being held up by
their fathers to tomahawk the dying victims at the stake.[26]

Thus it is that there are so many dark and bloody pages in the book of
border warfare, that grim and iron-bound volume, wherein we read how our
forefathers won the wide lands that we inherit. It contains many a tale
of fierce heroism and adventurous ambition, of the daring and resolute
courage of men and the patient endurance of women; it shows us a stern
race of freemen who toiled hard, endured greatly, and fronted adversity
bravely, who prized strength and courage and good faith, whose wives
were chaste, who were generous and loyal to their friends. But it shows
us also how they spurned at restraint and fretted under it, how they
would brook no wrong to themselves, and yet too often inflicted wrong on
others; their feats of terrible prowess are interspersed with deeds of
the foulest and most wanton aggression, the darkest treachery, the most
revolting cruelty; and though we meet with plenty of the rough, strong,
coarse virtues, we see but little of such qualities as mercy for the
fallen, the weak, and the helpless, or pity for a gallant and vanquished
foe.

Among the Indians of the northwest, generally so much alike that we need
pay little heed to tribal distinctions, there was one body deserving
especial and separate mention. Among the turbulent and jarring elements
tossed into wild confusion by the shock of the contact between savages
and the rude vanguard of civilization, surrounded and threatened by the
painted warriors of the woods no less than by the lawless white riflemen
who lived on the stump-dotted clearings, there dwelt a group of peaceful
beings who were destined to suffer a dire fate in the most lamentable
and pitiable of all the tragedies which were played out in the heart of
this great wilderness. These were the Moravian Indians.[27] They were
mostly Delawares, and had been converted by the indefatigable German
missionaries, who taught the tranquil, Quaker-like creed of Count
Zinzendorf. The zeal and success of the missionaries were attested by
the marvellous change they had wrought in these converts; for they had
transformed them in one generation from a restless, idle, blood-thirsty
people of hunters and fishers, into an orderly, thrifty, industrious
folk, believing with all their hearts the Christian religion in the form
in which their teachers both preached and practised it. At first the
missionaries, surrounded by thei