Ohio History Journal

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THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND MORAVIAN MISSION

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND MORAVIAN MISSION

ON THE PETTQUOTTING *

by FRED COYNE HAMIL

Assistant Professor of History, Wayne University

New Salem, the original Moravian mission on the Pettquotting

(now the Huron) River in northern Ohio, was abandoned in 1791

after four troublous years. In 1804 another settlement of Christian

Indians was made close to the old site, but it too failed after a few

years and had to be given up. This second venture had its incep-

tion at a General Mission Conference held at Goshen on the

Muskingum in the fall of 1803 during an official visit of Bishop

Loskiel. Gottfried Sebastian Oppelt of Fairfield on the River

Thames in Canada was selected to lead part of the Fairfield con-

gregation to the Pettquotting the following spring. John Benjamin

Haven was ordained at this time and chosen to assist Oppelt at the

new mission.

John Schnall, who had been present from Fairfield, returned to

the Thames with the news. Most of the Indians there immediately

expressed a desire to go to the Pettquotting, but after the matter

had been discussed in council, several advised waiting for another

year. They believed the chief of the Tawas who had gone to the

Cuyahoga to hunt for the winter should first be notified. Oppelt

thought that the objections of these Indians had some justification,

but just before Christmas he visited the American Indian agent

Jouett at Detroit who gave the plan his hearty support. Oppelt felt

that this was more valuable than the consent of the chiefs, who had

little prestige with their own people because of their evil ways of

living.

Preparations continued during the early months of 1804 for

the exodus of part of the Fairfield congregation. For a time it was

 

* This account of the founding of the second Pettquotting colony is based on

a manuscript in German, with a translation in English, in the Burton Historical

Collection in the Detroit Public Library. It is entitled Excerpts from a Report of

Br. Oppelt about the Start of an Indian Mission in Pettquotting to the end of the

Year 1804, and is part I of number II of the Congregation News, 1806. See also

John Heckewelder, Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the

Delaware and Mohegan Indians (Philadelphia, 1820), 417-418.

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