254 HISTORY OF 



engrossing aim was to cluistianize the Indians. With 

 this view he visited a distant part of Lancaster county — - 

 the Wyoming comitry — inhabited by the Shawanese 

 Indians. Zinzendorf, and his httle company, pitched 

 their tents on the banks of the Susquehanna, a httle 

 below the town. This caused no small degree of alarm 

 among the Indians ; '- a council of the chiefs was assem- 

 bled, the declared purpose of Zinzendorf was deliber- 

 ately considered. To these unlettered children of the 

 wilderness it appeared altogether improbable that a 

 stranger should brave the dangers of a boisterous ocean, 

 tliree thousand miles broad, for the sole purpose of in- 

 stnictmg them in the means of obtaining happiness after 

 death, and that too without requiring any compensation 

 for liis trouble and expense ; and as they had observed 

 the anxiety of the white people to purchase lands of the 

 Indians, they naturally concluded that the real object of 

 Zinzendorf was either to procure them the lands at 

 Wyoming for his own use, to search for hidden treasures, 

 or to examine the country with a view to future con- 

 quest. It was accordingly resolved to assassinate him, and 

 to do it priA'ately, lest the knowledge of the transaction 



Note. — Zinzendorf, the patron of the sect of the ^Moravians, 

 was born at Dresden, ]May, 1700. He studied at Hale and 

 Utrecht. About the year 1722, he began to preach and write to 

 instruct his fellow men. He travelled extensively in Europe, 

 In 1737 he visited London ; 1741 he came to America, and 

 preached in various parts in Pennsylvania. He with his daugh- 

 ter, Benigna, and several brethren and sisters, visited various 

 tribesof Indians. At Sheconneco he established the first Indian 

 Moravian Congregation in America. In 1743 he returned to 

 Europe. He died at Herrnhut in 1760, and his coffin was car- 

 ried to the grave by thirty-two preachers and missionaries^ 

 whom he had reared and some of whom had toiled in Holland, 

 England. Ireland, North America, and Greenland. Vt'hat mon-^ 

 arch was everlionored by a funeral like this / — Allen, 



