Blackcoats Among The Delaware

Abstract

On the morning of September 11, 1781, there occurred one of the most poignant and revealing events in American frontier history. David Zeisberger, his fellow Moravian missionaries, and over 300 Delaware Indian converts reluctantly abandoned the Muskingham Valley. Behind them, writes author Earl Olmstead, their little villages of New Schoen- brunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem "lay in scattered ruins, with dead animals rotting in the streets, and many of the crops and fences trampled and destroyed" (p. 39). Zeisberger and his colleagues had worked passionately for nine years to build these model Native communitites and to bring the Delaware to the Lord. That September morning much of their work seemed lost as the group headed west to the Sandusky River and an uncertain future.