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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