Pioneers of the Old Southwest | Page 8

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 his good fame among the tribes that for
some years all Moravian settlements along the borders were
unmolested. Painted savages passed through on their way to war with
enemy bands or to raid the border, but for the sake of one consecrated
spirit, whom they had seen death avoid, they spared the lives and goods
of his fellow believers. When Zinzendorf departed a year later, his
mantle fell on David Zeisberger, who lived the love he taught for over
fifty years and converted many savages. Zeisberger was taken before
the Governor and army heads at Philadelphia, who had only too good
reason to be suspicious of priestly counsels in the tents of Shem: but he
was able to impress white men no less than simple savages with the
nobility of the doctrine he had learned from the Apostle.
In 1751 the Moravian Brotherhood purchased one hundred thousand
acres in North Carolina from Lord Granville. Bishop Spangenburg was
commissioned to survey this large acreage, which was situated in the
present county of Forsyth east of the Yadkin, and which is historically
listed as the Wachovia Tract. In 1753, twelve Brethren left the
Moravian settlements of Bethlehem and Nazareth, in Pennsylvania, and
journeyed southward to begin the founding of a colony on their new
land. Brother Adam Grube, one of the twelve, kept a diary of the events
of this expedition.*
* This diary is printed in full in "Travels in the American Colonies."
edited by N. D. Mereness.
Honor to whom honor is due. We have paid it, in some measure, to the
primitive Gaels of the Highlands for their warrior strength and their
fealty, and to the enlightened Scots of Ulster for their enterprise and for
their sacrifice unto blood that free conscience and just laws might

promote the progress and safeguard the intercourse of their kind. Now
let us take up for a moment Brother Grube's "Journal" even as we
welcome, perhaps the more gratefully, the mild light of evening after
the flooding sun, or as our hearts, when too strongly stirred by the
deeds of men, turn for rest to the serene faith and the naive speech of
little children.
The twelve, we learn, were under the leadership of one of their number,
Brother Gottlob. Their earliest alarms on the march were not caused, as
we might expect, by anticipations of the painted Cherokee, but by
encounters with the strenuous "Irish." One of these came and laid
himself to sleep beside the Brethren's camp fire on their first night out,
after they had sung their evening hymn and eleven had stretched
themselves on the earth for slumber, while Brother Gottlob, their leader,
hanging his hammock between two trees, ascended--not only in
spirit--a little higher than his charges, and "rested well in it." Though
the alarming Irishman did not disturb them, the Brethren's doubts of
that race continued, for Brother Grube wrote on the 14th of October:
"About four in the morning we set up our tent, going four miles beyond
Carl Isles [Carlisle, seventeen miles southwest of Harrisburg] so as not
to be too near the Irish Presbyterians. After breakfast the Brethren
shaved and then we rested under our tent.... People who were staying at
the Tavern came to see what kind of folk we were.... Br Gottlob held
the evening service and then we lay down around our cheerful fire, and
Br Gottlob in his hammock." Two other jottings give us a racial
kaleidoscope of the settlers and wayfarers of that time. On one day the
Brethren bought "some hay from a Swiss," later "some kraut from a
German which tasted very good to us"; and presently "an Englishman
came by and drank a cup of tea with us and was very grateful for it."
Frequently the little band paused while some of the Brethren went off
to the farms along the route to help "cut hay." These kindly acts were
usually repaid with gifts of food or produce.
One day while on the march they halted at a tavern and farm in
Shenandoah Valley kept by a man whose name Brother Grube wrote
down as