Moravian.
Mahican,
Munsee, and
Delaware who followed the teachings of the Moravian brethren and were
by them gathered into villages apart from their tribes. The majority were
Munsee. In 1740 the Moravian missionaries began their work at the Mahican
village of Shekomeko in New York. Meeting with many obstacles there, they
removed with their converts in 1746 to Pennsylvania, where they built the
new mission village of Friedenshuetten on the Susquehanna. Here they were
more successful and were largely recruited from the Munsee and Delaware,
almost all of the former tribe not absorbed by the Delaware finally
joining them. They made another settlement at Wyalusing, but on the
advance of the white population removed to Beaver river in west
Pennsylvania, where they built the village of Friedensstadt. They remained
here about a year, and in 1773 removed to Muskingum river in Ohio, in the
neighborhood of the others of their tribes, and occupied the three
villages of Gnadenhuetten, Salem, and Schoenbrunn. In 1781, during the
border troubles of the Revolution, the
Hurons removed them to the region of the Sandusky and Scioto, in north
Ohio, either to prevent their giving information to the colonists or to
protect them from the hostility of the frontiers men. The next spring a
party of about 140 were allowed to return to their abandoned villages to
gather their corn, when they were treacherously attacked by a party of
border ruffians and the greater part massacred in the most cold blooded
manner, after which their villages were burned. The remaining Moravians
moved to Canada in 1791, under the leadership of Zeisberger, and built the
village of Fairfield on Retrenche river. Here a number were massacred by
the
whites in 1812. They finally settled on the Thanes in Orford township,
Kent Co., Ontario. The number in 1884 was 275, but had increased in 1906,
according to the Canadian official report, to 348. There were until
recently a few in Franklin county, Kans.
