so, and remained for several weeks at Salem and Gnadenhütten, working day and night gathering and husking the weather-beaten corn, and burying it in holes in the ground in the woods for future supply. On the very day that they were to have set off with their packs of corn, to return to their starving friends and relatives at Sandusky, a party of between one and two hundred whites made their appearance at Gnadenhütten. Seeing the Indians scattered all through the cornfields, they rode up to them, expressing pleasure at seeing them, and saying that they would take them into Pennsylvania, to a place where they would be out of all reach of persecution from the hostile savages or the English. They represented themselves as “friends and brothers, who had purposely come out to relieve them from the distress brought on them on account of their being friends to the American people. * * * The Christian Indians, not in the least doubting their sincerity, walked up to them and thanked them for being so kind; while the whites again gave assurances that they would meet with good treatment from them. They then advised them to discontinue their work and cross over to the town, in order to make necessary arrangements for the journey, as they intended to take them out of the reach of their enemies, and where they would be supplied abundantly with all they stood in need of.”
They proposed to take them to Pittsburg, where they would be out of the way of any assault made by the English or the savages. This the Indians heard, one of their missionaries writes, “with resignation, concluding that God would perhaps choose this method to put an end to their sufferings. Prepossessed with this idea, they cheerfully delivered their guns, hatchets, and other weapons to the murderers, who promised to take good care of them, and in Pittsburg to return every article to its rightful owner. Our Indians even showed them all those things which they had secreted in the woods,
