Mennonite Handbook of Information/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
OVERTURES OF INDIANS WERE FIRST PEACEFUL, THEN REVENGEFUL
Mennonites as a people have never been known to come into aggressive or defensive conflict with the Indians. When Mennonites or Quakers were known by them, they were readily recognized as peace-loving and peace-practicing people who were not suspected in the least of betraying a league of confidence. One of the first and earliest traits of the Indian character was to court the friendship and good will of their pale-faced neighbors. It was not until the principles of peace were ruthlessly violated by white men that the animal spirit in the Indian became aroused to acts of fury, desperation, and bloodshed.
The speeches of Logan, chief of the Mingoes, and the one given at the time of Black Hawk's farewell, very lucidly and pointedly illustrate this thought. History records instances when the first ships of white men touched the shores of the New World, when the Indians at once recognized them as heaven-sent friends, and hastened to offer them the best things they had to eat in the form of cooked venison and fish, two of the choicest articles and most toothsome of foods to be found in our market squares today. The story of their league made with William Penn and his people is a tribute to the Indian character that transcends that of every other people in the world.
Whenever the Indians were able to recognize nonresistant and peace-loving people, special care was taken to make distinction between them and others with whom they were on the war-path. In evidence of this we have the acount of friendship and deep sympathy shown to the Mennonites in the Schoharie Valley of New York in the year 1714, also those in Lancaster and other counties in Pennsylvania. All appeared to be perfectly immune to Indian attack because of the pledge they had given in the treaty with William Penn.
In Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, while war and bloodshed was going on at 'a terrible rate between tribesmen of those states, white settlers, many of whom were Mennonites, dwelt together in perfect quietude and shared the benefits of a common hunting ground.
The overtures of the Indian being always of friendly bearing, there came a change with the outbreak of the old French wars with the English colonists in 1754, when Indians were made to: believe that all settlements by whites east of the Qhip river were made with the purpose of robbing them of their own hunting grounds.
These conditions became the cause for unrest on the part of the Indians themselves, as well .as for trouble and anxiety to whites along all border settlements of the east. Being a child of nature, the red man gave evidence of being heart-broken and disappointed because of having to give up extensive hunting ground areas without any reimbursement. Some tribes did not give up without a struggle. Others remained with the whites until the last of their tribes had disappeared in death. Concerning these there remained to us the mournful and deeply pathetic stories of "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Eagle of the Mohawks" and the supremely tragic tale (related by Charles Sprague) of "The North American Indian."
The widespread bitterness that sprang up, and the strife and bloodshed that followed, was not confined to the actual aggressors, but vengeance fell upon the innocent as well as upon the leaguebreaker and hunting-ground intruder.
Under such circumstances the peace-loving Mennonites, many of whom were located along the border settlements at this time, became exposed to the savage fury of the Indians and along with that they were made to suffer the reproach and persecution of white men of other religious persuasions because they refused to assist them in wars of extermination on the Indian or to drive him away.
The unparalleled treachery and savage ferocity that was continued for years between white men and red men forms a chapter in American history that is awful and heart-rending to contemplate. The Indians continued to claim the country as their own hunting grounds. In face of all this, foot by foot and mile by mile, the pale-faces continued to' Encroach upon what they considered their rightful possessions.
For some time the Indians exacted by way of compensation the condition that when red men called at the home of a white man for something to eat, he was not to be refused. At a later period this privilege became abused to the degree that Indians began to travel through the settlements of white men in bands of twenty or more and the privilege of being fed from the white man's home was claimed as usual. Whenever refusal was offered, it frequently happened that they would take possession of the premises for the time, cook their own meal, eat it and then proceed to their journey. Nonresistant people peaceably allowed this privilege to be exacted again and again without resentment, but other whites of different temperament resorted to violence and bloodshed in defending their homes from these invasions.
Conditions followed in which Mennonites indiscriminately suffered with the guilty, and numbers of instances are on record, both in Pennsylvania and Virginia, where their homes were burned, and members of the family killed or carried into captivity.
A Mennonite colony located on the headwaters of the Rappahannock in Fauquier county, Virginia, where families by the name of Barr, Baer, Groff Webber and others were attacked by Indians in 1724 and a number of the settlers killed.
Late in the night of September 19, 1757, the house of Jacob Hostetler in Berks county, Pennsylvania, was surrounded by eight or ten Indians. In the building were Jacob Hostetler, his wife, three sons, and a daughter. The father would not permit his sons to shoot at the Indians, even while they were setting fire to the house and barn. After remaining in the cellar as long as they could bear the heat, they crawled out by the lower window and at once were taken captive. The mother was stabbed to death while a son and the daughter were tomahawked and scalped. The others were carried off captives. After living for seven years with the Indians, they were released and permitted to return to their home in Pennsylvania.
In 1763 the colony of Mennonites located in the Shenandoah Valley, in Page county, Virginia (where were settled the families of Michael Kauffman, Abram Heistand, Peter Blausser, Abram Strickler, John Rhodes and others) were all obliged to flee from Massanutten on the Shenandoah river to a place of safety east of the Blue Ridge mountains on account of a general Indian outbreak. In course of time these families all returned and reoccupied their homes.
On the last of August in the following year (1764) when the corn and hemp fields were grown to full length, eight Indians led by a white man suddenly appeared at the home of John Rhodes, a minister in the Mennonite Church, and the greater number of the family were surprised and massacred and their scalps taken.
Those who were killed were Bro Rhodes, who was shot while standing in the doorway of his home, his wife and one son, who were killed in the yard. Of two sons who were out in the corn field, one was shot out of a pear tree (into which he had climbed to see what all the noise x at^ the house meant), the other was shot and killed in the river while attempting to cross to a place of safety. While the awful work of taking the lives of her father, mother and brother was going on in the yard, the daughter (Elizabeth, aged twelve or fifteen years) snatched up her baby sister (Anna, about a year and a half old) and ran toward the barn, where she was followed by an Indian. She ran in at a door and secured it, and while the Indian ran back to the house to get fire, Elizabeth crept out at an opening at the rear of the barn, entered a field of tall hemp, and through it ran unobserved to the river, which she crossed, all the time carrying her little sister, till she reached the home of a neighbor, and thus saved her own life and that of her little sister.
After plundering the premises fire was set to all the buildings. The body of Bro. Rhodes being left in the door-way where it had fallen, it became partly consumed in the flames. The Indians then took their flight, taking with them two other sons and two daughters as captives. The younger son being weakly and unable to travel, he was killed. The two daughters refusing to go farther, they were also killed in a barbarous manner and scalped. The remaining son, whose name was Michael, was taken along to the Indian camps west of the Ohio river where he was held as a captive for three years. While there he saw the Indians sell the scalps of his father, mother, and six brothers and sisters to the French authorities for about fifteen dollars. After Gen. Bouquet's treaty in 1767, the Indians were required to release all white prisoners. Michael, along with many others, was permitted to come home to assist in the settling up of his father's estate.
Without question, the massacre was one of the most tragic and harrowing circumstances that God has ever permitted to befall the Mennonite Church in America.
It was also in the year 1764 that John Hooley and family, along with other Mennonite families, were compelled to leave their newly established homes in the upper Susquehanna Valley to escape Indian attack. It was because of these conditions that they were led to locate permanently in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania.
In about the year 1760 the Hartman family in Lebanon county, Pennsylvania, was raided by Indians while the mother and a son had gone to mill several miles from home. Several Indians entered the house where they killed the father and one son, and took the two remaining children, a son and a daughter named Regina, away with them as captives. The son was never heard from again, but Regina was taken to the Indian towns somewhere in the wilderness of Ohio and held as a captive for seven years, in which time she grew to womanhood. Before the home was broken up by the awful tragedy wrought by the hand of the Indians, Regina used to hear her mother sing a number of familiar hymns, one of which through her long period of captivity she never forgot.
By the treaty of 1767, she was permitted to come back home but when she reached-her former neighborhood she could recognize no x one not even her mother who searched diligently among the returned prisoners in the effort to find her. It was not until the mother began to sing some of the hymns she used to sing at the time of Regina's cnildhood that the girl, now grown to womanhood, walked up to her, saying that she remembered hearing that hymn sung before she was taken away by the Indians. It was in this most remarkable and providential way that mother and daughter were restored to each other.
In about the year 1767 the parents of Magdalene Weland settled and established their home at a point on the banks of the upper forks of the Susquehanna river one hundred miles north of Lancaster. When the family first located here Magdalene was then but a young girl. During their stay in this locality, the family was twice driven from home and their buildings burned. Final escape was made by way of the river in a small canoe, but not until one of Magdalene's brothers had been shot dead and another wounded by the Indians. Other members of the family escaped death by lying flat down in the bottom of the canoe, from which the upper edges were splintered away and the fragments scattered over their bodies by the continued firing of the Indians from the shore.
Magdalene, with the surviving members of the family, reached Lancaster county without further harm. Here she in time was married to David Heatwole and lived for some years on the Nolt place near New Holland. In 1795 they located in Rockingham county, Virginia, where, a large family was reared. David Heatwole was the first deacon of the Mennonite Church in Virginia and Magdalene Weland Heatwole, his wife, was the great grandmother to the writer.
Other accounts of Indian outbreaks on Mennonite families might be given, but the circumstances are meagre in the details and not sufficiently authentic for record here. In a general way destruction to life and property by Indians against Mennonites are not so frequent, when compared with the numerous instances where people of other nationality and religious faith suffered greatly.