would call a smuggler or a law-breaker. He could trade with the enemy of his nation throughout a war and do it all without admitting to himself that he had forsaken his idealism. And he had not. He still clung both to his ideal and to his practice, however inconsistent and contradictory, and he did it all without admitting to himself that there was any inconsistency.

There is no desire to leave the impression that puritanism accounts for all the materialism in America, or even the greater part of it. Enthusiasts have frequently made the mistake of assuming, for instance, that a large part of the immigrants of the nineteenth century came to America as to a land of refuge, seeking liberty. As a matter of fact, the greater number of immigrants did not care about American institutions and ideals, but came because they felt it was an easy place to make a living. But if the puritan has deserved a larger share of credit for American idealism than have some other elements of the American population, he deserves about the same proportion of credit for contributing the opposite of idealism.

UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA

BLOOMINGTON

ALBERT L. KOHLMEIER

THE MORAVIAN MISSION IN INDIANA

On the fifteenth day of October, 1800, John Peter Kluge, with his newly wedded wife and Abraham Luckenbach, set forth from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the chief seat in the United States of the United brethren, commonly known as the Moravians, for the purpose of establishing a mission among the Delaware Indians on White river in Indiana territory. On the twelfth day of November, 1806, the same party, enlarged by the addition of three little Kluges, after a weary journey of eight hundred miles or more, again reached Bethlehem, their mission abandoned and the labors of five years apparently fruitless. Between these dates there lies a record of dangers faced and hardships undergone, of devotion to duty and of self-sacrifice, that merits permanent remembrance.

A few words are needed by way of introduction to show why the Moravians undertook to establish this mission in the distant wilderness.

John Heckewelder, the well-known historian of the Moravian missions to the Indians of North America, thus begins his narrative, first published one hundred years ago:

The ancient Episcopal Church, called Unitas-Fratrum, after their restoration about the year 1720, in gratitude to our Lord Jesus Christ, for the blessings conferred on them, believed it to be their duty to use their best endeavors to propagate the Gospel among the Heathen.

Hardly had the early Moravian settlers migrated from Georgia to Pennsylvania in 1740 when missionaries were sent to the Indians of New York and Connecticut. Within a few years it became necessary to abandon the missions thus founded. Thenceforth the efforts of the brethren were directed mainly towards the conversion of the Indians residing in the vicinity of Bethlehem. These Indians were Delawares, and as they were gradually pushed farther west by the pressure of the white population the zealous missionaries followed them, until finally the banks of the Muskingum river in Ohio were reached in 1772. Here the villages of Schoenbrun, Gnadenhütten and Salem were founded

and flourished; and, says Heckewelder, "the prospect bid fair towards the conversion of the Delaware nation." But the revolutionary war broke forth, and the missionaries, with their charges, were in an impossible situation, living as they did midway between the contending forces. They were viewed with distrust and suspicion both by the Americans about Fort Pitt and by the British at Detroit and their Indian allies. Finally the evacuation of the mission villages was compelled in the fall of 1781 by Indians acting in the British interest. The missionaries and the so-called Moravian Indians were forced to spend the winter, poorly sheltered and insufficiently supplied with food, in the neighborhood of Upper Sandusky. A large party of the Indians returning the following spring to their former villages to gather corn from their abandoned fields was captured by American borderers, and ninety of them, men, women, and children were barbarously put to death in cold blood at Gnadenhütten. This massacre was the culminating stroke. Only a few faithful converts continued to follow their Moravian guides. The others rejoined their kinsmen and relapsed into savagery.

Near the close of the eighteenth century the Delawares, who for several years had been widely scattered, undertook to reunite their various bands on White river in eastern Indiana. Meanwhile David Zeisberger, the most famous of the missionaries, had led back from Canada a small group of the faithful, and in 1798, on lands along the Muskingum granted by congress, had founded Goshen. Naturally there was an interchange of visits between the Indians of White river and their kindred on the Muskingum, which culminated in what the Goshen missionaries understood to be a formal invitation from the great council of the Delawares for the missionaries and their converts to move to White river.

This invitation was carefully considered, and the determination was reached that it warranted the sending of missionaries and some of the Christian Indians to the White river. High hope was entertained that in this way the Moravians would regain their former influence and standing with the Delawares, and that the Delaware nation might be led to accept Christianity and to adopt the ways of civilized life.

The missionaries selected through the church authorities at Bethlehem to go to the White river were John Peter Kluge, a

German by birth, who had served as missionary almost ten years among the Indians in Dutch Guiana, and Abraham Luckenbach, born in Pennsylvania, a cabinet-maker by trade but since 1797 a teacher at the well-known boys' school of the Moravians at Nazareth. Brother Kluge was thirty-two years old and Brother Luckenbach about nine years younger. David Zeisberger had recommended that the missionaries should be two married couples, or one married couple and a single brother. The difficulty arising out of the fact that both of the brothers chosen were single men was removed by the selection of Anna Maria Rank, of Lititz, as wife for Brother Kluge. The choice was made through the use of the lot, which at that time was frequently resorted to in the Moravian church for the settlement of important questions. The marriage took place early in October.

The journey which began on October fifteenth carried the missionaries to Goshen, a distance of approximately 400 miles. The journey occupied about thirty days, and was filled with what we may suppose were the common incidents of overland travel in those days. The occurrences of each day are related in a diary which was kept in accordance with the church requirement. It is to the diaries so kept and the correspondence supplementing them that we are indebted for almost all our knowledge of the happenings on White river from 1801 to 1806. These documents are carefully preserved in the archives of the church at Bethlehem. They are written in German, but have been translated at the instance of the Indiana historical society, which expects soon to publish them.

At Goshen the missionaries spent the winter trying to acquaint themselves with the Delaware language and customs and preparing for the final stage of their journey. On February 22, 1801, they forwarded an address to his excellency, William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana territory, in which they set forth the objects of the mission and expressed their apprehension over the effects of the sale by white traders of spirituous liquors to the Indians. How well-grounded these fears were, the sequel will tell.

On March 24, 1801 the party was ready to proceed. From Goshen the long journey was by boat down the Muskingum to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the mouth of the Big Miami, up the Big Miami and the Whitewater to its forks, where Brookville

now is, and thence overland to White river, a distance of 430 miles, according to the Goshen diary. The party included fifteen Indians men, women, and children. Their boats consisted of five canoes, that one intended for the missionaries being thirtysix feet long.

No unexpected difficulties appear to have been encountered so long as the party was floating with the current. At Cincinnati they called on General St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest territory, who greeted them kindly, gave them supplies, and furnished them with a letter of recommendation to the chiefs of the White river Indians.

Their progress against the current of the Big Miami and the Whitewater was difficult and exhausting. Some of the canoes were sold, and help was procured for the management of the others. An important transaction was the purchase of two cows and a calf. The diary says: "This was not only of much benefit to us and the Indians on our journey, but when we reached our destination we saw that without the cow we would have been in great distress because milk, butter and bread was all our food this summer, so that we thanked God that we had this cow."

On April 24, one month after the departure from Goshen, the forks of the Whitewater were reached. Here the overland journey of somewhat less than 100 miles began. The difficulties which beset the way may be judged from the fact that a full month was spent in covering the distance. Drunkenness of the Indians caused almost constant trouble from then to the close of the mission. The diary, referring to an occasion when several Indians had secured whiskey, says: "They screamed all night in the woods and acted like madmen. No one who has not seen an Indian drunk can possibly have any conception of the same. It is as if they had been changed into devils or evil spirits. . . We were not a little astonished to see these Indians who, when sober, look like innocent lambs and were at all times friendly to us, were now like wild animals.”

On May 25 the place selected by the Delaware chiefs as the site of the mission was reached. The missionaries desired a site fifteen or twenty miles distant from the Indian villages in order that their charges might not be exposed to the influence and example of the unconverted savages, and they understood that such a site had been selected for them. They found, however,