|
|
|
The Gnadenhutten Effect: Moravian Converts and the Search for Safety in the Canadian Borderlands
by
John P. Bowes
|
In a journal entry composed on April 8, 1782, Moravian missionary David Zeisberger penned a critical observation: "The world is already too narrow." It had been a month since an American militia unit under the command of Lt. Col. David Williamson had systematically killed ninety-six men, women, and children, all of them Indian converts living in the Moravian settlement of Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum River. It appeared as if the developing world of the Ohio Valley was closing in on the Moravian missionaries and their charges. "From the white people, or so-called Christians," the missionary despaired, "we can hope for no protection, and among [the] heathen nations also we have no friends left, such outlaws are we!" Recent developments had not been kind to the Moravians and their communities in the Ohio Valley, but the murder of the Native converts at Gnadenhutten was the most egregious incident. Zeisberger could not believe what had happened, taking solace only in the ultimate mercy of God.1 |
1 |
|
This massacre has long been one of the most notorious examples of the mistreatment of Indians by eighteenth-century Euro-Americans. In the aftermath, the surviving mostly Delaware and Munsee Moravian converts scattered throughout the Ohio Valley and found refuge in the homes and villages of their Munsee, Delaware, and Shawnee neighbors. Within months rumors spread among the Indian villages placing blame for the attack on the missionaries themselves. According to some among the Delaware, the Moravian ministers had written to American officials in Pittsburgh months earlier and proposed the attack on Gnadenhutten. This accusation of complicity with the Americans was not a new charge, and the passage of time could not diminish its strength. For decades afterwards Native Peoples often explained their resistance to Moravian missionaries by asserting that these Christian men desired only to tame and then kill their Native converts.2 |
2 |
|
During the early 1820s, however, the Moravians continued to maintain a presence in the Great Lakes region. They had fewer settlements, but these dedicated missionaries and their Indian converts did not disappear after the tragedy of 1782. And all parties continued to deal with the legacy of what had happened on the banks of the Muskingum River. One Moravian community in particular symbolized the long-range impact of the Gnadenhutten massacre. This settlement, called Fairfield or Moraviantown, was located in the region known as Upper Canada, or present-day Ontario, on the northern bank of the Thames River sixty miles east of Detroit. Here the Moravians hoped to find stability and a measure of peace for themselves and their Indian converts, using the boundary between the United States and Canada to escape the troubles that led to the deaths of so many innocents in 1782.3 |
3 |
|
Yet the founding of Fairfield was only a partial success because the Moravian Indians had more problems than those presented by the incursions of militiamen and frontier immigrants. International migration simply replaced one set of government policies with another, and the permeable border that allowed the Moravian Indians to move permitted others to do so as well. Indian residents of Fairfield also found it difficult to avoid the demands of their relatives and of other communities of Native Peoples. Nor could they escape the tug-of-war between the American and British officials in the region. Indeed, Fairfield only survived until 1813, when it became a casualty of the War of 1812. Although it was reborn as New Fairfield on the southern side of the Thames River, the precarious nature of its early existence illustrates that the border region continued to be unstable. |
. . . |
There are about 6888 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
