Christian Munsee
With Christian Munsee or the Moravian Indians are Indians from the tribe of Munsee - Lenape referred to by missionaries of the Moravian Church in the 18th and 19th centuries for Christianity were converted.
In the 17th century, the Munsee-Lenape lived roughly in the area where the present-day states of New York , Pennsylvania and New Jersey meet, that is, in northern New Jersey, in southeastern New York and in eastern Pennsylvania. They included the Esopus , Minisink , Canarsee and Wappinger , for example . As a result of pressure from the European settlers, they were pushed westwards from 1650 and united. The groups from the land east of the Hudson River withdrew inland and settled in remote areas. At the beginning of the 18th century this trend continued with the Minisink moving northwest to the northern arm of the Susquehanna River , and many Munsee-speaking Lenape from the Hudson Valley joined them. Over time, the name for this new grouping changed from Minisink to Munsee or Muncie .
Moravian Brethren
Around 1750 missionaries of the Moravian Brethren, German Protestants who had come to North America in 1735, began missioning several Indian peoples. At the center of their efforts were the Lenni Lenape , for which they learned the Munsee language . They followed this tribe from Pennsylvania via Ohio and Indiana to Kansas . They were also missionaries with the Mahican and Mattabesic in Connecticut and New York and with the Cherokee in Georgia and later in Oklahoma .
Much information about the early history of the Christian Munsee comes from the records of the Moravian missionaries. Unlike the other Christian groups who came to America because of freedom of belief, their main concern was the proselytizing of the Indians. They made their first attempts in Georgia in 1735, and five years later they moved their base to Pennsylvania, where they founded the city of Bethlehem in 1741 . They soon realized that the establishment of mission villages beyond the settlement boundary had more chance of success than proselytizing the Indians within white settlements. The Moravian missionaries were often the first Europeans to live and work with the Indians. For security reasons, the established villages were away from European and other Indian settlements. The Moravians preached non-violence and achieved remarkable success with their peace-loving manner.
The missionaries kept meticulous records of their work with the Munsee Christian. The immigrants from Herrnhut were German, so a large part of their documents is in German. In addition, religious texts written by Herrnhutern make up a large part of the text corpus of the Delawarian languages. In addition to keeping church records and the letters and reports they sent to their superiors in Bethlehem, they kept a journal of their daily activities. It contained all the daily events of the mission village, such as visitors, harvest, hunting, diseases, problems and decisions. In total, the records comprise over 50,000 handwritten pages, which are kept in the archives of the Moravian Church of Bethlehem and are priceless.
In Ohio
The first missions were established in New York and Pennsylvania. In 1772 the missionary David Zeisberger (1721-1808) moved with his converted Munsee to the Ohio area on the other side of the settlement border, where he built the missionary village of Schönbrunn on the Tuscarawas River. Zeisberger was the best-known missionary of the Moravian Brethren, and until his death in 1808 he devoted all his energy to Christianizing the Lenape, especially the Munsee. To this end, he also translated a harmony of the four Gospels and a number of other Christian texts into Delaware . There were of course other missionaries, such as Benjamin Mortimer, Johann Heckewelder , John Schnall and Christian Denke. Mortimer was Zeisberger's assistant and in later years his scribe and successor after his death. Heckewelder was the scientist among the missionaries. He wrote detailed reports on Indian culture and became a member of the American Philosophical Society .
After the converted Munsee moved to the Ohio area, they were perceived as a special group. They were called Moravian Indians , Moravian Munsee , Christian Munsee or simply Christian Indians . Zeisberger's notes show that he distinguished our Indians from the wild Indians . With upcoming moves, he wrote about the need to have them start in the spring so the gardens could still be tilled. He noted that wild Indians could feed themselves by hunting alone, while our Indians are used to vegetable food.
In the American War of Independence (1775–1783) the villages of the Christian Munsee were located exactly between the fronts of the warring parties, the British in the west and the Americans in the east. Most of the Indian tribes in the Ohio area fought either on the British or the American side. In the summer of 1781 only the Munsee remained neutral in the Moravian missions. These missions were on the main routes of the passing white and Indian war troops and were harassed equally by both sides. In the fall, the British ordered their internment and a force of Wyandot warriors escorted them to Captive Town on the upper Sandusky River. In winter there was a famine and some of the Christian Munsee returned to their mission village Gnadenhütten to harvest the corn that was still in the fields. In early March, Lenape warriors who returned from raids in Pennsylvania passed through sanctuary. On their heels were 160 Pennsylvania militia men, under the command of Colonel David Williamson . Williamson suspected the Mission Indians of helping the persecuted Indians, placed them under arrest and ordered their execution the next day. In the morning the soldiers took the prisoners to a hut in twos, made them kneel down and smashed their skulls with a cooper's mallet. Williamson's men killed 28 men, 29 women and 39 children. The dead were piled in piles in the huts and all the buildings burned down. The event went down in history as the Gnadenhütten massacre and the only survivors were two boys, whom Zeisberger later mentions in his report on the incident. For decades afterwards, the massacre was an issue in every peace negotiation between the Munsee and the Americans.
In Canada
After more than ten years of war or displacement, the Christian Munsee Zeisberger followed in 1792 to southeastern Ontario in Canada , where they founded the new settlement Schönfeld (English: Fairfield) on the Thames River, which became known as Moraviantown . A few years later Zeisberger returned to the valley of the Muskingum River with some helpers to set up his last mission in Goshen . Most Munsee Christians, however, stayed in Ontario, where they could live in relative peace for about 20 years. They made a living from farming, beekeeping, raccoon trapping, building canoes, and selling nuts and excess corn. They fell victim to another war when their settlement was burned to the ground in the Battle of the Thames River in the War of 1812 . This battle went down in history above all because it was a great victory for American General William Henry Harrison in which his famous Indian opponent Tecumseh was killed. Hardly mentioned, however, was the complete destruction of Moraviantown, whose inhabitants fled into the wilderness, but returned after the end of the hostilities and rebuilt the village of New Fairfield.
In the American West
Part of the Christian Munsee moved west across the Mississippi River in the 1830s , where other tribes were already living on reservations . In the meantime, some Lenape tribes had moved to Indiana, where the name of the present-day city of Muncie comes from, then to Missouri, and finally to Kansas. The Stockbridge Mohican , another group of Christian Indians who were named after their missionary village of the same name in Massachusetts , had lived in Wisconsin for several years . In 1837, some Fairfield Munsee boarded their open Mackinaw boats to cross the Great Lakes to Wisconsin and connect with the Stockbridge Mohican west of Green Bay . The combined tribe was named Stockbridge-Munsee and they are now the only Munsee to be federally recognized. However, many of these Munsee returned to Ontario and received state recognition in Canada as a Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames . In 1839 a small group went to Kansas and developed into a separate group with its own identity. There they lived under the care of the missionaries, initially in Wyandotte County and a few years later purchased land in Leavenworth County. Another group settled near Fort Scott in Bourbon County.
The rest of the Lenape in Kansas took an active part in the conquest of the West, working as scouts and buffalo hunters for covered wagon treks and the American army. Some served as soldiers in California and fought for the US Army in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Even so, around 1857 pressure from white settlers forced most of Lenape to leave Kansas and go to Indian Territory or Canada. However, some Munsee stayed in Kansas. The Munsee Christian, now numbered under a hundred, bought a small reservation in Franklin County from a Chippewa group . In the treaty of 1859, the reservations of Swan Creek Chippewa, Black River Chippewa and Christian Munsee were officially merged. This reserve covers about 30 km² and is located on the Marais des Cygnes River ( German Swan Swamp River ) near the city of Ottawa in Kansas.
In the Civil War (1861-1865) most physically fit young Lenape served with the Kansas Volunteers ( English Kansas Volunteers ), although they did not have US civil rights. They fought against Confederate troops and against the Cherokee , Choctaw and Chickasaw from the Indian Territory, who were at war on the southern side . After the war, the combined Chippewa and Munsee suffered from the consequences of illnesses and high child mortality, so that the number of tribal members continued to decline.
The most famous and certainly the most prominent converted Lenape was Gelelemend , the son of John Killbuck and grandson of the great Lenape chief Netawatnes. When Gelelemend was baptized, he was named William Henry and his fellow Christian men called him Billy. He went down in history as John Killbuck Jr. one, and his descendants were surnamed Kilbuck, a name that can be considered a synonym for the Munsee in Kansas.
Todays situation
In their history, the Christian Munsee were often excluded from contract negotiations, primarily because of their small number and their demand for independence. The lack of their signature in previous contracts likely led to their non-recognition as a separate group. Of the 70 registered members, 43 were descendants of the Caleb family while 21 were descended from the Kilbuck family. Eventually the entire land in Kansas was divided up. In 1900, their Indian status ended after they received their severance pay from the state. They were no longer entitled to social benefits, unlike the Lenape groups in Oklahoma. Many descendants still live in Ottawa and Kansas, and there are signs that they will want to revive their Native American identities. The census in 2000 showed 2,012 Stockbridge-Munsee in Wisconsin.
See also
literature
- Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15. Northeast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978. ISBN 0-16004-575-4 .
- Wilcomb E. Washburn (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 4. History of Indian-White Relations. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1988. ISBN 0-16004-583-5 .
- Elma E. Gray: Wilderness Christians - the Moravian Mission to the Delaware Indians. Macmillan, Toronto 1956.
- Eart P. Olmstead: Blackcoats among the Delaware - David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier. Kent State University Press, Kent (Ohio) 1991.
- CA Weslager: Enrollment List of Chippewa and Delaware-Munsies Living in Franklin County, Kansas, May 31, 1900 .: n Kansas Historical Quarterly , vol. 40 (2), 1974, pp. 234-240.
Web links
- A Fragment of Kansas Land History: The Disposal of the Christian Indian Tract from the Kansas Historical Quarterly .
- Treaty with the Chippewa, Etc., 1859
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15. Northeast. Chapter: Delaware, page 213f.
- ^ Moravian mission archives ( Memento of February 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Munsee History ( Memento from February 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )