148 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



trations of their spiritual directors. With the same 

 amiable hospitality, they received those bands of In- 

 dians from Canada, allies of the English, who came 

 through their settlements going towards the back parts 

 of Pensylvania and Virginia. So far were they from 

 encouraging hostilities against the outlying settlers of 

 the American states, that on the contrary it is well 

 known how by their representations they at times 

 turned aside certain Indian warriors from murderous 

 designs against the settlers. However, they were un- 

 able to escape the suspicions of both sides, parties to 

 the war. The American frontiersmen conceived that 

 they suffered all the more from the massacring ex- 

 peditions of the English Indians, especially the San- 

 duskys, so long as these were able to get supplies from 

 the Moravian villages, without which support they 

 could not long maintain themselves in those otherwise 

 desolate regions. On the other hand, those Indians 

 allied with the English harbored suspicion against the 

 Moravians on the ground that they gave the frontiers- 

 men information of their movements and so enabled 

 the settlers to escape craftily contrived ambushments 

 they laid it to the account of the Moravians if their 

 plans were balked by the flight of the settlers. 



Therefore both sides undertook by cunning or force 

 to remove the Moravian Indians from their villages. 

 On the part of the Americans the proposal was that 

 they withdraw from the Muskingum to the neighbor- 

 hood of Pittsburg. They rejected this offer because 

 they preferred to remain in their comfortable dwell- 

 ings and on their lands, and because they were un- 

 willing, against their known principles, to declare 

 themselves so openly for one of the parties at war. 



