The Winning of the West, Volume 1: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 1: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
man's part and put down wrong-doing, caused the utmost possible evil to
fall both on the white man and the red. An avowed policy of force and
fraud carried out in the most cynical manner could hardly have worked
more terrible injustice; their system was a direct incentive to crime
and wrong-doing between the races, for they punished the aggressions of
neither, and hence allowed any blow to always fall heaviest on those
least deserving to suffer. No other colony made such futile,
contemptible efforts to deal with the Indian problem; no other colony
showed such supine, selfish helplessness in allowing her own border
citizens to be mercilessly harried; none other betrayed such inability
to master the hostile Indians, while, nevertheless, utterly failing to
protect those who were peaceful and friendly.
When the Moravians removed beyond the Ohio, they settled on the banks of
the Muskingum, made clearings in the forest, and built themselves little
towns, which they christened by such quaint names as Salem and
Gnadenhutten; names that were pathetic symbols of the peace which the
harmless and sadly submissive wanderers so vainly sought. Here, in the
forest, they worked and toiled, surrounded their clean, neatly kept
villages with orchards and grain-fields, bred horses and cattle, and
tried to do wrong to no man; all of each community meeting every day to
worship and praise their Creator. But the missionaries who had done so
much for them had also done one thing which more than offset it all: for
they had taught them not to defend themselves, and had thus exposed the
poor beings who trusted their teaching to certain destruction. No
greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a
bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way
can the success of evil be made surer and quicker; but the wrong was
peculiarly great when at such a time and in such a place the defenceless
Indians were thrust between the anvil of their savage red brethren and
the hammer of the lawless and brutal white borderers. The awful harvest
which the poor converts reaped had in reality been sown for them by
their own friends and would-be benefactors.
So the Moravians, seeking to deal honestly with Indians and whites
alike, but in return suspected and despised by both, worked patiently
year in and year out, as they dwelt in their lonely homes, meekly
awaiting the stroke of the terrible doom which hung over them.
1. See papers by Stephen D. Peet, on the northwestern tribes, read
before the state Archaeological Society of Ohio, 1878.
2. Barton, xxv.
3. General W. H. Harrison, "Aborigines of the Ohio Valley." Old
"Tippecanoe" was the best possible authority for their courage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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