he season afforded could hardly have been less wonderful
in the Indian's eyes than red men with their hair cut, and without paint
or feathers, at work in the fields like squaws.

Their heathen neighbors began to come into the Moravians' peaceful
fold, and the three villages grew and flourished till the war broke out
between the colonies and Great Britain. Then the troubles and sorrows
of the Moravians, white and red, began again. They were too weak to keep
the savage war parties from passing through their towns, and they dared
not refuse them rest and food. The warriors began to come with the first
leaves of spring, and they came and went till the first snows of autumn
made their trail too plain for them to escape pursuit from the border.
The Moravians did what they could to ransom their captives and to save
them from torture when the warriors returned after their raids, but all
their goodness did not avail them against the suspicion of the settlers.
The backwoodsmen looked on them as the spies and allies of the
savages, and the savages on their side believed them in league with the
Americans.

The Delawares had promised the Moravian teachers that if they settled
among them, the Delaware nation would take no part in the war, and the
most of 'them kept their promise. But some of the young men broke it,
and the nation would not forbid the Wyandots from passing through
their country to and from the Virginia frontier. It was true that the
Moravians held thousands of Delaware warriors neutral, and that our
American officers knew their great power for good among the Indians;
but the backwoodsmen hated them as bitterly as they hated the Wyandots.
Their war parties passed through the Christian villages, too, when they
went and came on their forays beyond the Ohio, and at one time their
leaders could hardly keep them from destroying a Moravian town, even
while they were enjoying its hospitality.

This situation could not last. In August, 1781, a chief of the Hurons,
called the Half King, came with a large body of Indians flying the
English flag and accompanied by an English officer, to urge the
Christians to remove to Sandusky, where they were told they could be
safe from the Virginians. They refused, and then the Half King shot
their cattle, plundered their fields and houses, and imprisoned their
teachers, and at last forced them away. When the winter came on, the
exiles began to suffer from cold and hunger, and many of their