the Pennsylvania missions. Beginning in the 1730s, the German Moravian Church had established mission communities across the Atlantic World—the largest Protestant missionary enterprise of the eighteenth century. In the northern American colonies, the founder of the Moravian Church, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, outlined a plan for working with Indigenous communities in New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, entitled the Heiden Collegia (Plan for the Heathen) (fig. I.1a–b).34 When he created this plan in 1742, Zinzendorf and other church elders had already established a central mission community in 1741 at Bethlehem in eastern Pennsylvania. In the summer and fall of 1742, Zinzendorf traveled from Bethlehem north of the Kittatinny Mountains into New York and the river valleys of the Susquehanna, to meet with the leaders of various Haudenosaunee, Delaware, Shawnee, and Mohican settlements.35 Based on these meetings, his mission plan focused on several communities he believed would be receptive to Christianity. Two of the most important Native communities in Pennsylvania—Shamokin, a Haudenosaunee-controlled town at the confluence of the western and northern branches of the Susquehanna, and Wyoming (called by the Moravians, Wajomick), a primarily Shawnee and Delaware settlement in the Wyoming Valley—were to become central hubs for a Native Christian network beyond the borders of European settlements. Zinzendorf’s mission plan also included Otstonwakin on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, a settlement led by a French Canadian and Algonquin woman named Madame Montour. A mission center at Otstonwakin would allow the Moravians access to the Great Shamokin Path that led across the Allegheny Mountains to Native communities in the Ohio and Beaver River watersheds, and the Great Warrior’s Path that led north to the Council Fire of the Six Nations at Onondaga near Lake Ontario. The existing Mohican mission at Shekomeko in Dutchess County, New York, was to serve as a central hub from which Mohican Christians could be sent to form new mission villages in the Upper Colonies.36
Map I.1 The Moravian Atlantic (created by Mark Sciuchetti and Sarah Eyerly).
Fig. I.1a–b Copies of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, “Die Heiden Collegia,” 1742. Personal papers of Zinzendorf, PPZdf 48, and MissInd 217.12b, MAB.
This detailed vision for Christianizing Native Americans living in eastern North America may have been conceived by Zinzendorf, but its success rested in the hands of Moravian missionaries from Europe—men and women who traveled by ship across the Atlantic to live in Native American communities. It was ultimately the day-to-day relationships formed by people working, eating, singing, and speaking together that would create the Moravians’ transatlantic network of people and places.37 The Moravian missions were successful because they employed a two-pronged strategy that operated well on both a micro and macro level. In the larger sense, the Moravian Church had created links with the Danish and British Empires that allowed them to quickly build new communities or to establish a presence in existing communities already under the umbrella of larger colonial governing structures. But, on a smaller level, the Moravians’ missionary strategy skillfully deployed a network of hundreds of young men and women who ardently believed in the cause of spreading the Christian message to people living in every country and region. They were the cornerstone of the Moravian mission plan, and the success of the church’s agenda rested on them.
The first Moravian missionary to live in a Native American community in North America was Christian Heinrich Rauch. Despite having never left the small geographic area in Germany where he was born, Rauch was inspired at the age of nineteen to immigrate to America by a letter sent from a German (non-Moravian) settler already living in Pennsylvania. In late 1737, Rauch had sat on a long wooden bench in the Saal (worship hall) of the Moravian community of Marienborn, Germany, eagerly awaiting the reading of a letter from Moravian leader August Spangenberg to Christian David. It was dated November 19, 1737, and contained an account by Conrad Weiser, a German from the Palatinate who now lived in the Tulpehocken Valley of Pennsylvania. Thanks to his ability to speak several Native languages, Weiser now served as the principle messenger to the Haudenosaunee on behalf of the Pennsylvania and Virginia governments. Earlier that year, Weiser had experienced a remarkable encounter in the forest as he journeyed north to Onondaga. This is Weiser’s story, as told in his own words and heard by Rauch:
In the year 1737, I was sent the first time to Onondaga, at the desire of the governor of Virginia. I departed in the latter end of February very unexpectedly for a journey of 500 English miles, through a wilderness where there was neither road nor path, and at such a time of the year when animals could not meet with food. There were with me a Dutchman and three Indians. On the 9th of April I found myself extremely weak, through the fatigues of so long a journey with cold and hunger which I had suffered. There having fallen a fresh snow about twenty inches deep, and we being yet three days’ journey from Onondaga in a frightful wilderness, my spirit failed, my body trembled and shook, and I thought I should fall down and die. I stepped aside, and sat down under a tree, expecting there to die. My companions soon missed me. The Indians came back and found me sitting there. They remained awhile silent; at last the old Indian [Shikellamy, Haudenosaunee leader at Shamokin] said, “My dear companion, thou hast hitherto encouraged us; wilt thou now give up? Remember that evil days are better than good days, for when we suffer much we do not sin; sin will be driven out of us by suffering, and God cannot extend his mercy to the former; but contrary-wise, when it goeth evil with us, God has compassion on us.” These words made me ashamed. I rose up and traveled as well as I could.38
Weiser’s fortitude earned him the name Tarachiawagon (Holder of the Heavens) among the Haudenosaunee. In Marienborn, his account also stirred admiration, but not for Weiser. It was the words of Shikellamy that moved several of the young brethren to tears. Surely, here was a person upon whom the Holy Spirit was already acting. Christian Heinrich Rauch was inspired. By 1740, he had sailed to the New York Colony, and requested permission from community elders to live in the Mohican village of Shekomeko. He did not preach, but instead offered basic medical care to the community, and set about living his usual daily life, including speaking prayers and singing hymns in their midst. Eventually, Rauch was able to report to the church in Europe that three people had requested Christian baptism. More followed and Shekomeko became the first Moravian mission in America.39
Early Moravian missionaries such as Rauch adapted to lifeways in Native American communities. They learned to boil maple sugar, interpret wampum, build and use bark canoes, and hunt using Native methods. They lived in bark homes and studied the languages of the communities they lived among. Rauch himself would learn to speak Mohican, Munsee, Unami, and Mohawk. According to an early Moravian Church history: “They [missionaries] earned their own bread, chiefly by working for the Indians, though the latter were not
