History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States.

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HISTORY, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF The Indian Nations WHO ONCE INHABITED PENNSYLVANIA AND THE NEIGHBOURING STATES. BY THE REV. JOHN HECKEWELDER, OF BETHLEHEM, PA. New and Revised Edition. WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY THE REV. WILLIAM C. REICHEL, OF BETHLEHEM, PA. PHILADELPHIA: PUBLICATION FUND OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, No. 820 SPRUCE STREET. 1881.
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John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder, the author of “An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighboring States,” was born March 12th, 1743, at Bedford, England. His father, who was a native of Moravia, a few years after his arrival at Herrnhut, Saxony, was summoned to England to assist in the religious movement which his church had inaugurated in that country in 1734. In his eleventh year, the subject of this sketch accompanied his parents to the New World, and became a resident of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Here he was placed at school, and next apprenticed to a cedar-cooper. While thus employed, he was permitted to gratify a desire he had frequently expressed of becoming an evangelist to the Indians, when in the spring of 1762 he was called to accompany the well-known Christian Frederic Post, who had planned a mission among the tribes of the then far west, to the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum. Here Post, in the summer of 1761, had built himself a cabin (it stood near the site of the present town of Bolivar), and here on the 11th day of April, 1762, the intrepid missionary and his youthful assistant began their labors in the Gospel. But the times were unpropitious, and the hostile attitude of the Indians indicating a speedy resumption of hostilities with the whites, the adventurous enterprise was abandoned before the expiration of the year. Young Heckewelder returned to Bethlehem, and the war of Pontiac’s conspiracy opened in the spring of 1763.