towns, where they rested and ate, prior to
continuing their journey with their remaining captives. When they left
they warned the Moravians that white men were on their trail. [Footnote:
Heckewelder, 3:1.] A white man who had just escaped this same impaling
party, also warned the Moravians that the exasperated borderers were
preparing a party to kill them; and Gibson, from Fort Pitt, sent a
messenger to them, who, however, arrived too late. But the poor
Christian Indians, usually very timid, now, in the presence of a real
danger, showed a curious apathy; their senses were numbed and dulled by
their misfortunes, and they quietly awaited their doom. [Footnote:
Loskiel, 176.]

It was not long deferred. Eighty or ninety frontiersmen, under
Williamson, hastily gathered together to destroy the Moravian towns. It
was, of course, just such an expedition as most attracted the brutal,
the vicious, and the ruffianly; but a few decent men, to their shame,
went along. They started in March, and on the third day reached the
fated villages. That no circumstance might be wanting to fill the
measure of their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, assured them that
they meant well, and spent an hour or two in gathering together those
who were in Salem and Gnadenhutten, putting them all in two houses at
the latter place. Those at the third town, of Schoenbrunn, got warning
and made their escape.

As soon as the unsuspecting Indians were gathered in the two houses, the
men in one, the women and children in the other, the whites held a
council as to what should be done with them. The great majority were for
putting them instantly to death. Eighteen men protested, and asked that
the lives of the poor creatures should be spared; and then withdrew,
calling God to witness that they were innocent of the crime about to be
committed. By rights they should have protected the victims at any
hazard. One of them took off with him a small Indian boy, whose life was
thus spared. With this exception only two lads escaped.

They are Massacred.

When the murderers told the doomed Moravians their fate, they merely
requested a short delay in which to prepare themselves for death. They
asked one another's pardon for whatever wrongs they might have done,
knelt down and prayed, kissed one another farewell, "and began to sing
hymns of hope and of praise to the Most High." Then the white butchers
entered the houses and put to death the ninety-six men, wome