Pioneers of the Old Southwest | Page 7

arms would soon be ceded by His Majesty. He knew something of Highland honor, too; for he would not let the Gaels proceed after their landing until they had bound themselves by oath to support the Government of King George. So it was that the unfortunate Highlanders found themselves, according too their strict code of honor, forced to wield arms against the very Americans who had received and befriended them--and for the crowned brother of a prince whose name is execrated to this day in Highland song and story!
They were led by Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough; and tradition gives us a stirring picture of Allan's wife--the famous Flora MacDonald, who in Scotland had protected the Young Pretender in his flight--making an impassioned address in Gaelic to the Highland soldiers and urging them on to die for honor's sake. When this Highland force was conquered by the Americans, the large majority willingly bound themselves not to fight further against the American cause and were set at liberty. Many of them felt that, by offering their lives to the swords of the Americans, they had canceled their obligation to King George and were now free to draw their swords again and, this time, in accordance with their sympathies; so they went over to the American side and fought gallantly for independence.
Although the brave glory of this pioneer age shines so brightly on the Lion Rampant of Caledonia, not to Scots alone does that whole glory belong. The second largest racial stream which flowed into the Back Country of Virginia and North Carolina was German. Most of these Germans went down from Pennsylvania and were generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch," an incorrect rendering of Pennsylvanische Deutsche. The upper Shenandoah Valley was settled almost entirely by Germans. They were members of the Lutheran, German Reformed, and Moravian churches. The cause which sent vast numbers of this sturdy people across the ocean, during the first years of the eighteenth century, was religious persecution. By statute and by word the Roman Catholic powers of Austria sought to wipe out the Salzburg Lutherans and the Moravian followers of John Huss. In that region of the Rhine country known in those days as the German Palatinate, now a part of Bavaria, Protestants were being massacred by the troops of Louis of France, then engaged in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) and in the zealous effort to extirpate heretics from the soil of Europe. In 1708, by proclamation, Good Queen Anne offered protection to the persecuted Palatines and invited them to her dominions. Twelve thousand of them went to England, where they were warmly received by the English. But it was no slight task to settle twelve thousand immigrants of an alien speech in England and enable them to become independent and self-supporting. A better solution of their problem lay in the Western World: The Germans needed homes and the Queen's overseas dominions needed colonists. They were settled at first along the Hudson, and eventually many of them took up lands in the fertile valley of the Mohawk.
For fifty years or more German and Austrian Protestants poured into America. In Pennsylvania their influx averaged about fifteen hundred a year, and that colony became the distributing center for the German race in America. By 1727, Adam Muller and his little company had established the first white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. In 1732 Joist Heydt went south from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opequan Creek at or near the site of the present city of Winchester.
The life of Count Zinzendorf, called "the Apostle," one of the leaders of the Moravian immigrants, glows like a star out of those dark and troublous times. Of high birth and gentle nurture, he forsook whatever of ease his station promised him and fitted himsclf for evangelical work. In 1741 he visited the Wyoming Valley to bring his religion to the Delawares and Shawanoes. He was not of those picturesque Captains of the Lord who bore their muskets on their shoulders when they went forth to preach. Armored only with the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, his feet "shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace," he went out into the country of these bloodthirsty tribes and told them that he had come to them in their darkness to teach the love of the Christ which lighteth the world. The Indians received him suspiciously. One day while he sat in his tent writing, some Delawares drew near to slay him and were about to strike when they saw two deadly snakes crawl in from the opposite side of the tent, move directly towards the Apostle, and pass harmlessly over his body. Thereafter they regarded him as under spiritual protection. Indeed so widespread was