[86] Loskiel, part III., ch. 12.
[87] [Pilgerruh on the Cuyahoga, within the limits of what is now Independence township, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was the seat of the mission during the time of the dispersion in the interval between May of 1786, and April of 1787.]
[88] General John Gibson thinks that Sawano is their proper name; they are so called by the other Indian nations, from their being a southern people. Shawaneu, in the Lenape language, means the south; Shawanachau,[89] the south wind, &c. We commonly call them the Shawanese.
[89] For “Shawanachau” read “Shawanachan.”
[90] The Shawanos call the Mohicans their elder brother.
[91] Loskiel, part II., ch. 10.
[92] While these people lived at Wyoming and in its vicinity, they were frequently visited by missionaries of the Society of the United Brethren, who, knowing them to be the most depraved and ferocious tribe of all the Indian nations they had heard of, sought to establish a friendship with them, so as not to be interrupted in their journies from one Indian Mission to another. Count Zinzendorf being at that time in the country, went in 1742 with some other missionaries to visit them at Wyoming, stayed with them 20 days, and endeavoured to impress the gospel truths upon their minds; but these hardened people, suspecting his views, and believing that he wanted to purchase their land, on which it was reported there were mines of silver, conspired to murder him, and would have effected their purpose, but that Conrad Weiser, the Indian interpreter, arrived fortunately in time to prevent it. (Loskiel, part II., ch. 1.) Notwithstanding this, the Brethren frequently visited them, and Shehellemus, a chief of great influence, having become their friend (Loskiel, ibid., ch. 8), they could now travel with greater safety. He died at Shamokin in 1749; the Brethren were, however, fortunate enough to obtain the friendship of Paxnos or Paxsinos, another chief of the Shawanos, who gave them full proof of it by sending his sons to escort one of them to Bethlehem from Shamokin, where he was in the most perilous situation, the war having just broke out. (Loskiel, ibid., ch. 12.)
[93] Loskiel, part I., ch. 10.
[94] [After the peace of 1763 there was comparative quiet on the Western frontiers, until the inauguration of the “Dunmore War,” in the spring of 1774—a contest which the last royal governor of Virginia is said to have excited, in order to divert the attention of the colonists from the oppressive acts of England towards them. The initial military movement in this war was Col. Angus McDonald’s expedition against the Shawanese town of Waketameki, just below the mouth of the Waketameki Creek, within the limits of the present county of Muskingum, Ohio. The battle fought on the 10th of October, 1774, at the junction of the Great Kanawha and the Ohio, between the garrison of Point Pleasant, under General Andrew Lewis, and the flower of the Shawanese, Delawares, Mingoes, and Wyandots, led by the Cornstalk, the Shawano king, in which the confederate Indians were routed, was speedily followed by a peace.]
[95] See, in Loskiel’s History, part II., ch. 10, his account of the visit of this chief to the Christian Indian Congregation at Bethlehem.