t was reported that the
missionaries were joining the French against the English, so that they
and the Indian converts were dreadfully persecuted.

Colonel de Peyster, who was then the English governor at Fort Detroit,
suspected the Christian Indians of being partisans of the Americans,
and the missionaries of being spies; and he wished the Indians
favourable to him to carry them all off. Captain Pipe, a Delaware
chief, persuaded the half king of the Hurons to force them away.
Persecution went on, till the missionaries, seeing that no other
course remained, they being plundered without mercy, and their lives
threatened, consented to emigrate. They were thus compelled to quit
their pleasant settlement, escorted by a troop of savages headed by an
English officer. The half king of the Hurons went with them. But I
will read you an account of what took place after they reached
Sandusky Creek. "Having arrived at Sandusky Creek, after a journey of
upwards of four weeks, the half king of the Hurons and his warriors
left them, and marched into their own country, without giving them any
particular orders how to proceed. Thus they were abandoned in a
wilderness where there was neither game nor provisions of any kind;
such was the place to which the barbarians had led them,
notwithstanding they had represented it as a perfect paradise. After
wandering to and fro for some time, they resolved to spend the winter
in Upper Sandusky; and, having pitched on the most convenient spot
they could find in this dreary region, they erected small huts of logs
and bark, to shelter themselves from the rain and cold. They were now,
however, so poor, that they had neither beds nor blankets; for, on the
journey, the savages had stolen every thing from them, except only
their utensils for manufacturing maple sugar. But nothing distressed
them so much as the want of provisions. Some had long spent their all,
and now depended on the charity of their neighbours for a morsel to
eat. Even the missionaries, who hitherto had uniformly gained a
livelihood by the labour of their hands, were now reduced to the
necessity of receiving support from the congregation. As their wants
were so urgent, Shebosh the missionary, and several of the Christian
Indians, returned, as soon as possible, to their settlements on the
Muskingum, to fetch the Indian corn which they had left growing in the
fields.

"Scarcely had the congregation begun to settle in Sandusky, when the