The War in the Northwest 193 



folly of their missionary leaders. Their only hope 

 in such a conflict as was then raging was to be re- 

 moved from their fatally dangerous position; and 

 this the missionaries would not see. As long as 

 they stayed where they were, it was a mere question 

 of chance and time whether they would be de- 

 stroyed by the Indians or the whites; for their de- 

 struction at the hands of either one party or the 

 other was inevitable. 



Their fate was not due to the fact that they were 

 Indians; it resulted from their occupying an abso- 

 lutely false position. This is clearly shown by what 

 happened twenty years previously to a small com- 

 munity of non-resistant Christian whites. They 

 were Dunkards Quaker-like Germans who had 

 built a settlement on the Monongahela. As they 

 helped neither side, both distrusted and hated them. 

 The whites harassed them in every way, and the 

 Indians finally fell upon and massacred them. 5 The 

 fates of these two communities, of white Dunkards 

 and red Moravians, were exactly parallel. Each 

 became hateful to both sets of combatants, was per- 

 secuted by both, and finally fell a victim to the fe- 

 rocity of the race to which it did not belong. 



The conduct of the backwoodsmen toward these 

 peaceful and harmless Christian Indians was utterly 

 abhorrent, and will ever be a subject of just re- 

 proach and condemnation; and at first sight it 

 seems incredible that the perpetrators of so vile 

 a deed should have gone unpunished and almost un- 



6 Withers, 59- 

 VOL. VI. I 



