An edition by T.A. Steele for Early American Literature (Spring 2006). This is number 3 in the series. This post contains the full text of this edition, which is also available in a more beautiful PDF format.
First, the PDF version: Download AH3DavidZeisberger.pdf (94.6K).
Kindly report any typographical or other errors to mjon at uakron dot edu.
Now for the plain-vanilla ASCII etext:
David Zeisberger, Diary for March 23, 1782
T.A. Steele, Early American Literature, Dr. Jon Miller, Spring 2006
Introduction
Perhaps one of the most influential men in relationships between Native Americans and their neighbors, the colonists who would form the United States of America, David Zeisberger is often absent from the pages of modern histories. What historical information about Zeisberger is available is primarily due to the extensive work of Ohio historian Earl P. Olmstead. Several of Olmstead’s works, listed in this edition’s bibliography, compile and make accessible to modern readers the writings of Zeisberger and those of his religious and political contemporaries, ranging from other Moravian missionaries to French, British, and Colonial military leaders.
Zeisberger was the first child born into a wealthy family of free landholders in German-speaking Zauchtenthal, Moravia, in the Carpathian Mountains, on Good Friday, April 11, 1721. His family members were devout Hussites, a group that was slowly being forced out of Eastern Europe near the close of a religious reformation and anti-reformation begun three hundred years earlier.
To better understand Zeisberger, one should have a basic history of the Hussites. Jan Hus, born 1370, was the Czech priest from whom the Hussites gained their moniker. Count Lützow of Prague’s The Life and Times of John Hus provides appropriate and accurate details about Jon Hus, while Howard Kaminsky’s A History of the Hussite Revolution gives ample information on events after Hus’s death that reflect on Zeisberger’s much later work. Hus preached and wrote against the selling of indulgences and the accumulation of wealth and political power by church leadership. Hus also spoke harshly about the reality that as many as three different men claimed to be the true pope during the fourteenth century, and all of them had significant Roman Catholic followings. Hus came to believe, in concert with John Wycliffe of England, that all men should read the scriptures and could interpret them for themselves, and that all Christian converts had the right and expectation of sharing in the communion cup and bread—perhaps even agreeing with Wycliffe that the cup and bread were the metaphoric (albeit still sacred) and symbolic rather than literal blood and body of Jesus Christ. It is important to note that such doctrines all but eliminated the gap between the leadership and laity of the church. Similar democratic convictions would mark Zeisberger’s attitudes toward his congregations, no matter their nationality, ethnicity, or race. Hus’s beliefs also led him to attempt to reproduce the Bible in the common language of the Czech people and to encourage Bible translation in general. These characteristics would be retained in the linguistic aspects of Zeisberger’s career. For the above beliefs, Hus was burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church in 1415.
Hus’s death incited riots among the commoners, who had enjoyed his, for the time, rather egalitarian doctrines. Three branches of Hussites came out of this chaotic era: one group became militant and practiced a violent form of replacement theology (where the nation of Israel is replaced by the organized church in interpreting the literal promises of the Old Testament); a second group espoused a similar theology, but was far less bloodthirsty in implementation and aligned themselves with the university culture of Prague. These two groups were either eliminated martially or reorganized and assimilated back into the Roman church over time. A small third contingent held to pacifism, as they did not accept the militant aspects of replacement theology, which was a common theme that Zeisberger would face when coming into contact with Puritan factions in North America over three centuries later. David Zeisberger’s parents were members of this faction, and they were forced to flee the land of their heritage for the estate of Count Zinzendorf of Saxony in 1726. They settled there becoming part of a growing, foreign missions-minded, pietistic community. Because most of their members came from the same region of Europe, the Hussites within this community eventually were renamed Moravians.
Zeisberger attended the local school, in the village of Herrnhut, on the Count’s estate, until 1736. Soon his parents prepared to leave for a settlement about to be founded by General James Oglethorpe of England in the Georgia colony in the Americas. At that time, fifteen-year-old Zeisberger’s faculty for foreign languages attracted the notice of the philanthropic Count Zinzendorf, and the lad was relocated to the Moravian founded city of Heerendyk in the Netherlands to broaden his linguistic studies. Already the recipient of harsh school discipline, including beatings that left lifelong scars, teenaged Zeisberger saw no recourse but to escape to London with a friend when accused of stealing. Searching out Oglethorpe, Zeisberger convinced the General of his innocence and was granted passage to join his parents in Georgia, arriving in Savannah on January 28, 1738.
It was in Georgia that Zeisberger began a frontier lifestyle that lasted for most of his life. He was exposed to Native cultures as he watched his fellow Moravians establish mission works, including teaching Creeks and Cherokees to read and to write. Zeisberger also probably visited the fledgling work of his later friend, Peter Boehler, who was trying to establish a mission to the Africans there, again focusing on teaching them to read and to write.
When war broke out with the Spanish, the Moravians refused to take up arms. A hostile attitude grew out of the other colonists’ suspicions of such pacifism, so much so that, when their Native missions were destroyed by the Spanish, the Moravians considered migrating north, to the more religiously tolerant colony of Pennsylvania. They succeeded in 1740, with the aid of famed evangelist George Whitefield. In Pennsylvania, Zeisberger received excellent schooling in languages from Moravian converts, who had emigrated from Europe, including men trained at distinguished universities, such as Oxford. Zeisberger also benefited from proximity to a Delaware village where Chief Tatamy helped him learn the Iroquois’ language—it would shape David Zeisberger’s life for over sixty years.
At age twenty-one, Zeisberger converted to his parents’ religious beliefs and chose to stay in the New World as a servant of the church instead of traveling back to Europe as a protégé of Count Zinzendorf. Within two years, Zeisberger was traveling throughout the Iroquois region. He was arrested by New York’s royal authorities for preaching, and he was held for over fifty days before being released and told never to return. Such brushes with regional governments would become regular disruptions of Zeisberger’s peaceful proselytizing efforts, yet they are generally described in his journals as par for the course in the cause of Christ.
Zeisberger spent most of the next twenty years serving in increasingly responsible roles as minister and mission worker, notably becoming an adopted member of the Onondaga Iroquois with the name of Ganousseracheri, or “On the Pumpkin.” He was made a part of the ruling Turtle Clan. Eventually, Zeisberger would become a forceful ally as translator of Mohawk, Onondaga, and Delaware dialects, and his services would be used by many British and later Colonial/United States leaders in making alliances and treaties with the Iroquois, Delaware, Shawnee, and other western tribes. Zeisberger’s contacts included such parties as Chief Canassatego, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.
In times of less vigorous missionary activity, Zeisberger compiled dictionaries of various Native tongues, translating them into English and German. In the relative peace of the 1740s and early 1750s, the Moravians sent out missionaries to several Native tribal groups and started settlements whenever possible. They often did so with full tribal support and, as in the case with the later Ohio settlements, regularly included influential chiefs among the ranks of the converted. Both Olmstead and Zeisberger acknowledge that such shifts in the allegiances of powerful and respected community leaders had intense ramifications for Native politics.
Moravian settlements consisted almost entirely of Natives, who had been proselytized, and they were unique in that they did not demand that Natives give up their cultural identity in many aspects. Although European attitudes were present in the prejudices of the Moravians, they generally did not press issues other than banning non-Christian worship ceremonies and practices directly against their interpretations of scripture, such as sexual activity outside of marriage. Later, the French and Indian Wars and Pontiac’s Uprising caused considerable unrest, and the Moravians and their “Christian Indian” converts suffered repeated massacres at both Native and European hands.
One massacre began with disgruntled border colonists murdering many peaceful Conestoga. The colonists had received little to no help from eastern leaders in Pennsylvania when the French and later Pontiac had called for border raids. When the chance came to revenge themselves upon non-violent Natives, they took it. When the colonists’ movements toward the Moravian settlements were discovered, over one hundred converted Natives were told by the Pennsylvania colonial government to flee to Philadelphia. The colonists’ forces nearly invaded that urban community. Although the attack was averted, the converts did not fare well. They were first placed on an island used for quarantining smallpox sufferers, then forced to march around a good portion of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New York, and western New Jersey. Finally, they were housed in extremely close quarters. As a result, nearly thirty percent of this “protected” group died. Zeisberger shared in almost all of these hardships, only leaving to communicate their plight to leadership concerns in both civil and church hierarchies.
While the above passage shows an almost comical ineptitude in the European handling of Christianized natives, the situation is evidence of the routinely tragic outcomes of any interactions between Moravian natives and colonial interests. The following passage is Zeisberger’s recording of one of the bloodiest revenges against natives in the history of the nation. Beginning in 1767, Zeisberger traveled further west into Delaware territory, with the tribal chiefs’ permission and often at their request. By 1770, Zeisberger resided in modern-day Ohio, and eventually he would lead Native converts to start settlements in or near modern Ohio towns of Coshocton, New Philadelphia, Gnadenhutten, Salem, and Milan before the massacre of 1782. Later sites would include modern Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, as well as Detroit, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. Many of the Natives from these various sites remain to this day, while others moved to reservations yet are still culturally identifiable.
As for the events of March 7th and 8th, 1782, the information within the personal diary of Zeisberger is more than adequate. Zeisberger was entangled in politicking maneuvers between Native and British leadership and had been removed from the Tuscarawas (then known as the Muskingum) River Valley settlements. The diary makes explicit that Zeisberger understood how Tribal, British, and Colonial interests attempted to appropriate the cause of the Christian Natives for political gain; Zeisberger was not naïve about his and his converts’ places in society. In accordance with orders from Wyandot and Delaware chiefs allied with the British, natives who lived in Shönbrunn, Gnadenhütten, and Salem traveled with Zeisberger. After being promised food if they peacefully left their farms, they came to the Upper Sandusky River region via forced march and canoes.
While Zeisberger had to answer accusations that his occasional letters to Fort Pitt were treasonous (accusations which were never upheld by any witnesses when brought before the British leadership at Detroit), many of the converted natives were living in famine conditions. The promised food had never materialized; instead, the natives found that those who had removed them gave nothing. Provisions from nearby Shawnees, who remembered the great generosity of Zeisberger and an earlier group of converts in Iroquois territory when many Shawnee were starving, kept the Moravian natives living in the Sandusky region alive, but they were slowly starving to death. Zeisberger’s diary reports his horror as his spiritual flock watched their livestock’s painful deaths. With Zeisberger in and out of Detroit, a large group of natives, including some of Zeisberger’s best friends of decades of close companionship and service, moved back to their homes along the Tuscarawas.
As the drama in to the north unfolded, a force of nearly two hundred armed men, including some with Revolutionary War experience, was led by Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson to burn the former Moravian settlements along the Tuscarawas River because raiding parties of British-led Natives used the empty villages as stopovers before attacking Pennsylvania border towns. When the forces under Williamson came upon the live Natives, recently returned, instead of deserted towns, they decided to wreak vengeance on whomever they could lay hands upon. At least ninety natives were murdered—twenty-nine men, twenty-seven women, and thirty-four children—roughly one-third of the converts under Zeisberger’s leadership at that time. The reports of this event caused the Delaware, a tribe that had remained neutral and peaceful for the most part during the Revolutionary War in large part due to the high standing of Zeisberger as a sitting member of their local councils, to suddenly side with the British, and many of the frontiers greatest losses on both sides (native and colonial) resulted—noticeably after the fighting was winding down in the eastern colonies.
A Note on the Text
The excerpt comes from an anonymous reprinting of the 1885 edition of Zeisberger’s diary by Eugene F. Bliss, pages 78-81, housed at the University of Toledo’s Carlson Library. This edition of Zeisberger’s private journal was first translated from German by Bliss, and the latter presents it as an accurate and un-tampered with version. My reproduction of the text is character for character, and all punctuation is from the Bliss translation. Although Bliss may have done a word for word translation, even he is doubtful that he fully expresses Zeisberger’s style. This is made doubly difficult by the reality that much of the dialogue reported by Zeisberger was translated from native languages or English into German at the time of recording. Given these difficulties, the text is still an important window into the past.
In its entirety, The Diary of David Zeisberger deserves further scrutiny by literary scholars for its style and content. In light of modern scholarship, such as Will Alpern’s article, “Indians, Sources, Critics,” which reveals that Zeisberger and his Moravian contemporaries were among the primary data for James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, it also needs to be seen as an important piece in the transition from mostly historical writing to fiction writing and the place of the novel in the American literary tradition.
This specific passage, describing the Gnadenhütten tragedy, is uncharacteristically detailed, vivid, and emotional. Much of the journal is dry, especially if compared to ethnographic studies, botanical works, and travelogues of the era; however, it reveals a moving preoccupation with people, scripture, and the will of God. Foremost throughout the journal are names; the frequency of certain names’ repetition is often confusing, probably owing to the Moravian practice of allowing natives to choose a new name from the Bible after conversion and baptism. Also, Zeisberger often quotes scripture and attaches a connection between daily events and the predetermined reading for said day; this element is akin to the Puritan concept of Providence.
Zeisberger also shares the proceedings of church events, including the unusual resurfacing of the first-century church practice (as described in the biblical book of Acts) of casting lots to determine the will of God. This ancient Hebrew ceremony was modernized through the use of paper to represent “yes,” “no,” and “no comment” answers when drawn blindly in response to questions put to God by Moravian leaders. This practice shows a group preoccupation with scripture that may have, unintentionally, influenced how Zeisberger describes events in his diary. For example, Zeisberger’s account of the 1782 massacre, assumed to be amassed from the telling of the two young survivors, bears striking similarities to early church accounts of Christian behavior amidst persecution, going back to the biblical account of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas at Philippi, where they sang hymns through the night. It could be argued that the impress of scripture upon the mind of the aged Moravian clergyman colored his representation of substantially traumatic events.
Zeisberger’s Diary
March 23 [1782]. The Frenchman who is commissioned to take us to Detroit sent an express to the commandant there that he should send boats or a ship over to transport us, till that event we must remain here, meanwhile also the weather will become more tolerable, for it is yet too cold to go upon the lake, and at present, as we hear, it is not yet free from ice. By Joshua and Jacob, Rachel’s son, who brought our baggage by water as far as the falls, we have to-day the first trustworthy and very affecting news of the horrible murder,[1] March 7th, of our Indian brethren in Gnadenhütten, and March 8th, of our brethren in Salem.
See our Scripture-verse for March 7th and 8th, which are worthy of note.[2] Our brethren at home numbered 86 missing, but they could not certainly say whether all were killed or some taken prisoners: we hoped the latter, and that some few, though not the greater part, are yet alive. Our Indian brethren during the whole winter had to make shift to live and suffered great hunger, for among the Wyandots and Delawares, living in this neighborhood. nothing was to be had, for they themselves not only now, but every year, suffer want, for they are lazy and plant little, and although they got some corn from the Shawanese, yet it was not enough. Since now they heard from those who in the autumn had been taken to Pittsburg and had again come back, that in our towns there was corn enough and that they had nothing to fear in going there to get it, they made ready and went away, for they saw nothing else before them if they remained, than that they and their children must starve. We advised them at Christmas and on New Year’s day to go there, for as long as the snow remained there was least danger, but they did not go until the snow melted and then it was too late and dangerous: when they were there they used not the least forethought, for they believed themselves quite secure. Instead of hastening to get away again, they stayed several weeks in the towns and fields, having then enough to eat. The most wonderful[3] thing is that while hitherto our Indians had always been careful and distrustful and fearful, and if they thought themselves at all insecure, had fled into the bush, and at least would not pass the night in the towns, now when they really saw the danger and the white people before their eyes, they were not at all suspicious and went straight into danger.
The militia, some 200 in number, as we hear, came first to Gnadenhütten. A mile from town they met young Schebosh[4] in the bush, whom they at once killed and scalped, and near by the houses, two friendly Indians, not belonging to us,[5] but who had gone there with our people from Sandusky, among whom there were several other friends who perished likewise. Our Indians were mostly on the plantations[6] and saw the militia come, but no one thought of fleeing, for they suspected no ill. The militia came to them and bade them come into town, telling them no harm should befall them. They trusted and went, but were all bound, the men being put into one house, the women into another. The Mohican, Abraham, who for some time had been bad in heart, when he saw that his end was near, made an open confession before his brethren, and said: “Dear brethren, according to appearances we shall all very soon come to the Saviour, for as it seems they have so resolved about us. You know I am a bad man, that I have much troubled the Saviour and the brethren, and have not behaved as becomes a believer, yet to him I belong, bad as I am; he will forgive us all and not reject me; to the end I shall hold fast to him and not leave him.” Then they began to sing hymns and spoke words of encouragement and consolation one to another until they were all slain, and the above mentioned Abraham was the first to be led out, but the others were killed in the house. The sisters also afterwards met the same fate, who also sang hymns together. Christina,[7] the Mohican, who well understood German and English, fell upon her knees before the captain, begging for life, but got for answer that he could not help her. Two well-grown boys, who saw the whole thing and escaped, gave this information. One of these lay under the heaps of slain and was scalped, but finally came to himself and found opportunity to escape-The same did Jacob, Rachel’s son, who was wonderfully rescued. For they came close upon him suddenly outside the town, so that he thought they must have seen him, but he crept into a thicket and escaped their hands. They knew his horses, which in the autumn they had seen at his home, and inquired for him, for he was one of those taken prisoners, probably therefore, by the very men who were now there. He went a long way about, and observed what went on.
John Martin went at once to Salem when the militia came, and thus knew nothing about how the brethren in Gnadenhütten fared. He told them there, the militia were in Gnadenhütten, whereupon they all resolved not to flee, but John Martin took with himself two brethren and turned back to Gnadenhütten, and told them, there were still more Indians in Salem, but he did not know how it had gone with them in Gnadenhütten. A part of the militia went there on the 8th[8] with a couple of Indians, who had come there to Salem and brought the brethren away, after they had first taken away their arms, and when they came to Gnadenhutten, before they led them over the stream, they bound them, took even their knives from them. The brethren and the sisters alike were bound, led into town, and slain. They made our Indians bring all their hidden goods out of the bush, and then they took them away; they had to tell them where in the bush the bees were, help get the honey out; other things also they had to do for them before they were killed. Prisoners said that the militia themselves acknowledged and confessed they had been good Indians. They prayed and sang until the tomahawks struck into their heads. The boy who was scalped and got away, said the blood flowed in streams in the house. They burned the dead bodies, together with the houses, which they set on fire.
Endnotes
1. Read also Heckewelder’s account of this massacre in his narrative, and see W. H. Howell’s account in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 23, p. 95. [Bliss’s note]
2. Is. lxvi., 19, and x., 22. [Bliss’s note] Isaiah 66:19 “And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles.” Isaiah 10:22 “For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness.”
3. The sense of the German here would be "wonderful" as in incredible or extremely unusual, odd, amazing.
4. “Schebosh” here was Joseph Bull, the son of John Bull, a European whose Native name from the Delaware was Schebosh. John had married a Native woman, and the family remained as lay helpers to Zeisberger for life. Young Joseph was the only victim of the massacre with known European heritage.
5. The sense of “belong” here should not be misconstrued to imply possession (as in slavery or de facto hegemonic order), but is the same as “belonging to our party” in reference to common membership.
6. The “plantation” was nothing like the southern, slave system that comes to mind for most modern readers. These included small independent farms (generally these created self-supporting families) as well as large, group worked orchards and fields which belonged in common to all members of the community (which tended to create surplus food stores and allowed large scale agriculture to develop). No member (not even the missionaries) was placed above others in working the common areas, and the individual farms were fully privately owned.
7. “Christina, another widow, who had been an inmate of the Bethlehem ‘Sisters’ House’ in her youth, spoke English and German fluently, and was a woman of education and refinement, fell on her knees before Col. Williamson, and addressing him in English, besought him to spare her life. ‘I can not help you,’ was his cold reply. ” De Schweinitz’ Life of Zeisberger, p. 549. [Bliss’s note]
8. Zeisberger here begins to confuse the order of events, possibly owing to extreme emotional attachment to the events he is reporting. The eventual massacre took place on the 8th, after all the above services were performed by those to be killed, and the two groups, from Gnadenhutten and Salem, had been combined.
Bibliography
Alpern, Will. “Indians, Sources, Critics.” James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art: Papers from the 1984 Conference at State University of New York College Oneonta & Cooperstown. Ed. George A. Test. Oneonta: State University of New York College Press, 1985.
This paper shows a direct link between the writings of Moravian missionaries in pre-Revolutionary North America and the later literature dealing with similar events, specifically Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.
Kaminsky, Howard. A History of the Hussite Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
This work is excellent in terms of scholarship and letting most historical texts speak for themselves (in translation), but it does sometimes come off as a bit preachy and overly paraphrased when it comes to doctrinal matters. Overall, it is worth the effort to separate the opinions from the facts, since its appendices and bibliography reveal that little work of this kind has been done in English.
Lützow, Franz Heinrich Hieronymus Velentin, Graf von. The Life & Times of Master John Hus. London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1909.
This history is reliable and well researched, easy to read and organized in a manner that helps rather than hinders quick access for reference material. The index also helps make the material accessible; however, the bibliography is largely useless to those not versed in Latin, German, and Czech.
Olmstead, Earl P. Blackcoats among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier. Kent, Ohio: Kent State UP, 1991.
Olmstead does an excellent job of painting with broad strokes the missionary work of David Zeisberger and his Moravian colleagues among the Delaware and other Native peoples of the Ohio Territory. Olmstead advances briefly through early years of work with tribes in Pennsylvania and New York before and during the French and Indian War, and quickly moves to a more detailed biography of the successes, influences, and journeys of Zeisberger from 1765 till his death in 1808, moving beyond that to give some of the key moments in Moravian frontier life in the fallout from those events begun during Zeisberger’s tenure.
The strength of this book lies in both its use of the original texts and its exemplary bibliography. The originals include British and Colonial/American government sources, letter correspondences, public church documents (notably daily journals to be shared with sending church offices, and birth and death registries), and the private diaries of all those involved. They include writings by natives and women, and as such, this book should spark zeal to continue to reclaim those voices. Also included are copies of maps created by the individuals involved (e.g. John Heckewelder), as well as current surveying and pictures of the pertinent regions.
Perhaps even more important than the representation of this compelling story of devotion, massacre, and pilgrimage are the competent end-notes, the extensive bibliography, and the index which allows a reader to sift for salient information in preparing corollary texts for future study.
While the religious tone of the work may be off-putting to some, it is given in a tasteful, if somewhat zealous manner. This work is a key piece of reclaiming Ohio’s “pre-history,” and plots the beginnings of all major and minor settlements on what was then the northeastern frontier of the thirteen Colonies, giving excellent insight into the heated political and cultural manipulations and misunderstandings that dominated those years, which helped shape the politics and even elections of the young Republic.
Olmstead, Earl P. David Zeisberger: A Life Among the Indians. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1997.
The definitive modern work on Zeisberger, Olmstead’s text has no match in bibliographic material and scholarly effort. The appendixes alone would be worth reading simply to gain a better understanding of native culture and Zeisberger’s surprisingly detailed knowledge of it, which includes instruction from native voices on the use of wampum, agreements between natives with each other and Europeans, population and migration statistics, letters between settlers, and even a note on a grave excavation at a Revolutionary fort. As a biography, the work is well done, yet has an affectionate tone, implying that care has been taken not to present Zeisberger out of his context for the harshest critics to deride.
The notes of this biography reveal sources, such as women’s diaries, other Moravian journals, and military documents from French, British, and Colonial/United States sources, all of which are blended with the main source texts from Zeisberger and Heckewelder. The index gives the glancing reader an eye-opening insight into just who Zeisberger rubbed elbows with as missionary and translator—including Chief Canassatego, Benjamin Franklin, George Whitefield, and George Washington. A more in-depth look at the book shows that the Moravians, especially Zeisberger, played a major role as translators and peace weavers with the western tribes of the Iroquois, Delaware, Shawnee, and others, first between the Natives and British, and later with the United States.
Along with historically significant persons, certain key events on the then western frontier are highlighted. Most notably, several massacres of “Christian Indians” (besides the Gnadenhütten one) are revealed, most at the hands of European settlers, although on occasion Native raids on European settlements would spill over into the converts’ villages, and the proselytized would be treated no better than the whites who also persecuted them. One attack on peaceful Conestoga is reported as the spawning of a revolt of frontiersmen that nearly made Philadelphia the sight of an urban massacre. Colonial government officials told Zeisberger to lead the converts into protective custody—a confinement that killed nearly thirty percent of the indigenous travelers when they were housed in confining quarters after first being sent to live on the island normally used for quarantining smallpox sufferers.
Zeisberger, David. David Zeisberger’s History of the Northern American Indians. Eds. Archer Butler Hulbert and William Nathaniel Schwarze. Columbus: F.J.Heer Printing Company, 1910.
Zeisberger’s history may be little used today, but it was a premier source in its own day, and it should be looked to as a jumping off point for any serious student of the histories and cultures of the tribes Zeisberger lived with for over six decades.
Zeisberger, David. Diary of David Zeisberger. Ed. and Trans. Eugene F. Bliss. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1885.
This Diary is the source text for almost all main ideas of later writers about the Lenape/Delaware in Ohio. It covers nearly sixty years of service and life among the natives, and includes a wealth of information that has only begun to be described. It shows the religious and the massive events as well as the mundane daily activities. As a literary work, it is amazing how much personal information and emotional data are represented in its pages—showing a valuing of such things by both missionary and native cultures. The characters represented stretch from powerful chiefs and European and colonial leaders to children and wives. No amount of description will be enough, but this is the text to begin with for any serious study on the impact of the Moravians on native and colonial life, warfare, and the frontier.
Zeisberger, David. Grammar of the Language of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians. Trans. Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. Philadelphia: James Kay, 1827.
This work includes much the same type of material as Roger Williams’s earlier work on the Narraganset language group. As such, it deserves at least as much recognition as the earlier work, if not more for the seemingly more modern linguistic representation. It also introduces the reader to the prolific linguistic efforts of the Moravians, not the least of which were Zeisberger’s. He compiled translating dictionaries of several Native tongues into both English and German. The introduction also is worth noting because it shows how other linguists of the era misrepresented native languages in attempts to justify theories of how the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas migrated there—a problem that is still an issue in the twenty-first century current era.
Zeisberger, David. The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger. 1772-1781. Ed. Herman Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel. Trans. Julie Tomberlin Weber. University Park: Penn. State UP, 2005.
This work is the most recent and advanced effort to look critically at the diaries of Zeisberger. These are not the personal diaries of a man per se, but the publicly shared missionary diaries of a servant accountable for a mission. In addition to excellent bibliographical information, index, maps, notes, and glossary, this work has an introduction that is a work unto itself. The introduction provides wonderful historical context for the selected journals, including native history, European issues, and colonial matters, and also introduces far more of the Moravian flavor of “who,” “what,” “how,” and “why” than all but biographies of the Moravians. There is also intense eschatological discussion and attempts to see the potential world-wide framework of the missions in Ohio as manipulations of major powers and/or outstanding images of integrity in an age of violence. This text also provides a glimpse of currently (publicly) unavailable material written by the women of the settlements, raising hopes that forthcoming editions could include far more minority voices than ever before.
Zeisberger, David. Zeisberger’s Indian dictionary, English, German, Iroquois—the
Onondaga and Algonquin—the Delaware; printed from the original manuscript in Harvard College Library. Cambridge: J. Wilson Printers, 1887.
Like his Lenni Lenape study, Zeisberger’s dictionary is an important part of linguistic history in the United States and is one of very few ethnographic accounts coming from an actual participant in the cultures with which it deals.
-----
“David Zeisberger, Diary for March 23, 1782.” Copyright 2006 T.A. Steele. This text was prepared to fulfill a critical edition assignment offered in “Early American Literature,” a graduate-level seminar taught by Jon Miller at The University of Akron in the Spring of 2006. Please note, this is not peer-reviewed work. License: You are free and encouraged to copy and distribute this work under the following conditions: 1. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. 2. Any reuse or distribution must preserve this copyright, license, version, and citation information. 3. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Version: First edition (May 2006). This document is, was created with, or contains the full text of a PDF file published by a website, The Akron Heron: Materials of American Literature. Please visit akronheron.com for possible corrections or improvements, which may appear in later editions of this file. Suggested citation: David Zeisberger, “Diary for March 23, 1782.” Ed. T.A. Steele. First edition. The Akron Heron: Materials in American Literature from Jon Miller at The University of Akron 3 (May 2006): 7p. [Add date accessed and URL accessed].
