THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 



CHAPTER I 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE, 1779-1782 



AFTER the Moravian Indians were led by their 

 missionary pastors to the banks of the Musk- 

 ingum they dwelt peacefully and unharmed for sev- 

 eral years. In Lord Dunmore's war special care 

 was taken by the white leaders that these Quaker 

 Indians should not be harmed; and their villages 

 of Salem, Gnadenhutten, and Schonbrunn received 

 no damage whatever. During the early years of the 

 Revolutionary struggle they were not molested, but 

 dwelt in peace and comfort in their roomy cabins 

 of squared timbers, cleanly and quiet, industriously 

 tilling the soil, abstaining from all strong drink, 

 schooling their children, and keeping the Seventh 

 Day as a day of rest. They sought to observe strict 

 neutrality, harming neither the Americans nor the 

 Indians, nor yet the allies of the latter, the British 

 and French at Detroit. They hoped thereby to of- 

 fend neither side, and to escape unhurt themselves. 

 But this was wholly impossible. They occupied 

 an utterly untenable position. Their villages lay 

 mid-way between the white settlements southeast of 

 the Ohio, and the towns of the Indians round San- 



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