e river, about two and a-half miles above the
present Upper Sandusky. Fourteen days later, the missionaries
were summoned to appear before the British commandant at
Detroit, Major De Peyster. Zeisberger, Heckewelder, Edwards,
and Senseman left for Detroit, October 25. De Peyster
questioned them closely, and finally released them with the
statement that he would confer with them later, relative to
their final abode. They reached the Sandusky, on their return,
November 22. Meanwhile, the winter had set in early; and in
danger of starving, a party of the Moravians had returned to
the Tuscarawas to gather corn in the abandoned fields; while
there, a party of border rangers took them prisoners and
carried them to Fort Pitt. Brig.-Gen. William Irvine, then in
command, treated the poor converts kindly, and allowed them to
go in peace, many returning to their old villages on the
Tuscarawas, to complete their dismal harvesting.--R. G. T.

[232] CHAPTER XIV.

The revengeful feelings which had been engendered, by inevitable
circumstances, towards the Moravian Indians, and which had given rise
to the expedition of 1781, under Col. Williamson, were yet more deeply
radicated by subsequent events. On the night after their liberation
from Fort Pitt, the family of a Mr. Monteur were all killed or taken
captive; and the outrage, occurring so immediately after they were set
at liberty and in the vicinity of where they were, was very generally
attributed to them. An irruption was made too, in the fall of 1781,
into the settlement on Buffalo creek, and some murders committed and
prisoners taken. One of these, escaping from captivity and returning
soon after, declared that the party committing the aggression, was
headed by a Moravian warrior.

These circumstances operated to confirm many in the belief, that those
Indians were secretly inimical to the whites, and not only furnished
the savages with provisions and a temporary home, but likewise engaged
personally in the war of extermination, which they were waging against
the frontier. Events occurring towards the close of winter, dispelled
all doubt, from the minds of those who had fondly cherished every
suggestion which militated against the professed, and generally
accredited, neutrality and pacific disposition of the Moravians.

On the 8th of February 1782, while Henry Fink