which was crowned by the God's acre, the burial-place of 
 their dead. In December, 1754, the flourishing com- 
 munity of Christian Indians an oasis in the desert 
 numbered 137 Mohican and Delaware communicants, 
 besides 86 converts residing in the outlying districts. 
 In November, 1755, it was destroyed by a band of 
 hostile Indians who massacred most of the missionary 
 brethren and sisters in charge, drove away the converts, 
 and burned the settlement. David Zeisberger made a 
 hairbreadth escape from being massacred. 
 
 After his ordination in 1749, Zeisberger was sta- 
 tioned at Shamokin, on the Susquehanna. Here he 
 began the preparation of an Iroquois dictionary, for he 
 had acquired by this time great fluency in the use of 
 the Mohawk language. The future of missionary oper- 
 ations among the Indians seemed very promising, 
 immediately after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, 
 and this quickened the ardor of the Bethlehem Mission 
 Board in the endeavor to push forward their missionary 
 operations. 
 
 In 1750 Zeisberger was again sent to visit the Iro- 
 quois capital, in company with Bishop Cammerhof. 
 They took a new route, planned by Zeisberger. They 
 started from Wyoming, on the eastern branch of the
 
 GNADENHUTTEN ON THE MAHONING, PA.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 21 
 
 Susquehanna, proposing to ascend the river in a canoe 
 built by Zeisberger. A Cayuga chief, Hahotschuan- 
 quas, acted as their guide, and with his wife Gajahene, 
 their boy Tagita, a lad of fourteen, and Gahaca, their 
 little four-year-old daughter, accompanied the two mis- 
 sionaries, in his own canoe. For ten days they pad- 
 dled their canoes against the current of the winding 
 river. At night, tying up to the shore, they slept in 
 the shelter of hastily-constructed bark tents. 
 
 At one point in their inland voyage they came upon 
 a settlement of Indians, among whom they met some 
 of their Indian converts. To the consistent steadfast- 
 ness of these Indian Christians their heathen comrades 
 bore testimony by their indignant inquiry, " What have 
 you done to our brothers that they are so entirely dif- 
 ferent from us and from what they once were ? What 
 is this baptism which has made them turn from our 
 feasts and dances and shun all our ways ?" 
 
 At Tioga, at the confluence of the Chemung River 
 with the Susquehanna, they turned their canoes into 
 the former river. Soon thereafter they took up the 
 overland trail through Tompkins County to the lower 
 end of Cayuga Lake, and thence to Onondaga, where 
 they were welcomed to the Grand Council House and 
 received with marked distinction. Their further nego- 
 tiations with the Grand Council for a treaty allowing 
 two or three missionary brethren to take up their resi- 
 dence at Onondaga, in order to learn the language and 
 customs of the Iroquois, were delayed by the circum- 
 stance that the majority of the members of the Council
 
 22 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 were too much under the influence of rum. During 
 the interval the two missionary envoys paid a brief 
 visit to the capital of the Seneca tribe, a village of forty 
 large huts, in what is now Livingston County, beauti- 
 fully situated, and rarely visited by any white man other 
 than the traders. Here too they found the Indians, 
 men and women, under the influence of rum, and our 
 two brethren barely escaped with their lives from the 
 drunken fury of the frenzied braves and squaws, who 
 would insist upon their taking part in their hideous ex- 
 cesses. But the Lord's hand was over them. On their 
 escape under cover of a thick fog from Seneca town, 
 they reached Onondaga, where they resumed their ne- 
 gotiations, and secured a treaty arrangement permitting 
 two resident missionaries to be sent to the capital to 
 learn the language. 
 
 Returning to Bethlehem in August of that year, 
 1750, Zeisberger was commissioned to visit Herrnhut, 
 in Germany. He returned from this voyage across the 
 sea in September of the following year, to resume his 
 missionary labors among the Indians with renewed de- 
 termination and zeal. He preached in the lodges of 
 the Indian converts in the region extending from Wyo- 
 ming to Shamokin, which latter post he again occupied 
 as his permanent headquarters. In a letter to the Mis- 
 sion Board at Bethlehem, dated February 28, 1752, 
 he writes : " I rejoice to hear of the awakening 
 among the Indians at Gnadenhuetten on the Maho- 
 ning ; but I shall rejoice still more when a church of 
 believers like that has been established among the Iro-
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 23 
 
 quois. I will not be satisfied until this is accom- 
 plished. I am on their side. Who knows what the 
 Lord will do !" 
 
 Zeisberger was now appointed to take up his resi- 
 dence at the Iroquois capital, to perfect himself in the 
 Mohawk language and dialects, and to gain a more 
 thorough knowledge of their usages. He was to be 
 " nationalized " among them, so that he might preach 
 the gospel to them as a brother in name and in fact. 
 His companion was Rundt. Onondaga was reached in 
 one month after leaving Bethlehem. They travelled by 
 way of New York city, Albany, and the Mohawk Val- 
 ley. To the message of the Bethlehem Mission Board, 
 of which Zeisberger and his assistant were the bearers, 
 the Council said, " We are well pleased that you have 
 sent Brother Ganousseracheri and the brother whose 
 name we cannot name, in order to learn our language. 
 We believe that this is a good work. It shall be as 
 you desire. All the chiefs of the Iroquois are so minded. 
 These two brothers shall live some years among 
 us and learn our tongue, that we may tell one an- 
 other the thoughts of our hearts. They may begin 
 here at Onondaga ; they may then go to the Cayugas, 
 and next to the Senecas." 
 
 Zeisberger with his assistant took up his abode in 
 the lodge which was formally assigned to them by the 
 Council. During their stay here the manner of the In- 
 dians' daily life became an object of familiar inspection. 
 Zeisberger was afforded every opportunity to learn the 
 mode and the significance of the interchange of belts of
 
 24 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 wampum. He learned too the painful facts of the moral 
 degradation of the Indians, especially in respect to 
 drunkenness and licentiousness and murderous cruelty. 
 He devoted himself to a diligent study of their language 
 with a view to the completion of his dictionary. 
 
 On the occasion of a friendly visit to the neighbor- 
 ing Cayugas, Zeisberger was almost killed in a murder- 
 ous attack upon him by a Dutch trader. He returned 
 to Bethlehem in the late fall. 
 
 He spent the following year, from spring to autumn, 
 at Onondaga, with Henry Frey as his assistant. He 
 acquired a complete mastery of the Mohawk tongue 
 and spoke fluently several of the dialects. 
 
 In the fall of 1754 Zeisberger paid his fifth and 
 his last visit but one to the capital of the Iroquois. 
 He, with Charles Frederick as his assistant, proceeded 
 to erect a substantial mission-house, with the purpose of 
 establishing a permanent church at Onondaga. In this 
 he was seconded by the good wishes of his Iroquois 
 friends. The Grand Council gave him a most distin- 
 guished proof of their implicit trust and confidence in 
 him and his mission, by depositing in the Mission-house 
 the Council's entire archives, comprising many belts 
 and strings of wampum, written treaties, letters from 
 colonial governors, and other similar documents. Zeis- 
 berger was appointed Keeper of the Archives of the 
 Grand Council. 
 
 His return to Bethlehem, on a short visit, in June, 
 1755, marks the close of Zeisberger's missionary activ- 
 ity among the Six Nations. The breaking out of the
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 25 
 
 " French and Indian War " put an end to the promis- 
 ing work of evangelization which he had been permitted 
 to begin at Onondaga as a centre. When, after an in- 
 terval of comparative inactivity on account of the war, 
 he resumed his life-work as a missionary among the 
 Indians, he took up his work among the Delaware In- 
 dians of Pennsylvania and Ohio. As a proof, however, 
 that the zeal of the Mission Board at Bethlehem was 
 unabated, on the very eve of the outbreak of Indian 
 hostilities, the fact is cited that a Missionary Conference 
 was held at Bethlehem (after the defeat of the English 
 under Braddock at Fort Duquesne in July, and just 
 about the time, in September, of the defeat of the 
 French, under Dieskau, near Lake George), which was 
 attended by sixteen missionary brethren and eighteen 
 missionary sisters, who made hopeful reports of their 
 operations. But war in all its horrors put an end, for 
 seven years, to active missionary operations in their 
 chosen field, in which the Lord had blessed them with 
 many gracious ingatherings of souls. 
 
 Seven years of war were seven years of enforced 
 cessation from active gospel work among the Indians. 
 Zeisberger was frequently employed to facilitate the 
 establishment of peace relations, by treaty, with the 
 various Indian nations. 
 
 Soon after the close of hostilities, in May, 1763, 
 Zeisberger gave joyous and eager response to a call 
 which came to him from the Indian settlement of 
 Machiwihilusing (in what is now Bradford County, 
 Pennsylvania, some two miles below the present Wya-
 
 26 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 lusing, on the Susquehanna) to preach to them. 
 Afoot, with Anthony, a Delaware Indian convert, as his 
 companion, Zeisberger left Bethlehem to resume once 
 again his apostolic life-work. For two days, amid 
 drenching rain, in the pathless forests and swamps of 
 the Broad Mountain, in what is now Monroe County, 
 these two messengers of Jesus crept for miles on hands 
 and feet, beneath and between laurel -bushes whose 
 tangled mazes made walking impossible. Their only 
 guide was a pocket-compass. After two days they 
 struck the trail to Wyoming. They reached Machi- 
 wihilusing after more than seven days, on the evening 
 of May 23. Although thoroughly exhausted by the 
 toil of the journey, Zeisberger at once began to preach 
 the gospel. " The Indians flocked from every side " to 
 hear his blessed message. Next morning, after a short 
 night-rest, the work was resumed, and for three days 
 he preached Christ with great power. A deep impres- 
 sion was made upon the hearts of his hearers. Tears 
 rolled down their cheeks and their whole frames were 
 convulsed with emotion as they listened to the preached 
 word. The Mission Board appointed him as resident 
 missionary, at the request of the Indians of Machiwihi- 
 lusing. Once again he was in his element, preaching 
 to his beloved Indians, calling them to repentance and 
 explaining to them free grace in Christ Jesus. He 
 taught the converts to sing the hymns which he transla- 
 ted into their native Delaware Indian tongue. 
 
 The visiting Quaker evangelist, John Woolman, 
 attended his services and prayed that " the great work "
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 2 7 
 
 which Zeisberger had undertaken might be crowned 
 with success. One day their foremost " prophet," Pa- 
 punhank, who had been converted by Zeisberger's 
 preaching, was to be baptized. All the town came to- 
 gether in solemn assembly. After singing a hymn in 
 the Delaware language, he preached on Baptism. He 
 then examined Papunhank, the candidate for bap- 
 tism, as to his faith and experience. After answering 
 the questions addressed to him, Papunhank added this 
 voluntary confession : " The Saviour has made me feel 
 my misery and my utterly depraved state. I used to 
 preach to you ; I imagined myself a good man ; I did 
 not know that I was the greatest sinner among you all. 
 Brothers, forgive and forget everything I have said or 
 done." The " prophet " was then baptized by Zeis- 
 berger, receiving the name John. Rev. John Hecke- 
 welder, in his Manuscript Biographical sketch, says, 
 " Had Zeisberger inherited a kingdom, his joy would 
 not have been as great as it was over the conversion of 
 the Indian ' prophet,' the first one whom he brought 
 into the church of Christ." At an afternoon service of 
 the same day a second Indian convert was baptized, 
 receiving the name Peter. Thereupon Zeisberger joy- 
 fully exclaimed, " Now my heart is light ; before it was 
 heavy, so heavy that I could scarcely endure it !" An 
 awakening in a neighboring Indian town engaged his 
 labors for the next three days. But the outbreak of 
 Pontiac's War cut short this renewal of his mission- 
 ary work and compelled his speedy return to Bethle- 
 hem,
 
 28 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 Now came a time of terrible ordeal for the Indian 
 Christians and their Moravian pastors. The govern- 
 ment of the Pennsylvania colony under the stress of 
 public sentiment ordered the transfer to Philadelphia, 
 as prisoners of war, of all the Indian converts, men, 
 women, and children, who had fled the wilderness and 
 had sought refuge within the Moravian settlements of 
 Bethlehem and Nazareth in Northampton County. On 
 their first arrival in Philadelphia they almost became 
 the victims of the murderous violence of a mob. Or- 
 dered to be led to New York city, they were halted on 
 their toilsome march through New Jersey and turned 
 back again to Philadelphia, where for sixteen months 
 these Indian Christians were imprisoned. In that time 
 nearly one-half their number died of small-pox. Dur- 
 ing this time of captivity, Zeisberger and his colaborers, 
 Grube and Schmick with their wives, shepherded the 
 persecuted sheep of the wilderness in a way worthy of 
 the followers of the Good Shepherd, sharing in all their 
 perils and ministering to them in all their distresses. 
 
 In the spring of 1765, like a flock of partridges that 
 have been cooped up in the winter-quarters of a farmer's 
 barn-yard and are set free, this company of the " chil- 
 dren of the forest " were allowed to return to their forest 
 home, Machiwihilusing on the Susquehanna. Rev. 
 John Heckewelder, the young assistant of Zeisberger in 
 the leadership of the Indian Christians, says that when 
 they went out to the chase or fished in the river, when 
 they roamed the woods gathering roots and herbs, the 
 game they found, the fish they caught, and every
 
 REV. JOHN HECKEWELDER.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 9 
 
 product of the ground seemed to them as specially 
 given by the hand of Providence. With praiseful song 
 men, women, and children busily engaged in building a 
 town. " Behold," says Zeisberger, " this is making a 
 right use of their liberty. Beginning their work in this 
 way, God will abundantly bless them. Under these 
 circumstances it is a joy to work among the Indians." 
 
 The new town on the Susquehanna, to which the 
 Mission Board gave the name Friedenshuetten (Tents 
 of Peace), is thus described. It had twenty-nine log- 
 houses with windows and chimneys, like the home- 
 steads of white settlers, and thirteen huts. These were 
 built along one street, in the centre of which stood the 
 church, thirty-two feet by twenty-four, with shingled 
 roof, and a wing used as a schoolhouse. The mis- 
 sionaries' house stood opposite the church, on the left- 
 hand side of the street. Each house-lot had a frontage 
 of thirty-two feet. A ten-feet-wide alley ran between 
 every two lots. Gardens and orchards stocked with 
 vegetables and fruit-trees lay to the rear of the home- 
 steads. 
 
 A post and rail fence inclosed the town. In sum- 
 mer time the street and alleys were kept scrupulously 
 clean by a company of women, who swept them with 
 wooden brooms and removed the rubbish. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty acres of meadow and farm 
 land, between the town and the river, were inclosed 
 with two miles of fencing. A canoe for each household 
 was tied at the river bank. Hundreds of cattle and 
 hogs, and poultry of every kind, were raised in abund-
 
 30 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 ance. More time was given to farming than to hunt- 
 ing, and plentiful crops were raised. Corn, maple- 
 sugar, butter, and pork, together with canoes of white 
 pine, were sold to the white settlers and to visiting In- 
 dians. 
 
 But greater than the material prosperity was the 
 spiritual blessing which rested upon the Indian church 
 in the wilderness. The first baptism of an Indian con- 
 vert, in October of the first year, marked the beginning 
 of a great revival. Visiting Indians, who came from 
 near and from far Mohawks, Cayugas, Senecas, Onon- 
 dagas, Mohicans, Wampanoags, Delawares, Tutelas, 
 Tuscaroras, and Nanticokes heard the story of Jesus. 
 Zeisberger wrote : " For several months a great revival 
 has been prevailing among the Indians who visit us. 
 All who attend our services are deeply impressed and 
 listen as though they never had enough of the message 
 of a Saviour. Often while I am preaching the power 
 of the gospel message makes them tremble with emo- 
 tion and shake with fear, until they almost lose con- 
 sciousness and seem about to faint. This shows with 
 what violence the powers of evil within them oppose 
 the work of the Cross. As a rule when such a paroxysm 
 is over they weep in silence. We have many candi- 
 dates for baptism. Anthony, our native helper, enjoys 
 the particular esteem of his unconverted countrymen, 
 and he sets forth the Saviour's love with such feeling 
 that not infrequently his hearers burst into tears, and 
 he is constrained to weep with them." 
 
 Without waiting for the inevitable crisis which
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 31 
 
 came in 1772 when the land upon which this Christian 
 community was located should be sold to the white 
 settler, the Mission Board sent Zeisberger, who had 
 come to be the recognized leader in all missionary work 
 among the Indians, on a journey of exploration to the 
 western part of the Pennsylvania colony. " Intelligence 
 reached us that there were Indians living on the Alle- 
 gheny River who desired to hear the gospel." The 
 purpose of this perilous journey was to find out " wheth- 
 er anything could there be accomplished for the Sa- 
 viour." 
 
 Zeisberger set out with the helpers, Anthony and 
 Papunhank, as his companions, on foot, with one pack- 
 horse, in September, 1767. From Friedenshuetten they 
 made their way by canoe and on foot through the al- 
 most impenetrable wilderness of northern and north- 
 western Pennsylvania, where doubtless no white man 
 had ever travelled, to the head waters of the Allegheny 
 River, in what is now Potter County. 
 
 On their journey they came to the lodge of a Seneca 
 chief. "Whither is the pale-face going?" " To Gosch- 
 goschiink " [a Monsey Indian town on the Allegheny, 
 near the mouth of Tionesta Creek, in what is now Ve- 
 nango County]. " Why does the pale-face come on so 
 unknown a road ? This is no road for white people, 
 and no white man has come this trail before." " Sen- 
 eca, the business that calls me among the Indians is 
 very different from that of other white people, and 
 hence the roads I travel are different too. I am here to 
 bring the Indians good and great words." For two
 
 32 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 hours the host and his guest kept up a cross-fire of at- 
 tack and defence of the missionary's purpose. At 
 length he demanded his guest's name. Zeisberger's 
 response, " I am Ganousseracheri," acted like a charm. 
 The chiefs stern face relaxed, breaking out into smiles. 
 He grasped his guest's hand, called him his brother, 
 said he had often heard of him, and begged him to ex- 
 cuse his cold reception of him. He warned Zeisberger, 
 " The Indians of Goschgoschiink will not hesitate to 
 murder you." But nothing could keep the intrepid 
 messenger of the cross from continuing his journey to 
 its destination. He reached it on the i6th of October. 
 Of the effects of his first preaching service, on his 
 arrival, he says, "Never before have I seen both the 
 darkness of hell and the invincible power of the gospel 
 so clearly depicted in the faces of Indians." After a 
 stay of seven days, during which Zeisberger secured 
 permission to establish a permanent mission at this 
 point a matter which was only settled favorably after a 
 fierce conflict with the Indian " prophet " Wangomen 
 he returned to report to the home Board. In June of 
 the next year, 1768, Zeisberger and Gottlob Senseman 
 and wife, together with three families of Indian Chris- 
 tians, the Helpers, Anthony and Joanna, Abraham and 
 Salome, Peter and Abigail, arrived on the Allegheny to 
 begin the new mission. Subsequently it was trans- 
 ferred to a second site and finally to a third site, within 
 what is now the " Oil Region " of Pennsylvania, in 
 Lawrence County, on the Beaver River, between the 
 Shenango River and Slippery Rock Creek. 
 
 American Heroi. 6
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 33 
 
 The missionaries encountered the fierce opposition 
 of heathen Indians in their attempts to Christianize 
 those who came to hear the gospel. Twice did Provi- 
 dence prevent the carrying out of a plot deliberately 
 laid to murder Zeisberger, " the man in a black coat," 
 who wrote at this time in his Diary : " They will cer- 
 tainly not succeed, for He that is with us is stronger 
 than they." The most signal triumph in these years 
 of hard campaigning under the banner of the cross, in 
 the Allegheny region, was the conversion of the elo- 
 quent Indian warrior, Glikkikan, who had never yet 
 met his equal among whites or Indians. He came to 
 the mission to confound the heralds of Christ, but 
 like Saul at Damascus was himself confounded. His 
 conversion marked the turning of the tide in favor of 
 the mission. A revival broke out at the new mission 
 station, named Friedenstadt (City of Peace). In the 
 house of Abraham, the Helper, inquiry meetings were 
 held every evening, sometimes lasting until midnight. 
 Even the children were impressed and talked of Jesus. 
 
 Among the converts who were baptized was Glik- 
 kikan, who received the name Isaac. Zeisberger says 
 of him that he was the wisest counsellor and bravest 
 captain of his Chief, and that when the latter reproached 
 him for having gone over to the missionaries, saying, 
 " In good time you will discover how miserably you 
 have been deceived," Isaac Glikkikan replied, " You 
 are right ; I have joined the Moravians. Where they 
 go, I will go ; where they lodge, I will lodge ; nothing 
 shall separate me from them. Their people shall be
 
 34 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 my people, and their God my God." One day after 
 listening to a sermon on sin and grace, Glikkikan, 
 deeply moved, walked to his hut through the village 
 sobbing aloud. " This is wonderful," writes Zeisberger ; 
 "a proud war-captain sheds tears in the presence of 
 his former associates. Thus the Saviour by His word 
 breaks the hard hearts and humbles the pride of the 
 Indians." 
 
 So complete was the triumph of the gospel over its 
 enemies that on their own proposal Zeisberger was 
 adopted into the Monsey tribe of Indians, and the 
 religion of Jesus was recognized as that of a majority 
 of the tribe. 
 
 In March, 1771, an urgent invitation from the 
 Grand Council of the Delaware Nation led Zeisber- 
 ger to visit their capital situated in what is now Ox- 
 ford township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio. Here he 
 was entertained as the guest of the head-Chief Net- 
 awatwes. It was his first visit to Ohio, the theatre 
 of his most successful missionary activity and of his 
 most appalling trials during the next thirty-seven 
 years of his career. He was just fifty years old when 
 he first came to the Western territory. 
 
 In accordance with Zeisberger's recommendation, 
 on his return, the Foreign Mission Board determined 
 to accept the formal invitation of the Grand Council 
 of the Delawares. It was resolved that the entire 
 body of Indian converts (at Friedenshuetten on the 
 Susquehanna and at Friedenstadt in the Allegheny 
 region) be removed to a new settlement to be begun in
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 35 
 
 what is now northern Ohio, in the Tuscarawas Val- 
 ley. 
 
 In the valley of the Muskingum River, in what is 
 now Tuscarawas County, near the " Beautiful Spring " 
 pointed out to them by Chief Netawatwes, who made 
 them a grant of land in its immediate vicinity, the first 
 settlement was begun by Zeisberger and Heckewelder 
 in the spring of 1772. He gave it the name Schon- 
 Brunn, the German for the Indian name which signified 
 Beautiful Spring. 
 
 In the course of a few years this had grown into a 
 cluster of Christian communities : Gnadenhuetten 
 (Tents of Grace), Lichtenau (Meadow of Light), New 
 Schon-Brunn, and Salem. Here were dwelling in 
 peace and plenty hundreds of Indian converts and 
 their families, and a corps of devoted missionary 
 Brethren and Sisters who labored under the superin- 
 tendency of Zeisberger, Rev. John Heckewelder and 
 wife, Rev. Gottlob Senseman and wife, Rev. John G. 
 Jungmann and wife, Rev. John Roth and wife, Rev. 
 John J. Schmick and wife, Rev. Michael Jung, and 
 Rev. William Edwards, and at a later time Rev. Ben- 
 jamin Mortimer and Rev. Abraham Luckenbach. 
 
 So complete was the success which crowned these 
 gospel labors, and so commanding became the personal 
 influence of Zeisberger, that just before the breaking 
 out of the War of the Revolution the Grand Council 
 of the Delawares solemnly adopted an edict of which 
 the following is the principal part : 
 
 " Liberty is given the Christian religion, which the
 
 36 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 Council advises the entire nation to adopt. The Chris- 
 tian Indians are on an entire equality with the Dela- 
 wares, all constituting together one nation. Christian 
 Indians have like property rights in the nation's lands 
 with the rest of the nation. Only converts may settle 
 near the towns of the Christian Indians." 
 
 The following statutes for the government of his 
 Indian communities were drawn up by Zeisberger, and 
 in accordance with them were ail their affairs regu- 
 lated : 
 
 " 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 
 pray. We will rest from work on the Lord's day, and 
 attend public service. We will honor father and 
 mother, and when they grow old and needy we will do 
 for them what we can. 
 
 " No one shall have leave to dwell with us until our 
 Pastors have given their consent, after due examination 
 by the Helpers. We will have nothing to do with thieves, 
 murderers, whoremongers, adulterers, or drunkards. 
 We will not take part in dances, sacrifices, heathenish 
 festivals or games. We will use no witchcraft in hunt- 
 ing. 
 
 "We will obey our Pastors and the Helpers ap- 
 pointed to preserve order in our public services, and in 
 the towns and in the fields. We will not be idle, nor 
 scold, nor beat one another, nor tell lies. Whosoever 
 injures the property of his neighbor shall make restitu- 
 tion.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 37 
 
 " A man shall have but one wife, shall love her and 
 shall provide for her and for his children. A woman 
 shall have but one husband, shall obey him, care for her 
 children, and be cleanly in all things. Young persons 
 shall not marry without the consent of their parents and 
 their pastor. 
 
 " We will not admit rum or any other intoxicating 
 liquor into our towns. If strangers or traders shall 
 bring intoxicating liquors, our Helpers shall take it from 
 them and not restore it until the owners are ready to 
 leave the place. 
 
 " No one shall contract debts with traders or receive 
 goods to sell for traders, without the consent of the 
 Helpers. Whoever goes on a hunt or journey must 
 give due notice to the Pastors or Stewards. When- 
 ever the Stewards or Helpers appoint a time to make 
 fences or to do other work for the common good, we 
 will assist and do our part. Whenever corn is needed 
 to entertain strangers, or sugar for lovefeasts, we will 
 freely contribute from our supply. We will not go to 
 war and will not buy booty taken in war." 
 
 The government of these towns was administered by 
 the Missionaries and the Helpers, who constituted a 
 municipal Council. Whenever the question of re- 
 moval came up after the dispersion in 1781, the de- 
 cision was always left to the vote of the people. Agri- 
 culture and stock-raising were what mainly employed 
 these communities of Indian converts, although hunt- 
 ing was not given up altogether. 
 
 The material and spiritual prosperity of this re- 
 
 448943
 
 38 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 markable cluster of Indian towns in the valley of the 
 Tuscarawas, under the superintendency of Zeisberger 
 and his devoted assistants, excited the wondering admi- 
 ration alike of the white man and of the red man. Many 
 came long distances to visit these habitations of peace 
 and plenty upon which rested the smile of God. 
 
 The church at Schon-Brunn, the oldest settlement, 
 had room for five hundred hearers, yet it often proved 
 too small to hold the people who crowded to hear the 
 gospel message. 
 
 Among the converts were many chiefs of the vari- 
 ous tribes of the Delaware Nation, together with 
 Mohicans, Nanticokes, Shawanese, and others, who 
 constituted a part of the abundant ingathering of this 
 most prosperous Indian mission. 
 
 On Easter morning, 1774, Zeisberger led the people 
 in the praying of the beautiful Easter Morning Litany 
 of the Moravian Church, which he had translated into 
 the Delaware Indian language. 
 
 The six years from 1771 to 1776 mark the time of 
 Zeisberger's greatest success in his life-work of evangel- 
 izing the Indians. It can be said with truth that no 
 man has ever reached an equal degree of success in 
 evangelizing the American red man. 
 
 With the beginning of the American Revolution 
 began the troublous years of Zeisberger's missionary 
 work, culminating, in 1781, in the destruction of the fair 
 fabric of Christian Indian civilization in the Tuscarawas 
 Valley and the dispersion of his Indian church. There- 
 after for more than twenty years he shepherded his
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 39 
 
 little flock of " brown brethren " in the face of appalling 
 perils, and amid fearful privations, in its wanderings 
 hither and thither in the wilderness, until, within ten years 
 of his death, he was recalled to the Tuscarawas Valley. 
 
 The flourishing settlements in northern Ohio were 
 about half-way between the American and British fron- 
 tier lines, with the American headquarters for all that 
 Western territory at Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), and the 
 British at Fort Detroit. As an apostle of peace Zeis- 
 berger was helpless in the face of these bitter antago- 
 nists, and was open to assault from either as the sup- 
 posed favorer of the other. The Indians among whom 
 he was laboring were the objects of rival diplomacies 
 and plottings, that they might be secured as allies of the 
 one against the other. It is easily understood that at 
 such a time of war and intrigue the work of the mis- 
 sionary must either cease for the time being or be an- 
 nihilated. 
 
 The crisis came in the summer of 1781 when the 
 emissaries of the British commandant at Detroit ap- 
 peared at Schon-Brunn, in the month of August, with 
 three hundred Indian warriors, under the leadership of 
 the British captain, Elliott. It had been determined 
 that the presence of this body of neutral Indians, under 
 the leadership of Zeisberger and his fellow-missionaries, 
 could no longer be tolerated. To this end the order 
 was given to remove the missionaries at any cost. This 
 fell in with the plans of the heathen Indians, who always 
 found in these settlements a barrier against their ma- 
 raudings and murderous assaults.
 
 40 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 In his Diary Zeisberger describes how this was car- 
 ried out. " They laid hands on me and Brothers 
 Heckewelder and Senseman, and led us away captive. 
 They stripped us, taking away all our clothes. We 
 were then brought to the Englishman's tent, where 
 they gave us some old clothes, so that we were not en- 
 tirely naked. Mrs. Senseman with her babe, only three 
 days old, was forced to get up out of her bed at night, 
 and together with Mrs. Zeisberger and Mrs. Jungman, 
 all in their night-clothes, these Christian women were 
 carried down the creek in a canoe to the rendezvous 
 near to their imprisoned husbands. Mrs. Heckewelder, 
 with her five-months' -old baby daughter, was undis- 
 turbed until the following morning. After plundering 
 the missionaries' houses and ruthlessly destroying their 
 effects (cutting open their pillows and feather-beds, etc.), 
 shooting their cattle and swine and poultry, they com- 
 pelled the missionaries and their wives to set out on 
 foot upon a toilsome march through the wilderness in 
 the direction of Detroit." Bishop de Schweinitz, in his 
 Life of Zeisberger, says : " It was a sad journey. Zeis- 
 berger and his fellow-missionaries were turning their 
 backs upon the scenes of more than eight years' indus- 
 try (1772 to 1781), and of a Christian community never 
 equalled in the history of missions among the American 
 Indians. They were leaving behind rich plantations 
 with five thousand bushels of unharvested corn, besides 
 large quantities stored in barns ; hundreds of young 
 cattle and swine roaming the woods ; poultry of every 
 kind; gardens stocked with an abundance of vegeta-
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 41 
 
 bles ; three flourishing towns, each with a commodious 
 house of worship ; all the furniture of their homes ; the 
 implements of husbandry ; in a word, their entire prop- 
 erty save what could be carried on pack-horses or in 
 canoes." 
 
 But more than all the material loss was the terrible 
 blow to the prestige of the work of the mission among 
 the Indians. Its glory was gone. The independence 
 of the Indian Christians, as recognized in their rela- 
 tions to the nation of Delaware Indians, and which se- 
 cured to them Indian rights and immunities at the 
 hands of all the other Indian clans and nations, was 
 destroyed. 
 
 Zeisberger, at the age of sixty, after having given 
 more than thirty of these years to unremitting labors in 
 behalf of the evangelization of the red man, saw the 
 shipwreck of his life-work. For well-nigh twenty fol- 
 lowing years of laborious and harassing leadership he 
 was the Moses of the remnant of the Indian Church, 
 guiding it with all the firmness and gentleness and in- 
 trepid devotion of the Hebrew leader, hither and 
 thither through the wilderness of northern Ohio and 
 southern Michigan and the adjacent parts of Canada, 
 until, in 1798, he was permitted, in God's good provi- 
 dence, to return to the Tuscarawas Valley, and near to 
 the " Beautiful Spring " and the site of Schon-Brunn, 
 to found his last Indian settlement, Goshen, in the sev- 
 enty-eighth year of his pilgrimage. 
 
 The record of these seventeen years of leadership of 
 the Indian Church in the wilderness has been recently
 
 42 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 published by the Historical and Philosophical Society 
 of Ohio, in an English translation, by Eugene F. Bliss, 
 of the German Manuscript Diary of Zeisberger. 
 
 It tells how the news of the " Gnadenhuetten Mas- 
 sacre " was brought to the captive missionaries at their 
 first halting station at " Captives' Town " [in what is 
 now Antrim township, Wyandot County, Ohio], near 
 Sandusky, in March, 1782, after their first winter in 
 captivity. Ninety Indian Christians, men, women, and 
 children, had returned to their former homes in the 
 Tuscarawas Valley, in early springtime, to recover a 
 portion of their still unharvested corn-crop. A force 
 of American militia-men from the vicinity of Pittsburgh, 
 under the command of Colonel Williamson, surprised 
 them at their labors in the field and murdered them in 
 cold blood ! 
 
 We will let Zeisberger tell the story, as he records 
 it in his Diary under date of March 23, 1782. " To-day 
 we have the first trustworthy news of the horrible mur- 
 der of our Indian brethren at Gnadenhuetten and Sa- 
 lem, March 7 and 8. Our Indian brethren (who had 
 been driven away from the Tuscarawas towns when the 
 missionaries were driven off and had shared the cap- 
 tivity of their pastors) during the whole winter had 
 suffered great hunger, for in this neighborhood nothing 
 was to be had. Since now they heard that there was 
 corn enough in our towns and that they had nothing to 
 fear to go there and get it, they made ready and went 
 away. For they saw nothing else before them, if they 
 remained, than that they and their children must starve.
 
 GNADENHUTTEN, OHIO.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 43 
 
 " We advised them at Christmas and at New Year's 
 to go there, for as long as snow remained there was 
 the least danger. But they did not go until the snow 
 melted, and then it was too late and dangerous. When 
 they were there they believed themselves quite secure. 
 Instead of hastening to get away again, they stayed 
 several weeks in the towrts and fields, having then 
 enough to eat. 
 
 " The militia, some 200 in number, as we hear, 
 came first to Gnadenhuetten. Our Indians were 
 mostly in the cornfields and saw the militia come, but 
 no one thought of fleeing, for they suspected no ill. 
 The militia came to them and bade them come into 
 town and no harm should befall them. They trusted 
 and went, but they were all bound, the men being put 
 into one house and the women into another. The 
 brethren began to sing hymns and spoke words of 
 encouragement and consolation one to another, until 
 they were all slain. The sisters soon afterwards met 
 the same fate. Christina [a widow who had been edu- 
 cated at Bethlehem], the Mohican (who spoke English 
 and German fluently), fell upon her knees before the 
 colonel and begged for life, but got for answer that he 
 could not help her. The brethren and sisters of Salem 
 were bound in like manner, led into town and slaugh- 
 tered. The militia, before murdering them, had made 
 our Indians bring out all their hidden goods, and then 
 took them away. They had to tell the soldiers where 
 the bees were and help get the honey out. Other 
 things also they had to get for them before they were
 
 44 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 killed. They prayed and sang until the tomahawks of 
 the militia-men stuck in their heads. The young man 
 Jacob (who brought the news), who was scalped and 
 got away, said the blood flowed in streams into the 
 cellar of the house. They burned the bodies together 
 with the houses, which they set on fire [a day or two 
 after the massacre]." 
 
 Thus were butchered in cold blood twenty-nine men, 
 twenty-seven women, eleven boys, eleven girls, and 
 twelve babes at the breast, members of the Indian 
 church now in captivity. 
 
 Zeisberger adds : " This news sank deep into our 
 hearts, so that these our brethren and sisters, who as 
 martyrs had all at one time gone to the Saviour, were 
 always, day and night, before our eyes and in our 
 thoughts, and we could not forget them. But this in 
 some measure comforted us : that they passed into the 
 Saviour's arms in such a resigned disposition of heart, 
 where they will for ever rest protected from the sins 
 and all the wants of this world." 
 
 On April 8, 1782, he writes in his Diary: " Nowhere 
 is a place to be found to which we can retire with our 
 Indians and be secure. The world is all too narrow. 
 From the white people, or so-called Christians, we can 
 hope for no protection, and among the heathen we have 
 no friends left, such outlaws are we ! But, praise be to 
 God, the Lord our God yet lives, who will not forsake 
 us. He will punish us if we deserve punishment, that 
 afterwards he may be the more merciful to us." 
 
 "Our Indian church," dispersed and persecuted,
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 45 
 
 like sheep that have no shepherd, knowing not whither 
 to turn or whom to trust prayer for them was the 
 burden of all his petitionings. 
 
 At length in July, 1782, by permission of the Detroit 
 commandant, Major Schuyler de Peyster, Zeisberger 
 began a settlement for the scattered remnant of the In- 
 dian church in what is now Clinton township, Macomb 
 County, Michigan, and named it New Gnadenhuetten. 
 It was situated some twenty-three and a half miles from 
 Detroit. After four years of quiet and measurable suc- 
 cess, the peace between Great Britain and the United 
 States seemed to open the way for the return of the 
 veteran Missionary Superintendent and his reunited 
 remnant of the Indian church to the Tuscarawas Val- 
 ley. Here Congress had made a large grant of land 
 for the abode and the support of the Moravian Indians. 
 But the complications with the various Indian nations 
 in the Northwestern Territory, who refused to submit 
 to the virtual confiscation of their land, rendered such a 
 return inadvisable. 
 
 Their Chippewa neighbors urged upon them the 
 fact that they had been granted an asylum on their ter- 
 ritory only until peace should be reestablished. Ac- 
 cordingly Zeisberger determined upon a return to Ohio 
 territory. In two sloops they were conveyed across 
 Lake Erie, and after many " perils in the waters " and 
 " perils in the wilderness " they were landed at the 
 mouth of the Cuyahoga, where Cleveland is now built. 
 " Pilgerruh," a temporary abiding-place, was built in 
 what is now Independence township, Cuyahoga County,
 
 46 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 on the eastern bank of the river, " probably not far 
 from the northern boundary." 
 
 After only a year's sojourn at this " lodge in the 
 wilderness," Zeisberger transferred his settlement to 
 what is now Milan township, Erie County, Ohio, a few 
 miles from the mouth of the Huron River. De Schwei- 
 nitz locates the site as probably near to that of Milan. 
 They reached the site of the new settlement in May, 
 
 1787. It bears the name of New Salem in the records 
 of the Indian mission. 
 
 Until March, 1791, this Indian settlement flourished 
 with a degree of material and spiritual prosperity that 
 seemed to bring back again the golden days of blessed 
 and fruitful missionary activity on the Lehigh and the 
 Susquehanna in Pennsylvania, and in the Tuscarawas 
 Valley before the Gnadenhuetten massacre. Many 
 conversions attended the faithful preaching of the gospel 
 message. Gelelemend, " the great chief of Goschgo- 
 schflnk " (the former capital of the Delaware Indians) 
 " came like any other sinner, weeping and begging for 
 grace at the Saviour's feet." He was baptized after 
 months of probation, and became a faithful Helper in 
 the church. 
 
 Here the faithful Brother Schebosch entered his rest, 
 aged sixty-eight. Identified since 1742 with the Mora- 
 vian mission among the Indians, he had been one of 
 Zeisberger's most trusty and efficient helpers. He says 
 of him in his Diary, under date of Friday, September 5, 
 
 1788, the day of his burial, " He was serviceable to 
 every man without distinction, white or Indian, at all
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 47 
 
 times ready to help when he could. He bore his cross 
 with patience, for in this life he seldom had things easy 
 and good. But he was never heard to complain or fret, 
 even if things went hard with him, and he had not even 
 enough to eat. He loved and was loved. We shaD 
 long miss him among us. His stay here below will re- 
 main with us and with the Indian brethren in blessed 
 remembrance." 
 
 Of a female helper, the Indian woman Agnes, who 
 died in peace at New Gnadenhuetten, in Michigan, 1783, 
 who had been baptized in September, 1751, at the station 
 Gnadenhuetten, on the Mahoning, in Carbon County, 
 Pennsylvania, he says : " She went through all the fatali- 
 ties, difficulties and changes through which the Indian 
 church passed: at the burning of the first Gnaden- 
 huetten in 1755, then at Nain, and in imprisonment in 
 Philadelphia; in 1765 at Friedenshuetten on the Sus- 
 quehanna, in 1772 at Friedenstadt on the Allegheny, 
 and thence to the Tuscarawas Valley. In the year 
 1781, when the Indian church on the Muskingum was 
 carried away captive, she had part in all the hardships 
 we encountered. After 1782, when the Indian church 
 had been altogether robbed of its missionaries, she took 
 the first opportunity to rejoin us at New Gnadenhuetten, 
 in Michigan, where she died in peace. She is a clear 
 example and proof that whoever has a true heart the 
 Saviour helps through all tribulations and upholds to 
 the end." 
 
 To " our dear old Abraham," who died a few years 
 later, in 1791, Zeisberger pays this tribute (he was
 
 48 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 one of the fruits of the Friedenshuetten revival, on the 
 Susquehanna, in 1765) : " By the grace of the Saviour 
 he made himself free altogether from Indian supersti- 
 tion and gave himself entirely to the Saviour. He 
 proved this in his life, and through all these years to 
 the very end he remained true to the church, and he is 
 therefore a rare example. He was formerly one of the 
 greatest drunkards and fighters, so that all had to flee 
 before him. But he had put off the old man with his 
 works and had put on Christ who lived in him. Dur- 
 ing all opposition, amid reproach and persecution from 
 the savages, he freely acknowledged Christ and praised 
 him as the Redeemer and only Saviour of the heathen. 
 He often ended his exhortations to the savages with 
 these words : ' Now, my friends, I have told you how 
 you will be happy and can attain to eternal life. I have 
 also told you what you have to expect in case you do 
 not receive it. I have spoken everything which one 
 must know who wishes to be saved. It is a comfort to 
 me to have had this opportunity of saying this to you, 
 so that you cannot on that day accuse me, We were 
 with the believers, but they told us nothing of this.' He 
 filled the office of Overseer in the Indian church for 
 many years unweariedly, in perfect fidelity day and 
 night. He went through much suffering and hardship 
 with the Indian church. In his last illness he said that 
 if it were the Saviour's will that he should depart it was 
 well. He should go to him with joy as a poor sinner, 
 who had nothing good to show but only Jesus' blood 
 and righteousness. He was conscious to the last. 
 
 American Heroes. *7
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 49 
 
 When the Lord's blessing had been imparted to him, 
 he said, ' Now I am happy.' We have had but one 
 Abraham. We shall miss him, but we do not begrudge 
 him his blessed call to rest in Jesus' wounds. Wt 
 thank the Saviour for lending him to us so many years. 
 May he be pleased further to think of us and to send us 
 more such true helpers, supplying them with grace, 
 courage, and strength to his praise." 
 
 Of William, a national Helper, who died in 1791, 
 Zeisberger records : " In his youth he was much with 
 the late Sir William Johnson, whose interpreter he was 
 at the treaties. He was honored by the Indians and 
 by the whites as a man of consequence. He joined the 
 church at Friedenshuetten in 1770, and at once formed 
 the resolution to live all his life in the church and to say 
 good-night to the world, Indian councils, the chiefs and 
 their affairs. He kept this resolution to the end. He 
 came to Ohio in '72 and soon became a national Helper 
 and our interpreter, for which he had a fine talent. He 
 had a fine gift, when preaching Christ to the heathen 
 Indians, to make them understand plainly, after the In- 
 dian way and manner of speech, what served for their 
 salvation ; and his words found acceptance, for he was 
 loved and respected by all in and out of the church. His 
 intercourse with the brethren was upright, straightfor- 
 ward, and for their blessing and edification. As often 
 as we had to treat with the chiefs about our affairs we 
 always employed him, for we could depend upon it 
 that our purpose would be attained. More than others 
 he had a successful hand in such transactions. He con-
 
 50 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 sidered well what he had to accomplish, and he knew 
 well the manners and customs of the chiefs, and the 
 Saviour was with him. The last business of this sort 
 which he undertook was to take back the hatchet sent 
 to our Christian Indians from Fort Wayne (Gigeyunk) 
 summoning them to war. He did not want to go, but 
 went from obedience ; for he was not well, and the mat- 
 ter was unpleasant to him. But in this affair also he 
 was so successful that since that time we have had no 
 further trouble about this. He came back from his 
 errand to Fort Wayne so sick that he was scarcely 
 able to give an account of his journey and what he had 
 done. He said to Brother Samuel, who was also sick, 
 ' We cannot know which of us two will first go to the 
 Saviour, you or I. If you go first, be assured that I 
 will remain faithful to the Saviour ; if I go before you, 
 do thou remain faithful, so that we may see each other 
 again.' He fell asleep calmly and happily, conscious 
 to the last." 
 
 Rich fruitage of the veteran missionary's life-labor ! 
 Happy indeed amid all the countless trials and poign- 
 ant sorrows that clouded his career, in the triumph of 
 the Saviour's grace over the powers of darkness, in the 
 salvation of hundreds and thousands of precious souls. 
 
 In the midst of the fruitful activity of the settlement 
 at New Salem came the " foreboding " of another en^ 
 forced pilgrimage. The warlike relations of the ne<* 
 Government with the Indians of that Western territory 
 made it no longer safe for the Indian church. -Again 
 the mournful plaint finds a place in his Diary : " The
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 51 
 
 world, which yet is large and contains land enough, 
 will soon be too small for them, a handful of believing 
 Indians, who because they believe in Jesus Christ are 
 despised, of whom the world is unworthy." 
 
 "We have had an inkling for some time that we 
 must soon again take the pilgrim's staff, after dwelling 
 here for four years," he writes under date of Wednes- 
 day, January 12, 1791. They had been four fruitful 
 years in another important respect. Zeisberger found 
 leisure to prepare a translation into the Delaware lan- 
 guage of the " Harmony of the Four Gospels," and a 
 hymn-book in the same language. Time for the estab- 
 lishment and conduct of schools was also given, and 
 three schools were kept with a hundred pupils, chil- 
 dren and adults, who were anxious to learn to read and 
 write. 
 
 On Sunday, April 10, 1791, the day before the sev- 
 entieth anniversary of his birth, Zeisberger preached the 
 farewell sermon preparatory to the breaking up of the 
 settlement. The removal began next day, and by 
 Thursday, the I4th, the last canoes left, carrying with 
 them the patriarchal Zeisberger and the rear-guard of 
 twenty helpers. 
 
 Again did the hostilities between the American 
 Government and the Indians compel the sorely dis- 
 tressed Indian church, under the guidance of Zeisber- 
 ger, to seek an asylum under the British flag. 
 
 Their pilgrimage led them to a temporary halting- 
 place or " night-lodge " near the mouth of the Detroit 
 River, on the Canada side, near the present Amherst-
 
 52 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 burg, where they established themselves for one year. 
 In May, 1792, they took up their abode in Oxford 
 township, Canada West, on the River Thames. Here 
 Zeisberger founded the settlement of Fairfield, upon a 
 tract of land granted them by the British Government, 
 twelve miles long and six miles broad. The new set- 
 tlement soon grew to be a flourishing town with forty 
 houses, regularly built, a church, and parsonages for 
 Zeisberger and his fellow -laborers, Brother and Sister 
 Gottlob Senseman, and the Brethren Edwards and Jung. 
 Here he labored in the gospel for six years among his 
 beloved " brown brethren," until August, 1798. In 
 that year the Mission Board commissioned Hecke- 
 welder and Edwards to lead a colony of converts back 
 to the Tuscarawas Valley, where a new Indian settle- 
 ment, named Goshen, was founded. Hither the vener- 
 able and apostolic Zeisberger was called to spend the 
 last years of his long life of labor for the salvation of 
 the red man. Here at Goshen, on November 17, 1808, 
 he entered on his eternal rest, in his 88th year. 
 
 John Heckewelder, next to Zeisberger the most il- 
 lustrious name in the annals of Moravian missionary 
 labor among the Indians, gives us this picture of one 
 with whom he was associated in these labors for 
 many years, and whom he loved as" Brother David." 
 
 " Zeisberger was endowed with a good understand- 
 ing and a sound judgment ; a friend and benefactor to 
 all men, and justly beloved by all who knew him, with 
 perhaps the exception of those who were enemies of 
 the gospel which he preached.
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 53 
 
 " As the result of the peculiar circumstances of his 
 life, we note his reticence. He undertook many soli- 
 tary journeys, and in the first half of his life he lived at 
 places where there either was no society or such as was 
 not congenial. Hence he withdrew within himself and 
 lived in close communion with his unseen but ever- 
 present heavenly Friend. 
 
 " In the formation of his judgments he was very 
 thorough, not impulsive. He did not suffer himself to 
 be carried away by outside influences. He gave ex- 
 pression to his opinion only after he had come to a 
 positive and settled conclusion in his own mind. 
 Experience usually proved the correctness of his 
 judgment. To this his fellow-missionaries all bear 
 witness. 
 
 " Receiving as it were a glimpse of the future 
 through the deep thoughts and silent prayers in which 
 he was engaged, he stood up, on most occasions, full 
 of confidence and knew no fear. Amid distressing and 
 perilous circumstances his fellow-missionaries and his 
 Indian converts invariably looked to him. His cour- 
 age, his fearless readiness to act, his comforting words, 
 cheered them all. 
 
 " Brother Zeisberger would never consent to have 
 his name put down on a salary-list, or become a ' hire- 
 ling,' as he termed it. He said that although a salary 
 might be both agreeable and proper for some missiona- 
 ries, yet in his case it would neither be the one nor the 
 other; that he had devoted himself to the service of 
 the Lord among the heathen without any view of a
 
 54 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 reward other than such as his Lord and Master might 
 deign to bestow upon him." 
 
 Benjamin Mortimer, his youthful associate in the 
 last years of his service, says : " Father Zeisberger was 
 fully persuaded that from his earliest youth God had 
 called him to preach the gospel to the heathen. In this 
 assurance he gave up all the vanities of a worldly life, 
 the comfort and ease so highly esteemed among men, 
 and took up his life-work in the assured faith that the 
 Lord would grant his blessing and help. With joy- 
 ousness of spirit he stood up courageously in the face 
 of reproach and scorn, persecutions and threatenings ; 
 he gladly took up his daily task, enduring hunger and 
 varied perils, assured of victory over every foe, in the 
 attainment of his one great object, the winning of souls 
 from Ijeathendom for Christ. Great were his zeal and 
 his perseverance in all the long years of his faithful 
 service. 
 
 " He was never happier than when assured that the 
 souls to whom he preached the gospel had sought and 
 found the forgiveness of their sins and could rejoice in 
 Jesus as their Saviour. To win one soul for Christ, 
 and help it to come into the blessed experience of par- 
 don, was more to him than to have gained the whole 
 world. It is impossible to describe adequately the joy 
 he always manifested when some wandering sinner 
 would return in penitence and find his way back again 
 to the fold of the Shepherd. 
 
 " His record of missionary service among the Indians 
 in the eighteenth century is unequalled. For sixty years,
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 55 
 
 amid many and varied trials, he preached the gospel 
 among them. During the last forty of these years he 
 was not absent from his post, at any one time, for a 
 period of six months. Only three times in the same 
 period was he a visitor in the home churches. The 
 last visit of this sort he made almost thirty years before 
 his death. 
 
 " With his boldness in God, and fearlessness in the 
 face of the greatest perils, he combined to a rare degree 
 meekness of spirit and a lowly mind. He was a trans- 
 parently unselfish man, who never thought highly of 
 himself. He was a prudent man, who, although con- 
 stantly exposed upon his incessant journeyings and 
 wanderings in the wilderness, never sacrificed his 
 health needlessly. He never used intoxicating liquors 
 as a beverage. 
 
 " In all the work of his ministry he never lost sight 
 of the fact that he was contending with the prince oi 
 the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the 
 children of disobedience, but he ever remembered that 
 he had God on his side to secure to him the victory. 
 And indeed he did overcome Satan by the blood of 
 the Lamb and by the word of his testimony, and loved 
 not his life unto death." 
 
 A few days before his departure, as he lay upon his 
 dying bed, the saintly man gave this testimony : " As 
 my weakness is continually increasing, I believe that 
 the Saviour intends to take me to himself. During the 
 many sleepless hours of the past days and nights, I 
 have been going over all my past life, with the Saviour,
 
 56 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 and have found so much occasion to ask his forgive- 
 ness that nothing else was left me. I know I am his. 
 I trust in his blood, which covers all my sins. He is 
 mine. His meritorious sacrifice avails for me. 
 
 " Some of our brethren and sisters depart with great 
 joyousness of heart. This is not so in my case. I can 
 only depart as a poor sinner. God will take unto him- 
 self my spirit. This I know. The sinful part I leave 
 behind." 
 
 This was modestly spoken, but with greatest assur- 
 ance of faith in the Lord his Redeemer. 
 
 In the library of Harvard University, in a case pro- 
 vided for this special purpose by the donor, Edward 
 Everett, under lock and key, are preserved fourteen 
 Zeisberger manuscripts, including a dictionary of the 
 Delaware Indian language, a grammar, a " Harmony 
 of the Four Gospels," a hymn book, a volume of 
 Litanies and Liturgies, of sermons to children, all in the 
 Delaware Indian language. Other manuscripts are de- 
 posited in the library of the American Philosophical 
 Society in Philadelphia, the property of the American 
 Moravian Church, whose own archives contain many 
 more equally valuable manuscripts and records of the 
 labors of Zeisberger. These literary remains are an 
 illustrious memorial of the patient scholarship of the 
 man who forgot self in his indefatigable service of the 
 despised American Indian. 
 
 But more glorious and imperishable memorials of 
 the endurance and unswerving devotion of David Zeis- 
 berger to his call as a herald of the Saviour's cross to

 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 57 
 
 the Indians of America are garnered in the upper 
 sanctuary the host of precious souls that he was per- 
 mitted to lead out of the darkness of heathendom into 
 the light of salvation through Christ. 
 
 Side by side in the old Goshen graveyard rest the 
 bodies of the brother missionaries, Zeisberger and Ed- 
 wards. A granite block marks each grave within the 
 enclosure. 
 
 Edwards died in 1801. It was on Sunday, Novem- 
 ber 20, 1808, when they laid the body of Zeisberger to 
 its grave-rest amid the scenes of his greatest triumphs 
 and sorest trials. 
 
 On the granite block which marks his grave is a 
 plain white marble slab, the simple inscription upon 
 which tells the story of Zeisberger's heroic devotion : 
 
 DAVID ZEISBERGER, 
 
 BORN APRIL II, 1721, IN MORAVIA; 
 
 DEPARTED THIS LIFE NOVEMBER 17, l8o8 ; 
 
 AGED 87 YEARS, 7 MONTHS, 6 DAYS. 
 
 THIS FAITHFUL SERVANT OF THE LORD LABORED 
 AMONG THE AMERICAN INDIANS AS A MIS- 
 SIONARY DURING THE LAST SIXTY 
 YEARS OF HIS LIFE.
 
 58 DAVID ZE1SBERGER 
 
 THE MARTYRS MASSACRED ON FRIDAY 
 MORNING, MARCH g , 1782. 
 
 " The annals of the Moravian Church link in the same chain of 
 sorrows and calamities the burning of John Hus at Constance (1415) 
 and the murder of the hapless Christian Indians at Gradenhutten on 
 the Muskingum." W. D. HOWELLS in "Three Villages." 
 
 THE names of the men, women, and children who 
 met death as Christian martyrs, on the spot marked 
 by the monument, are preserved in the record of 
 baptisms in the archives of the Moravian Brethren's 
 Church. 
 
 Five of the men were Elders of the congregation. 
 The most prominent of the Elders was Isaac Glikki- 
 kan (v. pp. 33, 34). Since his conversion in 1770, 
 during the revival that winter on the Beaver River 
 in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, he had approved 
 himself a church member conspicuous for fidelity and 
 prudence. In time of danger he had always been 
 ready and fearless in his devotion to the Missionaries, 
 in whose defence he was ever ready to lay down his 
 life, if necessary. After twelve years of steadfast 
 discipleship he sealed his faith in Jesus as a member 
 of this Church in the wilderness, with a martyr's 
 glorious death, at the massacre. Samuel Moore was 
 another Elder. He had been a member, in his 
 youth, of the Missionary David Brainerd's congre- 
 gation in New Jersey. After Brainerd's death he 
 joined our Moravian Indian congregation at Friedens- 
 hiitten on the Susquehanna. Samuel received his 
 education from Brainerd. He could read and under- 
 stand the English language so well that for many 
 years he was our interpreter of the sermons preached. 
 Tobias, another former member of Brainerd's Indian 
 congregation, and Jonas were both Elders, who lived
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 59 
 
 most consistent Christian lives. Another Elder and 
 interpreter was John Martin. He was always marked 
 for his exemplary conduct as a true disciple of Jesus. 
 He and his two sons, Paul, a young man, and An- 
 thony, a meie lad, died as martyrs at the massacre. 
 Two of these Elders were fifty years old; the other 
 three Elders were over sixty years of age. 
 
 Many of the massacred brethren and sisters were 
 the children of Christian parents who had been con- 
 verts of the Moravian Indian congregation in Penn- 
 sylvania in 1763 and 1764 and earlier. Children 
 and grandchildren, born in Ohio, died the death of 
 martyrdom. Heckewelder adds: "The loving chil- 
 dren! who had so harmoniously raised their voices 
 in the church, at school, and in their parents' houses 
 in singing praises to the Saviour. Their tender 
 years, innocent countenances, and tears made no 
 impression on these white Christians. The children 
 (together with twelve babes at the breast) were all 
 butchered with the rest." 
 
 The roll of the names of the martyrs: Isaac Glik- 
 kikan and his wife Anna Benigna; Jonas and his wife 
 Amelia; Samuel Moore; Tobias; John Martin and 
 his sons, Paul and Anthony; Christian and his wife 
 Augustina; Adam and his wife Cornelia; Henry, his 
 wife Joanna Salome, and their two sons, mere lads, 
 Benjamin and Gottlieb; Luke and his wife Lucia; 
 Philip, his wife Lorel, and their little daughter Sarah; 
 Lewis and his wife Ruth; Nicholas and his wife Jo- 
 anna Sabina; Israel, a former war-captain; Abra- 
 ham, the aged Mohican, the first one of the brethren 
 to be massacred; Joseph Sheborsh, son of the Mis- 
 sionary Sheborsh, a white man; Mark and his little 
 daughter Maria Elizabeth; Hannah, wife of Joseph; 
 Judith, an aged widow, the first one of the sisters 
 led forth to be massacred; the venerable Christiana, 
 a woman of refinement, educated at Bethlehem, Pa., 
 who spoke English and German fluently; John;
 
 60 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 Mary and her little daughter Hannah; Abel, who 
 survived his scalping and was killed when trying to 
 escape; Henry; John; Michael; Peter; Gottlob; 
 David; Rebecca; Rachel; Maria Susanna; Anna 
 and Bathsheba, aged respectively fifteen and eighteen 
 (daughters of the Elder Joshua, the Mohican, who 
 brought the first news of the massacre to Captives' 
 Town, to Zeisberger and Heckewelder) ; Julianna; 
 Elizabeth; Martha; AnnaRosina; Salome. 
 
 The names of the other boys and girls who have a 
 place on this roll are: Christiana; Leah; Benigna; 
 Christine; Gertrude; Anna Christina; Anna Salome; 
 Joseph; Christian; Mark; Jonathan; Christian 
 Gottlieb; Jonah; Timothy. Five or six unbaptized 
 adult Indians also met death in the massacre. 
 
 Two lads, Thomas and Jacob, got away. They 
 were scalped with the rest of the men and boys, but 
 not killed. Thomas revived toward evening. So 
 did Abel, who was in the act of getting up when a 
 militiaman happened to come into the cooper-shop 
 to look at the bodies of the massacred. Spying Abel, 
 as he lifted up his scalpless head, the militiaman des- 
 patched him. Thomas kept still until it grew dark. 
 Then he crept from out the mass of dead bodies, 
 and escaped to the woods. The other lad, Jacob, 
 although scalped, had strength enough left to slip 
 through a trap-door into the cellar of the slaughter- 
 house. Here the blood of the massacred streamed 
 upon him through the floor. He squeezed through 
 a narrow cellar-window and hid himself in the near 
 hazel-bushes until nightfall. In the darkness he, 
 too, escaped to the woods. 
 
 The two sons of John Martin, Paul and Anthony, 
 managed to get out of the house, but they were shot 
 down and scalped by the sentinels. 
 
 The men from the Pennsylvania border who mas- 
 sacred these people made their appearance at Gna- 
 denhiitten on March 7, 1782, the day our Christian
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 6l 
 
 Indians were bundling up their packs intending to 
 set off the next morning on their five or six days' 
 journey westward to Captives' Town. The brethren 
 and sisters, with the young people and the children, 
 were in the river-bottom opposite the town on this 
 (the eastern) side of the Tuscarawas [Muskingum] 
 River, gathering and husking the corn, left unhar- 
 vested since the previous September, when they and 
 the missionaries were led away into the barren wilder- 
 ness in what is now Wyandot County. During the in- 
 tervening months of the fall and winter they had al- 
 most perished from starvation. Many of the infant 
 children had died. In her autobiography Sister Zeis- 
 berger writes of this terrible winter: "Many a time 
 the Indian sisters shared their last morsel with me. 
 Frequently for eight days in succession I had no food 
 of my own." Heckewelder writes of this winter: 
 "In this wretched situation the hungry (heathen) 
 Indians the Wyandots would often come into our 
 cabins and look if there were any victuals cooking or 
 nearly cooked. One day just as my wife had set 
 down what was intended for our dinner, the Half- 
 King and Simon Girty and a Wyandot entered and, 
 seeing the victuals ready, without ceremony began 
 eating." 
 
 When our brethren heard of the unharvested corn 
 standing unhurt and still good in the bottoms here 
 at Gnadenhtitten, a company of men, women, and 
 children set out on the five or six days' journey 
 through the trackless forests, which brought them to 
 their old home on the river bank. They worked 
 day and night gathering the golden ears. They had 
 been here for some weeks, when suddenly the militia- 
 men from Pittsburgh and its vicinage came upon 
 the harvesters. 
 
 They greeted our brethren as friends and ex- 
 pressed their sympathy and warmest admiration for 
 them as converts to the common Christian faith.
 
 62 DAVID ZEISBERGER 
 
 They said: "We have come to remove you to a haven 
 of safety from the murderous heathen Indians on the 
 war-path. We will take you to Pittsburgh." The 
 brethren readily believed these protestations of 
 friendly interest, because they had met many of these 
 bordermen in neighborly intercourse in the streets 
 of Pittsburgh. To the suggestion that they give up 
 their guns and knives to the militiamen they gave 
 instant and cordial assent. 
 
 As soon as our brethren had thus been rendered 
 defenseless, the friendship of the white Christian 
 was changed, with bewildering suddenness, into the 
 merciless cruelty of enemies thirsting for the blood of 
 their victims. They bound our brethren as captives, 
 and thus brought them across the river and impris- 
 oned them in some of the houses still standing. 
 
 A council of war was held to decide what to do with 
 the imprisoned men, women, and children. "Shall 
 we carry them to Pittsburg or shall we put them to 
 death? " The men were drawn up in line to give 
 their decision. Any one in favor of carrying the 
 captives to Pittsburgh was commanded to step one 
 step forward. Only eighteen men of the almost two 
 hundred stepped forward. The question yet to be 
 decided was how to carry out this murderous intent: 
 whether they should burn our brethren alive by set- 
 ting fire to the houses in which they were imprisoned, 
 or tomahawk and scalp them. The latter method 
 would furnish these white Christians with the trophies 
 of the scalps of these brown Christian men, women, 
 and children. This consideration made them decide 
 for the latter method of massacre. 
 
 The original plan was to proceed to massacre the 
 captives at once. But as they were Christians their 
 plea for a night-time of preparation for death was 
 granted them. 
 
 On recovering from the first terrible shock of the 
 announced massacre, our brethren and sisters, con-
 
 AND HIS BROWN BRETHREN. 63 
 
 scions of their innocence of the cruel accusations of 
 their enemies, stood unshaken in their faith in Jesus 
 Christ when thus brought face to face with death. 
 Led by their Elders, they spent the hours of their last 
 night on earth in prayer and praise. They made 
 confession of their sins, asked forgiveness of one 
 another, and exhorted one another to glorify their 
 Redeemer's name by a faithful and loving endur- 
 ance to the end. Old Abraham, the Mohican (whose 
 flowing white hair caused him to be marked out in 
 the early morning as the first one of the brethren to 
 be butchered, because it would make so fine a scalp- 
 trophy) rose up early in the night to make humble 
 confession as a backslider: "Dear brethren, you well 
 know that I have been a bad man; that I have 
 grieved the Lord; that I have caused our teachers 
 much sorrow; and that I have not done the things 
 that I ought to have done. But now I give myself 
 anew to Jesus, and I will hold fast to Him as long 
 as I live." 
 
 Until the morning's early dawn they continued in 
 fervent supplication and joyous praises unto God 
 their Saviour. They felt the peace of God. They 
 were filled with cheerful resignation to their impend- 
 ing fate. To the inquiry of the white Christian mur- 
 derers, at early dawn, whether they were ready, our 
 brethren and sisters gave ready reply: "We are 
 ready. Jesus, to whom we have committed our 
 souls, gives us the assurance that He will receive us." 
 
 The massacre at once began. Two houses had 
 been selected as "slaughter-houses," one for the 
 killing of the brethren and one for the killing of the 
 sisters and the children. The victims were led forth, 
 two at a time, bound, into the houses. The cooper- 
 shop was the slaughter-house for the brethren and 
 the boys. The man who led off in the butcher- 
 ing of the brethren took up a convenient cooper's 
 mallet, saying, as he handled it, "This exactly suits
 
 64 DAVID ZEISBERGER. 
 
 the business in hand! " Beginning with the vener- 
 able Abraham, whom he killed with blows from the 
 mallet, he kept on despatching one victim after an- 
 other until fourteen lay dead and scalped before him. 
 Handing the mallet to his comrades, he said: "You 
 take it; I guess I've done pretty well; but my arm 
 gives out! " Thus all the brethren and boys were 
 massacred. 
 
 In like manner the sisters and children were 
 brought out, two and two, and massacred in the 
 slaughter-house for the women and little ones. 
 When the massacre was completed, they set fire to 
 the two slaughter-houses in which the mangled 
 bodies of their brown fellow Christians lay, and pro- 
 ceeded to collect the plunder previous to their 
 departure. Besides the bloody trophies of almost 
 one hundred scalps, they carried with them to Pitts- 
 burgh about fifty horses, many blankets, and other 
 articles of plunder. 
 
 A grassy mound marks the spot where loving 
 hands gathered up the bleached bones of our mar- 
 tyred brethren, some seventeen years later, and laid 
 them to an honored grave-rest. The near-by monu- 
 ment, erected in 1872, marks the spot of their Chris- 
 tian martyrdom. On it are inscribed these words of 
 light and peace : 
 
 HERE TRIUMPHED IN DEATH 
 
 OVER NINETY CHRISTIAN INDIANS 
 
 MARCH g , 1782. 
 
 " A noble band of men and boys, They climbed the steep ascent of 
 
 The matron and the maid, heaven 
 
 Around the Saviour's throne Through peril, toil, and pain; 
 
 rejoice O God, to us may grace be given 
 
 In robes of light arrayed. To follow in their train."
 
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