Between 1743 and 1749 he ministered to the Moravian Indians living in the Hudson Valley in New York State and in western Connecticut, earning the respect and trust of his Indian neighbors by learning their language and customs and by twice marrying native converts: Rachel, a Wampanoag, whom he married in 1743 and who died around 1745; and Agnes, a Delaware woman he was married to from 1747 until she died in 1751. Post had four children with his wives, but all died as infants. Suspicion and threats by local colonists against Post and his converts led to his being jailed in New York, then expelled from both New York and Connecticut. He returned to Europe in 1751. From there he was sent to Labrador for a time but eventually returned to Pennsylvania and his ministry among the Indians.
Post emerged as a significant figure in 1758 during the French and Indian War, when Governor William Denny enlisted him as his emissary to the Delaware Indians living along the western frontier. Along with Pisquetomen, a Delaware headman of considerable influence, Post played a central role in peace negotiations between the English and the tribes allied with the French. The two men journeyed across Pennsylvania in spite of great danger from both colonial and native enemies to carry news of the 1758 Easton Treaty with the eastern tribes to the Indians living along the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. At his urging, the western tribes accepted Governor Denny’s offer to restore peace if they agreed to remain neutral while British General John Forbes attacked Fort DuQuesne.
Late in 1761 Post traveled to the native settlements in Ohio’s Muskingum River Valley and built a cabin there before returning to Bethlehem for the winter. The next spring he returned to continue his ministry, accompanied by a young Moravian assistant, John Heckewelder. Again the governor of Pennsylvania enlisted him as a messenger, this time to summon Tamaque and other Indian leaders to a treaty at Lancaster. After the August treaty, during which he served as one of the interpreters, Post went back to the Muskingum to resume his missionary work. But that fall the Indians’ hostility against the Whites rose to the point that Heckewelder hurriedly left. Post was finally forced to flee for his life at the end of the year as events rapidly moved toward another war, this time under the leadership of an Ottawa chief named Pontiac and a Mingo chief named Guyasuta.
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| Moravians Baptizing Native Converts |
Post married Mary Margaret Stadelman Bolinger in January 1763, and seeing that his efforts to maintain peace and convert the Indians had failed, set off for the Carolinas later in the year to preach among the Cherokee. In 1764 he sailed to South America to establish a mission among the Indians of the Mosquito Coast. But when he returned to Pennsylvania in 1767 seeking additional funding from the Moravians, he was told that his services were no longer needed. He promptly enlisted as a missionary with the Anglican Church and returned to Nicaragua, where he labored in the jungles into his seventies. Post finally returned to Pennsylvania in 1784. He settled in Germantown near Philadelphia, where he died the following year, survived by his wife. Charles Thomason, a Quaker who was a contemporary of Post’s remembered him as “a plain, honest, religiously disposed man.” One of his fellow missionaries aptly described him as a “man of undaunted courage and enterprising spirit.”
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| David Zeisberger |
Zeisberger was ordained a Moravian minister in 1749 and became the senior Moravian missionary to the Lenape, or Delaware, tribe in Pennsylvania. He stood only slightly over five feet tall, but he seemed made of steel as he tirelessly traveled through primeval forests, over mountain ranges, and across rivers, visiting tribe after tribe. He was a staunch advocate for native rights, and his efforts to establish both white and native Moravian communities brought him into conflict with first British, and then American authorities. Although the Six Nations and the Delaware passed laws that he was not to be molested in his work, he often faced threats against his life from both Indians and Whites.
The outbreak of the American Revolution placed Zeisberger and his converts between “two exceeding mighty and wrathful gods who stood opposed with extended jaws,” as one native orator put it. Both sides pressured the Indians to take up arms for their side. Zeisberger opposed this, urging the tribes remain neutral in the war. The English sent the war hatchet to the Delaware twice, and both times Zeisberger and his native congregation, who were nonresistant, sent it back. Zeisberger even received a letter asking him to take command of the Christian Indians and bring the scalps of all the rebels they could slaughter to the British. Needless to say, he threw the paper into the fire! His native Christian communities welcomed, fed, and housed people from both sides of the war. Inevitably this aroused the suspicions of both the British and Americans concerning Zeisberger’s loyalties. The British accused him of giving aid to the Americans, and the Americans accused him of working on behalf of the English. Even so, there were many who acknowledged the work of grace the Holy Spirit was doing through him. Some American and the British military officials not only encouraged, but also at times offered him material aid in his work.
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| Gnadenhütten Massacre |
As a result, the already displaced Indians of the mission were again forced to flee their homes. During the twenty-year struggle over possession of the Ohio Valley, Zeisberger and his flock were driven from one settlement to another some 15 times. Conflicts with other native tribes and the expansion of white settlements into native lands finally forced many Moravian Christians to retreat to Michigan and Ontario. Zeisberger accompanied the group that moved to southern Ontario, where they founded a prosperous mission town in Fairfield. But at the age of 77, he returned to the destroyed villages in the Tuscarawas Valley of Ohio, where he founded Goshen in present-day Tuscarawas County. He spent the final decade of his life there.
During his ministry Zeisberger founded the settlements of Friedenshütten (Tents of Peace) on the Susquehanna, Goschgoschünk on the Alleghany, and Lavunakhannek and Friedenstadt (Town of Peace), on the Beaver River below Pittsburgh. In Ohio Territory on the Muskingum and Tuscarawas rivers, he founded the settlements of Schönbrunn (Beautiful Spring) with its meeting house that could accommodate 500 people, Gnadenhütten (Tents of Grace), Lichtenau (Meadow of Light), and Salem. Colonel Daniel Morgan said, “The Indians in Zeisberger’s settlements are an example to civilized whites.” These settlements were all neat and orderly, with log houses lining the streets. The modestly dressed native townspeople tilled the land and tended the abundant nut and fruit trees, their children attended the village schools, and all worshiped God with prayers and hymns in their own language. White Eyes, a notable Delaware captain, was quoted as saying, “I want my people, now that peace is established in the country, to turn their attention to peace in their hearts. I want them to embrace that religion which is taught by the white teachers. We shall never be happy until we are Christians.”
When he briefly returned to Bethlehem in 1781, Zeisberger, then 60 years old, gave in to his friends’ persuasion and married 37-year-old Susanna Lecron. They left to return to the mission field less than a week after their wedding. They labored together for the remaining 27 years of his ministry among the Indians, and only after his death did Susanna return to live among the widows at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Except for a few short intervals, Zeisberger ministered among the Indians for 62 years. By the time he died at Goshen on November 17, 1808, at the age of 87, he could count several thousand converts from almost every tribe in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Ontario, northern Virginia and Kentucky, and eastern Indiana and Michigan as a result of his ministry. He was deeply loved by his native congregations. While he lay dying, the chapel bell tolled as the people quietly entered the room to sing him home with the hymns he had translated into the Delaware language. He is buried in Goshen among his beloved Delaware brethren.
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| John Heckewelder |
After the French and Indian War, the colonists in Pennsylvania were hostile toward all Indians because of the devastating raids they had suffered. English settlers and soldiers also continued to move into the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains claimed by the Indians, pushing the original inhabitants ever farther west. In the early 1760s a Delaware prophet named Neolin came to prominence. He told of a vision in which the Master of Life had commanded him to call the Indians to abandon the ways of the Whites and cast them out of the Ohio lands, which he had given to them. Only then would they gain the blessing of the Master of Life, and he would restore their power and prosperity. In 1763, under the influence of this teaching, many of the tribes renewed their attacks against the English, led by the Ottawa leader Pontiac and the Seneca leader Guyasuta in a war that came to be known as Pontiac’s War. The Moravian missionaries and their Indian converts, who like the Quakers and Amish were nonresistant, found themselves under suspicion—and often attack—by both the English and the Indians.
The American Revolution made their situation even worse. Although the Moravians remained neutral, the Americans suspected them of aiding the British because they would not fight on their side. At the same time the British accused Heckewelder and Zeisberger of treason, claiming they passed intelligence from the Indians to the American rebels. The two missionaries were arrested and hauled in front of British officers at Detroit and held there for months. Meanwhile, a number of soldiers in Pennsylvania’s militia brutally murdered 96 unarmed Indian converts, including women and children, at the village of Gnadenhutten.
Heckewelder assisted in reestablishing the Moravian Indian refugees from Pennsylvania in Ohio after the war. He also was instrumental as a negotiator between the Indian communities and the new United States government. After his retirement, he returned to Bethlehem, but continued to occasionally work as an interpreter and agent for the Indians for some years. He devoted his greatest energies to writing, however. He published 3 books between 1818 and his death in 1823, which were based on his intimate knowledge of the Delaware. Leading scholars sought him out for details of the Indians’ languages, customs, and legends. He essentially served as a bridge between his generation, who grew up while the Indians still inhabited Pennsylvania and other eastern states, and new generations whose only knowledge of the aboriginal peoples came from history books.