192 The Winning of the West 



to see the impending doom; and the poor, simple 

 Indians clung to their homes till destroyed. The 

 American commander at Pittsburg, Col. Gibson, en- 

 deavored to get them to come into the American 

 lines, where he would have the power, as he al- 

 ready had the wish, to protect them; he pointed 

 out that where they were they served in some sort as 

 a shield to the wild Indians, whom he had to spare 

 so as not to harm the Moravians. 3 The Half King 

 of the Wyandots, from the other side, likewise tried 

 to persuade them to abandon their dangerous posi- 

 tion, and to come well within the Indian and British 

 lines, saying: "Two mighty and angry gods stand 

 opposite to each other with their mouths wide open, 

 and you are between them, and are in danger of 

 being crushed by one or the other, or by both/' 4 

 But in spite of these warnings, and heedless of the 

 safety that would have followed the adoption of 

 either course, the Moravians followed the advice 

 of their missionaries and continued where they were. 

 They suffered greatly from the wanton cruelty of 

 their red brethren; and their fate remains a monu- 

 ment to the cold-blooded and cowardly brutality 

 of the borderers, a stain on frontier character that 

 the lapse of time can not wash away; but it is sin- 

 gular that historians have not yet pointed out the" 

 obvious truth, that no small share of the blame for 

 their sad end should be put to the credit of the blind 



3 Loskiel, p. 137. 



4 State Department MSS., No. 41, Vol. Ill, pp. 78, 79; ex- 

 tract from diary of Rev, David Zeisburger. 



