The Chilling Disappearance Of Gnadenhütten

During the 18th century, Moravian missionaries came from Germany to work among Native Americans in the New World, sharing the Gospel of the Kingdom, which began with personal salvation, and spilled over into Kingdom-centered commerce.

Last week I wrote about Bethlehem, PA, founded by Moravian missionaries, and later dying "not of failure, but of success.” The Moravian's wholistic approach to missions created businesses that attracted many non-believers who didn’t embrace the theology but loved the profits.

The work of Moravians among Native Americans died for different reasons.  

The Moravians established a number of prosperous Native American communities, including Shekomeko in New York, Indian Pond on the Connecticut border, and Gnadenhütten in Ohio. 

William Danker, in Profit for the Lord, describes Friedenshütten, in Pennsylvania:

"The Indians lived in log houses with windows and chimneys like the homesteads of the settlers. The streets and alleys were kept scrupulously clean. In the center of the town stood the chapel with a school house as its wing. Behind the houses were fruitful gardens and orchards. Stretching down the river were cultivated fields and meadows. The converts had large herds of cattle and hogs, and poultry of every kind."

Moravian-founded communities of Native American Christians sold corn, maple sugar, butter, and white pine dugout canoes.

During the Revolutionary War, the Native Americans in these communities, along with the Moravians, tried to preserve neutrality. They were suspected by both British and Americans as double-dealing. Indian war parties were hard to trace, but the settled Native American communities were easy prey. Many Revolutionary War participants wanted Indians eliminated.

Danker describes the chilling disappearance of Gnadenhütten:

150 men "bound the peaceful inhabitants and murdered them two by two in two buildings they wantonly called 'slaughter houses.' White men, some of whom must have been baptized as Christians, scalped Christian Indians with biblical names who lived in white men's houses, wore white men's clothing, and used civilized utensils and tools in their homes and their work. Some of the Indians pleaded for their lives in fluent German and English. Yet the pitiless settlers spared not a single one."

Six missionary assistants and their wives were also butchered that day. In total, 96 defenseless people were demonically eliminated: 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. 

In time, all Moravian Native American communities came to an end. William Danker concludes: "One cannot help wondering what the future of the Indian American and the future of Indian missions might have been if the Moravian experiment had not been choked in blood."

Think about this the next time you drive past a Native American casino.  

This is the mass grave of 96 Christian Native Americans and German missionaries who were scalped at Gnadenhütten, in Ohio, by 150 white men. The bodies were first piled in mission buildings by the monsters, and then the village was burned to the ground. No criminal charges were ever filed. 

Years later, a missionary by the name of John Heckewelder collected the remains and buried them in this mound, just south of the vanished village site. This burial mound is now listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, where an official marker reads: "Burial Site of Indian Martyrs." 

[This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unreported license. Attribution: Bwsmith84 at en.wikipedia.]

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman