Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/495

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As was remarked on a previous page, the Moravians — taking up their residences with Indian communities, and devoting themselves in schools, workshops, and fields to the joint objects of civilizing and Christianizing the natives — found in their early zeal and efforts more rewarding results than have been attained by any other Protestant fellowship. Men that are justly entitled to the epithets “saintly” and “apostolic,” coming from a pietistic communion in Germany, gathered considerable bodies of the natives in communities, — first in New York and Pennsylvania, and afterwards in Ohio. These gave such promise of full success as gratified, if they did not reward, the devotion and hopefulness of the missionaries. But the same tragic fate, from similar causes and agencies, befell most of these communities at a critical stage of their training, as was visited upon Eliot's Indian towns in Massachusetts. Except that in the case of the Moravian settlements not only Indians hostile to their objects, but whites also, were the agents of their destruction in the closing years of the French war, and in the distracting strifes of our own Revolution.

Only in the most summary terms can we recognize here the continuance, under various modifications and adaptations, of missionary efforts devised by Protestants for the benefit of the Indians. They have never been neglected or intermitted up to our time. Humane and generous sentiments instigating a work of obligation, with funds supplied to sustain the work, have devised a succession of schemes of local or general operation in the service of the Indians. Very many of such among them as showed promise of