Moravian Indians. Mahican, Munsee, and Delaware who followed the teachings of the Moravian brethren and were by them gathered into villages apart from their tribes. The majority were Munsee. In 1740 the Moravian missionaries began their work at the Mahican village of Shekomeko in New York. Meeting with many obstacles there, they removed with their converts in 1746 to Pennsylvania, where they built the new mission village of Friedenshuetten on the Susquehanna. Here they were more successful and were largely recruited from the Munsee and Delaware, almost all of the former tribe not absorbed by the Delaware finally joining them. They made another settlement at Wyalusing, but on the advance of the white population removed to Beaver river in west Pennsylvania, where they built the village of Friedensstadt. They remained here about a year, and in 1773 removed to Muskingum river in Ohio, in the neighborhood of the others of their tribes, and occupied the three villages of Gnadenhuetten, Salem, and Schoenbrunn. In 1781, during the border troubles of the Revolution, the Hurons removed them to the region of the Sandusky and Scioto, in north Ohio, either to prevent their giving information to the colonists or to protect them from the hostility of the frontiers men. The next spring a party of about 140 were allowed to return to their abandoned villages to gather their corn, when they were treacherously attacked by a party of border ruffians and the greater part massacred in the most cold blooded manner, after which their villages were burned. The remaining Moravians moved to Canada in 1791, under the leadership of Zeisberger, and built the village of Fairfield on Retrenche river. Here a number were massacred by the whites in 1812. They finally settled on the Thanes in Orford township, Kent County, Ontario. The number in 1884 was 275, but had increased in 1906, according to the Canadian official report, to 348. There were until recently a few in Franklin County, Kansas.
