By the time the war had lasted four or five years both the wild or heathen Indians and the backwoodsmen had become fearfully exasperated with the unlucky Moravians. The Sandusky Indians were largely Wyandots, Shawnees, and Delawares, the latter being fellow-tribesmen of the Christian Indians; and so they regarded the Moravians as traitors to the cause of their kinsfolk, because they would not take up the hatchet against the whites. As they could not goad them into declaring war, they took malicious pleasure in trying to embroil them against their will, and on returning from raids against the settlements often passed through their towns solely to cast suspicion on them and to draw down the wrath of the backwoodsmen on their heads. The British at Detroit feared lest the Americans might use the Moravian villages as a basis from which to attack the lake posts; they also coveted their men as allies; and so the baser among their officers urged the Sandusky tribes to break up the villages and drive off the missionaries. The other Indian tribes likewise regarded them with angry contempt and hostility; the Iroquois once sent word to the Chippewas and Ottawas that they gave them the Christian Indians "to make broth of."
So Do the Americans.
The Americans became even more exasperated. The war parties that plundered and destroyed their homes, killing their wives, children, and friends with torments too appalling to mention, got shelter and refreshment from the Moravians, [Footnote: Heckewelder's "Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren," Philadelphia, 1820, p. 166.] —who, indeed, dared not refuse it. The backwoodsmen, roused to a mad frenzy of rage by the awful nature of their wrongs, saw that the Moravians rendered valuable help to their cruel and inveterate foes, and refused to see that the help was given with the utmost reluctance. Moreover, some of the young Christian Indians backslid, and joined their savage brethren, accompanying them on their war parties and ravaging with as much cruelty as any of their number. [Footnote: Pennsylvania Packet (Philadelphia, April 16, 1782); Heckewelder, 180; Loskiel's "History of the Mission of the United Brethren" (London, 1794), P—172. ] Soon the frontiersmen began to clamor for the destruction of the Moravian towns; yet for a little while they were restrained by the Continental officers of the few border forts, who always treated these harmless Indians with the utmost kindness.
They Blindly Court their Fate.
On either side were foes, who grew less governable day by day, and the fate of the hapless and peaceful Moravians, if they continued to dwell on the Muskingum, was absolutely inevitable. With blind fatuity their leaders, the missionaries, refused to see the impending doom; and the poor, simple Indians clung to their homes till destroyed. The American commander at Pittsburg, Col. Gibson, endeavored to get them to come into the American lines, where he would have the power, as he already had the wish, to protect them; he pointed out that where they were they served in some sort as a shield to the wild Indians, whom he had to spare so as not to harm the Moravians. [Footnote: Loskiel, p. 137.] The Half King of the Wyandots, from the other side, likewise tried to persuade them to abandon their dangerous position, and to come well within the Indian and British lines, saying: "Two mighty and angry gods stand opposite to each other with their mouths wide open, and you are between them, and are in danger of being crushed by one or the other, or by both." [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 41, Vol. III., pp. 78, 79; extract from diary of Rev. David Zeisburger.] But in spite of these warnings, and heedless of the safety that would have followed the adoption of either course, the Moravians followed the advice of their missionaries and continued where they were. They suffered greatly from the wanton cruelty of their red brethren; and their fate remains a monument to the cold-blooded and cowardly brutality of the borderers, a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away; but it is singular that historians have not yet pointed out the obvious truth, that no small share of the blame for their sad end should be put to the credit of the blind folly of their missionary leaders. Their only hope in such a conflict as was then raging, was to be removed from their fatally dangerous position; and this the missionaries would not see. As long at they stayed where they were, it was a mere question of chance and time whether they would be destroyed by the Indians or the whites; for their destruction at the hands of either one party or the other was inevitable.
Their fate was not due to the fact that they were Indians; it resulted from their occupying an absolutely false position. This is clearly shown by what happened twenty years previously to a small community of non-resistant Christian whites. They were Dunkards—Quaker-like Germans—who had built a settlement on the Monongahela. As they helped neither side, both distrusted and hated them. The whites harassed them in every way, and the Indians finally fell upon and massacred them. [Footnote: Withers, 59.] The fates of these two communities, of white Dunkards and red Moravians, were exactly parallel. Each became hateful to both sets of combatants, was persecuted by both, and finally fell a victim to the ferocity of the race to which it did not belong.
Evil Conduct of the Backwoodsmen.
The conduct of the backwoodsmen towards these peaceful and harmless Christian Indians was utterly abhorrent, and will ever be a subject of just reproach and condemnation; and at first sight it seems incredible that the perpetrators of so vile a deed should have gone unpunished and almost unblamed. It is a dark blot on the character of a people that otherwise had many fine and manly qualities to its credit. But the extraordinary conditions of life on the frontier must be kept in mind before passing too severe a judgment. In the turmoil of the harassing and long-continued Indian war, and the consequent loosening of social bonds, it was inevitable that, as regards outside matters, each man should do what seemed right in his own eyes. The bad and the good alike were left free and untrammelled to follow the bent of their desires. The people had all they could do to beat off their savage enemies, and to keep order among themselves. They were able to impose but slight checks on ruffianism that was aimed at outsiders. There were plenty of good and upright men who would not harm any Indians wrongfully, and who treated kindly those who were peaceable. On the other hand, there were many of violent and murderous temper. These knew that their neighbors would actively resent any wrong done to themselves, but knew, also, that, under the existing conditions, they would at the worst do nothing more than openly disapprove of an outrage perpetrated on Indians.
Its Explanation.
The violence of the bad is easily understood. The indifference displayed towards their actions by the better men of the community, who were certainly greatly in the majority, is harder to explain. It rose from varying causes. In the first place, the long continuance of Indian warfare, and the unspeakable horrors that were its invariable accompaniments had gradually wrought up many even of the best of the backwoodsmen to the point where they barely considered an Indian as a human being. The warrior was not to them a creature of romance. They knew him for what he was—filthy, cruel, lecherous, and faithless. He sometimes had excellent qualities, but these they seldom had a chance to see. They always met him at his worst. To them he was in peace a lazy, dirty, drunken beggar, whom they despised, and yet whom they feared; for the squalid, contemptible creature might at any moment be transformed into a foe whose like there was not to be found in all the wide world for ferocity, cunning, and blood-thirsty cruelty. The greatest Indians, chiefs like Logan and Cornstalk, who were capable of deeds of the loftiest and most sublime heroism, were also at times cruel monsters or drunken good-for-nothings. Their meaner followers had only such virtues as belong to the human wolf—stealth, craft, tireless endurance, and the courage that prefers to prey on the helpless, but will fight to the death without flinching if cornered.