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Remembrance and reform: a multi-generational saga of a Euro-American-Indian family, 1739-1924
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Remembrance and reform: a multi-generational saga of a Euro-American-Indian family, 1739-1924
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REMEMBRANCE AND REFORM: A MULTI-GENERATIONAL SAGA OF A EURO-AMERICAN-INDIAN FAMILY, 1739-1924 by Karin L. Huebner A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HISTORY) December 2009 Copyright 2009 Karin L. Huebner ii DEDICATION For my family, past, present and future. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is such a pleasure to finally arrive at this stage in the project where I can recognize and thank all those whose support made it possible. I am indebted to the many archivists at the repositories I consulted, especially those individuals serving at the University of California, Santa Cruz special collections, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs archives in Washington, D.C., the Riverside Public Library in Riverside, California, the Cambridge Historical Society in Cambridge, Ohio, and the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Maria Ortiz at the Fresno County Historical Society showed personal interest in my work and pulled materials on Anna Huebner that proved transformative to my narrative and I am deeply thankful. My greatest debt of gratitude is reserved for Grace Day at the John Heckewelder Memorial Church archives at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Her immense knowledge of the precious material that she oversees is truly remarkable and her professionalism and graciousness is without peer. My tenure at the University of Southern California was one of the greatest experiences in my life. The history department staff, Lori Rogers, La Verne Hughes, and Joe Styles, on too many occasions proved to be masterful problem solvers and became my close friends. I received incalculable support and encouragement from the Graduate Student committee through timely funding for research and conferences that advanced my career as an historian. Two faculty members who did not serve on my committee, but who were nonetheless so supportive and influential in my iv completion of my Ph.D. warrant special recognition. Elinor Accampo and Kevin Starr, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your wisdom, your unmatched brilliance, your encouragement, and your friendship. I also wish to thank Terry Seip for teaching me so much about teaching. My admiration of my advisors’ academic acumen and gifts of mentorship cannot be measured. I owe so much to Lois Banner for her indefatigable support throughout my career at USC. I gained so much from her working and walking by her side. Her seemingly tireless, yet brilliant critiques of my work have made me a better historian and made her my life-long friend. At every stage of this dissertation, Peter Mancall has provided me with thoughtful and intelligent contributions and made himself available to me at every step. He provided me with support through fellowships and friendship and my debt to him is far greater than I could ever repay. I look forward to our professional and personal relationship in the years to come. I am also thankful to Bill Deverell and Joan Weibel-Orlando for their helpful comments on the manuscript. My fellow graduate students sustained me throughout this process and deserve credit for its completion. Sarah Fried-Gintis, Vicki Vantoch, Yuko Itatsu, Liz Willis-Tropea, and Phil Chase, I thank you. Finally, I owe such a debt of gratitude to my parents whose love and belief in me I relied upon throughout this entire endeavor called graduate school. I love and thank you both so much. I want to give special thanks to my dear friend Monica Palma who has been there with me through the entire process. I wish to convey how much Grace Day from Gnadenhutten has meant to me and that I am so thankful that v this labor of love brought our lives together. John and Kim, Jim and Heidi, and Kaelin, Chase, Zoe, Noah, Hallie, and Kathy sustained me countless times over the years with the great relief called fun and love. And with all of my heart I thank my dear Michele for bringing me the joy that has been my strength. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vii Abbreviations ix Abstract x Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The World of John Lewis Huebner, 1739-1799 18 Chapter 2: Ludwig Huebner and the Reestablishment of Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum, 1800-1834 71 Chapter 3: Encounters on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier: The Heritage of Anna Gibson Huebner, Great-Granddaughter of “an Indian girl.” 115 Chapter 4: Commemorating a Massacre and the Politics of Remembering, 1843-1882 172 Chapter 5: From Remembrance to Reform: The Environment, Education, and Family Heritage of Francis Christian Huebner, 1869-1898 220 Chapter 6: Union for Reform: Anna and Francis Huebner, and the “Indians of the Painted Desert,” 1898-1924 262 Conclusion 320 Bibliography 324 Appendix: Archives, Primary Sources, and Secondary Sources 337 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Map of Mid-Atlantic North America, 18 th c., the world of John Lewis Huebner. 15 Figure 2: Insert of Mid-Atlantic map, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, 18 th c. 16 Figure 3: Map of Connecticut; Pachgatgoch highlighted, 18 th c. 16 Figure 4: Map of Pennsylvania; Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney, Nazareth, and Bethlehem highlighted, 18 th c. 17 Figure 5: Map of Ohio and Upper Great Lakes region; Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum, Goshen, the Gibson family farm on Wills Creek, and the Moravian mission town of Fairfield, Canada highlighted. 82 Figure 6: Pewter platter, brought from Ireland to British North America, 1768. 126 Figure 7: Gibson family Bible, circa 1775. 127 Figure 8: Nancy Gibson’s signature in family Bible. 128 Figure 9: Daguerreotype of Nancy Larison Gibson, circa 1840s. 138 Figure 10: Linen/flax dual-pane coverlet woven by Nancy Larison Gibson, circa 1790s. 143 Figure 11: Close-up of coverlet. 143 Figure 12: Gibson family home built circa 1815. 156 Figure 13: Map of Tuscawaras Valley, Ohio and surrounding region; Gibson Farm, Gnadenhutten, and Goshen highlighted. 158 Figure 14: Linen tablecloth made by Nancy Larison Gibson, mid-19 th century. 161 Figure 15: Close-up of linen tablecloth. 161 Figure 16: Photograph of Nancy Larison Gibson, circa 1865. 164 viii Figure 17: United States Land Grant to William Gibson, signed by James Monroe, 1823. 170 Figure 18: Photograph of Gnadenhutten monument to the massacred Indians, circa 1900. 224 Figure 19: 1885 Watercolor of Gnadenhutten’s second church, built in 1820, painted by Francis C. Huebner. 249 Figure 20: Photograph taken prior to 1889 of “Old Indian Apple Tree” planted in 1774 at “Old Gnadenhutten, Ohio.” 250 Figure 21: Photograph of Francis C. Huebner at his desk in the Depredation Division of the United States Indian Office, Washington, D.C., dated December 26, 1894. 259 Figure 22: 1922 flyer advertising Anna Huebner’s travel lectures on the Indians of the Southwest. 289 Figure 23: Photograph of Hopi Snake dancers, taken by Anna or Francis Huebner circa 1919. 290 Figure 24: Photograph of Hopi Snake chief Harry Shu Pela with Anna Huebner holding ceremonial sash, circa 1920. 291 Figure 25: Hopi man meeting the Huebners. 293 Figures 26-28: Pictorial narrative of Huebner family journey to the Hopi mesa villages of Oraibi and Walpi. 294 Figure 29: Photograph of Huebner family with Hopi villagers, circa 1920. 298 Figure 30: Photograph of “scene five” depicting the 1782 Gnadenhutten massacre of Christian Indians in the 1925 pageant play presented by the Moravian church in Gnadenhutten, Ohio commemorating the 125 anniversary of the founding of the village. 314 Figure 31: Photograph of “scene four” of 1925 pageant depicting “1773 baptism of first white child born in Ohio,” with actors Lawrence and Nettie Huebner participating in the actual baptism of their infant daughter, Mary. 317 ix ABBREVIATIONS BDHP: Bethlehem Digital History Project. BCAW: William Deverell, ed., Blackwell Companions to American History: A Companion to the American West. GA: John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church Archives, Gnadenhutten, Ohio. JHMMC: John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church Records, Ohio Historical Society. MA: Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA. David Zeisberger Diaries: Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, eds., The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772-1781. x ABSTRACT “Remembrance and Reform: A Multi-Generational Saga of a Euro-American- Indian Family, 1739-1924” presents an historical narrative of Indian/white relations through the histories of the Huebner and Gibson families. The primary sources, which have been inaccessible to other historians, reveal an extensive and intimate family history that spans two centuries of American history. Their story integrates multiple histories of the American West chronologically and spatially, and it complicates the traditional narratives of conquest and dispossession. This dissertation shows how one group of Euro-Americans and Indians came together to form families and communities in order to survive the difficulties that surrounded them. These associations were not free of conflicts. This study examines how later generations remembered their ancestral histories, which inspired some of them to work in Indian reform movements during the 1920s. Through an examination of individuals from the Huebner family, this study traces the complicated history of the Moravians’ evangelization of North American Indians, which was both egalitarian (in comparison to other European missionaries) and ethnocentric. The Moravian church’s most successful effort at forming interracial Christian communities with Euro-Americans and Indians ended tragically with the massacre of ninety-six Indian converts at Gnadenhutten, Ohio in 1782. In 1800, the Moravians made a final attempt at interracial co-existence in the borderland regions of Ohio, but this too ended when internal tensions in the Indian mission community and external pressures from the new and expanding nation xi prompted the permanent removal of the Moravian Indians to Oklahoma territory in 1823. As a racially integrated Scots-Irish/ Indian family in the trans-Appalachian west in 1800, the Gibsons’ experience stands in contrast to the traditional historical narrative of the westward expansion of Anglo-Americans onto Indian lands. The matriarch of the family, Nancy Larison Gibson, was herself a Native American. She was a prominent midwife and healer in her community in Ohio (1807-1870), and her presence in the midst of a Scots-Irish family forces a reconsideration of an older historical narrative based on Euro-American advance and indigenous retreat. The massacre at Gnadenhutten in 1782 challenged the Moravians’ calling to evangelize the Indians and brought their identity as a church and a people of God into question. This study largely turns on the events of that day and analyzes how, over the course of the nineteenth century, the leadership of the Moravian church at Bethlehem and the congregants at the local level sought to understand the meaning of the massacre at Gnadenhutten through commemoration, memorials, and pageant- plays. This dissertation explores the relationship between the collective memory of the village of Gnadenhutten and the private memory of the Huebner family. It examines how the community’s commemorations of both its indigenous heritage and the massacre shaped its residents’ understanding of indigenous history and the Moravians’ specific actions in the past. The marriage of Francis Huebner and Anna Gibson Alloway in 1898 brought together two family heritages of Euro-American-Indian intersection. “Remembrance xii and Reform” concludes with an examination of the Indian reform-mindedness of Francis and Anna, whose shared commitment to better the lives of Native Americans inspired them to work for land rights and religious freedom on the behalf of Indians. Historians of Indian reform have generally focused their attention on two late-nineteenth century ideological strains, assimilation and primitivism. Both reform strains imposed white reformers’ ideas of what they thought was best for Indian peoples, which in the end limited Native Americans’ agency and self- determination. Anna and Francis’s ideas about white/Indian relations represented a third ideological strain of white Indian reformers who advocated both assimilation and the preservation of Indian culture. My study argues that this strain of reform afforded Native Americans a higher degree of agency. By the 1920s, it gained national currency through the reform work of an unexpected alliance between California clubwomen, like Anna Huebner, Indian reformer John Collier, and the Pueblos of the Southwest. Their efforts culminated in the transformative 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which reversed the 1887 Dawes Act and strove to ensure tribal sovereignty and self-determination. 1 INTRODUCTION “Remembrance and Reform: The Multi-Generational Saga of a Euro- American-Indian Family, 1742-1924” traces the history of the Huebner family and its consistent intersection with Native Americans over three centuries. The story crosses multiple histories of the American West chronologically and spatially, and it complicates the traditional narratives of conquest and dispossession. The arc of my study, which spans from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, aligns multiple western histories—trans-Appalachian, California, Southwest, and Western/Indian political West--into a single historical narrative of national, regional, and local significance. It is based on a huge Huebner family archive that my parents, Larry and Gretchen Huebner, possess. Within the archive is a huge cache of artifacts—bibles, diaries, textiles, deeds, letters, land grants, daguerreotypes and other photographic images, which include Southwest Indian community life and religious ceremonies, and ephemeral materials that span the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. These materials have allowed me to write a study that makes a unique contribution to traditional narratives of the American West and suggests new directions to the histories of Indian and Euro-American relations. This study began with my discovery of this archive, stored in crates and hat boxes in my parents’ closet. As I read through family papers a remarkable story emerged. Amidst the mound of materials, I discovered a photograph taken in the late 1910s of my great-grandmother, Anna Huebner, seated on a rock beside a Hopi Indian in his Arizona desert village of Walpi. I soon found hundreds more 2 pictures—some depicting the Hopi Indian snake dance, others of native families, farmers, and villages. One photograph was of my grandfather as a young boy standing with his mother, Anna, and his father, Francis, in the midst of a group of Hopi children. As a child, I had been told many times the family lore about snake dances and Indian massacres and trips across the California and Arizona desert to visit Pueblo tribes in the Southwest. But these stories sounded incredible and hardly seemed real. At this point of discovery, I did not know what the pictures meant. But, in the process of uncovering the Huebner family’s entire story, I discovered that their alliances with the Hopis spoke to a history of deep intersection with Native Americans. And these alliances spoke as well to a story of significant participation on the part of Huebner family members in Indian reform work on local, state, and national levels in the first decades of the twentieth century. This reform movement culminated in the 1930s with the passage of the so-called Indian New Deal and a variety of associated legal cases, all of which led to a transformation of relations between the federal government and indigenous Americans. The family photographs led me to query: “What motivated these upper-middle class, conservative white people to venture out several times into the harsh Arizona desert to visit a people I assumed were foreign to them?” That question launched this dissertation. I discovered that Anna and Francis each possessed family histories of involvement with Indians that began centuries earlier. I traced their individual family histories—the Huebners and the Gibsons—back nearly two hundred years, across the Atlantic to British North America and then across the American continent. 3 I discovered Indian ancestry in Anna’s family, the Gibsons. I found a long tradition of Moravian missionaries to the Indians in Francis’s family, the Huebners, dating from the early eighteenth-century. I learned what had happened in the “Delaware Massacre” that I had heard about as a child, and I discovered in my search that the fantastic stories I had been told about snake dances were actually true. This dissertation presents an historical narrative of Indian/white relations through the histories of the Huebner and Gibson families. This is not a history that challenges the dominant (and accurate) story of Euro-American and then the United States government’s long history of injustice toward the indigenous peoples of North America. Rather, this dissertation adds to that story and revises it. In the main story of the Huebner and Gibson families Euro-Americans and Indians came together to form families and communities in order to survive the difficulties of the environment that surrounded them. These associations were not free of conflicts. The primary sources that drive this work, which have been inaccessible to other historians, reveal an extensive and intimate family history that spans two centuries of American history. The Huebner family saga begins with John Lewis Huebner, a Moravian missionary and itinerant preacher to the Indians during the late 1740s and 1750s. Before the Moravian church began its migration to the North American continent, the church leadership in Europe established its identity as a missionary enterprise, to bring the gospel of Christ to the “heathen of the world.” John Lewis Huebner participated in this project. In the mission field, Huebner labored alongside eminent 4 missionaries and cultural brokers Frederick Christian Post and David Zeisberger. He traveled to black slave mission settlements in the Bahamas and South America with Nathaniel Seidel, a prominent figure in the eighteenth century Moravian world who was later elected Bishop of the Moravian Church in North America. Historians have generally identified the Moravians’ evangelization of North American Indians during the eighteenth century as one of the more egalitarian and least intrusive missionizing efforts in comparison to other Europeans missionaries. Nonetheless, the Moravians’ attempts convert Indians to Christianity and replace indigenous cultural and social systems with European ways must still be interpreted within the four-pronged framework of conquest, which along with missionization included disease, the sword, and the massive demographic invasion from Europe. Indian mission workers like John Lewis Huebner were more than just evangelical soul-winners. They desired nothing less than a cultural revolution for American Indians. They were agents for social change who were dedicated to the goal of transforming Indians into purified Europeans. John Lewis was moved by an altruistic sensibility to “save” Indians from what he believed was heathenism and eternal damnation. Nonetheless, his religious ethnocentrism—the belief that European ways were superior to Indian ways—proved as devastating to indigenous peoples and their culture as other forms of conquest that North American Indians faced. Native “otherness” lay in a heathen/Christian distinction and Moravians, like the other Europeans who encountered North American Indians, embraced this paradigm of difference. While Moravians and many of their European counterparts 5 believed that Indians were children of God and capable of uplift, they still placed Indians in a lower state of civilization as people who needed only to be given the revelation of the gospel of Christ to be saved. 1 John Lewis Huebner occupied a leadership position in the church’s communal organization during the major events in American and Moravian history over the course of the eighteenth century. He lived through the Seven Years’ War, the Revolutionary War; the 1782 massacre at Gnadenhutten, Ohio; and the 1795 Treaty at Greenville, which opened much of the Northwestern territory to white settlement and which foreshadowed Indian removal. The sources that I examined start with John Lewis’s arrival to North America in the early years of the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem in the 1740s. Church diaries and community records provide intimate details of his life in the Moravian world, including vivid descriptions of life and work in the mid-Atlantic Indian mission towns during the 1750s. I have been able to reconstruct this history because Moravians were meticulous record keepers. The church mandated that all missionaries write daily diaries detailing the life in their communities. The diaries were regularly sent back to the home church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where they were copied and sent out to other missions for encouragement or training. The diaries, which span three centuries, are held at the Moravian Church Archives at Bethlehem. They provide the 1 James Axtel, in Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 10, and 35-45, provides an excellent study on European missionization as a form of conquest and colonization of Native Americans. He also analyzes the paradigm of distinction and “otherness” and what he identifies as religious centrism, which helped in a critical analysis of the Moravian mission project to the North American Indians. 6 most important source material for the study of the history of the Moravians’ entry onto the missionary field in North America during the colonial era and the era of the early American republic. These records were written by Euro-Americans and invariably reflected their ethnocentric biases and religious agendas. Needless to say, the reliance on white- authored sources privileges a Euro-American perspective about Native Americans, which challenges the historian to decode in the writings the actual thoughts and experiences of the Moravians’ indigenous neighbors. The unfortunate dearth of Indian-authored records requires, as one historian put it, “the use of the historian’s trick of reading between the lines.” Thus, any analysis of these diaries must be done critically, realizing that they reflect the perspective of those who wrote them. These materials must also be measured against other primary and secondary sources to help ascertain what Native peoples in these communities actually felt and thought about their lives. 2 It is primarily from the diaries of missionaries with whom John Lewis Huebner worked and traveled with that I was able to formulate a story about his missionary work among Native Americans. I trace John Lewis’s life through tumultuous eras of Euro-American and Indian relations, beginning with his arrival in America in 1739. This was a period when the experiment of Euro-American and Indian intercommunity formation on the part of the Moravian Church encountered 2 See Axtel, Natives and Newcomers, 2-6; and Peter C. Mancall, unpublished paper, “Native Americans and the Atlantic World,” given at California State University, Northridge, October 3, 2008: 2. 7 severe trials as well as its share of successes with indigenous peoples who joined their communities. One of the most successful Indian missions in the eyes of the church was at Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum--which translated from German means “huts of grace.” Gnadenhutten was a small Indian mission village founded by missionary David Zeisberger and Joshua, his leading Indian assistant, together with several Christian Indian families in the Ohio Country in 1771. On March 8, 1782, at the final stages of the Revolutionary war, American forces massacred ninety-six Indian brethren who lived at Gnadenhutten and delivered a severe blow to the Moravian church and its Indian mission project. White Pennsylvania colonists under the command of Colonel David Williamson bludgeoned to death, tomahawked, and then scalped these Moravian Christian Indians. The murderers then torched the village and left the Indians’ burnt, bloodied bodies to rot on the ground. They remained there for sixteen years. It was only in 1798 that Moravian missionary John Heckewelder returned to the site and buried the “sun-bleached bones” en masse in two mounds. Until recently, this massacre was largely absent in the heroic and patriotic annals of the American Revolution. 3 The Moravian Indians who survived the attack 3 There are a few exceptions to this historical omission (or amnesia). Richard White discusses the massacre briefly in The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 389-390. Peter Silver’s recent work on violence in early America provides an extensive analysis of the massacre as it relates to the culture of violence in the eighteenth century world of Indians and Euro-Americans. See Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 265-274. An increasing number of historians are now beginning to see the vast Moravian church archives in 8 shortly thereafter relocated to Canada and formed a community that continues to exist today. In 1798, sixteen years after the massacre, some members of the Canadian Indian congregation attempted to resettle the area around Gnadenhutten, Ohio. But by the 1820s, internal tensions in the Indian mission community and external pressures from the new and expanding nation prompted the Moravian Indians to move west into the Indian territory of Oklahoma, far from the presence of whites. By 1843, the United States government forcibly removed all remaining Indian peoples living in Ohio to the territory of Kansas and other designated reservation lands. In many respects, this dissertation turns on the events of that day. After the massacre, the remaining Indian settlers at Gnadenhutten abandoned the village. The Moravian church’s native mission experiment never fully recovered from the tragic events of that day. Unlike any of the difficult events the Moravians had endured earlier, the 1782 massacre challenged the Moravians’ calling to evangelize the Indians. From the highest levels of leadership at the headquarters at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to the common congregants in churches across the Moravian world, the massacre of the Indian brethren at Gnadenhutten brought their identity as a church and a people of God into question. For the next two hundred years the Moravian church sought to understand the meaning of the massacre at Gnadenhutten. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as an invaluable source on colonial and Revolutionary era histories. Historians Peter Silver, Amy Schutt, and Jane Merritt have utilized the church archives and produced new and exciting scholarship of these periods. 9 Moravian missionary work and interracial community with Native Americans continued with John Lewis’s son, Ludwig (the subject of Chapter 2). From 1800 to 1805, he served as first pastor of a reconstituted church at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. The leaders at Bethlehem reestablished the town of Gnadenhutten in 1800 eighteen years after the massacre in 1782. They strategically placed Gnadenhutten, conceived as a white settlement, adjacent to Goshen, an Indian settlement established in 1798, with the intention to reignite the mission movement in the western territory. Both Huebner and Benjamin Mortimer, the assistant pastor at Goshen, kept daily diaries. It is from these diaries that a detailed portrait of the two communities and their relationship to each other and to the world around them emerges. The diaries speak not only of daily life in the communities, but also of conflicts with Anglo-American outsiders and traders who challenged the strict Moravian edicts against bringing alcohol into the communities. The diaries also reveal the secret that for most of Ludwig Huebner’s tenure as pastor, Gnadenhutten’s white citizens and Goshen’s Indian citizens regularly drank alcohol together. The story then turns to the Gibson family, which migrated across the Appalachian Mountains into Guernsey County, Ohio adjacent to Tuscawaras County where Gnadenhutten and Goshen were located. The study of the Gibson family’s migration to Ohio possesses all the elements of the traditional historical narrative of the expansion of Anglo-Americans onto Indian lands. But I am particularly concerned with Nancy Larison Gibson, the matriarch of the family who claimed indigenous ancestry. In the nineteenth century, she was a local leader in her church 10 and community. Additionally, she served the surrounding Indian and Anglo- American populations as a midwife and healer. Her presence in the midst of a Scots- Irish family forces a reconsideration of an older historical narrative based on Euro- American advance and indigenous retreat. Nancy Larison Gibson belonged in both worlds. Chapter 4 turns away from family history to examine the inauguration and history of the Moravian community’s practice of remembering the 1782 Indian massacre. Beginning in 1843, members of the community of Gnadenhutten, Ohio, told and retold the story of their martyred Indian brethren through multiple media: religious teachings, monuments, commemorations, literature, and pageant-plays. Even the spatial organization of the village reflected the central place the massacre held in the consciousness of the community. The town’s built environment--its civic and religious buildings, homes, the cemetery, sacred sites, even the roads-- surrounded the site of the tragedy, and its citizens consider the ground where savage Euro-American vigilantes spilled the Indians’ blood to be consecrated and holy. Even today, relics identified with the massacre remain in the church display case. They signal the community’s long investment in remembering the massacre of Christian Indians and the importance of passing and interpreting the memory of the event from one generation to the next. This part of my study explores the relationship between the collective memory of the village of Gnadenhutten and the individual and family memories of Francis Huebner, who was born into this Moravian community in 1869. It examines how the community’s construction of a 11 collective memory of the massacre that was both transformative and traditional, and that had held political, social, and spiritual meanings. The education of Francis Christian Huebner and the environment he grew up in is the subject of Chapter 5. Francis was born and baptized in 1869 in Gnadenhutten, Ohio. He was three years old in 1872 when the town held its first inaugural commemoration of the massacre and thirteen when the 1882 Centennial took place. He later wrote as an adult that his youth in a town imbued with memories of the 1782 massacre deeply influenced him. Here young Francis learned of how the community commemorated and interpreted the attack. The private historical traditions of Francis’s family and the public commemorative practices of his religious community produced in him a consciousness of Indians and reform mindedness that was distinct from contemporary mainstream narratives about Indians in the larger society in the late nineteenth century. Francis’s ideas, shaped largely growing up in Gnadenhutten, challenged the dominant ideas of white so-called “friends of the Indians” who viewed Indians as degenerates and headed toward extinction if they did not adopt Anglo-American ways. The tragedy of the 1782 massacre especially inspired him in the course of his life to eventually take a position in the Indian Bureau in Washington, D.C. and write books on the history of Moravian Indian missions in North America. Anna Gibson Alloway, great-granddaughter of Nancy Larison Gibson, married Francis Huebner on June 21, 1898, in Anna’s home village of Uhrichsville, three miles from Gnadenhutten. Their union brought together two family lines—the 12 Gibsons and Huebners—each possessing its own traditions of European and Native American intersection. Chapter 6 examines Anna and Francis’s mutual interest in the indigenous peoples of the Southwest. Their relationship began in the environs of Gnadenhutten, and it united their individual passions about Native Americans and kindled a shared interest for reform on behalf of Indians. After their marriage in Ohio they established a home in Washington, D.C., and then, in 1906, moved to Fresno, California. Over their twenty-five year marriage, Anna and Francis collaborated on projects that centered on Native Americans and the problems these marginalized peoples faced. Their shared consciousness and their union inspired them as individuals to work for land rights and religious reform on the behalf of Indians. In light of their family heritage of interaction with Indians and their concerns, the friendships Anna and Francis eventually formed with the Hopis seems hardly surprising. Historians of Indian reform have generally focused their attention on two late- nineteenth century ideological strains. First was assimilation, embedded in the federal government’s Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, which turned Indian tribal and communal societies into variations of white, middle-class societies. Second was primitivism, which was reflected in the ideas of early twentieth century reformers like Mabel Dodge Luhan, who reified and romanticized Indian culture. Both reform strains imposed white reformers’ ideas of what they thought was best for Indian peoples, and as it turned out, the assimiliationists and primitivists limited the agency and self-determination of Native Americans. 13 Anna and Francis Huebner’s ideas about white/Indian relations complicated this binary. They represented a third ideological strain of white Indian reformers who advocated both assimilation and the preservation of Indian culture. This third strain of reform afforded Native Americans a higher degree of agency. By the 1920s, it gained national currency through the reform work of an unexpected alliance between California clubwomen, like Anna Huebner, Indian reformer John Collier, and the Pueblos of the Southwest. Their efforts culminated in the transformative 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which reversed the Dawes Act and strove to ensure tribal sovereignty and self-determination. My dissertation examines Francis Huebner’s reform-mindedness through an analysis of his progressive writings—in both fiction and non-fiction—on the history of Indians and the Moravian church. Anna demonstrated her progressive attitudes toward Indians through her reform work in her local women’s club in Fresno, California. I examine Anna’s work in Indian reform during the 1920s through the California Federation of Women’s Clubs. A significant aspect of my study traces the involvement, during the 1920s and 1930s, of California clubwomen in Indian Welfare reform on the local, state, and national levels. My research has uncovered the considerable impact of these white, politically conservative clubwomen on bringing national attention to the oppressive conditions and repressive policies under which Indian peoples across the nation lived. Thus, my study revises earlier understandings of the political culture of women’s clubs during a critical period of our nation’s history. California clubwomen, Anna Huebner among them, waged 14 effective political campaigns for Indian religious freedom, the protection of tribal lands and rights, and Native self-determination. Anna was deeply involved in Indian welfare through her local woman’s club and through the personal relationships she developed with Hopi of Walpi and Oraibi, which she chronicled through an extensive photographic record. The evidence suggests that both Anna and Francis provided behind the scenes support for each other’s reform efforts. Together they ventured across racial and cultural boundaries to embrace the Hopi and Navajo Indians they encountered in the Painted Desert as their friends. Their history, I argue, reflected long-term familial interests in the lives of Native Americans. 15 Figure 1: Map of Mid-Atlantic North America, 18 th c. Area highlighted: The Moravian missionary world of John Lewis Huebner with Pachgatgoch Indians. (adapted from George Henry Loskiel’s History of the Mission of the United Brethren, 1795). 16 Figure 2: Insert of Mid-Atlantic map, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, 18 th c. Figure 3: Map of Connecticut, Pachgatgoch highlighted, 18 th c. 17 Figure 4: Map of Pennsylvania, Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney, Nazareth, and Bethlehem highlighted, 18 th c. 18 Chapter 1 The World of John Lewis Huebner, 1739-1799 To my very great delight, Brother Post and Ludwig Hübener came from Bethlehem, bringing me peace and the spirit of my beloved brothers. My heart was pleased beyond words that my dear brothers fondly remembered me and all the brothers and sisters in Pachgatgoch and sent Brother Ludwig Hübener to us. He will stay with me. 4 --Abraham Beninger, missionary to the Indians at Pachgatgoch, 1754 In 1739 John Lewis Huebner, an unmarried twenty-two year old German pietist, made the perilous transatlantic voyage from his home in Rommelshusen, Bavaria to the Port of Philadelphia in America. 5 Four years later, in 1743, the 4 “Abraham Beninger’s Diary and Christian Heinrich’s from Pachgatgock,” Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary July 25-December 31, 1754; Box 115, folder 2 (Original by Buninger); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 5 There is a discrepancy in the records regarding John Lewis’ arrival to America and depending on the correct account, there are very different implications. A reliable, but single source in the Moravian archives has him arriving in 1739. See, Register- Marriages, Oct. 4, 1757, Bethlehem Digital History Project http://bdhp.moravian.edu/community_records. All other sources date his arrival as 1743. I am leaning toward the year 1739 because of his rapid rise to leadership in the Church during the 1740s, which would have required prior church membership and service in the congregation at Bethlehem. Pietistism was a seventeenth century reform movement among predominantly German Protestants. The movement advocated for a shift of religious focus from church government and ritual to one that centered on personal piety. For a detailed treatment on pietism among German immigrants to America see, Jan Silverman, “A Plain, Rejected Little Flock”: The Politics of Martyrological Self-Fashioning Among Pennsylvania’s German Peace Churches, 1739-65” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 19 Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania received him into their congregation. In 1796, fifty-seven years after he landed in America, he died and was buried in “God’s acre”—the Moravian burial ground in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was seventy-nine years of age. Between his induction into the Moravian community headquartered in North America in Bethlehem and his death and burial, John Lewis Huebner walked thousands of miles throughout the mid-Atlantic colonies and New England to a large number of Indian towns. He also traveled as an assistant missionary to distant places such as St. Thomas Island in the Bahamas, Barbados Island, and Berbice and Surinam on the northeast coast of South America. The Moravian Church commissioned John Lewis as an itinerant preacher and as a missionary to the Indians and the church sent him to these places to spread the gospel of Christ to the “heathen” in the world. John Lewis Huebner walked and worked with the most eminent Moravian missionaries during the 1740s and 1750s—Frederick Christian Post, David Zeisberger, and Nathaniel Seidel. He learned Indian languages and served as a schoolmaster in the various mission towns in which he lived, teaching the Indian children in their native languages. Late in life he served as the chief instructor in the making of pottery at the school at Bethlehem. His long life carried him through lXVI, no. 2 (April 2009): 287-324. For specific treatment on Moravian pietism see Craig D. Atwood, Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), ch 1, esp. pgs. 27-35. For a brief, but useful treatment on the piety groups in British North America, see Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 125-127. 20 major events in Moravian and American history – the Seven Years’ War, Pontiac’s Rebellion, the American Revolution, and the devastating murder of ninety-six Christian Indians in Gnadenhutten, Ohio in 1782, which resulted in the initial ending of the Moravians’ missionary efforts. John Lewis died just four years before his son, Ludwig Huebner, participated in the reinvigoration of the Moravian church’s evangelical mission to Indians at the site of the Ohio massacre. Ludwig followed his father’s spiritual vocation and served as the first pastor of the new Gnadenhutten in 1800. This chapter traces the movements of John Lewis Huebner throughout the eighteenth-century Moravian world in North America, beginning with his arrival to Bethlehem in 1743 to his death in 1796. His life was intertwined with the lives of Native Americans in ways that differed from most of his European neighbors. Moravian sensibilities prompted John Lewis and the missionaries he worked with to work and live among Indian peoples in egalitarian ways that, in the eyes of his native brethren, distinguished them from the other whites they encountered. The world of John Lewis Huebner reveals a history of Indian-Euramerican intersection and community that existed in the midst of Indian-white conflict. John Lewis’ story also inaugurated the saga of one family’s Euro-American-Indian history. The cross-cultural communities John Lewis visited and worked in existed in a milieu where Native and European peoples lived together in a complex pattern of 21 tension and cooperation, accommodation and resistance. 6 Native and European brethren in the mid-Atlantic and Pennsylvania regions endured constant threats from and attacks from both Indian and Euro-American detractors who surrounded them as individuals and communities. In order to maintain their spiritual authenticity, the church and its Indian mission communities creatively responded to the growing hegemony of Anglo-American ways over their lives, their society, and the surrounding landscape. John Lewis Huebner’s experience was a microcosm of the larger forces shaping eastern North America in the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Moravians, like other missionaries, hoped to perfect the world by bringing Native Americans into Christendom. As their missionaries discovered, that task was often far more difficult than anyone imagined. Community, Mission, and Martyrdom John Lewis Huebner and other Moravians understood themselves through community, mission, and martyrdom. These concepts reflected the core ethos of the Moravian church during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The church’s identity, reflected in its name—the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren—was evident in its core principles, communal arrangements, and in the relationships they formed with Indian peoples. Fellowship in Christ, according to Moravian doctrine, 6 Rachel Wheeler has published an informative work on the complex world of Indians and Christian missionaries in the Northeast British colonies during the period John Lewis worked and lived among the Indians at Pachgatgoch. See Rachel Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 22 transcended racial, gender, and cultural differences. Mission to the unsaved, Moravians believed, was their calling from God, and they fervently carried out this assignment across the globe. Their specific understanding of the notions of persecution and Christian martyrdom can be traced to their fifteenth-century roots as a religious community. 7 The origins of the Moravian Church can be traced to the Hussite reformation in fifteenth-century Bohemia and Moravia, in the present day Czech Republic. As a radical, reformist pietist sect, and one that presaged Luther’s reformation by nearly one hundred years, the church faced severe persecution throughout its early history. From its beginning the church has closely identified with martyrdom. Catholic 7 For colonial era history of the Moravian mission to the Indians in British North America I relied on Rachel Wheeler’s informative and insightful recent study, To Live Upon Hope. See also Aaron Fogelman, Jesus is Female: Moravians and the Challenge of Radical Religion in Early America (2007). For a specific study on the community at Bethlehem, see Craig D. Atwood’s detailed work, The Community of the Cross. Histories by Moravian missionaries and church leaders George Henry Loskiel (1787) and John Heckewelder (1820) have been particularly useful, although challenging as well. I employ these Moravian historians’ treatises carefully, mindful of the problems associated with white male authorship speaking to the Native American experience. Nonetheless, these men lived through the eras examined here, and the historical detail they provide is extraordinary. See George Henry Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America (London: 1794) Part II; and John Heckewelder, A Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians, from Its Commencement, in the Year 1740, to the Close of the Year 1808 (Philadelphia: M’Carty & Davis, 1820). For a thorough analysis on Moravian theology regarding martyrdom see, Atwood, The Community of the Cross: 100-102; and Silverman, “A Plain, Rejected Little Flock:” pg#. For the historical identification of the martyred Moravian Christian Indians in 1782 with fifteenth century Bohemian martyred forebear Jon Hus, see C.F. Battershell, “The Czech Connection with the Hussite Martyrs of Gnadenhutten,” 1959 article, source unknown: 4, GA; and “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly, 23(135), (January 1869): 95-115. 23 persecutors killed the United Brethren’s spiritual leader, John Hus, burning him at the stake for heresy in 1415. Many of the early faithful shared his fate. The counter- reformation and Catholic persecution during the Thirty Years’ War forced the United Brethren underground. The severe oppression motivated many of the brethren to emigrate from Moravia to Western Europe and England. In the early eighteenth century, the United Brethren found a wealthy patron in German nobleman Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. He allowed the congregation to establish a colony, Herrnhutt, on his vast estate in Saxony. By the 1720s, the stabilization of the Moravian fellowship at Herrnhutt inspired church leaders, led by Zinzendorf, to seek out their mission, or identity, as a church. 8 The United Brethren believed God called the congregation to be messengers of the gospel of Christ to heathen peoples throughout the world. They formed the official Society of the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen, through which they operated their missionary work. Their mission field was extensive. Missionaries traveled and preached to native Greenlanders, the slave populations in the West Indies, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Thomas Island, and Antigua, and the indigenous populations of Surinam, South America, South Africa, and Ceylon. Their 8 Atwood, Community on the Cross, 21-25, 35-36; Amy Schutt, ”What Will Become of our Young People?” Goals for Indian Children in Moravian Missions,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3 (Autumn, 1998): 69-270. Standard English language texts on the European origins of the Moravian Church include, J. Taylor Hamilton and Kenneth G. Hamilton, History of the Moravian Church: The Renewed Unitas Fratrum, 1722-1957 (Bethlehem, PA: Interprovincial Board of Christian Education of the Moravian Church in America, 1967); Rudolf Rican, The History of the Unity of Brethren: A Protestant Hussite Church in Bohemia and Moravia, trans. C Daniel Crews (Bethlehem, PA: Moravian Church in America, 1992); and J.E. Hutton, A History of the Moravian Church (BiblioBazaar, 2006). 24 most intensive evangelism was among the Native populations in British North America. 9 The first Moravian missionaries arrived in North America in 1735, setting up a congregation among the Creeks and Cherokees in Georgia, but this mission failed because of imperial conflicts between the Spanish and English in the region and Native resistance to the missionaries’ presence and message. Forced to seek other mission fields, the missionaries migrated north to Pennsylvania, a colony known for its religious tolerance ever since William Penn established it in 1681. Reverend George Whitefield, a non-Moravian Protestant who was sympathetic to the United Brethren’s mission to the Indians, offered them land (near the first Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney River—see fig. 4) to reestablish their mission base in North America. The land belonged to the Delaware, who did not accept having the Brethren settle there, so they looked elsewhere. In 1739, the Moravians chose a site to the south and founded the village of Bethlehem, which became the North American headquarters for their mission. In the early years of the mission project, the congregation at Bethlehem provided support for the missionaries and their work among the Indians. Bethlehem also served as a launching point for evangelizing Indians and a place for missionaries returning from the mission field to rest and recuperate. 10 Immigrants from the Moravian church in Herrnhutt in Germany and other Unitas Fratrum communities in Europe came to America in the late 1730s and early 9 Atwood, Community, 4. 10 Heckewelder, Narrative, 19. 25 1740s primarily for evangelical reasons. Typically, they did not come to America to seek a better life or to escape persecution. The Moravian efforts to convert the Indians were not sponsored by a colonial government or an imperial power. Nor were these missionaries interested in accumulating Indian lands. Independent of government sanction, the Moravians hoped to convert the Indians to Christianity. John Heckewelder, one of the most successful missionaries to the Indians during the Revolutionary War era, wrote in his history of the Moravian missionaries, They did not go among those people, for the sake of earthly gain; neither to serve a party; their sole object was, that of bringing them the good tidings, that Christ had come into this world—suffered and died on the cross, for the sins of mankind—and to teach them the way to salvation. 11 John Lewis Huebner arrived at Bethlehem within this cultural-spiritual context. He became a member of this community as well as one of the early groups of missionaries based in the village. Other than the date and place of his birth, there is no extant information on his background in Europe. It is possible he came to America as an indentured servant, which was not uncommon among the Moravians during this period. 12 This would explain the long delay between his arrival in 1739 and his partaking of communion for the first time in 1744. 11 Heckewelder, Narrative, v. 12 For a general history on indentured servitude in early America see Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction, (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 60-64; and Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), pg. #. 26 The Bethlehem diaries from 1742 report on one such indentured man brought before the congregation: A single man Samuel Mau, a former servant [redemptioner] in Oley, has reported to us that his master, to whom he still owes f6-10, had given him a few days off to find another master of his own choice. Otherwise, he would be inclined to sell him to another owner. He indicates a desire to be with the congregation and seems to be drawn to the Saviour (sic). The matter was considered, and it was decided that Bro. Andreas Eschenbach, to whom he is known as well as to several other brethren, was to arrange the matter and advance the f6- 10 to him to enable him to satisfy his master. He is, however, to remain, not as a servant among us but in the capacity and at the wages of a regular hired hand until such time as he shall have earned the equivalent of this money and it can further be seen how things may go, not to lift his standard of living, not to possess land, and not to escape persecution. 13 John Lewis’ arrival date in 1739, however, also coincided with an evangelical enterprise, the “Sea Congregation” implemented by Zinzendorf and the United Brethren Elders in Europe in the late 1730s. This first “Sea Congregation” was a transatlantic migration of mostly young, single men, together with a few married congregants, sent by the church at Hernhutt in Germany to America to be missionaries among the heathen. Missionaries from Georgia and the “First Sea Congregation” moved into Bethlehem in 1741-42 for this purpose. 14 The missionary Nathaniel Seidel’s pilgrimage with the “Second Sea Congregation,” which landed in 13 Bethlehem Diary, August 7, 1742, Volume I. MA. These and subsequent Moravian church diary excerpts, ranging from 1742 through 1745, can be found on the Bethlehem Digital History Project website: <http://bdhp.moravian.edu/community_records/register/marriages/marriages1 757.html>. (Hereafter, BDHP). 14 Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope, 86. 27 Philadelphia in 1742, was likely organized and executed in a manner similar to the earlier migration. At that time, the new enterprise which the Brethren were inaugurating in Pennsylvania attracted general attention in their European colonies, and Seidel secretly longed to go to the New World and take part in the work of its evangelism. His satisfaction was therefore great, when Count Zinzendorf, prior to his own departure for America, sent him and other young men at Herrnhaag an invitation to emigrate to Pennsylvania. 15 Seidel and fifty-five other emigrants left Europe for America on March 19, 1742. “There they were organized into a so-called “Sea-Congregation,” and set sail in a vessel, which he had chartered, and which bore the name of Catharine.” The vessel landed on June 7 in Philadelphia and Ludwig Zinzendorf personally received the missionaries. 16 This trans-Atlantic crossing included the second group of young single men sent by the United Brethren in Europe. If John Lewis arrived in 1739, he may have come over on the first “Sea Congregation.” The long delay between John Lewis’s arrival to America in 1739 and his induction into the church in 1743 can also be understood within the strict edicts Zinzendorf placed on the congregation. Again, this can be understood through the writings of the diarist for 1742: Indeed Bro. Ludwig gave the warning that Bethlehem must not be thwarted in its [striving for] purity. He stated that he was not satisfied with the congregation in that the individual brethren recently arrived 15 “Bishop Nathaniel Seidel obituary;” Edmond de Schweinitz Scrapbook A (11)- Sermons, obituaries 1878-1885; MA. 16 “Bishop Nathaniel Seidel obituary;” Edmond de Schweinitz Scrapbook A (11)- Sermons, obituaries 1878-1885; MA. 28 from Europe had not been examined more carefully, prior to their having been admitted to the congregation. Brethren who arrive from a distance, even those who have been considered outstanding brethren and confessors in the congregations from which they respectively come, must be tested, grilled, and dealt with in an impartial manner; all must depend upon humility and discernment. In this way a congregation could maintain its purity. All denominations and sects strive to grow larger and stronger; but our rule must remain that of keeping the door open for everyone to leave us, yet of being more cautious in admitting them. 17 Most of the missionaries who immigrated with the “Sea Congregation” were skilled craftsmen such as blacksmiths, shoemakers, bakers, coopers, weavers, and potters. John Lewis was a master potter. These skilled men and women filled critical functions in the developing infrastructure of the fledgling Moravian communities, both Indian and European. 18 When the United Brethren first arrived and settled at Bethlehem in 1739-40, the mid-Atlantic region saw significant missionary activity among the Indian populations of the Six Nations throughout New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The historian Jane Merritt has written that Indians and Europeans “negotiated a common space” where lives and culture intersected. 19 Indeed, the 17 Bethlehem Diary November 11, 1742, Volume I. MA, BDHP 18 For information on the “Sea Congregation,” see Atwood, Community of the Cross, ch 4, esp. pg. 117; and Joseph Mortimer Levering, A History of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with Some Accounts of its Founders and the Early Activity in America (Bethlehem, PA: Times Publishing Co., 1903), 199-126; Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope, 90. The information on John Lewis is from the Bethlehem Register of Marriages, 1757, MA, BDHP. 19 Jane Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 3. On pre- Revolutionary era Indian/Euro relations Merritt writes, “Modern Scholarship has 29 Indian villages the Moravians first visited—Shekomeko, located in the colony of New York nestled between the borders Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and Pachgatgoch and Wechquatnoch both located in the colony of Connecticut—were all situated among European settlers (long before the Moravians arrived), making the area a “middle ground” of sorts. 20 Ludwig Zinzendorf visited America in early 1740 to organize and oversee the mission project in the northern colonies. He instructed the missionaries to work alongside the Indians in their fields, chopping wood, planting crops, to accompany them on the hunt, and share in their domestic labors first and to preach to them second. Zinzendorf mandated that they “avoid all religious disputes” and labor with the Indians to support themselves, closely following the apostle Paul’s admonition to the early church to “work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” 21 Zinzendorf and the church elders at Bethlehem sent the first missionaries to New York and Connecticut in 1740. By the end of 1742, they had baptized thirty-one Shekomeko residents either in their village or in Bethlehem, explored new and complex relationships within native cultures and between Indians and whites during the first two centuries of contact.” 20 Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope, 32. This “middle ground,” however, was unlike the region Richard White calls the pays d’en haut located in the Great Lakes region. The Moravian/Indian mission towns were not “joint Indian-white creations” that White describes, and the balance of power between the Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch villagers and their colonial neighbors leaned toward the Euro-Americans. See White, Middle Ground, xiv. 21 Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope, 86-88. See also I Thessalonians 4:11. 30 which the Indians frequently visited. Most of the converts at Shekomeko were Mahican, but visiting Wampanoag Indians from the nearby village of Pachgatgoch were also intrigued by the gospel message and converted. According to contemporary Moravian writers, the Indians immediately took note of the missionaries’ work ethic. The Moravian missionaries, in contrast to other white preachers who visited them, worked alongside the Natives. The missionaries earned their own means of sustenance and even dressed like the Indians, “so that,” as the eighteenth-century Moravian historian George Henry Loskiel later put it, “in travelling (sic) to and fro they were taken for Indians.” 22 The Pachgatgoch and Potatik Indians were amazed that the (missionaries) lived, ate, and slept with them. Loskiel emphasized that the Indians recognized the differences between the Moravian missionaries and other Europeans they encountered. Accounts from the Moravian brethren in the mission field said that the Indians in general were well inclined towards the Brethren, and knew very well how to distinguish between them and other white people, who came either merely in pursuit of gain, or led a dissolute life. 23 And their English counterparts also noticed the difference. David McClure, a Presbyterian minister, observed one of the Moravian Indian towns and suggested that their success at conversion rested in their approach: The Moravians appear to have adopted the best mode of Christianizing the Indians. They go among them without noise or parade, and by their friendly behaviour (sic) conciliate their good will. 22 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 37, Part II. 23 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 4 and 41, Part II. 31 They join them in the chace, and freely distribute to the helpless and gradually instill (sic) into the minds of individuals, the principles of religions. 24 Missionary wives also labored, in their case alongside the Indian women. When Martin and Anna Mack, a husband and wife missionary team, arrived at Shekomeko (see fig. 3) at the end of 1742, Sister Anna Mack labored alongside the Indian women, sharing their work and helping to tend the children. Anna’s situation, however, may have been an exceptional case. She was brought up within a Mahican community and spoke fluent Mahican and Wampanoag, the language of the Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch peoples respectively. She served as an interpreter for her missionary husband and filled an important role as a cultural broker between the Indian communities and the European Moravians. In early 1743, missionaries Christian Rauch and Martin and Anna Mack served together at Shekomeko, while Frederick Christian Post, joined by two married couples, went to nearby Pachgatgoch. These men and women were itinerant preachers, and they moved from village to village throughout Connecticut, New York, and eastern Pennsylvania. By February, Martin and Anna Mack moved to Pachgatgoch and established a home there, becoming the Wampanoag village’s first resident ministers. These Moravians preached a Christian message that was more palatable to the Wampanoag people at Pachgatgoch than the ones they had heard from non-Moravian 24 David McClure, quoted in Earl P. Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1991), 36. 32 preachers who had visited them earlier. Moravian Christianity reflected Indian spirituality in ways that the other Protestant religions did not. The hell-focused doctrine of most of those religions did not resonate with the Wampanoag. But the Moravian doctrines did, which emphasized salvation, images of the “lamb of God,” and the wounds and suffering of Jesus. Many of the Pachgatgoch Indians accepted Christ. Tschoop, a Shekomeko Christian, explained why he listened to Brother Rauch’s message: “I found this to be something different from what I had ever heard, and I interpreted Christian Henry’s words to the other Indians.” 25 Moravian missionaries also did not hold back expressing love for their native brethren. The Indians took this to heart. The Indians at Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch “believed the Moravians recognized their humanity, in contrast to their other European missionary counterparts.” 26 “They (the Pachgatgoch and Potatik Indians) were greatly surprised, and told the rest (of their people) how much more the missionary loved them, than any one had done before.” 27 Forming communities that included Native American groups and Moravians was a relatively compatible endeavor for both. Moravian cultural practices 25 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 11-15, Part II. Even if Tschoop did not actually say these words, the Moravians recorded it and repeated the sentiment in the diaries and histories repeatedly that their relationship with Indians was distinguishable from other Euro-Americans. This was part of their identity as a church, that they treated and viewed Indians differently than other evangelists and, especially, European settlers. 26 Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope, 90-91. 27 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 41, Part II. 33 regarding family networks, naming ceremonies, and spiritual conversion were akin to traditional Native ideals and practices. 28 Besides the spiritual, personal, and cultural connections, the Indians identified with the missionaries on practical levels. Moravians critiqued white society as much as the Indians did. The diarist at the Pachgatgoch mission wrote that some “wicked” young men from a nearby white settlement were causing “mischief, intended for our brothers there… in order to frighten people.” 29 The Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch villagers also witnessed persecutions the missionaries suffered under British authorities and from local Europeans. The surrounding Euro-American populations were unsympathetic and hostile to the Moravian missionaries and their work among the Indians. During this early mission period in the 1740s, John Lewis Huebner lived in Bethlehem and served as a worker and an assistant in the church there. The church elders at Bethlehem received John Lewis into their congregation in late 1743. In early 1744, the church diaries recorded that “Br. Ludw Hubner (sic) partook of 28 Amy C. Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?:” Goals for Indian Children in Moravian Missions.” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3 (Autumn, 1998), 280. Merritt suggests the same regarding mutual compatibility between Indian cultural practices and needs and Moravian practices. See Jane Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood: Moravians and the Indian Great Awakening in Pennsylvania” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3 rd Ser., vol. 54, no. 4 (October 1997): 746. See also, The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772-1781, Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, eds., translated by Julie Tomberlin Weber (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), Introduction, and pp. 59-71. 29 “Pachgatgoch Diary,” Wednesday, Feb 22, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 34 Communion with the congregation for the first time to the abiding blessing of (his) heart.” He shared his first communion with Indian brethren from Shekomeko; Gideon, Lucas, Josua, Mary, and Thomas. By the early 1750s, John Lewis would live and work among these same Indian brethren, serving at Pachgatgoch as their assistant missionary. 30 Following his first communion, the elders appointed John Lewis to serve as an acolyte, a position in which he served in the daily religious work of the community, including the morning and evening quarter-hour gatherings, the education of the youth, the “lovefeasts,” and other exercises practiced by the congregation. 31 Church minutes for July 1, 1742 record assignments given to contemporaries of John Lewis who worked as acolytes: Certain brethren are to look after the non-Moravians who visit us, spend time with them, and converse with them. For this week these will be: of the brethren, Andr. Eschenbach and Bischof, of the sisters, Rosina Nitscbmann, [Sr.] Bischof and [Sr.] Sensemann. Brandmiller, Bishof, and Walmert are to serve as sacristans in the Saal; Hagen must also share in the activity of the sacristans. Brandmiller is in charge during the Communion week; Hagen, during the week of the Bettag; Walmert with Bischof, during the other two weeks. 32 30 Bethlehem Diary, January 19, 1744, Volume II. MA. BDHP. It is unclear whether this was his “first” communion, or the first time he took it with the Church at Bethlehem. For the rituals of inclusion and communion at Bethlehem during this time see Atwood, Community of the Cross, 158-161 (inclusion) and 164-167 (communion). 31 The lovefeast was a meal shared in common, sometimes by the whole congregation, sometimes among the specific choir groups. It was not equivalent to the Eucharist, but it was always a “liturgical action.” See Atwood, Community of the Cross, 161. 32 Bethlehem Diary, July 1, 1742, Volume I. MA. BDHP 35 Training both female and male assistants in the church served an important purpose in the Moravian communal infrastructure, and it produced future workers for the mission field. “These [workers] may train Bro. Ronner and Meurer from among the brethren. The sisters may take [Sr.] Almers and Margar. Disman as their assistants.” The church at Bethlehem trained John Lewis within this system and eventually recognized his gift in evangelism and in teaching. He then received his “calling” to become a minister to the Indians. John Lewis was also exposed to the communal and egalitarian sensibilities that were fundamental to the church at Bethlehem. The church established policies aimed at ministering to the congregants and outsiders who visited the village. At the congregational council held on September 9, 1742, the idea of a place of lodging for “strangers,”—in other words, non-Moravians—was discussed. It is very necessary for a house to be built to accommodate the non-Moravians [or strangers] who come to us for either quite a short or a longer time. There they can stay under the supervision of a brother or sister as long as they remain here, for the people who come to us are of various kinds, and it is not at all proper after all for everybody to go in and out of our Gernein Haus who is not connected or acquainted with us, nor is a member of the Church. It should have two good-sized rooms; normally one brother and sister should live in it, and one brother be appointed for a week at a time to act as its caretaker and see to the securing of food and other necessities. 33 Besides meeting the physical needs of the visitors to the village, this was also a policy designed to control their behavior. 33 Bethlehem Diary, September 9, 1742, Volume I. MA. BDHP 36 The congregational council issued a decree in April 1745 regarding non- believing Indians who visited Bethlehem: And concerning the Indians who are strangers and pass through here, it was mentioned that they are our brethren and we are in covenant with the Five Nations. If they just are hungry and suffer want we will give them food, not under the condition that they should become Christians, but because they are hungry. If they seek something for their souls we will also care for them. 34 It is probable that the brethren wished to remain on good terms with the Iroquois nation by providing hospitality to the Indians so that they could gain access to the nation to share the gospel. The church had recently sent out envoys—David Zeisberger and Nathaniel Seidel—for this purpose. Moravians organized their society around a segregated system of “choirs,” a set of sub-societies within the larger community. The choir to which one belonged was determined by one’s gender and “station” in life. As an unmarried man, John Lewis would have been placed in the single men’s choir. Moravians practiced this system because they believed individuals were best suited to identify with others who were similar to them. “The Choirs are to have their regular and separate walks,” the 1742 diarist wrote. That of the Single Brethren… is in the direction of Nazareth; that of the Single Sisters is towards the Lehigh. In future the Single Brethren will hold quarter-of-an-hour devotions daily, when all other meetings are over, and proceed therefrom (sic) to their dormitory. 35 34 Bethlehem Diary, April 25, 1745, Volume II. MA. BDHP. 35 Bethlehem Diary, July 1, 1742, Volume I. MA. BDHP. 37 A congregant’s station in life was determined by gender, age, and marital status. Choirs were divided by gender; by age—infants, little boys, little girls, older boys, and older girls; and by marital status—single brothers, single sisters, married women, married men, widows, and widowers. Because resurrection figured prominently in Moravian theology, they believed people would enter into the afterlife with those in their “choir” at the point of mortal death. Thus, Indian, black, and European brethren were buried together in sections of “God’s Acre” in Bethlehem based on the choir to which they belonged, not their race or national origin. Under this social infrastructure, the Moravian Christian society lived, died, and resurrected within the context of community. 36 There was no hierarchy within the institutional structure of choirs and thus it reflected the church’s egalitarian and communal ethos. By the mid-1740s the choir system was in place at Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch. It was later instituted at the Indian mission at Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney in Pennsylvania. 37 An excerpt from the diary from Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney River provides an example of the workings of the system: Afterward the single brothers went to (the) sitting room (and were) introduced (to) Brother Grube and Brother Rösler, as caretakers of the single brothers on the Mahoning and Brother 36 For the “choir” system, see The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772-1781, 62; also, Beverly Prior Smaby, The Transformation of Moravian Bethlehem: From Communal Mission to Family Economy. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 10-11. 37 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 98, Part II. 38 Weha as choir diener. He arranged us into two associations, which will occasionally gather twice weekly; granted us the grace to have Communion and a choir quarter hour service during the week. 38 In Pachgatgoch, in 1754 the morning choir meetings had been discontinued, but to the delight of the Wampanoag brethren, the missionaries restored them. “[The Indian brethren] were all were very sorry this had happened. Brother Martin told them of the congregation’s opinion and promised that the morning quarter hour services would resume. This was received with joy by all brothers and sisters.” 39 In December 1754, John Lewis and Frederick Christian Post arrived at Pachgatgoch to assist the resident missionary, Abraham Beninger. On the day of their arrival, Beninger wrote in his diary that he was relieved that the Church at Bethlehem had sent Br. Huebner to assist him: Saturday the 14 th To my very great delight, Brother Post and Ludwig Hübener (sic) came from Bethlehem, bringing me peace and the spirit of my beloved brothers. My heart was pleased beyond words that my dear brothers fondly remembered me and all the brothers and sisters in Pachgatgoch and sent Brother Ludwig Hübener to us. He will stay with me. Our Indian brothers and sisters were truly and sincerely pleased to see their old Achamanant. 40 38 Diary of the Family of God on the Mahoning from December 22, 1754 through March 1, 1755,” Sunday December 22, 1754. Archived as: Gnadenhutten, Mahoni Diary, December 22, 1754-October 31, 1755. Box 118, folder 3. MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 39 “Abraham Beninger’s Diary and Christian Heinrich’s from Pachgatgock,” January 1, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary July 25-December 31, 1754; Box 115, folder 2 (Original by Buninger); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 40 “Abraham Beninger’s Diary and Christian Heinrich’s from Pachgatgock,” Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary July 25-December 31, 1754; Box 115, folder 2 (Original by Buninger); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 39 The Church at Bethlehem sent Huebner, an itinerant preacher and assistant missionary, to the Pachgatgoch mission to provide temporary relief and support to the resident missionary, Abraham Beninger. “Pachgatgoch being near two hundred miles from Bethlehem, the missionaries, to whom that post and Potatik were committed, stood in need of some occasional relaxation.” 41 The church’s missionary system included a rotation of missionaries. Huebner and Post were slated to replace other assistant missionaries who were working at Indian towns and to substitute for a resident missionary who needed to return to Bethlehem for rest or to attend church synod meetings. 42 The elders also hoped that the arrival of itinerant missionaries would revive the religious mission life in the Indian community. “The Brethren of Bethlehem and Gnadenhutten went also frequently to Pachgatgoch and Wechquatnach, wishing to prevent the spark of truth, yet glimmering in those places, from being entirely extinguished.” 43 A second reason that church leaders rotated missionaries in the various mission towns was to prevent the Indians there from forming too strong an attachment with individual missionaries and to encourage them to place their hope in God alone. As an itinerant preacher, John Lewis, like his counterpart Fredrick Post, operated within these evangelical strategies. 41 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 129, Part II. 42 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 45, Part II. 43 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 88, Part II. 40 At Pachgatgoch, Huebner served as schoolmaster for the Indian children. “Brother Ludwig held school with the children. The quarter hour service tonight was the first one he conducted in the English language.” 44 As a school-teacher he occupied a critical position in the well-developed Moravian education system, which they considered central to the mission. 45 John Lewis also knew indigenous languages. To effectively share the gospel with the many Indian populations in North America, from the early years of the mission program Zinzendorf and the church leaders at Bethlehem strongly encouraged their missionaries to acquire a working knowledge of the local Indian languages. As missionaries worked with Indian populations they translated schoolbooks, hymnals, and parts of the Bible into indigenous languages to better share the gospel. Sharing a language deepened personal relationships between the missionaries and the Indians. At the Indian mission village at Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney, text readings at Sunday services “were customarily read in the Native congregants’ language—Mahican and Delaware.” 46 44 “Abraham Beninger’s Diary and Christian Heinrich’s from Pachgatgock,” January 17, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary July 25-December 31, 1754; Box 115, folder 2 (Original by Buninger); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 45 For Moravian pedagogic practices and the central place education had in the religious society, see Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?”, 268-286. 46 Diary of the Family of God on the Mahoning from December 22, 1754 through March 1, 1755,” Saturday March 1, 1755. Archived as: “Gnadenhutten, Mahoni Diary, December 22, 1754-October 31, 1755.” Box 118, folder 3. MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 41 The acquisition of languages also enabled the church to expand the missionary project to the non-Christians in the Iroquois and Delaware nations who lived in the northern colonies of Pennsylvania and New York. Missionaries Frederick Post and David Zeisberger were fluent in Mahican, Delaware, Mohawk, and additional dialects and languages of the Five Nations. 47 It seems probable that Huebner occupied the vital post of schoolmaster because he had a working knowledge of the local language. Records indicate that he was proficient in Wampanoag, but as an itinerant preacher it is likely he had knowledge of other native languages as well. At Pachgatgoch, the Wampanoag brethren who served as translators sought out help in translating some English words into their language. Brothers Johna and Martin visited us. The dear brothers are self- conscious about using appropriate words in their language when translating. For example, they have no words for grace, blessing, and redemption. We advised them to introduce these words into their language since one language often borrows a word from another. 48 Many religious terms could not be translated into the Indian languages, so the missionaries taught the Indians German or English to help them conceptualize the terms. Sometimes whole new words were constructed – amalgamating Indian and 47 For Moravian dedication to learning Native languages, see Loskiel, History of the Mission, 71, 103, Part II; Wheeler, 88-89; White, The Middle Ground, 250; and Merritt, At the Crossroads, 74-75. For Moravians serving as interpreters between colonial and Native American powers, see Merritt, At the Crossroads, 202-203; and ibid, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 736. 48 “Abraham Beninger’s Diary and Christian Heinrich’s from Pachgatgock,” January 16, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary July 25-December 31, 1754; Box 115, folder 2 (Original by Buninger); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 42 European meanings -- to make the concepts intelligible to the Indians. Brother John, a Mahican assistant from Shekomeko, employed pictography to explain Christian theology to his native brethren. Sometimes (John) made use of figures, after the Indian manner. For instance, in describing the wickedness of man’s heart, he took a piece of board, and with charcoal drew the figure of a heart upon it, with stings and points proceeding in all directions; “This,” said he, “is the state of a man’s heart; while Satan dwells in it, every evil thing proceeds from it. 49 By the early 1750s the European brethren felt that the mission at Pachgatgoch was doing well. “By degrees, the number of constant hearers increased so much, that a resolution was taken to erect a large chapel and school-house.” 50 Tensions however, had existed between the Indians and missionaries at Pachgatgoch and the white communities that surrounded them for nearly a decade. Since the inauguration of the mission project at Shekomeko and Patchgatgoch in the early 1740s, English and Scots-Irish settlers in the area had distrusted the missionaries. A religious awakening that occurred among the Indian populations in Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch in 1742 displeased their British neighbors. From the beginning of their mission work in New York and in Connecticut, the Moravians’ greatest enemies in the region were Europeans who did not want their neighboring Indians to become Christians. “Some white people, conceiving their interests would be injured, if the Indians were converted to Christianity, began to stir up the heathen against (the 49 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 44 and 103, Part II. 50 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 142-143, Part II. 43 missionaries).” 51 The British settlers had exercised a degree of control over the Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch Indians through trading with them and plying them with alcohol. The arrival of the missionaries altered the power the British held over their Indian neighbors in several important ways. In the first place, Moravian tenets prohibited the Native congregants from drinking alcohol. The congregants from Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch enthusiastically embraced prohibition. 52 This removed the English use of liquor as a tool to manipulate Indian populations. A second change involved the Moravian communal system, which created a network between the Indian mission towns and the Moravian center at Bethlehem where if one community was in need of assistance the church would provide whatever was needed. When John Lewis Huebner arrived at Pachgatgoch at the end of 1754, the community began to show acute signs of tensions. Just prior to his arrival, four white people at Stockbridge, a town located near Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch were 51 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 11, Part II. 52 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 43-47, Part II. Indian temperance did not originate with the Moravians. The idea had circulated among Indian communities beyond the influence of the church and mission system. Gregory Evans Dowd discusses what he calls the “Indian Great Awakening,” an indigenous movement that emerged in the 1740s and 1750s that awakened Native peoples to the idea of a pan- Indian shared past and present. One of the early revivalist “seers” and reformers, an unnamed woman, promoted the idea of a separate creation theory for whites, blacks, and Indians, and strongly denounced the Indian use of alcohol, which she identified as a reason for the degeneracy and corruption of Indians. See Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1995), Chapter 5; and Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 29-30. 44 murdered. British authorities suspected that non-Moravian Indians were responsible. News of an impending war between Britain and France intensified fears in the mid-Atlantic colonies. Alliances between the Indians and the French gravely concerned the local white communities aligned with Great Britain, and the murder at Stockbridge heightened tensions that already existed between the Moravian Indian mission communities and their non-Moravian neighbors. In December 1754, as a result of the murders at Stockbridge, British authorities issued a proclamation setting limits as to where Indians could travel. On the 5 th of December the Pachgatgoch diarist wrote: “Samuel, Philppus, Makwa, Simon’s sons, and an unknown Indian went hunting twenty miles from here. The General Assembly has drawn boundaries as to where the Indians may now hunt.” 53 By early 1755, the Pachgatgoch community was in serious trouble. The restrictions on the Indians’ hunting grounds reduced the winter meat supply the Pachgatgoch Indians gained by the hunt, which seriously threatened their food supply. The diarist wrote throughout the month of February that the Native congregants were suffering from extreme poverty and hunger and that their grain supply was running out. Wednesday the 5 th Gottlieb’s family went to work in the undergrowth because they have nothing more at all to eat. Monday the 24 th We visited the brothers and sisters in their cabins. Most lamented their poverty. Gottlieb’s wife cooked her last grain. Johna said he had no more packets (?). Petrus, Martin, Jerimias (sic), and Samuel have had to buy for a long time. Wednesday the 26 th We had the morning blessing early. Then several brothers and sisters went out to see 53 “Abraham Beninger’s Diary and Christian Heinrich’s from Pachgatgock,” December 5, 1754; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary July 25-December 31, 1754; Box 115, folder 2 (Original by Buninger); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 45 where they could get provisions. Their poverty is strongly gaining ground. 54 In March 1755, tensions still remained high over the Stockbridge murders and restrictions on the movement of Indians remained in place: In the morning one of our neighbors arrived and spent a while with us. Among other matters he discussed, he gave us to understand that we should remind our local Indians that the government did not want any one of them to go to Stokbridge (sic). Now people heard that an Indian from Pachgatgoch did go there. (That was Lucas, who went there contrary to Brother Gideon’s reminder before we arrived here.) We were concerned that a complaint about this would be made to the government. Afterwards we spoke with our Indian brothers about this point. 55 A month earlier, in February, magistrates from the nearby town of Shearon sent a peremptory order to Pachgatgoch “that no Indian should set foot upon their land, under pain of death.” 56 These orders effectively cordoned off a significant amount of the hunting territory of the Indians and seriously restricted the ability of the Pachgatgoch community to maintain their food supply. Nonetheless, despite these restrictions, the Pachgatgoch Indians still traveled to towns and into the “bush” to negotiate land deals; sell wooden brooms, baskets, and tableware; purchase goods; 54 “Pachgatgoch Diary,” Wednesday, Feb 3, 24, 26, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 55 “Pachgatgoch Diary,” March 3, 27, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 56 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 155, Part II. 46 engage in work; and collect wood. 57 The threat of starvation probably trumped any fear the native brethren felt over the threats directed against them and the restrictions imposed on them. The Moravians’ communal agricultural system extended throughout the Moravian world. If one village suffered from a poor harvest or other catastrophes, other Moravian communities that had a surplus of food and supplies came to their aid and helped abate two of the most serious problems for Indians—famine and disease. 58 The Wampanoag faced famine during John Lewis’s tenure at Pachgatgoch. A New York Indian congregation apparently had a surplus of food and provided provisions to the Pachgatgoch villagers. “Brother Ludwig (John Lewis) went to Nickau to pick up some things (food and supplies) that the brethren in New York sent them.” 59 The involvement of Moravian missionaries in the local trade network was a third issue that loosened control the British settlers had over their Indian neighbors. Missionaries at Pachgatgoch regularly engaged in those networks. In early January 1755, Abraham Beninger, the resident missionary, “went to our neighbor Mils, [and] bought some Welsh grain.” He then traveled to Kent, Connecticut, to grind Indian 57 See “Pachgatgoch Diary,” March 21, 24, 27, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 58 See Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?,” 273-274. 59 “Pachgatgoch Diary” Monday March 3, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 47 corn at the mill there, and was joined by other missionaries. “Brother Jungmann went to the Kent mill, and Brother Rundt met him with a horse this afternoon to bring the flour home.” 60 The mission congregants held to the Moravian tenets of pacifism and of the forbidding of taking oaths. These positions irritated the British colonists in the region. 61 The New York Provincial Assembly passed an act that banished any person from New York and Connecticut who refused to take an oath of allegiance to King George and an oath rejecting the worship of the Virgin Mary and the belief in purgatory. On pain of imprisonment, Moravians refused to swear to either oath, insisting that their “yes” and “no” were sufficient. This intransigence prompted British settlers and authorities to accuse Moravian missionaries of being French- sympathizing papists and traitors. Several missionaries from the region were imprisoned for lengthy terms because they refused to take oaths. 62 Angering British colonists and authorities even more was the close association between the missionaries and the Indians at Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch. This association made them suspects that the Brethren were in league with French-allied Indians who recently had caused trouble among the English settlers. 60 “Pachgatgoch Diary” Friday Jan 3 and Feb 3, March 18, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 61 “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly vol. 23, No. 135 (January 1869), 97; and Loskiel, History of the Mission, 58-64, Part II. 62 Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly vol. 23, No. 135 (January 1869), 97; Loskiel, History of the Mission, chapter 4, Part II. 48 Throughout the 1740s, tensions existed between the British settler communities and in the nearby Pachgatgoch and Shekomeko communities. By the mid-1750s, hostilities between French-allied Indians and British settlers in the region had also heightened significantly. The Pachgatgoch diary entry for March 2, 1755 suggested that the war had reached the community. In the evening Brother Samuel visited us. He told us about all sorts of serious situations. We see that the evil foe is very busy disturbing the brothers and sisters and the blessed path they have been following for some time and trying to deprive them of peace. According to Loskiel, the English were attempting to persuade the young men of Pachgatgoch and neighboring Wechquatnach to abandon pacifism and join in the conflict against the French. As to externals, the troubles at Pachgatgoch increased. The neighborhood being in great dread of the French, the young people were called upon to serve against them. Some of the baptized suffered themselves to be persuaded to take the field, and repented, when it was too late. 63 On March 11, 1755, the missionaries informed the congregation at Pachgatgoch that the minister Buninger and his assistant Huebner would return to Bethlehem the next day. “The Indians expressed themselves very sincerely, directly, and emphatically about the present determination and desire of their hearts. After everything we white brothers and sisters had another very blessed Communion.” Despite the communal and egalitarian character of the Moravian mission project in which racial and gender boundaries appeared virtually nonexistent, a degree of racial 63 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 162, Part II. 49 separateness remained in the community at Pachgatgoch—the white brethren shared a second Eucharist without their Indian brethren. The next day John Lewis left Pachgatgoch to join Bishop Nathaniel Seidel in Bethlehem to embark on a mission to Surinam, South America. 64 He would remain on this mission until November 1755. The Seven Years’ War, 1754-1761—A Mission in Crisis In the Pennsylvania backcountry prior to the Seven Years’ War, the Euro- American settlers and displaced Indians had found ways to coexist for their mutual benefit and lived in relative peace with one another. 65 This halcyon period ended abruptly in 1754 with the beginning of hostilities between France and Great Britain. These hostilities “triggered the deterioration of personal relations between Indians and whites.” 66 The colony of Pennsylvania, situated at what the historian Jane Merritt called “the crossroads of international rivalries and inter-Indian political 64 “Pachgatgoch Diary” March 11, 12, 1755; Pachgatgoch, Conn. Diary 1755 Box 115, folder 3 (Original by Buninger and Rundt); MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 65 Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 725. Peter Mancall has written that in the first half of the eighteenth century “Cooperation, not conflict, characterized the relationship between European traders and Indians.” See Peter C. Mancall, Valley of Opportunity: Economic Culture Along the Upper Susquehanna, 1700-1800; (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 48 and 78. For an exhaustive study on the Seven Years’ War, see Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York: Knopf, 2000). For Anderson’s discussion of the peaceful period prior to the Seven Years’ War, see Crucible, 17-21. 66 Merritt, At the Crossroads, 4; see also Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 48, 78. 50 conflicts,” was particularly vulnerable to war. 67 The conflicts brought enormous changes to life and community in the hinterland where many Moravian Indian towns were located. “Though backcountry conflicts had always been divisive, this enormous conflict brought so much violence to so many communities that the level of animosity following the Seven Years’ War made previous grievances pale in comparison.” 68 The dire conditions for Indians in the mid-Atlantic region that existed prior to the war -- displacement, disease, violence, famine, and destructive effects from alcohol--intensified between 1750 and 1780. Many Indians opted to join Moravian settlements to escape the escalating violence and constant displacement that were consequences of war. The March 31, 1755 entry from the diary of the congregation on the Mahoney states that John Lewis and Sammy Hund paid a visit to the native and European brethren (at either Gnadenhutten or Friedenshutten—both were Indian missions near Bethlehem) “before their departure for Barbice and Thomas.” 69 Since its founding in 1746, Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney had served as a place of refuge for Shekomeko’s Mahican congregants fleeing the harassment and hostilities inflicted on them by neighboring British and French-allied Indians in New York and 67 Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 725. 68 Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 99. 69 “Continuation of the Diary on the Mahoni from March and April of 1755” Saturday March 31, 1755. Archived as: “Gnadenhutten, Mahoni Diary, December 22, 1754-October 31, 1755.” Box 118, folder 3. MA. (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 51 Connecticut. As early as 1744, the Mahican congregation at Shekomeko began considering a move to Bethlehem because of these problems. Thus was the Indian congregation situated, when suddenly a most violent persecution arose. Some white people in the neighborhood continued to do everything in their power to seduce the Indians from their connexion (sic) with the Brethren. The unbelieving Indians at Westenhuck made several attempts to draw the Christian Indians in Shekomeko into their party. 70 The English wanted them out of the region as they mistrusted the neutrality of the Moravian Indians. The Christian Indians at Shekomeko became suspicious of their increasingly hostile non-Moravian Indian neighbors, and many from the congregation opted to move closer to Bethlehem to live under the protection of their European brethren. When news of this more permanent and secure settlement reached Pachgatgoch and the Mahicans who had remained in Shekomeko, many residents moved to Gnadenhutten. By the late 1740s, the new settlement had more congregants than the two previous settlements combined. By 1749, five hundred Indians from various tribes—Mahican, Delaware, and Wampanoag—lived together in Gnadenhutten, constituting a polyglot community joined together in their Moravian faith. Ethnic differences were hard to overcome, and historic animosities between the Delaware and Mahicans did cause fractures in the community. 70 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 57, 80-81, Part II. 52 Nonetheless, when John Lewis left for Surinam shortly after his visit, the village of Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney appeared to be thriving. 71 From March through November 1755, John Lewis served as an assistant missionary to Nathaniel Seidel in South America. Their assignment was to investigate the Moravian missions in St. Thomas, Barbados, Berbice, and Surinam. Their ultimate purpose was to reestablish the Moravian mission in Surinam, which had been abandoned in 1745. Seidel was sent to select sites along the Corenty and the Sarameca Rivers. Abraham Boemper and Lewis Huebner accompanied him on this perilous expedition. They sailed from Rhode Island to Barbados, and thence to Surinam, where they found that illustrious apostle of the Arawack Indians, Theophilus Solomon Schuman, waiting in simple faith for the resuscitation of the missionary work, which he had so boldly inaugurated. Amidst frequent perils by land and sea, Seidel accomplished the object of his visit, and returned to Bethlehem on the 19 th of November of the same year. 72 The situation in Pennsylvania changed dramatically during John Lewis’s absence. “All was peace in Gnadenhuetten,” Loskiel wrote, “but suddenly fear, horror, and inexpressible distress filled the whole country.” The Seven Years’ War had fully descended upon the Pennsylvania countryside, and the Moravian settlements were situated in the middle of the crossfire. “A cruel Indian war, occasioned by the contest between the English and French, burst at once into flames, 71 For the ethnic fractures in Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney, Pennsylvania, see Merritt, At the Crossroads, 159-165. 72 Bishop Nathaniel Seidel obituary. Edmond de Schweinitz Scrapbook A (11)- Sermons, obituaries 1878-1885, MA. 53 spreading terror and confusion, especially throughout Pennsylvania.” 73 Within a week after Huebner and Seidel’s return, Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney literally burst into flames. On November 24, 1755, French-allied Delaware descended upon the village, scalped and burned eleven congregants alive in their cabins, and razed the village to the ground. 74 Mahican and Delaware brethren at Gnadenhutten escaped the attack, and only white missionaries and members of their families were killed. The church at Bethlehem recognized God’s providence in the “massacre,” as it served to prove to the British that the Moravians were not allied with the French, which they thought in the long run would save lives among the congregation. 75 A new thinking among the British in the mid-Atlantic now identified all raids by Indians on whites as “massacres.” In this case the Moravians used it to their advantage. 76 But the brethren at Bethlehem were cognizant of the virulent Indian- hatred among their non-Moravian European neighbors. They “advised (their Indian brethren) to keep out of their way; to buy no powder or shot, but to strive to maintain 73 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 164, Part II. 74 For a very detailed account of this “first Gnadenhutten massacre” in Pennsylvania and the dangers other Moravian settlements were exposed to during the Seven Years’ War, see Loskiel, History of the Mission, 164-201, Part II. 75 Loskiel, History of the Mission, 165, Part II. 76 Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, 57. 54 themselves without hunting.” “White people,” wrote Loskiel, “considered every Indian as an enemy.” 77 The pacifist Moravian Indian settlements in the Pennsylvania backcountry were caught in the middle between imperial war zones. Because of the neutral and pacifist stance taken by the Moravians, warring factions on both sides of the conflict—the French, the British, and their Indian allies—were deeply suspicious of the Moravian missionaries and their Indian converts. White and Indian marauders, allied to both the French and the British, harassed and ultimately subjected the Christian settlements to violent attack to such a degree that many Moravian Indians sought refuge in Bethlehem. The Seven Years’ War permanently altered the relations between Indian peoples and Euro-Americans. The Moravian church attempted to shield their communities from the vitriol of both the Anglo and Indian populations who viewed Christians Indians with suspicion. Gnadenhutten’s Indian exiles in 1757 wrote a letter to Governor Denny of Pennsylvania graciously declining his offer of land in Pennsylvania far west of the Moravian center at Bethlehem, away from what had become dangerous areas from them. At this point in time, these Delaware and Mahican Christians felt their survival depended on staying close to their European brethren. 77 Loskiel, History of the Mission: 169, Part II. No such positive spin was issued by the Church from the second massacre of ninety-six Indian brethren at Gnadenhutten, Ohio in 1782. It effectively ended the mission of the church to the Indians until 1800. For more analysis on the 1782 massacre—how the church recovered and remembered the tragedy—see Chapters 2 and 4. 55 Now we have heard that you have thought about us again that you would give us a good piece of land to plant Indian corn, where we, our Women and Children could live safe and quiet. We look upon it as a great favour (sic) of you and are very thankfull (sic) for it. But we hope you will not take it amiss if we now tell you our heart and mind and what we think about it. And as we are yet of the same mind for that reason we do intend to remain to live together, the Brethren therefore out of Love to us for our Salvation will assist us very willingly in that Case as much as it is in their power and they will find us a piece of Land near Bethlehem, where we can plant and hunt and live together happy for our Saviour (sic). That is very agreabel (sic) to us and we are very well pleased with it and we all together with our Women and Children who are of the same mind do not intend to move to Susquehanna nor elsewhere but to stay with our Brethren near Bethlehem. 78 The Iroquois, “uncles” to the Delaware, also attempted to persuade the Indian brethren to leave the area around Bethlehem and to move north to settle along the Susquehannah River within territory controlled by the Six Nations that constituted the Iroquois confederation. This too the Moravian Indians declined. “The six Nations have sent us several messages and Belts of Wampum, but we have always declin’d it, because we are of another mind than they are.” 79 Through their association with the church at Bethlehem the Delaware and Mahican converts were able to resist the pressures upon them from their tribal authorities. They used their “religion as a political tool” and maintained their autonomy “through alliances with white Christians.” 80 78 “Indian Letters” Box 323, folder 8. MA. 79 “Indian Letters” Box 323, folder 8. MA. 80 Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 725. 56 The records are scant on John Lewis Huebner following his trip to South America, but what exists places him in the midst of these chaotic situations. In 1757, at forty years of age, he married Cornelia Ysselstein at the church at Bethlehem. In 1761, he and Cornelia lived in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where their first son, Ludwig, was born. Living in Nazareth indicates that John Lewis may have continued to serve in the ministry, since this town had received many Native exiles from Gnadenhutten and other villages threatened with violence. By 1765, he and his family moved to Bethlehem, where their second son, Abraham, was born. The school at Bethlehem employed John Lewis as the head of the pottery school. 81 Both of his sons apprenticed under him, indicating that the move to Bethlehem was permanent. After the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1761, there was a sizeable increase in the westward movement of Algonquians, Christian and non-Christian, into the Ohio Territory to escape the new pressures in the Pennsylvania backcountry. By the mid-1760s, the Delaware had established a new political center, Gekelemukpechunk (or Newcomerstown), in the Muskingum Valley in Ohio. Gekelemukpechunk was situated squarely between two British military headquarters: Fort Detroit to the west and Fort Pitt to the east. Thirteen Delaware settlements surrounded Gekelemukpechunk. The entire complex fell under the leadership of Chief Netawatwees (known to the English as Chief Newcomer) of the Turtle clan and the clan’s war captain, White Eyes. Both leaders were sympathetic to Moravian mission activities. Netawatwees and White Eyes, however, shared leadership with heads of 81 Register-Marriages, Oct. 4, 1757, BDHP. 57 other Delaware clans who were opposed to the presence of Christians among their people. In response to Euro-American encroachment, Native leaders and their people generally took one of two courses of action—Nativist resistance, or accommodation and acculturation. By the late 1760s, both Netawatwees (a non- Christian) and White Eyes (who, late in life, may have joined the Moravian church) embraced the latter course and pursued policies of adopting Euro-American ways for the betterment of their people. This included the adoption of white agricultural practices and allowing Christian evangelism among their people. The conclusion of the Seven Years’ War brought a heightened competition among Anglo settlers for the newly opened land. The British acquired much of the trans-Appalachian region previously claimed by France. The ensuing westward migration of white colonists into the Pennsylvania backcountry was huge, putting enormous pressure on the Delawares and Shawnees to give up portions of their land. Intense conflicts erupted in the hinterland between white interlopers and Indians who occupied the territory. To help stem the violence, British officials issued the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlers from moving west into the backcountry of Pennsylvania and into the Ohio territory. Many whites disregarded the proclamation, feeling that the Crown had favored Indian rights over the rights of British subjects. 82 82 Fred Anderson, Crucible of War, Chapter 59; and D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America Volume 1, 284-287. 58 During the 1760s, European colonists, mostly Scots-Irish and German, continued moving west into the hinterland. They homesteaded in Indian-controlled regions on the fringes of the Ohio Territory, producing, as two historians recently wrote, “mistrust and profound unease among the Ohio Indians.” 83 The result was that a culture of violence between the Indians and white settlers reached such heightened levels that neither the tribal leaders nor the British authorities could stem the escalating chaos. “By the late winter of 1765 and the spring of 1766, killings [of Indians] particularly around the Ohio, were reported with an alarming regularity.” 84 Indian-hating whites, sometimes totally unprovoked, brutally murdered Native women, children, and important tribal leaders, even those allied with the British. Revenge killing of white settlers by Indians and of Indians by settlers made the hinterland a space of vicious cycles of lives lost and settlements destroyed. The Moravian presence among the Ohio Indians began in June 1758. Missionary Frederick Christian Post, who traveled with John Lewis Huebner during the early 1750s, served as a negotiator of peace between the British authorities and French-allied Ohio Indians. He was fluent in multiple native languages and was married to a Delaware woman. These advantages made him an effective cultural broker between Indian and European powers. Moravian missionaries often served as peace emissaries between Indians and colonial powers because they were among the few Euro-Americans who knew Native languages. Further, as colonial subjects, they 83 Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 122. 84 White, Middle Ground, 345. 59 were often commissioned by the government to function as cultural brokers between Native Americans and British officials. 85 In 1771, Chief Netawatwees issued an invitation to the Moravian leadership in Bethlehem to relocate the Delaware converts who had been displaced in Pennsylvania to his domain in the Muskingum Valley in Ohio. With the continued push from backcountry whites and the unabated violence on the Pennsylvania frontier, the Moravians saw the advantages of distancing their Native converts from hostile British settlers and accepted Netawatwees’ offer. 86 In 1772, Moravian Indian converts, led by missionary David Zeisberger, emigrated from Pennsylvania and established two permanent mission towns close to Gekelemukpechunk. Five Indian families, mostly Delaware, arrived at the Muskingum Valley and established Schoenbrunn (“Beautiful Spring” in German). In August of that year, under the leadership of Joshua, a Mahican who served as Zeisberger’s assistant, additional Christian Indian families arrived in the Ohio territory and began building of the second Gnadenhutten twelve miles from Schoenbrunn. These villages were situated along the Muskingum River approximately one hundred and fifty miles west of Fort Pitt and over four hundred 85 For an informative biographical anthology on a selection of cultural brokers and their function as mediators, see Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker, edited by Margaret Connell (Norman & London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994). 86 Earl P. Olmstead, Blackcoats on the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier, (Dent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1991), 7; and The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772-1781, 59. 60 mile from Bethlehem. Many of these new émigrés were Mahican and Delaware Moravians from Gnadenhutten on the Mahoney in Pennsylvania. In the early years of settlement, the new Moravian villages in the Ohio Territory provided stable environments that remedied many of the issues Christian and non-converted Indians had endured in the Pennsylvania backcountry. 87 Between the 1740s and the 1770s the Delaware had lost up to 70 percent of their population from alcohol, disease, famine, and warfare. “Within this context,” wrote the historian Amy Schutt, “the physical/spiritual health of the next generation was a source of unending anxiety for these Algonquian peoples.” 88 Netawatwees, although a non-Christian, appreciated the more healthful and productive environment in the Moravian mission towns, and he encouraged their establishment in his domain as a strategy for the survival of his people. 89 Moravians prohibited alcohol in their communities. In fact, if a white trader or Indian was found with liquor in his possession while visiting a mission town, the individual was oftentimes asked to leave, or the alcohol was either confiscated during their stay or it was dumped on the ground or in the nearby river. 90 87 See Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?:” 272. Schutt’s central argument is that the Native peoples from the tumultuous hinterland became Christians and joined the Moravian settlements because they provided protection and a better future for their children. 88 See Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?,” 272. 89 See Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?,” 272. 90 Delaware chief Netawatwees and his council also banished alcohol from their villages. See David Zeisberger Diaries, 132, 134, 264, 290. 61 Seeking a more hospitable, less chaotic environment, the Moravian Indians followed the migration patterns of their Delaware kin and established new Indian mission towns deep in the Ohio Territory. The leadership in Bethlehem supported the resettlement because it would distance the Indian converts from proximity to white colonials and their vices, and it would protect them from the violence that had engulfed the western Pennsylvania mission villages. “Disturbed by the frequent necessity of moving and the losses incident thereto, Zeisberger came to the conclusion that it was advisable to remove the Christian Indians as far as possible from all contact with the advancing white population.” 91 The Moravian church sought to provide protective enclaves for displaced Indians wishing to escape the sufferings that resulted from white encroachment, warring tribal factions, and the escalating violence, disease, and famine. It was within this context that Moravian settlements in the Ohio territory attracted more and more Indian converts, mostly among the Delawares and Mahicans who suffered most from the violence. Pacifism, a principal tenet in Moravian theology, mandated that the Christian communities remain neutral in any conflict. In this context, the Moravian leadership hoped to distance their Indian converts from volatile environments—at least as much as they could in this “in-between zone”--which witnessed increasing hostilities among divided Indian factions, European colonists, and British authorities. The Moravians also sought to stem violence where they could. According to missionary 91 C.F. Battershell, “The Czech Connection with the Hussite Martyrs of Gnadenhutten,” 1959 article, source unknown, 4; courtesy of the GA. 62 John Heckewelder when members of the community gained information of an imminent attack--by Indians on settlers or settlers on Indians--their pacifist ethic compelled them to issue warnings to unsuspecting victims or military authorities able to check the violence or provide protection. 92 The people in the Moravian communities, as peacemakers, upheld Christian ideals of kindness and charity toward anyone who traveled through their village, irrespective of political, religious, race, or tribal affiliation: The Christian Indians under their (the missionaries) care, obedient to the commandment of God: “thou shalt not kill”—and adhering to the precepts of the gospel, as given to all Christians, both by our Lord and master, and by his apostles—as also in conformity to the will of the chiefs and great council of the nation, who as rulers had power over them; and under whose protection they lived; strove to live in peace with all mankind, of whatever nation or colour (sic) they might be: nay, they even sought to preserve lives from destruction, whenever they had it in their power, and acted thus purely from principle, and by the impulse of the Christian spirit dwelling within them. 93 The communities at Schoenbrunn and the new Gnadenhutten also practiced the biblical tenet of hospitality. 94 Indian and European traders and hunters, colonial and 92 Richard White argues that the Moravians in Ohio, under the guidance of missionary John Heckewelder, sided with the Americans during the Revolution, especially assisting American soldiers and warning leaders at Ft. Pitt of immanent attacks from the Britain’s Indian allies. See White, Middle Ground, 389. For an argument that the motivations behind the Moravian missionaries and their congregants forewarning the Americans of attacks was strictly based on their religious sensibilities, see “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 23, no. 135 (January, 1869), 105. 93 Heckewelder, Narrative, iv. 94 See Schutt, “What Will Become of Our Young People?,” 274. Mancall noted in Valley of Opportunity that hospitality practices were prolific among Susquehanna Valley Indians and were similar to the culture of hospitality practiced in Moravian 63 British soldiers, native warriors, captives, and prisoners of war who passed through Gnadenhutten and the other mission towns received food, shelter, and medical aid. Heckewelder recognized, however, that these benevolent practices by the Christian Indians contributed to malevolent feelings from untrusting British subjects and officials and the non-Moravian Native populations who surrounded them. In Heckewelder’s mind, the Christian charity of the Indians was the precipitating factor that led to the massacre at Gnadenhutten in Ohio in 1782. They were however, as this narrative will show, by the one side persecuted and distressed for doing what they considered to be Christian duties; while from the other side, a great number of them, the one half women and children, were barbarously murdered, under the false pretence, that they were enemies and warriors. 95 The Revolutionary War recreated familiar dangers in the Ohio country for the transplanted Algonquin peoples and the Moravian mission towns. 96 Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum was situated squarely between the British headquarters at Fort Detroit in the upper Ohio territory and the American counterpart at Fort Pitt. By 1781, less than ten years after they moved from the Bethlehem area, the Indian converts were again wedged in a war zone, as they had been in Pennsylvania. The village existed in a cultural and political crossfire where contesting Anglo imperial settlements. This cultural similarity supports Schutt’s notion that mutual cultural traits like this facilitated compatibility between some Indians and Moravians. It may also be that Moravians learned and adopted some of the Indians’ practices of hospitality. See Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 50-51. 95 Heckewelder, Narrative, vi. 96 White, The Middle Ground, 366. 64 powers and their Indian allies intersected making the Moravian mission “a place of danger rather than survival.” 97 When the war broke out between Britain and her colonies, Indian tribes, as they had during the Seven Years’ War, allied themselves with the side they believed would be in their best interest. The Ohio Indians in the Sandusky region near Detroit—the Shawnee and Mingos among others—sided with the British. The Delaware, under the influence of Netawatwees and White Eyes, were neutral for most of the war. As a consequence of the ongoing cycle of violence between backcountry settlers and Native Americans in the previous years, most Ohio Indians either held the Americans with suspicion or hated them. They were not inclined to join their cause. By 1781, Delaware leaders of other clans split from Netawatwees and White Eyes and proclaimed their allegiance to the British. United with the faction led by White Eyes and Netawatwees, the Moravian communities along the Muskingum remained neutral throughout the war. The Moravian villages, however, were situated in the path of two warring factions. When American militiamen, British soldiers, allied-Indian warriors, prisoners of war, and Indian and white mediators passed through the Ohio Gnadenhutten, the Indian brethren provided them with food, shelter, and medical aid. This raised suspicions and contempt on both sides of the conflict. The British, the Americans, and their respective Indian allies interpreted the charity and pacifism of the Christian Indians as treason, especially when they warned frontier families and 97 See Schutt, “’What Will Become of Our Young People?, 285. 65 Indian villagers of impending attacks. To exacerbate the situation, increasing numbers of murders and assaults upon frontier settler families and the destruction of their farms by British-allied Indians prompted American militias to carry out indiscriminate retribution on all Indians. “Indians haters,” writes Richard White, “even killed or alienated the very [Indian] men who were willing to act as alliance chiefs or mediators for the Americans.” Worse, Americans butchered the Indians who had previously warned them of impending attacks by British-allied Indians. The massacre at Gnadenhutten in Ohio was typical of this kind of Indian-hating hysteria among Anglo-American borderland settlers. By August 1781, British authorities at Fort Detroit suspected that Zeisberger, Heckewelder and the Indian brethren were in league with the Americans. They forced the residents of Gnadenhutten, Shoenbrunn, and a third nearby Moravian Indian mission settlement, Salem, to abandon their villages and remove to a harsh and inhospitable British Indian-allied region, the Upper Sandusky, several hundred miles from the Muskingum Valley. 98 The brethren established new settlements on the Sandusky, but winter conditions were so harsh that the ground froze, making planting impossible. Their livestock died from hunger and exposure. By early 1782, they had depleted all their provisions. Unless drastic measures were taken, their survival was doubtful. 98 My account of the massacre comes from several sources. See Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, 265-274; White, The Middle Ground, 384, 389-390; Heckewelder, Narrative, 229-327; “The History of the Gnadenhutten Massacre,” the original booklet published by the Gnadenhutten Monument Association, ca. 1843, GA. 66 In February 1782, the Moravian Indians requested and were granted permission from Half-King, a Wyandot leader who had overseen the removal of the Moravian congregants, to return to their villages to gather food and supplies to bring back to their distressed brethren facing famine and disease. One hundred and fifty Indian men, women, and children returned to Gnadenhutten, Schoenbrunn, and Salem to harvest the cornfields and gather supplies from their stores that had been abandoned the previous fall. 99 While the Moravian Indians were making their way back to their settlements in the Muskingum Valley, British-allied Indians had brutally murdered, scalped, and burned a backcountry settler’s wife and three children. One hundred frontiersmen and Pennsylvania militiamen, under the command Colonel David Williamson, formed a regiment and headed west into Ohio territory to avenge the murders. These men were intent on killing any and all Indians they came across. They did not differentiate between peaceable and hostile Indians. In an Indian-hating frenzy, the militia decided that the pacifist Moravian Indians had participated in the attack on the Wallace family as well as previous attacks on other backcountry families. 100 On March 7, 1782, the American militiamen came upon the Gnadenhutten Indians who were harvesting their corn to bring back to their brethren on the 99 For additional sources for the precipitating events leading up to the massacre, the bloodbath itself, and its aftermath, see Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 85-87; Amy Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians, 170- 173; Robert Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 104. 100 White, The Middle Ground, 384, 389-390. 67 Sandusky. The Indians at first had little fear from the militia’s approach because many of the men had familiar, friendly faces. The armed men had traded with the brethren and lodged in their village in the past. They falsely told the Indians that their purpose at hand was to take them to Pittsburgh for protection. For, they said, there were hostile whites and Indians in the area intent on doing them harm. Heckewelder records: “The Christian Indians, not in the least doubting their sincerity, walked up to them, and thanked them, for being so kind, while the whites again gave assurances that they would meet with good treatment from them.” 101 However, the militia soon revealed their true intentions when, upon returning with the Christian Indians from the fields to the village of Gnadenhutten, they bound them and locked them into two different cabins, separating the men from the women and children. Col. Williamson accused the Moravian brethren of murdering the Wallaces. The Indians were not allowed to rebut the charges. Then the troops voted to condemn the Indians to death. They informed the Christian Indians that their executions would commence at daybreak the next morning. 102 Survivors and soldiers who were present reported that the Christian Indians spent the night in prayer; asked forgiveness from each other for their sins; and sang hymns, preparing themselves for their imminent death. It was the morning of the 8 th of March, and the murderers came to them, whilst they were engaged in singing and asked, whether 101 Heckewelder, Narrative, 314. 102 Most traditions of the tragedy report that eighteen of the hundred men stepped aside in protest to the massacre because they knew the Moravians as their friends. 68 they were ready to die? To which they received the answer, that they had commended themselves to God, who had given them the assurance in their hearts, that he would receive their souls. The carnage then immediately commenced. 103 The soldiers took turns bludgeoning individuals one by one with a cooper’s mallet, and then scalped each of them, until a pile of bloody bodies lay on the cabin floor. 104 Ninety Christian Delawares and Mahicans fell that morning. Six additional brethren had been murdered before the massacre began while trying to escape, and these were counted in the final tally of ninety-six. Two young boys, Thomas and Jacob managed to escape. 105 When the carnage ended, Jacob— who had been scalped and left for dead under the pile of bodies— leapt out of a window and ran to the forest, where he came across Thomas. The two boys hid in the forest throughout the night, and then journeyed together on foot back to Sandusky and reported the horrors of the massacre to their brethren. The American soldiers set the “slaughter houses” (as 103 “The History of the Gnadenhutten Massacre,” 14. The Gnadenhutten Monument Association published the original booklet (publication date unknown); the Gnadenhutten Historical Society prepared this exact copy of the original booklet in April 1963. Courtesy JHMMC. 104 James Axtell has argued that at least since King Philip’s War in 1675, scalping had become an increasingly common practice rewarded with bounties among Anglo- American colonists. See James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), chapter 11, “The Moral Dilemmas of Scalping,” 259-279. 105 A few years later, Jacob died from drowning when he was struck with a seizure while swimming, a probable consequence of the injuries he sustained in Gnadenhutten. 69 they became known) on fire, and the bones of the dead were left to “bleach in the sun, until after some twenty years they received interment by friendly hands.” 106 News of the tragedy spread throughout the Moravian communities. John Lewis must have received news of the massacre, along with all the leadership at Bethlehem. Nathaniel Seidel, whom John Lewis had assisted in Surinam, was Bishop of the church at Bethlehem at the time of the massacre. Seidel was devastated by what had happened. “When the news reached him of the massacre of the Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten, his heart failed him, and he mourned as one that refused to be comforted.” 107 The Moravian mission to the Indians effectively ended with the massacre of ninety-six Christian brethren at Gnadenhutten. * John Lewis Huebner lived for fourteen years after the tragedy. During these years he apprenticed his three sons, Ludwig, Abraham, and Anton, in pottery. He also instructed them in the religious and spiritual life of the church. Abraham served as a potter and as curator of the Sister’s House, which was an important position in Bethlehem’s congregational infrastructure. Anton became a shoemaker. Records indicate that he regularly moved from town to town, possibly following his father’s vocation as an itinerant preacher. He eventually moved with his family to Gnadenhutten in 1834 and permanently established the Huebner family in the Ohio 106 “The History of the Gnadenhutten Massacre,” 17. 107 “Nathaniel Seidel Obituary.” Edm de Schweinitz Scrapbook A (11)-Sermons, obituaries 1878-1885, MA. 70 village. John Lewis’ first son, Ludwig, however, received the same call his father had received. He became a minister to Native Americans, traveling throughout the mission complex where Moravian Indians resided. He continued the saga of Euro- American-Indian intersection in the Huebner family. John Lewis died in 1796 and was buried in “God’s Acre” in Bethlehem. At the time of his death, he was surely aware of the plans of the church, which were in the making, to send his son Ludwig to Gnadenhutten, Ohio to participate in the reinvigoration of the mission project, to serve as the village’s first pastor and to work alongside John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger. 71 Chapter 2 Ludwig Huebner and the Reestablishment of Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum, 1800-1834 We had the joy to see among us Brother Ludwig Hubener, the newly arrived laborer of Gnadenhutten, accompanied hither by Brother Heckewelder. Our Indians rejoiced with us, that our Gnadenhutten brothers and sisters, as well as themselves, can now be regularly served with the word of God. 108 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen Diary, July 3, 1800 On July 3, 1800, the small Moravian congregation of Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum, situated in the midst of an unstable borderland region of the Ohio Territory, welcomed Ludwig Huebner, the son of John Lewis Huebner of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as their first pastor. His wife, Christina, was also with him to serve the community. Upon Huebner’s arrival, John Heckewelder brought the eminent Moravian missionary David Zeisberger on horseback from the nearby Indian mission town of Goshen “to introduce Brother and Sister Huebner into their office, as future laborers of that congregation.” 109 Two years earlier, in 1798, Zeisberger, together with several Moravian Indian families, some whom were related to victims of the 108 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, June 3 & July 3, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. Ludwig Huebner’s given name and surname take various forms in these and other documents—Lewis Huebener, Ludwig Hubener, Ludwig Huebner, etc. I will be using the German form “Ludwig” for his given name throughout this chapter to distinguish him from his father John Lewis (Johan Ludwig), the subject of. When citing exact quotes from original sources, I use the surname as it written in all of the various forms it takes. In my narrative, I use “Huebner,” the form that became fixed by the mid-nineteenth century. 109 Goshen, Muskingum Diary, July 6, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA 72 1782 Gnadenhutten massacre, had established Goshen, a Moravian mission town. The leadership at Bethlehem strategically planted this Indian Christian community along the Muskingum River only seven miles north of the future site of the second Gnadenhutten and located near the grounds of old Schoenbrunn, one of the three Indian mission towns disbanded following the 1782 massacre. Moravian church leaders intended the Indian mission town of Goshen and the village of Gnadenhutten, this time established as a white settlement and led by Ludwig Huebner, to be economically, spiritually, and culturally interconnected with each other. The two villages would coexist in a complex network that would serve as a launching point for evangelization to non-Christian Indians and buttress the Indian mission against threatening movements that surrounded them. Considering the recent history of hostilities in the region and the fragile relations between Native and European Americans, this was a daring venture on a blood-stained ground. One of the most decisive measures forced upon Ohio Indians by the federal government was the 1795 Treaty at Greenville. What government officials viewed as intransigence on the part of Native peoples of the Ohio Valley—for defending their own land—justified in their minds the acquisition by the United States of millions of acres of Indian lands to be opened up to Anglo-American settlers. 110 Ironically, it also opened up the possibility of restoration of the Muskingum Indian mission communities. The possibility of living under the jurisdiction and protection 110 Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 282. 73 of the United States provided assurances for the Moravians that their Christian Indians could live unmolested by Indians hostile to their communion with white Christians and by hostile American settlers. Church leaders at Bethlehem had long desired to reignite their Indian mission movement that had collapsed following the 1782 massacre. They envisioned the joint resettlement of Goshen and Gnadenhutten along the Muskingum to serve as the outpost and launching point of their revived missionary work. The establishment of the Goshen mission, with missionary Zeisberger at the helm, reinvigorated the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel to the Heathen (SPG). With the strategic placement of Goshen and Gnadenhutten at the doorstep of the western Indian nations, the church had the manpower–Indian converts and white missionaries—to execute the evangelical ambitions of the SPG. In a very real sense, the grand scheme of this new mission experiment depended on Goshen’s success. Church leaders envisioned Gnadenhutten to serve and support Goshen economically and spiritually. Thus each village functioned as a strategic piece in their evangelical designs. Ludwig Huebner began his diary about the daily life in the settlements of Gnadenhutten, Goshen, and other nearby Moravian and non-Moravian communities in 1800. His daily entries over a five-year period record many issues concerning Indian/white relations in the borderland territory of Ohio. Huebner described the community life at Gnadenhutten and the intricate economic, political, cultural, and spiritual interdependence between the white Moravian community and the Indian brethren living in nearby settlements. Benjamin Mortimer, who served in Goshen as 74 the assistant missionary to David Zeisberger, also kept a detailed daily diary. The Huebner and Mortimer diaries together offer a portrait of the everyday life experiences the Native converts shared with their Euro-American brethren. The diaries describe encounters and exchanges the communities had with outsiders and the problems and benefits associated with the absorption of massive movements of people in the region. The diaries speak of the challenges these Moravian communities faced from encounters with “strange” and “wild” (non- believing) Indians. These included Chippewas, Ojibways, Wyandots, and Delawares. Huebner and Mortimer wrote about French traders, incoming white settler families, and the dire consequences of alcohol. The diaries portray the Moravian communities in the Muskingum as thoroughfares between two political and demographic fronts: autonomous, disaffected Indian nations to the west and north and the fledgling Anglo United States to the east. Traders, diplomats, and land surveyors composed the stream of visitors. And many land hungry Anglo Americans with a sense of entitlement and a deep-seated hostility toward Indians were permanent settlers. Many of them settled in and around Gnadenhutten and Goshen. The diaries show that the daily life in Goshen and Gnadenhutten was organized around several categories: intercommunity exchange; work practices and the economics of the communities; encounters with outsiders—both Indian and non- Indian; white settlement in the area; religious life; and social organization. These categories illuminate the destabilizing effects on the Moravian communities that 75 resulted from outside contacts, from alcohol use, and from the increasing concern about the rising hostilities throughout the Ohio territory. The daily records also reveal, at least in the first five years of settlement, a deep sense of community and kinship between the white congregation at Gnadenhutten and their Indian brethren at Goshen. But the experiment did not last. Just two decades after the reestablishment of Gnadenhutten and the reigniting of Moravian mission work in Goshen, the Indian converts who were left could no longer sustain their community in the Muskingum Valley. They “voluntarily” moved to the Nebraska Territory, in what later became the state of Kansas, establishing a new settlement called New Fairfield. The intricate details revealed in Huebner and Mortimer’s diaries dealing with the community life of Gnadenhutten and its relationship with of Goshen show at the micro level the problems Native American peoples faced as Anglo-America continued its westward advance. These Euro-American-Indian Christian communities had to contend with surrounding non-Christian Indian populations in trade and war. They also had to contend with a rising pan-Indian revivalist movement throughout the Ohio territory. The complex inter-workings that linked the two villages show early successes in this intercommunity experiment. But the realities of internal and external pressures on the communities overwhelmed the Moravians’ utopian vision of interracial coexistence based on Christ’s love. Unforeseeable tragedies and dissensions within the communities, unstoppable settler advancement, and 76 consequent hostility and war were factors that proved too much for the Indian and Euro-American communities of Goshen and Gnadenhutten to bear. These developments ultimately proved devastating to the Moravian communities, particularly to the Christian Indians at Goshen and to the future of the mission experiment there. Indian revivalists identified Indians who adopted white ways, like the Moravian converts, as enemies and as culpable as whites in the decline of Native American life and power. 111 The stream of white Americans coming into the territory, who generally possessed a deep-seated, indiscriminate hatred for Indians, contributed to the rise of an Indian resistance and revival movement, which, together with the War of 1812, the U.S. government’s insatiable thirst for Indian land, and finally, Indian removal, came to define the era. The War of 1812 and its aftermath had particularly devastating effects on the Christian Indians at Goshen. On more than one occasion, John Henry, brother of Goshen’s deceased Indian leader, William Henry, speaking on behalf of the Goshen Indian community, wrote to the church at Bethlehem about their concerns brought on by the war. “Dear brethren and Sisters!” We wish to let you know, that we feel ourselves sometimes in many respects, destitute and forsaken, like poor orphans without father or mother, being only few in number, and no one among us being duly capable of taking particular charge of the whole. Nevertheless we have great reason to be thankful to our Saviour, for having of late especially safely conducted us 111 For the most comprehensive and intelligent treatment on Nativist movements during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, esp. Chapters 1 and 7. 77 through trying and difficult circumstances, in these times of war, so that we are still alive and well.” Any hope that Moravian Indians could live “in community” alongside their white brethren, especially with an increasing number of unsympathetic Americans entering the region, dramatically diminished. Henry continued his petition for assistance. During the late troublesome time here, arising from this way, many white people spoke of hurting us, and that we must no longer live on this land. We believe that it was on account of the land that they spoke so hard against us, because they did not want us to remain on it. We beg therefore that you would let the great men in the city of Washington know how we have been threatened, that our living here may be made more safe and sure to us, and that bad people may cease to threaten us about the land. 112 The challenges that surrounded the Indian community at Goshen proved fatal to the Moravian church’s utopian dream of interracial community and coexistence. * Beginning in 1798, Moravians established their communities in the borderland between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. Delawares, Shawnees, Chippawas, Ojibwas, Wyandots, and Ottawas populated the area, coexisting in ethnically diverse, intertribal villages. 113 Anglo-Americans began entering the region in droves starting 112 Letter from the Indian Brethren and Sisters at Goshen to the Brethren and Sisters at Bethlehem and the other Congregations in Pensylvania (sic), dated 16. Nov. 1812, box 172, folder 8, “Letters from Goshen Indians, 1812,” MA. 113 Colin G. Calloway describes the polyglot, multiethnic nature of Indian communities just prior to the Revolutionary through the War of 1812, with specific attention on the multi-tribal character of Ohio’s Native population in The American Revolution in Indian Country, 8-11. 78 in the last decade of the eighteenth century through the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The various peoples, villages, and nations inhabiting the area had multiple competing agendas for survival. And the Moravians, both Euro-American and Indian, resettled along the Muskingum River in this turbulent environment, hoping to reestablish and sustain their long practice of interracial and intra-community existence that had been all but devastated by the massacre of 1782 in the earlier Gnadenhutten Indian settlement. The newly opened land also brought large numbers of Anglo-Americans, mostly Scots-Irish, into the region. These settlers brought along with them their long-held hostilities toward Indians, and their prodigious alcohol culture, exacerbating the crises that had already devastated Native society. The indigenous peoples of the Ohio territory—Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomis, and Miamis—responded to the advance of Anglo-American settlers, their violence, and their destructive cultural practices in considered ways. Some Native leaders advocated complete separation, physical and cultural, from the expanding Anglo-American population into their territory. At the turn into the nineteenth century, this approach was manifested in a pan-Indian spiritual revivalist movement that sought to cleanse Native society of white influences, reclaim Indian lands, and revive traditional ways emerged. A second approach Indians embraced included varying degrees of accommodation with white settlers and their ways. Like their nativist counterparts, most accommodationist leaders advocated this strategy for the survival of their people. 79 A nativist movement emerged following the 1795 treaty at Greenville and continued into the early 1800s. Some of the prominent Native leaders of the movement eventually allied themselves with the British in the War of 1812. Its leaders called for a revival of Indian ritual practices in order to restore Indian power and then restore Indian society. 114 Tenskwatawa, known as the Shawnee Prophet, and his contemporary, the Trout (Ottawa), identified two primary causes for the decline of Native power: advancing Anglo-Americans and Indians who took the path of accommodation. Anglo Americans, revivalists argued, pushed Native peoples off their land, depleted game by over-hunting, brought with them the destructive forces of alcohol, killed Indians indiscriminately, destroyed Indian crops and livestock, and exposed Indians to deadly diseases. Other visionaries emerged, such as Handsome Lake (Seneca), who advocated to varying degrees accommodation with whites. But all of the revivalists recognized the destructive force of alcohol on their people. This first pillar of the revival message—the 114 Gregory Evans Dowd explains that nativism does not suggest conservatism or regression. Rather, the concept was one which “sought native-directed solutions” for the problems facing Indian populations. “For nativists, acceptable changes were to come about through traditionally sanctioned means. By 1800, one of the requisites for such sanction was Indian control. Nativism meant, in this context, not the conservation of a current tradition, or revitalization of a dead or dying culture, but independence of, and resistance to, direct intervention by the American republic.” Nativism then had more with a native adaptation to the pressures of “encroaching power” and a loss of power. See Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, xxii and 129. 80 temperance impulse—was central to the prophets’ message. An equally important pillar was a call for the renewal of Indian rituals. 115 The Shawnee Prophet and the Trout directed their strongest indictment against Indians who pursued a path of accommodation by adopting white ways. 116 By adopting Christianity and Euro-American hunting and agricultural practices, the Goshen Indians aligned themselves with ideals of accommodation inimical to the Indian revivalists. 117 The Native resistance movements and the escalating tensions between the Ohio Indians and the government of the United States during the first decade of the nineteenth century placed the Goshen Indians in a precarious position. The diaries also reveal rising tensions within the Goshen community between the Indian congregation and the white leadership and a similar problem in the relationship between Goshen’s Native converts and the white leadership at Bethlehem. Furthermore, the dynamics between the citizens at Goshen and their brethren at Gnadenhutten were economic, not just spiritual. The establishment of a trade market at Gnadenhutten was essential for the success of the Indian community. But trade invariably brought liquor into the communities, despite the strict Moravian 115 See Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 2-9, 128-130. For the Seneca prophet Handsome Lakes’ “Social Gospel, which incorporated both a degree of accommodation with whites and a renewal of Indian ritual, see Wallace, Death and Rebirth, 202, 263. 116 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 17-19 and Chapter 7. 117 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, xvii. 81 edicts against alcohol consumption. As it had in the past, alcohol undermined the stability and success of the Native population. 118 A New Beginning, 1798 Between 1782 and 1798, the Moravian Indians were on the move throughout the Upper Sandusky, hoping to establish a permanent and safe place to live. Following the massacre of 1782, non-Moravian Indians in the region controlled the movements of the Christian Indians throughout the Great Lakes region. Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, Chippewas, and Ojibwas extended their sympathy and assistance to the Moravian Indians who were in desperate straits from the harsh winter spent in the Upper Sandusky and the recent loss of so many of their family and brethren in the Gnadenhutten massacre. In November 1782, with help from the Ojibwas, some Moravians settled on the Clinton River, giving their settlement the name New Gnadenhutten. At the invitation of the Shawnee, others gathered on the Upper Miami. In 1786 they moved south of Lake Erie on the Cuyahoga River. In 1787 they relocated and settled along the Pettquotting River. Finally, in 1792, the Moravian Indians, accompanied by David Zeisberger, established what would prove 118 For a comprehensive study on alcohol’s effect on the Native American population during the eighteenth century, see Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); and for a detailed study on Indians and alcohol during the early republic see Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol in Indian Villages in the Great Lakes Region in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, 15 (1995), 425-448. 82 to be a permanent mission town called Fairfield (later Moraviantown), located along the Thames River in Upper Canada. 119 119 For a more detailed account of the “wandering” period for the Moravian Indians see Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 173-175. Figure 5: Map of Ohio and Upper Great Lakes region. Highlighted: Fairfield mission in Canada; Gnadenhutten and Goshen, Ohio; and Gibson family farm on Wills Creek. (adapted from Olmstead, Blackcoats). 83 Upon their arrival at the Fairfield mission, the Moravian Indians, under the protection of the British, established a thriving and peaceful community. To their south, however, violence continued throughout the Ohio region. In the immediate years following the Revolution, a new phase of conflict between Indians and white American settlers erupted in the Ohio country over the issue of land. Delaware leaders in the Upper Sandusky, friendly with Zeisberger and sympathetic to the Moravians converts, who they considered their kin, cautioned the Christian Indians against returning to the Muskingum Valley. Post-war land cessions signed at the Treaty of Paris in 1783 between the British and the new United States government gave no consideration to Native American land rights. 120 As a result of these negotiations vast amounts of Indian land, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, were transferred under the jurisdiction of the United States and were opened up for American settlement. Neither the federal government nor its citizens gave any consideration that this was Indian occupied land. Subsequent treaties signed by peace-seeking accommodationist leaders of the Delawares, Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Wyandots at Fort Stanwix in 1784 and at Fort McIntosh the following year, gave the United States more Indian territory in the Ohio Valley. The influx of settlers brought increasing pressure on Native populations in the region. Surveyors flocked into the region, and Anglo-American settlers followed in their wake. Between 1783 and 1790 the population of Anglo-Americans into the 120 For the omission of Indians from all negotiations and consideration at the Paris, see Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 273-283. 84 region rose eighty seven percent, heightening the hostilities between settlers and Indians. Threats of violence and retaliation from both sides were ubiquitous. 121 In the late 1780s and into the early 1790s, a faction of Delawares, Ojibways, Wyandots, Ottawas and Miamis who felt cheated by the treaties that resulted in massive loss of land and hunting rights, effectively united against the United States. Bands of allied Indians executed small-scale attacks on incoming Anglo-Americans throughout the borderland regions of Ohio and Kentucky. 122 Both sides showed little restraint in the atrocities they leveled against each other. By the conclusion of these hostilities, the image of Indians as savage animals was sealed in the minds of white frontiersmen and settlers. 123 By the early 1790s the conflicts escalated to a full-scale war. In the early stages the pan-Indian Western confederacy inflicted significant victories over the American military. By 1794, however, with Native forces depleted from war, their resources dwindling, and wavering British support, President Washington responded with strengthened troops and resources to defeat the Native confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The Treaty at Greenville the next year ceded all but a small section of upper Ohio to the United States. 121 Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 280-281. 122 Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 179-180. Schutt’s work provided much of the history on Native/Euro-American conflicts in the Ohio Territory, specifically the Delawares’ experience during the early 1790s. See also, Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faracher, The American West: A new interpretive history (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), Chapter 4. 123 Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, 133. 85 Even with this transfer of land to the United States, the indigenous Native American Moravians in Canada remained cautious about returning to their homes along the Muskingum. Their lives remained at risk as rumors circulated that both frontier settlers and some Indians wished them dead. Many of the American newcomers hated Indians and did not distinguish between those who were friendly and those who were hostile. While safely settled in Canada, the Moravians heard from Indian allies that Euro-American settlers posed a great threat to the Christian Indians if they ventured back into territory too close to the borderland states of Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Anti-Indian sentiment raged among these frontiersmen, who threatened to kill all Indians on sight. 124 Some Indian groups were equally hostile toward the Moravians, whom they held responsible for their suffering. Faced with threats on multiple sides, the Moravians at Fairfield accepted the fact that their return to the Muskingum would have to wait. In spite of these dangers, Zeisberger remained steadfast in his desire to return with his congregants to the Muskingum and reestablish his mission town there. By 1796, however, moving back to their original village sites was becoming a realistic hope. In 1788, eight years earlier, the Continental Congress approved a grant of three 4,000-acre tracts of land (totaling 12,000 acres) to the Society of the Brethren, 124 For the development of the indiscriminate “Indian-hating” culture prevalent among Scots-Irish American inhabitants, see Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, esp. ch. 5; Maldwyn A. Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America” in Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan eds., Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Migrations of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 296-297; and Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 148-149. 86 to be held in trust for the Indian survivors and descendants of the Gnadenhutten massacre in recognition for their sacrifice during the Revolutionary War. Whereas the United States in Congress assembled by their Ordinance of the 20 May, 1785 among other things ordained that the towns of Gandenhutten, Schoenbrun and Salem with lands adjoining to the said towns be reserved for the sole use of the Christian Indians who were formerly settled there or the remains of that society. 125 The tracts were located along the Muskingum River on the village sites where the massacre took place. A curious element in this Congressional statute was the caveat that the “said towns and reserved lands [were] to be vested in the Moravian brethren at Bethlehem in Pensylvania (sic) or the Society of the said brethren (SPG) for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity.” 126 The statute revealed that the state should sponsor civilizing and Christianization of Indians immediately following the end of the Revolutionary War. 127 125 Continental Congress 1788, 43:485-487. 126 Continental Congress 1788, 43:485-487 (emphasis mine). 127 The strongest and arguably the most influential proponent of state sponsored civilizing and Christianizing of Indians as a way to solve the issue of Native incorporation into American society was Thomas Jefferson. According to historian Peter Mancall, Jefferson believed Indian involvement in the trade network and their adoption of agrarianism and manufacturing would replace their hunting culture and was central for the Indians’ transformation to civilization. Jefferson also sought to stop the trade of alcohol in Indian country. Other historians emphasize the cynical view that the real dilemma for Jefferson rested with how to take Indian lands with justice and humanity. Civilizing Indians and turning them into Euro-American agriculturalists would shrink their need for hunting lands, and in consequence, open up lands for the expanding American population. See Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 290; and Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol,” 426, and 437-441. 87 In June 1796, following lobbying efforts by church leaders at Bethlehem Congress renewed the 1788 statute. In 1797, President John Adams signed the land patent, which the church at Bethlehem was to hold “in trust for the use of the Christian Indians were formerly settled there” for their future resettlement and the reestablishment of mission activity among the Indian nations residing throughout the Ohio territory and farther west in Indiana. 128 Still fearful that volatile conditions in the Ohio region remained pervasive, Zeisberger and his congregation would wait until the following year to plan a return to their “ancient villages” in the Muskingum Valley. In 1797, the SPG sent John Heckewelder, who now served as their agent, to survey the tracts for settlement and oversee the granting of leases “to honest and reputable farmers or tradesmen.” The Society anticipated the return of the Indian congregants from Canada to the Muskingum, but they also welcomed the idea of collecting leases and rents from non-Indian Americans anxious to settle this fertile Ohio region. Incoming settlers could not make legal claims on these granted lands, nor could they even settle there without the express approval of the Board of Directors of the SPG. 129 The SPG justified exercising autonomous control of the 128 1798 letter from John Ettwein, President of the SPG, to Christian Indians in Fairfield, Canada; box 3500, folder, 14, MA. See also 1796 Land Grant, signed by President John Adams, box 181, folder 18, Westfield, Kansas letters 1851, MA. 129 1798 letter from John Ettwein, President of the SPG, to Christian Indians in Fairfield, Canada; box 3500, folder, 14, MA; Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 95. For the development of the tenant system earlier in the eighteenth century in the Susquehanna Valley see, Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 105-110. 88 land and thought it “meet and proper to nominate Heckewelder to oversee the holdings “in order to further the benevolent intentions of the said United States.” 130 In the spring of 1798, after surveying the land and laying out tracts for settlement, Heckewelder, joined by the young missionary Benjamin Mortimer, journeyed from Bethlehem to the mission at Fairfield, Canada. Heckewelder and Mortimer delivered the welcome news to Zeisberger that the surveyed tracts in the Muskingum were ready for his return and the return and resettlement of the Indian converts. Many of those Indians who would return to the Muskingum Valley were the same individuals who had been forcibly removed from their villages in 1781 and whose relatives Colonel Williamson and his band of white militia murdered in 1782. The new mission town would be called Goshen, and Benjamin Mortimer would serve as Zeisberger’s assistant. Mortimer had the duty of inputting daily entries in the diary. Thus he became the chronicler of the life at Goshen for the next fourteen years. After staying ten days in Fairfield, Heckewelder and a select group of Indian converts—Christian Gottlieb, Nicholas, Leonard, Renatus, and Bartholomew-- journeyed south back to the Muskingum Valley. This group departed to prepare the settlements at Goshen, Gnadenhutten, and Salem for the more substantial second shift of émigrés to follow from Canada. 131 When Heckewelder and the Indian 130 1798 letter from John Ettwein, President of the SPG, to Christian Indians in Fairfield, Canada; box 3500, folder, 14, MA. 131 Many of the details surrounding the Moravians’ migration from Fairfield to the Muskingum are found in Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 97-103. 89 brethren reached Gnadenhutten, they returned to the site of the 1782 massacre and the abandoned Indian mission village of Gnadenhutten. The burned out cabins were faintly visible, covered under eighteen years of thick brush. The men gathered up the “sun-bleached bones” of their murdered Indian brethren. In a quiet ceremony, they buried the remains en masse in a mound on the site of the massacre. 132 According to lore of the massacre, the burned bodies and bones of the victims had remained undisturbed for eighteen years, since Indians and non-Indians alike believed that Gnadenhutten and the site of the massacre were haunted by evil spirits. Once Heckewelder and his companions completed their solemn task and established the site for further settlement, they sent for Zeisberger and several other families from Fairfield to join the community at Goshen. William Henry, his wife Rachel, and their children, Gottlieb and Benjamin, together with a number of Indian families, left Fairfield on August 15, 1798 with Zeisberger to reestablish their mission along the Muskingum. William Henry’s Indian name was Gelelemend, and he was also known as Killbuck. Before his conversion to Christianity he was a leading Delaware chief. Among his Christian brethren he was the “Vorsteher,” or leader, of the Indian converts, and he served throughout his life in the mission as an important religious leader among his people 132 “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly vol. 23, no. 135, (Jan 1869), 115, GA. Peter Silver also mentions Heckewelder’s burial of the bones in Our Savage Neighbors, 267. 90 and a respected political figure in the region. In his journal, Mortimer identified Henry as “our leader.” 133 Non-Christian Delawares also respected William Henry, who was their former chief they had known as Gelelemend. Delaware leaders in the region recognized Henry’s past and present leadership position. In this capacity, he served as a negotiator, or cultural broker, along with tribal headmen from his own kin network and other tribal leaders in the northern and western borderland regions. 134 Heckewelder noted the historic day of their arrival: In October [1798], the missionaries, Zeisberger and Mortimer, together with a number of the Christian Indians from Fairfield in Upper Canada, arrived on the Muskingum, and having laid off a village on the Shonbrun tract, about seven miles from Gnadenhutten, they called it Goshen. 135 Two years later in 1800, Benjamin Mortimer noted in the Goshen diary that Indian brethren from Fairfield continued to join the community. On May 18, Mortimer wrote: “Abel and Issac came from Fairfield, and reported that other brn. and srs. were on their way from thence.” In early June, Mortimer reported the arrival of two additional Indian families: “Jno. Henry [William’s son] and Petrus arrived 133 Cited in Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 100. Original source, Moravian Church Archives, box 171, folder 14, p. 38. 134 Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 98. 135 Heckewelder, Narrative, 407. 91 here with their families from Fairfield and brought us letters from our dear brn. there.” 136 The following year, Zeisberger held the first communion service at Gnadenhutten since the massacre. Heckewelder noted that it was a “very sacred service” in which Zeisberger opened the “lovefeast service” reminding the communicants “that there existed on this spot, many years in succession, a fine Indian congregation, but that they were scattered during the war eighteen years ago.” 137 During this time, the Moravian church at Bethlehem was in the process of recruiting white families from various Moravian communities to relocate and reestablish Gnadenhutten. The church leadership orchestrated a plan whereby the two villages, Goshen and Gnadenhutten, Indian and white respectively, would be intertwined and interdependent, economically, socially, and spiritually. Gnadenhutten and Goshen, 1800-1806: The Diaries In 1800, John Heckewelder reestablished the community of Gnadenhutten, this time as a “white” Moravian village. The Church intended to reestablish Gnadenhutten in order to create a dynamic religious, social, and economic relationship with the adjacent Indian settlement of Goshen. Their plans came with 136 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 18 and June 8, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 137 John Heckewelder, Gnadenhutten Church Diary, “Communion Service at Gnadenhutten, July 13, 1799” series VII, box 13, folder 2, Zimmerman translation; GA. 92 the full endorsement of the United States government. A second aim of the Church was evangelical—to be in striking distance to share the gospel with the non-Christian Indians who had settled in the surrounding area and to their west and north. In 1800, the church elders at Bethlehem commissioned Ludwig Huebner (who had served as a missionary to the Indians throughout the last decade of the eighteenth century) to serve as the first pastor of the white congregation at Gnadenhutten. Huebner’s entries in the church diary show that interchanges occurred between the two villages on a daily basis. 138 The diary also mentions frequent visits from “strange [ie, unsaved] Indians” who exchanged skins and other goods with David Peter, the village storekeeper who had established his store in Gnadenhutten in 1799. The diaries detail how Gnadenhutten and Goshen served as thoroughfares and stopping points between Ohio Indian settlements to the west and north and the newly formed United States to the east. Native leaders stopped there on their way to negotiate with the American government. Travelers and traders passing through Gnadenhutten and Goshen brought with them news from family and brethren, Indian and white, scattered along the various trade networks. Visitors served as postal carriers as well, delivering letters from the Muskingum villages to other Moravian communities they passed through on their journeys home. 139 On May 3, 1802, Huebner noted in his diary that 138 Gnadenhutten church diary, 1801, Zimmerman translation, pp. 18-39; Box 1, Folder 4; GA. 139 See for example, Gnadenhutten church diary, 1801; Zimmerman translation, pp. 24, 30, 38. Box 1, Folder 4; GA 93 an unidentified Indian man, a friend of Heckewelder’s, with a party of Delawares, had just returned from the United States on what appears to be a diplomatic mission (Ohio had not yet been admitted to the Union). At the end of the week an Indian man was here, an old acquaintance of Bro. Heckewelder. He had been in the states with a party of Delaware Indians and was now on his way back to the vicinity of Woapikomikunk. Through him we had an opportunity to write to our dear brethren and sisters there. 140 A rude, but long established and effective communication network was now in place at Gnadenhutten and Goshen. 141 Heckewelder’s friend carried letters written by Huebner and other Gnadenhutten residents to Moravian settlers living in the upper Ohio region. On another occasion, visitors brought news and letters all the way from their old home in Canada. “Toward evening three Indian Brethren arrived from Fairfield on a visit, after they had been in Goshen a few days; by them we received letters and diaries from Fairfield.” 142 It is possible these Native converts were on their way to Bethlehem because they had the Fairfield mission diaries to be deposited at the head church there. Or they may have handed the materials over to be delivered to Bethlehem by someone else traveling through the community. 140 Gnadenhutten church diary, May 3, 1802; Zimmerman translation, p. 46. Box 1, Folder 4; GA. 141 Peter Silver provides an informative section on the communication system in place during the mid-eighteenth century similar to the well established Moravian network where important information in letters and newspapers was copied and distributed to reach a broader audience. See Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, 67-71. 142 Gnadenhutten church diary, Sept 12, 1802; Zimmerman translation. Box 1, Folder 4; GA. 94 Mortimer recorded such a circumstance the next year on July 3, 1800. “To Br. Rixecker, we delivered a packet of letters and diaries from Fairfield and here to be forwarded to Bethlehem.” 143 White and Indian travelers served as mail couriers within the Moravian communication network. In one entry Huebner noted, “Bro. Matthew Taylor came here from Hope in the Wachau (?) on a visit and brought us letters from the dear brethren there.” 144 According to Huebner’s diary entries, Indians who passed through Gnadenhutten, both Christian and non-believers, often stayed to listen to his sermons. Huebner gave them preferential seating and other courtesies in an attempt to court them to convert. They [the “strange” non-Moravian Indians] were placed on the foremost benches and Bro. John Henry who understands the English language well, sat beside Bro. Huebener (sic) and translated his sermon on today’s Gospel, sentence by sentence, from the English into the Delaware language. We noted a very close attention. 145 Most of the daily entries in Huebner’s and Mortimer’s diaries seem innocuous and uneventful: congregants’ births, baptisms, and deaths; sermon topics; visits to the sick; a lot about the weather; and community projects such as the raising of a home, 143 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, July 3, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 144 Gnadenhutten church diary, July 6, 1801; Zimmerman translation, p. 29; Box 1, Folder 4; GA. 145 Ludwig Huebner quote taken from Ruth E. Baker, “From the Archives: The Rev. Ludwig Huebener (sic) First Pastor at Gnadenhutten,” The Heckewelder Herald 1987; GA. 95 planting of crops, or daily work. Entries in June and August 1801 list inclement weather: “it rained so hard last night that the Muskingum was very swollen.” “Sunday the second, the sermon was dispensed with since we do not yet have a meeting house and it was rainy and wet.” Mortimer gave numerous accounts of Indian converts trekking to Gnadenhutten to help congregants there with crop planting and other labors: “May 18, 1800: At the desire of Br. Heckewelder, most of our brn. and srs. went to Gnadenhutten, to clear a corn field for Br. Knauss, who is soon expected to arrive there with his family.” Huebner’s and Mortimer’s diaries often noted Native and non-native members assisting in the construction of Gnadenhutten’s buildings. Huebner noted in his diary on January 17 th and 30 th , 1801, that his own home and those of others had been constructed: “Saturday the seventeenth the brethren helped Bro. Knaus lay up the logs of his new house.” “Friday the thirtieth: the brethren put up the addition to Bro. Huebner’s house.” “Monday, the ninth, there came Indian brethren from Goshen, who helped Bro. Brier block up his house.” On some occasions, Huebner noted work projects that demonstrated the growing permanence of the community: Nov 28, 1801: The horse mill was so nearly completed by the twenty ninth that the first corn could be ground in it, whereupon much flour was ground during the following days. It seems to be a very good mill. The construction of the gristmill, blacksmith shop, sawmill, and trading store in Gnadenhutten afforded greater self-sufficiency to both communities. Residents no 96 longer needed to travel fifty-five miles to Charleston or farther to Buffaloe Creek City in Pennsylvania, which were the nearest trade and manufacture centers. 146 On May 4, 1800, Mortimer recorded the building of the church at Gnadenhutten by the Native convert Ignatius: Ignatius returned from Gnadenhutten, having finished all the work that he had engaged to perform there. We consider it as an honor to our congn., that he has been permitted to build the house which is designed for the habitation of the Agent of the Heathen Society there, and is at first to be made use of for the divine worship of the congn. We learnt afterward with pleasure, that he had discharged his contract to the entire satisfaction of Br. Heckewelder, while his whole conduct had gained him the esteem and good will of all the Gnadn. brn. & srs. It is a remarkable circumstance, singular perhaps in the history of our times, that a converted heathen, formerly a savage, should build a religious meeting-house for the use of a congn. of white Christians. 147 Ignatius was a master builder who apprenticed the young men in the congregation. He had been a member of the Moravian community since 1771 and had been a devoted companion to Zeisberger since that time. Nonetheless, Ignatius’ “savage” and “heathen” past remained ever present in Mortimer’s mind. This entry, laced with a tinge of irony, reveals the deeply entrenched Moravian agenda to “civilize” the Indian, the Moravians’ success at it, and Mortimer’s wonder at its actualization. It was Ignatius who a few years hence would be embroiled in an irreconcilable argument with Zeisberger that devastated and fractured the Indian mission community. 146 Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 110, 145. 147 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 4, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 97 Sometimes work commitments kept congregants from attending Huebner’s sermons. “Mar 17, 1805: Since the sugar trees were running extraordinarily today, many of our (people) had to attend to the sugar cooking, for which reason but few were present at the English preaching.” Mortimer recorded the same at Goshen. “In these days nearly all our brn. went a hunting, on which account the daily meetings were discontinued.” 148 Both of the pastors’ diaries—Ludwig Huebner’s on Gnadenhutten and Benjamin Mortimer’s on Goshen—reveal a deep interconnectedness between the two villages. White citizens from Gnadenhutten and Indian congregants from Goshen regularly trekked back and forth to each other’s villages for business dealings, religious life, work related matters, and issues involving health concerns. Only seven miles separated the towns. It was feasible to journey from one village to the other and return the same day. For instance “John Henry and Petrus went to Gnadenhutten, and returned again in the afternoon.” 149 More often, however, diary accounts of inter-village exchange between Goshen and Gnadenhutten recorded an overnight stay at least, with some visits lasting a number of days, depending on the circumstances. 150 On August 2, 1801 for 148 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, June 18, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 149 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, June 8, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Both Huebner and Mortimer wrote their diaries in third person. 150 The writers may have viewed longer visits with more significance, which could explain these registers of extended stays. 98 instance, Huebner escorted Heckewelder’s daughter Salome to Goshen, where she stayed several days to provide assistance (of an undetermined nature) to Brother and Sister Mortimer, the town’s minister and his wife. 151 In October of that year, Ludwig Huebner hurried to Goshen upon receiving word that Zeisberger was stricken with an unspecified illness: Wednesday, the twenty first, we received the report from Goshen that Bro. David Zeisberger suddenly became very weak and sick. For that reason Bro. Huebener rode there toward evening and found him somewhat better again. 152 On October 4, 1802, the Zeisbergers “visited the (Gnadenhutten) brethren and sisters in their houses during these days and returned again to Goshen on Wednesday, the sixth.” 153 When Gnadenhutten citizens fell ill they often requested the services of Indian healers from Goshen. “At the desire of Br. Peter, who was very unwell, we sent an Indian brother to bleed him.” Ten days later Mortimer recorded a report from Goshen Indians who had returned home after a visit to Gnadenhutten that Peter “was fast recovering from his illness. 154 On another occasion, Mortimer dispatched an 151 Ludwig Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, August 2, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 152 Ludwig Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, October 25, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 153 Ludwig Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, October 4, 1802. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 154 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 9, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 99 “Indian doctor” to Gnadenhutten to assist Peter Edmonds, who “had been dangerously bitten by a copper-snake.” The man fully recovered. “We had the pleasure to learn in the evening that the wound was in a fair way of healing.” 155 When inclement weather arrived travel between the villages could be difficult, if not impossible. Locals preferred to travel by canoe on the Muskingum River, but it was frequently swollen or overflowing from rains or in the winter frozen from extreme cold. It was not until late 1800 that improvements in the local road system provided alternatives. Until then, paddling along the Muskingum remained the most common, practical, and efficient way to get from one town to the other. 156 July 29, 1800: “In these days our brn. and srs. paid frequent visits in Gnadenhutten, and as this is the best season for hunting on the water, these excursions were frequently made along the river in canoes.” 157 This excerpt from the Goshen diaries came soon after the arrival of Huebner in Gnadenhutten. Along with numerous other entries, it suggests that the Indian congregation liked the new pastor, at least in the early stages of his tenure. Mortimer’s entries for August 1800 record regular attendance of Goshen congregants at Huebner’s sermons. 155 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, June 28, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 156 For the importance of the river transportation system during the early republic era, see D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume 2, “Continental America, 1800-1867” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 311-312; and Andrew Cayton, Ohio: The History of a People, 17. 157 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, July 29, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 100 August 3: Some of our brn. and srs. who had been down the river returned home. No fewer that fifteen of them had attended the morning sermon in Gnadenhutten, which was interpreted into the Indian language from the mouth of Br. Hubener by our Indian brother John Henry. Again, on August 24, Mortimer wrote: “Jno. Henry, at the desire of our Indian brn. and srs. now in Gnadenhutten, went thither to interpret.” 158 Huebner’s diary indicates that he reciprocated those feelings of affection for Goshen’s citizens and that he traveled there often to visit his Native brethren, using the river for transportation. Saturday the fourteenth: the Huebners and Peters with their children had a delightful visit in Goshen. They were taken there by the two Colvers and Benjamin Chitty in their large new canoe; and we came back safely by the same conveyance on the following day. 159 Soon after the settlement of Gnadenhutten, the Goshen Indians began clearing wide wagon roads to ease travel between the two villages and facilitate trade and cultural exchanges. As early as 1798, the church leadership at Bethlehem issued a mandate to Heckewelder to oversee a road development project to link the two communities: And for as much as he the said agent (John Heckewelder) of the Society has been directed to erect some buildings on the said tract of 158 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, August 3, 24, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 159 Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, March 14, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 101 Gnadenhutten, to regulate and open roads from one tract to the other, which will be attended with considerable expense. 160 The church authorized the necessary funding for the project—five hundred dollars in bonds available for those who would make these improvements. By the summer of 1800, the road between Goshen and Gnadenhutten was almost complete: “August 8, 1800: To day our brethren finished cutting out a wagon road from here to the Gnadenhutten fording, which is nearly two-thirds of the distance between the two settlements.” 161 The expansion of the transportation system to include both roads and water-ways strengthened the ties between the communities. At the same time, these developments opened the communities up to outside markets and influences. This exposure had both positive and negative effects on the Native converts at Goshen, above all they threatened the Moravian ideal of Christian community. Moravian leaders viewed the establishment of a lucrative market in Gnadenhutten for the Christian Indians at Goshen as one of the most important links between the two communities. Heckewelder and Zeisberger intended David Peter’s store, established in Gnadenhutten in 1799, to be the prime market for the Goshen Indians’ furs and manufactured goods. The missionaries intended the Indian converts to utilize Peter’s store to trade their furs and commodities like corn and sugar in exchange for manufactured items they did not make themselves. The end result, they envisioned, would be a stable market for the Christian Indians to trade 160 John Ettwein, President of the Moravian Church at Bethlehem, correspondence, April 27, 1798; Box 3500, folder 14, MA. 161 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, August 8, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 102 their goods, which in turn would secure their economic livelihood and thus ensure the community’s viability in the volatile region. The Moravian system fit within the national strategy advocated by Thomas Jefferson and other leading political figures to bring Indians into the commercial trade to “civilize” them. Teaching Native peoples Anglo-American agricultural practices and incorporating them into the new republic’s burgeoning systems of market capitalism, Jefferson believed, would hasten the incorporation of Indians into the American citizenry. Jefferson viewed trade as central to his plan to civilize the Indians, and he promoted farming and manufacturing to replace the hunting culture. 162 While they agreed with the national vision of leading Indians away from their Native traditions and rituals and toward Euro-American agricultural ways, Moravian missionaries remained supportive of their Native converts’ hunting practices and fur trading in combination with farming as a transitional form of sustenance. But there was a downside in the trade system for Native Americans—the fur trade was historically linked with alcohol. The records indicate that the Indian converts at Goshen regularly traded furs and goods with David Peter at Gnadenhutten. They operated on a system of credit, which was dependent on the seasonal cycles of the “chace” (or hunt) and the fur trade. The entry for May 28, 1800 states that the bear-hunting season for that year was nearly over and: 162 See Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol,” 426, 438-39. 103 all our Indians who had been abroad returned home, and attended the evening meeting. They brought home a few bears. The whole number that have been killed by our brethren here since its commencement in November last, is 196. In these days nearly all our brethren went a hunting, on which account the daily meetings were discontinued. They are obliged to follow the chace here diligently, in order to pay their debts, as corn and other produce have no market, nor is there a call for such articles as they have been used to manufacture in Fairfield. 163 Upon returning from the hunting season, the Goshen Indians squared their debts with David Peter. Br. Dencke returned from Gnadenhutten, and in his company came Br. Peter, to whom our brethren who were in his debt unexpectedly brought so considerable a quantity of skins, that he returned home in the evening driving a well loaded pack horse before him. 164 After collecting these debts, David Peter would proceed to sell or trade the commodities he acquired from the Goshen Indians to the broader market of traders and consumers throughout the region. Competing markets throughout the Ohio territory, however, challenged the aims of the Moravian leadership that envisioned a loyal and mutually beneficial commercial relationship between the Goshen Indians and David Peter and his store in Gnadenhutten: June 3, 1800: it is a circumstance that occasions us some concern, that though the Directors of the Heathen Society in Bethlehem have established a store in Gnadenhutten, chiefly with the view of serving the Indian congn. here, and being generally useful to the mission, yet 163 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 28 and June 18, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 164 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, June 30, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 104 at present there is but little prospect that these desirable objects can be effected agreeable to wish. From Br. Peter, who has the management of the store, our brn. and srs. always experience kindness and friendship; but the traders from the northward, who stroll about the country, and live in the Indian manner, can generally afford their goods at a much lower price then he can, while they give a higher price for most kinds of skins. 165 The Goshen Indians, acting independently from the designs of the white missionaries, engaged in trade with non-Moravians from outside the community. Mortimer’s entry implies that it troubled him and the white leaders in Bethlehem that the Indian brethren benefited financially more in their dealings with outsiders than within the religious network. The arrival in June 1800 of several French, Euro-American, and Indian traders from Woakatomonika and Pettquotting who wanted to do business with the Goshen Indians is probably what prompted Mortimer’s concerns. 166 In addition to the threat of a competitive market, Mortimer was anxious about traders bringing liquor into the community. Moravian leadership was keenly aware of the insidious relationship between the fur trade and alcohol and the destructive impact that liquor had on Native Americans. Tension existed between the leadership’s desire to incorporate the Indian converts into the trade market while maintaining control over the presence of alcohol. As long as outside traders behaved according to Moravian standards of decency, they were welcome to stay. “June 17, 1800: A French trader who came here 165 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, June 3, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 166 See Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 14, 23, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 105 yesterday to traffic, went away again today. This man has been here twice before, and behaved to satisfaction.” July 4, 1800: A trader who proposes settling near Fort Laurence came here, to whom we explained the principles which we observed in our conduct towards all traders who desired to have dealings with our Indians. The trade here was free for every man who behaved orderly, and did not entice to the use of spirituous liquors; but to none others. A law had lately been passed on our favor, at our express desire; and we were resolved to see that it was put in force. He was very civil, and promised to be a good neighbor. 167 The “principles” Mortimer cited were the statutes that Heckewelder established in the 1770s for Indian mission communities to live by and which the Indian congregants at Goshen agreed upon. Statute five dealt with alcohol: “We will have nothing to do with thieves, murderers, whoremongers, adulterers, or drunkards.” Statute thirteen was even clearer: We will not admit rum or any other intoxicating liquor into our town. If strangers or traders bring intoxicating liquor, the helpers shall take it from them and not restore it until the owners are ready to leave the place. The law Mortimer referred to was an act passed two years earlier in 1798 by territorial governor, Arthur St. Clair, which prohibited the sale of alcohol specifically within the boundaries of the three Moravian tracts. 168 The diaries indicate, however, that traders who visited the Moravian communities, both Indian and Euro-American, regularly brought alcohol with them, much to the dismay of Huebner and Mortimer. “Two flour packers came here this 167 See Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, July 4,1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 168 Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 154. 106 forenoon, of whom one had drunk too much whisky and made such a disturbance that it became necessary to conduct him out of the place with a scourge.” 169 Even at the early stages of the experiments at Goshen and Gnadenhutten, alcohol threatened the stability of the communities. The end of the hunting season in late spring brought fur traders into the communities’ environs, in all probability to trade their peltries with David Peter. Mortimer’s entry on May 1, 1800 details a troubling event that involved some visiting non-Christian (strange) Indians, who, it is reasonable to assume, were there to trade their furs. These Indians had liquor, which some Goshen Indians imbibed to the point of intoxication. “Strange Indians brought whiskey here, and in spite of the precautions of our brn., there was a drinking frolic among our heathen visitors, in which some individuals who belong to us took share.” 170 In this case, Mortimer saw at least some advantage to his congregants’ participation in the frolic and drunkenness. The unhappy persons who had fallen into temptation, came afterwards to bewail their conduct. The proneness of most Indians to fall into the sin of drunkenness, has at least this use in our congn., that it keeps our brn. and srs. humble. 171 169 Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, October 11, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 170 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 1, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 171 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 1, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 107 Mortimer wrote in depth in his diary about two traders, a Frenchman named Shabel and his Indian partner Ska, who visited the area a number of times. 172 “Aug 11, 1800: The trader Shabel and Ska returned here with fourteen strange Indians, four of whom were Chippeways.” Goshen’s Indian leaders regularly took action to remove the culprits who exposed their brethren to alcohol. Aug 12: the helper brn. were desired to tell Ska, that as he did not appear to wish to be converted, he had better leave us entirely. He begged hard for leave to remain here. Abel, to whom brn. were also sent, expressed himself sorry for his late bad behaviour, saying that when he went from here, he had no intention to get drunk, but had been enticed to it unawares. We spoke with Shabel, (the Frenchman whose whiskey casks were thrown into the Muskingum in April last), desiring to know whether he intended to bring any more liquor here. He promised that he would not do it. We informed him of the strict laws that had been passed on the subject. 173 In the case of the French trader Shabel, the Indian brethren threw his stash of liquor into the Muskingum River rather than hold it for him until he left. On other occasions, Native leaders removed their congregants from temptation: As the sugar camps nearest to our town have been more than once made use of for such debaucheries, we desired our brn. to transfer to a greater distance, all those which be within half a mile of us, that we might at least not be molested by the noise of drunkenness. 174 172 See also, Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 5, “Sehabel (sic), the Frenchman (trader) who we have had frequent occasion to mention;” also June 2, 3, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 173 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, August 11-12, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 174 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 1, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 108 Unfortunately, and surprisingly, neither the statutes nor the law, nor the efforts of the brethren effectively kept alcohol from the Christian Indian community. The most surprising part of this story is that Brother David Peter stocked alcohol in his store in Gnadenhutten. For reasons that can only be conjectured, Peter’s store was apparently exempt from the act that banned the sale of “spirituous drink” in the three tracts of Moravian land along the Muskingum. Huebner’s diary, which spanned five years, does not mention the presence of alcohol in Peter’s store. Not until a major crisis hit the Goshen community in 1805 did Mortimer candidly write of the hypocrisy of the availability of alcohol in Gnadenhutten. The explanation for Peter keeping rum and whiskey in his store may lie with the stark reality of the central role that alcohol played in the fur trade. “Liquor,” writes historian Peter Mancall, “quite literally lubricated the fur trade.” Among Shawnee and Ojibwa traders in the Great Lakes region and the Ohio territory at the turn of the century, the demand for alcohol increased a good deal from earlier periods. One French trader saw liquor as the only way to lure Indians to his store to trade furs and other necessary daily commodities. 175 Huebner noted in his diary a number of occasions when Indian traders from outside the community came to trade their furs. “Monday, the twenty eighth, and in the following days, many Indians were here with skins, which they traded in for merchandise.” 176 By “merchandise” 175 Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol,” 436, 431-432. 176 Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, November 20 & 28, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 109 Huebner meant foodstuffs, fish, baskets, brooms, maple sugar, and other commodities produced by the Goshen Indians; but in this region, it most certainly also meant alcohol. David Peter and the Moravian leaders in Gnadenhutten, including Ludwig Huebner, must have justified stocking and selling liquor in order to be competitive in the fur trade market and to “lure” Indian traders to the store. Moravian leaders wanted control over the liquor trade in the area and perhaps by having it under their purview they felt they could control the Native congregants’ involvement in the trade. The records, however, show that the leaders could not control their congregants’ consumption of alcohol. According to Mortimer, by 1805 white Gnadenhutten citizens and Goshen Indians had shared alcohol for years. 177 Mortimer wrote about these intercommunity-drinking frolics between the two Moravian villages at a time when the Goshen congregation was rapidly spiraling downward due to disagreements in the community. The Goshen community never fully recovered from one particular event. Indian brethren Ignatius and his wife Christina had been faithful congregants and companions to Zeisberger since 1771. Both served as leaders in the Goshen community. Their oldest son, Henry, however, had a troubled history. According to Mortimer’s diary, throughout his young life, Henry ventured away from his home in Goshen with his non-Christian Indian friends and engaged in drinking frolics and other misdeeds that Zeisberger judged unacceptable. In his late teens, Henry committed suicide by ingesting poison. 177 Mortimer diary, Moravian Archives, Box 173, folder 3, pp. 13-14, cited from Earl Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 153. 110 Because of Henry’s apostasy, which was considered to be an irredeemable sin, Zeisberger would not allow him to be buried in “God’s acre.” Nor would Zeisberger officiate over a Christian burial for Henry anywhere else in the area. Zeisberger’s decision devastated Ignatius and Christina and caused irreparable damage within the communities. Mortimer wrote about the tensions that existed between the Indians at Goshen and the Gnadenhutten brethren over Henry’s death and burial. In the afternoon the relations buried the corpse of the deceased Henry, at the place permitted them at some distance from our own burying-grounds. Had it been desired, we white brn. would also have attended at the grave, and a short discourse would have been delivered. But they were too highly displeased on account of his not having received absolution, & at being refused leave to bury him near. 178 Zeisberger’s decision not to allow Ignatius to bury his son in the church cemetery or with the proper Christian ritual ceremony was devastating to both communities. As a result of Zeisberger’s inflexibility, Ignatius and Christina, together with half of the Indian congregation, severed their relationship with Zeisberger. Ignatius and the faction of the Goshen community that broke with him held deep animosity toward Zeisberger from which those involved never recovered. Sunday services were empty except for a few faithful like William Henry’s family. Ignatius, according to all accounts, had never abused alcohol before, but following this ordeal, he and the Indian brethren who broke from the Goshen congregation regularly engaged in drinking frolics. What was most insidious to Mortimer, 178 Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, March 31, 1805; Box 173, folder 2, MA; cited from Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 202. 111 Ignatius and the Indian converts who joined him obtained their alcohol from their white brethren from Gnadenhutten and, collectively, they participated in “frolics” on a regular basis. 179 On Sunday October 26, 1805, Zeisberger delivered a seething sermon directed at Ignatius and his faction, publicly accusing him and the others who joined him in drinking alcohol and other debaucheries. Zeisberger threatened that they would suffer the consequences of their behavior by losing his support and that of the church at Bethlehem. The Goshen fellowship risked complete abandonment by the Moravian church if they continued on this path. Zeisberger threatened that Ignatius and his followers would bear the responsibility for the failure of the mission at Goshen. William Henry approached Mortimer the following day in defense of his Native brethren. Mortimer noted in his diary that Henry’s main point was the inequitable treatment of the Indians by the missionaries. White congregants in Gnadenhutten had engaged in drunken frolics for years, Henry protested, and the leadership—Mortimer, Zeisberger, and Huebner—never discussed it. “Last of all,” Henry petitioned Mortimer, “our brethren objected (to Zeisberger’s sermon) as follows: “We have seen” said they, “with our own eyes, drunkenness among our brethren in Gnadenhutten, for some years past, whenever we have been there; and believe that it is not taken so much amiss of them, as it is of us.” Mortimer 179 I obtained the information on the 1805 crisis surrounding Ignatius and his son from Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 153-155, 202, 203-207, & 239- 240. 112 continued, “On being answered by us, that it was not the brethren but other people who got drunk there, they replied: that the brethren there allowed the drunkenness, as they sold out liquor for it.” 180 Mortimer acknowledged Henry’s righteous indignation and detailed the hypocrisy at issue in his diary the following day: As since then [the passage of the prohibition of alcohol act], the Society’s store keeper at Gnadenhutten [David Peter]—the only person on the three tracts in whose sale of spirituous liquor the Society has interest—has, and for years successively, dealt publickly in the same, While all other persons on the three tracts considered themselves as prohibited so to do, therefore, in the eyes of the quick-sighted world around us the opposers of the act were right in their vile insinuations concerning us, and we are an artful, designing, hypocritical people, whose professions are not to be believed nor secret views trusted. In addition to all this, it is a known fact that the Indians in whose welfare we pretended to be much interested, have also occasionally obtained liquor there [at Gnadenhutten] to excess. 181 In direct contradiction to their goal of protecting their Indian charges from the evils of white civilization, the Moravian leadership turned a blind eye and permitted liquor in the communities. It appears they were motivated by economic reasons. The congregants at Gnadenhutten were, at the very least, complicit with their Indian brethren in the breakdown of the congregation at Goshen. The Goshen community never fully recovered from this event. Even then, the Indians were increasingly blamed for their apostasy and debauchery and the failure of the experiment. 180 Mortimer diary, Box 173, folder 3, p. 18, MA; cited from Earl Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 153. 181 Mortimer diary, Box 173, folder 3, p. 13-14, MA; cited from Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware, 154-155. 113 Ludwig Huebner and his family left Gnadenhutten in August 1805 at the height of the controversy. Huebner never mentioned the crisis in his diary. He was perhaps unaware of the crisis, but this seems improbable. Or, knowing that the leadership in Bethlehem would read his diary, he chose not to disclose such unattractive behavior on the part of his congregation and the failings of the Goshen/Gnadenhutten experiment. As much as Huebner and the Moravian leadership hoped for interracial, communal harmony between Indians and whites, their utopian vision would not be realized at Gnadenhutten and Goshen. Although Huebner avoided the realities of drinking and discord within his own community, he was well aware of external conditions in the region that coincided with the internal tensions at the Moravian villages. Huebner noted in his diary that the fear of Indians remained strong among incoming white settlers and rumors of Indian aggression and atrocities only fed their already fertile imagination. Tensions were high in this borderland region and can be felt in his entry: Toward evening two men from Fayette County came here, who were on their way to White-woman’s Creek. At seven o’clock last evening as they, together with the wife of one of them, were expecting to stay over night not far from Stillwater, there were two musket shots not far from them; being alarmed at this they thought the Indians wanted to murder them and therefore walked to the Stillwater, by which time it was quite dark; there they took the woman between them and wanted to swim across but were so unfortunate that the woman drowned and they could not find her any more. In the following days different ones of the Brethren and friends went there to search for her, but in vain. But they found the things belonging to the people where they had 114 placed them, undamaged and undisturbed which was sufficient evidence that their fear of the Indians was unfounded. 182 Hostilities between incoming Anglo-Americans and Ohio Indians were a reality in the region and increasing. Stirrings of a pan-Indian revivalist movement were well underway, which sought to reclaim Native power and lands in Ohio. 182 Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, April 11, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 115 Chapter 3 Encounters on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier: The Heritage of Anna Gibson Huebner, Great-Granddaughter of “an Indian girl.” Now Larry if you do not want to bother with the family heirlooms, do not hesitate to say so, but I prefer they go to family folke (sic), and you, your father, and your son all carry the Gibson name, your children are the 8 th generation descended from colonists and pioneers. Ellen Gibson Watts letter to Lawrence Gibson Huebner, 1959. 183 In the spring of 1806, less than a year after Ludwig Huebner and his family left the congregation at Gnadenhutten, William Gibson entered the newly formed state of Ohio to survey two-quarter sections of military district land along the banks of Wills Creek, a tributary to the Muskingum River, which was a tributary to the great Ohio River. The site Gibson chose was twenty-one miles south of Gnadenhutten and Goshen. Unlike the Huebners, who were Moravian, William Gibson and his wife Nancy were not affiliated with a Christian sect that compelled them to move west to Christianize Indians. William and Nancy and their children were part of the stream of ambitious settlers emigrating west for economic reasons following the expanding borders of the fledgling United States. 184 They saw an 183 Personal correspondence, Ellen Gibson Alloway Watts to Lawrence Gibson Huebner, March 22, 1959. Huebner Family papers. 184 For mid-nineteenth century family migration patterns in the trans-Mississippi West and the Great Plains, see John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979); and Elliot West, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains, (Albuquerque: University of New 116 opportunity to better their lives and the lives of their descendants in the newly opened Northwest Territory of Ohio. The next year, William returned with his wife, Nancy Larison Gibson, and their six children, one of whom was an infant. They left their home in Newellstown, Virginia (now St. Clairsville, Ohio) to establish a new home in eastern Ohio. Regional records list the Gibsons as the first whites to settle in the county of Guernsey, an area located one hundred and sixteen miles west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When they arrived, their closest neighbors were Native peoples living in nearby villages. 185 On their westward journey they walked along established Indian trails; they rode on horseback and led their livestock through dense, uncut forest; they paddled down creeks in canoe and chartered flatboats to ferry them across wide rivers. On this arduous trip they carried the necessary household goods with them to better their chances for survival during their first months in the harsh Ohio hinterland. Nancy and William also carried cumbersome items with them to Ohio that did not possess practical utility. They took two Bibles. One was small and easy to carry and would have served the spiritual needs of the family. The second, published in 1775 and protected in a soft deerskin book-cover, was large and heavy. On the back Mexico Press, 1995). For early colonial settlement and the impact European agricultural practices had on Native peoples and the ecology of New England see, William Cronon’s seminal, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983, 2003). 185 Portrait and Biographical Record of Guernsey County, Ohio. (Chicago: C.O. Owen & Co., 1895), 333. 117 page of this Bible were written the names, births, and deaths of family members. Nancy and William also carried with them a weighty, broad rimmed pewter platter that William’s Scots-Irish parents had transported with them on their trans-Atlantic trip in 1768 when they had migrated from Ireland. 186 This chapter traces the history of the westward movement of this Euro- American family into the trans-Appalachian West at the turn of the nineteenth century. The story focuses on the relationship the family had with the Indian population in the region and how the westward movement they were a part of affected Native American society in Ohio. The policies of the United States and the movement of American settlers into the trans-Appalachian west in the first decade of the nineteenth century permanently altered indigenous communities in Ohio. The Gibson family’s Ohio history suggests that the reformist drive to create interracial communities in Goshen and Gnadenhutten faltered even when newcomers had no obvious desire to conquer local peoples. The Moravian communities simple could not sustain under the pressures that accompanied American settler advance. The Scots-Irish-Indian Gibson family and the white and Indian Moravians were separated by only twenty-one miles, linked together by the Muskingum River and Wills Creek. Throughout the year their lives would intersect through the trade of surplus goods and probably the sale of alcohol. They shared the phenomena of settler advance, Indian resistance movements, the War of 1812, and Indian removal. 186 Both Bibles and the pewter platter are in the Huebner family collection. 118 The possessions the Gibsons brought with them to Ohio help tell this family’s story, especially the Bibles, the pewter platter, and the flax textiles. Subsequent generations of the Gibson family kept these family artifacts and, over the years, continued to accumulate more. These include a large flax dual-pane blanket Nancy Larison Gibson wove in the 1790s. Daguerreotypes, tintype and glass photographs, diaries, letters, land deeds, and homespun fabrics were held safe by one generation to pass on to the next. These artifacts convey more than quaint family lore. They help to tell the multi-generational history of an American family’s westward movements and life in frontier Ohio. They also speak to what the family wished to remember about their history and what they chose to forget. * William Gibson fit the familiar demographic model of the incoming settler to the Ohio Territory. 187 He was a Scots-Irish Presbyterian, a farmer, and a whiskey maker. 188 His wife Nancy also conformed to most of the characteristics of the 187 Stephen Aron’s study of the Anglo American advance into the Ohio region argues for a much “messier” society in Ohio at the turn of the nineteenth century where Indian and Anglo-American lives were less demarcated than other studies suggest. See Stephen Aron, “Pigs and Hunters: “Rights in the Woods” on the Trans- Appalachian Frontier,” in Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830, Andrew Cayton, editor (Williamsburg, VA: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 175-185. Peter Mancall’s work on the Susquehanna Valley provided a useful template for my study on the Gibson migration into Ohio. Mancall’s study also informed my analysis of the early Gibson migration into western Pennsylvania and the consequences that the large migrations of Euro-American settlers into the Valley over the course of the eighteenth century had on the Indian populations. See, Mancall, Valley of Opportunity. 188 My treatment on the culture and impact of alcohol in the Ohio region relies heavily on W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcohol Republic: An American Tradition (New 119 frontier settler woman. She was a spinner, a weaver, and the mother of twelve children. Unique among her peers, however, she was a skilled midwife and healer in her community; and she was Native American. 189 Her story enriches the existing narratives of Scots-Irish American families settling in the trans-Appalachian west. She was an anglicized Native American and her presence on the Ohio frontier fosters new queries about Anglo-American advance and Indian resistance, displacement, and removal. 190 York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Mancall, Deadly Medicine; and Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol,” 425-448. For more general studies of the Scots-Irish settlers that deal with their alcohol culture see, Maldwyn A. Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America,” in Strangers Within the Realm, Bailyn and Morgan, editors. 189 Various references in family documents and in regional histories identify Nancy Larison Gibson as an “Indian girl.” See William G. Wolfe, Stories of Guernsey County, Ohio: History of an Average Ohio County (Cambridge, Ohio: self published by author, 1943); unknown author, Portrait and Biographical Record of Guernsey County, Ohio. Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County (Chicago: C.O. Owen & Co., 1893. There is no official document--such as birth, adoption, census, or death records that substantiate this attribution. Washington County, Pennsylvania, the county in which Nancy was born did not start keeping adoption records until 1790, fourteen years after her birth in 1776. Neither did they register Indian births. My analysis of Nancy Larison Gibson’s occupation as a midwife and healer is informed by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); and Conevery Bolton Valencius, The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 190 Admittedly, the term “frontier” is problematic and I use it cautiously but with purpose to explain Indian-white intersection in the history of the Gibson family in the Ohio territory. An ongoing discussion/debate exists in the field of Western history over the usefulness of the term. Patricia Limerick, in The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1987), was the first to challenge its use in Western history because it harkens back to late nineteenth century understandings of a linear, east to west, 120 Part 1: The “Colonists” The Gibson family saga of westward movement and settlement began when William Gibson’s parents, William Sr. and Avis Carey, sailed from Ireland to the colonies in 1768. This Ulster Scots-Irish émigré family brought their sensibilities about land, religion, community, and politics with them to their new home in British American expansion, and the closure of the frontier propagated by Frederick Jackson Turner in his paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” which he gave at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Turner told the story of American expansion west and the closing of the frontier with Anglo-American pioneers as his central subjects and the axe and plow functioning as their props/weapons of conquest. If Native Americans were discussed at all, they were left to the margins of his history of the West. Modern critics of Turner’s thesis rightfully reject his interpretation as fundamentally Amerocentric and triumphalist. I define the term “frontier” in the context of accommodation within joint occupation, utilizing Stephen Aron and Kerwin Lee Klein’s understanding of “frontier” as a space of political and cultural convergence between divergent polities and a collision of distinct peoples. Frontier then, is a “territory or zone of interpenetration between at least two distinct societies,” and traces accommodations, acculturations, adaptations, and assimilation over time. This meaning complements historians Limerick, White, and others’ use of the term, which emphasized colonialization and conquest. For the rejection of Turner’s “frontier” see Patricia Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest, and Something in the Soil, (1989); Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Press, 1973, 2001 edition); and Richard White, Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). For compelling revisions of Turner that still see the usefulness of his theory on the frontier, see Kerwin Lee Klein, “Reclaiming the “F” Word, Or, Being and Becoming Postwestern,” Pacific Historical Review 65 (May 1996), 179-215; Stephen Aron, “Lessons in Conquest: Towards a Greater Western History,” Pacific Historical Review 63 (May 1994), 125-147; and Stephen Aron, “The Making of the First American West and the Unmaking of Other Realms,” in Blackwell Companion to the American West, William Deverell, (ed.); and Robert Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). For a lively debate among western historians on the significance of Turner see, “The Legacy of Conquest,” by Patricia Nelson Limerick: A Panel of Appraisal (commentators: Donald Worster; Susan Armitage; Michael Malone; David Weber; Patricia Limerick)” The Western Historical Review (Aug. 1989). 121 North America. After making the difficult journey across the Atlantic, landing in Philadelphia, William and Avis Carey Gibson and their young son, Henry, traveled to the Cumberland Valley located on the east side of the Appalachian mountains in the southern corner of the colony of Pennsylvania. 191 The details of their departure from Ireland are not known, but they were part of a large wave of Protestant (predominately Presbyterian) migrants from Ulster who felt America held a better future for them. 192 William and Avis had at least four sons over the course of their lives. Henry, the oldest, was born in Ireland, which meant he made the arduous trip across the Atlantic with his parents. Avis Gibson was 191 Family documents state that the family landed at the port of Philadelphia. Ellen Gibson Watts to Lawrence Gibson Huebner, personal correspondence June 7, 1959. Huebner family collection. Maldwyn A. Jones confirms that after 1725, almost all Scots-Irish landed in the port of Philadelphia. See Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America,” in Bailyn and Morgan eds., Strangers Within the Realm, 294. 192 There is an extensive literature on eighteenth century trans-Atlantic family migration patterns from Ireland to America that related closely to historical information I have found on the Gibson family experience. The major monographs that have informed this study include, Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986); and D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Volumes 1 and 2. Meinig’s expansive work discusses in depth the eighteenth century migration patterns to North America of all of the major groups: Africans, Germans and other European groups, and the great variety of British Empire immigrants. For specific works on Ulster Scots-Irish migration to British North America and their settlement in the mid-Atlantic colonies, see Nicholas Canny, “The Marginal Kingdom: Ireland as a Problem in the First British Empire;” and Maldwyn A. Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America,” in Bailyn and Morgan eds., Strangers Within the Realm; and Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire. 122 pregnant with their second son, John, while en route, making the trip across the Atlantic an especially harrowing experience for her. 193 Trans-Atlantic traveler Gottlieb Mittelberger wrote an account of his 1750 voyage from Europe to Philadelphia. His experience was probably similar to that of the Gibson family, since sailing ships and technologies had not changed much in the intervening eighteen years. Mittelberger described his sea journey as filled with “smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot…which brings miserable destruction and death of many. Children between the ages of one and seven seldom survive the sea voyage.” 194 Beginning in the 1720s, Scots-Irish from the province of Ulster in Northern Ireland began to immigrate to the American colonies in massive numbers. 195 The Gibson family’s arrival in 1768 came at the end of this long first wave of Irish 193 The information on the dates and places of birth of the children of William and Avis Gibson comes from two sources: an insert in the diary of James Gibson (circa 1830 to 1880) titled “Births and Dates of William Gibson Sr,” and a detailed family tree organized by Amelia Baumgarten, a Gibson descendant, in the 1950s. Both sources are in the Huebner family collection. 194 Gottlieb Mittelberger original quote from Journey to Pennsylvania, ed. and trans. Oscar Handlin and John Clive. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1960), 12-15, cited from Gary Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of North America (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2000 edition), 204. 195 Bernard Bailyn writes that between the end of the Seven Year’s War in 1763 and the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, in just twelve years, over 55,000 people emigrated from Ireland. He called the migration a “social force.” See Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 7, 26. 123 immigration. The typical Ulster Scots-Irish migration between 1760 and 1775 consisted of artisans (from the linen and weaving industry) and farmers, and possibly distillers. Like so many of their fellow Scots-Irish who preceded them to America, the Gibsons were yeoman farmers who were part of the more than 100,000 Scots- Irish immigrants looking for an opportunity for private land ownership and freedom from the religious, social, and economic tyranny they lived under in Ireland under British rule. 196 William Gibson may have been a distiller in Ireland as well as a farmer. When the family settled in the colonies, he and his son William Jr. owned taverns where they served alcohol. William Jr. made his own still and whiskey later when he was in Ohio and undoubtedly learned the craft from his father. Two factors motivated the mass exodus from Ireland in the mid-eighteenth century. First, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the British government imposed economic and religious prohibitions on Ulster citizens, whose commercial success threatened landed elites. The government restricted the export of Ulster livestock (cattle, sheep, and hogs); they limited the import of American goods into the province; and in 1705 they prohibited any export of wool, which virtually destroyed Ulster’s vibrant wool industry. British Anglican authorities also placed restrictions on the Presbyterians among the Ulster Scots-Irish. They forbade 196 See Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 26. For an additional source for migration numbers from Ireland, see Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 134. 124 ministers to perform marriage ceremonies unless validated by the Church of England, and they barred all Presbyterians from government service. 197 Moreover, the people-to-land ratio was much more favorable in the colonies than in Ireland, creating a sense of opportunity for Ulster’s oppressed yeoman class. Following their defeat in the Seven Years’ War, the French ceded vast territories to the English, adding the trans-Appalachian region to the regions already in British possession. News of the newly opened lands and the opportunities for land ownership quickly spread to places like Ulster. 198 Shortly after their arrival in Philadelphia, the Gibson family of three— William and Avis (still pregnant) and their toddler, Henry—trekked south to the Cumberland region in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, near the border with Maryland. This was a backcountry region of Scots-Irish settlement, but it was also a “middle ground“ between the English colonials to their east (for whom they had little 197 Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 134; see also, John Anthony Caruso, The Appalachian Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1959, 2007), 38-39. I use Caruso’s dated work cautiously here, and solely for historical facts and dates related to the settlement of the Appalachian region. 198 Maldwyn A. Jones writes that discontent with British rule and religious persecution only partly explains Ulster immigration to America. While it is true certain statutory laws were oppressive to Scots-Irish Presbyterians, such as the Test Act of 1704, these measures were only nominally enforced. By the time of the large waves of migration that occurred in the 1730s, Presbyterians in Ulster lived largely unmolested. The main motivation for migration, throughout the first three quarters of the eighteenth century was economic, not religious. The Scots-Irish were oppressed by tithes, short leases, high rents, and most lived in serious poverty—these factors drove Ulsters to try their luck in America. Maldwyn A. Jones, “The Scotch- Irish in British America,” 291-293. 125 affinity) and the Native Americans to their west. 199 The Gibsons joined their Ulster Scots-Irish country folk who clustered in homogeneous settlements in the Cumberland region starting in the early decades of the eighteenth century. 200 Although their social surroundings possessed some of the familiar trappings of home, they had to weather the challenges of a new physical environment. Fortuitously for this family, all members survived the arduous journey across the Atlantic and the “seasoning” period of the first few years of settlement. “Seasoning” is a process of physical acculturations to the new environment. This process would be repeated with all of the relocations the Gibson family made as they went farther into the backcountry over the next four decades. 201 In fact, two sons were born in the first three years of their arrival, John and George, while the family resided in the Cumberland region. The Ulster Scots-Irish traveled in “isolated family and community groups” across difficult Indian paths in wagons filled with household items. When the roads were impassible they boarded canoes and rafts to reach the outlaying areas beyond 199 Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 134; and Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 8. 200 The Scots-Irish emigrated largely in groups of people that knew each other in Ulster and were often related. Settlement was often determined by previous community affiliation settlement in Ulster. See Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America,” 293. 201 Migration always necessitated adjustment, not only externally but internally in the body as well. “Seasoning diseases,” notes Conevery Bolton Valencius, “had marked Europeans’ settlement of places in North America since the colonial era.” See Valencius, The Health of the Country, 22-23. 126 colonial borders. Among the items that William and Avis brought with them from Ireland and carried to the Cumberland region was a heavy broad-rimmed, crudely crafted pewter platter, twenty-four inches diameter, and a large family Bible with the names and dates of births and deaths of family members. 202 Both items were heavy 202 Several family records state that William and Avis Gibson brought a Bible over from Ireland that in 1900 would have been two hundred years old (published circa 1700). The Bible pictured above is in the family collection but is dated 1775. There are two possible conclusions to be made: one that there was another earlier family Bible from Ireland no longer in the Huebner/Gibson family’s possession; or the family lore about the Bible was incorrect, that it did not come over when the family migrated, rather that the Gibsons obtained it sometime after 1775 after arriving in America. The Bible pictured above is very large and heavy and has the names and dates of the births and deaths of Gibson family members from the second and third generations. Personal correspondence, Ellen Gibson Alloway Watts to Lawrence Gibson Huebner, March 22, 1959, Huebner Family papers; and Col. C.P. Sarchet, “Early History. As Related by the Vererable James Gibson, of Kimbolton.” Cambridge Jeffersonian November 29, 1894. Figure 6: Pewter platter, brought from Ireland to British North America, 1768. 127 and cumbersome and more burdensome than practical to carry on their long and arduous journey. So why did William and Avis hold on to them? William Gibson Sr. is listed in the 1810 census as illiterate and his 1819 will is signed with his mark, an “x,” which confirms his inability to write. Who wrote the names and dates in the Bible? Who in the family was able to read? Avis Carey Gibson may have been literate, but this poses further questions about the gendered history of literacy in the family. William Jr. was, like his father, illiterate. Nancy Larison Gibson, William Jr.’s wife, was, on the other hand, literate. 203 It may have been she who signed her name below on a page in the middle of the large family Bible. 203 The United States census records for 1820, 1850, and 1879 list Nancy Larison Gibson as able to read and write. Her parents, John and Elizabeth Larison, however, were not literate. For the census records on Nancy Larison Gibson see www.Ancestry.com. For John and Elizabeth Larison, see land contract between John and Elizabeth Larason and Israel Beagler, July 14, 1804, in pages 418-419; Citizens Library, Washington, PA. Figure 7: Gibson family Bible, circa 1775. 128 At least some of the women in the Gibson family were literate, yet the men of the first and second generation were not. By the third generation, the Gibsons placed a premium on education, and the children born from the early 1800s and after went to school and were literate. 204 The pewter-platter provides additional insight into the economic status, or at least the economic aspirations, of Avis and William Gibson. From the 1500s through the eighteenth century, the price of pewter-ware was prohibitive and 204 James Gibson, son of Nancy and William was a teacher for a short while in Liberty, Ohio. He kept a diary for fifty years in which he listed all the letters written and received between him and his siblings and children, indicating their level of literacy. In the 1850 and 1870 United States census, all the children in the Gibson household under twenty years of age were listed as attending school. See James Gibson diary, Huebner family collection. Figure 8: Nancy Gibson’s signature in family Bible. 129 predominately found in the households of Britain’s elite class. 205 Pewter-ware hit its high point as a symbol of higher economic status in Ireland and Britain in the first half of the eighteenth century. By mid-century, however, pewter-ware became more affordable to all classes and began to decline as a symbol of wealth. The Gibsons carried the pewter plate from Ireland to the colonies in 1768, then across hundreds of difficult miles south to the Cumberland Valley, and eventually to western Pennsylvania where they settled. Why would they cart such a large, awkward piece of tableware over thousands of miles? The pewter platter clearly possessed important meaning for them that cannot be fully determined. It can tell us, though, something about their economic position and/or aspirations when they arrived to the North American colonies. William and Avis did not use the platter as a form of barter when they arrived to America. Instead, it remained within the family. 206 Platters in families would be used to serve roasts and other meats. The platter may have served as a symbol of the economic standing of the Gibsons in Ireland as a middling farming family. They may have held on to it to help situate themselves as a middle-class family when they arrived among their Scots-Irish compatriots in the communities in the Cumberland region. It was a symbol of the home they had left and the one they would establish 205 The status of pewter as a symbol of wealth declined first among British elite, but later in America. For the history of pewter in Britain and North America during the period under study, see Peter R. G. Hornsby, Pewter in the Western World, 1600- 1850, (Exton, PA: Schiffer Publishers, 1983), 23-27 and 124-127. 206 The rather crude platter was a cherished family possession passed down through eight generations within the Gibson family. 130 in a new world. If the Gibsons were from a poorer class, the platter may have functioned as a sign of their social and economic aspirations. In 1772, the Gibson family migrated from the Cumberland region deeper into the borderland territory of the trans-Appalachian west where the possibility of land ownership had, over the course of the 1760s, become a feasible reality for them. The “opening” of these western Indian lands, however, brought peoples together with conflicting agendas, which promised to have ominous consequences. The French had ceded to the British large parts of land that the Iroquois nation and their dependant tribes deemed was rightfully theirs. 207 Tensions between Anglo-Americans settlers and Indians were high at the end of the Seven Year’s War to the Revolution and to forestall what seemed like eminent war between the western Indians and the advancing settlers, British authorities passed the Proclamation Line Act of 1763, which restricted settlement by colonists west of the Appalachian Mountains and was intended to serve as a line of separation between European settlers and Indian nations. Colonists who had already settled in the Ohio Valley were ordered to abandon their homes and return to the east behind the Proclamation’s invisible dividing line, which loosely traced the summit of the Appalachian Mountain range. The imperial edict was impossible to enforce and many backcountry settlers expressed anger toward the British authorities they felt 207 Fred Anderson, Crucible of War; Anthony F.C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 114-117. 131 supported the interests of Indians more than their own colonial subjects. 208 In defiance of British authorities, Scots-Irish settlers continued to squat on land without regard for law or Indian rights. Nor did they bother to acquire legal titles. The audacious ceding of Indian land by the French to the British at the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War incited a pan-Indian rebellion, commonly known as Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1765), an effort aimed at recapturing control of the area. 209 The rebellion ultimately failed and by the mid 1760s, tensions had risen so high between Indians and incoming British and European settlers that Indian leaders from the Delawares, Shawnees, Mingos, and other western tribes allied with the Iroquois wished for a second boundary line separating white colonists from their peoples. 210 By 1768, the disparate agendas of Indian peoples and the new colonial arrivals had reached such a volatile state that leaders from both sides realized that to live at peace the two peoples must live apart. Leaders from the Iroquois, Shawnee, and Delaware nations and representatives of the colonial government signed the 208 Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 133-137; and Silver, Our Savage Neighbor, 163-172. The Paxton revolt was largely motivated by these sensibilities. Other more prominent eastern colonists interested in land investment, George Washington among them, also viewed the Proclamation of 1863 with disdain. See also, D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Volume 1, 264, 284-287. 209 This period also witnessed the rise of a revivalist movement in response to the disintegration of frontier Indian communities from alcohol abuse, loss of hunting lands (from post-war 7 Years’ War negotiations and settlement), borderland violence, and loss of indigenous culture from acculturation. See Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 114, 117. For a new and insightful examination of the heightened forms of violence between Indians and whites in the Seven Years’ War and after, see Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, esp., Chapters 4 and 6. 210 Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 78, 88. 132 treaty at Ft. Stanwix in 1768. The treaty established a borderline that held out a modicum of hope to achieve peaceful but separate co-existence in the Ohio Valley. The treaty, however, transferred yet more Indian land to the British. The Iroquois ceded all of Kentucky (the principle hunting ground of the Ohio tribes). A large portion of western Pennsylvania and Virginia was now opened up for white settlement. 211 Increasing numbers of settlers pushed into the backcountry, creating more tension between Native Americans and colonists. 212 Ohio Indians claimed ownership of the land based on their historic occupation, and colonists claimed rights to the land as British subjects. British-American authorities, however, thought that the western reaches of this new acquisition could serve as a buffer zone between the eastern colonies and Native groups who were hostile to settler advance that occupied lands in the west, deep in the Ohio Valley. 213 Soon after the signing of the 1768 treaty, massive numbers of land hungry immigrants began pouring into western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley. British colonial officials especially encouraged the settlement of the newly arrived Scots- Irish in these borderland regions because they viewed these “ruffian,” clannish colonials as the perfect bulwark between the eastern colonial settlements and Indian 211 Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 90; Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 122. 212 Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 72-73. 213 Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 125. 133 populations in the west. 214 The brutalities of the Seven Years War however, had produced a dynamic that the opening of more land for settlement exacerbated further: the heightening of hatred between white colonists and Indians. 215 Conflicts between Indians and colonials only increased as new emigrants penetrated deeper into Indian occupied territory, extending beyond colonial borders and with utter disregard for imperial strictures. In 1769, British authorities opened a land office to enter land claims at Ft. Pitt (Pittsburgh). Nearly two thousand eight hundred applicants appeared the first day it opened. One million acres of southwestern Pennsylvania land were granted to settlers in the first four months. By 1771, 10,000 families lived in this trans- Appalachian frontier land. The Gibsons were soon among them. 216 By the mid- 1770s, this region witnessed “tens of thousands of settlers,” most of whom were Ulster Scots-Irish Presbyterian families, who squatted on land with the hope of future purchase once legitimate government was established. 217 Soon after they arrived at the Cumberland Valley in 1768, William and Avis Gibson set their sights west toward these recently acquired lands in the trans- Appalachian region. During the land rush after the Seven Years War through the 214 Gary Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1974, 2000, fourth edition), 261. 215 Hinderacker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 119. 216 Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 14. 217 Hinderacker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 151-153, 154-155; and Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 27. 134 mid-1770s, the Ohio Valley in the western reaches of Pennsylvania near and around the confluence of the Ohio, Monongahela, and Susquehanna Rivers saw the most concentrated settlement. Fort Pitt, situated where the three rivers converged, was a booming village by the mid 1760s, and the river systems offered great potential for the transportation of agricultural goods, furs, and timber to major markets throughout the eastern colonies and even the trans-Atlantic market through the Mississippi. This area of southwestern Pennsylvania witnessed a throng of settlers who entered claims at the land office or simply squatted on the land. With their presence established, these mostly Scots-Irish colonials “improved” the land by transforming it into Euro-American style farmland. 218 Most settlers entered the region and simply squatted with the hope for independent ownership once a legitimate government was established. 219 By 1772, the Gibson family left the Cumberland and migrated deeper into the western regions of Pennsylvania, south of Ft. Pitt in Washington County. If 218 “Improvement” of land was a Eurocentric principle of land use based on the biblical edict to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) and the English concept of “vacuum domicilium,” or the idea that empty land (even though used by Natives for hunting) was available for the taking. If land was not used in the English understanding of land use, if there were no fences, no permanent farms, then the land was considered open. In contrast, Indian understanding of land use was based on the principle of “usufruct,” or shared, community land use. In Native thinking, land was not owned, so it could not be sold, only the use of it could be given or sold. Indians owned was on the land, not the land itself. The English considered this communal understanding of land ownership as uncivilized. Indians did not think it made sense to stay in one place – Colonists saw impermanence as nomadic, barbaric and un- Christian. An excellent treatise on the differences in English and Indian understanding of land ownership and the meaning of the concept of “improvement” can be found in William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), see esp., 52-78. 219 Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 154. 135 they were first squatters, they quickly took advantage of the opportunity to purchase the land they had settled on. By the end of the 1790s, William and Avis Gibson had achieved middling status with independent land ownership and an agricultural livelihood that went beyond subsistence farming. 220 William Jr., the fourth son of Avis and William, was born on September 22, 1773 in Washington County. 221 Two years later the Revolutionary War broke out. By 1777, William Sr. served on the western regiment of the Pennsylvania militia for the Americans. Scots-Irish who lived deep in this part of the backcountry generally sympathized with the rebels. Indians in the region either sided with the British or tried to maintain a neutral stance, as the Delaware did during the first years of the conflict. William assuredly fought against his Indian neighbors who had allied with the British. 222 These racial divisions in the war in the hinterland intensified the 220 See June 9, 1806, indenture between Wm and Evish (sic) Gibson and Wm Gibson Jr., in “Land Records,” Volume A, page 489, Belmont County, Ohio, found in Guernsey County District Public Library, Cambridge, Ohio. William Gibson’s will indicates that he had accumulated over 100 acres that he bequeathed to his son, William Jr. See “William Gibson Sr. Will,” Guernsey County Probate Court, Will Book B, page 228, Guernsey County District Public Library, Cambridge, OH. 221 James Gibson diary, 1830 to circa 1880; insert “Births and Deaths of William Gibson Sr.” Huebner Family Archives. The records on William Sr. and William Jr. presented some confusion because after William Jr. had his own son named William, he thereafter was identified in the records as William Sr. To avoid confusion, I have retained the original title of “Sr.” for the first generation William and “Jr.” for the second generation William, except in the case where a citation requires the notation of jr. or sr. For subsequent generations named William, I use the full name including the middle initial. 222 Alan Taylor’s recent study, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Press, 2006), provides a comprehensive look at Native American involvement and experience 136 already strong distrust between the backcountry settlers and the Indians into the post- war era. 223 Nonetheless, over the course of the war and in the post-war era, there were cases of Indian and Euro-American integration, both in interracial community, such as the Moravians as well as through interracial adoption and marriage. Such was the case of Nancy Larison Gibson. Nancy Larison was born on February 23, 1776 in Washington County, Pennsylvania. 224 She grew up in a middling farming family in the township of Amwell, which was fairly close to the Gibson family farm. The 1781 tax rolls list John Larison, Nancy’s father, as owning 200 acres, three horses, and three heads of cattle. By 1793 he had increased his holdings to ten cattle and two sheep, indicating that the family lived beyond subsistence farming. Flax was the most important crop throughout the conflict. For the senior Gibson’s military record see Ellen Gibson Watts to Lawrence Huebner, personal correspondence, June 7, 1959, Huebner family collection. For a history on the Scots-Irish involvement in the Revolutionary War, see Maldwyn A. Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America,” in Bailyn and Morgan eds., Strangers Within the Realm, esp., 309. For the historical significance of the western migration of colonists into the Pennsylvania backcountry as a critical precursor to the Revolutionary War, see Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 150. 223 Mancall, Valley of Opportunity, 148-149. 224 There is a discrepancy in the records regarding Nancy Larison’s exact date of birth. An obituary states that at her death in 1773, she was a centenarian, which would mean she was born in 1773. There are several records that establish her birth in 1776, but according to officials at the Washington County Historical Archives, this could have been either her birth date or the date of her adoption into the Larison family. It is equally possible that Elizabeth, Nancy’s mother may have been Native American and that would explain Nancy’s identification as Indian. Elizabeth was born in 1754 in Washington County at a time when Indians dominated the area and the Euro-American population was negligible. 137 among these Scots-Irish settlers, and they made their own clothes and household linen and woolen products. Indications are that weaving also was part of the Larison family economy. 225 It is probable that John and Elizabeth Larison adopted Nancy, who was Native American, although there are no records of her adoption. 226 Euro-American adoption of orphaned Native American children was not unheard of before, during, or after the War for Independence, when the brutalities of war in the Pennsylvania hinterland decimated Native communities. 227 Euro-American families that brought Indian children into their homes often treated them as no better than indentured servants or slaves. However, in Nancy’s case, evidence suggests the Larisons incorporated her into the family on equal standing with the other children. One sign of her incorporation into this Anglo-American family and their community was her literacy. 225 Tax rolls, Pennsylvania archives, 3 rd Series, vol. 22, Washington County Supply Tax 1781, 1793. In 1804, John and his wife Elizabeth sold a portion of their estate in Amwell to one Israel Beagler for $1,571, which was a substantial sum of money for that time. “Indenture (contract) between John Larason (sic) to Israel Beagler,” July 14, 1804, Washington County Law Library, Washington County, Pennsylvania. 226 There are no existing records at the Washington County Records and Law Library on Nancy Larison’s birth and/or adoption that could identify her tribal affiliation. Unfortunately, Washington County did not begin registering adoptions until 1790 and Native American births were not regularly recorded prior to this period when Nancy was born. The resident tribes in the region were predominately Delaware and Shawnee, but numerous other Indian peoples displaced in the Seven Years War and other conflicts had populated the area as well. 227 Amy Schutt in her work on Indian children being incorporated into Moravian communities writes specifically on the devastation of Indian communities and particularly the children during the second half of the eighteenth century from war, famine, and disease, but mentions nothing about adoption of Native children into Euro-American Moravian families. See Schutt, “What will become of our Children.” 138 Both her parents, and her husband, William Gibson Jr., were illiterate. 228 A second sign was her full appropriation of white ways evidenced in a daguerreotype of her at mid-life, which shows her anglicized in manner and dress. 229 228 Two documents attest to the illiteracy of Wm Gibson and Nancy’s parents. Both John and Elizabeth Larison signed a contract for the sale of land with an “x.” See “Indenture of the sale of land between John and Elizabeth Larason to Israel Beagler,” July 14, 1804, Recorder of Deeds, Property Records (1781-present), pp. 418-419, Washington County, PA, Courthouse. William Jr. signed his will with an “x.” “William Gibson Sr. Will,” April 24, 1849, Guernsey County Probate Court, Will Book B, p. 228. 229 The family Bible brought from Pennsylvania to Ohio had the “ages of the children of William Gibson and Nancy Larison, his wife, written in a very legible hand.” See Colonel C.P.B. Sarchet, “Colonel Sarchet Asks James Gibson, the Nonogenarian (sic), a Few Questions.” The Guernsey Times, circa, December 1894. Figure 9: Daguerreotype of Nancy Larison, circa 1840s. Huebner family collection 139 Nancy was also trained in the art of midwifery and curatives, skills that would have required an apprenticeship with the older female members of the family and the community. 230 By the age of twenty, Nancy was an accomplished spinner and weaver, evidenced by a large flax dual-pane coverlet she fashioned in the late 1790s. These factors suggest she was incorporated into the Larison family economy and into the broader Scots-Irish village community. On the national front, the newly formed United States showed its ambitions for expanding American settlement into the Ohio region soon after the signing of the Treaty at Paris in 1783. Britain handed over to the United States all of its territorial claim from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River below the Canadian border. American leaders viewed the Indians as a conquered people and left them completely out of the negotiations with Britain. However, leaders of the Iroquois nation and the Ohio Indians who sided with the British did not perceive themselves defeated and the treaty left them deeply disaffected. The expenses from the war left the new United States government in serious debt and the newly acquired public lands (which was in fact Indian territory) was a way to supplement back pay promised to soldiers and backcountry militiamen. The acquisition and disbursement of Indian land was critical to the stabilization of the fledgling nation. 231 230 See Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, 77. I discuss Nancy Gibson’s practice in midwifery and curative skills in more detail below. 231 Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 148-150. 140 Following the Paris Treaty, the U.S. government passed two pieces of legislation—the 1785 Land Ordinance and 1787 Northwest Territory Ordinance—both of which were clear indications of the nation’s intentions for the region. The first ordinance allowed for the survey of Ohio lands gained from Britain following the War for Independence. Once surveyed, the United States could recoup financial losses incurred during the conflict through the sale of lands to investors and settlers. The 1787 Ordinance established the Ohio region as a territory under the governance of the United States, with provision for a governor and a future for statehood when population numbers reached 60,000. These ordinances proved critical because it gave surveyors, investors, and future settlers in this contested and volatile region the necessary assurances that the United States would secure and protect their investments both militarily and politically. The ordinances opened up the possibility for settler land purchase and provided the level of security and promise that attracted William Gibson to move his family to Ohio. 232 These developments only exacerbated tensions between Ohio’s Indians who were resistant to further incursions and white settlers bent on land ownership. In 1785, Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, and other Ohio Indian tribes organized a Western Confederacy and demanded that the United States treat with them 232 These ordinances established the region’s legal infrastructure and national future settlement by families like the Gibsons. See D.W. Meinig, Vol. 2, 341-342; and Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A new interpretive history, 107-109 (1785 Land Ordinance) and 113-116 (1787 Northwest Ordinance). For a detailed explanation of both ordinances, see The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings, Emily Foster, ed., (The University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 68- 69. 141 exclusively, recognize their autonomy, and acknowledge their land rights. The United States initially ignored the confederacy, insisting that peace depended on the Indians’ acquiescing to federal demands for their land. If the Indians did not agree to the United States’ demands and accept the so-called conquerors’ “humanitarian” offers of allotment, the war would continue until the Indians were either expelled or exterminated. The Western Confederacy rejected the government’s demands and resisted the encroachment of whites with violence. During the late 1780s until the early 1790s, the war for independence, Indian independence, would continue in the Ohio country. 233 The Western confederacy enjoyed early successes with two devastating defeats of American forces under Josiah Harmar and Arthur St. Claire. In 1794, however, Washington employed General Wayne Anthony with numerically superior forces and defeated the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. That same year, the Gibson and Larison families celebrated the marriage of son William Gibson Jr. to the Larison daughter, Nancy, during the height of conflict between western tribes and the United States. William Jr. followed his father’s vocation and became a farmer. Nancy and William also followed the western movement patterns of Avis and William Sr. Within just a few years of marriage, this second generation Gibson family set their sights on newly opened western lands in the Ohio territory. 233 Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 151-155. 142 Like many of his contemporaries, William Gibson Jr., only in his mid- twenties, eyed the Ohio territory at the end of the eighteenth century and started edging his way deeper west. The treaties negotiated between the United States and the Delaware, Ojibway, Wyandot, and Ottawa nations following the Battle at Fallen Timbers secured the region for American advancement and settlement. Many Ohio Indians felt deeply disaffected with the outcome and the 1795 Treaty at Greenville, which ceded two thirds of Indian land in Ohio to the United States and continued to resist Anglo-American encroachment onto their homelands. However, settlers, like the Gibson family, continued to pour into the Ohio Territory in greater numbers after 1795. The cumulative effect of these land cessions set the stage for Indian revivalism and resistance. 234 In their first decade of married life, William and Nancy Gibson established themselves as a middling farming family of some means at the eastern edges of the newly acquired Ohio territory. Immediately after their marriage in 1794, they moved west from Washington County, Pennsylvania and established a farm near Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia). They remained there for six years. Three of their eventual twelve children were born there: their first child, John, was born in 1795, 234 For the most comprehensive and intelligent study on Indian resistance movements from the middle of the eighteenth century through the first two decades of the nineteenth century, see Dowd, A Spirited Resistance. See also, Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 179. 143 then Martha in 1797, and William in 1799. 235 Sometime during the family’s tenure in Wheeling, Nancy spun and wove the dual-pane or “counterpane” coverlet blanket pictured below from flax grown on the family farm. 236 235 Nancy had thirteen children but lost one in infancy. Her great success at rearing children into healthy adulthood was due in no small part to her skills in midwifery and curatives. 236 The blanket was part of the collection of family artifacts Aunt Ellen “Bob” Gibson Watts sent to Lawrence Gibson Huebner in 1959. Aunt Bob explained to her nephew the family lore surrounding the blanket. “One of the heaviest articles would be a hand woven “coverlet” or counterpane, woven by my great-grandmother, Nancy Larison Gibson, your great-great-great grandmother. Our mother said she always understood “Granny” wore it before they moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio in 1802.” Personal correspondence, Ellen Gibson Alloway Watts to Lawrence Gibson Huebner, March 22, 1959. Huebner Family papers. Figure 10: Linen/flax dual-pane coverlet woven by Nancy Larison Gibson, circa 1790s. Figure 11: Close-up of coverlet. 144 Family records indicate that Nancy wore the blanket before the family moved farther west in 1801, indicating that the Gibsons had amassed enough acreage to grow the flax used in the manufacture their own clothing. Continuing their westward movement, in 1801, they settled in Newellstown, Virginia (now St. Clairesville, Ohio), where two more sons were born: Henry in 1802 and James in 1804. For four years while in Newellstown, William owned an inn and tavern where he likely served his home-brewed whiskey to his customers. 237 When they left Virginia for Ohio in 1807, Nancy and William had accumulated a fair amount of land and livestock. On their journey into Ohio, they transported an undetermined number of cattle, horses, and sheep, together with a large boatload of household goods. The natural growth of the Gibson family meant that they had to expand their economic productivity, which necessitated more land. And the land to be had was in Ohio. But Ohio was far from unoccupied. Delawares, Wyandots, Shawnees, and several other Indian peoples, who considered Ohio their rightful homeland and viewed the incoming white settlers as unwelcome intruders, had suffered much in the previous decade and were finding new ways to regain what they had lost. Ohio’s indigenous peoples were not willing to relinquish their land quietly. 237 Cayton, Ohio, 41. William Jr. was a skilled whiskey distiller. 145 Part 2: The “Pioneers” When the land in Ohio opened for Euro-American settlement, there were multiple and competing agendas for how to deal with the Indian presence in the region and what their future course should be. In the mid to late-1790s, after the signing of the Greenville Treaty, Thomas Jefferson, supported by leading statesmen and social elites—Henry Knox, Benjamin Lincoln, Henry Pickering, and Philadelphia’s leading Quakers—determined that the Indians were disappearing. Native Americans, the reasoning went, who refused to adopt white ways of agriculture and who maintained their hunting practices, could not sustain the advance of “civilization.” Jefferson’s logic was shrouded in benevolence, but in reality it was more expedient to his goal of land acquisition. In Jefferson’s rationale, the Indians should “abandon hunting, to apply to the raising of stock, to agriculture and to domestic manufacture, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and labor will maintain them.” 238 The two-fold plan for both America and the Indians was that it was possible to save the Indians by stripping them of their lands and their Indian-ness. Jefferson saw the possibility that Indians could change, but they had to change to white ways for their own survival. However, “if the savages cannot be civilized and quit their present pursuits,” one Jefferson contemporary argued, “they will in consequence of 238 Jefferson quote from D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 2, 79. 146 their stubbornness, dwindle and moulder (sic) away.” 239 The official Indian policy of the United States in the last years of the eighteenth century was to confine Indian tribes to small reservations and to promote their “civilization” for their survival. This new American ideology conveniently emerged at a time of aggressive western expansion. Richard White argues this “American imperial benevolence… held full sway” in eastern politics from the signing of the Greenville Treaty through to the first decade of the nineteenth century. 240 While eastern elites articulated benevolent ideas about what the character of American expansionism should look like—dispossession through treating with the Indians, followed by “expansion with honor”—the reality on the ground was much different. Incoming settlers who dominated the backcountry held attitudes and took action toward Indians that were characterized by both disregard and bloodshed. Many of the incoming settlers were intent on emptying Ohio of its Indian population, either pushing them further west or by outright killing them. Not all newcomers 239 The quote is Benjamin Lincoln’s and is taken from Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 196. 240 White, The Middle Ground, 470, 473-474. Stephen Aron argues that the Jefferson administration’s policies of land settlement (Jeffersonian agrarianism) and the purchase of trans-Mississippi territory through the Louisiana Purchase (1803) had the most impact on Indians and their lands and that it set the course for Anglo- American westward expansion and a permanent transformation of the landscape. James Rhonda, writes that in Jefferson’s imagination of the American West, expansion coincided with his concept of republican agrarianism upon which the future welfare of the nation depended. See Stephen Aron, “The Making of the First American West and the Unmaking of Other Realms,” 19-20, in BCAW; and James P. Rhonda, “Passion and Imagination in the Exploration of the American West,” 53- 62, in BCAW. 147 were hostile toward Indians, though, but sought to live together, if not in close community with the Native population, then at least in a modicum of peace. 241 Indian occupants had their own multiple agendas for survival in Ohio. 242 Some Native peoples adopted a combination of accommodation and acculturation, while other groups resisted the advance of Anglo-Americans with understandable aggression toward the white invaders. Another response to these conditions was the emergence of resistance and nativist movements, which sought to restore Native power and lands lost over the last half-century. In 1800, the Moravian communities along the Muskingum were already witnessing the huge barrage of American newcomers into the Ohio Territory. In June 1800, Goshen pastor Benjamin Mortimer entered in his diary that Euro- American families had arrived and settled in the area before he or his congregants even noticed. “A few miles up the Muskingum, they (Goshen Indians) found two families of white people who had built and planted there.” 243 Ludwig Huebner regularly noted in his diary the movement of people into the area: “Mr. Gottfried Hoff arrived here from Bedford County during very wet weather. He came with his 241 D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 1, 355, 409; and Maldwyn A. Jones, “The Scotch-Irish in British America” in Bailyn and Morgan eds., Strangers Within the Realm, 296. 242 Ohio historian Andrew Cayton writes that the Anglo-Americans entering Ohio circa 1800 generally feared Indians, coveted their land, and wanted to be rid of them. See, Cayton, Ohio, 10. 243 Benjamin Mortimer, Goshen, Muskingum Diary, May 4, 1800; Box 171, folder 7, MA. 148 son to see about getting land for himself. They had brought various tools for the purpose of carrying on agriculture with them on a pack-horse.” In the last weeks of August 1801, Huebner wrote about the increasing number of Americans interested in settling in the region. “Many travelers and such as wanted to see the land, passed through. Various strange Indians were also here.” 244 Between 1801 and 1805, Huebner recorded in his diary about the unrelenting stream of American newcomers into the neighborhood to survey land for investment and future settlement. In the fall of 1801, Huebner wrote, “Toward evening Mr. Stansburg, from New York, came here with two gentlemen on business regarding land matters.” The following spring, Huebner noted: “Tuesday. Peter Wolf, Mennonite preacher, who loves the Savior, arrived here. He wants to buy a piece of land somewhere on the Muskingum, and then move here.” Later that fall he wrote: “Toward evening Mr. Rathbone from New York arrived here in order to view his land in these parts.” Although the decade following the Treaty of Greenville did not see any major political developments in the region, the environmental, social, and economic impact from the inflow of settler families and their Euro-American agricultural practices was significant. Huebner regularly noted the influx of 244 Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, May 2, August 30, 1801. Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 149 livestock: “At the end of the week, people, who wish to settle in our neighborhood, passed through with cattle.” 245 As the historian Richard White has argued, Euro-American settlers like the Moravian Huebners and Gibsons were the “main agents of change” in the Ohio country. 246 These settlers brought livestock, Euro-American farming ways, and a desire to produce beyond subsistence for the broader market, factors all of which permanently transformed the landscape. William and Nancy Gibson and their children were among this movement into Ohio. It was within the context of these positive and conflicting attitudes toward Indians and their land—benevolent dispossession, malevolent aggression, assimilation and accommodation, and sheer desire for land—that the Gibsons sought to establish their new homestead in Guernsey County, Ohio along Wills Creek. Neither the Gibsons nor the Huebners (who had recently left nearby Gnadenhutten and returned to Bethlehem) harbored any manifest hostility toward their Indian neighbors. Nonetheless, their presence contributed to the final dispossession and expulsion of Native Americans from Ohio. Taking swift advantage of the opportunity to purchase western land, in 1806 William Gibson journeyed west from Newellstown, Virginia into eastern Ohio to a section of land on Wills Creek, a tributary of the Muskingum River. He chose as his 245 Ludwig Huebner, Gnadenhutten Diary, May 2, 1801; August 30, 1801; October 11, 1801; February 7, 1802; September 7, 1802; October 4, 1802 . Box 1, folder 4, Zimmerman Translation; GA. 246 White, The Middle Ground, 476. 150 site a two-quarter section of land located in the Military District ten miles below the burgeoning market town of Cambridge located on the Muskingum River. Gibson strategically staked his claim along Wills Creek, thus linking his farm to the wide- reaching markets along the Ohio River. When Gibson returned to Newellstown in late 1806, he entered his claim at the U.S. government land office in Wheeling and purchased the two-quarter sections, equivalent to 320 acres. 247 When Gibson entered Ohio he brought with him all the trappings of Anglo- American culture. In an 1894 interview, James Gibson, William and Nancy’s fourth son, described his father’s initial trek to and from the Ohio backcountry. “He had with him his gun for self protection. He returned to Newellstown with all the deer 247 “Entering” land means applying for ownership and obtaining the legal title to a chosen parcel of land. See Valencius, The Health of the Country, 194. For a general description of how the new settlers occupied and claimed land in the region, see D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 2, 240-249. Most of my information about the family of William and Nancy Gibson comes from a large body of primary and secondary sources. Where I have discovered discrepancies in the sources, I have gone with the information that is most consistent across all of the sources. These sources include, but are not limited to, a series of interviews by Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History as Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton,” November 29, December 6, and December 13, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian; William G. Wolfe, Stories of Guernsey County, Ohio: History of an Average Ohio County, (Cambridge, Ohio: Self Published by Author, 1943); Author unknown, Portrait and Biographical Record of Guernsey County, Ohio. Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County, Together with Biographies and Portraits of all the Presidents of the United States, (Chicago: C.O. Owen & Co., 1895); Gibson papers filed at the Guernsey County Historical Society, Cambridge Ohio; and the Huebner family archives which hold James Gibson’s diary 1830 to circa 1880, Gibson family letters circa 1940s through 1960s, and the Gibson family Bible. 151 saddles and hides his horse could carry.” 248 Typical of Scots-Irish American backcountry men, Gibson killed more deer than he needed, taking only the skins and leaving the flesh to rot. He undoubtedly intended to trade the peltries he collected upon his return to Newellstown. On his mission to survey and claim his parcel of land, William hunted game with abandon, as did his fellow Scots-Irish. Spiritual revivalists Tenskwatawa and The Trout spoke strongly against wanton hunting such as Gibson practiced and the ubiquitousness of this type of hunting among their Native kin in the Ohio territory. 249 These Indian visionaries preached that the continuance of such practices ensured the “earthly disaster and punishment” of Indian society and culture. 250 They spoke equally strong against the use of alcohol, intermarriage, and preached that Indians who practiced white ways ended up corrupted and degenerate, and were contributors to the decline of Native society. 251 Over-hunting by Euro-Americans and Indians had already severely depleted game in much of the Ohio territory. Indian revivalists implored Native peoples to 248 Colonel C.P.B. Sarchet, “Colonel Sarchet Asks James Gibson, the Nonogenarian (sic), a Few Questions.” The Guernsey Times, circa December 1894. 249 William Gibson Jr. was apparently a hunter of some note in his time, and I think it can be assumed that he hunted without restraint. Information on his hunting exploits comes from Portrait and Biographical Record , 333. 250 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 9. The Indian Prophet Trout focused his message to Native followers primarily to abandon white ways of hunting and returning to ancient Indian practices. 251 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 29. 152 stop killing animals only for their fur, a regular practice in the fur trade among whites and accommodating Indians. Indigenous religious leaders argued that native peoples needed to halt such wasteful actions if they were to regain their sacred power, which would enable them to restore the spiritual relationship between animals and humans. The prophets believed that over-hunting and spiritual vacuity during the hunt was responsible for the decline of Native power and prominence. Redemption would be only realized if Indians repudiated all white ways of hunting and returned to their ancient Native rituals during the hunt. 252 Tenskwatawa and The Trout associated alcohol with the fur trade and Anglo- Americans. 253 Trade brought Indians into the white commercial culture with its attendant commodities—whiskey and rum— both of which had proven devastating to Indian society. The promise of alcohol attracted Indians to unscrupulous white traders. Alcohol, in fact, became a motivation for many Natives to hunt since they did not need any more durable goods that traders had hauled into the hinterland. 254 William Gibson produced his own whiskey in Ohio, and whether he intended it for 252 According to the Huebner and Mortimer diaries, William Gibson’s Moravian Indian neighbors at Goshen, who lived twenty miles down river along the Muskingum, practiced white ways of hunting and especially earned the animus of Indian nativists. The revivalists saw the adoption of Christianity and the abandonment of Indian ritual as the ultimate failure, even worthy of torture and death. In 1805, Tenskwatawa followers condemned two Moravian Indians to death for witchcraft. For details on the Tenskwatawa inspired witch-hunts during the first decade of the nineteenth century aimed particularly at the Moravian Indians and accommodating chiefs, see Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 136-139. 253 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 126-127. 254 Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol,” 435-436. 153 subversive purposes or not, he participated in and contributed to the destructive force of liquor on Native American society. All of this only added to the revivalists’ diatribes against white advance and Indian accommodation. 255 The civilizing mission, advocated by eastern political and religious elites and some accommodationist Native leaders, involved the complete revolution of gender structure in Indian society. To become “civilized,” Indian men were to give up hunting and cultivate crops, and Indian women, the traditional agriculturalists in Indian society, were to be relegated to the domestic sphere, their labor centered around spinning and weaving. Tenskwatawa became the primary opponent to the civilizing mission and this set him squarely against the both Moravian mission in Ohio and the encroaching white population that brought these gendered systems into the borderland region. 256 “Separate creation” ideas, which replicated earlier revivalist movements in the mid-eighteenth century, emerged as well. The nativist identity incorporated the belief that all Indians were of a polygenesis origin. 257 Anglo-Americans also shared 255 Some Indian revivalists, such as Handsome Lake (Seneca) advocated for varying degrees of traditionalism, progressivism, and accommodation, but the admonition against alcohol was universal. Between 1800 and 1815, Handsome Lake (known as the Peace Prophet) promoted his “Social Gospel” which incorporated temperance, peace, land retention, acculturation, and domestic morality. He sought to incorporate a mixture of Anglo-American agricultural practices and Indian religious revivalism among his people and he also advocated Indians to retain good feelings toward whites. See Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 241-278. 256 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 135-136. 257 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 21. 154 common origin, but with spiritual impurity. Based on these principles, Tenskwatawa preached that Indians and whites should not live together, not even close to each other. He forbade intermarriage as well as intercommunity with whites. 258 Anglo- American hunting practices, settler expansion, alcohol, and intermarriage—the Gibsons brought all of these elements with them to Ohio. In the spring of 1807, William returned to Ohio, this time with Nancy and six of their eventual twelve children. From Newellstown, the family traveled along “Zane’s trace,” a rough-hewn road that absorbed numerous Indian trails. This was the only road wide enough for wagons that entered Ohio from the east. It served the region until the National Road reached the state in the mid-1820s. The Gibsons brought cattle, horses, and sheep along with them, and the journey to Cambridge, Ohio took them several days. In the 1894 interview, James Gibson gave account of their journey to their new home site. At the time of the journey, James was four years old, but many years later he told one interviewer what he remembered—or more likely had heard—about this expedition “Two canoes were got at Cambridge and lashed together,” he recalled, and on these were placed our household goods, and we poled down the creek. The cattle and horses (and other livestock) were taken through the woods near the creek. My mother rode one of the horses and carried George (an infant). Communication with each other was kept up by hallooing from one to the other, and I think they had a 258 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 142. 155 dinner horn that they blew. Father had chosen the site for our home, and we landed at the stake on the bank of the creek. 259 Once the family arrived to the chosen site, they established a permanent homestead on the 320 acres of Military District land William had entered and paid for the previous fall at the government office. James told the interviewer that the place of their chosen home was not inviting. Nettles, pea vines, and horseweeds were “higher than a man’s head.” The forest surrounding the property was thick “in which the click of the pioneer’s axe had not yet been heard.” William and Nancy, with the help of their oldest children—John, who was twelve, and Martha, just ten—made a tent of elm bark for their first rudimentary shelter and this served them through the winter of 1807-1808. 260 In the spring of 1808, two men and two women built the family a log house, “with a loft above, the floors being of puncheons split and dressed with an axe, the chimney would take in a five foot log.” 261 259 Colonel C.P.B. Sarchet, “Colonel Sarchet Asks James Gibson, the Nonogenarian (sic), a Few Questions.” The Guernsey Times (ca. December 1894), Cambridge, Ohio. 260 D.W. Meinig detailed study on frontier settlement in the first two decades of the nineteenth century substantiates James Gibson’s recollection of his family’s homesteading in Guernsey County. See Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 2: 245-249. 261 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History as Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton,” November 29, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio; and Author unknown, “First Settlers at Kimbolton,” publication unknown, date of publication circa 1885. Located in the Gibson file, Guernsey County District Public Library. 156 The family of eight, with one on the way, required a large home. Later that year, William’s parents, William Sr. and Avis arrived from Washington, Pennsylvania to live with them as well. William’s parents both lived with their son and daughter-in- law until their deaths. Within the first year of the family’s arrival, William Jr. hired two men, Joshua Reeves and George Phillips, to help him clear his land and prepare it for planting. Game was plentiful in the area, and the family supplemented its diet through hunting as well as tending sheep, cattle, and pigs. James Gibson later recalled, “There was plenty of wild game then, I have seen from twenty-five to thirty deer in a gang.” Figure 12: Gibson family home, circa 1890s, built circa 1815. William Gibson III pictured. This home replaced the original home described above, which was struck by lightening and destroyed by fire a few years earlier. The Gibson family occupied this home until 1919, when, it too burnt down. 157 Feral pigs, strong and fierce, posed a serious problem for the newcomers. “Wild hogs were so plenty that it was not safe to go into the woods, you would have to climb a tree for safety.” 262 Wild turkey, bear, and fish that male family members hunted and killed rounded out the family diet. The Gibsons quickly moved beyond subsistence farming and entered into the region’s burgeoning agricultural market economy. They grew wheat, corn, and flax and herded sheep, cattle, and pigs. William, with his sons, brought their corn in canoes to the mill at Cambridge ten miles up the river, where it was ground and sold at the market. They also used their corn to make whiskey. After a short time, William built a distillery at his home. “The whiskey we made was good,” James recalled in the 1894 interview. “If I had some of it I would drink it now.” 263 Family and friends enjoyed whiskey privately, but no mention is made of selling it on the market. But since William was an entrepreneur selling a variety of products, it is reasonable to assume that he sold or traded the whiskey he made at his farm to local Indians and white settlers. When the oldest son, John, married at Christmas 1816, more than forty neighbors came from great distances and celebrated the marriage through the night, drinking and dancing to a fiddle. “They all formed a circle on the 262 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History as Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton,” November 29, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio. 263 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History. As Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton” December 6, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio. 158 (frozen) creek, and my father and mother (William and Nancy) were inside the circle with the jug of whiskey, and they all took a drink, women and men.” 264 William and his sons took the wheat to Coshocton, located outside of Guernsey County, and Uhrichsville, a Scots-Irish settlement three miles from Gnadenhutten. The family sold their cattle they herded and fish they caught in Wills Creek at nearby market centers in Cambridge, Zanesville, and Washington. The production of flax was central to the family economy and social life. “It had to be pulled and then hackled to get out the seed, then laid out on the grass to rot 264 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History. As Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton” December 6, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio. Figure 13: Map of Tuscawaras Valley, Ohio and surrounding region, Gibson Farm, Gnadenhutten, and Goshen highlighted. Adapted from Olmsted, Blackoats. 159 so as to be broke and scutched.” 265 James remembered the gatherings surrounding the flax culture. “Flax pullings and breakings and scutchings were great frolics and at night came the dance. All the young folks for miles around would turn out to these frolics.” 266 In the Gibson home, the spinning and weaving of flax into cloth was a female economy. The production of flax was, however, an extension of farming, which was the domain of men, thereby showing the close links between the female and male economies in frontier society. 267 Nancy Gibson had shown herself an accomplished weaver in Pennsylvania, where she had woven homegrown flax into cloth in the mid- 1790s. “My mother was a weaver and a spinner,” James Gibson told the interviewer in 1894. There was a “weaving house” adjacent to the Gibson home. That building signals the significance of the industry of weaving in the family economy. 268 The working of flax weaving entailed combing, webbing, quilling, and finally, spinning the flax into thread. “Spinning, like nursing,” writes historian Laurel Thatcher 265 For a detailed description of processing flax from sowing the seed to spinning it into thread, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 282-284. 266 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History. As Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton,” November 29, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio. See Ulrich, Homespun, 286; and Valencius, The Health of the Country, 203. 267 Ulrich, Homespun, 95, 282. 268 Information on the “weaving house” is found on the backside of a late-nineteenth photograph of the Gibson house, built circa 1815. Huebner family collection. 160 Ulrich, “was a universally female occupation, in both realms, training was communal and cumulative, work was cooperative.” 269 Together with her skills in midwifery, Nancy brought with her to Ohio her skills and artistry in the female culture of spinning and weaving. In fall, the time of year for spinning, Nancy hired out young women to help with the labor. James reported that his mother regularly hired “two Sigman girls from about Cambridge,” a town located ten miles away. This distance probably necessitated that the girls stay overnight, maybe even weeks, in the Gibson home. James, Nancy’s son, remembered she paid the sisters “sixty-two and a half cents per week; a dozen being a day’s work.” And James recalled her craftsmanship: The flax mother spun into thread and wove into fine linen for shirts and dresses, and the coarser into tow-linen and into sacks for grain. We were dressed in two-linen and linsey woolsey (a combination of linen and wool) and all the men and boys wore waumuses, they were either red or blue. 270 269 Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, 77 and 79. 270 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History. As Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton” November 29, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio. Ulrich confirms that spinning and weaving was an intercommunity endeavor for hinterland society, where “spinning meetings,” and “spinning frolics” were sites where young women would gather, thus giving textile work “public meaning.” Ulrich, Homespun, 286. 161 Figure 15: Close-up of linen tablecloth. This linen tablecloth made by Nancy Larison Gibson is an example of her high level of skill at weaving. Figure 14: Fine linen tablecloth made by Nancy Larison Gibson, mid-19 th century. 162 Nancy Gibson managed a female economy in both her home and community. Nancy created a female world into which she brought her daughters and her neighbors’ daughters where she passed on to them her skills and knowledge in weaving, spinning, midwifery and curatives. 271 When the interviewer asked James Gibson about Indians in the surrounding area when they first settled, he replied, “There was nobody else around but Indians.” 272 According to local histories of the region, Delawares, Shawnees, and Ojibways populated the area and lived together in multiethnic village communities. There was an Indian town above a section on Wills Creek called “Fish Basket” where local Indians trapped fish. A village chief named Old Douty headed another Indian town that was located in a prairie further down the creek. Their Indian neighbors grew “wild potatoes,” a food the Gibsons frequently ate. The family regularly traded these and other products with Douty’s village. James remembered that Old Douty “frequently came to our cabin” and that his family was on good terms with the surrounding Indian population. “In the early day Indians were numerous, and with them my father (William) was on good terms, and often made some 271 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich explains in great detail this female world through the history of Martha Ballard, whose life mirrored Nancy Gibson’s on many levels. Martha practiced midwifery, curatives, and weaving in Maine circa 1785-1812. See Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, Chapter 2. 272 Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History. As Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton” November 29, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio. 163 valuable trades.” James related that the Indians who regularly came to the cabin had a special affinity for “milk and mush,” which Nancy readily provided. 273 As a Native American, Nancy Gibson may have served the family as a “cultural broker” between the non-Indian world of the Gibsons and the Indian world that surrounded them when they first arrived in Ohio. Even though Nancy appeared to have assimilated to Euro-American ways—her dress, her faith, and her family life style were clearly Euro-American—her Indian heritage was not hidden, at least not to her descendants. Family records and nineteenth century historical monographs on the Gibson family state that she was “an Indian girl.” Photographic images of her also suggest a Native American ancestry. 273 Portrait and Biographical Record, 333; and Col. C.P.B. Sarchet of James Gibson, “Early History as Related by the Venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton,” November 29, 1894, Cambridge Jeffersonian. 164 Indians who encountered her may have recognized her as a Native American and this may have fostered a more trusting and engaging relationship between the family and local Native peoples. The early establishment of relationship between the Gibsons and the local Indian community may have also eased the family’s initial year in the region, which records indicate was particularly harsh— “known as the cold winter.” 274 A news article reporting on a Gibson family reunion in 1910 recorded some of the family’s memories of Nancy and testified to the neighborly relations she had with her Indian 274 Col. C.P. Sarchet, “Early History. As Related by the Vererable James Gibson, of Kimbolton.” Cambridge Jeffersonian, November 29, 1894. Figure 16: Photograph of Nancy Larison Gibson, circa 1865. 165 neighbors: “In our father’s home Grandmother Gibson (Nancy) used to visit frequently and we listened to her stories of adventure with interest. She told of the Indians coming to their home frequently and she giving them something to eat.” 275 Nancy Larison Gibson was also a well-respected midwife and skilled in curative medicine. This was a second arena where she may have functioned as cultural broker between Indian and non-Indian worlds. Her 1873 obituary stated that “for about forty years she practiced midwifery in the community and her knowledge of curatives rendered her a great benefit to the people.” 276 There is no information on the time frame of Nancy’s practice, but she likely brought some of her skills with her from Pennsylvania. An 1885 historical account of the Gibsons states that Nancy’s “large family was raised without paying a dime for medical care.” 277 The Gibsons succeeded in their new frontier settlement in no small part due to her skills in midwifery and curatives. Cross-cultural exchanges were not uncommon among borderland settlers, something Nancy demonstrated with the numerous occasions she welcomed her 275 Author unknown, “The Gibson Reunion,” Cambridge Daily Jeffersonian, 10/3/1910. According to the article, this was the fourth annual Gibson reunion. 276 Author unknown, “Death of a Centenarian.” Guernsey Times, Thursday, July 3, 1873, Cambridge, Ohio. Microfilm department Guernsey Country District Public Library. (The article incorrectly listed her birth as in 1772, thus identifying her as a centenarian. She died at the age of 98, not from indications of old age but from a severe fall). 277 Author unknown, “First Settlers at Kimbolton,” publication unknown, date of publication circa 1885. Located in the Gibson file, Guernsey County District Public Library. 166 Indian neighbors into her home. 278 Backcountry midwives often employed Native methods for cures, a practice embraced earlier by eighteenth century midwives in the eastern seaboard hinterland communities. 279 Indian curatives and healing practices were well known, and well received, especially in rural Euro-American communities. Native peoples, according to Laural Thatcher Ulrich, regularly shared their knowledge of local, indigenous herbs and roots for multiple remedies for sicknesses and injuries. 280 Nancy was known for her expertise in curatives and she probably gained knowledge of local herbal and root remedies from her Indian neighbors. The area the Gibsons settled was isolated from the centers of population, like Cincinnati, where medical professionalization had just started to develop. Injury and illness were constant concerns for settlers on the frontier. Everyday experiences—accidents, sickness, and childbirth—could have devastating consequences on a family’s productivity, even their survival. 281 Excluding the Indian population, Ohio in 1807 was still a sparsely populated backcountry, and female practitioners would have been the only providers for the much-needed 278 For cross-cultural interchange in the context of backcountry medicine, see Valencius, The Health of the Country, 10. 279 For a fascinating and comprehensive look at midwifery three decades before Nancy Gibson practiced, see Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale. The world of Martha Ballad that Ulrich describes closely resembles Nancy’s and proved helpful in understanding and imagining Nancy’s life and work in her community. 280 Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, 52. 281 Valencius, The Health of the Country, 5. 167 medical care. They delivered most of the babies. Nancy would have been one of the few women in the region who possessed the critically important skills when she first arrived in Ohio 1807. The dangers and isolation inherent to frontier settlement rendered Nancy’s skills in midwifery and curatives a “great benefit to the people.” 282 Nancy’s son James admired his mother’s vocation indicated by the fact that as a young man he considered a career in medicine. In his 1894 interview, he recalled that in the early 1820s, I thought I would go to Virginia where I could learn more. I went to school to a Dr. Smith in a school house that was near what was called the “cross roads tavern” in Brooks county, Virginia. I soon learned to read and write well and thought I could figure as good as anybody. Dr. Smith wanted me to get a school and begin to study medicine with him and be a doctor. I wrote to my father about it, and told him if he thought I ought to do it. He come (sic) on to Virginia, and we talked it over, and he thought I had better some back home, to the farm. 283 He showed his continued interest in the practice of healing by several entries in his diary detailing “cures for cancers,” and various uses for potash poultices. 284 James was also not reticent about seeing a “doctress” in Cincinnati when he fell ill. In his diary for November 15, 1830 he wrote: “I doctored with the steam 282 Author unknown, “Death of a Centenarian.” Guernsey Times, Thursday, July 3, 1873, Cambridge, Ohio. Microfilm department Guernsey Country District Public Library. 283 Col. C.P. Sarchet, “Early History. As Related by the Vererable James Gibson, of Kimbolton.” Cambridge Jeffersonian, December 6, 1894. 284 James Gibson diary, no date, located between January 17, 1876 and May 5, 1838. James regularly inputted diary entries out of chronological order so it is impossible to know the exact date of this entry. Huebner Family Archive. 168 doctors but done me no good, Then I went to a Doctress Mrs. Lewis on Walnut Street. Doctored with her 2 weeks but she done no good.” 285 It turned out to be a tooth that needed extracting; still, he paid her $3.75 for her services. Nancy Larison Gibson was what historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich called a “social healer,” a person who “developed personal affiliations and built local reputations.” 286 Over the forty years of her practice, Nancy Gibson built an orbit of influence in her community and her local reputation was strong. As midwife, healer, and weaver, Nancy propagated and managed a female culture and economy in her community and incorporated the young women in the region into her sphere of influence. * Despite the friendly relations the Gibsons may have had with their Indian neighbors, the family embodied all the elements that militant Nativist leaders spoke against and eventually went to war over: over-hunting, whiskey production, intermarriage, assimilation, the continual acquisition of land, and the assault on the landscape with the implementation of Anglo-American agriculture and animal husbandry practices. For the militant leader Tecumseh, the brother of Tenskwatawa, the sheer presence of the Gibsons was a declaration of war upon Indian society. 287 285 James Gibson diary, November 15, 1830, p. 11. Huebner Family Archives. 286 Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, 61. 287 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 17. 169 The War of 1812 would be the last major pan-Indian resistance to white American encroachment into the trans-Appalachian west. Early in the war the militants, led by Tecumseh, achieved significant victories over the Americans. But whites outnumbered Indians seven to one in the region and any hope for success on the part of the pan-Indian resistance movement was dim. 288 William Gibson Jr. and his son, John, were drafted in the war but, “as they did not want to leave the large family,” paid replacements to serve in their stead. They were Josiah Keerer and Samuel Vance and each received eighty and sixty dollars respectively and both returned home after the war. 289 By 1813, the battle had moved north to Canada where Tecumseh died at the Battle of the Thames, ironically, fighting alongside Moravian Indian brethren. 290 288 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 181-184. 289 Col. C.P. Sarchet, “Early History. As Related by the Vererable James Gibson, of Kimbolton.” Cambridge Jeffersonian, December 6, 1894; William G. Wolfe, Stories of Guernsey County, Ohio: History of an Average Ohio County, (Cambridge, Ohio: Self Published by Author, 1943), 858. 290 Some Moravian Indians who lived in Moraviantown (earlier Fairfield) joined Tecumseh against the United States army under the command of General William Henry Hamilton. There is a question whether they were compelled by Tecumseh to join on pain of death or they joined the resistance by their own volition. Two letters written by John G. Cunow, Bishop of the Moravian church, one to President Madison and another to the missionary at Moraviantown, are striking in their insistence that the Moravian Indians should not and would not engage in the “strives and wars of the nations of this world.” See John Cunow letter to US President, February 10, 1814, box 3500, folder 4; and John Cunow letter to Rev. John Schnall, missionary at Farifield, Upper Canada, June 27, 1814, box 3500, folder 5, MA. 170 Most of the Indians who lived near the Gibsons had left the area once the war began for fear of whites. 291 William Gibson saw opportunity in the departure of his neighbors and continued to build his estate, which, by the 1820s, totaled over two thousand acres. In 1823 he received from President Monroe this land grant, written on deerskin parchment, a stark, physical reminder of the displacement of Indians in Ohio. 291 Cayton, Ohio, 10 and 15; and Portrait and Biographical Record, 524. Figure 17: 1823 United States Land Grant to William Gibson, signed by President Monroe on deerskin parchment. 171 The departure of Indians from the area where the Gibsons lived and around the communities of Gnadenhutten and Goshen began in earnest during the War and continued into the 1820s. The Goshen Indians eventually felt the pressure and voluntarily relocated to Canada in 1823. In July 1843, the United States government ordered the removal of the last remaining Indian tribe, a small group of Christianized and anglicized Wyandots, from Ohio. During the tribe’s exodus, white observers noted the presence of white husbands with their Wyandot wives and white women walking alongside their Native husbands. Nancy was among many individual Ohioans with Indian ancestry who either did not identify as such, or hid their Native identity in order to remain in Ohio with their white families. 292 As a Native American, Nancy Larison Gibson had to negotiate around the conflicting reality of her Indian-ness and her participation and culpability in the advancement and settlement of Euro-Americans and the dispossession and displacement of Ohio’s Indians. From the summer of 1843 through to the end of the century, Ohio’s Indians lived only in the history and the memory of the American citizens who remained. 292 Cayton, Ohio, 15; “Farewell to the Sandusky: The Wyandot Removal of 1843,” in The Documentary Heritage of Ohio, Phillip R. Shriver and Clarence E. Wunderland, Jr., eds., (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 168-169; “The Last Good-bye: The Xenia Torchlight Notes the Departure of the Wyandots, 1843,” in The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings, edited by Emily Foster (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 213-214. 172 Chapter 4 Commemorating a Massacre and the Politics of Remembering, 1843-1882 Depressions in the earth caused by the “caving in” of the cellars where stood the houses of the inhabitants, outlined what had existed, while two solemn mounds and a tall, grey monument bearing the inscription, “Here triumphed in death ninety Christian Indians, March 8, 1782,” told the story of the end. Francis C. Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 1898 Three months after the last Native Americans left Ohio, the Moravian community of Gnadenhutten inaugurated a complex culture of remembering the Indians massacred there in 1782. Throughout the nineteenth century, community members told and retold the story of their martyred Indian brethren through multiple media: religious teachings, monuments, commemorations, literatures, and pageant- plays. Even the spatial arrangement of the village reflects the central place the massacre holds in the consciousness of community. Much of the town’s built environment circles the site of the tragedy and the citizens consider the ground where the Indians’ blood spilled to be consecrated and holy. 293 Over the course of the nineteenth century, the village collected relics identified with the massacre for display. 293 Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, 1838, p. 30, Box 4, folder 2, Zimmerman translation, GA; and Gnadenhutten Monument Society Constitution, October 7, 1843, Gnadenhutten Monument and Cemetery Association records, Constitution, Box 11, Folder 5, GA. 173 Communities, social scientists have argued, provide individual members with material frameworks, which include physical objects and spatial organization where memories are “localized by a kind of mapping.” These frameworks enable individuals to participate physically, as well as mentally, in the community’s practice of remembering. 294 The cultural and social infrastructure has enabled this community to pass their memory and interpretation of the massacre and it’s meaning from one generation to the next. Moravian records indicate that it was not until the 1840s, nearly sixty-five years after the massacre of their Indian brethren, that the community of Gnadenhutten established an institutionalized practice of remembering the village’s foundational tragedy. In 1843, the church elders came together and formed a “society” (or committee) for the purpose of memorializing the massacre. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Gnadenhutten Moravians had constructed an elaborate commemorative culture in which the community regularly memorialized the 1782 massacre. The Moravians’ practice of remembering Indians can be contextualized within larger national movements throughout the nineteenth century, a history that speaks to 294 For theories on public and individual memory, remembering, and commemoration I have relied on the following memory studies literatures: Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, John R. Gillis, ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, Paul Shackel, ed., (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2001); Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory, 41 (1994): 179-197; and Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). 174 the conquest, reform, removal, and the romanticization of Native Americans. The Moravian members of the community interpreted the tragedy through their religious sensibilities and history about their Native brethren and contemporary national thinking about Indians. At times the Moravians’ memorializing of the massacred Indians contested dominant national sentiments regarding Indian peoples, at other moments they upheld the dominant thinking. Democratic values in the fledgling early nineteenth century republic of the United States sometimes conflicted with traditions commemorating heroic individuals. 295 This was especially true if the heroic individuals were Native American. Yet, even before the war for independence was over, “commemoration was already becoming an essential component of Revolutionary politics” and stories of individuals’ sufferings and sorrows “became part of a larger narrative of national sacrifice.” 296 Most of these narratives centered on the heroism of the colonial militia and of pioneer settlers who suffered horrors at the hands of the British and particularly at the hands of “bloodthirsty Indian savages.” In stories of the American Revolution and after, if Indians were incorporated into the narratives at all, they were far from heroic— most often they served as the antithesis to the American patriot. The rhetoric denouncing Indians as “savage, cruel, cannibalistic butchers of innocent women and children” increased during the Indian Wars of the 1790s through the War 295 Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 19. 296 Sarah J. Purcell, Sealed With Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 39, 40. 175 of 1812. Politicians and land speculators fed on these images to justify their belief that Indians should be driven into submission or even extinction. 297 A genre of literature emerged in the early nineteenth century that venerated the spilling of patriot blood and the sacrifices pioneer families made for the revolutionary cause. These story lines were designed to incorporate the “common folk” into the national story. 298 The historian Jane Merritt has noted that the shedding of blood and sacrifice were also principle tenets in Moravian theology and experience. 299 Yet, the Moravian narrative of what happened to their Indian brethren during the revolution—the spilling of their “innocent blood” at the hands of American militia—did not fit neatly into the national lore. Public amnesia had already come into play when the actual events of the savagery of white American colonials played out against the Christian Indians. These accounts were downplayed. The white citizens of Gnadenhutten were perhaps reluctant to elevate Indians above colonial militiamen. That may, in part, explain the sixty-five year delay in memorializing the massacre. Moreover, speaking against the narrative of white colonial heroism and for Indian heroism and martyrdom was unpalatable to most American citizens given the anti-Indian sentiment a great majority of them held during the first half of the 297 Anthony F.C. Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 54. 298 Purcell, Sealed With Blood, 4. 299 See Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood:” 741-744; and Atwood, Community of the Cross, 95-108. 176 nineteenth century. “A legacy of bitterness over atrocities on both sides remained for generations,” the historian Anthony F.C. Wallace has written, “Western frontiersmen condemning the Indians as murdering savages, and Indians despising the Americans as untrustworthy and brutal.” 300 John Heckewelder’s 1820 account of the 1782 massacre characterized colonial militiamen and Anglo-American pioneers as cowardly and savage, deceitful and anti-Christian murderers who butchered innocent, God-fearing Indian men, women, and children. Yet several prominent contemporaries of Heckewelder criticized him for his historical representation of both Indians and colonials and the facts surrounding the massacre. Lewis Cass, considered as the foremost authority on Indians during the first half of the nineteenth century, issued the most critical attack on Heckewelder’s sympathetic treatise on the Delaware. 301 In the early 1800s, the United States faced rising hostilities from a strong Native American resistance movement and, by 1812, the nation was at war with Britain and a threatening contingent of Indian nativist allies. Given the Moravians’ past experience of persecution based on the question of their allegiance to the American revolt before and during the War for Independence, coupled with the contemporary hostilities between Native Americans and the United States, community leaders may have suspected that it was not only unpatriotic but even 300 Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 26. 301 See Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 46; and “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly vol. 23, No. 135 (January 1869): 102. For Heckewelder’s strong critique of the white murderers at Gnadenhutten, see Heckewelder, Narrative, x, 313-324. 177 dangerous to publicly commemorate their fallen “brown brethren.” Furthermore, throughout the 1810s and 1820s, the dearth of references to the massacre in church diaries may also suggest the community’s unwillingness to contest overtly the national sentiment aimed at emptying Indian lands. To complicate matters, Gnadenhutten was a Christian-oriented community that had an allegiance to God and fellow congregants, both white and Indian. Their loyalty, the evidence suggests, superseded national allegiance. The community had to reconcile its loyalty to their Indian brethren and their own Christian faith with a patriotic sensibility to their nation without compromising either. The pacifist Moravian community of Gnadenhutten sought to locate their place in the revolutionary story and in so doing, establish their identity as patriotic Americans. Its historic connection to the Revolution was one of spilt blood and sacrifice, but creating a public memory so divergent from the national sentiment about both Indians and the Revolution had to find an appropriate time for expression. By the 1840s that time had come. The last remaining Indians in Ohio had moved to the western regions that had been established by the Indian removal policy of the United States. Indians were now only a memory. Thus the town’s residents identified their connection to the national story through remembering their history with Indians by constructing a celebratory memory of the massacre of their Native American brethren. 178 Context For Remembering The conclusion of the War of 1812, the death of Tecumseh, and the defeat of the Red Sticks in the Southeastern United States brought an end to any effective Native resistance in the eastern United States. By the late 1810s, the nation’s leaders turned their attention to formulating an effective Indian policy and solving “the Indian problem.” The Supreme Court weighed in on these issues concerning the Cherokees; William Appess, a Pequot Indian, wrote treatises on Indian civil rights that presaged the movement for black Americans in the next century; Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson both ran their campaigns in no small part on how they would deal with Native Americans. 302 Long standing questions remained for the developing and westward advancing American nation and there were multiple, competing ideas for what United States Indian policy should look like. Could Indians assimilate and be incorporated into white society? Or, was removal the best policy for Indians and the nation? Was peaceful white/Indian coexistence impossible? Christian reformers like the 302 For Cherokee Nation Supreme Court cases see, Theda Perdu and Michael D. Green, The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History With Documents, 2 nd edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005), ch. 2; and Daniel Walker Howe, What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 354-356, 412-413. For William Appess, see On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Appess, a Pequot, edited and with an Introduction by Barry O’Connell (Amherst: The University of Amherst Press, 1992). For a concise history on Andrew Jackson and Indians, see, Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail. For historical contextualization of Jackson and his dealing with Indians see, Howe, What God Hath Wrought, 76, 342-357, and 418-422. 179 Moravians, who had had great success with interracial communities, were convinced that Indians could assimilate white ways and they pressed for this approach. 303 At the end of the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero and he pursued the idea of Indian removal. Jackson rose to national prominence with his victories in the War of 1812 and brought his ideas for Indian policy onto the national political stage. Jackson was appointed commissioner to treat with Southeastern Indians, and between 1815 and 1820 he successfully acquired, sometimes nefariously, one half of the Indians’ lands in the Southeastern section of the nation. It was through these dealings that Jackson inaugurated the process of removal of Indians to Indian territory. 304 By 1820 Indian removal as the solution to “the Indian problem” gained currency alongside the ideas for reform and assimilation. Throughout his presidency in the early 1820s, James Monroe pushed legislators for a removal policy but Congress refused to pass it. President John Quincy Adams envisioned a removal policy that incorporated Pan-Indian autonomy on territory west of the Mississippi. Lewis Cass, the foremost authority on Indians at the time and Jackson’s future Secretary of War, advocated removal as a policy to save the Indians. Religious reformers generally believed that Indians could be “civilized” and should remain on the small reservations where they lived. And still strong among the white citizenry 303 For the various positions and Indian policy advocates, see Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 33-41. 304 Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 4 and 50. 180 was the notion that Indians were savage and a menace and should be either removed or exterminated. 305 Jackson himself never publicly advocated extermination, but his personal ideas about Indians was duplicitous. Nonetheless, in his Presidential inauguration speech on March 4, 1829 he was quite clear about what he thought Indian policy should be: removal. On the surface the motivation behind the removal policy expressed by Jackson and his supporters appeared altruistic. In Jackson and his advocates’ reasoning, removal west would delay, if not avert, the wholesale extinction of Native Americans, which they felt was assured with the white population encroaching so heavily upon them. However, the appearance of a benevolent policy in reality served as justification for the real driving force behind the removal policy: the immediate and uncontested acquisition of desirable, fertile Indian occupied land and resources. Jackson was convinced that the presence of Indians, whether they were “civilized” or not, impeded these plans. 306 According to historian Anthony Wallace, “it was not the “savagery” of the Indians that land-hungry whites most dreaded, it was their civilization” because Indians who embraced white ways and who were incorporated into white society weakened the justification to remove them from their homes. 307 In 305 Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 33-48. 306 Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, “Introduction.” 307 Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 10. 181 1829 the debate ended. Newly elected President Andrew Jackson signed legislation that began the forced removal of all eastern tribes to Indian Territory. 308 The story of the relocation of the Moravian Indians to Indian Territory preceded the 1829 federal mandate, but similar factors precipitated their abandonment of their homes on the Muskingum. In 1812, John Henry, a Native leader of the congregation at Goshen, wrote to church leaders at Bethlehem of the painful difficulties and dangers they faced during the war. “We have great reason to be thankful to our Saviour, for having of late especially safely conducted us through trying and difficult circumstances, in these times of war, so that we are still alive and well.” 309 Henry also wrote of the community’s deep sense of grief and abandonment since the leaders at Bethlehem had decided to call back their beloved ministers, Benjamin Mortimer and his wife Sarah. The purpose of the letter though, centered mostly on hostile, land-hungry American settlers threatening the Goshen Indians to leave their homes: Dear brethren and Sisters! There is only one more thing that we wish to tell you, and we request your assistance about it. During the late troublesome time here, arising from this way, many white people spoke of hurting us, and that we must no longer live on this land. We believe that it was on account of the land that they spoke so hard against us, because they did not want us to remain on it. We beg therefore that you would let the great men in the city of Washington know how we have been threatened, that our living here may be made 308 Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail, 34-41. 309 Goshen, Muskingum, Ohio letters, 1812; letter from John Henry representing the Goshen Indians to Pennsylvania fellowship, November 16, 1812, box 172, folder 8; MA. 182 more safe and sure to us, and that bad people may cease to threaten us about the land. The Christian Indians living at Goshen and in their name, John Henry. 310 The pressure for land from the encroachment of new settlers only increased throughout the next decade. In spite of the fact that this Native American community was Christianized and anglicized in virtually every aspect of their lives, they were being pushed out. Henry appealed to Bethlehem their desperate need for a minister. The community had lost its founder and minister David Zeisberger in 1808, and in 1811, William Henry, Zeisberger’s Indian assistant, had also died. The leadership at Bethlehem had difficulty supplying the community with a permanent minister and this issue remained a serious problem for the Goshen Indians to 1820. 311 Finally, in June 1821, a permanent husband and wife minister team, Brother Johannes Bardill and his wife, arrived at Goshen. The situation deteriorated quickly. An 1821 letter to the Goshen congregation from the Bethlehem leadership expressed deep disappointment in the receipt of a report from Bardill. Upon his arrival he found the congregation in disarray. The letter indicated that Bardill was “grieved and afflicted” at the spiritual state he found the Christian Indians. The Bethlehem 310 Goshen, Muskingum, Ohio letters, 1812; letter from the Goshen Indians to Pennsylvania fellowship, November 16, 1812, box 172, folder 8, MA. 311 See May 1821 letter to “the congregation of believing Indians of the Delaware Nation at Goshen on the Muskingum river” from the Elders of the Brethren Church at Bethlehem,” box 175, folder 13; file name: “Goshen, Muskingum, Ohio, Letters, 1821,” MA; and July 28, 1821 letter “To the Congregation of Indians of the Delaware Nation at Goshen on the River Muskingum, from the Elders of the Brethren’s Church at Bethlehem, box 217, folder 4; file name: “Personalia, Hueffel, letter,” MA. 183 elders chastised the Goshen community for having abandoned their faith and engaging in “shameful and wicked ways,” which was a reference to the consumption of alcohol and other “sins of uncleanness.” 312 With harsh words, the elders threatened to abandon the Goshen brethren as a fellowship if the Indians did not turn away from their ways and “turn anew with your whole heart unto the Lord our God, in order to be healed by him.” The Christian Indians’ temporal and eternal destruction was eminent if they did not change course. “It follows of course, that then we cannot look upon you any longer as our Brethren and a Society of Christian Indians, whom we are bound to serve and care for.” The church elders would send them no more missionaries and threatened disassociation from the larger Moravian fellowship. But know also, brethren, that we feel assured now to have done all what we could concerning your preservation, and that, if you will not hear us now, but continue in your wicked ways, your teachers will positively leave you, authorized by us. 313 The push from advancing settlers and the internecine tensions between the Church at Bethlehem and the Goshen Indians created an unstable situation for the small community, which they could not sustain. Although the Goshen community seemed to have made the decision to move of their own volition, familiar forces, 312 Letter from the Elders of the Brethren’s Church at Bethlehem to the Congregation of Believing Indians of the Delaware Nation on the Muskingum river, May 1821; Goshen, Muskingum, Ohio, letters file; box 175, folder 13; MA. 313 Letter from the Elders of the Brethren’s Church at Bethlehem to the Congregation of Indians of the Delaware Nation at Goshen on the River Muskingum, July 28, 1821; file name: “Personalia Hueffel letter file,” box 217, folder 4, MA. 184 such as the western advance of hostile Anglo-American settlers and the hunger for land on the part of land speculators in the fertile Ohio Valley served as the compelling forces in their decision to move west. An 1851 letter between government officials of the United States Indian department details the events surrounding the Natives’ abandonment of Goshen in the early 1820s. As the country became settled with white people, it was deemed efficient to remove the Indians; and a treaty for that purpose was made August 4 th , 1823 between Lewis Cass, Agent for the United States, and Lewis De Schweinitz, agent of the Society of the United Brethren, by which said Society was divested of its trust, conditioned that the Christian Indians would agree to the arrangement. They did agree, as appears by a formal contract between Lewis Cass and the Christian Indians, executed at Detroit, 8 th Nov. 1823. 314 The surrounding circumstances pressured the Goshen Indians to leave their village and their cultivated lands. They first joined their kin at the Indian mission settlement in New Fairfield, Canada, but this would be a temporary sojourn for the Goshen Indians. Over the course of the 1820s, a segment of the Christian Indian community of New Fairfield, which included many of the original inhabitants of the Muskingum missions “voluntarily” moved to Westfield in the Nebraska Territory. 315 314 Westfield, Kansas letters, 1851; James Patrick to Luke Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Indian Department, Washington, D.C., June 27, 1851; Box 181, folder 18; MA. See also, “Records of the Moravian Indian Lands in Ohio, 1812- 1922,” JHMMC collection, box 13, folder 7, Ohio Historical Society. 315 Westfield, Kansas letters, 1851; James Patrick to Luke Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Indian Department, Washington, D.C., June 27, 1851, box 181, folder 18, MA. 185 The relinquishment of their land on the part of the Goshen Indians signified the permanent end of the Moravian Indian missions in Ohio. The Indian brethren’s departure from Ohio, even though “voluntary,” must have created an identity crisis for the Moravian church that had as its original and primary calling in America “to propagate the gospel among the heathen” and to form Christian Indian mission towns to witness Christ’s transformative power. The Moravian church continued sending missionaries to their Indian communities in Indian Territory, but the Moravian practice of inter-community formation between Euro-American Moravians and Indian converts was over. The final removal of Indians from Ohio occurred in July 1843 when United States soldiers forcibly moved the Wyandots of Upper Sandusky, the last remaining tribe in Ohio, from their ancestral lands west to Indian country. They settled in the Nebraska Territory, joining the Ottawa Christians, who had left Ohio five years earlier in 1838. This group of Wyandots eventually settled near and among the Moravian Indians in Westfield. Various newspapers throughout the state reported on the final removal of the Wyandots from Ohio. The citizens in Gnadenhutten undoubtedly knew of their removal. This final departure signified the end of Indian presence in Ohio. 316 As the Wyandots passed through Xenia, Ohio, the local newspaper account noted their deportment during the removal as “orderly and 316 I gained my knowledge of the Ottawa and Wyandot relocation to Kansas and their settlement among the Goshen Moravian Indians from a series of letters written in 1851 between federal Indian agents and Moravian church leaders concerning intertribal conflicts over land rights. See Westfield, Kansas letters, 1851; Box 181, folder 18, MA. 186 respectful” and that they dressed “in the costume of whites.” 317 These Indians were not Moravian, but this particular Wyandot community had been largely Christianized by the work of Methodists John Stewart and James Finely in the early part of the nineteenth century. 318 The Euro-American Ohioans who remained and witnessed the removal attested to a feeling of melancholy, seeing the despair on the faces of the Indians leaving the land of their ancestors. One can only imagine what the white Moravians must have thought or felt knowing their original missionary calling and their history as a church in America was dramatically coming to an end. The timing of the last Native American tribe leaving Ohio in July, 1843, and the inauguration of a society by the Gnadenhutten Moravian church four months later in October to commemorate their Indian brethren was not a coincidence. In this respect, the history of Gnadenhutten’s commemorative culture is linked with the history of Indian removal, which meant the permanent separation of Indians from community with white Moravians. Pragmatically speaking, the removal of the last tribe of Indians from Ohio brought an end to the Moravian experiment of interracial Christian community formation and the closing of the era of Moravian mission to North American Indians, as they knew it. The community of Gnadenhutten maintained its association with their Indian brethren by remembering their highest 317 “Ottawa Indians Leave Ohio: Dresden W.H. Howard’s Memoir of the Removal of Ottawas from the Maumee Valley, 1838,” and “The Last Good-bye: The Xenia Torchlight Notes the Departure of the Wyandots, 1843,” in The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings, Emily Foster, editor (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996). 318 The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology, Foster, ed., 148. 187 spiritual moment: the 1782 massacre. In other words, residents of Gnadenhutten maintained their relationship to Indians through commemorating them as martyrs. The First Remembering On the evening of July 6, 1838 Gnadenhutten’s pastor, Herman Tietze, recorded in his diary that he wanted the grounds where the Indians had been massacred to be demarcated and memorialized. Returning from a visit with a parishioner, Tietze noted that on his way home, he passed by the “former Indian Gnadenhutten.” Moved by the moment, Tietze eloquently wrote, “We took not a little delight in the lovely surroundings, the plum groves and the green meadows which made a deep and lovely impression in the brilliant evening illumination.” Tietze continued, the wish came naturally to expression here, that the distinguished, and for us brethren, also holy, piece of ground, might never become the possession of strangers and become marred and profaned through improvements, while it could still, for a small sum, be made the possession of the Unity Elder’s Conference of the Society for the Brethren. 319 On this “holy piece of ground,” which Tietze noted in his diary, were two mounds that held the bleached bones of the massacred victims that John Heckewelder buried in 1798. These were the same mounds that Francis Huebner 319 After careful reading of the translated pastors’ diaries from 1800 to 1838, this is the first mention I found of memorializing the grounds where the Indians had perished. Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, 1838, Zimmerman translation, pp. 1- 49, box 4, folder 2, GA. 188 wrote about in his 1898 historical essay, The Moravian Missions in Ohio. 320 Also identifiable on the approximately six acres that constituted the “ancient Indian village” were depressions where the two “slaughter houses” stood where the massacre was executed. These sites were especially important because it was at that spot the Indians’ “blood flowed in streams into the basement.” 321 The church did not own the land where the massacre occurred at the time Tietze considered securing it as a memorial. Tietze expressed concern that the six acres were open for “improvement” by developers who might be insensitive to the “sacredness” and historical significance that the grounds held for Moravians. The records indicate that sometime in 1843, “The Society of the United Brethren for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen,” headquartered in Bethlehem, 320 See “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly, 115, GA; Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, 267; and Francis C. Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio (Washington D.C.: Sims & Lewis Printers, 1898), 3. 321 This dramatic language telling of the massacre comes from an historical account prepared by the Gnadenhutten Monument Society in 1843, “The Brief History of the Gnadenhutten Massacre.” I could not locate a copy of the 1843 pamphlet, but in 1963, the Gnadenhutten Historical Society issued “an exact copy of the original pamphlet,” titled, “Massacre at Gnadenhutten: Blackest Page in History of Northwest Territory.” This pamphlet is available for purchase at the John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church and the Gnadenhutten Museum. My copy was courtesy of the John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church Archives. For the significance of blood and wounds in Moravian theology, see Craig Atwood, Community of the Cross, Chapters 3 and 7; and Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 723-746. 189 Pennsylvania, purchased this said site for the purpose of “preserving it from cultivation.” 322 In October 1843, Gnadenhutten’s church leaders formed the Gnadenhutten Monument Society to explore ways to commemorate the massacred Indians and “for the purpose of enclosing and improving said ground, and of erecting some appropriate monument upon it.” 323 The Moravian leadership at Bethlehem bequeathed their title of the land to the Monument Society and said Society, having obtained the control of about six acres of the ground on which the ill-fated Indian village of Gnadenhutten formerly stood, and on which the location of the two slaughter- houses, with that of other buildings, can still be identified, fenced it in, cleared off the underbrush, with which it was overgrown, and then proceeded to collect funds for the erections of the projected monument. 324 The Monument Society’s constitution opened with language charged with racialized tones, but not in the traditional way. Complicating, even turning on its head the racial structures of the mid-nineteenth-century (which emphasized white superiority and Indian degeneracy), the society demonized whites and elevated the Native Christians: WHEREAS, contiguous to the village of Gnadenhutten in Tuscarawas County, Ohio is the site of the ancient village of the same name, 322 Gnadenhutten Monument and Cemetery Association records, constitution, October 7, 1843; box 11, folder 5, GA. 323 Gnadenhutten Monument and Cemetery Association records, constitution, October 7, 1843; box 11, folder 5, GA. 324 “Massacre at Gnadenhutten: Blackest Page in History of Northwest Territory;” “Appendix,” pp. 19, 20, GA. 190 which ground has been consecrated by the blood of 96 Christian Indians (early converts of the Moravian Missionaries), who were there treacherously captured and butchered by a lawless band of whites, on the 8 th of March, A.D. 1782, meeting death with all the fortitude and meekness of Christ’s true disciples… 325 In this preamble, the Society identified the perpetrators not only by their actions, but also by their race. In a reversal of the contemporary racial image construction of Anglos and Indians, the white militia and frontiersmen who massacred the Christian Indians embodied the very characteristics associated with Native Americans: they were now the treacherous butchers and lawless murderers. 326 In a telling shift of stock character images and plot themes in captivity narratives, a literary genre popular in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Indians in this account were the innocent captives, and the band of “lawless whites” occupied the role of the vicious, villainous captors. In 1847, the Monument Society issued a pamphlet of the history of the massacre compiled by Reverend Sylvester Wolle, who served as Gnadenhutten’s pastor (after Tietze) from 1840 to 1849. In the introduction, Wolle wrote that memorializing the massacred Christian Indians and their sufferings would reveal the martyrs as models of true faith in Christ: May the memory of our red brethren, who at Gnadenhutten sealed their faith with their blood, ever remain and may their pious confession of the Savior in their sufferings, the meek endurance and 325 Gnadenhutten Monument and Cemetery Association records, constitution October 7, 1843; box 11, folder 5, GA. 326 For an informative analysis of the history of the image construction of Indians as savage, see Robert F. Berkhoffer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. (New York: Vintage Books, 1978). 191 their triumphant Christian death, bear testimony to the Truth as it is in Jesus, as long as the memory of the atrocious deed shall last. The pamphlet opened with a poem about the massacre and in it identified the whiteness of the perpetrators, but, curiously, did not mention the Indian-ness of the massacred victims: Alas! alas! for treachery! the boasting white man came With weapons of destruction,--the sword of lurid flame; And while the poor defenseless ones together bowed in prayer. Unpitying they smote them all while kneeling meekly there. The cry of slaughtered innocence went loudly up to heaven; And can ye hope, ye murdering bands, ever to be forgiven? We know not,--yet we weep for you the latest lingering prayer That tremble on your victims lips, was, “God, forgive and spare!” The story of the massacre and the way the Indians faced their death as it was told in the 1847 pamphlet echoed scriptural accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the words he spoke upon the cross. The writer of the poem hoped that for the sake of the murderers the last prayer on the “trembling lips” of the condemned Indians was “God, forgive and spare.” This prayer reiterated Jesus’ words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 327 The Indians’ identification with the sufferings of Jesus is also evident in the text of the pamphlet; Wolle likened the martyred Indians with the gospel versions when Christ stood before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. The pamphlet tells the story of Colonel Williamson deciding to allow his men to vote to determine the fate of the Christian Indians: 327 Luke 23:34, The New International Version Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995). (hereafter, NIV). 192 It was probably, therefore, more for the sake of appearances, and to devolve at least a part of the awful responsibility upon their men, than from any motives of mercy, that they determined first to let it be put to a vote of the whole corps [what should be done with the Indians]. Col. Williamson, himself, put the question, in form: “Whether the Moravian Indians should be taken prisoners to Pittsburgh, or be put to death;” and requested that all those who were in favor of saving their lives should step out of their line and form a second rank. On this sixteen or eighteen stepped forward, and upwards of eighty remained. The fate of the Indians was thus decided on, and they were told to prepare for death. 328 In the gospel account, Pilate appeals to the crowd to determine the fate of Jesus: release him or crucify him. Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” With loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. 329 Similar plot structures are evident between the stories of Christ’s accusers and the Indians when Williamson attempts to “devolve at least part of the awful responsibility upon the men,” and when Pilate, too declared himself “innocent of this man’s blood,” and shouted to the crowd, “It is your responsibility!” 330 Also, on the night before their death, the Indian brethren had a “Gethsemane” experience, in 328 “Massacre at Gnadenhutten: Blackest Page in History of Northwest Territory;” (pamphlet issued by GMS, 1847), 12-13, GA. 329 Matthew 27:17; and Luke 23:23-24, NIV. 330 See Matthew 27:24, NIV. 193 which “they spent the night in prayer” similar again to Jesus’ experience in the garden, when he prepared for his imminent death. 331 Finally, Wolle’s version of the murder of the Indians echoed other significant scriptural references to Christ. He noted that the Natives were “as sheep being led to the slaughter.” The term “lamb,” or phrase “lamb of God,” a biblical metaphor for the sacrificial Christ, was one of the most ubiquitous iconographic terms and images found in Moravian liturgy, litanies, and hymns. 332 The biblical reference comes from Isaiah 53:7: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” 333 Wolle’s identification of the martyred Indians as “sheep” “with Christ, “the lamb of God” both undeserving of their faith is a powerful association that elevated the Indians’ deaths on par with Christ’s sacrifice. As Christ 331 Compare “Massacre at Gnadenhutten: Blackest Page in History of Northwest Territory,” 13-14 with Mark 14:32-35 NIV. 332 See Atwood, Community of the Cross, 114-146, and “Appendix 3.” Atwood provides quantified charts of the vocabulary that was used in the liturgies, litanies, and hymns of the Church. His analysis shows that the term “lamb” was one of the most common terms used in Moravian religious rituals, ranking above “wounds” and “heart.” 333 Compare “Massacre at Gnadenhutten: Blackest Page in History of Northwest Territory” p. 10 with Isaiah 53:7 and Matthew 27:12-14, Mark 14:60-61; 15:4-5, and John 19:8-9, NIV. The image of the triumphant, sacrificial lamb has served as the seal for the Moravian church dating back to the fifteenth century. A contemporary church issued booklet states that beginning in 1540, the seal has “been used extensively and continuously” and “denotes a triumphant victor over sin, over oppression, over death itself.” “Church Booklet Guide” issued by the John Heckewelder Memorial Church, Gnadenhutten, Ohio (date of publication and author unknown). 194 accepted his fate, so too the Indian brethren resigned themselves to their death. The author of the pamphlet honored the Indians for their pacifism in the midst of the horrors they faced and their acquiescence to their fate. As “Christ’s true disciples,” they met their death with “fortitude and meekness.” The Indian martyrs were not only innocent victims; their pacifist behavior at the point of their death portrayed them as models in the highest Moravian order and elevated them to the status of martyrs, even as Christ was martyred. 334 Dedication of the Monument, 1872 The Gnadenhutten Monument Society (GMS) board met monthly for nearly three decades before their purpose was realized: to make judicious and suitable improvements upon the plot of the old Indian village of Gnadenhutten, and to erect on that spot an appropriate monument commemorating the death of the 96 Christian Indians who were there murdered on the 8 th day of March, A.D. 1782. 335 334 Did these Moravian Indians die because they were Indian, or did they die because they were Christians? This was an important question and debate in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which Moravian missionaries and scholars attempted to sort out and differed on. If they died because of their faith, then they would enjoy the status of Christian martyrs, a position held by John Heckewelder. See Heckewelder, Narrative, vi. If their sacrifice was due to their “Indian-ness,” then their death becomes less a spiritual triumph and more defined as a racially and secular event, a position adopted by eighteenth century church historian, Bishop George Henry Loskiel. Loskiel argued “the murderers did not destroy the believing Indians on account of the being Christians, but merely because they were Indians. I will therefore not compare them with the martyrs of the ancient church.” Loskiel, History of the Mission, 184. 335 Gnadenhutten Monument and Cemetery Association records, constitution, October 7, 1843, box 11, folder 5, GA 195 For twenty-nine years the society and the community were deeply committed to exploring ways to honor their martyred Christian Indian brethren. Finally, on June 5, 1872, the highly anticipated event arrived, and an estimated six to eight thousand people, hailing from all across Ohio and other surrounding states, some even coming from Canada, descended upon the small village to celebrate the memory of the martyred Moravian Indians. 336 Between 1843 and 1872, Gnadenhutten and the Moravian church’s constructions of the images and representations of those involved in the massacre—the Indian victims and their white perpetrators—had taken dramatic turns. In the 1843 GMS constitution and the 1847 historical pamphlet which detailed the history of the massacre, the Indian brethren were cast in images of the highest Christian order, martyrs who died heroically as innocent, faithful believers; their counterparts, the white colonial militiamen, were portrayed as barbaric, villainous savages, having committed an utterly horrific and unjustifiable crime. By the time of the 1872 commemoration, the Bishop of the Moravian Church in America gave a keynote address that reflected a softening toward the savage white militiamen who committed the atrocity. One excerpt from his speech, printed in a local newspaper, painted the white perpetrators sympathetically and as quintessential pioneers who opened up the frontier to future settlement and, by so doing, suffered their own share of hardships: 336 Tuscawaras Chronicle, Thursday, June 6, 1872, file name: “Gnadenhutten News Clippings,” box 145, folder 3, MA. 196 Many of those who engaged in it were not border ruffians, but men of good character, hardy settlers, who with infinite toil, had established for themselves families and homes beyond the Alleghenies, and who constituted the stout-hearted vanguard of that army of immigrants which, some years later began to pour into the Northwest Territory. De Schweinitz also indicated that the slain Moravian Indians suffered less as Christians and more because of their Indian-ness. “The Christian Indians, who lost their lives on this spot were not martyrs, for they did not suffer on account of their religion. But they may rank with the martyrs, because they died like them.” 337 Still, his language revealed a complexity in the production of Native American images as both racial and spiritual beings. This shift in the image construction of the Indian martyrs in the first commemoration is best understood by integrating the broader thinking about Indians during the period. The Moravian community applied its religious sensibilities to commemorating the massacre of their martyred Indian brethren. The planning for the dedication of the monument intensified in the months before the ceremony. The GMS committee met weekly, then as the event neared, daily, to discuss the organization of the events, the order of exercises, the invited speakers, and the distinguished guests. On February 29 the board resolved that Brother Haman, Gnadenhutten’s current pastor, should invite Edwin Reinke, a prior 337 “ORATION, Delivered at the DEDICATION of the Gnadenhutten Monument, By Rt. Rev. Edmund De Schweinitz, D.D. Bishop of the Moravian Church,” The Ohio Democrat, Friday, June 14, 1872, Gnadenhutten News Clippings; box 145, folder 3; MA. 197 pastor at Gnadenhutten who was serving as missionary at the Indian mission town of New Fairfield, Canada, along with several of his Indian parishioners. “Ascertain whether it would be practible (sic) to have him with us at the time of the Dedication, accompanied by several of the Indian Brethren.” 338 Reinke responded in the affirmative and four Christian Indians joined him as “distinguished guests” for the dedication. They were Joel Snake, who was reportedly “a descendent of the great Indian warrior Tecumseh;” James Snake; Christian Stonefish; and John Jacob, the grandson of John Schebosh, the first victim of the massacre. 339 Whether these individuals were, in fact, descended from the great Indian warrior and the first Indian martyr is not important. But in the imagination of the Moravian community—at least as it was revealed in the public commemoration—the Indian descendents embodied deep symbolic spiritual meanings. Their presence symbolized ideological and theological principles upon which the Moravian church had based their “propagation of the gospel to the heathen” enterprise. The blood of Tecumseh, the great resistance fighter and Native revivalist, flowed through the 338 Minutes, February 29 th , 1872; Gnadenhutten Monument & Cemetery Association Records, series VI, box 11, folder 6: Minute book, October 7, 1843-November 23, 1876; JHMMCA. 339 See Tuscawaras Chronicle, Thursday, June 6, 1872; Gnadenhutten News Clippings; box 145, folder 3; MA. Contemporary material on the commemoration -- news reports, minutes of the GMS board meetings, the pastor’s diary—mention John Jacob as a descendent of a victim of the massacre, but none of the other three as being so. Later twentieth century accounts constructed the memory of this first commemoration differently and identify all four of the Indian guests as descendents of the massacre. See “From the Archives: Erection of the Monument;” The Heckewelder Herald, April 2000; GA. 198 veins of Joel Snake. The blood of a Christian martyr flowed through the veins of John Jacob, which reflected the success of the Moravian enterprise and the community’s identification and eternal bond with those who died in the “sufferings of Christ,” their salvation sealed with sacrificial blood. “Blessed are those who suffer for my sake,” Jesus reportedly said, “for they shall see the kingdom of God.” 340 The keynote speaker for the day’s event was the Right Reverend Edmund De Schweinitz, bishop of the Moravian Church in America. His oration was filled with racist imagery. He applied mid-nineteenth-century binaries, juxtaposing white and Indian, civilization and barbarism, Christianity and heathenism. He offered a historical account of the indigenous inhabitants of the Muskingum Valley prior to contact and before they embraced European civilization, especially, Christianity. “The North American Indian,” De Schweinitz told the crowd, “lived in savage simplicity.” He disparagingly pointed to “their schemes of aggrandizement, concocted with all the duplicity for which the aborigines are noted.” De Schweinitz even said that the Christian Indians who perished at Gnadenhutten, those in whose honor the monument was dedicated that day, “were gained from gross barbarism—won from a low superstition which saw god in almost everything 340 Matthew 5:10, NIV. 199 animate or inanimate. No heathen can be more depraved than they originally were.” 341 In spite of De Schweinitz’s racist language and his promotion of the idea that Indians were inferior to Euro-Americans, the speech also showed ideological complexities about Native peoples. De Schweinitz spoke repeatedly of “gains” brought to the North American Indians as a result of European contact—they acquired such things as “new staples, more effective weapons, better garments.” But the encounter also brought evils to indigenous peoples that resulted in great loss—“fire water (alcohol), diseases, and the worst vices of heathenism were stirred by the worst elements of civilization.” Indians lived in “savage simplicity” but De Schweinitz also noted that they “as yet knew nothing of the influences of a superior race, whether for good or evil.” 342 De Schweinitz believed in the idea of the superiority of the Anglo Saxon race, but not strictly from a racialized point of view. His speech reflected a nineteenth- century reasoning based more in an ethno-religious centrism, than a purely racial superiority. 343 De Schweinitz believed that the introduction of Christianity to the 341 The Ohio Democrat, Friday, June 14, 1872 “Oration Delivered at the Dedication of the Gnadenhutten Monument, Br Rt. Rev. Edmund De Schweinitz, D.D., Bishop of the Moravian Church; Gnadenhutten news clippings, box 145, folder 3, MA. 342 The Ohio Democrat, Friday, June 14, 1872 “Oration Delivered at the Dedication of the Gnadenhutten Monument, Br Rt. Rev. Edmund De Schweinitz, D.D., Bishop of the Moravian Church; Gnadenhutten news clippings, box 145, folder 3, MA. Emphasis mine. 343 Berkhoffer, The White Man’s Indian, 54. For another helpful work that looks at nineteenth century thinking on race and Indians see Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. 200 “aboriginal heathen,” was beneficial to them because it gave them access to the one true God and to eternal salvation. Although his use of language may seem offensive to modern sensibilities, by deconstructing De Schweinitz’s speech in its broader context one can identify nuances in it drawn from the historic Moravian principle that all peoples, race notwithstanding, were brethren and citizens of the heavenly kingdom of God. “Long may it stand,” declared De Schweinitz before the crowd, “to proclaim the power of the gospel in the case of every yet unconverted nation! There is hope for (Indian) brothers in the Western Territories, and for the tribes of British America. There is hope for the swarming multitudes of Central America, for the Chinese, with their hoary traditions of lies, for the Hindoos and the Japanese, and all the Gentile world. “The heart of Christianity,” De Schweinitz affimed, “pants to make Indians and white citizens one in the common Redeemer of all mankind.” At another point in the speech, De Schweinitz stated that Indian removal and the acquisition of their ancestral land by the Anglo Saxon race was not God’s will, but a sin. He called for belated justice for Indians suffering in the western territories. The monument would serve as a lasting inspiration for this cause: But again I say, long may this monument point upward to that throne whose habitation is righteousness and judgment, invoking justice for the Indian of our time! I believe that the Lord of heaven and earth meant this continent to be swayed by the Anglo Saxon race. But I do not believe that He intended any part of the aboriginal domain to be usurped, or that He ever sanctioned the forcible abduction of an Indian tribe from its homes, or that His benediction attends any Nichols, and David M. Reimers, Natives and Strangers: Blacks, Indians, and Immigrants in America, second edition, (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 201 fraudulent treaties concluded with the natives. We have sinned as a people against the race which owned this broad land. 344 In a shift from earlier Moravian lore about the massacre, De Schweinitz softened his rhetoric toward the white perpetrators by stressing the rogue nature of the attack. First, he emphasized that Colonel David Williamson and the white militiamen were not acting with “authority from Fort Pitt,” thus removing responsibility for the massacre from the American government. He pointed out the disorderliness of the assault upon the Gnadenhutten Indians. “They did not take time to arm and equip themselves properly; there were lads among them entirely too young to go to war.” De Schweinitz emphasized the renegade, rogue behavior of the guilty agents. So important was this detail to De Schweinitz that he concluded his account of the massacre by repeating once more that the white men acted without official sanction: “I may add, that Williamson’s expedition was undertaken without the least sanction on the part of the military authorities of the Western Department.” By not implicating colonial patriots or the fledgling American government in the crime, this telling of the story reaffirmed the Moravian church’s patriotic place in the national revolutionary lore. De Schweinitz was also aware that the dedication ceremony followed close on the heels of the conclusion of the Civil War. Perhaps he 344 The Ohio Democrat, Friday, June 14, 1872 “Oration Delivered at the Dedication of the Gnadenhutten Monument, Br Rt. Rev. Edmund De Schweinitz, D.D., Bishop of the Moravian Church; Gnadenhutten news clippings, box 145, folder 3, MA. 202 did not want to call attention to the recent atrocities committed by both Union and Confederate soldiers upon innocents. 345 The oration continued and the places the Indians and whites occupied in the story took on new meanings from earlier traditions of the massacre: The whole frontier was aroused by the news that a party of British Indians had attacked the plantation of William Wallace, murdered his wife and five children, and carried off his farm hand, John Carpenter, as a prisoner. The opinion gained credence among the settlers that the Moravian Indians had either been guilty of this outrage or had harbored its authors in their villages. In all probability the Moravian Indians did not commit the crime against the Wallace family, but it is possible that they harbored the guilty Indian party. They would have been compelled to do so because of threats on their own lives on the part of Indian war party. Based on the missionaries’ diaries and the Christian Indians’ commitment not to take up arms in the war on either side of the conflict, De Schweinitz proclaimed that the “entire innocence of the ninety members of the Mission who suffered here, is indisputably established.” De Schweinitz made it clear to his listeners that Col. Williamson’s expedition “was an unmitigated atrocity” and that the purpose of the attack was “putting the non-combatants to death.” But he also began to speak as an apologist for the white murderers: And yet something may be said to explain the act. Many of those who engaged in it were not border ruffians, but men of good character, hardy settlers, who, with infinite toil, had established for themselves families and homes beyond the Alleghenies, and who 345 For a superb treatise on nineteenth-century war commemorations see Jeffery Kosiorek, “Revolutionary Commemoration, Liberty, and Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century America.” PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2005. 203 constituted the stout-hearted vanguard of that army of immigrants which, some years later, began to pour into the Northwest Territory. The white militiamen, who in earlier records were described as barbaric savages, were now identified with American pioneer stock, the new patriotic national hero constructed in the post-bellum era. Neither should these men be wholly blamed for the crime. Instead they faced the reality of Indian savagery on the frontier, which compelled them to commit atrocities they would otherwise never have committed: The cruelties, the murders, the devastations, of the British Indians, exceeded all description. Hence the public mind had been worked up to a pitch which prevented it from distinguishing between right and wrong. “Death to the Indians, of whatsoever tribe and name!” was the cry that rang along the frontier. To evoke even more empathy for the militiamen, De Schweinitz recalled a memory from the recent past: We will understand such frenzy when we remember the blood-thirsty imprecations which burst for the lips of the people of Minnesota only nine years ago, while their State was ravaged by the Indians. Williamson’s men looked upon the massacre as a blow struck against the Indian race, and they justified its enormities by the still greater cruelties which the savages practiced upon their neighbors and upon some of their own families. De Schweinitz also called for reconciliation and forgiveness, echoing contemporary calls to the citizens of the nation to exhibit such characteristics who had recently endured the sufferings and divisions in the Civil War. While we unqualifiedly condemn the massacre, we will, in the figurative language of the Indians themselves, so often used in their speeches at treaties, bury the crime here committed in one common grave with the dead, and remember only the faith displayed by the dying. 204 De Schweinitz’s final departure from the earlier traditions of the massacre was the Christian Indians’ fall in their spiritual stature as martyrs. “The Christian Indians who lost their lives on this spot,” he said, “were not martyrs, for they did not suffer on account of their religion.” Sylvester Wolle and the original Gnadenhutten Monument Society in the 1840s had closely identified the Indians’ death with the sufferings of Christ, but the new construction established that the massacre victims died because of their Indian-ness, not their Christian faith. Nonetheless, they could still be counted as martyred for how they died. “But they may rank with the martyrs, because they died like them.” He followed this statement recounting one by one the names of the fallen Indian brethren. “On an occasion like the present,” he said, “it is eminently proper that their names should be made known and enshrined in our memory. The roll is the following:” 346 Members of the Gnadenhutten Mission.— John Schebosh John Martin (a distinguished national assistant) Luke and his wife, Lucia Philip and his wife, Lorel, together with their little daughter, Sarah Abraham (surnamed, the Mohican) Paul and Anthony (John Martin’s sons) Christina (a widow, educated in the Moravian schools at Bethlehem, a refined and cultured woman) Mary (another widow) and her little daughter Hannah Rebecca Rachel Maria Elizabeth (a young daughter of Mark) 346 The names were taken from a newspaper publication of Bishop De Schweinit’s oration at the 1872 Dedication of the Monument Commemoration. “ORATION, Delivered at the DEDICATION of the Gnadenhutten Monument, by Rt. Rev. Edmund De Schweinitz, D.D., Bishop of the Moravian Church.” The Ohio Democrat, Friday, June 14, 1872, file name: “Gnadenhutten news clippings,” box 145, folder 3, MA. 205 Gottleib and Benjamin (two little sons of Joanna) Anthony and John Thomas (two little boys) Members of the New Schoenbrunn Mission (who happened to be at Gnadenhutten).— Nicholas and his wife, Joanna Sabina Abel Henry Anna and Bathseba (the two last daughters of Joshua, the founder of Gnadenhutten) Members of the Salem Mission.— Isaac Glickkikan (one of the most illustrious Moravian Indians, a faithful assistant of the missionaries) and his wife, Anna Benigna Jonah (Indian assistant) and his wife, Amelia Christian (Indian assistant) and his wife, Augustina Samuel Moore (a Jersey Indian, well educated assistant) Tobiah (well educated Indian assistant) Israel (a celebrated Delaware chief, known as Captain Johnny) Mark (surnamed the Delaware) Adam and his wife, Cornelia Henry and his wife, Joanna Salome Lewis and his wife Ruth John Another John (a young man) Paul Michael Peter Gottlieb David Hannah, Joseph Peepi’s wife Judith (an aged, gray-haired widow, the first killed among the women) Catharine Maria Susanna Julianna Elizabeth Martha Anna Rosina Salome Together with the following little boys and girls: Christian Joseph Mark Jonathan Christian Gottlieb 206 Timothy Jonah Christiana Leah Benigna Gertrude Christina Anna Christina Anna Salome Anna Elizabeth One unnamed victim Besides these, there were five adults—one man, Scappihillen, the husband of Helen, together with four women—and thirteen babes not yet baptized. Hence, 28 of the victims were men, 29 women, and 33 children. Two lads, Thomas and Jacob, escaped, the first with the loss of his scalp. It was through this gesture of identifying each individual victim by their name where De Schweinitz most strongly humanized and dignified the Native Americans who died that day. Following De Schweinitz’s oration, the ceremony continued with the unveiling of the monument. The four “distinguished Indian guests” stood at the four corners of the monolith and “with cord in hand, which was fastened to the drapery at the top of the shaft, performed the ceremony of unvailling (sic) the monument during the recital of the burial litany.” 347 The monument stood nearly 35 feet high and the inscription on the base read: “Here Triumphed in Death Ninety Christian Indians, March 8, 1782.” Local newspaper accounts of this part of the ceremony described a scene that portrayed the Indian men on display before the large crowds more like 347 The granite monolith was unveiled during a funeral recital, which constitutes it as much a gravestone as a monument. 207 romanticized relics of an Indian past and less as important figures in the commemoration ceremony. The afternoon exercises began with Rev. Reinke and the four Indian men singing a Moravian hymn in the Delaware language. “At the close of this novel (to us) and interesting performance, the audience was entertained by short Indian addresses from the four Indians, who occupied seats upon the stand. The Indian ‘James Snake’ was first introduced by Rev. Reinke.” 348 The quotations bracketing James Snake’s name is curious. It suggests that the writer of the article considered the name of James Snake as more a moniker or theatrical character than his actual given name. The article continued: “He was, we should think, a full blood Indian and altogether the best representative of the real Indian character. His remarks were wandering and disconnected, but he made one or two very good points.” The writer of the article, in a demeaning way, associated James Snake’s “wandering and disconnected” speech with his Indian-ness. One of the “good points” of the speech the author noted was Snake’s comment that the “Indian was as wicked now as in the days of the Gnadenhutten massacre, because he did not like to acknowledge and love the Great God in Heaven.” It is impossible to know if Snake’s words were his own or were taken out of context. But here again, the author emphasized the elements of the speech that degraded Native Americans and used an Indian’s own voice to do so. 348 Tuscawaras Chronicle, Thursday, June 6, 1872; file name: “Gnadenhutten News Clippings,” box 145, folder 3; MA. 208 The discourse throughout this first commemoration of the 1782 massacre shows a distinction between the imagined Indian martyrs of Gnadenhutten’s history and contemporary Indians living in the 1870s. The former had “triumphed in the Christian Faith” and the latter fulfilled the expectation of the crowd, even still Indians were wicked and godless. The newspaper report on the dedication ceremony and its representation of Native Americans stands in ideological contrast to the many of the sentiments expressed by De Schweinitz. At the time of the dedication in 1872, there were multiple ways that whites in the community thought of and imagined Indians in the present and in the past. De Schweinitz and the Moravian church in the early 1870s shared many of the contemporary perceptions that held disdain and contempt for Native Americans. In this inaugural celebration, though, the Moravians’ memory of their martyred Indian brethren departed from the dominant perceptions held by Anglo-Americans that Indians were degraded and in danger of extinction. The 1882 Centennial “Celebration” Although Francis Huebner was but two years old at the time of the 1872 monument dedication, his education in Gnadenhutten’s culture of remembering the massacred Moravian Indians was well under way. In 1882, at the age of twelve, the spectacle of the Centennial of the massacre left impressions on him he never forgot. His later writings and the stories he shared with his children and grandchildren described a childhood in which the physical and religious environment recalled for 209 him the early Indian Gnadenhutten. He wrote that his childhood engendered in him an impassioned interest in the history of Moravians and the Indian missions. 349 By 1882, various records suggest that he was already a deeply committed congregant in the Moravian church and someone who would have attended the Centennial and participated in its preparations and ceremonies. 350 Even more than the first commemoration, the 1882 celebration lessened the spiritual meaning of the Indian massacre to an even greater extent. Leading church members on the Centennial board appeared intent on making the celebration more of a public statewide and civil event than an intimate religious commemoration. Bishop Edmund De Schweinitz, orator for the 1872 Dedication of the Monument ceremony, urged Henry J. Van Vleck, the current pastor of Gnadenhutten’s church, to secularize and politicize the event. “Your official letter,” wrote Van Vleck in response to De Schweinitz, “urged me to make it (the Centennial) a State occasion, and to secure an orator from the ranks of Ohio’s public men, convinced that it is the only way in which the occasion can be made a success.” Van Vleck opposed the shift to the secular, responding that he “endeavored to give an interpretation (of the event) more denominational than civil, or pertaining to the 349 See Francis C. Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio (Washington D.C.: Sims & Lewis Printers, 1898), preface, and 3. 350 Francis’s deep involvement in the Moravian church at this young age is substantiated by several factors, which are detailed in Chapter 5. 210 state.” 351 Powerful church members on the Committee of Arrangements for the Centennial sided with Bishop De Schweinitz, and the orators selected for the Centennial comprised of a United States Senator, Ohio’s Governor, and a Military officer. Prominent Moravian leaders who participated in the Centennial, such as Van Vleck, who was himself a ranking bishop of the church, were relegated to the strictly religious tasks such as opening prayers and closing benedictions. What accounts for this dramatic shift from the deeply religious practice of remembering the martyred Indians to a civil/political State commemoration? During these planning stages for the Centennial, Rev. Van Vleck expressed shock that the Committee of Arrangements even considered the idea of not issuing an invitation to Indian representatives from Moravian Town, the Indian mission in Canada (previously New Fairfield). The board entertained the thought because of the prohibitive travel expenses that would be incurred by the church. “In the last meeting of the Com of Arr before the celebration,” recorded Van Vleck, the probable condition of our funds (in the collecting of which we met with unlooked for disappointments) seemed to preclude the giving of invitations to any persons or person whose traveling expenses we would thereby feel ourselves in duty bound to pay; the only exception being Bro. Hartmann and his three Indians, in whose behalf I pleaded in as much as the impracticability of having even them to come, on our expense, was broached. 352 351 Rev. Van Vleck to Bishop De Schweinitz, June 20, 1882; PEC Letter: U-Z; 1882; MA. (Emphasis in the original). 352 Rev. Van Vleck to Bishop De Schweinitz, June 20, 1882; PEC Letter: U-Z; 1882; MA. (Emphasis in original). 211 The Committee ultimately agreed to issue invitations to Joshua Jacobs, Brother Stonefish, a third unnamed Indian brother, and Brother Hartmann, their white missionary. Together they made the long trek from Moravian Town and arrived in Gnadenhutten five days before the Centennial celebration. All three of the Native American guests were said to be direct descendents of victims of the massacre. Similar to the focus on the Indians’ bloodline in the 1872 Dedication ceremony, the blood of the martyred Indians flowed through the veins of Jacobs, Stonefish, and the third Indian guest. In this capacity, these Indians also functioned as living relics of the past. Whether or not their sacred ancestry was genuine, church leaders on the Committee of Arrangements deemed the claim important enough to emphasize it in literature published for the Centennial. The evidence suggests that the idea of lineal descent from the massacre victims would have ultimately trumped the reality of their bloodline, regardless of its veracity. The Committee reissued the 1872 pamphlet for the 1882 Centennial with curious revisions that suggest that the community’s remembering was driven more by cultural needs than historical fact. The body of the pamphlet was an exact replication of the 1847 pamphlet, “A True History of the Massacre of Ninety-six Christian Indians, at Gnadenhutten, Ohio, March 8, 1782.” But the 1882 issue had an updated Appendix that changed a few of the factual details of the 1872 Dedication of the Monument ceremony. The erection of it was completed on the 4 th , of June, in the aforesaid year (1872), and it was unveiled and solemnly dedicated, on the day following. The oration was delivered, by Bishop Edmond de Schweinitz of Bethlehem, Pa. And the music rendered by the 212 Moravian church and trombone-choirs of the same place, together with the unveiling of the monument, by four Delaware Indians, from the New Fairfield mission in Canada, [all of whom were lineal descendants, of those who were massacred,] greatly added to the interest and impressiveness of the occasion, at which about ten thousand persons were in attendance. The most critical revision was that all four of the Indians were now Delaware and lineal descendents of the massacre victims. Records from the 1872 commemoration had stated that only one of the Indian guests was descended from a victim of the massacre and no mention was made of their Delaware affiliation. The 1882 organizers may have been influenced by Helen Hunt Jackson’s recently published, A Century of Dishonor, a diatribe against the injustices the United States inflicted on Native Americans. The organizers of the memorial and many of the attendees were sure to have read this hugely popular and influential work. In Jackson’s first chapter, she emphasized the role the Delaware played in the success of the Revolution and their subsequent betrayal by the United States following the Treaty at Paris. Captain White Eyes had adhered to our (the American) cause (the Revolution) in spite of great opposition from the hostile part of the tribe. At one time he was threatened with a violent death if he should dare to say one word for the American cause; but by spirited harangues he succeeded in keeping the enthusiasm of his own party centered around himself, and finally carrying them over to the side of the United States. She followed this with a speech of White Eyes, which she argued compared favorably with “speeches made by commanders to their troops in those revolutionary 213 days.” 353 The two-fold identification of each of the four Indian guests as Delaware and lineal descendents of the massacre placed them in the imagination of the white audience firmly within Jackson’s framework as descendants of Revolutionary heroes. Van Vleck noted in his diary that immediately upon their arrival on the evening train, two of the “Indian brothers addressed us in the meeting (of the Committee of Arrangements).” Their schedule was booked throughout their stay with numerous speaking engagements and ceremonial visits to historic sites of the Indian missions around the region. Their visit lasted nearly a week and the Indian brothers Jacobs and Stonefish spoke at several Moravian churches around the region to “interested and well-attended audiences.” 354 These men occupied important roles in their Indian and religious community in Canada. Van Vleck identified Stonefish as “chief of the Delaware in Moravian town,” and Jacobs was the Indian assistant to Hartmann, which was the highest position of authority in the mission system bestowed upon Indian converts. These Native guests functioned as Christian Indian ambassadors to the white religious sector of the community, and in this capacity they participated in the more private and spiritual commemorative culture distinct from their roles in the public, civil affair of the official Centennial celebration. 353 Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings With Some of the Indian Tribes (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1885), 36. 354 Gnadenhutten, Fry’s Valley, and Ross church diary, August 15, 1881—October 7, 1882; see May 23 rd , 25 th installment; GA. 214 These Christian Indian men recalled for the white congregants who gathered to hear them speak the Moravians’ idiosyncratic understanding of the significance of blood – martyred blood spilt one hundred years past was the same blood that flowed through the veins of the Indians standing before them. These Indian guests were, in a real sense, religious relics, living testimonies to the work of God in the church. They were remnants of the Moravians’ mission field, representatives of their great and glorious past, and served as visual reminders of the church’s original calling from God. These Indians who shared the blood of the massacred victims evoked the memory of the past in deeper ways than a simple imaginative exercise. The physical presence of these Native American men who were believed to be lineal descendents of the massacred victims, regardless of any factual basis, brought the imagined past into the real present for the white Moravian congregants. Apart from Van Vleck, the records show that prominent church leaders envisioned a commemoration of the massacre far removed from earlier historical constructions of the tragedy. In the 1840s, the story focused on the martyred Christian Indians and the spiritual meanings and significance of their death. The early practice of remembering was, in many respects, a private community experience. By the 1880s, the practice of remembering of the massacre was significantly more public and its history reconfigured. The schedule of events and list of orators invited for the Centennial point to this shift, while contemporary sources also suggest that the 1882 Centennial de-emphasized the Christian Indian martyrs’ story and instead spotlighted the white missionaries, especially Zeisberger. 215 Thus Euro-Americans became the heroic protagonists of the massacre. Regional newspaper accounts that followed the “celebration” indicate that the memory of the massacre became civil rather than religious. According to a journalist named Henry Ford, Moravians had played a crucial role during the Revolution by preventing some “hostile Indians” from threatening the patriotic cause. “The recent occurrence of the centennial commemoration at Gnadenhutten offers a fit opportunity to bring into public view an important relation of the Moravian mission in the Valley of the Tuscarawas to the general history of the country,” he wrote in the Columbian Leader. “Full justice has hardly been done to this, even by the industrious historians and biographers of the Moravian faith.” 355 Despite the fact that the Centennial was, by definition, a commemoration of the one hundred year anniversary of the Gnadenhutten Massacre, there was not a single mention in Ford’s piece on the tragedy. Instead, Moravian missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder became central in Ford’s account—two American patriots whose influence kept the Delaware nation neutral during the War. To his credit, Ford gave passing credit to Delaware clan leaders Netawatwas and White Eyes for their refusal to take sides during most of the war and their influence on their own people to remain neutral. Ford recounted that during the Revolutionary War, Indian alliances proved invaluable, especially in the borderland regions of the Ohio territory between Fort 355 Henry A. Ford, “Heroic Patriotism of the Moravian Missionaries. The Important Part They Acted During The Revolution In Holding in Check the Hostile Indians;” The Columbian Leader, May 27, 1882; from Edmund De Schweinitz Scrapbook II (11); MA. 216 Pitt and Fort Detroit. The Moravian missionaries and their mostly Delaware converts were issued the war wampum belt by British allied Delaware Chief Pipe and his contingent of warriors. But the religious community refused to join in the hostilities due to their pacifism, thus maintaining neutrality. British authorities, suspicious of their neutral stance, issued a final appeal to the Moravians to join their side against the Americans: When a runner brought a letter to the missionaries, purporting to be an order from Governor Hamilton, at Detroit, that they should arm their converts and lead them on a foray against the “rebels” beyond the Ohio, the command was disregarded and the Moravians, white and red alike, were forcibly deported to the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky. The removal of the Moravian Indians to Sandusky was the catalyst that led to the massacre at Gnadenhutten, yet the author makes no mention of the massacre of Indians by American colonials, simply that the “occasion of the centennial commemoration” provided the “opportunity” to discuss the role that the white missionaries had in the Americans’ victory. It is, then, perhaps hardly too much to say that the neutrality of the Delawares saved the infant Republic of the New World. For this result the Moravian mission, all writers agree, is primarily to be credited. Let, then, the Delawares of the Tuscarawas, especially the Moravians of the mission stations, and more especially their founder and leader, David Zeisberger, be enrolled forever among the saviors of the Republic. 356 356 Henry A. Ford, “Heroic Patriotism of the Moravian Missionaries. The Important Part They Acted During The Revolution In Holding in Check the Hostile Indians;” The Columbian Leader, May 27, 1882; from Edmund De Schweinitz Scrapbook II (11); MA. 217 Ford’s focus on the white missionaries reflects a shift in the thinking about the massacre by the community of Gnadenhutten and the citizens throughout the Tuscawaras Valley. The organizers and the community centered the meaning of the 1882 Centennial more on the white missionaries, identifying them as American patriots, and to an extent, marginalizing the Christian Indians who were massacred. They recast the story of the massacre and spilling of the blood of ninety Christian Indians as a patriotic sacrifice that secured the success of the American cause rather than a spiritual triumph. There is another angle to the story of the planning of the Centennial. While the organizers were moving forward, a debate erupted among members of the Committee of Arrangements, Reverend Van Vleck, and church leaders in Bethlehem. Gnadenhutten’s leading citizens wanted to exhume Zeisberger’s remains from his grave in Goshen and re-inter them in Gnadenhutten beside the monument. While the idea to bring Zeisberger to rest near his Indian brethren appeared to be motivated by religious sensibilities, it also confirmed that the emphasis was shifting away from the Indian martyrs to the white missionaries. In spite of the event being the Centennial celebration of the massacre of Christian Indians, the Committee of Arrangements planned on featuring the re-interment as the day’s centerpiece. An exchange of letters between Van Vleck and De Schweinitz showed it was a heated debate, but the idea was ultimately abandoned. The debate over Zeisberger’s bones further supports the argument that the remembrance of the massacre was shifting in emphasis from a history of Christian Indians whose blood located them in revolutionary lore, to a 218 revised narrative in which the Moravian missionaries became cast as the “saviors of the Republic.” 357 This shift occurred in the public arena of commemoration practices. Nonetheless, in Gnadenhutten there persisted a religious (and less nationalistic) contingent of Moravians who remained dedicated to the spiritual, ritualistic, and Christian interpretation of the Indian massacre as martyrdom. The commemoration of 1882, and later the centennial of 1898 (which will be examined in chapters 5 and 6), demonstrates there existed in Gnadenhutten, and the broader Moravian community, multiple strains in the practice of their commemorative culture. They practiced their remembering of the massacre within contexts of national, patriotic lore, and a provincial strain that sought to incorporate the wider historical community of pioneers, missionaries, and Christian Indians together as national heroes. There was also a religious strain that sought to keep the focus on the sacred and spiritual significance of the massacre. This points to an “identity crisis” of sorts in the community: the planners of the commemoration seemed to ask themselves, “where do we place ourselves as Christians and as Patriots in the American lore, and how do others see us in the American story?” At different moments, the commemorations emphasized one strain of remembering above another. * 357 H.J. Van Vleck to Bishop Edmund De Schweinitz, Feb., 12, 21, 28, April 3, 7, June 20, 1882; Sam Walter, Secretary, Cemetery and Monument Society to Bishop Edmund De Schweinitz, Feb., 23, 1882, PEC Letters B-J & U-Z, 1882, MA. 219 Francis Christian Huebner was born into this environment of commemoration at Gnadenhutten. Francis was a descendant of Indian missionaries John Lewis Huebner and his son, Ludwig. He was educated in the history of his ancestors’ missionary work and the interracial communities they lived in with their Native brethren. He came of age within this family heritage and Gnadenhutten’s culture of remembering, which impressed on him a consciousness of the great sufferings and injustices that Indians had endured in America’s past. His private and public education of his family and community’s histories with Native peoples produced in him a reform mindedness that complicated contemporary late nineteenth century ideas of how to solve “the Indian problem.” 220 Chapter 5 From Remembrance to Reform: The Environment, Education, and Family Heritage of Francis Christian Huebner, 1869-1898 The early life of the writer of this little volume was spent on the banks of the Tuscarwaras River within a stone’s throw of the site of the old Indian town of Gnadenhutten, and it was here that an interest in the history of the missions was first awakened. Francis C. Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 1898 Francis Christian Huebner was born in 1869 and baptized soon after his birth into his ancestral Moravian community at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Francis was nearly three years old when the inaugural commemoration in 1872 was celebrated. He came of age over the years the community deepened its practice of remembering its historic relationship with Native Americans in the 1782 massacre of their Christian Indian brethren. As an adult he wrote that the environment and education of his youth concerning the interracial, communal history of his church and Native Americans, and particularly the 1782 massacre, profoundly inspired him. As a young adult, from 1891 through 1895, Francis worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. By his late twenties, Francis became an expert on the history of the Moravian mission to the Indians. He gave lectures in his community on the subject, and he published books on it. 358 358 This excerpt comes from the preface of Francis Huebner’s published work, The Moravian Missions in Ohio (Washington D.C.: Sims & Lewis Printers, 1898), which is in substance a lecture that he gave at the John Heckewelder Memorial Church June 221 Francis held deep affection for his ancestral home and the Moravian church of Gnadenhutten. After moving away in the early 1890s, first to Washington, D.C., and then to Fresno, California, where he remained for the rest of his life, he and his family regularly returned to Gnadenhutten for visits. The community that Francis was born into possessed a complicated historical tradition of intersection with Native Americans. Moravian history showed whites and Indians living in a community of faith, and Francis’s family and community instructed him in these traditions. Any culpability on the part of the Moravian church, even Francis’s ancestors, in the demise of Native American society was erased from the history. The ancestral history the family and the community chose to remember contributed to Francis’s perception of Indians as equals, friends, and brethren. Francis’s individual practice of remembering his family’s history, where intersection with Indians was communal and familial, cannot be separated from the 9, 1898 for the Centennial Celebration. In 1901, he also published a well-received novel, Charles Killbuck: An Indian’s Story of the Border Wars of the American Revolution (Washington D.C.: The Herbert Publishing Company, 1901). According to my father, Larry Huebner, Francis cherished his birthplace and its rich history. He passed the lore and history of Gnadenhutten to his grandson, my father, who then passed it on to my brothers and me. But, as in the game “telephone,” by the time the story reached me, the original telling had become distorted. The “Delaware Massacre” that I imagined as a young child, was a battle between Indians, not a massacre of pacifist Christian Indians by American colonialists. I constructed in my mind an imaginary ancient battle where arrowheads pierced Indian bodies, and these arrowheads remained undisturbed amidst the dried bones of those Indian warriors who had fallen in battle, strewn across the family farm, which Francis as a boy had gathered up. Not until I began the research for this dissertation did I discover a more accurate historical account of the massacre at Gnadenhutten. 222 “patterns of perception which [he] learned from [his] wider social environment.” 359 In other words, the Huebner family’s private historical traditions and the religious community’s public commemorative practices produced in Francis a consciousness and reform mindedness about Indians that proved to be distinct from the contemporary narratives about Indians in the late nineteenth century. His ideas, shaped largely in his youth in Gnadenhutten, challenged the dominant ideas of white “friends of the Indians” who viewed Indians as savage and degenerative, and heading toward extinction. Gnadenhutten launched its first public practice in collective memory in the 1872 dedication of the monument to the martyred Indians. Community commemorations to the Christian Indian martyrs continued throughout Francis’s childhood and into his adulthood. The 1872 and 1882 commemorations must have been magnificent spectacles for the young Francis to witness. Thousands of strangers came to his small village to participate in the celebration. Perhaps he stood on the roadside holding his mother’s hand as the monument ceremoniously rolled through town to its eventual resting place. Once it arrived to Gnadenhutten, “the men and boys turned out in force to help. [They] helped push and shove until late in the afternoon, after an early morning start.” 360 Francis’s father and uncles would likely have been among those who helped transport the monument to the cemetery grounds. Once the ceremonies began the next day, seeing in person “living descendents” of 359 Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory,” 185. 360 “Erection of the Monument,” The Heckewelder Herald, April 2000, box 11, folder 1, GA. 223 the fallen—Brothers Stonefish and Snake—Indian guests who gave their speeches in their native languages surely left an impression on the young boy. Throughout his life in Gnadenhutten, Francis daily passed through the village. Every turn would have reminded him of the injustices and sufferings his Christian Indian brethren had endured. The Huebner home was on Main Street, about four blocks from the church, which stood in the center of the village. Cherry was a wide road that a few hundred yards further led to the monument grounds and “God’s Acre,” the village cemetery. Structural remnants of the ancient Indian village—portions of the cooper’s house and deep impressions of the basements of some of the Indians’ cabins—were visible alongside the broad, easy-flowing Muskingum River. The village grounds where the old cabins and the cooper shop once stood was now a grassy, quiet park, filled with evergreens and maple trees. The Monument, encircled by a rod-iron fence, stood in the middle. A walking path divided the monument grounds from the cemetery. God’s Acre, filled with headstones of the village’s ancestors, buttressed the park. 224 Francis wrote about the impressions these physical images had on him as a young child growing up among the physical imagery of the massacre located throughout his village: Depressions in the earth caused by the “caving in” of the cellars where stood the houses of the inhabitants, outlined what had existed, while two solemn mounds and a tall, grey monument bearing the inscription, “Here triumphed in death ninety Christian Indians, March 8, 1782,” told the story of the end. 361 The depressions he wrote about were the two cabins—one held the men and the other held the women and children—awaiting their death by being bludgeoned with 361 Huebner, The Moravian Missions, 3. Figure 18. Monument to the Massacred Indians, erected 1872 (photograph taken ca. 1900). Huebner family collection. 225 a cooper’s mallet. The mounds are large—five feet wide and three feet high—and are still located within the park grounds across the walking path from “God’s Acre.” They cover the “sun-bleached bones” that John Heckewelder gathered in 1798 and buried with solemnity. The Moravian community of Gnadenhutten invested the structural features of the village with spiritual meanings that relayed both the tragedy and the triumph of the massacre, in order to impart these meanings to subsequent generations. Gnadenhutten’s practice of remembering through pageantry shaped Francis’s thinking about Indians. Equally influential was his family’s history in the Moravian church. These private and public influences informed Francis’s approach to the “Indian question,” which became a pressing issue in the United States by the time he was an adult. Specifically, the culture of Gnadenhutten steered him from the assimilationist approaches that dominated the discussions of reformers during the late nineteenth century. His ideas about Indians, reflected in his writings and life, locates him within a distinct ideological strain of Indian reform that promoted Native American self-determination and dignity. The community’s construction of its collective memory of the massacre had both transformative and traditional elements on Francis’s individual thinking about Indians. 362 The religious community of Gnadenhutten fostered in Francis a 362 Memory theorist Paul Shackel’s thinking on private and public memory was particularly helpful to me in understanding the connection between the personal and public construction of Francis’s sensibilities about Native Americans. “The individual memory,” Shackel wrote, “is closely linked to community’s collective memory. Different versions of the past are communicated through various 226 consciousness about Indians that displayed an affinity for and charity toward them. Whether or not the Moravian history was accurately told, “what people believe to be true about their past,” writes historian Michael Kammen, “is usually more important in determining their behavior and responses than truth itself.” 363 Francis’s consciousness about Indians appeared when as an adult he contributed to Gnadenhutten’s commemorative culture through lectures and literary works; entered a legal career in Indian politics; and formed lifelong friendships with Indians. Francis’s private family history in the Moravian world also instructed him in a history that viewed Indians as brethren. Francis’s ancestors John Lewis Huebner and his son, Ludwig, as previous chapters have detailed, were both prominent missionaries in the Moravian mission project to the North American Indians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Francis wrote that his early life was surrounded with imagery of his community’s history with Indians, but he was also inculcated with his ancestral heritage. Ludwig’s diaries, which he kept during his tenure as pastor at Gnadenhutten from 1800 to 1805, were held at his local church, not in Bethlehem. They were often brought out for special occasions and read aloud institutions, including schools, amusement, art and literature government ceremonies, families and friends, and landscape features that are designated as historical.” See “Introduction,”Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, edited by Paul A. Shackel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 2. 363 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 17, and 38-39. 227 to the community. 364 The Gnadenhutten congregation had a penchant for remembering its close historical association with Native Americans and much of their history of the early settlement in Ohio they garnered from the diaries they had close at hand. 365 Francis grew up hearing stories about his great-uncle Ludwig’s close association with Indians who shared the faith. Sitting in church, he would have heard one section of Ludwig’s diary, which was often read and which noted the close relationship between the Gnadenhutten community and Christian Indians. “The Indian brethren and sisters” wrote Ludwig in 1802, camped by the river and the needs of their journey were variously provided by us. They continued their journey down the Muskingum in four canoes on the afternoon of the twenty fifth; and we heartily joined and wished them our best blessing in a touching leave taken with them. 366 Other standard readings from the diary included the passages in which Ludwig gave preferential treatment to visiting, non-believing Indians who attended his Sunday service: 364 Reading from the diary was a common practice at the Gnadenhutten church. During a service on January 2, 1898 for instance, pastor William Rice brought out the “time-browned pages of the old Diary” and read a passage to the congregation. See, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications. The Gnadenhuetten Centennial. September 29, 1798, 297-298, box 11, folder 2, GA. See also an article from the periodical, The Moravian July 20, 1898 Bethlehem, PA., Gnadenhutten church diary, 1898, William Rice, pastor, GA. 365 Ruth E. Baker, “From the Archives: The Rev. Ludwig Huebener (sic) First Pastor at Gnadenhutten,” The Heckewelder Herald 1987, 1996, 2000, GA. The materials that Baker accessed are held in the Gnadenhutten church archives. 366 Ludwig Huebner diary March 24, 1801, GA. 228 They [the “strange” Indians] were placed on the foremost benches and Bro. John Henry who understands the English language well, sat beside Bro. Huebener (sic) and translated his sermon on today’s Gospel, sentence by sentence, from the English into the Delaware language. We noted a very close attention. 367 His church and family raised Francis to be cognizant of his ancestral heritage of life and work among Indians that dated back to his great-great grandfather, John Lewis Huebner. Ludwig was the first of three Huebner men who served as the pastor of the Gnadenhutten fellowship during the nineteenth century. Samuel R. Huebner, a nephew to Ludwig, served for eight years from 1827 to 1835. Francis was four and five years old when another relation, Lewis R. Huebner began a short-lived pastor- ship in 1873. 368 The Huebners were one of Gnadenhutten’s prominent, founding families, especially within the context of the spiritual life of the community. Francis embraced this religious heritage, so a brief review his family history in Gnadenhutten will help shed light on his understanding of his ancestral past and how this influenced his life. 367 Ludwig Huebner quote from Ruth E. Baker, “From the Archives: The Rev. Ludwig Huebener (sic) First Pastor at Gnadenhutten,” The Heckewelder Herald, 1987, 1996, 2000, GA. 368 Lewis R. Huebner died unexpectedly from a heart attack within a year of his placement at Gnadenhutten. 229 The first Huebners to establish a permanent presence in the village were Francis’s great-grandfather and grandmother, Anton and Marie Salome Huebner, who arrived to Gnadenhutten with their children in 1834. Anton was the youngest son of John Lewis Huebner and his second wife, Catharina Baumgartner. Born in Bethlehem in 1780, Anton was a member of a family deeply entrenched in Moravian religious culture. Anton’s older half-brothers, Ludwig and Abraham, the children of John Lewis and his first wife, Cornelia Ysseltein, were leaders in the church at Bethlehem and abroad. During the 1790s and the early 1800s, Ludwig and Abraham served as curators of the Female Seminary and the Sister’s House in Bethlehem respectively. 369 Anton was baptized and attended the children’s worship at seven years old. At twelve years old, Brother Klingsohr, pastor of the Bethlehem congregation, noted in his diary that Anton was accepted into the older boys’ choir. When he reached fifteen, “Anton experienced the grace and indescribable joy of taking Holy Communion for the first time with the congregation.” 370 Records also indicate that Anton shared a warm relationship with his father and mother, John 369 For Abraham Huebner’s record of service as curator see, Register-Marriages, Apr. 26, 1792, Bethlehem Digital History Project http://bdhp.moravian.edu/community_records; for Ludwig’s apprenticeship to his father see, Ruth E. Baker, “From the Archives: The Rev. Ludwig Huebener (sic) First Pastor at Gnadenhutten,” The Heckewelder Herald 1987, GA 370 Anton Huebner obituary; September 20, 1854, Henry C. Bachman, pastor; Gnadenhutten Church Register, Volume 1, GA (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). Bachman’s entry for Anton is quite lengthy compared to other obituaries throughout the register. Also of interest, Anton’s obituary was written in German, a practice which was discontinued nearly fifteen years earlier. Anton’s German language obituary is interesting in that it suggests his association with the earlier, more traditional era of the Moravian church. 230 Lewis and Catharina Baumgartner. They brought their son Anton up within the religious traditions of the church and it is reasonable to assume that they shared with him the stories of his father’s celebrated missionary life among the Indians. 371 Anton did not become a potter as did his father and brothers. Instead he apprenticed as a shoemaker. At twenty-three years of age, Anton left Bethlehem and arrived on May 17, 1804 in Hope, New Jersey “in order to ply his trade there.” 372 Later that year in November, he married Maria Salome Knauss, also of Bethlehem. During their tenure in Hope, Anton and Maria Salome bore their first son, August, on November 16, 1807. The early life of this family took circuitous routes to several Moravian villages throughout the northeast. Settling first in Hope from 1804 to 1808, the Huebner family then moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania and remained there ten years. In 1818, with at least four of their eventual seven children in tow, Anton and Maria Salome moved to Shoeneck, Pennsylvania. Some records locate the family in Litzitz, Pennsylvania and then a return to Bethlehem in 1827 for seven years before permanently settling in Gnadenhutten, Ohio in 1834. 373 371 Anton’s obituary mentions that he wrote several religious poems about his parents. “He [Anton] left behind several poems (written) upon the death of his parents, in which he proved himself not only a poet but also a true Christian.” Anton Huebner death record, September 20, 1854, Henry C. Bachman, pastor; Gnadenhutten Church Register, Volume 1, GA (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 372 Anton Huebner death record, September 20, 1854, Henry C. Bachman, pastor; Gnadenhutten Church Register, Vol. 1, GA (translation by Jeannette Norfleet). 373 Matilda Antonia Bidwell (Huebner) death record, November 29, 1897, entry by Rev. William Henry Rice. Gnadenhutten Church Register, Vol. 2, 1870-1909, GA. 231 These multiple sojourns suggest Anton and Maria Salome probably functioned in some capacity as religious workers in the church. Other indications that this couple held respected positions in the church and community at Gnadenhutten are the church diarists’ exclusive references to Anton as “Father Huebner” and Maria Salome as “Mother Huebner,” designations which were a sign of prominence in the religious community. 374 The diarists of the church at Gnadenhutten also recorded conflict and heartbreak within the Huebner family, which impacted the religious community, as well as the spiritual life of August Huebner, Anton and Maria Salome’s first son. In 1837, August married Julian Dell, the daughter of another prominent Gnadenhutten family. Tragedy soon struck the young couple. Herman Tietze, pastor of the church at the time, recorded that a “fever” had come to the region and several members of the community succumbed. 375 Over the course of several months in 1838, Tietze 374 See, Thursday Feb 24, Saturday Feb. 26, Thursday May 26, Saturday May 28, 1842; Thursday Jan. 26, 1843, Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, 1842 and 1843, box 4, folder 10 and 11, entered by Rev. Sylvester Wolle, Zimmerman translation; and September 20, 1854, Gnadenhutten church diary, box 5, folder 8. In the extensive number of the church registers and diaries examined, the titles of “mother” and “father” were exclusively attributed to Anton and Maria Salome Huebner and no other community members. “Brother” and “Sister” were the most common designations that preceded church members’ names in the church diaries and records. Craig Atwood writes that in eighteenth-century Bethlehem, these designations signaled prominence in the community. See Atwood, Community of the Cross, 68, 74, 116-117, 136. 375 The diarist recorded that this wave of fever was particularly deadly and hit the children of the village hard. On January 30, 1839, Tietze wrote: “An unusual number of children became sick at this time.” Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, box 4, folder 4, GA. 232 recorded that he visited many homes and that he himself suffered from the fever. In the fall, which is the time of year when sickness and fevers were most virulent and deadly, Tietze recorded that fever had reached the young Huebner household. Bro. August comes toward evening and calls me to solemnly bless his wife, who unexpectedly got worse and, already past consciousness, lay in her death struggle. After a prayer, I imparted the blessing of the Lord on her home going. 376 Julian was nine months pregnant at the time when she was struck with fever. She managed to give birth to a son, but she died a week later. The records are unclear, but it appears that August became so grieved with the death of his wife that he gave the care of his son over to his parents, Anton and Maria Salome. Then, only increasing the weight of his and his parents’ grief, the infant died early the following year. “Burial of little Will. Obad. Huebner, who, after the home going of his mother, was adopted and cared for by his grandparents Ant. Huebners; hence this loss was especially painful to them.” 377 Only six months later, in the late summer of 1839, August married Margaret Hofer. An unpleasant drama disrupted their wedding ceremony and created such a scene that the pastor recorded it in his diary. “The widower August Huebner was married by me to Margaret Hofer, which step was taken amiss by his mother-in-law, 376 Friday October 26, 1838, Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, box 4, folder 2, entered by Herman Tietze, GA. Zimmerman translation. 377 For marriage record, see, August 20, 1837. For death of William Obadje Huebner, see January 20, 1839, Gnadenhutten Church Register, Volume 1, p. 241 and Gnadenhutten-Sharon diary, Thursday January 31, 1839, entry by Herman Tietze, GA. Zimmerman Translation. 233 the deceased wife’s mother, so that she manifested her bitterness about it in an offensive manner.” 378 According to records, Julian Dell’s still grieving mother protested August’s seemingly hasty marriage to Margaret and she had to be forcibly removed from the wedding ceremony. Earlier in March of this very tumultuous year for the Huebner family, Reverend Tietze recorded a deep and unpleasant fracture in the community between August and another church member, which brought him “strange feelings and a heavy heart.” 379 The pastor wrote that Mr. Teichman, who had years earlier served as an “ordained missionary,” (the same capacity as Ludwig and his great- grandfather, John Lewis had served) had for reasons not wholly clear, “nurtured deep-rooted grudging against all the brethren, by whom in general he believed himself to be deceived and unjustly treated.” Teichman had moved to Gnadenhutten in the late 1820s to ply his trade as a shoemaker. August, who followed in his father’s trade as a shoemaker, “worked” or apprenticed under Br. Teichman. The diarist singled out August Huebner as one whom Teichman particularly “wronged most rudely, and brought [him] ruin.” These cryptic words “brought [him] ruin” are unclear whether the diarist meant “ruin” to have come to Huebner or to Teichman. 380 378 Thursday August 1, 1839, Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, box 4, folder 4, entered by Herman Tietze, GA. Zimmerman translation. 379 March 3, 1839, Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, box 4, folder 4, entered by Herman Tietze. GA. Zimmerman translation. 380 March 3, 1839, Gnadenhutten & Sharon church diary, box 4, folder 4, entered by Herman Tietze, GA. Zimmerman translation. 234 Other challenges and heartache compounded the troubles the Huebners faced. August and Margaret had eleven children but they lost at least three infants in the early years of their marriage. These circumstances help explain August’s departure from the church, but the records themselves are vague on the exact reasons. The records do state, however, that late in life, about the time that his grandson, Francis Christian, was born, August returned to the congregation “in good standing” after having been an apostate for most of his adult life. 381 Margaret, however, remained a faithful member of the church throughout her life. She served as a church worker, and in 1882, eight years following August’s death, she remained engaged in the weekly practices of the church. “Held the [Tuesday] prayer meeting at widow Margaret Huebener’s, the attendance being good.” 382 August and Margaret’s second son Lorenz (hereafter Lawrence) Lionhard Huebner was born November 8, 1841 and baptized a month later into the Moravian church. 383 On November 2, 1865, Lawrence married Anna Maurer, the daughter of a Moravian family who had emigrated from Switzerland when she was five years of age. Anna and Lawrence’s first son, Francis Christian, the second child of six, was born on December 11, 1869. 381 The records that hold the information on August’s return to the church are missing. 382 February 21, Tuesday, 1882, Gnadenhutten church diaries, August 15, 1881- October 7, 1882, box 6, folder 4, GA. 383 November 8, 1841; Gnadenhutten Church Register Volume 1, p. 67, GA. August and Margaret’s first son, Emile died in early childhood. 235 Francis grew up on a family farm located near the center of town and its church. 384 His parents, Lawrence and Anna, headed a farming family that eventually numbered three daughters and three sons. Lawrence worked in various jobs to sustain the family, but he and Anna made their living primarily from making brooms and canning fruit. Francis related later in life that the whole family engaged in this family economy. 385 Lawrence, who was “interested in seeing things grow and progress,” was also well known in the village for his skill in gardening, which supplemented their diet and contributed to a supply of fruits and vegetables for canning. 386 According to their obituaries, Francis’s parents, Lawrence and Anna, remained in good standing in the congregation their entire lives. Anna served as “a faithful worker [in the church] until ill health and age prevented.” 387 A female worker in the church performed a number of various duties, which included, but were not limited to, teaching Sunday school to the children, ministering to the sick around the region, quilting blankets for the aged of the community, and participating in the church’s 384 The Huebner farm was located on what is now the corner of Main Street and Huebner Avenue with acreage behind it where the primary cultivated crop was corn, although Francis parents canned fruit as well. 385 Francis continued canning fruits and vegetables well into his senior years. His grandson, Larry, remembered, “Grandfather had a cellar and I loved to go down there with him to see all the canned goods he had, especially olives.” Personal interviews, Lawrence Gibson Huebner, May 8, 2006; June 1, 2009. 386 Lawrence Leonard Huebner, death record, August 17, 1927, Gnadenhutten church register, Volume 3, GA. 387 July 15, 1936; Gnadenhutten church register, Volume 2, GA. 236 renowned candle making industry. 388 There are no records indicating that Lawrence participated in any official capacity as a church worker, but he was recognized for his honest business dealings. While “his life was not spectacular,” he was regarded as a stalwart member the community, and “belonged to that class of people called by Lincoln “the common people.” 389 Lawrence and Anna Huebner held church meetings at their home and the church pastors visited the family on a regular basis. 390 Many of these pastor visits were prompted by the health problems, which both Anna and Lawrence suffered from during the 1870s and 1880s. In the fall of 1874, Lawrence was in a serious crisis, suffering from injuries he sustained during his service in the Civil War. 391 Lawrence eventually recovered, but over the course of his sickness, the Rev. Van Vleck visited the home several times. On other occasions, close friendship between the pastor and the family was the motivating factor behind the visits. Henry Van Vleck, who oversaw the 1882 centennial celebration of the massacre, once demonstrated his personal affection for and familiarity with Anna when he “prepared 388 Candle making was in the nineteenth century, and still is, a major source of income for the church at Gnadenhutten. Interview, Grace Day, Gnadenhutten church historian, summer 2008. 389 Lawrence Leonard Huebner, death record, August 17, 1927, Gnadenhutten church register, Volume 3, GA. 390 October 31, Saturday, 1874; November 17, 1874; Gnadenhutten church diary, September 27, 1874-January 22, 1877, box 6, folder 1, GA. 391 Lawrence Leonard Huebner, death record, August 17, 1927, Gnadenhutten church register, Volume 3, GA. 237 a birthday poem for Sr. Annie Huebener.” The attention the pastor gave to Anna’s birthday could have also been an indication of the important position she occupied in the church. It had been a practice throughout the eighteenth century in the Moravian church to acknowledge and celebrate the birthdays of church leaders. 392 By the time Francis reached his adolescent years, he demonstrated a deep commitment to the religious culture of the Moravian church. It began on December 16, 1869 with his baptism by the Rev. James Haman into the Moravian congregation at Gnadenhutten. Christian Maurer, the uncle from whom Francis received his given name, and his grandparents, August and Margaret Huebner, served as his baptismal sponsors. 393 As sponsors, they occupied the critically important spiritual role of Godparents and were responsible for the spiritual life of the boy. His grandfather, August, who had only recently returned to the church when Francis was born, lived until Francis’s fifth year and was present in the early, impressionable years of the boy’s life. Both his grandmother, who lived until Francis turned seventeen, and his mother were faithful workers in the church and held church meetings in their homes. Finally, the community’s religious leaders regularly visited the Huebner home. Francis was thus born and raised in a spiritually dynamic family and community network. 392 January 9, 1882, Gnadenhutten church diaries, August 15, 1881-October 7, 1882, box 6, folder 4, GA. For the importance of birthday celebrations of church leaders in the church at Bethlehem during the eighteenth century, see Atwood, Community of the Cross, 136-137. 393 Baptism record, Francis Christian Huebner, December 16, 1869, Gnadenhutten church register, book 2, p. 261, GA. 238 Lessons in Spectacle: The 1872 Dedication of the Monument in a child’s eyes The village held its first commemoration of the Indian massacre in 1872 when Francis was a toddler. Francis may have been too young to retain conscious memories of his experience, but this grand spectacle inaugurated his instruction of the massacre. The town had been a-buzz for months with preparations for the great day. A local newspaper reported that the event “had been the chief topic of conversation for many weeks.” 394 The excitement heightened significantly when the thirty-seven foot monument arrived a week before the dedication. The men and boys of the church turned out in force to help move it through the village on railway tracks to its resting place in the cemetery grounds. Francis, together with the rest of the community, may have stood with his mother along the side of Main Street and watched the 394 My information on the day’s events is culled from four news articles: two of them from regional newspapers, The Tuscarawas Chronicle, Thursday, June 6, 1872“GNADENHUTTEN. The Memorial Monument Dedication. 6,000 to 8,000 PEOPLE PRESENT. Highly Interesting and Impressive Exercises; ” and The Tuscarawas Advocate, Friday, June 7, 1872, No. 32, J.L. McIlvaine, editor; and two articles from Cincinnati and Cleveland newspapers, The Cincinnati Commercial, June 5, 1872, “GNADENHUTTEN. Its Location, Name, Settlement, Early History—Murder of Moravian Indians—Dedication of the Monument—Address of Bishop De Schwenitz (sic), &c.” author unidentified; and The Daily Herald, Cleveland, Ohio, June 10, 1872. “GNADENHUTTEN. Dedication of the Monument to Slaughtered Christian Indians—Immense Concourse—Intensely Interesting Exercises” author unidentified. These newspaper accounts are pasted in a scrapbook put together by the Bishop of the Moravian Church at the time of the event, Edmund de Schweinitz. Edm de Schweinitz Scrapbook III (12), MA. 239 massive monolith as it passed through the center of town. 395 The erection of the monument was completed on June 4, one day before the great event. According to a local report, the community witnessed “people flocking into the quiet little village of Gnadenhutten, from every direction, and in every possible way, until the crowd numbered at least eight thousand.” The weather was warm and clear and the people arrived in carriages, wagons, buggies, on horseback and on foot, by railroad, and by canal. The Huebner family likely joined the large procession, which started at the church, and marched to a grove within the cemetery grounds. The memorial park was overgrown with sycamores, wild cherries, and black locusts, and “among which can yet be traced the excavations made for the buildings” where the 1782 massacre took place. When the crowd reached the cemetery and neared the monument, the surroundings were a somber reminder for those in attendance. A few yards to the east of the monument is the site of the cooper shop into which the women and children were led to be slaughtered, while the men were taken from the Church in pairs, and led by a rope about their necks a few yards to the west, where they were dispatched. Two large platforms had been built for the special guests and dignitaries, and hundreds of chairs were placed in close proximity to the monument. The festivities began with prayer and song. The Reverend Sylvester Wolle, Gnadenhutten’s pastor who founded the Monument Society in 1843, read the burial litany. The litany was then “responded to by the brethren.” The distinguished Moravian choir of Bethlehem, “of forty-four ladies and gentlemen” made the music 395 The Heckewelder Herald, “From the Archives: Erection of the Monument,” April 2000, Gnadenhutten, Ohio, GA. 240 for the occasion. For a young child like Francis, the drama of the event heightened with the unveiling of the monument. “The Monument was unveiled by four Christian Indians from Canada, one of whom is a great grandson of Shabosh, the first Indian who fell in the great massacre, and two of whom are distant relatives of the great Tecumseh.” All the newspaper accounts emphasized the authenticity of the Native American guests, and how the presence of “real” Indians unveiling the 37-foot monument provided an exciting moment for the white community. These Indians, one at each corner of the monument, and with cord in hand, which was fastened to the drapery at the top of the shaft, performed the ceremony of the unvailing (sic) the monument during the recital of the burial litany. Following the unveiling, the crowd dispersed and picnicked in the grove on basket lunches prepared beforehand at the church. 396 As a female church worker, Anna would have helped in these preparations. Lawrence and Anna, with their three children, Ella, Francis, and Ernest would have joined their church brethren in the grove and enjoyed a family picnic on the grass. The Huebner children probably played with other children among the graves of their ancestors and the martyred Indian brethren, as the newspaper accounts reported. The image was of “families picnicking and children playing on the grounds, which ninety years ago was the 396 I assume that the lunches were prepared for church members only. Otherwise, it would have been an incomprehensible undertaking for the church to have supplied lunches for 8,000 visitors. 241 scene of one of the saddest events in American history made joyful by the laughter and general good feeling among those present.” 397 The afternoon exercises opened with the singing of an Indian hymn, supposedly the one the Indian martyrs sang the night before the slaughter. 398 “This was announced in the Delaware language by Rev. Reinicke [the pastor of the Indian congregation in Canada] and sung by that gentleman and the four Indians in the Indian tongue.” “This” the journalist wrote, “was a novel experience for all.” The implication is that most of this Anglo American crowd had never before heard the Native American language spoken. Following their singing, the Indian guests (sitting on the stage beside the other dignitaries) rose and gave individual addresses. According to the Cincinnati Commercial, the Indians were “all full-blooded, with the features and physical characteristics of their race strongly marked.” Christian Stonefish addressed the audience in his native Delaware language. Then he translated what he had said into English. To the laughter of the crowd, Stonefish, according to the reports, “remarked that a good many of those before him looked like Indians themselves. He was glad to see them,” he said, “here among the white folks.” Stonefish expressed 397 Cincinnati Commercial, June 5, 1872, “GNADENHUTTEN. Its Location, Name, Settlement, Early History—Murder of Moravian Indians—Dedication of the Monument—Address of Bishop De Schwenitz (sic), &c.” Edm de Schweinitz Scrapbook III (12), MA. 398 Daily Herald, Cleveland, Ohio, June 10, 1872. “GNADENHUTTEN. Dedication of the Monument to Slaughtered Christian Indians—Immense Concourse—Intensely Interesting Exercises.” Author not given. Edm de Schweinitz Scrapbook III (12), MA. 242 his desire that they would all love God, “and then they would meet in another country where differences of color and language are unknown.” His comment showed an awareness of, and subtle petition against, racial discrimination. As a Moravian Christian, Stonefish was cognitive of the erasure of racial difference in church doctrine. John Jacob was the third Native American to speak. He expressed thanks to the large crowd that they “remembered his relations who were buried here in their graves.” 399 “Everything came off in good order,” the article in the Tuscarawas Advocate reported, “and the Moravian people, especially those of Gnadenhutten, can felicitate themselves upon so happy a consummation of a long-cherished purpose.” For the citizens who attended the dedication of the monument in 1872, Gnadenhutten’s commemoration of the massacre was a grand experience. The public spectacle inaugurated the villagers, particularly the young children, in the historical meaning of the massacre. The community undertook the education its citizens of their historic connection to their Indian brethren and instructed them in their place as a community in the larger American story. As his later writings indicated, the event left young Francis with a positive and sympathetic impression of Indians and his family’s relationship with them. 399 Cincinnati Commercial, June 5, 1872, “GNADENHUTTEN. Its Location, Name, Settlement, Early History—Murder of Moravian Indians—Dedication of the Monument—Address of Bishop De Schwenitz (sic), &c.” Edm de Schweinitz Scrapbook III (12), MA. 243 The 1882 Centennial of the Massacre Francis was twelve when the centennial celebration of the massacre was held in 1882. This event lacked the spectacle of the inaugural event of 1872. The young people of the church were asked to help in the preparations and Francis, being active in the congregation at this time, in all likelihood helped. The event organizers assigned the younger congregants to put together “basket dinners,” paint fences, set up chairs and tables, and post notices around the monument grounds. The older boys helped build platforms for the seating of the dignitaries and as a stage for the guest speakers. 400 Christian Stonefish and Joshua Jacobs, two of the Indian guests who unveiled the monument and spoke at the 1872 commemoration, traveled a second time from Moraviantown (earlier called New Fairfield), Canada to participate in the 1882 event. A third unidentified Native brother joined Stonefish and Jacobs and the three men were again touted by the organizers as “authentically” Indian (with the emphasis this time on their affiliation with the Delaware nation) and descendants of victims of the massacre. As Chapter 4 detailed, despite the fact that this event celebrated the one-hundred year anniversary of the massacre of the Indian Christians, the 1882 commemoration surprisingly focused more on the secular elements connected to the massacre and less on the spiritual facets of the tragedy. This time, 400 While there is no specific mention of Francis’s name in the pastor’s diary, Van Vleck did note that he requested help from the young men of the congregation to help with the preparations. See, Tuesday May 23, 1882, Gnadenhutten, Fry’s Valley, and Ross church diary, August 15, 1881-October 7,1882, GA. 244 in contrast to the 1872 Dedication ceremony, the spotlight was less on the Indian guests and more on the history of the white missionaries—Zeisberger and Heckewelder—and their connection and contribution to the American Revolution. The pastor of Gnadenhutten, Reverend Van Vleck did not favor this de- emphasis on the Christian Indian martyrs and their spiritual triumph and he expressed his displeasure in several letters to the leadership at Bethlehem. 401 The community located its religious and patriotic identity through its culture of remembering their historical relationship with Native Americans. The accuracy of that history was not the issue; more significant was that the Centennial Celebration brought into public view the “important relation of the Moravian mission in the Valley of the Tuscarawas to the general history of the country.” 402 Francis came of age during an era when his community demonstrated a heightened spiritual and patriotic self-awareness through ceremony and spectacle. Within the walls of the church, a public space where the pastor exercised more control, Van Vleck redirected his flock’s attention back on to the Indian and spiritual dimensions of the massacre. He brought the Native American guests repeatedly face to face before his white Moravian community. Stonefish and Jacobs remained in Gnadenhutten for nearly a week and spoke in several Moravian churches and homes in the area. Van Vleck scheduled a whirlwind tour for the Indian brethren, bringing 401 See Chapter 4 in this dissertation, pp. 28-33. 402 Henry A Ford, “Heroic Patriotism of the Moravian Missionaries. The Important Part They Acted During The Revolution In Holding in Check the Hostile Indians;” The Columbian Leader, May 27, 1882. Edmund De Schweinitz Scrapbook II (11); MA. 245 Stonefish and Jacobs into congregants’ homes and churches to speak about their own faith as Indian Christians and the “faith unto death” of their Native ancestors. On Tuesday, May 23, the evening the three Indian men arrived from Canada, Van Vleck brought them to a meeting at the home of Brother Dell. The attendance being very large and comprising, amongst the rest, bros E. Oerters and A. Hartmann, together with the 3 Indians all of whom arrived with the evening train and of whom the first two addressed us in the meeting. The next day he brought the trio to Dover to speak to a Moravian congregation there. On Thursday, Stonefish and Jacobs each spoke at the Church at Gnadenhutten. Presided at a very interesting and well attended meeting held in the large church hall comprising singing, prayers and addresses by Rev. Hartmann and Anderson, (M.E.) and the Indian Bros. Jacobs and Stonefish, the latter interpreting the remarks of the former and adding some of his own. For the white Moravians seated before them, Stonefish and Jacobs functioned as Christian Indian ambassadors of both the past and the present. As such, they contributed to the spiritual culture of remembering, quite distinct from their roles and representation in the official, more secular Centennial celebration. At once, these Indian men represented to the white congregants both “the other” and their “brethren in Christ.” Francis’s later writings on the history of the Moravian missions reflect this dichotomy. This detail, and the fact that the Indian brethren spoke on more than one occasion before the Moravian congregation at Gnadenhutten, strongly suggests that the Huebner family would have attended such a novel and important event. This 246 would probably have been Francis’s first opportunity to see and hear Native Americans speak about their history in the church. At the end of 1882 through early 1884, Francis’s mother, Anna, fell deathly ill. The diary entries for January 15 through 20, 1883 detail the seriousness of Anna’s condition. The new pastor, Henry T. Bachman, who had replaced Van Vleck, made almost daily visits to the Huebner home starting in the early part of 1883 through 1884. “Mrs. L. Huebener, very sick;” “Visit Sr. Anna (Lawrence) Huebener;” “Visit (sick) Sr. Anna Huebener.” In February 1884, the situation with Anna became critical. On the thirteenth Bachman wrote: “Visit and pray with Sr. Anna Huebener who is in trouble.” The following day, Francis’s mother appeared to be at the brink of death: “Sr. Anna Huebener found peace during the night, and assurances the fact in a few words.” 403 Francis was fourteen and fifteen years old over the year and a half that his mother suffered her illness. During this time his spiritual commitment to the church deepened. On Palm Sunday, April 6, 1884, Francis was one of eleven young people confirmed into the Moravian church. Under Bachman’s pastorate, which began in late 1882, church attendance grew. Bachman wrote often in his diary that he was encouraged by the large and growing attendance in church. 404 The Centennial Celebration contributed in no small part to the heightened spirituality throughout the 403 Henry Bachman, Gnadenhutten diary, January 15-20, February 13-14; October 8, 1882-April 24, 1890, box 7, folder 1, GA. Anna Huebner did not die that night. She lived another fifty years until 1934. 404 See Henry Bachman, Gnadenhutten diary Feb –April 1884, box 7, folder 1, GA. 247 community, but Bachman also deserves credit for the spiritual reawakening in his congregation. His diary entries are markedly more upbeat and energetic than his predecessor, Van Vleck. “Today I commenced the morning meetings at 10 o’clock, in the lecture room, which is uncomfortably crowded!” “14 th Thursday: 10 a.m. Another very good morning meeting.” 405 Francis had a substantial number of peers within Gnadenhutten’s social and church network. In 1886, he and fifteen fellow students, nine young men and six young women, became the second graduating class of Gnadenhutten High School. At this critical time in his life, Gnadenhutten’s religious, social, and physical environment, which was intimately associated with its Indian past, inspired Francis to think about his own heritage in the church and with Indians. Collecting Memory: Arrowheads, Watercolors, and Apple Trees Francis’s individual practice of remembering the history of Gnadenhutten and his family’s relationship with Indians began early in his life. Francis collected and created things that spoke to the history of his church and its mission to the Indians. A family’s collection of keepsakes speaks not only to the history of an object but also to the meanings the keepers placed on the object. Human beings attach 405 Henry Bachman, Gnadenhutten diary, See especially Feb-April 1884; October 8, 1882-April 24, 1890, box 7, folder 1, GA. 248 meanings to the artifacts they keep, which make their way into the family folklore. These meanings speak not to the object collected, but to the collector. 406 Arrowheads As soon as he was old enough, Francis was put to work in the family’s fields behind the Huebner house. His interest in Indian artifacts and history was ignited when, as a young boy, he and his two brothers, Ernest and Arthur, while plowing the cornfields, dug up Indian arrowheads. 407 Over several years of work on the farm, the boys collected hundreds of arrowheads. For Francis, the arrowheads were tangible, physical objects from an Indian past that he could hold in his hand. The hand-carved stones confirmed for him the presence of Native Americans who occupied that space one hundred years before and further. He later wrote that the close physical proximity of the ancient Indian village to where he grew up “awakened in him” an interest in the history of the Moravian missions. Francis kept the arrowheads close at hand his entire life. 408 406 Much of my thinking on the history of the practice of collecting comes from a lecture given by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “In the Garrets and Rat Holes of Old Houses,” Huntington Lecture Series, March 24, 2009, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. In her lecture, Ulrich: “you can write anything about American history from items found in old historic homes.” 407 Francis spoke often to his grandson, Larry Huebner, about how finding the Indian arrowheads awakened an interest in Indian history. Personal interview, Lawrence Gibson Huebner, May 8, 2008, Fresno, California. 408 The Huebner brothers, Francis, Ernest, and Arthur donated some arrowheads to the John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church and the museum of the Gnadenhutten Cemetery, which are on display today in their respective display cases. The bulk of them, which number in the hundreds, remain in the Huebner family private collection. I have no information on the Huebner sisters, Ella, Nettie, and 249 The Watercolor During Francis’s impressionable teenage years, pastor Henry T. Bachman was very present in the young man’s life. Bachman visited the Huebner household regularly throughout 1883 and 1884, attending to his mother Anna’s spiritual needs. Francis’s confirmation in 1884 came after intense weekly instruction by Bachman in church doctrine and history. 409 But Francis also showed his connection to the church and its history privately through artistic expression, when in 1885 he painted a watercolor replica of an 1843 painting of Gnadenhutten’s second church, built in 1820. Hazel finding arrowheads, but I assume they too shared in this family culture of collecting. 409 Rules and Discipline of the Moravian Church at Gnadenhutten, O. Adopted May 12, 1889 (Gnadenhutten: Gnadenhutten Press, 1889), pp. 15-16, GA. Figure 19: 1885 Watercolor of Gnadenhutten’s second church built in 1820, painted by Francis C. Huebner. 250 Sylvester Wolle, pastor of the congregation from 1841-1849, painted the original, which hung in the foyer of the newer, third sanctuary built in 1852. The care and detail with which Francis, an adolescent fifteen-year-old, executed his work meant that he spend hours in the church gazing at Wolle’s painting. The work reflects a sensitivity for the Gnadenhutten church, its traditions, and its history. Francis treasured his watercolor and carried it with him when he first moved from Ohio to Washington, D.C. and then to California. The Indian Apple Tree Francis also cherished throughout his life a framed image of an apple tree the family had photographed sometime before 1889. Figure 20: Photograph taken prior to 1889 of “Old Indian Apple Tree” planted in 1774 at “Old Gnadenhutten, Ohio.” 251 As a group, Moravians were interested in documenting their history and they had a particular cultural penchant for relic collecting. The church archives in Bethlehem opened in 1757 at which time church leaders created of a vast repository that included “a unique collection of manuscripts, books, music, and images relation to the history of the Moravians in North America from 1740 to the present.” 410 As early as 1800, the fledgling second Moravian settlement at Gnadenhutten actively engaged in the practice of identifying and collecting religious relics. Heckewelder inaugurated Gnadenhutten’s practice of relic collecting when he gathered the “sun- bleached bones” of the massacre victims and buried them in a mound in 1798. Community lore, quite early on, reified these remains of the massacred Indians, treating them as holy, sacred, even spiritually powerful. 411 This particular apple tree was, according to the local folklore, the last standing remnant of an orchard planted by the original Moravian Indian congregation who had settled Gnadenhutten on the Muskingum in 1772 under Zeisberger’s leadership. The Moravian church heralded this settlement as the highpoint of its missionary project among the Indians. The tree functioned as a visual, tangible reminder of the 410 Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2006. 411 “Ohio’s Joan of Arc and Her Phantom Redskin Warriors: Revealing the amazing story of Ann Charity who led a ghostly Indian crew to wreak vengeance on whites that butchered redmen in cold blood,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Magazine Section, Sunday September 2, 1934, p. 10; file name: “Gnadenhutten, Ohio, Newspaper clippings,” box 145, folder 3, MA. This very un-Moravian story depicts the victims of the massacre as vengeful skeletal warriors who terrorize American soldiers and settlers who participated in the massacre at Gnadenhutten. See also, “Gnadenhutten,” The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 23, no. 135 (January 1869),114-115, GA. 252 “ancient” Indian settlement and the massacre. The tree possessed meaning that extended beyond the Moravian village. One journalist, reporting for a Cleveland newspaper about the 1872 dedication of the monument, noted the apple tree and its significance: “There is an apple tree on the monumental grounds at Gnadenhutten that was planted by some of the massacred Indians in their day.” 412 By capturing a photographic image of the sacred apple tree, the Huebner family demonstrated that they too participated in the culture of religious relic collecting, but within the private sphere of the family. Francis kept and displayed the photograph his entire life, and shared its lore with his descendants. 413 In 1889, this last surviving apple tree from the orchard of apple trees planted in 1772 by the Christian Indians fell to the ground. The report on the fallen tree in the local newspaper focused on its relation to the original Indian settlement and the massacre. In the report, the tree took on anthropomorphic qualities—it could see, and feel, and it gave of itself: On Tuesday, the 16 th , “Zeisberger’s apple tree,” one of the only remaining eye-witnesses of the terrible event of 1782, succumbed alas! to its increasing weight of responsibility, viz.: that of the furnishing of relics, and having withstood the storms of 117 years, it now required but a slight wind to lay it low. 412 Daily Herald, Cleveland, Ohio, June 13, 1872. “GNADENHUTTEN. Dedication of the Monument to Slaughtered Christian Indians—Immense Concourse—Intensely Interesting Exercises, ” Edm de Schweinitz Scrapbook III (12), MA. 413 Francis’s grandson, Larry Huebner, says that Francis showed him “a picture of an old apple tree, but [he] cannot recall any detailed explanation of [it].” Personal interview, Lawrence Gibson Huebner, May 8, 2008, Fresno, California. 253 The author of this piece also gave mystical powers of fecundity to the fallen tree, an idea he may have appropriated from a contemporary concept that romanticized apples as a metaphorical embodiment of the American story, in all likelihood from the writings of Thoreau. 414 “The tree was badly decayed, but, strange to say, had more perfect fruit upon it, than any of the old residenters (sic) ever remember it to have borne, there being at least three bushels of apples on it.” 415 The Gnadenhutten Press reported that the Monument and Cemetery Society had cut the “Zeisberger’s apple tree” into sections to be stored away for safekeeping. It was also cut into small pieces for interested “Relic-hunters,” who could obtain them either at the church or at “Eggenberg’s Furniture Room.” The petrified trunk of the apple tree is in the church display case today. The Huebner photograph of the tree shows it before it fell which means the image had to be taken before 1889. The fact that someone in the family took the picture implies that the family placed meaning on the tree—they recognized something of its historical and religious significance. The image was framed, which also suggests it was important to the family and that it was probably displayed in the Huebner home, perhaps on a wall or above the fireplace on the mantle. Beneath the image someone in the Huebner family wrote: Old Indian Apple Tree. Planted 1774 at old Gnadenhuetten, O. 414 Karen Halttunen, unpublished paper, “Wild Apples: Nature and History in Thoreau’s New England” given at The Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship Lecture, Huntington Library, January 18, 2007. 415 The Gnadenhutten Press, vol. 1, no. 6, July 1889, GA. 254 The local newspaper, The Gnadenhutten Press, identified the apple tree as “Zeisberger’s Tree.” This subtle difference between the newspaper’s identification of the tree and the Huebner family’s identification of the tree suggests that the public consciousness of the Indian settlement focused more on the white missionaries, while within the private space of the Huebner family, the memory of the village’s history focused on the Indian brethren. The writing under the Huebner image gave the apple tree a specific meaning—the family saw it as the “Indian” apple tree, not Zeisberger’s. In his later writings about the Moravian missions, Francis honored the white missionaries as heroic and patriotic. But he focused his historical narratives primarily on the Indians connected to the mission project, regardless of whether they were Christian or non-Christian. Before he wrote about the Indians in his family and community’s past, however, he relocated to Washington, D.C. to begin a four-year career in the Indian Office in the Department of the Interior. It was during his time in Washington that his consciousness about Indians, which he wrote was shaped by his upbringing, revealed itself as distinct from the dominant ideas propagated by the nation’s elites for how to solve “the Indian problem.” The Indian Office Years In 1891, at twenty-two years old, Francis applied for a position in the Indian Office in the Department of the Interior. “Gentlemen: Your notice of appointment as clerk in your office (Indian office), received and accepted. I will report for duty 255 about November 5 th or 6 th . Trusting this delay will not inconvenience you, I am yours respectfully, Francis C. Huebner.” 416 Francis coordinated his move to Washington, D.C. with his enrollment in Columbian University Law School (now George Washington University). Prior to starting law school in the fall of 1892, Francis began work as a copyist in the Depredation Division on the per diem clerk roll. The Columbian University student yearbook for 1894, in a section titled, “Clerks are Students,” stated that the school “is largely made up of students who have work in the departments [of the government] during the day. They are clerks, examiners, private secretaries, stenographers, and scientific assistants.” 417 It is reasonable to assume that he intended his clerkship in the Indian Office to lead to a career in Indian law, possibly within the government. It was during his four-year tenure with the Indian Office’s Depredation Department that he had his first real taste of how the United States government dealt with Indian peoples. 416 Francis C. Huebner to Office of Indian Affairs, Dept. of the Interior, Washington, D.C.; October 25, 1891; Huebner, Francis C., 1891.38589, roll 48, volume 174, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (RG75), 1887-1892 H-L. Five years passed between Francis’s graduation from high school and his move to Washington. I found nothing on him in the records during this interlude, but it would not have been uncommon for a young man in his station of life to work the family farm before heading off to a new career. Francis’s son, James followed this path. 417 Whether or not this was a system of apprenticeship or simply a means of financial support I do not know. Francis, however, could have applied to a number of different government offices and departments, but chose the Indian Office. The yearbook quote is from Glimpses of School days in Print and Picture by GEM, a 1894-98 Columbian University (later changed to George Washington U.) yearbook of Miss Gertrude Metcalf: p. 93; George Washington University special collections, Washington, D.C. 256 The depredation system originated a century earlier in the Early Republic’s desire to avert interracial wars of retaliation. It provided a system of compensation for both Indians who suffered from attacks by white Americans and whites attacked by Indians making them eligible to submit claims for their losses. Created by Congress in 1796, the depredation claims system lasted from 1796 to1920 and was designed “to prevent retaliation and preserve peace” between Indians and borderland whites. 418 To accomplish their goal, Congress passed three Trade and Intercourse acts in 1790, 1793, 1796, and each incorporated indemnity into the legal code. The 1796 Act for the first time provided “codified indemnity system,” and was intended to benefit both sides of the racial divide in the borderland territories. The 1796 act was, in other words, one of the nation’s earliest codified racial laws. From the act’s inception, Indian claims against white perpetrators were rare; the Indian Office received most of its claims from white Americans against Indian individuals and/or tribes for losses (property, life, etc.) they suffered from attack. 419 For the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, indemnities awarded to white claimants were paid with Indian annuities, a policy that was flawed for two reasons. First, taking monies from annuities incensed Indian tribes who lacked the funds to hire lawyers to argue against the claims. Indian nations lost much-needed funds or annuities, promised through treaties with the United States, which were 418 Larry C. Skogan, Indian Depredation Claims, 1796-1920 (Norman, London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), xv. 419 Skogan, Indian Depredation Claims, 23-24. 257 meant to sustain their people. Second, the depredations claims system led to rampant fraud. 420 The veracity of a claim submitted to the department was nearly impossible to substantiate. Prior to the 1880s, Congress had not been willing to approve the necessary funding to send out investigators to verify the white claimants’ assertion of Indian depredation. The tribes against whom most of the claims were made from 1836 to 1874 were the nations of the Great Plains—Arapahos, Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and Sioux. As the United States expanded west, tribal representation in depredation claims reflected this westward advance. White settlers increasingly submitted claims against tribes located in the west—the Navajo and Apaches. As white settlers moved west and encroached on Indian lands, the response by Indian tribes was defensive and hostile. 421 In 1885, Senator Henry Dawes championed a law to finance an investigatory branch of the Depredation Division to begin sifting through all the pending claims, which numbered in the thousands. Clerks, such as Huebner, were hired to sort through claims and his first position in the Indian Office was as a copyist. In this 420 In 1867, for instance, an Indian Office auditor issued a warrant to pay claimant T.R. Curtis $435 to be charged against the annuity of a $75,000 appropriation to the Arapahos and Cheyennes that came out of a 1865 treaty between these nations and the United States. The payment to Curtis reduced the funds the Indian Office could spend at the Indian agencies overseeing the tribes. Skogan, Indian Depredation Claims, 98. 421 Contemporary writer Helen Hunt Jackson alluded to this trend of American westward encroachment on Indian lands and the Indians’ justified response in her 1881 “protest” treatise, A Century of Dishonor. See below for further analysis of Jackson’s Indian reform writings and their relation to Francis Huebner’s written work on Indians. 258 capacity, Huebner received incoming claims from the field and copied them into clear and legible legal documents for his superiors to review for their veracity and then for processing. Within six months of employment, Francis’s superior, department chief Frank Armstrong, recommended him for promotion from a per diem clerk to a permanent position. Francis received his new assignment on June 23, 1892. 422 In 1893, Francis is listed in the government employee register as a mid-level employee, still working as a copy clerk in the Office of Indian Affairs and earning a yearly salary of $900. Boyd’s Directory for the District of Columbia for the years of 1893, 1894, and 1895, lists Francis’s occupation as “clerk, Indian Office.” 423 422 A.G. Tonner, chief of Appointment Division, Dept. of the Interior, to Frank C. Armstrong, Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, June 22, 1892; Huebner, Francis C., 1892.22733, roll 52, volume 178, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (RG75). 423 Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia, 1893, 1894, 1895; National Archives Library, Washington, D.C. 259 In June 1895, Huebner “tendered his resignation as clerk in the Indian Office.” 424 There is no evidence to help determine why Francis left the Depredation Division. 425 Though the original purpose of the Depredation Division was to remedy injustices suffered by both Indians and white Americans, the overwhelming preponderance of reparations issued were awarded to white citizens—and typically at the expense of Indian populations. Francis’s sensibilities about Indians, reflected 424 Francis C. Huebner to Office of Indian Affairs, June 29, 1895; Huebner, Francis C., 1895-26815, roll 71, volume 197, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (RG75). 425 Francis sent a letter to the Indian Office, but the file folder in the Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs that it should have been filed in was empty. Figure 21: Photograph of Francis C. Huebner at his desk in the Depredation Division of the United States Indian Office, Washington, D.C. On back of photograph: “Indian Office, December 26/1894. Francis C. Huebner.” 260 in his 1898 and 1901 writings, were incompatible with these actions and policies, as well as the government’s overall dealings with Indians. This incompatibility helps explain Huebner’s departure from the Indian Office. Several years later, Francis related a story to his grandson, Larry Huebner, about the Indian Bureau and Apache chief Geronimo, which signaled whose side he fell on in the matter of the government’s dealings with Indians. As the story went, the Indian office informed Geronimo that he could not take any more wives. Upon hearing the government’s order, Geronimo took a sixth wife. Larry Huebner explained that Francis was pleased that Geronimo thumbed his nose at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 426 While he resided in Washington, Francis remained tied to his home and community, returning often to Gnadenhutten. On a visit in 1894, he was introduced to Anna Gibson Alloway, a new teacher at Gnadenhutten’s primary school. 427 Anna was one of five daughters of John and Nancy Gibson Alloway from New Philadelphia, a nearby village. Anna was born in Liberty, Ohio and was a great- granddaughter of Nancy Larison Gibson. Anna’s family eventually moved from Liberty to New Philadelphia in 1892. Anna and her sister Jane taught in schools in the area. Following their meeting in 1894, Francis and Anna nurtured a long- 426 Personal interview, Lawrence Gibson Huebner, May 8, 2008, Fresno, California. 427 In a 1958 letter to her nephew, Lawrence Huebner, Anna’s sister Ellen wrote: “Your grandmother (Anna) Huebner went to teach in Gnadenhutten where she met F.C. Huebner.” Ellen Gibson Watts to Lawrence Huebner, personal correspondence, February 23, 1958. Anna Gibson Alloway is listed as a teacher in 1894 for Lockport School located in Goshen, Ohio. See, Vivian Stewart, “The History of Lockport School District, (1872-1900)” in The History of Education in the Tuscarawas Valley, Tuscawaras County Historical Society, New Philadelphia, Ohio. 261 distance relationship over the next four years and, on June 21, 1898, were married. 428 Anna joined Francis in Washington D.C. where he now worked in the United States Post Office. Their union deepened their commitment and interest in Indians of their past and their present. 428 “Marriage announcement of Angelene Gibson to Francis C. Huebner,” Huebner Family archives; and Marriage Record, Francis C. Huebner with Anna Alloway, Tuscarawas County, Ohio. Tuscarawas County Department of Records and Archives, Uhrichsville, Ohio. 262 Chapter 6 Union for Reform: Anna and Francis Huebner, and the “Indians of the Painted Desert,” 1898-1924 After crossing this last pass we came into a valley dotted full of Pueblo Indian villages, and really there was nothing on the whole trip any more interesting than these. 429 Anna Huebner, 1917 In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in everything, love. Moravian proverb In August 1917, Anna and Francis Huebner, along with their sons Herbert and James, happened upon Pueblo villages while returning to their home in Fresno, California from an extended visit in Gnadenhutten. They encountered the Pueblo Indian villages accidentally, when they decided to take the Santa Fe Trail south through Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona rather than to risk the Northern route through the Rockies, which was already reporting heavy snows. The Huebners entered into conversation with the Pueblos and quickly became fascinated by them. The Pueblos they met responded in kind with equal curiosity about their culture and their lives. The family decided to remain for an extended stay. This encounter launched a five-year odyssey for the Huebners, who returned every summer for extended visits with their friends from the Hopi and Navajo communities. 429 Anna Alloway Huebner, October 16 th , 1917, personal correspondence, Huebner Family Archive. 263 Underpinning the mutual interest of Anna and Francis in these indigenous peoples of the Southwest were their individual family histories of Euro-American- Indian intersections. Their marriage in 1898 in Gnadenhutten united individual passions in each of them about Native Americans and kindled a shared interest for reform. Their family traditions spoke to a history of community and kin between white and Indian peoples that extended back over one hundred and fifty years. During their twenty-five year marriage, Anna and Francis collaborated on projects that centered on Native Americans and their problems. Their shared consciousness inspired them as individuals to advocate for reform on the behalf of Indians. Their union strengthened their efforts. Francis expressed his reform-mindedness through his writings about the history of Indians and the Moravian church; Anna demonstrated her progressive attitudes toward Indians through her reform work to improve the conditions of the Native Americans through her local women’s club in Fresno, California. Each supported the other in reform work. As a family, the Huebners ventured across racial and cultural terrains and embraced the Indians they encountered in the Painted Desert as their friends. Francis’s involvement in Indian matters increased when he and Anna married. That year, Francis served on the official organizing committee of the 1898 Centennial Celebration of Gnadenhutten; he gave lectures on the subject of Moravian missions; and wrote a historical treatise for the event. In 1901, he published a novel about Moravian missions in the years before the massacre of 1782. In his historical 264 fiction Huebner contested the prevalent late-nineteenth century images of Indians as degraded and disappearing. Francis’s protagonist in the story was a heroic, non- Christian Delaware, whose descendents still thrived in 1900 in an Indian community in the now state of Alaska. The images of Native Americans in Francis’s writings need to be understood in the context of the most significant contemporary literatures about native Ameircans—Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1881 protest essay, A Century of Dishonor, and her 1884 novel, Ramona. These two works represented a strain of reform-mindedness different from the dominant discourse that promoted Indians’ assimilation to Anglo-American ways. Anna promoted Indian reform in her own ways. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, she worked through her local women’s club in Fresno, California, advocating welfare reforms for both the “Indians in the Painted Desert,” and for indigenous peoples in and around Fresno. Just as Francis’s books need to be understood within the literary context of his age, Anna’s efforts need to be understood within the context of other reformers’ programs—in her case state and national movements for Indian reform in the California and General Federation of Women’s Clubs’ Department of Indian Welfare. In partnership with John Collier, that department was headed by Stella Atwood and was responsible for dramatic reforms in the early 1930s in the policies of the United States government toward the Indians. Anna put 265 into operation on a local and regional level the Indian reform work that Atwood and Collier affected on the state and national level. 430 * Francis Huebner graduated in 1896 from Columbian University (later George Washington University) with a degree in law and joined the legal department of the United States Post Office. His official government work in the Indian department had ended, but his personal interest in Native Americans continued, particularly those historically associated with the Moravian church. At the beginning of 1898, the people of Gnadenhutten began preparing for its third Centennial. This event was to celebrate the second founding of the village by John Heckewelder in 1798. At the Sunday morning service on January 2, 1898, pastor William Rice “called the attention of the congregation to the fact that this was the Centennial year of Gnadenhutten’s settlement.” 431 The following day, at the annual church council meeting, leading members appointed a Centennial Celebration Committee (CCC) to arrange a “proper observance of Centennial Day.” They chose September 29, 1898 as the day of the event. Although Francis lived a distance from Gnadenhutten, he was brought into the planning of the event from its beginning; the council commissioned him to write a history of the early settlement of Gnadenhutten 430 See Karin L. Huebner, “An Unexpected Alliance: Stella Atwood, the California Clubwomen, John Collier, and the Indians of the Southwest, 1917-1934,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 78, no. 3 (August 2009), 337-366. 431 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications. The Gnadenhuetten Centennial. September 29, 1798, 297. Courtesy of Grace Day, Gnadenhutten church historian. 266 for the Centennial, and they called on him to function as a representative of the CCC in Washington, D.C. 432 By early June, preparations for the Centennial were well underway. Although the commemoration was, in fact, the centennial celebration of Heckewelder’s reestablishment of “Gnadenhutten as a Moravian Church settlement of whites” in 1798, the community re-directed its focus to the Indian massacre of 1782. 433 The 1898 event recovered the spiritual dimensions of the 1872 dedication of the monument, while retaining to a lesser degree the civil/state turn taken by the organizers in the 1882 Centennial. At the 1898 graduation exercises for Gnadenhutten’s schools, graduating senior Esther Eggenberg gave the commencement address. Reverend Rice referred to it as “the opening note of the coming centennial in September.” 434 Her subject was the story of the “Tents of Grace” the sad but interesting story of old Gnadenhutten, and the massacre of the Christian Indians at the place we now call “The Old Town.” [Esther] told in all its simplicity and beauty—a story which always interests a 432 “INVITING THE PRESIDENT. He is Asked to Attend the Centennial of Gnadenhutten, Ohio.” The Washington Post, Sep. 8, 1898. 433 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications. The Gnadenhuetten Centennial. September 29, 1798., 297. Courtesy of Grace Day, Gnadenhutten church historian. 434 News article “GNADENHUTTEN. Graduates, Seven in Number, Entertain a Large Audience at Their Commencement Exercises Last Night,” (unidentified author, unidentified periodical) pasted in Pastor William Rice, Gnadenhutten church diary, June 7, 1898, p. 66; GA. Esther Eggenberg was a direct descendent of David Peter, the original inhabitant of the village commissioned by Heckewelder and the church at Bethlehem to open a trade store to service the Indian settlement at Goshen. See Chapter 2. The participation of descendants of the village founders in the 1898 centennial is examined below. 267 Gnadenhutten audience. The descriptive part was beautifully written and the narrative was as interesting as the story when told us in childhood. On June 9, three days following Esther Eggenberg’s commencement speech, Francis contributed to this “opening note” with a lecture he gave to the Gnadenhutten congregation on the history of the Indian missions in Ohio. “This Thursday evening, our church was crowded with an audience to hear the lecture on ‘Early Moravian Missions in Ohio,’ by our Brother Francis C. Huebner of Washington D.C., son of Lawrence Huebner of Gnadenhutten.” 435 The centennial committee commissioned Huebner to give the lecture, and it was advertised in the local newspaper. “Admission is free. And all interested in the history of Tuscarawas missions should attend the lecture as it will be interesting.” 436 Anna Gibson Alloway, Francis’s soon to be wife, had been a schoolteacher in Gnadenhutten since 1894; she undoubtedly was present at her fiancé’s lecture. Anna’s relationship with Francis and her exposure to Gnadenhutten’s culture of remembering the massacre assured that she was well versed in the lore of the 1782 tragedy. It is probable that Anna attended the 1882 commemoration with her family when she was nine years of age. Family letters and photographs indicate that the Alloways attended celebratory events such as the Centennial, even those at some distance from their home in Liberty, Ohio. The articles about the 1882 Centennial in 435 Pastor William Rice, Gnadenhutten church diary, June 9, 1898, pp. 68-69, GA. 436 News article, “Moravian Missions.” (unidentified author, unidentified periodical) pasted in Pastor William Rice, Gnadenhutten church diary, June 7, 1898: p. 66. John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church archives, Gnadenhutten, Ohio. 268 Gnadenhutten emphasized the large number of families who came to the event from the surrounding area where Anna lived as a child. 437 At summer’s end, three weeks before the event, the committee designated Francis to issue an invitation to the President of the United States, William McKinley, to attend the celebration. The Washington Post reported on Francis’s visit with the President: Mr. Francis C. Huebner, representing the centennial celebration committee of Gnadenhutten, Ohio, called on the President to-day to present an invitation for him to attend the centennial celebration to be held in that town on September 29. 438 At the centennial, Reverend Rice read a letter sent by McKinley, in which the president responded that he had “received a very cordial invitation” but sent his “deep regret at my inability” to attend the centennial due to “pressure of the most important public business [that] precludes my absence from Washington on the date named.” 439 437 For instance, in a 1917 letter to her sister that detailed the trip the Huebners encountered the Pueblo Indians on their way home to California, Anna wrote that they stopped in Chicago. It reminded her, she wrote, of the wonderful time she and her sisters had when their family attended the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Anna Alloway Huebner to Ellen “Bob” Alloway Watts, October 16 th , 1917, personal correspondence, Huebner Family Archive. All of the following quotes of Anna Huebner are taken from this letter. 438 “INVITING THE PRESIDENT. He is Asked to Attend the Centennial of Gnadenhutten, Ohio.” The Washington Post, Sep. 8, 1898. 439 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications. The Gnadenhuetten Centennial. September 29, 1798, 309, courtesy of Grace Day, Gnadenhutten church historian. McKinley, who was from Ohio and served as the state’s governor before being elected President in 1898, was not being untruthful about his presidential obligations. Weeks earlier, McKinley had negotiated an armistice with Spain following the 269 The 1898 centennial surpassed the spectacle of the 1872 dedication of the monument celebration. Similar to the earlier commemorations, the organizers incorporated generational elements into the weeklong festivities. But this time those events involved descendants of the original white Moravian settlers, rather than descendants of the massacred Indians. In fact, unlike the 1872 and 1882 events, Indian representatives were conspicuously absent from the ceremony; nonetheless, their memory was evoked throughout the festivities. The 1898 celebration also had a heightened sense of pageantry throughout the week, with the children of the village especially participating in numerous ceremonies. The organizers christened the entire event “Centennial Week.” 440 The celebration opened on Sunday, September 25, with the “Sunday-school and Church services [taking] on a festive cast.” 441 A “committee of children” from the Sunday school—one of whom was identified as a great-great-grandson of John Heckewelder and others as descendents of his associate, store owner David Peter—ceremoniously presented a painting of Heckewelder to the church. As the picture was brought into the church and up the aisle, the whole assembly rose and sang, “My Country, “Tis of Thee,” and conflict over Cuba and was still in the middle of a diplomatic torrent surrounding the United States’ acquisition of the Philippines. 440 The Moravian, October 5, 1898, Bethlehem, PA. Pasted in the Gnadenhutten church diary, October 1898, p. 84; William Rice, pastor, GA. 441 The Moravian, October 5, 1898, Bethlehem, PA. Pasted in the Gnadenhutten church diary, October 1898, p. 84; William Rice, pastor, GA. 270 “America” and remained standing until [they] placed the Founder’s portrait in position in the pulpit recess. 442 In this ceremonial procession and singing of national hymns, the congregation reconstructed the second founding as a “white settlement” with patriotic national lore and religious meaning. This was as far as the festival planners went in connecting the Gnadenhutten settlement with the national story, in contrast to nationalistic agendas that underpinned the 1882 event. The ceremonial exercises that followed in the 1898 event focused primarily on the 1782 massacre. That focus seems curious since this event was, in effect, the centennial celebration of the second founding of the village by white Moravians. The organizers, celebrants, and local newspaper reports of the event spotlighted the massacre throughout the weeklong festivities much more than the reestablishment of the village in 1798, displaying an obsession with the bloody tragedy. One local newspaper headline that announced the centennial celebration mentioned nothing of the actual meaning behind the event, which was the second founding of the village one hundred years earlier: “CENTENNIAL Of the Ninety Martyrs To Be Celebrated on the Historic Spot Which Witnessed the Blackest Crime in Ohio’s History. Narrative of the Slaughter at Gnadenhutten, When Ninety Christian Indians Were Cruelly Murdered by Lawless Militiamen.” The article opened with attention to the village’s original settlement in 1771 as a Moravian Indian mission town. It immediately proceeded to the history of the massacre in 1782: “Gnadenhutten 442 William Rice, Gnadenhutten diary, entry for Sunday, September 25, 1898, p. 83; and The Moravian, October 5, 1898, Bethlehem, PA; pasted in Gnadenhutten church diary, October 1898, p. 84; William Rice, pastor, GA. 271 figured conspicuously in Ohio’s early history. It was made the central point from which the Moravian missionaries of this valley operated among the red men.” After a lengthy recounting of the massacre, a brief paragraph at the end of the article noted the historical relevance of the day being celebrated: Thus closed one of the blackest chapters in Ohio’s earliest history, leaving the Tuscarawas valley a desolate waste, shunned by whites and Indians alike for 16 years. After this lapse of time John Heckewelder again entered the valley to found a Moravian settlement of whites. On September 29, 1798, he moved his family into the first house of the new Gnadenhutten. The day of the centennial celebration will mark the passage of 100 years since that day. 443 The community’s shift back to attention on the Indian massacre reflected a change in contemporary thinking about the relationship between Indians and white Americans. That year the town’s residents repudiated Colonel Williamson and his band of white militiamen who murdered Indian innocents. Their public statements stood in stark contrast to those of the organizers of the 1882 Centennial from Gnadenhutten and Bethlehem who had marginalized Native American representation and even offered subtle justification for the actions of the white perpetrators while at the same time tying the community’s history to the national story. The week’s celebration culminated on Thursday, September 29 in processions and pageantry. “Gnadenhutten was visited by a concourse of seven thousand men, women, and children. The larger part of the concourse in attendance came from the cities and villages and farms of the valley; many came “from all over” the State of 443 “ CENTENNIAL,” The Enquirer, September 24, 1898, (city of publication and author unknown); pasted in Gnadenhutten church diary, 1898; William Rice, pastor, GA. 272 Ohio; visitors were here from Bethlehem, PA.; from New York City and Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Pittsburg and states to the west, as far as Minnesota.” The celebrants were, according to news accounts, mostly Moravian. Thus, in spite of a broad representation, this was a provincial, religious celebration and less the civil/state centered event of 1882. A “historical procession,” the newspaper reported, started at Gnadenhutten’s public square and advanced to historic sites around the village where commemorative plaques identifying the site’s historical significance, were placed in the ground. Designated children from the village, all supposed descendents of founders of the “white settlement,” presented the plaques in a public ceremony. Moravians valued this sort of “flesh and blood” representation; they venerated descendents who had the blood of their early spiritual fathers and mothers flowing in their veins. This practice constructed for congregants a history that was more tangible and more real than one taken from the stories of the past. 444 The procession first stopped and placed a marker at the Indian corn-fields “where the Christian Indians were arrested that dark day in March, 1782, by their bloodthirsty white captors.” It then proceeded to the riverbank where the first Indian was killed and this spot was also marked with a plaque. The crowd went on to the burial mound that held the bones of the victims where a third stone tablet was laid. The crowd proceeded to the monument, and a co-teacher with Anna and descendent of an early settler, made a brief address to the crowd: “Here stands the Monument 444 See Atwood, Community of the Cross, 95-108; and Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood,” 741-744. 273 which records the bloodiest day in the history of Ohio. But it is a Monument which records the triumph of Indian Christians who here met their death with Christian heroism and resignation.” Following this presentation, Bishop Van Vleck offered a history of the massacre to the somber crowd. “Then,” the newspaper report detailed, “amid impressive silence, little Lena Miksch, great-granddaughter of [an early settler] unveiled the marble tablet [with the inscription] ‘Site of the Cooper Shop, 1782.’ The concourse of people united in singing, amid suppressed tears.” 445 Evoking the memory of the massacre was the means the organizers of the Centennial Celebration, Francis Huebner among them, chose to remember their origins. The foundation of their “white” settlement lay atop a tear-soaked ground stained with the blood of their martyred Indian brethren. The festivities then turned to the 1798 re-founding of Gnadenhutten. A descendant of John Heckewelder marked the site of his first home, and the same was done for David Peter’s store. The procession then advanced to the site of the 1803 church that Ludwig Huebner had presided over. “The marker on the site of the First Church was unveiled by little Gladys Hamilton, a descendant of the Huebners.” Gladys was Francis’s niece. Her participation in the ceremonial remembrance connected the Huebner family’s history and religious heritage to the village’s founding. 445 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications. The Gnadenhuetten Centennial. September 29, 1798: pp. 300-302, courtesy of Grace Day, Gnadenhutten church historian. 274 The afternoon was filled with yet more speeches, “cantatas” (singing by the church choirs), and picnics. Tables had been set up on the cemetery grounds where the participants could hold picnics. “Centennial Buttons” were sold as keepsakes. Copies of the manuscript of the diary of Heckewelder’s wife were also made available free of charge to first comers. The book the Committee of Arrangements had commissioned Francis to write on the history of the community was available for sale. A local newspaper announced his publication: “Moravian Missions in Ohio,” was on sale on Centennial Day, by our friend and brother Francis C. Huebner, Esq., of Washington, D.C., and is for substance the Centennial Lecture which he delivered in our Gnadenhuetten Church, much to the satisfaction of his townspeople. 446 Writing Reform: The Moravian Mission in Ohio and Charles Killbuck Francis Huebner’s historical narrative, The Moravian Missions in Ohio: An essay on the History of Eastern Ohio of the Moravian Missions, published for the 1898 Centennial Celebration, focused on the Moravian Indian missions and the Gnadenhutten massacre in 1782. Francis began writing the text soon after he and Anna were married, and completed the project around September 15, a mere two weeks before the centennial. Anna’s younger sister, Ellen, who lived with Francis and Anna in Washington, D.C. at the time, helped edit Moravian Missions in Ohio. In a mid-twentieth century letter to Anna’s grandson, Ellen spoke highly of Francis’s 446 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications. The Gnadenhuetten Centennial. September 29, 1798, pp. 300-302, courtesy of Grace Day, Gnadenhutten church historian. 275 work and mentioned she still had autographed copies that he had given to each of Anna’s sisters. Anna probably assisted in the editing process as well, just as she and her sister did for Francis’s later work, Charles Killbuck. Francis’s first book gained recognition beyond Gnadenhutten. It received a positive review in The Washington Post: The author of this neat little volume was born on the banks of the Tuscarawas River, within a stone’s throw of the site of the old Indian town, Gnadenhutten. The story of the introduction of Christianity among the tribes of Eastern Ohio up to the time of the Moravian massacre at Gnadenhutten in 1782, is well connected and graphically told. It is a book of value to those interested in the early efforts to Christianize the Indians. 447 Francis’s second book, Charles Killbuck: An Indian’s Story of the Border Wars of the American Revolution, published in 1902, was a fictional counterpart to Moravian Missions. The novel received favorable reviews in several newspapers in the mid-Atlantic region and as far south as New Orleans. The Washington Post praised Francis’s first attempt at fiction and included an etching of the author along with the review. If we can judge by reviews and criticisms, in “Charles Killbuck” Francis C. Huebner, of our city, has written one of the successful novels placed upon the market this fall. We now review it in connection with about two score of newspaper clippings of rather unusual length. Mr. Huebner has used all the faculties of an intelligent and justice-loving nature rather than merely recording such facts as are to the credit of his own race. Quoting the Cincinnati Times-Star: “The descriptions of Indian customs and life have every impress of truth, but even this interest in the book is secondary to one 447 “New Books.” The Washington Post, September 26,1898, Washington, D.C. See also, “Inviting the President. He Is Asked to Attend the Centennial of Gnadenhutten, Ohio.” The Washington Post, September 8, 1898. 276 in which the author is decidedly felicitous, that is, the psychology of the Indian mind.” 448 Both Huebner’s works demonstrate a thinking about Indians that was markedly different from the mainstream thinking in which Native Americans were degraded and in need of “civilization.” 449 In Moravian Missions Francis did employ the racial trope of the period—savage, red-skin, uncivilized, civilized, etc.—but he did not use it in racially degrading ways. He used language that his white audience could understand and measure the Indians against. Francis understood his late nineteenth-century readers’ perception of Native Americans. The Native peoples in his account, whether Christian or non-Christian, decent or malevolent, stood on equal ground with whites. Huebner was harsh in his critique of the settlers advancing into Indian Territory. He sympathized with Native Americans on the issue of American western advance. “White civilization was pushing rapidly west, and in the case of war, no discrimination was shown by the border whites generally—every red skin was regarded as an enemy to civilization.” 450 Francis employed the “savage Indian” trope for his readers’ benefit, to help them understand the degree of white injustices toward Indians. In his opening 448 “New Books,” The Washington Post, December 6, 1902. 449 For an excellent collection of writings by Indian reformers who were contemporaries of Francis’s, see Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880-1900, Francis Paul Prucha, editor (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978). 450 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 7-8. 277 paragraph, Huebner wrote, “Indians who inhabited Gnadenhutten were ‘Indian in name only;’ they did not exhibit the savage nature that the word ‘Indian’ implies.” 451 Huebner then wrote about the “renegades, Simon Girty, Elliot, and McKee,” he said that they were, “white men more Indian in their savage nature than Indians.” 452 Huebner used familiar language for his contemporary readers to understand the depth of the “white militia men’s crime against the Christian Indians” at Gnadenhutten. At one point in his description of the massacre at the book’s end, Huebner racialized the militiamen and not the Christian Indians. The perpetrators he called “The whites” and the victims, “the innocent Moravians.” 453 In this passage, Huebner identified the murdered Indians by their religious affiliation, not their racial identity, while he identified the murderers by the color of their skin. Francis presented an alternative to the mainstream belief that American Indians were degraded beings, lacking in industry and quickly vanishing. For instance, he described mid-eighteenth-century Indian dwellings in Newcomerstown, the central town of the Delaware nation in Ohio, as being as “well constructed as white settlers’ dwellings.” 454 He used his readers’ frame of reference to de-center the dominant notions held by most whites in his time. Francis noted that White Eyes, a leading Delaware statesman during the Revolutionary War, possessed 451 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 5. 452 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 83. 453 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 115-116. 454 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 12-13. 278 “bravery, patriotism and influence on his warriors.” “Together with his oratorical powers, logical conclusions, and powers of persuasion, [White Eyes was] truly remarkable for a man who is considered a savage.” 455 In this passage, Huebner employed the trope of the Indian as “savage,” to unseat his contemporary readers’ long held racist views that Indians lacked the intelligence, character, and skills to lead. Significantly, Francis does not identify White Eyes as a savage. Rather, his syntax suggests a distancing from the racist views of Indians. Importantly, White Eyes never accepted Christianity, so the exceptional qualities Huebner identified in him were of the man, apart from white civilization. Francis critiqued white injustices toward Indians using the language that degraded them. In his telling about the conversion of Glikkikin, a leading Delaware figure in the 1770s, Francis took the opportunity to legitimize Native religions. This was a major ideological departure from the stance of the late nineteenth-century white Indian reform organizations—the Indian Rights Association and the Lake Mohonk Conference—which viewed Indian religious practices as heathenistic, backward, and barbaric. The Indians had a religion of their own. They believed in a happy hunting ground where they would go when they died. Some of their religious practices seem foolish. But however foolish those practices might be, that was what they were taught and that was the theory many of them believed. 456 455 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 13. 456 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 17-18. 279 Showing understanding for Native culture, Huebner continued on, articulating his respect for religious traditions, even those contrary to Christianity. The teachings of one’s fathers which have been handed down from generation to generation are hard to forsake, and the conviction that it is one’s duty to adopt another system must be strong indeed to overcome the teaching of childhood. 457 In this passage, he also demonstrated an understanding of the great sacrifice an Indian made in adopting Christianity. In Huebner’s Charles Killbuck, the fictional title character was a non-Christian who represented ideal manhood. Even his title, Charles Killbuck: An Indian’s Story of the Border Wars of the American Revolution shows his reformist stance. Francis sought to tell his history from the vantage point of his Indian protagonist and his prose was neither paternalistic nor degrading. For most of the story, Killbuck remained a heathen, but he was also heroic. Killbuck’s conversion at the story’s end is more incidental than significant, motivated not by religious sensibilities but by his love for Benigna Nanticoke, a Moravian Indian girl he thought he had lost in the Gnadenhutten massacre. In the author’s “note” at the conclusion of the text, Huebner spotlighted the contemporary prejudice of whites toward Native Americans: Some of the readers of this story will think it is overdrawn. Captain White Eyes and the Killbucks with their advanced ideas of thinking are not the ideal Indian characters pictured in stories and history. As to stories, with few exceptions, novelists write to please white men—to gain their approbation—and they know race prejudice is strong enough that the presentation of the white man as the hero and 457 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 21-23. 280 the Indian as the villain is more acceptable than if they were placed vice versa. 458 In both the historical and fictional essays, without romanticizing Indians, Huebner portrayed his characters as heroic, whether they were Christian or non- Christian. White Eyes and Killbuck were deliberate, wise leaders, patriots of their own nations, the American cause, and the Moravian missions. Huebner admired White Eyes’ reasoning with regard to whether his people should join the Americans or British in the Revolution, constructed on the basis of self-preservation. The fear of the savage [non-Christian] Delaware, and the argument that seemed to have the surest influence upon them, was that the Americans would not be successful, and for their own protections they desired to be the winning side at the close of the conflict. 459 [White Eyes] had studied the interests of the (Delaware) nation from his youth, and the laws of cause and effect were as clear to him as to many statesmen of the present day. He wanted to see his people prosper, and he knew the only way to accomplish that end was to adopt civilization. 460 Huebner’s progressive attitudes toward Indians in Moravian Missions and Charles Killbuck (1902) did not come out of a vacuum. Rather, his ideas fit within a strain of Indian reform-mindedness expressed in the literary works of Helen Hunt Jackson in the early 1880s. Jackson’s writings critiqued the United States dealings with Indians and advocated an alternative approach to reform and solving the “Indian 458 Francis C. Huebner, Charles Killbuck: An Indian’s Story of the Border Wars of the American Revolution, (Washington, D.C.: The Herbert Publishing Company, 1902), 312. 459 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 51. 460 Huebner, The Moravian Missions in Ohio, 58. 281 problem,” which placed less focus on assimilation and more on self-determination and uplift. In the early 1900s, the major groups working for Indian reform supported the assimilationist policies of the federal government. White Victorian reformers in the 1880s, most of whom were ethnocentrists, formulated these policies, which favored turning Indian tribal and communal societies into variations of white, middle-class society, with nuclear families and capitalist economies. These groups included the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA), founded in 1879, which focused on education, missionary work, and transforming Indian women into ideal Victorian women, and the white, male-led Indian Rights Association (IRA) and Lake Mohonk Conference, founded in 1883, which focused their work on civil and political issues, such as the 1887 Dawes Act. In line with mainstream assimilationist policy, Native Americans were Christianized—sometimes forcibly—and regrouped into nuclear families living on individually owned farms, while their children were removed to boarding schools to be raised in the standards of Anglo society. The Dawes Act, which accomplished the first goal, was the most important piece of federal legislation regarding Indians until the New Deal of the 1930s. However well intentioned the Victorian reformers may have been, the assimilationist policy proved to be a disaster for Native Americans. It undermined the Indians’ communal societies and destroyed their economies. Most important, its provisions allowed white speculators to acquire much Indian land. That happened even in the Southwest, where the Dawes Act could not be enforced because a 282 provision in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War, had guaranteed the Indians full rights to their land. 461 Through fraud and the backing of judges and state legislators, even in the Southwest Anglo-American speculators managed to acquire millions of acres of Indian land. A new group of white reformers who took a cultural relativist stance toward Indian policy emerged by the late 1910s. This group of Progressive reformers represented, in the words of historian Francis Paul Prucha, a “radically different approach to the Indian question.” 462 These individuals called for Indian rights, freedom of religion, the protection and restoration of tribal lands, and self- determination. They admired Indian culture and argued that Indians should control any move toward assimilation, which some Indians themselves favored. The Huebners fit into this strain of Indian reform. And it was this reform-mindedness that Helen Hunt Jackson articulated and championed in the early 1880s. Between 1879 and her death in 1885, Jackson passionately worked for Indian reform. Her crusade began when she heard an address given by the Ponca chief 461 For informative and critical treatments on the Americanization policies and Indian reform culture of the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, see William T. Hagan, The Indian Rights Association: The Herbert Welsh Years, 1882 – 1904 (Tucson, Ariz. 1985); Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian,” 1889 – 1900. (Lincoln, Nebr., 1978); Lawrence Kelly, The Assault on Assimilation: John Collier and the Origins of Indian Reform, (Albuquerque, 1983); and Valerie Sherer Mathes, “Nineteenth- Century Women and Reform: The Women’s National Indian Association,” American Indian Quarterly, 14 (1990), 1–18. 462 Francis Paul Prucha, “Forward,” in Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1977), xi. 283 Standing Bear in which he detailed the U.S. government’s exploitation of his people. Jackson wrote to a friend that after hearing the speech, “I shall be found with ‘Indians’ engraved on my brain when I am dead.—A fire has been kindled within me which will never go out.” 463 Jackson’s Indian reform efforts occurred at the same time that Victorian reformers were lobbying for the Dawes Act. Consequently, historians of Indian reform have traditionally associated Jackson with these uncompromising assimilationists. Jackson’s writings, however, reveal a different stance. In 1881, Jackson broke from the sentimentalist genre that launched her literary career with her first non-fiction work, A Century of Dishonor, which detailed the history of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Indians, its unfulfilled promises, and broken treaties. Indeed, Jackson directly challenged her contemporaries’ assimilationist approach—first in her protest essay, A Century of Dishonor, in which she wrote pointedly of the injustices suffered by Native Americans at the hands of the United States government and people, while also arguing for Indian self-determination; and second, in her novel Ramona, in which she employed the same dramatic, sentimental form that Harriet Beecher Stowe had used to challenge the treatment of blacks in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 464 463 Quoted in Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, 5. 464 According to Helen Hunt Jackson’s biographer, Valerie Sherer Mathes, Jackson “was more muckraker than missionary reformer. [She] did not appear to be overly committed to the destruction of Indian culture and their acculturation into American society.” See Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, xii. See also Siobhan Senier, Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance (Norman, Okla., 2001), Chapter 1. 284 Jackson published A Century of Dishonor in 1881 under her own name. She sent every member of Congress a copy bound in blood red cloth, with a quote from Benjamin Franklin on the cover: “Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations.” 465 In A Century of Dishonor, Jackson detailed the history of seven tribes, beginning with the Delawares in the 1780s to the Poncas in the 1870s, who had been wronged by the government of the United States. Curiously, Jackson organized her critique by beginning and ending it with stories of Indian peoples closely identified with Moravian history. In her first chapter, she wrote about injustices suffered by the Delaware nation in the 1790s at the hands of the United States government, which repeatedly broke long-standing treaties with the Delawares. During the post-Revolutionary era, American settlers persistently pushed into Native lands in the Ohio country, disregarding boundaries that treaties had determined. Jackson wrote that these actions prompted the Delawares to justifiably engage in the borderland conflicts against white settlers and the army in defense of their lands. In an effort to reaffirm friendly relations with the Delawares during the Indian wars of the early 1790s, the United States reached out to the Indian nation through the trusted Moravian emissary, John Heckewelder. In 1793, a council was held between the head chiefs of the Delaware and US commissioners. Jackson recorded that the Delaware leaders’ appeal to the commissioners to respect and uphold their previous treaties was both eloquent and heart rendering: 465 Quoted in Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, 36. 285 Their words were not the words of ignorant barbarians, clumsily and doggedly holding to a point; these were the words of clear-headed, statesman-like rulers, insisting on the rights of their nations. Jackson’s account is nearly identical in language and concept to Huebner’s description of Delaware leaders Netawatwas and White Eyes’ and their negotiations with the Americans during the Revolutionary era. She used the contemporary Indian tropes—removal, extermination, savage, and heathen—to reach her audience with familiar language. Yet she did not employ terms disparaging Indians, rather her usage served as a linguistic tool to engage her readership. 466 Francis used the same strategy. In his final note in Charles Killbuck, Francis wrote that he consulted numerous manuscripts, sources, and contemporary works on Indians in American history, including the National archives and other legal sources. Jackson’s works, especially Ramona, were major best-sellers. He had to have read them. Significantly, Jackson ended her historical treatise of the nation’s injustices toward Native Americans with accounts of Indian massacres by whites. The final chapter opened with the massacre of a small remnant of Conestoga Indians in 1763 (at the hands of the Paxton Boys), but immediately focused on white depredations against Moravian Indians interred on Killbuck’s Island, near Philadelphia in 1763. She then turned to the massacre of Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten in 1782 as the highpoint of the United States government and peoples’ “dishonor” against Indians. This final chapter in A Century of Dishonor indicates that Jackson was well versed in Moravian history. She spent several pages detailing the trials and 466 Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor, 308. 286 tribulations of the Moravian Indians at the hands of white colonials up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. She ultimately used the Moravian tragedy at Gnadenhutten for her most vitriolic attack against the government. At the end of this final chapter, Jackson juxtaposed the Moravian massacre of 1782 with a massacre of a small group of Apache old men, women, and children in 1871, ten years before she wrote A Century of Dishonor. Jackson shrewdly used a crime against Indians in the nation’s past—the Moravian massacre at Gnadenhutten—to substantiate the accusations she made against the United States for crimes against Indians. These massacres were, to Jackson, real incriminations against the United States and its citizens. 467 Jackson’s defense of Indian character and religion is in her appendix. Again, similar to Huebner’s works, Jackson attempted to offer a counter to her contemporaries’ views that Indians were degraded. “The North American Indian is everywhere in his native state a highly moral and religious being, endowed by his Maker with an intuitive knowledge of some great Author of his being and the universe.” 468 Francis followed Jackson in Moravian Missions and Charles Killbuck. He presented Native Americans as moral, religious beings on the same plane as the nation’s white heroes. They deserved “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 469 467 Jackson, Century of Dishonor, 324. 468 Jackson, Century of Dishonor, 377. 469 Jackson, Century of Dishonor, 342. 287 Francis’s writings demonstrate that he possessed a deeper historical connection with his heritage in mid-eighteenth century Moravian Indian mission settlements and the 1782 massacre than with his connection to Ludwig Huebner’s pastorate in the “white village.” He wrote much about the history of Indians prior to that settlement, but nothing about the “second Gnadenhutten.” Growing up in Gnadenhutten amidst the imagery and lore of the massacre instilled in Francis a passionate interest in the history of the region as it related to the Moravian missionary project and the Ohio Indians. He seemed particularly connected to the tragedy of his ancestral Indian brethren. In these ways his writings complemented Jackson’s critique of the nation’s historic injustice toward Indians. Jackson’s influence resurfaced in the 1910s in the Indian reform efforts of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs (CFWC), to which Anna belonged. The Indian reform-mindedness articulated in the writings of Jackson and Francis Huebner was, by the 1920s, gaining currency. Anna and Francis shared a sympathetic disposition toward Native Americans and the past inequities they had suffered. It was this consciousness that underpinned their encounters with the “Indians of the Painted Desert” and inspired Anna to work for reform on their behalf. Working Reform: Anna Huebner and the “Indians of the Painted Desert” In 1922, The Clubwoman, the official newsletter of the CFWC, reported on a lecture on “The Indians of the Painted Desert” given by Anna Huebner of the Fresno Parlor Lecture Club to the Women’s Tuesday Club of Kingsburg, not far from 288 Fresno. Anna shared with the clubwomen her experiences on numerous trips that she and her family had taken from 1917 to 1921 to the Hopi and Navajo communities in Arizona and New Mexico. She talked about the home life, religion, and tribal customs of these communities, and she displayed numerous artifacts she had bought from them and that they had given her. She also showed colored lanternslide projections of photographs she and her husband had taken of the Indians’ architecture, community life, and ceremonial dances. 470 These photographs included 470 The Clubwoman, 14 (March 1922), 28. For the additional lectures, see ibid, (July 1922), 32. The Clubwoman is available in the California Women’s Club Collection, Special Collections, University Library—Microfilm Department, University of California, Santa Cruz (hereafter, CFWC). See also Business Meeting, April 6, 1922; located in “Business Meetings” file, Feb. 4, 1919 – March 6, 1924, p. 112. Manuscript Collection 160: Parlor Lecture Club Records (hereafter PLC), Fresno City and County Historical Society Archives, Fresno, Calif. 289 Figure 22: 1922 flyer advertising Anna Huebner’s travel lectures on the Indians of the Southwest. 290 shots of the sacred Hopi Snake Dance ceremony, which Hopi leaders had permitted the Huebners to photograph. Figure 23. Photograph of Hopi Snake dancers, taken by Anna or Francis Huebner circa 1919. 291 There were also photographs of the exterior of the Kiva, the Hopi’s “church,” which extended underground. Hopi leaders invited Anna’s husband and two teenage sons into the Kiva, where they witnessed religious rites few whites had been privileged to view. Snake Chief Harry Shu Pela even honored Anna with the ceremonial sash he had worn during the Snake Dance ceremony they witnessed. 471 471 “Hopi Friend of Fresnans Passes—Indian Friend of F.C. Huebner is Dead,” Fresno Republican, March 29, 1931 (available in the Fresno Bee archives, Fresno, Calif.). Figure 24: Photograph of Hopi Snake chief Harry Shu Pela with Anna Huebner holding ceremonial sash, circa 1920. Huebner family collection. 292 Anna gave at least two additional lectures, one to the Clovis Women’s Club on February 1, 1922, another at the end of April to the Parlor Club Lectures (PCL) Study Section Department. The records suggest that the numerous Huebner family visits to Oraibi, Walpi, and other Hopi villages fostered life-long friendships between the Huebners and the Hopi people. Anna Huebner had been a clubwoman in a California affiliate since 1913. She was active in the Indian Welfare Committee of the Fresno Parlor Lecture Club in the 1910s and committee chair from 1922 to 1923. Working at the local level, Anna initiated measures that would provide welfare assistance to the Indians living in the Auberry Indian Reservation near Fresno. Anna’s talks and activities influenced California clubwomen in general. Following Huebner’s February 28 lecture, Mrs. George Carr, the San Joaquin Valley district CFWC chairman for Indian Welfare, spoke in favor of two bills pending before the California legislature that would protect and extend Indian land claims and acquisition. Carr also stated that she was certain that pressure from the women’s clubs in California would secure the passage of those bills. 472 Anna’s heritage, which encompassed both the Gibson and Huebner family histories, underpinned her work in Indian reform in California. Anna did not identify as Native American although she was aware of her Indian ancestry through her great- grandmother, Nancy Larison Gibson. Nonetheless, Anna, informed by her family history, understood her Indian contemporaries in the context of community and 472 The Clubwoman, 14 (March 1922), 28, and The Clubwoman, 14. (Feb. 1922), 10. CFWC. 293 family. To what degree did Anna embrace her husband’s Moravian sensibilities? The Parlor Lecture Club Yearbook for 1913-1914 provides a clue. The yearbook details the officers, departments, scheduled events for the year, and all of the active members’ names and addresses. Printed under the “Departments” heading was the most cherished Moravian proverb, which was (and still is) considered the fundamental principle of the church: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in everything, love.” 473 At the time this yearbook was published, no Moravian congregation existed in Fresno. It is reasonable to assume that Anna, an active member of the club at the time, was responsible for the inclusion of the proverb in the PLC yearbook. 474 Francis supported Anna’s work. He also joined her and their sons on the arduous treks to the Southwest desert, where they met and bonded with Oraibi and Walpi Hopis. The following series of photographs provides a pictorial narrative of one of their summer trips to the mesa villages. 473 Yearbooks: Parlor Lecture Club, 1913-1914; Manuscript Collection 160: PLC. 474 Anna served on the Music committee that year and was listed as the chairman of one of that department’s major events. Every year following she served on at least one committee. Figure 25: Hopi man meeting the Huebners 294 Figures 26-28: Pictorial narrative of Huebner family journey to the Hopi mesa villages of Oraibi and Walpi. 295 When Anna first met Pueblo Indians in 1917, she welcomed the encounter. In a 1917 letter to her relatives in Ohio, Anna wrote: When we made the final decision at Denver to take the Southern route home, the Huebners had sort of a disappointed feeling as we had been anxious to cross the northern Rockies, but our disappointment waned as we traveled on to find so much variety and unusual interest. After crossing this last pass we came into a valley dotted full of Pueblo Indian villages, and really there was nothing on the whole trip any more interesting than these. We were only sorry we could not take more time, but even so we tarried long enough in various places to get a good idea of the lives of those people. 475 Anna immediately sought to purchase some Indian pottery. This inquiry established her first recorded cultural exchange with Native Americans. I was so anxious to buy some of their pottery right there so I could feel it was not an imitation and so I began to inquire if I could buy a bowl. We could not find any body (sic) who could understand what I meant by bowl. After a great deal of effort here and there we made a young girl comprehend and she began to jabber to her mother who immediately trotted away to another room and brought a bowl from which she had taken her bread she was mixing. Bits of dough sticking to the sides. I said “sell.” She said “yah.” A man standing by said “denaha.”That was what the indians (sic) call a bowl. Then we went about asking for denahas and finally was (sic) directed to an adobe hut where we were told we could get some. Here again we found a young girl who could understand English and interpreted it to her mother and we got another kind of ware, that is, pottery made by a different tribe—it being Old Laguna. The first one we got was made in the Sandia. 475 Anna Alloway Huebner to Ellen “Bob” Alloway Watts, October 16 th , 1917, personal correspondence, Huebner Family Archive. All of the following quotes of Anna Huebner are taken from this letter. 296 Anna took notice not only of the items she could purchase from the Indians, but of the Indians themselves, their culture, and their daily lives. “The Indians are so queer. It is a whole circus to be among them in their adobe habitations. Most of the tribes are of such happy dispositions and seemed to enjoy us very much.” In this section of her letter to her sister back home, Anna’s words seem paternalistic, romanticized, and “other-izing” of the Indians she encountered. At the same time, however, Anna actively engaged these people, a community completely foreign to her. Her letter suggests she was neither repelled by, nor judgmental of their otherness. As a keenly interested observer, and in a respectful way, Anna recounted for her sister the daily routine of family life in the Pueblo villages she visited. “Some of the tribes were touching up their huts with a new coat of adobe. The women put it on with their hands.” The color of the adobe when dry is tan. Many of the huts are trimmed with blue--a brilliant blue and the women are dressed in the most striking colors you know—all the reds, yellows and in fact most any color so it is bright. Hence these villages present a most brilliant picture. Many of them consist simply of a row of huts around a square plot of ground containing 2 or 3 acres. In this center they congregate in the evening for their dances and fandangos and such. We would wave to them all [from their automobile] even though we could not stop. At one point in the letter, Anna related two stories that imply a sense of a connection between herself and the Indians she encountered. While driving in New Mexico alongside the Rocky Mountain Range, the family was curious if the high peaks in the range had names. “So grand and majestic.” We wondered what they were called. We named one Cathedral Peak ourselves and when we arrived at 297 Gallop and asked the names of these different peaks, found the name of the one we had named is “Navajo Church.” In this instance, Anna recognized a connection with the Navajo in that they both recognized the sublime and spiritual quality of the mountain peak, giving it a name with similar meaning. 476 The significance of this moment to Anna is implied in that it was important enough to her to write about the experience to her sister. In the same vein, the next day the family stopped the car on the side of the road to have some breakfast. While they were eating “a young indian (sic) came riding by and stopped to look at the machine.” We spoke to him and he gave a grunt in response. He seemed so tickled over the car. Had not seen many I guess. I offered him a slice of bread with jelly on and he took it, and we knew from his manner he wanted more so I gave him another. In this account, Anna personally engaged the Indian man in such way as to be cognizant of his wants and desires. She twice made an attempt to connect with him. These accounts of Anna’s initial experiences with Native Americans are telling when put into the context of her numerous subsequent encounters and relationships with the Southwest Indians. Over the next five years, Anna returned every summer with her family to visit the Navajo and the various Pueblo villages, especially those of the 476 It is quite possible that the neither the Navajo nor any other Indian peoples in the area gave this name to the peak. Early non-Indian explorers or the local population may have done so. Nevertheless, it is important for my purposes that the fact that Anna wrote about this experience to her sister indicates that to a certain level she identified with and may have felt connected to the Navajo through this shared experience. 298 Hopi. Anna’s exposure to the culture and communities of these “queer Indians” inspired her later work in Indian reform through her local women’s club in Fresno. In 1917, the same time that Anna first encountered the Pueblo Indians, Stella Atwood of Riverside, California, established the first local Indian Welfare Committee in a Riverside affiliate of the GFWC. 477 Under her leadership, the Riverside clubwomen investigated and sought to remedy the serious problems facing the local Indian populations—the Morongo, the Cahuilla, and the Saboba—living on reservations in the Riverside area. 477 RPL8 RWC collection Box 5, Riverside Women’s Club Collection, Riverside Public Library, Riverside, Calif. (hereafter RWC). Figure 29: Photograph of Huebner family with Hopi villagers, circa 1919. Pictured left to right: Francis, James, and Anna Huebner together with Hopi children. Huebner family collection. 299 In some ways similar to Anna’s experience, Stella Atwood’s interest in Indians can be traced to her family heritage. Atwood had become interested in Indians during her childhood in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which was a gathering place for the Chippewa and Sioux tribes. Before she was born, her parents had witnessed Indian massacres there, experiences that inspired her physician father to engage in serious study of Native American religion and society. As a young girl, Atwood showed great interest in Indian matters, and she assisted her father in his investigations. In the process, she heard countless stories about the lives, customs, and religions of Native Americans. 478 Atwood was also later influenced by the writings of Helen Hunt Jackson. At the 1916 annual convention of the Southern California District of the CFWC, Dr. Horace Porter spoke on the plight of Indians in the Riverside area. 479 He called on 478 See “Mrs. H. A. Atwood, Nationally Known Figure, Passes Here,” Friday Morning, May 26, 1939 Riverside Enterprise--Riverside, California (also available in folder 12, box 1, Series 1, Part 2, file name: “Correspondence and Papers of Others,” John Collier Papers, and “MEMORIALS: Museum, Library, UCR Get Atwood Estate Gifts,” Dec. 2, 1955, Riverside Press, Riverside Public Library. Stella Myers was born in Maine Prairie, Minnesota June 25, 1866. She married Harry Atwood, a physician, in 1893 and moved to Riverside, California in 1894. She had no children. Before her involvement in Indian reform, she devoted her life to altruistic projects in education, settlement work, and she was deeply concerned with troubled youth. Additional information on Stella Atwood’s youth has been related to me through personal correspondence with Lawrence Kelly, to whom I am deeply indebted. Kelly based his information on an extant but currently missing biography of Atwood, to which Atwood’s cousin, Grace King, gave Kelly access for his biography on John Collier. All references to Atwood except in notes 78 and 79 refer to Stella Atwood; all those to Collier, except in note 75, refer to John Collier. 479 To date, I have not been able to find any additional information on Horace Porter, his professional degree, or the source of his interest or involvement with Native Americans. 300 the clubwoman to take up the cause of Indian reform, framing his remarks in terms of Jackson’s Century of Dishonor and her novel Ramona, whose protagonists belong to the Riverside tribes. These books, Porter stated, “make a strong appeal for the Indians. They, the Sabobas, are now the very Indians among whom Mrs. Jackson lived while writing Ramona.” He pointed out that the same tribe was then being sued by the state in federal proceedings in Riverside, and that “the white brother is having these Indians sign receipts for labor done which are [being falsely] interpreted by white men as rents receipts.” That interpretation, he warned, would hold up in court unless something were done. 480 Porter urged the California clubwomen “to use their power at Washington to insure protection for these Indians.” He suggested that each club establish an Indian Welfare committee so “that Helen Hunt Jackson’s dying plea [to save the Indians] be not forgotten.” 481 Yet in the reform climate of the 1910s, it is not surprising that the California clubwomen who inaugurated committees of Indian welfare read Ramona as Jackson intended it—as an indictment of government policies toward the Indians and in terms of the clubwomen’s own push for cultural relativism in Indian policy. Prior to her work in Indian reform, Atwood had a long career in progressive reform that reflected 480 CFWC Southern Dist.--Minutes of Convention in Redlands, Nov. 15 – 16, 1916, pp. 9 – 10, folder V.5; RWC. The district recording secretary put quotation marks around this quote, implying that it was a verbatim record of Porter’s words. I do not assume this to be the case, but I have transcribed it as it was exactly written in the minutes. 481 CFWC Southern Dist.--Minutes of Convention in Redlands, Nov. 15 – 16, 1916, pp. 9 – 10, folder V.5; RWC. 301 such a cultural relativist stance. In the early 1900s Atwood had spearheaded Riverside’s Community Settlement Association and she organized the first Parent Teachers Association (PTA) in the area. She was also deeply involved in the county’s Juvenile Industrial Training Camp, as well as literacy programs for immigrants. 482 Porter’s lecture in 1916 communicated the cultural relativist reform strain articulated by Jackson in the 1880s, and the clubwomen carried Jackson’s legacy of reform into the 1920s and 1930s with significant success. Atwood, for one, responded quickly to Porter’s appeal. In 1917, the same year that she established the first committee on Indian Welfare in her local club, Atwood also established an Indian welfare committee in the Southern California District of the GFWC and served as its first chairman. 483 In 1918, the CFWC established Indian Welfare Committee at the state level. Stella Atwood and Aida Arnold were the primary sponsors. The expansion of the Indian Welfare department throughout the Southern district of women’s clubs resulted in an increased interest and participation in Indian affairs on the part of 482 “Mrs. H. A. Atwood, Nationally Known Figure, Passes Here.” Friday Morning, May 26, 1939 Riverside Enterprise--Riverside, California (also available in folder 12, box 1, Series 1, Part 2, file name: “Correspondence and Papers of Others,” John Collier Papers, and “MEMORIALS: Museum, Library, UCR Get Atwood Estate Gifts,” Dec. 2, 1955, Riverside Press, Riverside Public Library. 483 Box 5, Riverside Women’s Club Collection. The records are confusing in that sometimes the Indian Welfare committee is listed as having originated in the Riverside Women’s Club and other times as having inaugurated in the Riverside County Federation of Women’s Club, which incorporated all of the women’s clubs throughout Riverside County. The records do indicate, however, that Riverside Women’s Club members such as Mrs. Arnold and Atwood consistently held positions of prominence both at the district and state, and eventually national levels. 302 clubwomen across California. This brought about its adoption in the state body of women’s clubs as a “standing” committee. The state committee replicated the structure and focus that Stella Atwood had established at the local and regional levels. By the 1910s, women’s clubs organization and club work were structured around philanthropy activities, civic betterment, social welfare, and promoting personal and community enrichment through the arts. 484 The overall organizational structure was a hierarchal, four tiered system: first, there was a national body--the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Under the national organization, each state formed a body--for instance, California organized as the CFWC. The state organization had oversight over district level boards and officers, such as the Southern California or San Joaquin Districts. Finally, there were local clubs such as the Fresno Parlor Lecture Club. Local clubs could choose to “federate” at both the state and national levels, which meant they paid dues to their superior bodies and sent representatives to the multiple level conventions held throughout the year. Each of the four levels of the organization had “standing” departments through which club work was carried out. They included Public Welfare, Legislation, 484 Surprisingly, little work has been done on the history of clubwomen or the women’s clubs from their inception in 1869 up through the post-suffrage era. Only two major works exist on the subject and they did not inspire historians to inquire further into the extraordinary political work these women engaged in, particularly during the 1910s and 1920s. See Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980) See also Anne Ruggles Gere, Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in the U.S. Women’s Clubs, 1880-1920, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997). 303 American Citizenship, Art, Music, Child Welfare, and Applied Education. 485 The CFWC listed these same departments, but it included additional departments that met specific needs of the state, such as the department of Conservation, with a special project to save the California Redwood forests from over cutting. Under each department, numerous divisions were created that addressed various projects with greater specificity—under Legislation, the division of resolutions had the task of writing out, in legal format, the official stance the GFWC or CFWC took on a particular political or cultural issue. The resolution would have to first pass the scrutiny of the legislation chairman, and then it would be presented to either the governing body of the board of directors and officers, or in some instances, to the general membership, for an up or down vote. If approved, the resolution would be sent to government officials who were connected to the issue addressed in the resolution— these include congressmen, senators, even, as was often the case, the President of the United States. These were the primary avenues through which the women’s clubs expressed their political voice. Under divisions, committees were often formed that dealt with even more specific concerns and interests of particular clubs and clubwomen. When the Indian Welfare Committee was formed at the state level in 1918, it was placed under the auspices of the division of Public Health, which fell under the department of Public Welfare. In addition, committees, such as Indian Welfare, had an internal oversight 485 Minutes: GFWC 1920-1922 Board Meetings, Biennial Conventions, Councils. Vol. XIV, 64, General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives--Women’s Historical Research Center, Washington, D.C. 304 structure with communication channels in place. For instance, the state chairman of Indian Welfare would distribute information on state-wide programs, policy changes, resolutions, legislation, and year-end reports to the district committee chair, and the district chair would then forward this information and her own reports to the local clubwomen chairs located within the district. While this organizational structure suggests that clubwomen functioned in a monolithic, uniform manner, this was not the case. The clubwomen involved in Indian welfare took a range of, and sometimes opposing, views on policy matters and how to execute their programs. In terms of how to deal with the issues facing Indians, the ideological and political positions clubwomen took could be radically different. By 1918, the executive board of the CFWC established an Indian Welfare Committee. Its members elected Aida Arnold of Riverside as chairman, then the most prominent position on Indian policy in the organization. Arnold was a close friend and sister clubwoman to Atwood. As early as 1919, the CFWC urged its affiliates throughout California to form Indian Welfare committees to “investigate the conditions under which Indians in their vicinity are living, especially the school and hospital facilities to Indians in and around the state” and to seek ways to improve health and education services to them. The CFWC executive board appointed Arnold as the first state chairman of the CFWC Indian Welfare department, with Stella Atwood and four other women serving on the committee. In 1919, Arnold issued an appeal to the clubwomen throughout the state to become politically engaged in Indian reform. 305 We are strengthened by the decision of our State Supreme Court, which has decreed that Indians, whether living on reservations or not, are citizens and are entitled to public school advantages; to county aid for their indigent and sick and to other rights and privileges of citizens. Our clubwomen are urged to see that county supervisors do not continue their practice of refusing to admit to county institutions, aged and indigent Indians, or those who require hospital care. During the coming winter, Congress will be asked to take adequate measures towards redeeming our long neglected promises to the “landless Indians,” to whom no homes have ever been granted, and also to those whose allotments are worthless. We must use our influence, with our representatives, to help this important legislation. 486 Like many reformers of her time, Arnold viewed Christianization as an important reform goal for the “ignorant, degraded” Indian. 487 In these words, she revealed her maternalist and ethnocentric attitudes toward Native Americans. Yet Christianization was only part of her agenda for Indian reform, which included investigating the conditions of neighboring Indian communities and arousing “public sentiment in their behalf” for health and education services. Arnold’s comments concerning allotment also situate her within the new thinking among white reformers that the federal allotment policy was wrong. She called on the clubwomen to establish committees within their respective clubs to investigate the conditions of neighboring Indians and “arouse to secure health and education services.” Arnold also encouraged local clubs to “appoint committees on Indian Welfare, whose duty would be to keep each club informed as to Indian questions, and if in the vicinity of 486 The Clubwoman, Vol. XII, No. 1, (October 1919), 16-17, CFWC. 487 The Clubwoman, Vol. XII, No. 12, (September 1920), 26, CFWC. 306 any Indians, to establish friendly relations with them.” Finally, she encouraged the clubwomen to learn Indian history, art, and folklore so that they could respond to the specific needs of Indians. 488 Corresponding to the CFWC ideals and work in Indian reform, local affiliate clubs throughout the state, such as the Parlor Lecture Club of Fresno, established their own Indian welfare committees. The earliest record of an established Indian Welfare Committee in the Parlor Lecture Club (PLC) is 1919, with Mrs. Denham listed as chairman. 489 However, minutes from a PLC Board of Directors meeting as early as 1916 records interest in Indian matters. In this case, the PLC Board advised giving more consideration to a resolution from the state body, the CFWC, which recommended a change in the management of Indian affairs at the state level to remove political influences. 490 The PLC archives have no record explaining why the club finally established an Indian Welfare Committee in 1919, or who prompted its formation, but it is clear that by this time, club members such as Anna Huebner were interested in Indians and their welfare. In 1920, the twenty-third annual convention of the San Joaquin Valley District listed several committee reports, programs, and distinguished speakers focusing on 488 The Clubwoman, Vol. XII, No. 12, (September 1920), 26, CFWC. 489 Yearbooks: Parlor Lecture Club, 1919-1920: 11. Manuscript Collection 160, PLC. 490 Minutes: Board of Directors Minutes, February 27, 1915-February 1, 1919: 22 (meeting of January 4, 1916), Manuscript Collection 160, PLC. 307 Native American concerns. As reported in The Clubwoman, renowned Indian expert and lecturer, George Wharton James “was one of the treats of the convention.” Added to Mr. James’ gifts as a speaker was the wealth of information and material he presented all illustrated with very beautiful pictures. His lecture will no doubt be an added incentive for further efforts in Indian Welfare. 491 The Fresno Parlor Lecture Club Indian welfare committee executed the agenda issued from state chairman Aida Arnold. Mrs. Denham, chairman of PLC’s Indian Welfare in 1919, investigated the issue Arnold raised of hospitals refusing to admit Indians. Denham found that in her local district, Indians were afforded the care they needed. At the December 4 th , 1919 regular business meeting of the PLC, Denham reported “she had found that Indians were admitted to the Fresno County Hospital, but the difficulty lay in keeping them.” Her report added, They [the Indians] seemed to want Christmas things and needed sheets and extra clothing to be used in case of sickness. 492 In early November 1920, chairman Denham announced that a meeting would to be held later in the month with two guest speakers addressing matters of Indian welfare, and “she wished all members to be present.” 493 On another occasion, the chairman of the PLC Civic Philanthropic department, Mrs. Baymiller, reported on the successes of “Indian Welfare Day:” “Large crowd and a good day and only costing 491 The Clubwoman, Vol. XII, No. 7, (April 1920), 13, CFWC. 492 Minutes: Business Meetings, February 4, 1919-March 6, 1924, 48-50 (Regular Business meeting, December 4 th , 1919). Manuscript Collection 160, PLC. 493 Minutes: Business Meetings, February 4, 1919-March 6, 1924, 71 (Regular Business meeting, November 4 th , 1920). Manuscript Collection 160, PLC. 308 the department $5.85.” 494 The PLC Indian Welfare was firmly established in the PLC by the year 1920. With this groundswell of action at the local and state levels in 1921, the GFWC formed a standing committee on Indian welfare. Indeed, it was Atwood who petitioned GFWC executive board members at the 1921 biennial convention in Salt Lake City to establish this committee. The executive board elected her to serve as its first national chairman; her tenure lasted from 1921 to 1928. In a 1922 Survey article, Atwood spelled out her reform agenda: The General Federation of Women’s Clubs has taken up this problem of the Indian and will not lay down the task. The aim of the federation is to work out a simple, basic policy, aimed primarily at the improvement of the Indians’ economic condition. It hopes to cooperate with the government in a sustained effort toward keeping for the Indians the land which they still possess and getting back for them the land of which they have been illegally dispossessed, and toward fostering the Indians arts and crafts. 495 In July 1921, immediately following the Salt Lake City biennial, Mary Gibson, a high-ranking CFWC clubwoman, introduced her friend John Collier to Stella Atwood, believing that their mutual interest in reform would stimulate a powerful alliance. 496 Gibson was correct. Collier began lecturing across California 494 Minutes: Board of Directors Minutes, February 20, 1919-May 17, 1922, 88 (Board of Directors meeting, December 2, 1920). Manuscript Collection 160, PLC. 495 Atwood, “The Case for the Indian,” 57. 496 See Kelly, The Assault on Assimilation, 127–131. There is confusion in the historical literature surrounding the date of the first meeting between Atwood and Collier. In his autobiography, From Every Zenith Collier placed it in the summer of 1922. John Collier, From Every Zenith: A Memoir; and Some Essays on Life and 309 on issues relating to Indian welfare. And in 1922, Atwood officially hired Collier in the summer of 1922 to serve in a fulltime position as the GFWC’s investigator of Indian conditions and of pending legislation with regard to Native Americans on the state and national levels. By late 1922, the All Pueblo Council had allied itself with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) to advance the Indian cause. In 1922-23, Anna Huebner replaced Denham as PLC chairman of the Indian welfare committee. Early in Anna’s tenure as chairman and just days before Anna gave her lanternslide presentation, John Collier spoke before the Fresno PLC. Collier’s talk focused on “the administrative methods through which the federal government governed the Indians.” He characterized the spiritual and communal life of the Pueblo Indians as especially victimized by the “brutal and venal bureaucracy that destroys these values.” At the talk’s end, Collier recommended that the U.S. government ideology and method of dealing with the American Indians be reorganized and modernized. 497 Anna Huebner, as chairman of Indian welfare, in all probability issued the invitation to Collier to speak. Huebner’s presentation to the clubwomen three days Thought (Denver, Sage Books, 1963). I think Collier’s recollection on this point is inaccurate. The contemporary literature indicates that the meeting took place either in April 1921 or possibly later that summer. Also, according to Kelly, Mary Gibson, Atwood, and Kate Vosburg met at Vosburg’s estate in May 1922 where they worked out the details of hiring Collier as Indian investigator for the GFWC. By January 1922, Collier was already active in the CFWC, giving speeches on Indian issues to women’s clubs across California. It seems unlikely, given Vosburg’s and Atwood’s active roles in Indian welfare, that they had not met Collier prior to the summer of 1922. 497 The Clubwoman, 14, (Feb. 1922), 14, CFWC. 310 later resonated with Collier’s ideology and reflected a reform-mindedness that rejected assimilation as the only strategy to solve “the Indian problem.” Through her “instructive and interesting” lectures on the Indians of the Painted Desert, Anna Huebner educated the clubwomen on the “self-sufficiency” of the Hopi and Navajo. Collier spoke before the twenty-first annual convention of the CFWC in Los Angeles that May. The Clubwoman reported that Collier’s address was considered to be the “high-light event of the three-day conference.” He spoke about the historic mistreatment of the Indian, presenting evidence “to show that the United States has wiped its boots on the soul of the first Americans—the red men of the reservations.” He stated that the California clubwomen were the “torch bearers in this new work for the conservation of the Indian.” 498 He stressed that Stella Atwood and other leading California clubwomen had played the deciding role in persuading him to take up Indian reform. Through their “intensive” lobbying efforts, the clubwomen “had advanced important political remedies to the plight of the Indians. If one desired to make out a case for feminism,” Collier argued, “he could not find a better foundation for it than to contrast the action of American women toward the Indian with that of the American man.” He continued: There is a movement, which is now felt all over the United States, which was started here in California by the women, with Mrs. Atwood as its originator. To do this great thing it requires a wide range of knowledge, a certain amount of legal equipment, a statesmanlike and sympathetic interest in the Indian. The women are the only ones who have advanced toward the legal solution to the 498 The Clubwoman, (June 1922), 17–18. 311 problem [of the Indian in American society], a solution that must be dealt with by the whole country. 499 Anna Huebner was one of the California clubwomen of whom Collier spoke. Her lectures were aimed at educating the clubwomen in her area about the customs and lives of the Indians she visited in the Southwest. She was part of the larger state and national movement that directed clubwomen to support legislation that defended Indians’ land and religious rights. In May of 1923, the assault by the U.S. government on Pueblo ceremonial dances was at its height. Anna Huebner issued a statement to her Parlor Lecture Club urging the women to consider the government’s actions. Mrs. Huebner of Indian Welfare spoke on the discontinuance of the Indian dances and recommended that Club Women give it some thought during the summer. 500 The Parlor Lecture Club minutes for the subsequent fall season do not record the “thoughts” given to this issue raised by Anna Huebner. Anna became ill and succumbed to cancer the following year. Nonetheless, the national movement for Indian reform, which clubwomen like Huebner helped launch, was gaining momentum. Throughout the 1920s and into the early 30s, John Collier, Stella Atwood and the GFWC, with the endorsement of the All Pueblo Council and other Indian groups, continued to collaborate and campaign for major reforms for Native Americans. Their activity culminated in the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. 499 The Clubwoman, (June 1922), 17. 500 Business Meeting, May 3, 1923; located in Business Meetings, February 4, 1919- March 6, 1924, 164. Manuscript Collection 160. PLC. 312 In the final analysis, however, the relationships that were established between the Hopi people and Anna and her family offer the most compelling aspect of the story. The Hopi allowed the Huebners access into their lives, their communities, their tribal customs, and their sacred religious ceremonies. The personal relationships between the Huebners and the Hopi people, a portrait of collaboration, provided the means through which alternative images of Indians were offered to clubwomen across California with the effect of real political reform for Native Americans across the nation. * After Anna’s death in 1924, there is no indication that Francis ever returned to the Southwest to visit his Hopi friends. He continued his practice as a patent attorney in Fresno and cultivated a variety of table grapes on forty acres he owned outside of town. But he did return to Gnadenhutten every two or three years through the 1920s and 1930s. 501 Beginning in the mid-1920s, the Moravian community at Gnadenhutten began commemorating the village’s history in the form of pageant plays. They celebrated the 150-year return to Gnadenhutten by John Heckewelder in 1798, the 125-year reestablishment of Gnadenhutten in 1800, and the 250-year anniversary of the 1782 massacre. These pageants focused on the history of the Moravians and their mission to Indians, and each placed special attention on the massacre of 1782. Together with 501 Personal interview, Raymond Huebner, summer 2007. Raymond was Francis’s cousin. He told me that Francis returned to visit his family, but would also purchase a new car in Ohio every two or three years. Francis would return to California on the train and would have Raymond and another cousin drive the car out to him. 313 congregants of the church, members of Francis’s immediate and extended family that had remained in Gnadenhutten participated in these pageants. In these plays, the Moravian community and the Huebner family reenacted their historical relationships with Native Americans and their historic place in the American story. The Pageant The wide-eyed, bob-haired five-year old twins were unaware of the horrible fate that lay before them. It was the end of the fifth scene titled, “The Eve of the Massacre,” and Grace and her sister Ruth, scared and uncertain, dressed in identical Indian costumes, fashioned by their mother, bowed down on their knees in prayer before their captors. They were too young to understand the gravity of this moment in the pageant and what it represented in history. 502 502 Information on the 1925 pageant comes from church records, the actual pageant playbook, and photographic stills from the performance, box 22, folder 5, GA. I was also privileged personally interview Grace Day, one of the twin girls who performed in the 1925 and 1932 pageants. Personal interview, Grace Day, October 18 th , 2007, Gnadenhutten, Ohio; and personal correspondence, Grace Day to Karin Huebner, November 5, 2007. Grace was born in 1920 and currently serves as the historian and archivist of the Gnadenhutten Moravian Church. 314 At the curtain’s close, the two little girls with their mother and the other actors on stage representing ninety-six Moravian Christian Indians, were, in the imagination of the audience, bludgeoned to death with a cooper’s mallet, scalped, and then their lifeless bodies set on fire and left to burn. This scene was part of a 1925 pageant-play presented by the John Heckewelder Memorial Moravian Church commemorating the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the second founding of Gnadenhutten, a small village nestled beside the Tuscawaras River in the fertile mid-east region of Ohio. Visitors from all around the state came to witness the performance, so many that the play was Figure 30: Photograph of “scene five” depicting the 1782 Gnadenhutten massacre of Christian Indians in the 1925 pageant play presented by the Moravian church in Gnadenhutten, Ohio commemorating the 125 anniversary of the founding of the village. Grace Zimmerman (Day) and her sister Ruth are on the left, kneeling with their mother’s arms around them. 315 extended a second night to accommodate the large crowds, which numbered close to two thousand people. 503 While the pageant’s principal theme was the re-establishment of the Moravian congregation in Gnadenhutten in 1800, it was the scene depicting the massacre, an event that had occurred eighteen years earlier in 1782 that captured the attention of the audience and the numerous press reports on the play. One local newspaper reported that the fifth scene was the “most impressive” to the audience because, “they had heard so much of the Indian village massacre.” 504 According to a second account, sobs could be heard in the audience during the massacre scene. 505 Another reporter wrote, “The fifth scene showed the Christian Indians singing and praying on the eve of the massacre. So realistic was this tableaux that the performers themselves were seen to shed tears, and the audience was entranced.” 506 Members of the Huebner family participated in the pageant, making their stage entrance in the scene before the massacre scene. This fourth scene portrayed the historic baptism of the first white child born in Ohio in 1773. 507 Missionary David 503 “Moravian Church’s Pageant Attracts Many From Canton,” box 15, folder 2, GA. The population of Gnadenhutten at the time numbered approximately 1,000. 504 “Pageant At Gnaden Will Be Repeated,” vol. 24, No. 58, Friday, October 16 th , 1925, name of newspaper unknown. box 15, folder 2, GA. 505 The Evening Chronicle, October 16 th , 1925. box 15, folder 2, GA. 506 “Gnaden Past Is Revealed In Pageant,” Friday, October 16 th , 1925, name of newspaper unknown. box 15, folder 2, GA. 507 Whether or not this history is accurate is irrelevant here. The racial implications of this lore and its significance to the community is worthy of further examination, 316 Zeisberger officiated the baptism and recorded the event in his diary he kept for the Schoenbrunn mission. “July 5, 1773: Brother David, Brother and Sister Jungmann, and some Indian Brothers and Sisters went to Gnadenhutten for the baptism of the baby boy born to Brother and Sister Roth yesterday.” 508 John Roth and his wife, Marie Agnes, had arrived to Gnadenhutten on April 24, 1773 to serve as missionaries to the Indian congregation there. Three months later, on July 4 th , Marie Agnes gave birth to a son, John Lewis. 509 Lawrence Huebner, Francis’s cousin, played the part of John Roth, and Nettie, Lawrence’s wife, played the role of Marie Agnes. 510 Lawrence and Nettie’s baby daughter, Mary Susanna Huebner, filled the role of John Lewis, the infant son to be baptized. The current pastor of Gnadenhutten’s church, the Reverend Frederick Nitzschke, played the part of David Zeisberger. but not within the parameters of this study. It is a historical lore that Gnadenhutten has embraced for over two hundred years, although historical discrepancies exist. To date, the birth of John Lewis Roth was the first recorded birth of a white child in Ohio. 508 David Zeisberger, Schoenbrunn Diary, July 5, 1773. The Moravian Diaries of David Zeisberger, edited by Hermann Wellenreuther and Carole Wessel. 509 That John Lewis Roth’s birth occurred on July 4 only adds to the community’s connection to the national significance in the remembering. 510 This Lawrence Huebner who played the role of John Roth was the son of Edwin Huebner, a brother of Francis’s father, Lawrence, after whom he was named. 317 The following day, newspaper reports on the play related that a certain element in this fourth scene “added interest” for the audience in attendance. “It was a real baptismal service last evening. The service was the same as that used in 1773.” 511 While the audience enjoyed the recreation of John Lewis Roth’s historic baptism, they also participated as the congregation in one of the most important spiritual rituals in the Moravian church. Mary Susanna was “baptized into the death of Jesus” and the necessary spiritual participants—her father and mother, her pastor, 511 “’GNADENHUTTEN’ PAGEANT GIVEN IN CHURCH HOUSE,” The Evening Chronicle, October 16, 1925. Figure 31: Photograph of “scene four” of 1925 pageant depicting “1773 baptism of first white child born in Ohio,” with actors Lawrence and Nettie Huebner participating in the actual baptism of their infant daughter, Mary. Scene four: “Baptism of the First White Child in Ohio,” 1925 pageant. Lawrence Huebner holding baby daughter. GA. 318 and her baptismal sponsors— played their appropriate roles in the historic pageant and in the contemporary religious ceremony. 512 One article noted, There possibly isn’t a child in the county that has had as high in honor bestowed upon it in baptismal ceremonies as has Mary Susanna Huebner, for she was baptized by the Moravian church pastor Thursday evening in actual baptismal services carried on as a part of the pageant. Mr. Huebner, father of the child, is a lineal descendant of Rev. Louis (Ludwig) Huebner, the first minister in the Gnadenhutten church. 513 How the Moravian community of Gnadenhutten remembered its history, however, turned on the 1782 massacre, and it citizens never forgot their triumphant and tragic history with Indians. The people of this small village showed equal determination to connect their history to the larger national story, and to varying degrees of success they accomplished this without compromising their historic relationship with their Native American brethren. The serendipitous birth date of John Lewis Roth on July 4 th certainly helped in this regard. The 1925 pageant, then, was a conflation of the private memory of the community with the public memory, in order to bring the “common folk” into the national story. 514 The Huebner family’s 512 For a description of the ritual of infant baptisms in the Moravian church in the eighteenth century, see Atwood, Community of the Cross, 158-159. 513 “PAGEANT AT GANDEN WILL BE REPEATED. History of Pioneer Days Enacted by Descendents of 125 Years Ago. EIGHT GRIPPING SCENES. Baptize Descent of First Child Born in Ohio.” Newspaper unknown, Friday, October 16, 1925, box 15, folder 2, GA. The pageant was such a success that they gave a second performance the following evening and the Huebner infant received a second baptism. One may wonder the religious/spiritual implications of receiving two baptisms in as many days. 514 Sarah Purcell, Sealed With Blood, 4. 319 participation in this pageant—their conflation of an historic representation with an actual, current religious experience—however, reveals something more. In the history of the families under study here—the Huebners and the Gibsons—what proved transformative was each generation’s persistent effort to keep their long, intertwined, and conflicted history with Indians in their consciousness. In the case of Anna and Francis Huebner, this inherited tradition translated into a commitment for reform. Throughout the twentieth century and up to the present day, the Moravian community continued its memorial culture by instructing its citizens and future generations through pageantry and commemorations how to remember their history with Native Americans. Printed on the back page of the program of the 1925 pageant was a Biblical directive for the citizens of Gnadenhutten to remain ever diligent in their practice of remembering: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.” 515 515 This biblical passage, Deuteronomy 32:7, was printed on the back of the 1925 Pageant program. The archives at Gnadenhutten holds several playbills for the 1925 pageant in its archive, and on one of my research trips to the village church archivist Grace Day graciously gave me one copy as a gift. See, “The One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the organization of the Moravian Congregation at Gnadenhutten, Ohio” Pageant Playbill. Huebner family collection. 320 Conclusion When I embarked on this project my goal was to determine the motivating factors that compelled my great-grandparents, Anna and Francis Huebner, together with their two sons, to venture into the Southwest desert to visit Hopis and Navajos. Their first encounter with the Pueblos in 1917 was accidental. But the family’s subsequent visits over the next six years distinguished them from other early twentieth-century Anglo-American tourists who, driven by curiosity of the Indians’ exotic dances and culture, visited Pueblo communities in droves. My inquiry led me to over a dozen different repositories across the nation. In these archives I unearthed a story that suggested Anna’s and Francis’s interest in the Southwest Indians revealed far more than their insatiable curiosity. In the early stages of my investigations, I uncovered a local, state, and national network of clubwomen’s efforts in Indian reform; I then discovered Anna’s (and my) Indian ancestry in Nancy Larison Gibson; and I learned for the first time about my family’s Moravian history of missionary work among Indians. The records I examined persistently spoke to a historical narrative where the Huebner and Gibson families each possessed long and complex histories with Native Americans over the course of two hundred years. How Anna and Francis remembered their family histories, though, provided the explanatory factors for their interest in Native Americans. As the historian Michael Kammen has written, “what people believe to be true about their past is usually more important in determining their behavior and responses than truth 321 itself.” 516 The records suggest that Anna and Francis embraced Indian reform because they imagined their ancestral past in terms of community and cooperation between Euro-Americans and Native Americans. Francis’s writings reflect a consciousness about Indians that was informed by the lives of his Moravian missionary ancestors John Lewis Huebner and Ludwig Huebner and the Moravian church’s history with Native Americans, especially the public memorials held in the village of Gnadenhutten where he grew up. These rituals taught him about his community’s history with Native Americans. His community communicated its interpretations of the past through grand public commemorations, through built landscapes that exalted their martyred Indian brethren, and through pageants that privileged the Indian massacre in their telling of the history of the village. The collective memory of the Moravian church, which self-consciously distinguished itself from other religious institutions in its historical relationship with Indians, informed Francis’s ideas about who Indians were. His individual memory then, was, to use the words of one scholar, “closely linked to [his] community’s collective memory.” 517 The records indicate that Anna embraced her husband’s Moravian traditions and especially its attachment to Native Americans, but she possessed her own family heritage that spoke to Euro-American-Indian intersection as well. The Gibson family accumulated and safeguarded a significant collection of physical objects, 516 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 38-39. 517 Paul Shackel, “Introduction,” in Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, Paul Shackel, ed., (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 2. 322 many of them related to Anna’s great-grandmother Nancy Larison Gibson who was identified in contemporary documents as “an Indian girl.” Nancy’s descendants carefully wrapped and passed her linen work, photographs, and other ephemera material down to future generations and in so doing perpetuated her memory. Later Gibson family members constructed their history with the help of these items and celebrated their Indian ancestor. Nancy’s story, told through these artifacts, was part of the family history that Anna received. The Gibson treasures contributed to a family myth that cherished its relationship with Native Americans, emphasizing positive social ties in an age when many other Euro-American families did all they could to distance themselves from indigenous Americans. The family carefully kept the material that would perpetuate this tradition to future generations. Lost or discarded letters, photographic images, or diaries may have told a less generous story of the family’s interaction with Indians. But the surviving documents, never used in any scholarly analysis to date, reveal how the family chose to remember Nancy and her world. Francis and Anna’s individual memories cannot be separated from what one scholar called the “patterns of perception,” which they learned from their immediate and wider social environment of family and community. 518 What they learned about Indians from their families and communities in Ohio largely determined how they perceived and responded to the Hopis and Navajos they encountered in the Southwest. 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Bethlehem Digital History Project <http://bdhp.moravian.edu/community_records>. Bethlehem Diary, 1742-1745, Volumes I and II. Register-Marriages, 1757, 1792. Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge, Ohio Gibson Family File June 9, 1806, indenture between Wm and Evish (sic) Gibson and Wm Gibson Jr., in “Land Records” Volume A. “William Gibson Sr. Will,” Guernsey County Probate Court, Will Book B. Fresno Bee Archives, Fresno, California Fresno Republican, March 29, 1931, “Hopi Friend of Fresnans Passes—Indian Friend of F.C. Huebner is Dead.” Fresno City and County Historical Society Parlor Lecture Club papers. General Federation of Women’s Clubs National Headquarters, Women’s Historical Research Center, Washington, D.C. General Federation of Women’s Club papers. George Washington University special collections, Washington, D.C. Metcalf , Miss Gertrude, Glimpses of School days in Print and Picture by GEM, 1894-98 Columbian University yearbook. Guernsey County Probate Court, Guernsey County District Public Library, Cambridge, Ohio. Guernsey County Historical Society, Cambridge, Ohio. Gibson family file. 338 Huebner family collection, Fresno, California Baumgarten, Amelia, “Gibson family tree.” Gibson, James, diary, 1830-circa 1880. Huebner, Anna Alloway to Ellen “Bob” Alloway Watts, October 16 th , 1917. “The One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the organization of the Moravian Congregation at Gnadenhutten, Ohio” Pageant Playbill. Watts, Ellen Gibson Alloway, to Lawrence Gibson Huebner, February 23, 1958; March 22 and June 7, 1959. Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University John Collier papers National Archives, Washington, D.C. Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia, 1893, 1894, 1895. Continental Congress 1788, 43:485-487. Indian Office, Depredation division. John Collier papers. Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (RG75). National Census Records www.Ancestry.com. 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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Huebner, Karin L.
(author)
Core Title
Remembrance and reform: a multi-generational saga of a Euro-American-Indian family, 1739-1924
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
History
Publication Date
10/23/2009
Defense Date
08/04/2009
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
19th and early 20th century Indian reform,19th century commemoration history,British North America 18th century,California clubwomen,Euro-American and Indian intersection,Gnadenhutten massacre,Moravian Indian missions,OAI-PMH Harvest,Pueblo Indians,Trans-Appalachian western history
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USA
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Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Banner, Lois W. (
committee chair
), Mancall, Peter C. (
committee chair
), Deverell, William F. (
committee member
), Weibel-Orlando, Joan (
committee member
)
Creator Email
khuebner@usc.edu,klouhue@aol.com
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https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2684
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UC1177409
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etd-huebner-3211 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-275358 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2684 (legacy record id)
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etd-huebner-3211.pdf
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275358
Document Type
Dissertation
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Huebner, Karin L.
Type
texts
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University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
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Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
19th and early 20th century Indian reform
19th century commemoration history
British North America 18th century
California clubwomen
Euro-American and Indian intersection
Gnadenhutten massacre
Moravian Indian missions
Trans-Appalachian western history