[44] Ibid.
[45] [The following is the passage from Loskiel, which that historian copied from David Zeisberger’s “Collection of Notes on the Indians,” compiled by the missionary during his residence in the valley of the Tuscarawas, about 1778. “According to the account of the Delawares, they were always too powerful for the Iroquois, so that the latter were at length convinced that if they continued the war, their total extirpation would be inevitable. They therefore sent the following message to the Delawares: ‘It is not profitable that all the nations should be at war with each other, for this will at length be the ruin of the whole Indian race. We have therefore considered a remedy by which this evil may be prevented. One nation shall be the woman. We will place her in the midst, and the other nations who make war shall be the man, and live around the woman. No one shall touch or hurt the woman, and if any one does it, we will immediately say to him, “Why do you beat the woman?” Then all the men shall fall upon him who has beaten her. The woman shall not go to war, but endeavor to keep peace with all. Therefore, if the men that surround her beat each other, and the war be carried on with violence, the woman shall have the right of addressing them, “Ye men, what are ye about? why do you beat each other? We are almost afraid. Consider that your wives and children must perish, unless you desist. Do you mean to destroy yourselves from the face of the earth?” The men shall then hear and obey the woman.’ The Delawares add, that, not immediately perceiving the intention of the Iroquois, they submitted to be the woman. The Iroquois then appointed a great feast, and invited the Delaware nation to it; when, in consequence of the authority given them, they made a solemn speech containing three capital points. The first was, that they declared the Delaware nation to be the woman in the following words: 'We dress you in a woman’s long habit, reafilled ching down to your feet, and adorn you with ear-rings;’ meaning that they should no more take up arms. The second point was thus expressed: ‘We hang a calabash with oil and medicine upon your arm. With the oil you shall cleanse the ears of the other nations, that they may attend to good and not to bad words, and with the medicine you shall heal those who are walking in foolish ways, that they may return to their senses and incline their hearts to peace.’ The third point, by which the Delawares were exhorted to make agriculture their future employ and means of subsistence, was thus worded: 'We deliver into your hands a plant of Indian corn and a hoe.’ Each of these points was confirmed by delivering a belt of wampum, and these belts have been carefully laid up, and their meaning frequently repeated.
“The Iroquois, on the contrary, assert that they conquered the Delawares, and that the latter were forced to adopt the defenceless state and appellation of a woman to avoid total ruin.
“Whether these different accounts be true or false, certain it is that the Delaware nation has ever since been looked to for preservation of peace, and entrusted with the charge of the great belt of peace and chain of friendship, which they must take care to preserve inviolate. According to the figurative explanation of the Indians, the middle of the chain of friendship is placed upon the shoulder of the Delaware, the rest of the Indian nations holding one end and the Europeans the other.”]
[46] [The Life and Times of David Zeisberger, the Western Pioneer and Apostle to the Indians, by Edmund de Schweinitz, Phila., 1870, reviews the Moravian mission among the North American Indians from its beginnings to recent times, besides very fully portraying the career of the veteran missionary, who spent upwards of sixty years of his life as an evangelist to the Indians, thirty-six of which were passed within the limits of the present State of Ohio. He died on the 17th of November, 1808, at Goshen, on the Tuscarawas, in the 88th year of his age. Zeisberger, in the course of his long life in the Indian country, mastered the Delaware and the Onondaga of the Iroquois, into the former of which he made translations of a number of devotional books, while he studied both critically, as his literary efforts in that direction, partly published and partly in MS., amply testify.]
[47] Mr. Proud, in his History of Pennsylvania, relates that, some time after the establishment of William Penn’s government, the Indians used to supply the family of one John Chapman, whose descendants still reside in Bucks County, with all kinds of provisions, and mentions an affecting instance of their kindness to that family. Abraham and John Chapman, twin children about nine or ten years old, going out one evening to seek their cattle, met an Indian in the woods, who told them to go back, else they would be lost. They took his advice and went back, but it was night before they got home, where they found the Indian, who had repaired thither out of anxiety for them. And their parents, about that time, going to the yearly meeting at Philadelphia, and leaving a young family at home, the Indians came every day to see whether anything was amiss among them. Such (says Proud) in many instances was the kind treatment of the Aborigines of this country to the English in their first and early settlement. Proud’s Hist., Vol. I., pp. 223, 224.
[48] [For “Easton in Pennsylvania,” read Philadelphia. Easton, the county-seat of Northampton County, was laid out in the spring of 1752.]
[49] For “1742,” read “and November, 1756.” [The latter was held at Easton.]
[50] [The so-called French and Indian war, the fourth and last of the inter-colonial wars, which originated in disputes between the French and English concerning territorial claims, and which, after a seven years’ contest, resulted in establishing the supremacy of the latter over the civilized portions of North America.]
[51] [The Conestogas remained on their ancestral seats, near the mouth of the Conestoga, in Manor township, Lancaster County, Penna., long after the other Indians on the Susquehanna had been crowded by the advance of civilization beyond Shamokin. Here the remnant of this tribe was fallen upon by Scotch-Irish partizans of Paxton township (now within the limits of Dauphin County) in December of 1763, all that were at the settlement killed, and their cabins burnt to the ground. Ten days later, the remainder of this inoffensive people, who had been lodged in the jail at Lancaster, were inhumanly butchered by the same band of lawless frontiersmen. In Heckewelder’s “Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians,” there is a statement by an eye-witness, touching the last scene in this bloody tragedy.]