The fall colors are glorious throughout the commonwealth, though as I write this the weather is on the dreary side. I'm baffled to realize that I have one more blog post after this and then the month of October is done; it's like I blinked and it was over.
We haven't talked about the Moravians in a couple of minutes, so I thought I'd rectify that with a visit to what could be regarded as a lost settlement. I'm very low on images for this one, which is something I'm going to need to change eventually, but at least I can tell you a very interesting story.
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| The marker is situated at the intersection of U.S. Route 6 and Moravian Road, just outside of Wyalusing |
M'chwihilusing and its neighboring territories were considered the 'southern door' of the Iroquois Confederacy's land, so they considered it to be especially sacred and they guarded it heavily. They used it as a sort of temporary residence for refugee Natives who had been displaced by the incoming European settlers, and these were allowed to stay there until such time - if any - that the Confederacy agreed to adopt them into their holdings.
As we've seen in relation to other historical markers, the Moravians came to what would eventually be the United States to preach the Gospel to the Natives. They were strictly neutral when it came to conflicts, but they had quite a large amount of success in ministering to and converting the Natives they encountered. One of these Moravian missionaries was David Zeisberger, whom I first mentioned when I wrote about the ill-fated Gnadenhuetten in Carbon County.
David was already well-known to the Haudenosaunee because he had paid visits to the Mohawk Nation in upstate New York. He visited M'chwihilusing in 1763 and decided it would make an ideal setting for a new Christian Native settlement. He took up residence himself there, for a time, and invited converted Natives to join him in what he named Friedenshuetten - literally, "huts of peace." Through the Society of Friends in Philadelphia (Quakers), he appealed for and received the permission of the colonial government of Pennsylvania, who also agreed to supply the settlement with enough flour to last through their first year's harvest. Cows and horses were bought for the new settlement, along with seed-corn for planting, and in June of 1764 they first houses began to appear in the settlement. By the end of the summer, they had added a spacious meeting-house, or saal, and a winter dwelling, and a God's Acre cemetery was established following the first two deaths. Some of the village had to be rebuilt on higher ground following some flooding in 1768, but otherwise it was doing well, with Natives and Moravians living in harmony and, according to David Zeisberger's journal, somewhat blended their religions.
For the first few years, the residents of Friedenshuetten enjoyed a comfortable existence with no interference from the Iroquois Confederacy. However, in the early 1770s, things began to change. Spurred by their French allies, the nations of the Confederacy began once again raiding white settlements where English was the primary language, since France and England still hated each other quite a bit at that time. The neutrality of the Moravians did nothing to protect them from these raids, as they had already learned the hard way during the French and Indian War. In the specific case of Friedenshuetten, although the peaceful tendencies of the residents were known to and acknowledged by the Iroquois, their actual loyalties were harder to confirm. It didn't help that the Moravians were often visited by their Quaker friends, who tended to be more English in their sympathies. There were other concerns as well; although the settlement was firmly on Iroquois territory and had been established with the permission of the Confederacy, various other claimants were starting to come forward to try and prove that they had prior claims to the land.
(They were not. The Natives at Schoenbrunn and other nearby Moravian settlements were the victims of a massacre in 1782. But let's not think about that too much, at least not right now.)
The structures of Friedenshuetten, after the departure of its residents, were burned. Within just seven years, nature had reclaimed the site, fresh grass hiding all trace of what had once been. The land was sold to L. P. and Catherine Stalford, whose descendants retained at least some portion of it for more than two hundred years. It was later bought by a company called New Fortress Energy, who planned to build a liquefied natural gas plant on the grounds, but the plan was stalled for some time by both permitting issues and the efforts of local conservationists. It did eventually get built, and opened in 2021, adjacent to where the village once stood.
Friedenshuetten, during its existence, was regarded as something of a model of a Moravian Native settlement, and it was used as a pattern for other settlements established later. Although the precise footprint of Friedenshuetten isn't officially confirmed, a map survives from 1768, which shows the basic layout of the village - shingled log homes, Native huts, cornfields, grazing meadows, hayfields, the cemetery, springs, and forested areas where they harvested sugar maple and walnut trees. An artist, Brad Keeler, painted his idea of how it might have looked. Both the map and the art piece can be viewed on an informational sign next to the Friedenshuetten Monument. This nationally recognized historic marker was placed in 1871 by the Moravian Historical Society, and indicates the spot where they believed the village center to have been. It's the only surviving bit of the settlement known today.
That might change someday, though. In 1972, an excavation was conducted by students and teachers from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, and they performed a thorough dig in search of relics from the settlement. They found many items, including arrowheads and metal hooks, which were ultimately determined to have predated Friedenshuetten. They were unable to continue their search due to funding issues, but concluded that they had been digging in not quite the right spot; they should have gone a little farther west. So maybe eventually, another excavation will take place and bring up some souvenirs from the Moravian way of life. In the meantime, the items found in the vicinity can be viewed in the Wyalusing Valley Museum.
Sources and Further Reading:
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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