it in no wise lessens the claim which the memory of both these great men has upon the gratitude of posterity. A glance at contemporaneous history will serve to show how novel and comprehensive were the views of colonization held by the great Gustavus. We are told that in 1626, Usselinx obtained from the king a charter for a commercial company with the privilege of founding colonies. The charter provided that the capital might be subscribed for by persons from any country, and colonists were invited to join the expedition from every part of Europe. In this invitation. the proposed colony was described as a benefit to the persecuted, a security to the honor of the wives and daughters of those whom war and bigotry had made fugitives, a blessing to the "common man," and to the whole Protestant world. What then was the condition of the Protestant world in 1626, that it needed such a refuge beyond the seas? I need only remind you of the gathering of the storm in England which, three years later, drove the Puritans across the ocean to found the colony of Massachusetts Bay. The Protestants in Germany and Denmark were at that time in the midst of that storm, exposed to all its pitiless fury. The thirty years war-a war unexampled in history for the cruel sufferings which it inflicted upon non-combatants-was at its height. The Protestants were yielding everywhere, nothing could resist the military power of Wallenstein, who, supporting his army upon the pillage of the miserable inhabitants of the country, pressed forward to the shores of the Baltic, with the avowed intention of making that sea an Austrian lake. The great Protestant leaders, Mansfeld, Christian of Brunswick, the King of Denmark, were dead, and their followers and their families were a mass of dispersed fugitives fleeing towards the north, and imploring succor. Gustavus had not then embarked in the German War, but his heart was full of sympathy for the cause in which these poor people were suffering as martyrs, and I think it cannot be doubted that this scheme of colonization occurred to him as a practical method of reducing the horrors which he was forced to witness. The faith of the king in the wisdom of this scheme seems never to have wavered. In the hour of his complete triumph over their enemies, he begged the German Princes, whom he had rescued from ruin, to permit their subjects to come here and live under the protection of his powerful arm. He spoke to them just before the battle of Lützen, of the proposed colony as "the jewel of his crown," and after he had fallen a martyr to the cause of Protestantism on that field, his chancellor, acting, as he says, at the express desire of the late king, renewed the patent for the colony, extended its benefits more fully to Germany, and secured the official confirmation of its provisions by the Diet, at Frankfort. The colony which came to these shores in 1638 was not the colony planned by the great Gustavus. The commanding genius which could forecast the permanent settlement of a free State here, based upon the principle of religious toleration-the same principle in the defence of which Swedish blood was poured out like water upon the plains of Germany -had been removed from this world. With him had gone, not perhaps the zeal for his grand and noble design, but the power of carrying it out. It has been said that the principle of religious toleration which was agreed to at the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, which closed the thirty years' war, and soon after became part of the public law of Europe, is the corner-stone of our modern civilization, and that it has been worth more to the world than all the blood that was shed to establish it. With this conflict and this victory, the fame of Gustavus Adolphus is inseparately associated; but we ought not to forget that when during the long struggle he sometimes feared that liberty of conscience could never be established upon an enduring basis in Europe, his thoughts turned to the shores of the Delaware as the spot where his cherished ideal of human society, so far in advance of the civilization of the age in which he lived, might become a glorious reality. The Swedish ladies next sang The Swedish Folksongs, A Serenade, by Bishop, and closed with "Skynda po" (Haste along) of Wahlin. NOTES ON THE IROQUOIS AND DELAWARE INDIANS. COMMUNICATIONS FROM CONRAD WEISER TO CHRISTOPHER SAur, which APPEARED IN THE YEARS 1746-1749 IN HIS NEWSPAPER printed at GERMANTOWN, ENTITLED "THE HIGH GERMAN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL WRITER, OR A COLLECTION OF IMPORTANT COMPILED BY ABRAHAM H. CASSELL. FRIEND CHRISTOPHER SAUR: TULPEHOCKEN, December, 1746. According to your desire, I will give you herewith a short but true account of the Indians, their belief, confidence or trust in the great Being, as I have myself, from my own experience, learned during frequent intercourse with them from my youth up, namely from 1714 until this date. If the word religion means a formal belief in certain written Articles of Faith, such as, prayer, singing, churchgoing, baptism, the Lord's Supper, or other well-known Christian ordinances, or even heathen worship, then we can truly say: the Indians, or so-called Iroquois, and their neighbors have no religion, for of such a one we see and hear nothing among them. But, if by the word religion we understand the knitting of the soul to God, and the intimate relation to, and hunger after the highest Being arising therefrom, then we must certainly allow this apparently barbarous people a religion, for we find traces among them that they have a united trust in God, and sometimes (although quite seldom) united appeals to Him. It would be unnecessary to give detailed proofs of this. I will give but one or two instances, which I have from my own experience, and I have seen and heard myself from them. 1. When in the year 1737, I was sent for the first time to Onondago, at the request of the Government of Virginia, I left home at the end of February quite inconsiderately to under take a journey of 500 English miles through a wilderness, where there were neither highways nor paths, neither men nor, at that period of the year, even animals to be found to stay our hunger. I had a German and three Indians with me: when we had travelled about one hundred and fifty miles, we came into a narrow valley, on both sides of which lay terrible mountains covered about three feet deep with snow; in the valley itself the snow was about eighteen inches deep; now this valley was not above half a mile wide, but over thirty miles long; in the middle of the valley throughout its length ran a rather large stream, very swift, and so crooked that it ran continually from one side to the other and passed away by the lofty rocks on which the mountains seemed to be founded. Now, in order not to wade this stream too often at that time of the year, as besides it was three feet deep more or less, we tried to pass along the slope of the mountains; now the snow, as I have said before, was about three feet deep on the mountain and frozen hard, so that we could walk over it on level ground; but here we were obliged to cut holes in the crust of snow with the small hatchets which we carried with us, so that our feet could hold, and we clung to the bushes with our hands, and thus we climbed on; but the old Indian's foot slipped and he fell, and what he was holding on to with his hand (namely, a part of the root of a fallen fir-tree) broke off, and he slid down, as if from the roof of a house; but, as he carried a little pack on his back held by a band across his breast, according to their custom, it so happened that after he had gone about ten paces, he was caught in a little tree as thick as an arm, for his pack happened to hang on one side and he on the other, held together by the carrying band; the two other Indians could not render any assistance; but my German companion Stoffel Stump went to his help, although not without evident peril of his life. I too could not stir a foot until I received help, and, therefore, we seized the first opportunity to descend again from the mountain into the valley, which was not until after another half hour of hard work with hands and feet. We bent a tree downwards where the Indian had fallen; when we came again into the valley, we went some what back, although not above one hundred paces, for we saw that if the Indian had slipped but four or five steps further, he would have fallen over a precipice one hundred feet high, down upon pointed rocks; the Indian stood with astonishment, and grew pale as he saw the rocks, and broke out in these words in his language: "I thank the great Lord and Ruler of the world, that he had mercy on me and was willing that I shall live longer." This he said with outstretched arms, very earnestly and emphatically, which words I then put down in my Journal thus; this happened on the 25th of March, 1737, as I have said. 2. The following 8th of April we were still on the journey, and I was utterly worn out by cold and hunger and so long a journey, not to mention other hardships; a fresh snow had fallen about twenty inches deep; I found myself still nearly three days' journey from Onondago in a terrible forest. My strength was so exhausted that my whole body trembled and shook to such a degree that I thought I should fall down and die; I went to one side and sat down under a tree, intending to give up the ghost there, to attain which end I hoped the cold of the night then approaching would assist me. My companions soon missed me, and the Indians came back and found me sitting there. I would not go any farther, but said to them in one word: "Here I will die." They were silent awhile; at last the old man began: "My dear companion, take courage, thou hast until now encouraged us, wilt thou now give up entirely? just think that the bad days are better than the good ones, for when we suffer much we do not sin, and sin is driven out of us by suffering. But the good days cause men to sin, and God cannot be merciful; but, on the other hand, when it goes very badly with us, God takes pity on us." I was therefore ashamed, and stood up and journeyed on as well as I could. 3. As I was journeying the previous year to Onondago and Joseph Spangenberg1 and two others travelled with me, it so Properly Bishop Augustus G. Spangenberg, of Bethlehem. In his religious enthusiasm he adopted the name of Joseph, and his wife, Eva, assumed the name of Mary. |