204 The Winning of the West 



Eighteen men protested, and asked that the lives 

 of the poor creatures should be spared; and then 

 withdrew, calling God to witness that they were in- 

 nocent of the crime about to be committed. By 

 rights they should have protected the victims at any 

 hazard. One of them took off with him a small 

 Indian boy, whose life was thus spared. With this 

 exception only two lads escaped. 



When the murderers told the doomed Moravians 

 their fate, they merely requested a short delay in 

 which to prepare themselves for death. They asked 

 one another's pardon for whatever wrongs they 

 might have done, knelt down and prayed, kissed one 

 another farewell, "and began to sing hymns of hope 

 and of praise to the Most High/' Then the white 

 butchers entered the houses and put to death the 

 ninety-six men, women, and children that were with- 

 in their walls. More than a hundred years have 

 passed since this deed of revolting brutality ; but even 

 now a just man's blood boils in his veins at the 

 remembrance. It is impossible not to regret that 

 fate failed to send some strong war party of savages 

 across the path of these inhuman cowards, to inflict 

 on them the punishment they so richly deserved. 

 We know that a few of them were afterward killed 

 by the Indians ; it is a matter of keen regret that any 

 escaped. 



When the full particulars of the affair were known 

 all the best leaders of the border, almost all the most 

 famous Indian fighters, joined in denouncing it. 16 



t 16 Col. James Smith, then of Kentucky, in 1799 calls it "an 



