pay little heed to tribal distinctions, there was one body deserving
especial and separate mention. Among the turbulent and jarring elements
tossed into wild confusion by the shock of the contact between savages
and the rude vanguard of civilization, surrounded and threatened by the
painted warriors of the woods no less than by the lawless white riflemen
who lived on the stump-dotted clearings, there dwelt a group of peaceful
beings who were destined to suffer a dire fate in the most lamentable
and pitiable of all the tragedies which were played out in the heart of
this great wilderness. These were the Moravian Indians.[27] They were
mostly Delawares, and had been converted by the indefatigable German
missionaries, who taught the tranquil, Quaker-like creed of Count
Zinzendorf. The zeal and success of the missionaries were attested by
the marvellous change they had wrought in these converts; for they had
transformed them in one generation from a restless, idle, blood-thirsty
people of hunters and fishers, into an orderly, thrifty, industrious
folk, believing with all their hearts the Christian religion in the form
in which their teachers both preached and practised it. At first the
missionaries, surrounded by their Indian converts, dwelt in
Pennsylvania; but, harried and oppressed by their white neighbors, the
submissive and patient Moravians left their homes and their cherished
belongings, and in 1771 moved out into the wilderness northwest of the
Ohio. It is a bitter and unanswerable commentary on the workings of a
non-resistant creed when reduced to practice, that such outrages and
massacres as those committed on these helpless Indians were more
numerous and flagrant in the colony the Quakers governed than in any
other; their vaunted policy of peace, which forbade them to play a true
man's part and put down wrong-doing, caused the utmost possible evil to
fall both on the white man and the red. An avowed policy of force and
fraud carried out in the most cynical manner could hardly have worked
more terrible injustice; their system was a direct incentive to crime