Moravian Missionary-Scholar among the American Indians

Moravian Missionary-Scholar among the American Indians Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr. For the preservation of knowledge of how the American Indians lived in the days of the Thirteen Colonies, their traditions, history and culture, we are indebted primarily to the Moravian Brethren missionary, John Heckewelder. John Heckewelder was born in Bedford, England on May 12th 1743. His father, the preacher David Heckewelder, was a native of Moravia, who together with Kristián David found refuge from religious persecution that he faced in his native land, in Lusatian Herrnhut (Ochranov). Later the family moved to England, in the service of the Church of the Moravian Brethren. John received his elementary education in the schools of the Moravian Brethren. At the age of eleven, he left with his parents for America, where the family settled in 1754 in the town of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. For two years he attended the boys' school in Bethlehem, then worked on the farm of the Brethren in Christian's Spring, not far from Nazareth. There he began an apprenticeship as a cooper, however, he soon expressed an interest in helping David Zeisberger in his missionary work. In 1762 he was called to help Frederick Post in transferring several groups of baptized Delaware Indians away from the Susquehanna territory. After returning to Bethlehem he helped found a new mission in Friedenshutten and was employed for nine years at this station and elsewhere as a teacher. He was also sent as a courier to Indian settlements. In the course of this work he showed unusual abilities to master Indian customs and languages, which he learned by assiduous study of traditions and legendary history. He started his regular missionary activity in 1771 and persevered in it for fifteen years; during this time he served as an assistant to David Zeisberger and lived together with baptized Indians. He spent most of his time traveling on horseback between Bethlehem and Detroit, usually at the head of Indian groups and as their "passport," since the white colonists of the time did not consider Indians to be a peace-loving people. ' In 1781 he was arrested, along with his guides, by a wandering group of Englishmen and Indians and jailed in Upper Sandusky on charges of espionage for the American side. Heckewelder was twice called to Detroit to explain his activity and in the end was permitted to return to Ohio. During his absence ninety-six baptized Indians were murdered by Whites in their settlement of Gnadenhutten. In 1792 the War Secretary, General Knox, asked Heckewelder to accompany General Putnam with the mission of negotiating a peace treaty at Viscennes in the state of Indiana. The following year he served as consultant to a similar mission, consisting of General Lincoln, Colonel Pickering and General Beverly Randolph, from the Iroquois territory, to Detroit. In 1798 he became an agent of the Society of the Unity of the Brethren for the Evangelization of Pagans and settled in Gnadenhutten. In 1792 he was appointed, along with General Putnam, an ambassador for the preparation of a treaty with the Indians, which was approved on September 12th. In 1801 he returned to Gnadenhutten and for nine years administered Indian lands in Muskingum, entrusted to the Society for Evangelization, for the benefit of the Indian descendants of the former mission. At that time, thanks to his efforts, a substantial part of the Indians settled in Fairfield in Canada. In the course of organizing the Tuscarawas in 1808 he was elected assistant judge. He remained in this position until 1810, at which time he returned to Bethlehem, where he spent the remainder of his life. At the request of Caspar Wistar from the American Philosophical Society, he devoted the last years of his life to writing up his knowledge and experience of Indian life, which he had gathered in the course of his sojourn among them. The result was a publication entitled Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations, Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania (1819). A translation into German was published in 1821 and a French translation appeared in 1822. Among his further publications are: Narrative of John Heckewelder's Journey to the Wabash in 1792 (1888), originally published in German in 1797, Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians from Its Commencement, in the Year 1740, to the Close of the Year 1808 (1820) and Names which the Lenni Lenape, or the Delaware Indians, had given to to Rivers, Streams, Places, etc. in the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia and their Meanings (1872). An interesting meteorological logbook kept by Heckewelder in Gnadenhutten in 1880 was published in 1805 and his notebook from his voyage with General Putnam in 1797 was published posthumously in 1866. Many of his manuscripts are kept in the collections of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Heckewelder's work was of course a continuation of the original work of David Zeisberger, who conducted the first survey of Indian languages. It was, however, Heckewelder's practical sense and adaptability that led the missionary work to success. It was his simple directness, which finally won the day over the prejudice prevalent in Detroit and it is one of his accomplishments that the chronicle of Indian life and colonial Indian affairs has survived in a realistic historical perspective. John Heckewelder died in Bethlehem on January 31st 1821, at the age of nearly eighty.