The Moravians: John Heckewelder

John Heckewelder

This is the third and final post in my series on the Moravian missionaries to the Native Americans during the 18th and early 19th centuries. These men and women were saints of sturdy faith, indeed, and they suffered many trials in their devotion to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like all humans, they also had flaws, as we’d expect. When he was only a youth, the subject of today’s post, John Heckewelder, went to the Muskingum River in Ohio in the spring of 1762 as Christian Frederick Post’s assistant in his mission to the Delaware Indians in the Ohio Territory. Like John Mark, the young man who accompanied Paul and Silas on their first missionary journey only to turn back when the going got tough, Heckewelder fled that fall when the Indians became increasingly hostile toward the Whites. At the end of the year, however, with the conflict known as Pontiac’s War looming, threats against Post’s life finally forced him to flee as well.

Heckewelder spent the rest of his life as a missionary among the Delaware at a crucial period of their history, while they were progressively being driven from their lands in Pennsylvania into Ohio, and eventually to Ontario. His book, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, which published in 1818, is a classic work that offers readers and historians insights into the history and lives of the Delaware even today. I own a copy of it myself and am using it to do research for my historical series.

Moravian Baptism of Indian Converts

Heckewelder was born in England in 1743. His parents were German Moravians, and in 1754 they moved their family to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the headquarters of the Moravian Church in North America. Young Heckewelder grew up among fellow believers who ministered to the Delaware living along the Susquehanna and Allegheny rivers. Heckewelder’s parents apprenticed him to a cooper as a boy, but in 1762 he accompanied Post on his journey into the Ohio Territory as his assistant. Under Post’s guidance and later that of David Zeisberger, Heckewelder lived among the Delaware Indians throughout the 1760s and 1770s, becoming fluent in their language and intimately acquainted with their culture.

After the French and Indian War, the colonists in Pennsylvania were hostile toward all Indians because of the devastating raids they had suffered. English settlers and soldiers also continued to move into the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains claimed by the Indians, pushing the original inhabitants ever farther west. In the early 1760s a Delaware prophet named Neolin came to prominence. He told of a vision in which the Master of Life had commanded him to call the Indians to abandon the ways of the Whites and cast them out of the Ohio lands, which he had given to them. Only then would they gain the blessing of the Master of Life, and he would restore their power and prosperity. In 1763, under the influence of this teaching, many of the tribes renewed their attacks against the English, led by the Ottawa leader Pontiac and the Seneca leader Guyasuta in a war that came to be known as Pontiac’s War. The Moravian missionaries and their Indian converts, who like the Quakers and Amish were nonresistant, found themselves under suspicion—and often attack—by both the English and the Indians.

Gnadenhutten Massacre

The American Revolution made their situation even worse. Although the Moravians remained neutral, the Americans suspected them of aiding the British because they would not fight on their side. At the same time the British accused Heckewelder and Zeisberger of treason, claiming they passed intelligence from the Indians to the American rebels. The two missionaries were arrested and hauled in front of British officers at Detroit and held there for months. Meanwhile, a group of soldiers in Pennsylvania’s militia brutally murdered 96 unarmed Indian converts, including women and children, at the village of Gnadenhutten.

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Heckewelder assisted in reestablishing the Moravian Indian refugees from Pennsylvania in Ohio after the war. He also was instrumental as a negotiator between the Indian communities and the new United States government. After his retirement, he returned to Bethlehem, but continued to occasionally work as an interpreter and agent for the Indians for some years. He devoted his greatest energies to writing, however. He published 3 books between 1818 and his death in 1823, which were based on his intimate knowledge of the Delaware. Leading scholars sought him out for details of the Indians’ languages, customs, and legends. He essentially served as a bridge between his generation, who grew up while the Indians still inhabited Pennsylvania and other eastern states, and new generations whose only knowledge of the aboriginal peoples came from history books.

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J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in April 2017. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.

The Moravians: Christian Frederick Post

In last month’s post I covered the beginnings of the Moravian Church in Europe, the Moravians’ beliefs, and their missions outreach. Today we’ll take a look at one of the most notable of the intrepid Moravian missionaries who ventured from Europe to other countries to spread the gospel: Christian Frederick Post.

Moravian Chapel at Bethlehem, built in 1751.

Post was born in Prussia in 1710. Little is known of him until 1742 when he came to Pennsylvania with the Moravian migration that established Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He initially worked to form a church federation among Christians of German heritage in that area, but his ability to learn native languages made him more suited to organizing native groups.

Between 1743 and 1749 Post ministered to the Moravian Indians living in the Hudson Valley in New York State and in western Connecticut. He earned the respect and trust of his Indian neighbors by learning their language and customs and by twice marrying native converts: Rachel, a Wampanoag, whom he married in 1743 and who died around 1745; and Agnes, a Delaware woman he was married to from 1747 until she died in 1751. Post had four children with his wives, but all died as infants. Suspicion and threats by local colonists against Post and his converts led to his being jailed in New York, then expelled from both New York and Connecticut. He returned to Europe in 1751. From there he was sent to Labrador for a time but eventually returned to Pennsylvania and his ministry among the Indians.

Post emerged as a significant figure in 1758 during the French and Indian War, when Governor William Denny enlisted him as his emissary to the Delaware Indians living along the western frontier. Along with Pisquetomen, a Delaware headman of considerable influence, Post played a central role in peace negotiations between the English and the tribes allied with the French. The two men journeyed across Pennsylvania in spite of great danger from both colonial and native enemies to carry news of the 1758 Easton Treaty with the eastern tribes to the Indians living along the Allegheny and Ohio rivers.

Delaware Chief

The western tribes gladly accepted Governor Denny’s offer to restore peace if they agreed to remain neutral while British General John Forbes attacked Fort DuQuesne. However, the Indian leaders emphasized that the English must withdraw from the Ohio Territory after defeating the French. If they did not stay east of the Allegheny Mountains, the Delaware sachem Tamaque warned, his people would again take up the war hatchet. A short time later, the government’s agents who were with Post insisted that the Indians had changed their minds and would welcome the establishment of forts in Ohio Territory. Post met with the Indian leaders, confirmed that they had not changed their minds about the presence of the English in their lands, and insisted on giving that message to the governor.

Late in 1761 Post traveled to the native settlements in Ohio’s Muskingum River Valley and built a cabin there before returning to Bethlehem for the winter. The next spring he returned to continue his ministry, accompanied by a young Moravian assistant, John Heckewelder. Again the governor of Pennsylvania enlisted him as a messenger, this time to summon Tamaque and other Indian leaders to a treaty at Lancaster. After the August treaty, during which he served as one of the interpreters, Post went back to the Muskingum to resume his missionary work. But that fall the Indians’ hostility against the Whites rose to the point that Heckewelder hurriedly left. Post was finally forced to flee for his life at the end of the year as events rapidly moved toward another war, this time under the leadership of an Ottawa chief named Pontiac and a Mingo chief named Guyasuta.

Post was motivated by faith, not politics, and these experiences convinced him that God’s work and politics don’t mix. He finally asked the governor not to employ him as an emissary if the promises given to the Indians weren’t going to be fulfilled. He came to the conclusion “that a man whose Caracter it is to bring Words of Goddely and immutable Truth to the Nations, ought to be somewhat more cautious than others in carrying to the same People worldly messages, as these latter are often subject to unforeseen Disappointments” and that “the Lyes of our Messengers will always expose us [missionaries] to Danger from the Indians.” (Quotes from “C. F. Post and the Winning of the West” by Walter T. Champion, Jr.

Post married Mary Margaret Stadelman Bolinger in January 1763, and seeing that his efforts to maintain peace and convert the Indians had failed, set off for the Carolinas later in the year to preach among the Cherokee. In 1764 he sailed to South America to establish a mission among the Indians of the Mosquito Coast. But when he returned to Pennsylvania in 1767 seeking additional funding from the Moravians, he was told that his services were no longer needed. He promptly enlisted as a missionary with the Anglican Church and returned to Nicaragua, where h labored in the jungles into his seventies.

Post returned to Pennsylvania for the last time in 1784. He settled in Germantown near Philadelphia, where he died the following year, survived by his wife. Charles Thomason, a Quaker who was a contemporary of Post’s remembered him as “a plain, honest, religiously disposed man.” One of his fellow missionaries aptly described him as a “man of undaunted courage and enterprising spirit.” David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder are two of the spiritual heirs of Post’s missionary work among the Delaware. I’ll take a look at their lives and ministries in my October and November posts.

Christian Frederick Post shows up in The Return, book 2 of my Northkill Amish Series, coauthored with Bob Hostetler, as he passes through Sauconk in 1758 on the way to a dangerous meeting with hostile Indians tribes to try to persuade them to abandon the French while in the very shadow of Fort DuQuesne’s guns. He appears again in 1762 at Tamaque’s settlement along the Muskingum with his young assistant John Heckewelder when he resumes his mission there and summons the Indian leaders to a treaty at Lancaster.

Post truly was a bold and faithful servant of Jesus Christ. In what ways does his example inspire you to live a bolder and more faithful life as a disciple?

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J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in Spring 2017. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.