and rough bodies covered with buckskin breeches and blue huntingshirts; see their wild roving eyes and dare-devil expression, as they sit in their canoes, telling with coarse jests and coarser oaths their adventures with the red skins, and bragging over their adventures with a noisy self-importance. See and hear this; consider the strong prejudices against the Indians which they nursed within them, and you will not wonder that the civilized white man is now bent on the murder of the savage red man. Hear them laugh at the idea of an Indian being a Christian; hear them curse the red race for some deed of treachery which we could pardon in an Indian, and which may have been of far less turpitude than the object of their present expedition. About a mile below Gnattenhutten they concealed their canoes in a little creek which emptied into the Tuscarawas on the east side. Powder-horns and shot pouches were slung over their shoulders, their rifles primed anew, a few chosen to guard the canoes, and eager for a fray, they received their orders to move. Before they proceeded far they saw approaching a young man (not an Indian) dressed after their own manner. Before he was within speaking distance, they fired and wounded him so much that he could not escape. This young man, whose name was Schebosch, was the son of a white man― a Christian and resided at Gnattenhutten, where he was beloved by all the Christian congregation. As soon as they had wounded him they surrounded him. According to the accounts of the marauders themselves, he told them who he was, and begged in piteous tones that they would spare his life. Heedless of his prayers, at the beck of the captain, several of the men pulled their hatchets coolly from their belts, and with an atrocity that would have shamed an Algerine pirate, coolly hacked this already wounded young Christian to pieces. He could tell no tale to the living. Let us seek a momentary relief by turning our steps to the peaceful Indian village.

The sun of the sixth morning of March was scaling the hills, and before its full orb was seen above the horizon, the people of the village were in the house of worship. After a fervent offering of their guileless hearts to the GoD of Peace and of Love, they retired to their usual work. Some to fell trees, and to maul them into rails; some were preparing the ground; some were hunting; some fishing; others tapping the maples; and all were more or less engaged, a thing unusual in a community of Indians. The sceptic of the refined world might have found in this pleasant vale and in those days of hardihood, an argument for Christianity and for its congruity with human nature, which no ingenuity or sophistry could invalidate. Intemperance was seen as seldom there as idleness; the spade had taken the place of the war club; the deadly tomahawk had been superseded by the useful adze; their only trail was the furrow fresh turned by the glistening share; the wild war halloo no longer awoke the echo of the woods; but the Christian hymn, sung sweetly as an Italian air, had developed the exquisite harmony of the Delaware tongue, and embodied the beating spirit of the Delaware believer. Nature to them - the children of Nature-began to wear the

smiling face of the fond mother; for a new spirit drank the spectacle.' The very birds were heard with new feelings; the humming bird buzzing from flower to flower; the wild swan as he trumpeted his voice through the winding vale; and the mocking bird tuning his hundred little pipes to varied melody; all were vocal with praise to their CREATOR; and as the peaceful Indian listened he felt grateful to that CREATOR that he had sent the white man to tell his existence, his glory, and the infinite mercy of HIS SON. Ah! little did he think that the white man, with murder in his heart, was near!

The shrill winding of the horn, at the hour of noon, drew the peaceful Indians of Gnattenhutten to the sugar camp below the village. Squaws, papooses, men and missionaries, all save young Schebosch, were there to partake of their dinner under the tall juicy maples, and to witness the grand 'stirring off.' Each family had a cluster of trees, a lot of troughs, and a large brass kettle. The night preceding had been cool, and under the warmth of the morning sun the sap had flowed freely. The women, as was customary, had collected it, boiled and attended it through all its forms, from the thin sweet water to the honied syrup; and now it was reduced to the requisite thickness; all were to assist in pouring it into the broad wooden dishes, and in stirring it briskly until it should granulate and become their palatable and perhaps only luxury. It was a merry time, as all such times yet are among the sugar-makers. Children ran hither and thither in gleeful activity; women directed the operations and the men with hearty cheerfulness obeyed. More than one bright-eyed Delaware girl leaped for joy at her success in the test of cooling and stirring. It was at this hilarious hour that the marauders unnoticed surrounded the camp. What a victory was theirs! The triumph of the snake over the tuneful, unconscious bird! As if ashamed of their easy victory, and seeing the peaceful and harmless occupation of the Indians, the marauders approached them in an apparently friendly spirit; they made excuses for their appearance; they told the amazed and unsuspecting Indians to go to their homes; at the same time promising that no injury should happen to them; but that they would be protected from the British and hostile Indians. These Americans, as they called themselves, condoled with the Indians for their former perils and losses; and the Indians, in guilelessness of heart, believed what was promised, went home with the Americans, and treated them with generous and Christian hospitality. During the afternoon, the whites found a barrel of wine, which the Indians used in partaking of the Lord's supper; and on this discovery, as a pretext, they waxed very wroth; pretended great anger; hinted at the tampering of the British; and threatened to send all the Indians immediately to Pittsburgh. The Indians heard this with no less surprise than resignation; they delivered to the whites, at their demand, all the guns, hatchets, and other weapons of the village. Moreover, in their unsuspecting innocence they showed these Americans all the things which they had secreted (as was the custom then) in the woods out of the sight of the hostile Indians, who occasionally visited their village. They also emptied their bee

hives to please and entertain their guests. In the mean time, these cunning whites expressed an earnest desire to see the neighboring Moravian town of Salem, on the west bank of the river. A party of whites were conducted thither; expressed great good-will toward the Indians there; and by heightening their danger, persuaded them to give them all the things in their possession, promising to return them when they should all arrive at Pittsburgh, where the kind care of the Americans would recompense them for their hasty removal. These hypocritical desperadoes had the audacity to profess themselves Christians, and in order to lull entirely any wakeful suspicion, they questioned the Indians about Scriptural truth; professed great anxiety for the salvation of their souls; and thus, by detestable duplicity, completely won the confidence and love of the simple-hearted people. Would that this were mere fiction! It is too real; and if the history of the Indians of America, even of those whose conversion to Christianity had given them some reason to expect fair treatment, common honesty and decent respect from the white man, could be written if the sealed leaves which contain the recitals of meanness practised toward the Indians, converted and unconverted, could be opened to the light of impartiality, a catalogue of black and despicable crimes, lies, cheating and murders would be exhibited, that would make the heart of the good citizen ache, and enlist his sympathies with the scattered remnants of the red race who yet breathe the air of the western wilds. We forget, in our loud cry for the West and Oregon, that every impulse of the nation levels an Indian mound, and every step of the pioneer treads upon an Indian grave. All that we shall hereafter tell of Gnattenhutten shall be told with a colorless pen. While the band which had gone to Salem were conducting the Salem Indians to Gnattenhutten, the remaining whites attacked and drove together the defenceless and startled Indians of Gnattenhutten, and bound them all. By a preconcerted design, the conductors of the Salem Indians turned upon them before they reached Gnattenhutten, despoiled them of every thing, even to their pocket knives, bound and conducted them in triumph into Gnattenhutten.

The marauders now held a meeting to concert farther measures. 'What shall be done with the prisoners?' was the question; and in council assembled they deliberately declared, by a majority of voices, that they all should be murderd on the next day. The cold bloodedness of the deliberation chills the sickened heart. Is it possible that men with an idea above the cougar of the wood, with a feeling above the snake of the grass, could deliberate on so heinous a deed? For the honor of human nature we rejoice to know that a good minority of the band were made up of something like men; men whose hearts the simple goodness and Christian meekness of the Indians had touched. These dissented, entreated; but the vote passed; they wrung their hands in unaffected grief, calling God to witness that they were innocent of the blood of the harmless Christian Indian. The majority were unmoved; they only differed as to the mode; some in mercy were for burning them alive; others pre

ferred the pleasure of taking with their own hands the scalps of the red skins; thus imitating as near as possible the worst feature in the worst of the savage character. The latter mode, as we might well suppose, was agreed upon. We can better conceive than describe the terror with which the Indians heard this. But they had an Indian's fortitude, and blent with it, a Christian's hope! They passed the night of the seventh of March in prayer and inter-consolation. On the morning, bound two and two, they were led into two houses; slaughter-houses, as the whites pleasantly named them; one for the men, the other for the women and children. Some of the band seemed impatient to dabble in the blood of innocence; a sort of delusion, like that which prevailed once in Europe, when persons thought they would become supremely happy if they could take the life of a child, or the sinless life of any one, seems to have seized upon these marauders. The Indians told those who were earliest in the house to gloat their eyes on the sight, to taunt and to jeer; that they were ready to die; that they had commended their souls to God; and that they were assured that He would take them to HIMSELF forever. After this declaration, the murders began.

Oh! that such black, inhuman deeds should have been done on the virgin soil of Muskingum! We can hear without emotion of the deaths by faggot, sword and rack in the old world; they seem to be associated with the soil of the other hemisphere, and sometimes necessary for the purification and advancement of man. We can bear the sacrifice of blood in the contemporaneous deaths on our Atlantic coast; because every drop there shed throbbed with the life and liberty of future millions; but in this case, no association softens the contemplation; no iron grip of necessity demanded the sacrifice; but the associations of early days and happy hours around these scenes only serve, like the innocent infant in the painting of David, to make the murderous Cain start horribly from the canvass.

All Gnattenhutten and Salem were murdered, save two boys, who although scalped, miraculously escaped. According to the accounts of the murderers themselves, a noble resolution and a Christian resignation made glorious their death. We cannot follow the murderers farther: how they sacked the town and fired it; how they destroyed the other Moravian towns; how they rioted like fiends in carnage and blood, may yet be told by some one who writes the history of the American Moravian. We have endeavored to detail the circumstances connected with the fall of Gnattenhutten only. It is a subject somewhat obscure. Very few of those who now plough around and over the spots where these events took place, can tell the tale of the Moravian. The little which is known is indefinite; and thousands on the Ohio canal pass daily near this scene of early martyrdom, without a thought or an association by which to point out and celebrate the spot. The great West, with dashing progressiveness, sweeps by the few spots upon which the gray light of antiquity would fain fall and hallow. The genius of the Past shrinks pale and affrighted before the genius of the Future; while the latter, with the eagle glance of enterprise, 'points with untiring pur

pose, onward, onward!' When this utilitarian frenzy shall have subsided into the madness of poetry, and the future poet of America shall write the epic by which the nuptials of America and Liberty shall be celebrated, and the men who, by proud oppression driven,' raised the standard of cis-Atlantic freedom shall be immortalized; may he not forget, in his rapture at the grandeur of his theme, to weave into his song a strain of pathos for the sufferings and of sublimity for the heroism of those Indian Christian martyrs who fell on the far-off banks of the Muskingum !

S. 8, C.

SOME spirit led him on, herself disguising,
Through all the varied forms of Nature fair;

Through groves and shining vales, o'er heights surprising,
Through gem-illumined caves and realms of air;
From all things where they sped, a magic light,
A smile of beauty, met his charméd sight.

And to his wakened soul the truth came stealing,

"T was Beauty's spirit, whose loved form he sought,
That made the world so fair, its charms revealing,
And fired his mind with art-inspiring thought.
He seized the pencil with impulsive joy,
To consecrate his powers in Art's employ:

And strive to body forth in fairest imitation

The exalted beauties we in Nature see;

To fix in lasting Form, in re-creation

Save, the transient charms that with the moment flee;
And with ideal grace and truth combined,

Express the lofty image of the mind.

And we have seen, in few brief years, with gladness,
His youthful genius veteran powers outrun;

But now, our hope and joy are turned to sadness!
For his career, so worthily begun,

With glorious promise of his riper age,

Has closed in death, in manhood's earliest stage!

Alas! what pain to him, to us what deep affliction,
Those first dread warnings brought that he must die!
When, hopeless of relief, the sad conviction
In silence settled in his speaking eye;

To see with sorrow dimmed its joyous glow,

Its genius-radiance, which ne'er ceased to flow.

Still placid was his mien; without repining,
His gentle nature bore the mournful fate;
Yet one could see, while manfully resigning
His cherished hopes, a shadow of regret;
The yearning that all gifted souls must feel,
Some work to finish, with Perfection's seal.