escape from his savage persecutors, saw the dead bodies of William Crawford, a nephew of Col. Crawford and of Major Harrison, his son-in-law, at Wakatomika. The unfortunate Crawford had been assured by Pipe, that these relatives would be admitted to mercy, but they, as well as Colonel McLelland, the second in command, were beaten to death soon after reaching the valley of Mad River.

Thus, life for life were the atrocities on the Muskingum avenged at the sources of the Sandusky. It was the cry of vengeance for the Christian Delawares slaughtered at Gnadenhutten, which was raised by Pipe on the banks of the Tymochtee, drowning every appeal or suggestion of mercy for one so estimable as all contemporary accounts represent Col. William Crawford to have been. Although the Muskingum proselytes were the objects of persecution by their heathen brethren, yet it was far from being a persecution unto death. It had for its object their restoration to the customs and associations of their former lives, and was entirely consistent with warm personal attachments. Loskiel narrates that the wife of Captain Pipe had been strongly moved by the persuasions of the missionaries; and the chief himself, when not instigated by Elliott, Girty or McKee, was disposed to be just and tolerant even to the teachers. He was a magnanimous savage, and his indignant repulse of all compromise with his rude sense of justice-when Girty sought to invoke his influence to save Crawford by an offer of moneygives a heroic air to the dreadful tragedy which followed. "Sir, do you think I am a squaw?" replied the indignant Delaware. "If you say one word more on the subject, I will make a stake for you and burn you along with the white chief."

With Crawford's defeat, and the carnage at Blue Licks in

August following, closed the drama of the American Revolution upon the wilderness of Ohio. Soon the motive power of British intrigue and gratuities was withdrawn, as the termination and result of the struggle became apparent, and the ravages of their Indian allies also abated. The latter were glutted with vengeance and plunder, and while their villages rang with their savage festivals, there was comparative indisposition to assume the risks of fresh forays upon the frontiers of Pennsylvania.

On the 30th of November, 1782, provisional articles of peace had been arranged at Paris: on the 20th of January following, hostilities ceased: on the 19th of April, 1783, peace was proclaimed to the army of the United States, and on the 3d of September a definite treaty was concluded.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SUBSEQUENT MOVEMENTS OF THE MORAVIAN CONGREGATION.

THE removal of the Moravian missionaries to Detroit, and the dispersion of their Indian congregation, did not terminate the labors of Zeisberger, Heckewelder, and their associates in the Western wilderness. There is no doubt that the interposition of Col. Depeyster was prompted by a disinterested regard for their safety; and the departure of the Christian Indians from Upper Sandusky, which soon followed, is commemorated by Loskiel and Heckewelder as a manifest token of the Divine protection, specially vouchsafed to arrest a repetition of the massacre at Gnadenhutten.

On the arrival of the missionaries at Detroit, Governor Depeyster offered to provide means for the removal of themselves and their families to Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, but they "resolved, from motives of duty and affection, to use their utmost exertions to gather their scattered flock." In this design, they received the countenance and aid of the English officer. A site was selected in Michigan, thirty miles distant from Detroit, and on the Huron River. The Chippewas were induced, by the influence of Col. Depeyster, to assent to such an occupation of a portion of their hunting grounds: the settlement was affectionately called New Gnadenhutten; and thither the Christian Indians, by messages directed to them on the Scioto and the Miami of the Lake, were invited to come. The Governor accompanied the invitation by an assurance, that they should enjoy perfect liberty

of conscience, and be supplied with provisions and other necessaries of life.

On the second of July, 1782, two families arrived from the Miami, who were soon joined by Abraham, a venerable assistant, and two other families: a seasonable remittance of one hundred pounds sterling by their brethren in London, reached the missionaries about the same time; and on the 20th of July, the new settlement was commenced. On the 5th of November, the missionaries (namely, Zeisberger, Heckewelder, Youngman and Senseman, with their families, and the "single brethren," Edwards and Young) had the gratification of meeting fifty-three of their converts at the consecration of a chapel. Loskiel says that the fugitives to the Shawanese had been in great danger of their lives, and had only escaped by a precipitate flight. The larger portion had sought the protection of their Delaware kindred on the Miami -the personal adherents of Pachgantschihilas, or Bockengehelas, the great war chief of the Delawares, whose magnan-imous conduct at the Muskingum villages, in 1781, has already been detailed. When Bockengehelas was urged by Captain Pipe "not to suffer the believing Indians to leave. his territory," his reply is thus reported by Loskiel : “I shall never hinder any one of my friends from going to their teachers. Why did you expel them? I have told you beforehand, that if you drive the teachers away, the believing Indians would not stay. But yet you would do it, and now you have lost the believing Indians, together with their teachers. Who murdered the believing Indians on the Muskingum? Did the white people murder them? I say, no! You have committed the horrid deed! Why could you not let them live in peace where they were? If you had let them alone, they would all have been living at this

day, and we should now see the faces of our friends: but you determined otherwise."

The other Delaware chiefs made extraordinary exertions to dissuade their converted kindred from joining the missionaries; and although forty-three of their number returned in the summer of 1783, yet many relapsed into savage life.

The manner in which the Indian congregation sustained the severe winter of 1784, with other incidents of that period, are thus narrated by the European historian of the Mission: "In the beginning of the year 1784, a most extraordinary frost set in, extending over the whole country about New Gnadenhutten. All the rivers and lakes were frozen, and the oldest inhabitants of Detroit did not remember ever to have seen such a deep fall of snow. In some places it lay five or six feet deep. The long continuance of this severe weather was the cause of great distress. March 6th, the snow was still four feet deep; about the end of the month it began to melt, but the ice on the River Huron did not break till the 4th of April, and Lake St. Clair was not free from ice in the beginning of May.

"As no one expected so long and severe a winter, there was no provision made either for man or beast. The extraordinary and early night frosts of the autumn before, had destroyed a great part of the promising harvest of Indian corn, and thus the Indians soon began to feel want; for what was bought at Detroit was very dear, and the bakers there refused to sell bread at a Spanish dollar per pound. The deep snow prevented all hunting. The Indians were therefore obliged to seek a livelihood wherever they could get it, and some lived upon nothing but wild herbs. At length a general famine prevailed, and the hollow eyes and emaciated countenances of the poor people were a sad token of their