GNADENHUTTEN
"JA-NA-DEN-HUTTEN"
Lenape translation
"Huts of Grace"
Gnadenhutten
A Company of Heroes
by Dale Van Every
On the night of March 6th Williamson's men hid in the forest a mile from Gnadenhutten. Daylight revealed the unexpected number of Indians working in the fields around the town. There was no mistaking their identity since, as a feature of their religious training, the converts had abjured Indian paint and ornamentation and dressed and wore their hair according to white fashion. Nevertheless, the attackers made their approach to the town with as much military stealth and energy as if it were being defended by Shawnee or Wyandot warriors. Care was taken to surround the place so that there might be no escape.
Six Indians, including one woman, who chanced at intervals to be encountered in the woods outside the town were killed.
When the assailants suddenly closed in, the Moravians made no effort to resist or escape and were at first not even frightened. They readily accepted the preliminary white assertion that all that was intended was to remove them to Pittsburgh where they would be fed and kept safe until the war was over.
Most professed to prefer this prospect to a return to their harsh Sandusky exile. The Moravian contingent at Schonbrunn had meanwhile fled into the forest, having been warned in time by one of their number who had stumbled upon the body of one of the six Indians killed in the intervening woods during the white approach to Gnadenhutten. But those at the third town, Salem, having had no such timely warning, unhesitatingly accepted a white delegation's assurances of friendliness and joined their companions in Gnadenhutten.
A total of 90 Moravian men, women, and children had been assembled, disarmed, and confined in their chapel where they awaited, still trustingly, the indicated move to Pittsburgh. There had been ten years of intercourse between the mission and the frontier, frequent social and commercial contacts, most of the Indians knew many of their captors by sight, some even by name, and there was even yet no suspicion of white intentions. But what was now going on outside the chapel was the holding of a kind of kangaroo court as the undisciplined intruders debated with increasing heat what disposition actually to make of their prisoners. A minority, afterwards said to have numbered at most 18, favored taking them unharmed to Pittsburgh as had been promised. They argued that the Moravian Indians were Christians whose conduct had always been inoffensive and recalled how often their pastors, Heckewelder and Zeisberger, had furnished the frontier with information and warnings. But the much more vehement majority continued to insist that the prisoners still were Indians. Search of the three towns had disclosed many articles of white manufacture, branded horses, and similar indications which could be construed as evidence that some at least of the residents had been engaged in attacks upon the frontier. Later assertions were made that blood-stained clothing and even scalps had been found. Whatever view might be taken of these inferences, there could be little doubt that hostile war parties in their excursions to and from the frontier had habitually demanded and necessarily been granted shelter by the pacifist mission communities. The majority verdict, therefore, was death. The minority advocating clemency turned their backs and made no further protest.
When informed of their fate the Moravians begged for time to prepare themselves. They spent the night praying, singing hymns, and exchanging farewells. At dawn they were dragged with ropes, two or three at a time, to one or the other of two houses, thereafter referred to by the white participants as the "slaughter houses". Most were dispatched with a cooper's mallet, a tool belonging to one of the mission artisans. When one executioner's arm tired, the hammer was passed to another eager to take his turn. Of the 90 killed, 29 were men, 27 women, and 34 children. All were scalped and the trophies taken home by frontiersmen who by now had become accustomed to set as high a value on these tokens of personal prowess as did any warrior.
Thus it was that our Lord Jesus greeted 90 Lenape martyrs.
The irony of all this is that Col. Williamson and those with him professed to be good Christians.
If they were, then they showed on that dreadful day, that those Lenape were exceptional Christians.
Perhaps it should be noted that, to a Native American, religon is an all powerful force that dictates every movement of that individual's life. Once a commitment is made, it is adhered to irregardless of what that form of religon is.
Thus it was with the Lenape and their acceptance of Christianity.
Our history is filled with unwritten accounts of such attrocities. Few ever made the history books.
Many of those Lenape Christians who had escaped the atrocious persecution of the whites, as well as their own, for their beliefs, seperated themselves from tribe and tried to live unobtrusive lives in the depths of the Ohio forests that they loved. Their only thought was to raise their families according to their new found faith.
They tried their best to adapt to the white way of life. Yet each time they established a homestead, it was stolen by those whites who were too lazy to break their own ground. Thus were they driven ever deeper into seclusion, virtually hidden away in the places that the whites did not covet. But even this was no answer.
In December 1803, there was a bounty offered of $2 for a full grown wolf or panther and $1 for one under six months. Evidently many were killed in the next year because the bounty was then reduced to $1 for a full grown wolf or panther scalp and 50 cents for one under six months. An interesting side note was that top dollar was payed for the scalp of Red Wolves a reference to any Indian found wandering loose in the area. Needless to say, many an unscrupulous settler got his seed money from taking innocent Christian Lenape lives.
But then, that is all unwritten history. This was Ohio way back then. I am amongst those whose ancestors had survived. Nothing of the past can be changed. But that doesn't mean that it has to be appreciated any less.
I don't write this to promote Christianity. Each persons belief is their own private concern. I only write this to point out the strength of the people in their convictions and their perserverance. It is a good lesson to look back on. A gift of sacrifice to those of us who survive. This was only one instance of far too many, and I only use it because it was personal to me.
I must note here that the same "White" attitude lives today just as it did in the past, only it doesn't make itself so apparent, and of course doesn't include all whites(most of which have become so indolent and apathetic that they couldn't care less). But it still goes on with those greedy that look back on promises and treaties trying to find legal ways to renege so as to line their pockets. Such legal terms as "eminent domain" and other conniving terms, spending million for lawyers just to find little legal loop holes in order to forward their goals.
So what must the people do? I can only give my opinion...
While they are numerically few, to rise against them physically would awaken the wraith of even the apathetic many. So force of arms is out of the question. To yell and rise up in protestation? We would only be bowled over by legal mumbo-jumbo. Neither of these seems to be the answer. Rather let us see to it that our children recieve the best education possible. Light within their hearts the need to become even better than those who would oppose them, learning the law, practicing the law and battling the fire with like fire of their own. The possibility is there. Light the fire within their hearts with these stories of our people's past sacrifices, in such a way that they not go forth filled with hate, for hate some times blurs the vision, but with a firm clear eyed resolve to make things right for their people. And reward each of their successful achievements as we would any brave warrior defending his people.
This is as I see it. the peaceful way. thus is it told.
Da NAHO!
Blue Turtle
