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Hendrik Hudson anchored his ship, the Half Moon, off New York Island in 1609, the Delawares stood in great numbers on the shore to receive him, exclaiming, in their innocence, “Behold! the gods have come to visit us!”

More than a hundred years later, the traditions of this event were still current in the tribe. The aged Moravian missionary, Heckewelder, writing in 1818, says:

“I at one time, in April, 1787, was astonished when I heard one of their orators, a great chief of the Delawares, Pachgantschilias by name, go over this ground, recapitulating the most extraordinary events which had before happened, and concluding in these words: ‘I admit that there are good white men, but they bear no proportion to the bad; the bad must be the strongest, for they rule. They do what they please. They enslave those who are not of their color, although created by the same Great Spirit who created them. ‘They would make slaves of us if they could; but as they cannot do it, they kill us. There is no faith to be placed in their words. They are not like the Indians, who are only enemies while at war, and are friends in peace. They will say to an Indian, “My friend; my brother!” They will take him by the hand, and, at the same moment, destroy him. And so you’ (he was addressing himself to the Christian Indians at Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania) ‘will also be treated by them before long. Remember that