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By Root 704 0

in the eighteenth century, and were active missionaries to Indians in the northeast. Kluge and Luckenbach first established their mission at White River in 1801. They abandoned their mission in September 1806, not long after the tumultuous events described here. How did Kluge and Luckenbach make sense of what was happening at the White River mission in 1806? Can you read their account carefully to understand what Indian participants might have thought? How did the Moravians and the Delawares understand witches? Compare this document to the seventeenth-century accounts by missionaries (documents 1 through 5). What strike you as important changes or continuities in Christian missionaries’ perceptions of Indian religious and cultural practices?

March 13, 1806

On the afternoon of this day, seven wild Indians with faces painted black came to us and took our last remaining brother Joshua away by force. The reason for this, according to them, was this: The Indians had resolved to abolish poison and all sorcery among them, as we mentioned in our record of February. To this end the young people had banded together, deposed their chiefs, and at the instigation of the heathen teacher guarded those who had come together as captives, especially the older people, and appointed a great day on which to sit in judgment upon all who were suspected of dealing out poison. These suspects were to be brought to confess through fire. Old Chief Tedpachsit was the first one whom they accused of having poison with which he had brought about the death of many Indians. When the poor old man would not confess, they bound him to stakes and actually began to burn him. In his distress he said he had stored poison in our Indian Br. Joshua’s house. This was what they desired to hear, for it gave them a pretext to draw our poor Joshua into their terrible upheaval. They had called him a number of times before this but he had not gone, answering that he was a believer and had nothing to do with their matter; that they should do what they pleased but that they should let us alone. But the savages were not satisfied and were only too happy to get him in their midst through deceit and, as mentioned before, took him away by force so that he might tell Chief Tedpachsit to his face that he had nothing like that in his house, after which he might return home. In spite of everything, Joshua had to go with the savages to the Indians gathered at Woapicamikunk. And now we were quite alone with our Sr. Theresa. As mentioned in the record of February, the recently baptized Hannah had been impelled by fear and superstition to go to the assembled savages. How we felt under the circumstances cannot be described, especially so, because we could not tell what their object really was in regard to our poor Joshua. In our trouble we prayed to God our Saviour that He should have mercy upon us and upon our poor Joshua who was in the hands of the wild ones. In this time of trouble the text for the day was a great comfort to us.

15th. At last an Indian from Woapicamikunk came and told us that when Joshua was led before the old Chief and declared to him that his statement had been false, the old Chief confessed that he had lied from fear, in order to quiet somewhat the wrought-up savages; that he knew well enough that he had nothing of the kind and much less had he anything stored in Joshua’s house. Joshua was then declared free of the charge, but they would not allow him to return home on the ground that he had to wait until their prophet, the Schawano [Tenskwatawa], had arrived.

N.B. This Schawano is the greatest teacher among the savages because he not only pretends to have had visions of God who had told him how the Indians should live, but also to have been given the power to know all that is concealed and to uncover even the thoughts of people; he pretends that he can look into a man’s heart as well as into his face, and knows all that is going on in it. He lays claim to many other foolish things.

This fellow, a well-known evildoer, was to tell the Delaware nation, who among