hours after the marriage of William and Dido he left for his memorable Indian journey.

1

Wyalusing, a corruption of the Indian M'hwikilusing, or Mahackloosing, "The Place of the Hoary Veteran" 1 occupies the site and retains the name of one of the oldest Indian settlements in America. In the time of Woolman, it was reached by the Wyalusing Trail, a great Indian highway or path, not more than two feet wide, cut to the depth of some eighteen inches through the fragrant soil of the primeval forest by the soft !moccasined tread of generations of red men. In single file, many a war party had swiftly and silently sped along its windings, while in times of peace, lingering hunters and braves, peeling off the bark from the great hemlocks and birches, had pictured upon the smooth skin of the exposed surface below, histories of Indian prowess in war and the chase, and boasted of their deeds in ideographic history.

The route by which this highway crossed the eastern portion of the state of Pennsylvania was, roughly speaking, almost. the bed of the present Lehigh Valley Railroad, running east of the river in the South and west of it on the North, and entering Bradford County several miles west of the southeast corner of the boundary, passing Wyalusing in a northeast and southwesterly direction. The Towanda, the Minisink and the Sheshequin trails were others in the same part of the state, but none were so deeply worn by travel, or so well known, as the Wyalusing Path. The Germans whom Conrad Weiser, on a Commission from Philadelphia to the Onondaga settlement of the Iroquois, in 1737, found trying to buy lands, were probably the first white men who had followed it.2 In 1743 John Bartram, the Quaker botanist, with Conrad Weiser and Indians as guides, accompanied the explorer, Lewis Evans, over this same trail, and so far as is known were the first to travel on horseback through the "terrible Lycoming wilderness." 3

In 1745 the Iroquois, or Six Nations occupying the Genesee country beyond, had been visited by two Moravian mis

1 Heckewelder. "Delaware Names of Rivers and Localities in Penna." "Susque: hanna" means "Winding River."

= H. C. Bradsby: "History of Bradford County, Pa.," p. 54.

Ibid., p. 42.

See also L. H. Everts and Co. "Bradford Co.," 14 ff. and Journal

of J. Bartram.

40

These

sionaries from Bethlehem, itself only three years old. were the Brethren August Gottlieb, afterward Bishop, Spangenberg, and David Zeisberger, led by the Indian Commissioner, Conrad Weiser, with the Cayuga Chief Shikellamy,' his son, and Andrew Montour 2 as guides. They went on a peaceful mission, with the further object of obtaining permission for their own Indian converts to settle in the Wyoming country. They partially Christianized the Indians at the Munsey village of Sheshequin, a day's journey beyond Wyalusing. Soon after, however, the weaker tribes were exterminated by the powerful Iroquois, and for some years Wyalusing lay in ruins.

44

In 1752 the Munsey Chief Papunahung, who was a Moravian convert and had spent some time at Nain, the Indian village two miles from Bethlehem set apart for these converts by the Moravians, brought his own and a few other families and rebuilt Wyalusing. The rich corn and grass lands lying near the mouth of the Wyalusing Creek were cultivated by the squaws, and by • 1760 there were over forty huts in better condition than was usual with the Indians. John Woolman well describes them. Job Chilaway, a native West Jersey Indian from Little Egg Harbor, was the sachem's right hand man. Job's fluent English kept him much in demand as interpreter. His wife Elizabeth, was sister to Anthony and Nathaniel,45 two native Moravian converts living near Tunkhannock. In the spring of this year-1760 -the settlement was visited by Christian Frederic Post, the devoted Moravian missionary. He had substantially aided the Quakers through their Peace Associations, in keeping the Indians friendly with the English. The text for the sermon which he preached to Papunahung and his people that May day so long ago is said to have been S. Luke II, 8-11. The fact that Post calls this settlement one of religious or "Quaker" Indians, is evidence of the intercourse which the Friends had kept up with them and the influence which they had exerted. A letter which Post appears to have sent the Governor at the hands of Papuna

1 For over twenty years the great Indian Shikellamy ruled the Iroquois. Together with Conrad Weiser he practically saved the colony from annihilation. A huge boulder has recently been erected over his grave at Sunbury, suitably inscribed to his memory.

2 Another Captain Montour was a son of "Madame Montour," the remarkable French woman who settled among the Indians of the Susquehanna, one of whom she married; he was a son of Indian Deborah.

David Zeisberger preaching to the Indians. From original drawing for painting by Schussele, known as "The Power of the Gospel."

Drawing in Possession of Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

The Substance of some Conversation with Caponaheal the Indian Cheiat 071 in presence of Jo: Wnt Bre

Notes by John Woolman at Interview with Papunahung. Last Page,

with Addition by His Wife, 1761.

In Possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

hung, when the first visit was planning, says, "I do not send these people down; they have long had a desire themselves to go down to see their brothers, the English, so I have thought it proper to send them along." His companion, John Hays, writes in his Journal under May 19, 1760, “Arrived at a town called ¡Quitalosing (Wyalusing); the Governor's name, Wampoonham; a very religious, civilized man in his own way." 1

Awake to the spiritual needs of their converts, the Moravians at the Mother Mission of Bethlehem soon after the departure of Brother Post, appointed David Zeisberger" in special charge of the Indians at Wyalusing, and he spent much of the next two years in residence among them, and in making periodical visits and reports to his superiors. The Indians, nevertheless, were for long periods left to themselves, yet Papunahung appears to have been faithful to his trust as "guide, philosopher and friend."

Trade was constant and lively with Philadelphia, and it was in the spring of 1763 that John Woolman met one of the trading parties, who were in town at the time of the Friends' annual "Spring Meeting." Another source of information would also be the arrival of the occasional post from Bethlehem, whose official headquarters was at the house of John Stephen Benezet, (father of Anthony Benezet, the Quaker,) whose daughter was the wife of the Moravian merchant, Thomas Bartow." The religious awakening at Wyalusing among the red savages, for whose welfare John Woolman had long been solicitous, and who were now his personal friends, aroused a lively desire in his heart to visit them in their home, and he obtained the official approval of his meeting.

There can be little doubt that it was the brothers Pemberton *** whose solicitous care sent the messengers to Mount Holly the night before his departure, with the warning that the Susquehanna Indians. were again on the warpath. He set out, however, fearlessly, after making his usual careful preparations, on the sixth of June, accompanied by Israel and John Pemberton and William Lightfoot," who did not intend to make the entire journey, and Benjamin Parvin,“ his inseparable companion, who shared all the danger and eased the way. There were besides, several Indian guides. They went in

8

1 Penna. Archives, Vol. III, p. 742; Vol. X, p. 736.

* David Zeisberger was perhaps the most remarkable of the many devoted Moravian missionaries in the colonies. Bishop de Schweinitz, in his "Life and Times of David Zeisberger" (p. 267, ff.), gives a graphic and interesting account of Pastor Zeisberger's two visits to Wyalusing at this time, the most dangerous period of its history. See also G. H. Loskiel, "History of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Indians of North America." Vol. II, Ch. xv.