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Relig ion and American Culture: A Journa l of Interpretation , Volume 13, No. 1, pages 27–67.
© 2003 by The Cen ter for the Study of Religi on and Americ an Culture . All righ ts res erved.
Send reque sts for permis sion to reprint to: Rights and Pe rmissions, University of Ca lifornia Press,
Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.
ISSN: 1052-1151; online ISSN 1533-8568
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village
Rachel Wheeler
SARAH
She saw nothing with her Eyes, but her heart believed so in the
Saviour as if she had seen him and she had then such a feeling
of it, that she thought that if any one should pull the esh from
her bones she would nevertheless abide with him, and said she,
“I believe I should not have felt it neither, for my whole body
and heart felt a power from his wounds and blood.”1
RACHEL
wen ey giff mey scheyld When I give my child
suck en ey tenck an die blot en suck and I think about the blood and
wouns off auer söffger ey fühl mey wounds of our Savior I feel my
hat sam teims were wet en heart sometimes very wet and
so ey tenck mey scheyld saks de so I think my child sucks the
blot off auer söffger en ey fähl blood of our Savior and I feel
de ensels luck efter mey en the angels look after me and
mey scheyld. my child.2
In August 1742, a little-known scene of the Great Awakening
was unfolding in the Mahican villages that dotted the Housatonic
Valley region of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York.3 On Au-
gust 10, the colorful Moravian leader, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf,
arrived in the village of Shekomeko to check on the progress of the
newly founded mission. Six months earlier, he had overseen the bap-
tism of the rst three villagers. Their baptized names—Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob—expressed the Moravians’ grand hopes that the men
would be patriarchs to a new nation of believers. Zinzendorf was now
in Shekomeko to witness as these three men assumed the Christian
ofces of elder, teacher, and exhorter. Twenty miles away and two
days later, melancholic missionary David Brainerd preached the Pres-
byterian gospel of salvation in hopes of saving the residents of Pach-
gatgoch from Moravian heresy.
28 Religion and American Culture
But it is not the denominational rivalry of Moravians and Cal-
vinists that is of interest here. Rather it is the emergence of a distinc-
tive indigenous Christianity that grew up am id the convulsions of re-
ligious enthusiasm sweeping the northern colonies. That August day
in Shekomeko, Abraham’s wife was baptized. From then on, she
would be called Sarah.4 And in Pachgatgoch, a young woman named
Amanariochque listened as Brainerd preached an emotional sermon
from Job 14:14 while members of his audience “cried out in great dis-
tress.”5 Alth ough Brainerd fanned the ames of revival in Pachgat-
goch, it was the Moravians who established a mission in the village
and who, in February 1743, baptized Amanariochque, bestowing the
name Rachel on the young woman. And it was a Moravian mission-
ary, Christian Friedrich Post, who sought Rachel’s hand in marriage
just weeks after her baptism.
Sarah and Rachel lived out their lives as Indians and Chris-
tians, as wives and mothers. Temperamentally, Sarah and Rachel
could not have been more different. Like her biblical namesake, Sarah
was the matriarch, more advanced in years, devoted to her husband,
her children, and her community. Rachel was just twenty-one at the
time of her baptism, with a ery temperament and a longing to be a
mother. These differences of personality and lifestage are vividly re-
ected in the tenor of their Christian expressions. Despite these differ-
ences, a common thread links their Christian practice: both Sarah and
Rachel engaged the Moravian blood and wounds theology and prac-
ticed Christian ritual in ways that sought to preserve, sustain, and
nourish self, family, and community. While Christianity became a
source of empowerment for some native northeasterners, it was also
a source of signicant tension within the individual and between
themselves and their families and larger comm unities. An exploration
of Sarah and Rachel’s practice of Christian ritual begins to uncover a
unique tradition of native Christianity, demonstrating the way Chris-
tianity was indigenized as it was literally incorporated through such
rituals as communion and such human experiences as pregnancy,
birth, and nursing.6 While Sarah and Rachel found new sources of
power in Christian ritual, they also experienced the factionalizing
power of Christianity as the newly drawn lines between Christian
and non-Christian sometimes bisected the very families they were
struggling to hold together.
Until recently, native Christianity has received relatively little
scholarly attention. Except for early treatments of mission history
that attributed missionary “successes” to the power of the gospel
and “failures” to the “backward” nature of Indian society, all schol-
ars of cultural encounters have had to struggle with how to relate the
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 29
conditions of colonialism to the acceptance of Christianity.7 Beginning
in the 1960s, necessary correctives to triumphalism emerged as ethno-
history joined forces with revisionist and social history, stressin g the
high cost of colonization exacted on native peoples and cultures. With
greater attention to the complexity of native cultures came a move-
ment to depict native peoples as historical actors, not simply histori-
cal victims.8 This interest in native resistance led to an emphasis on
nativist “revitalization movements.”9 Recent decades have also seen
substantial advances in illuminating the impact of colonialism on gen-
der relations in native societies.10 Together, these various strains of
scholarship have added immeasurably to our understanding of na-
tive societies and the tragic consequences of colonialism. Yet one pop-
ulation has remained understudied: native Christians. Generally, na-
tive Christianity has been understood as the result of a colonization of
consciousness or a thin veneer that served to obscure the continuation
of traditional practices from missionary view.11 These interpretations
fall short, however, by preserving a central element of the older, tri-
umphalist scholarship they were reacting against. The categories of
noble and ignoble remained (with the casting reversed) and, more
signicantly, the missionaries were unimpeached as sole deners of
Christianity.12
What is needed, and what has been emerging in recent years,
is a fresh look at mission communities that treats missionaries and
Christian Indians as legitimate interpreters and practitioners of Chris-
tianity who lived, practiced, and believed within inextricably linked
yet distinct historical and cultural contexts. By understanding Chris-
tianity as that which is constructed through ritual practice by those
who identify as Christian, this approach circumvents the preoccupa-
tion with questions of authenticity and allows for an investigation of
mission experience that gives full consideration to social context. This
is nothing new, of course, but something long known to students of
popular and local religion. Methods used in studying the relationship
of lay and clerical Christianity in the colonial context are particularly
well suited for use with the Moravian mission sources.13 A recent es-
say by Anne Brown and David Hall provides a useful model for
studying Sarah and Rachel’s Christian practice. In focusing on the
practice of baptism and communion in early New England, the au-
thors are able to identify where lay people assented to ministerial dic-
tates and where they charted their own path. Whether lay people fol-
lowed their minister’s teachings or not, argue Brown and Hall, “their
behavior reveals an insistence on aligning religious practice with fam-
ily strategies of preservation and incorporation.”14 The same could be
written of Sarah and Rachel. In the social ends to which Sarah and
30 Religion and American Culture
Rachel directed the spiritual power accessed through Christian ritual,
we can begin to identify a distinctly native, and distinctly feminine,
Christianity.
Before returning to Sarah and Rachel, the Moravians need
some introduction. The missionaries who arrived in Shekomeko in
the 1740s traced their roots to followers of the fteenth-century mar-
tyr, Jan Hus. Facing violent persecution in the fteenth and again in
the seventeenth century, the movement continued largely under-
ground until being rekindled in the 1720s, when members gained asy-
lum on the estate of Lutheran Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Saxony.
The Renewed Unity of the Brethren emerged as unique combination
of Pietist and pre-Reformation tendencies. Out of zeal and necessity
(Zinzendorf was exiled from Saxony in 1736), the Brethren launched
mission outposts from Greenland to the West Indies to Georgia. The
mission at Shekomeko was begun in 1740 and, by 1741, Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, had become the headquarters for the Moravians’ North
American missions.15
Perhaps the safest generalization to be made about Moravian
missionaries is that they confound all generalizations about colonial
missionaries.16 Protestants, they preached little of the Word of God
and much of the love of Jesus. They made extensive use of music and
images, and thus came under suspicion as “papists” from their Anglo-
Protestant neighbors.17 Evangelicals, they experienced conversion as a
loving union with the Savior, not a painful recognition of innate sin-
fulness and utter dependence on God.18 Missionaries, they hardly t
the Edwardsean ideal of the lone, tortured laborer in the wilderness
striving rst to civilize then Christianize the heathens. Instead, they
often worked in couples or pairs of couples, and on the whole seemed
to enjoy life among their native hosts.19 These differences from other
missionaries were precisely what gained Moravians entry into native
communities. Not only was their approach signicantly less cultur-
ally aggressive than that of their Anglo-Protestant counterparts, but
Moravians and Mahicans also quickly discovered that they shared a
dislike and suspicion of the general run of European colonists. Above
all, however, it was the Moravians’ distinctive “blood and wounds”
theology and the concomitant ritual practice that generated sus-
tained interest in native communities.
The blood and wounds of Christ formed the central pillar of
mid-eighteenth-century Moravian theology. Volumes could be writ-
ten about this era known as the Sifting Time, but for purposes here,
three central aspects of the blood and wounds theology deserve spe-
cial attention: the pervasiveness of familial metaphors, the emphasis
on physical and spiritual sustenance derived from the wounds of
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 31
Christ, and, nally, believers’ experience of Christ’s nearness. These
elements resulted in a presentation of the Christian message that was
readily incorporated into traditional Mahican religion and culture.
Moravians elaborated a kinship of Christian fellowship: God
the father, the Holy Spirit as mother, and Jesus the son of God. Christ
is both mother of the Church (born of Jesus’ side hole) and bride-
groom to the believer.20 Earthly ties mirror these divine relations and
are, thereby, sanctied. The distinctive choir system by which peer
groups lived and worshiped together enacted Moravian kinship the-
ology. While, in theory, Moravians did not believe in transubstantia-
tion, in practice, they experienced the blood and body of Christ viv-
idly and viscerally. They were baptized in the blood of Christ, they
sang of swimming in the wounds of Christ, they desired to crawl into
the side hole of Christ, they were revived and sustained by drinking
Christ’s blood. The wounds, experienced most immediately through
communion, offered sustenance, respite, and often spiritual ecstasy,
expressions of which can readily be found in hymns, litanies, letters,
and diaries.21 Not only was consumption and incorporation of Christ’s
body prominently featured in Moravian worship, but Christ’s imme-
diate presence was constantly invoked, so much so that some com-
munities appointed Christ as Chief Elder. His guidance was sought
through the use of the lot on questions mundane and grand.22
While many colonists found Moravian religious culture dan-
gerous, smacking as it did of “enthusiasm,” its spiritual grammar was
not unlike that of native religious practice, and Mahicans enlivened
this grammar with the vocabulary of their experience, experience
deeply marked by colonialism.23 As historian John Webster Grant has
written, for a missionary message to be communicated and appropri-
ated, the message must provide sufcient continuity that it is readily
comprehensible, yet it must also be different enough that the per-
ceived shortcomings of the status quo are addressed.24 More than a
century of contact with Europeans had brought drastic changes to
Mahican society prior to the arrival of the Moravian missionaries.
Moravian ritual practice offered sufcient continuity with Mahican
understandings of spiritual efcacy to be recognizable, yet offered a
new theology that helped to naturalize societal changes already under
way. While the sources available for early historical era Mahican cul-
ture are sparse, especially when compared with neighboring Iroquois
and coastal New England communities, it is possible to sketch the
outlines of Mahican religious, social, and economic practices and
some of the changes wrought by contact with European settlers.
The people of the middle Hudson River Valley were a horticul-
tural, matrilineal, clan-based society. Economic activities were sharply
32 Religion and American Culture
divided along gender lines, with the men and women occupying
largely distinct spheres. Women’s sphere was the domestic—producing
and processing food, raising children, and constructing homes. Men’s
activities often took them away from the village, whether to hunt,
trade, or wage war.25 Kathleen Bragdon suggests that, during the
early historical period, riverine, horticultural, and matrilineal socie-
ties like the Mahicans tended to be less hierarchical than coastal Al-
gonquian peoples, and women likely had considerable power.26
Deeds dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries conveying
land in traditional Mahican territory frequently were signed by
women, suggesting that women maintained substantial power in
community affairs into the colonial period, even as the social struc-
tures of Mahican society were adapting to the colonial realities of dis-
ease, the trade, and European encroachment.27
The century of contact with Europeans prior to the arrival of
the Moravian missionaries saw signicant cultural change among the
Mahicans and their neighbors. Henry Hudson had sailed directly into
Mahican territory in 1609, and a lively trade was soon established.
While the trade initially bolstered Mahican status among neighboring
tribes, it also brought with it a host of problems, including disease, in-
creasing demand for skins and furs, and increasing hostilities with
neighboring tribes over access to the trade.28 Diminished numbers
and increasing pressures from encroaching Dutch settlers along the
fertile banks of the Hudson River prompted many Mahicans to reset-
tle to the eastern reaches of their historic hunting territory near the
Housatonic River, consolidating with Housatonic Indians who had
also suffered great population losses.
By the late seventeenth century, epidemic disease and eco-
nomic pressures were spurring change in Mahican cultural patterns.
On the one hand, women had less direct contact with the forces of
change. On the other, increased trade and warfare elevated men’s
roles and likely disrupted the balance of gender roles. The need to
travel farther to hunt and trap necessitated smaller social units, thus
elevating the status of the nuclear family, transforming the localized
clan system and prompting the development of centralized tribal
leadership. Anthropologist Ted Brasser cites evidence of a shift to single-
family dwellings from the traditional longhouse, built to house sixteen
to eighteen families, and now used primarily as the chief ’s residence
and for ceremonial purposes.29 Additionally, by the late seventeenth
century, many Mahicans found it necessary to supplement hunting
and agricultural production with wages earned as day laborers on
nearby Dutch farms.30 What these changes meant in concrete terms
for Mahican women and their experiences of family life is impossible
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 33
to know with any certainty. But it is clear that, at the time Moravian
missionaries arrived in Shekomeko, Mahican cultural traditions were
in ux as individuals and families struggled to adapt to a rapidly
changing world. Conference minutes from weekly meetings between
missionaries and villagers testify to the strain on marriages and fam-
ily relationships under the press of colonialism.31
Even more difcult to assess than the broad outlines of pre- or
early-contact social structures is the shape and content of Mahican re-
ligious practice and ideology. Little direct evidence of non-Christian
religious practice survives from the rst years of the missions, al-
though there are a few tantalizing pieces of evidence. Ebenezer
Poohpoonuc, the rst Mahican to be baptized at the nearby Congre-
gational mission in Stockbridge, offered his commentary to mission-
ary John Sergeant on the occasion of a religious ceremony. Sergeant
asked about his people’s religious beliefs, and Poohpoonuc replied
that some believed that everything worked according to its own laws,
and some believed the sun to be a god, or at least home to god. Most,
he reported, believed there was one supreme invisible being who was
the maker of all things. Sergeant watched as an old man stood over a
recently killed deer and implored, “O great God pity us, grant us
Food to eat, afford us good and comfortable sleep, preserve us from
being devoured by the Fowls that y in the Air. This Deer is given in
Token that we acknowledge thee the Giver of all Things.” Following
the ceremony, the man received a payment of wampum, and the meat
was boiled and distributed to everyone, with an extra portion given
to a widow. When asked about the origins of the tradition, Poohpoo-
nuc answered that there had once been a man among them who came
down from heaven with snow shoes. The prophet cleared the country
of monsters and taught the people the religious customs from the
land above. He then married a wife among the people and had two
children. While he prayed during a ceremony, he began to rise up
through the wigwam and the people begged him to leave one of his
children behind, which he did. The child also had extraordinary powers
and taught the people many things.32 Community ceremonies, like
the deer sacrice witnessed by Sergeant, sought to keep the world in
balance by acknowledging the favor of the spirits and offering a sacrice.
In saying that some believed that everything worked accord-
ing to its own laws, Poohpoonuc may well have been referring to the
individual element of native worship, in which individuals, after a
period of fasting or other trials, received in a dream a guardian spirit.
Missionary John Heckewelder afrmed that such beliefs were univer-
sal among the various tribes he had encountered. Boys were led
through a course of fasting and powerful medicines that brought on
34 Religion and American Culture
visions in which “he has interviews with the Mannitto or with spirits,
who inform him what he was before he was born and what he will be
after his death.” As a result, some come to believe themselves “under
the immediate protection of the celestial powers.” Moravian mission-
ary David Zeisberger offered a similar account, observing “there is
scarcely an Indian who does not believe that one or more of these
spirits has not been particularly given him to assist him and m ake
him prosper.” The particular spirit is made known in a dream and is
considered their “Manitto.”33 Through the dreams or visions, individ-
uals entered into relationships with particular spirits who could en-
sure their safe passage through life. The evidence is suggestive, if not
conclusive, that some Mahican women came to view the Moravian
Savior as a guardian spirit wh o offered protection and sustenance.
At rst glance, the sources recording native Christian expres-
sion, mediated as they are by missionaries, might easily be dismissed
as the wishful thinking of eager missionaries or the simple parroting
of neophytes intent on pleasing (or deceiving) their Christian teachers.
But a uniquely Mahican Christian voice (or voices, rather) begins to
emerge with careful attention to the context of these expressions.
While European Moravian expressions are properly understood within
a mystical Christian tradition whose goal is union with the divine, al-
most without fail Mahican evocations of the blood and wounds were
intended to bring about efcacious spiritual intercession toward the
sustenance—spiritual and physical—of self, family, and community.34
Sarah and Rachel turned to the blood of Christ in precisely these ways.
First, to Sarah. Identied in the Moravian records as “Wampa-
nosch,” Sarah was likely a member of the Paugusett or Potatuck Indi-
ans who inhabited the lower Housatonic Valley. This region had suffered
drastic population losses in recent years, and remnant populations
likely sought to secure their future through alliance and settlement
with Mahicans moving east to take up residence on their old hunting
grounds as their traditional homelands became increasingly crowded
with Dutch settlers.35 No mention is made in the Moravian records to
any living blood relatives Sarah may have had, suggesting that her
family may well have perished in the recent wave of smallpox to de-
scend on the region. Sarah’s marriage to Mamma’tnikan (later Abra-
ham) from nearby Shekomeko in the late 1710s or early 1720s might
well have cemented ties between the villages or even joined the two vil-
lages together. Mamma’tnikan was the grandson of Mammanochqua,
probably a woman sachem of the Esopus, who, before her death in the
early 1680s, had attempted to ensure that the lands including Sheko-
meko remained under her family’s control.36 That Sarah took up resi-
dence in her husband’s village (contrary to matrilineal traditions)
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 35
provides further evidence of the precarious position of her home
community, for as Kathleen Bragdon suggests, unilinear societies often
become more exible during stressful periods of colonization and/or
epidemic disease.37 Despite the odds, by the time the Moravian mis-
sionaries arrived in 1740, Sarah and Mamma’tnikan had been married
for probably close to twenty years, and, together, the couple had
raised several children to adulthood.38
Sarah and Abraham raised their children in an uncertain
world, a world with few relatives and precarious community ties. Just
as Sarah had lost many in her family and community to smallpox, so
Abraham’s grandmother, father, aunt, brother, and sister had died of
the disease. His mother had been killed by Mohawks when Abraham
was just eleven.39 Given the extent of such losses, the social fabric of
Shekomeko and surrounding communities must have been extremely
fragile. Traditional cultural patterns that rested much on kinship net-
works would have become virtually impossible to maintain. At the
same time Sarah and Abraham were trying to build a new family and
community, Abraham was struggling to secure his rights to his ances-
tral lands that were increasingly encroached upon by New York set-
tlers. It was out of this frustration that Abraham rst considered
Christianity. A drinking bout following yet another unsuccessful trip
to the New York governor brought about a vision that prompted
Abraham to visit the mission at Stockbridge. Apparently unimpressed,
Abraham returned to Shekomeko, and, a year later, in New York,
making yet another (futile) plea for justice, he and a companion were
drunk when they encountered Moravian missionary Christian Hein-
rich Rauch, fresh off the boat from Europe.40
Despite initial reservations, Abraham found the Moravian
message and mission program appealing in some measure. Moravi-
ans offered access to new sources of spiritual power, few demands of
cultural change (especially in comparison to the thorough cultural
conversion expected at Stockbridge), and the prospect of a continued
presence on ancestral lands. Sarah, too, came to nd the Moravian mes-
sage and manner appealing, though for different reasons—reasons that
corresponded to (and sometimes challenged) traditional gender roles.
Sarah sought individual fortitude, spiritual sustenance, and new ties
to bind together family and community, all through the vehicle of
Christian ritual.
Sarah was baptized in August 1742 and participated in com-
munion for the rst time in March 1743. The rst hint we h ave of
Sarah’s experience of Christian ritual can be found in a diary entry
by missionary Gottlob Büttner on the eve of a celebration of the
Lord’s Supper in December of that year:
36 Religion and American Culture
She saw nothing with her eyes, but her heart believed so in the
Saviour as if she had seen him and she had then such a feeling
of it, that she thought that if any one should pull the esh from
her bones she would nevertheless abide with him, and said she,
“I believe I should not have felt it neither, for my whole body
and heart felt a power from his wounds and blood.”41
Rachel had a similar experience, testifying that, when she experienced
the blood and wounds of Christ, someone could pour scalding water
over her without her marking it. It was as though she “stood before
God in his house” and could not tell whether she walked on the earth
or oated in the air, but she felt the Savior and his angels sitting be-
side her.42 Sarah’s talk of esh being pulled from her bones and
Rachel’s of scalding water being poured over her, at rst glance,
seems to be of a piece with the graphic blood and wounds theology of
the Moravians. But the imagery is altogether different from that com-
monly employed by European Moravians, evoking instead practices
associated with ritualized torture among many Algonquian and Iro-
quois peoples. Sarah would certainly have known of such torture
practices even if she had no rsthand experience—her mother-in-law
had been tortured and killed by French-allied Indians and other vil-
lagers had surely suffered similar fates.43
While most commonly associated with the Iroquois, there is
considerable evidence that ritual torture of captives was practiced by
Mahican and Delaware peoples as well. Captives were seized from
enemy tribes to appease the deaths of family members. The power, and
the obligation, to quench the crying blood of lost relatives belonged to
women, who could appease the death either by the adoption of the
captive or by mandating torture and death. If the captive was to be
killed—a more likely fate for men than women and children—the
whole village gathered to participate in the ritualized torture, with
women playing the central role. As captives endured the villagers’
torments, which often included application of burning brands, re-
moval of ngernails, or pouring hot liquids or sand over the victims,
they strove to conceal their suffering, thereby displaying spiritual for-
titude and power. Captors admired the stoic suffering of their cap-
tives for it testied to their great spiritual power, power that the captors
could appropriate through ritual consumption after the victim ex-
pired. According to Dutch observer van der Donck, all the while being
tortured, the captive “continues to sing and dance until life is extinct, re-
proaching his tormentors, deriding their conduct, and extolling the
bravery of his own nation,” thereby winning the respect of his cap-
tors.44 Observations made by missionary John Heckewelder over a
century later suggest a continuity of practice when he described the
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 37
ritualized torture of an accused murderer, who, “while undergoing
the most dreadful tortures,” will “rehearse all vile acts of the kind he
had committed during his life time, without showing fear of death,”
employing “an haughty tone, and with a pride,” in hopes that “at his
death, his soul may be permitted, to reenter the body of some unborn
infant.”45 The torture victim’s stoic suffering brought with it a chance
of rebirth.
Understanding Sarah and Rachel’s words against this back-
drop and the Moravian practice of communion suggests some in-
triguing possibilities about the intersection of gender, colonialism,
and Christian ritual. The Moravian symbolism surrounding com-
munion intersected in powerful ways with native rituals of torture.
Moravians placed especial emphasis on Christ’s gruesome death, de-
scribing in great detail the spear wounds, the blood that ran like
sweat, and his stoic death upon the cross, which they often depicted
as a tree. Further, the Abendmahl, or communion, in which Christ’s
esh was symbolically consumed, was often referred to by the Mora-
vians as “Streiter-Mahl” or “ghters’ meal.” Moravians attributed a
transformative power to Christ’s blood and wounds.46
While women were less likely to be the victims of ritual tor-
ture, they were its directors. It was women’s responsibility to balance
the spiritual forces after the disruption caused by a death. In their ac-
counts of warfare and torture, neither Heckewelder nor Zeisberger
call particular attention to the central role of women, suggesting
either the authors’ cultural bias, the waning of women’s power, or
perhaps both. Historian Theda Perdue’s assessment of changing
Cherokee gender roles might apply equally to the Mahican situation.
The new motives for war introduced by the trade and French-English
colonial rivalries “excluded women from the social and spiritual benets
that traditional warfare had brought them.”47 One source of spiritual
power would have been less readily available to Mahican women.
The Moravian emphasis on the redemptive power of suffer-
ing and on the transformative power of Christ’s blood fused with
Mahican cultural traditions to create a ritual practice fully Christian
and Mahican. By participating in communion, Sarah and Rachel laid
claim to two types of spiritual power—that traditionally accorded
women as they avenged the deaths of their kin and that claimed by
captive warriors who secured a chance at rebirth through stoic endur-
ance of torture. Consuming Christ’s esh might h ave functioned as a
substitute for the traditional spiritual power available to women as
active participants in the practice of war. In turn, this spiritual force
was translated into the ability to suffer stoically.48 Communion was
thus one means of acquiring the spiritual power to sustain self in an
38 Religion and American Culture
environment increasingly hostile to Indian existence. By combining
Mahican elements of ritual associated with the torture of captives and
the Christian message of redemptive suffering, Shekomekoans forged
a powerful new symbolic universe that helped make sense of the new
world of colonialism.
If Sarah found resources of personal strength in Christian
practice, she also sought means to reinforce community and kinship
ties through her work as a member of the “Indianer Conferenz.”
These conferences were weekly meetings between the missionaries
and a small group of appointed villagers. The Indian men and women
who served on the committee were to meet individ ually with all com-
munity members and report back to the missionaries on everything
from spiritual state to marital relations to plans for hunting or har-
vesting. These meetings served as a forum to discuss both familial
and social problems. Marital problems occupy a signicant portion of
the conference minutes. Somewhat surprisingly, very few of the prob-
lems brought before the conference seem to be the result of mission-
ary attempts to impose a new morality of marriage on villagers.
Rather, the minutes call attention to the difculties average men and
women had in securing domestic harmony.49 These tensions were
likely the result of a number of forces: economic, political, and social
changes brought on by colonialism translated into increased empha-
sis on the nuclear family at the same time that the kinship ties that
once supported individuals were severely disrupted. Sometimes, too,
the source of domestic discord lay in differing degrees of participa-
tion in the emerging Christian community. The conferences were at
once a potentially divisive force in the community and a signicant
venue for native leadership.50
Sarah’s frequent service on this committee might well have
functioned to support the role she would have held by tradition as
wife of the head man of the village. Women in native societies had tra-
ditionally maintained oversight of domestic village affairs. What to
European observers often looked like the absence of a formal legal
code was in fact the operation of powerful moral suasion that shaped
behavior through public praise and scorn.51 The social upheaval of the
decades prior to the founding of the Moravian mission at Shekomeko
may well have created a space for more formal structures of moral
regulation that came to be lled by the weekly conferences in which a
group of village delegates considered the problems faced by individ-
uals and families and sought resolution. Sarah thus exercised consid-
erable authority in regulating behavior and overseeing the entrance
of new members into the Christian community.52 She strove in her
work to establish a n ew foundation for community stability and
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 39
mutual obligation. Whether a prior system of kinship became the
basis of the new Christian community is impossible to know, though
it seems quite probable.
Some women found solace in Sarah’s counsel while others
bristled at her authority. During one conference in the spring of 1745,
Sarah reported on her conversation with a sick, unbaptized woman
from Pachgatgoch. The unnamed woman (known only as “Naskom-
schock’s wife and Johannes’ friend”) had remained behind in Pach-
gatgoch when many villagers had moved to Shekomeko but now felt
drawn to the Christian community. In a poignant image, the woman
likened the Christian community to a grove of chestnut trees and her-
self to a lone tree.5 3 Whether or not this woman ultimately moved to
Shekomeko, her report to Sarah suggests that part of the appeal of be-
coming a Christian was the fellowship offered by the nascent commu-
nity. It was often through people like Sarah that prospective Chris-
tians found their way into the Christian community. Not all villagers,
however, saw Sarah’s role in such a positive light. Rebecca, wife of
Jacob (who, together with Abraham, was among the rst to be bap-
tized) was baptized on the same day as Sarah. Rebecca resented that
she was expected to confess the state of her heart to Sarah. She com-
plained to the missionaries that she could not understand why Sarah
should be her confessor and expressed disdain for the conferences
altogether.54
Sarah’s authority was not limited to other women. On one oc-
casion, Sarah and Abraham reported that Isaac had recently spent an
entire day at a nearby tavern and, in his drunken state, threatened to
shoot Johannes (a prominent leader of the Christian-Mahican com-
munity) and spouted derogatory words about the Moravians. The
couple queried the missionary whether they should speak to Isaac on
their own or accompanied by the missionary. After putting the ques-
tion to the lot, the missionary answered that the Savior wished them
to speak alone with Isaac. One suspects that the missionary sensed his
involvement would only heighten tensions.55
In her work as a frequent conference member, Sarah strove to
bring new members into the Christian fold and to regulate the behav-
ior of Christians. But it is through her relationships with family that a
fuller sense of her Christian practice emerges, together with the ten-
sions that sometimes erupted between her familial and Christian
identities. On one occasion, Sarah reported to missionary Johannes
Hagen that she was well and thought much about the Savior and felt
much love for him, but her heart was much concerned with her chil-
dren and the world.56 Sarah’s confession of concern for her children
suggests she knew the missionary would not approve. Yet, at the
40 Religion and American Culture
same time, she seemed to be making the case that she was a good
Christian, not in spite of her familial concerns but because of them.
For Sarah, being a Christian meant attempting to secure the welfare of
her family.
The link between Christian ritual and family in Sarah’s life
is yet more apparent in the events surrounding the birth of a son in
the late spring of 1747. It was an uncertain time to bring a child into
the world, and not only because Sarah would have been at least forty.
The couple had arrived in the newly formed Christian-Mahican settle-
ment at Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania, having completed the 150-mile
journey from Shekomeko while Sarah was eight months pregnant.57
Abraham had been determined to remain in Shekomeko, unwilling to
leave his home village despite the continued refusal of the New York
government to recognize his land claims and the increasing hostility
of colonists toward Moravians and their native allies. It might well
have been his wife’s desire to have her unborn child baptized that -
nally persuaded him to leave his home village.58 Following the birth
of their son, Sarah expressed her fear that the missionaries might
refuse to baptize the child because the couple had not initially joined
the migration of Shekomeko Christians to Pennsylvania. She ex-
plained how much she had cried over the child and how greatly she
desired he might receive the Savior’s grace. Missionary Martin Mack
consented and baptized the child. He would be called Isaac.59
With her youngest safely baptized, Sarah began to worry
about her older children. Two sons, Jonathan and Joachim, had re-
cently left the Moravian community, though both would soon re-
turn.60 The 1744 act forbidding Moravians from preaching within the
borders of New York (many suspected them of “papist” leanings) made
it eminently clear that an alliance with the Moravians counted for little
in the colonial world. Jonathan and Joachim may well have thought it
wise to investigate other native communities farther to the West.
Whatever their reasons, Sarah was distraught, not knowing if and when
her sons would return and fearing that their rejection of the Christian
community might keep them from meeting again in the next world.61
Unable to console his wife, Abraham pleaded with the European sis-
ters that they try to comfort her. Maria Spangenberg related to Sarah
her own difcult experiences as a mother whose children had not ac-
cepted the Savior.62 Sarah seemed to be somewhat relieved by Maria’s
efforts and resigned to the reality that not all of her children would
follow in her footsteps. Resigned to separation, Sarah was surely
elated when Jonathan and his wife, Anna, returned to the congrega-
tion and began building a house in February 1749. For the time, her
family was reunited.
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 41
Several years later, Sarah would again be faced with trying
circumstances, and this time she chose to follow family while attempt-
ing to maintain ties with the Christian community and especially
with the power of the Savior’s blood. In 1753, Abraham was ap-
pointed as captain of the Mahican nation and was called to move to
Wyoming, Pennsylvania, to carry out his duties.63 Sarah did not want
to leave the Brethren, but neither could she bear being separated from
her husband.64 Her daughter-in-law Anna faced the same painful de-
cision in the winter of 1753–54. Clearly upset, Anna pleaded with
Jonathan,
My dear husband, decide soon what you want to do, and don’t
take long: I want to tell you, what I want to do, I am not going
with you to Susquehanna. If you want to go, you can. But I and
my children want to stay with the congregation, for when I
think about what the Savior did for us and for our children, it is
impossible for me to resolve to go away from the congregation,
I would inict severe judgement upon myself.
Anna attributed the well-being of her children to the Savior and feared
that leaving the Christian community would jeopardize the protec-
tion offered by the Savior. Jonathan promised to think over the matter
while on his hunting trip and to have an answer for her when he re-
turned. Anna anxiously awaited Jonathan’s return, confessing to Es-
ther, “Oh how often have I thought of him, especially during C hrist-
mas and New Year’s week and I wished with my heart that he still
feels some of that grace and blessing the Savior let us feel.”65 Sarah,
too, prayed for her son. When in the woods collecting rewood, she
prayed to God that “he have mercy on my husband and children, and
that he sends them a new heart.”66 For the time being anyway, Anna
and Sarah’s wish for Jonathan was granted: he decided to stay with
the Brethren.67 Sarah’s relief that Jonathan decided to stay with the
congregation must have been mixed with the sadness of her own im-
pending departure. While the Christian congregation helped to ce-
ment new ties of community, particularly for women, it could also
force painful choices when the multiple layers of Sarah’s identity—as
Mahican, wife, mother, and Christian—did not t easily together.
As Sarah and Abraham set off for Wyoming in April 1754, the
couple promised to “stay with the Savior and to tell others about Him
and His love whenever possible.”68 In a letter to “Liebe Schwester”
Maria Spangenberg sent later that year from Wyoming, Sarah con-
fessed the difculty of living among non-Christian Indians but found
that “the Savior still comes through to me and I abide by him” and
that she continued to feel “what love I have for the Savior, because he
42 Religion and American Culture
was wounded and his blood shed that melts my heart and makes me
happy.” She prayed often for the Savior to “give me a drop of the
blood that ows from his side.” Finally, she asked that Spangenberg
“remember me to the Savior” and promised to visit if she ever had the
chance.69 Being separated from the Moravian community was clearly
trying for Sarah, but she continued to nd spiritual power through
communion with the blood of Christ. The Savior seemed to function
for Sarah in much the same way as a guardian spirit that came to her
offering protection. Sarah would eventually return to the congrega-
tion, but only after her husband had died.
On his deathbed in 1762, Abraham encouraged Sarah to re-
turn to the Moravians. Although she was indeed eager to return, Sarah
feared the move would mean painful family decisions. She delayed
returning for nearly a year, held back by her sons. Eventually, her
older sons decided to move further west and urged her to join them.
She refused, saying she would rather go to the Brethren, but, she said,
“go where you will. I can’t help you and I can’t hold you back .” Un-
able to compel her sons to stay with her, she turned to her daughter,
Sarah,70 and pleaded, “You are my only daughter. You have heard my
thoughts. What will you do? If you want to abandon me, you can do
that. You have your freedom. I have raised you to adulthood and you
would be sad if I should die in the woods at your side and be forever
lost.” The younger Sarah broke into tears and promised to follow her
mother. The family was welcomed back into the congregation, and
soon work was begun on a house for Sarah and her two children.71
One year later, in 1764, Sarah and Isaac were living in Phila-
delphia where dozens of Moravian Indians had sought refuge in the
midst of the frontier upheavals of Pontiac’s Rebellion and the Paxton
Boys incid ent. In this climate, no one trusted Christian Indians. In
the cramped quarters of the Philadelphia Barracks, Sarah succumbed
to smallpox in June 1764, and Isaac followed his mother in death sev-
eral weeks later.72 At times, Sarah had found in the personal experi-
ence of the Savior’s blood and in the support of the Moravian com-
munity a means of sustaining herself and her family, but her identity
as a Christian Indian often left her in the impossible position of choos-
ing one child over another, her faith over her family, or her family
over her faith.
Rachel’s life was more openly dramatic than Sarah’s, yet she
faced many of the same struggles of negotiating family and faith. The
few short years of her life recorded in Moravian records were intense:
they were lled with intense spiritual experiences, anxiety, and sor-
row. Because Rachel married a missionary, her life is better docu-
mented than perhaps any of her sister villagers.73 Like Sarah, Rachel
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 43
drew heavily on the Moravian imagery of the blood and wounds of
Christ. And she, too, directed her practice of Christian ritual to the
ends of creating and preserving family.
At the time of her baptism, Rachel was twenty-one and al-
ready separated from her rst husband. She had been married to a
man named Annimhard, a Mahican from Shekomeko, but she was ap-
parently unhappy and left the marriage, perhaps because the relation-
ship had yet to produce any children, or perhaps because the relationship
was abusive.74 Rachel seems to have been at once eager to escape from
family yet afraid to chart a new course. Among those attentive to
David Brainerd’s preaching, she then became among the rst of her
village to be baptized by the Moravians.75 Within weeks of her bap-
tism, she was contemplating marriage to a white man. Rachel was
clearly a woman in search of what she thought would be a better life.
Although there is little in the sources to suggest why Post and Rachel
chose each other, it seems that Post was intent on marrying an Indian
woman, and Rachel might have hoped marriage to a European man
with an especially close relationship to the Savior would produce
the children she had been unable to conceive in her rst marriage.76
The couple was engaged in early August 1743 and married later that
month. Just four days after the betrothal, Rachel was headed home to
her mother in Pachgatgoch, apparently having second thoughts about
her marriage to Post. Two weeks later, she returned, apologizing for
her ight from Shekomeko. A month later, Rachel was still struggling
with her marriage, confessing that she wanted to love her husband
but could not.7 7
By December, Post’s fellow missionaries were deeply con-
cerned at Rachel’s erratic behavior. Although she had returned to
Shekomeko, she refused to consummate the marriage. The missionar-
ies, perhaps even Post himself, sought the help of the Savior through
the lot. The an swer came that it was time for the couple to effect their
union.78 Although Rachel consented, missionary Büttner had reason
to believe that all was still not well. He was right, and Rachel was
soon headed for Pachgatgoch. When she returned two weeks later,
she refused to enter the mission house. Büttner sent his wife to speak
with Rachel, and Post himself went to attempt to placate his wife.
They inquired if she wanted to live alone, and promised her her own
house. But Rachel remained stubbornly silent. Other members of the
congregation tried to appease her, but Rachel gave no answer and
again ran away. When Büttner penned a worried letter to Bethlehem
headquarters seeking advice, she had yet to return. At a loss, Büttner
sent Post to Bethlehem bearing his letter and dispatched a member of
the congregation to New York to bring back some cloth, hoping to win
44 Religion and American Culture
over the disgruntled bride. Two days later, Rachel returned to Sheko-
meko.79 One week later, on December 22, 1743, she moved into the
missionaries’ house.80 Nine months later almost to the day, Rachel
gave birth to a baby boy, named Ludwig Johannes, whom she called
Hannes.81
Pregnancy seems to have settled Rachel’s restless soul. A let-
ter to her friend and spiritual mother, Maria Spangenberg, relates the
joy she experienced at the prospect of becoming a mother.82 She de-
scribed for Spangenberg how she had once wept when she saw chil-
dren at play in Shekomeko because she herself was childless. But
now, she wrote, during worship services, “my babe leaped in my
womb,” and she thanked “our Savior continually, that he has given
me one.” The letter implies th at it was the Savior working through Jo-
seph Spangenberg, more than Post, who was responsible for the child
Rachel carried. Wrote Rachel,
I never yet felt my heart so at the Lord Supper as this time. I
can’t express how it was with me when I received that Blood,
muchraa haniseho pekachkanon . . . and when Br. Joseph gave it
to me, my heart, glowing and lled with the Sap of Life and
thought, Muchree onewe onewe, onewe.83
Doubt about the life-giving powers Rachel attributed to the blood of
the Savior vanish when we read another letter, this one written in Au-
gust 1745. “O beloved Mother,” wrote Rachel, “I was very poor [of
spirit] in Bethlehem and while we [she and Post] were together in the
cabinet and Brother Joseph prayed, I felt the great grace of the Savior
ood my heart with blood.”84 It was probably on this occasion that
Rachel conceived her second child. The sexual overtones of the letter
are hard to ignore, yet again it seems that it is God’s grace, mediated
through Christ’s blood and Spangenberg’s prayer, that bestows a
child on Rachel. Post, it seems, just happened to be present.
Another letter dictated by Rachel that year to the “Brethren
and Sisters in Barbies [Berbice]” (Suiname) offers further testimony to
the life-giving properties Rachel found in Christ’s blood. Rachel’s eight-
month-old Hannes died that year, and she had lost three siblings in
1744, so she might well have felt an even greater pull to establish a new,
spiritual family, one that transcended the precarious bonds of biolog-
ical kinship.85 She testied to the distant members of her new Chris-
tian family that the Savior had received her as his child and “washed
my heart with his blood.” Now that she felt the Savior ’s blood on her
heart, she found she was better able to love her husband, something
she had clearly struggled with before. In concluding her letter, she
professed her love for her distant Brethren and Sisters, although “I
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 45
don’t know all your names.” The Savior ’s blood was the means for es-
tablishing a new community—having been adopted by the Savior, and
enabled by his blood to love her new husband, Rachel now claimed
membership in a community that transcended local boundaries.86
Rachel’s letters offer testimony to the power she found in
Moravianism—the power to love a prickly husband, the power to
conceive children, and the comfort of a new spiritual family. But they
also testify powerfully to the very real and personal impact of colo-
nialism. She had lost not only her son and three siblings, but doubtless
many other friends and neighbors. Moravian missionaries, including
her husband, had been forbidden from preaching in all of New York.
Shekomeko and Pachgatgoch were now divided between those who
chose to stay behind and those who followed as the missionaries re-
treated to Pennsylvania. In September 1746, she again turned to her
“liebe Mutter,” Maria Spangenberg, who Rachel felt loved her “a great
deal more than my own mother.”87 She confessed her sense of power-
lessness, “I know and feel that I am a poor little creature and only the
blood of our savior gives me wellness. . . . Now I feel my heart [is] al-
ways more hungry and thirsty after the blood of our Savior.” The
more difcult life became, the stronger was her desire for sustenance
from the Savior. In the same letter, she described for Spangenberg
how she had a premonition that left her heart “very heavy.” She
pleaded with the Savior to identify the cause. Was it her husband’s ill-
ness? No, said the Savior. Then what? “And then Joshua came home
dancing and singing and it was as if my nger was cut off.” Joshua, a
friend from Pachgatgoch, had enlisted in the army that summer and
had been off ghting in Canada. He returned in early September and
went on a drunken spree.88 Rachel experienced this threat to the soli-
darity of the Christian community as physical pain. She prayed for
the Savior to help the wayward Joshua. Feeling uneasy, Rachel could
not sleep and so she took the letter she had received from Maria and
went to “the house of our Savior.” Unable to read, Rachel found the
physical presence alone of the letter cheered her considerably. In the
meeting house with the letter, Rachel recounted, “it was just so as
when the Savior gave me my Hannes, and I was so glad that I did
cry.”89 The letter was a gift of Maria’s presence from the Savior.
Finally, Rachel’s thoughts turned to her young child, Maria,
named after Spangenberg. It is here that the connection between self,
family, community, and Christian practice are most clearly evident.
Wrote Rachel, “My child grows well and strong but it has a great
cough. I wish our savior did make her well again. I can’t help her at
all. The Savior must do everything.” Rachel felt powerless to ensure
the health of her child and turned to the Heiland, imagining that,
46 Religion and American Culture
rather than breast milk, she fed her child from the Savior’s wounds.
“When I give my child suck and I think about the blood and wounds
of our Savior I feel my heart sometimes very wet and so I think my
child sucks the blood of our Savior and I feel the angels look after me
and my child.” She closed her letter with a prayer for her fellow vil-
lagers “that the Savior would give them a feeling of his blood and
wounds in their hearts.” And, nally, there is an entreaty to Spangen-
berg. “You must think about me that he gives much grace. . . . We are
your poor children Rachel and Maria Post.”90 The next year, in De-
cember 1747, Rachel delivered a stillborn baby boy. Rachel and her
young Maria both died the following day.91
Rachel’s letters capture both the powerlessness and the em-
powerment experienced by many native Moravians. They demon-
strate the creative spirituality of native Christians who enlisted new
sources of spiritual power to strengthen the bonds of family and com-
munity and the ways in which the encroaching colonialism chal-
lenged the efcacy of tradition to sustain self, family, and community.
Childless from her rst marriage, Rachel turned to Christ’s blood and
a European man she had difculty loving to give her a child. Let
down in some way by her own mother, Rachel found sustenance from
her spiritual mother, whose strength she hoped to pass on to her own
daughter. Fearing mother’s milk alone was insufcient nourishment
for her beloved child, she fed little Maria from the wounds of the Savior.
It was through the practice of Christian ritual by Sarah, Rachel,
and others that an indigenous Christianity came into existence. While
these women found new resources of spiritual power in Christian rit-
ual, their need for such new sources testies to the severe strains on
native cultures. Christianity as lived by Sarah and Rachel was marked
indelibly by the destructive forces of colonialism. But it does not nec-
essarily follow that the Christian residents of Shekomeko and Pach-
gatgoch were victims to a colonization of consciousness. Nor does it
follow that native Christianity was the result of a self-conscious, stra-
tegic manipulation of the oppressor’s religion. Through study of the
religious expressions of individuals like Sarah and Rachel and of
communities like Shekomeko, we can begin to uncover a distinctive,
Indian Christianity that expressed both deeply rooted cultural values
and the realities of a dramatically changed world.
Notes
The author wishes to thank a number of individuals and institu-
tions. The NEH provided nancial support, and the McNeil Center for Early
American Studies provided an institutional home. Jon Butler, Bruce Forbes,
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 47
Monica Siems, and Jace Weaver critiqued earlier versions of this essay. Irakly
Chkhenkely helped with German translations.
1. Büttner Diary, December 11, 1743, box 111, folder 2, item 7 (here-
after given in x/x/x format), Records of the Moravian Mission to the Indians,
Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (hereafter RMM). See also en-
try of same date, 111/1, RMM. Except where quoted, I have anglicized Chris-
tian names; for example, “Sara” is written as “Sarah,” “Rahel” as “Rachel.”
Depending on the diarist, “Sara” was sometimes spelled “Sarah” in the original.
2. Rachel to Maria Spangenberg, September 9, 1746, 113/1/5, RMM.
This letter is in the hand of Rachel’s husband, Christian. It starts in broken
German and shifts to broken English written in German script and according
to German phonetics. Rachel had probably learned some English growing up
in close proximity to English settlers. Post, a carpenter by trade, and native of
Polish Prussia, knew little English at this time. For biographical information
on Post, see Thomas Christopher Chase, “Christian Frederick Post, 1715–
1785: Missionary and Diplomat to the Indians of America” (Ph.D. diss., Penn-
sylvania State University, 1982).
3. The term Mahican will be used throughout, although the term is
problematic, suggesting as it does cultural homogeneity and sharply drawn
political boundaries. Mahican tribal identity emerged as a response to colo-
nialism; River Indians, Housatonics, Highland Indians, and Hudson River
Mahicans confederated politically to deal with colonial governments and vil-
lages consolidated in the wake of epidemic disease and encroaching white
settlement. Shekomekoans called themselves Mahican; Pachgatgoch identity
is more difcult to determine. The Moravians listed the tribal identity of
Pachgatgoch residents as Wampanosch, which has sometimes been taken to
mean Wampanoag. However, Wampano means “Easterner” in most Algon-
quian languages and, thus, could refer to any individual or group who had
come from the east. A nineteenth-century manuscript by Moravian mission-
ary John Heckewelder suggests that the Wampanos might have been a branch
of the River Indian Mahicans who earlier branched off from their Hudson
River location and relocated to the vicinity of New Haven, preferring to live
by the shore. If Heckewelder’s sources were correct, then the Wampano and
the Mahicans of Shekomeko were more closely related than previously un-
derstood. John Heckewelder, Notes, Amendments, and Additions to His Account
of the Indians (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1820), 3. See also
Bert Salwen, “Indians of Southern New England and Long Island: Early Peri-
od,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, ed. Bruce G. Trigger
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 175. Throughout this arti-
cle, to avoid excessive qualications, I use “Mahican” as an umbrella term
meant to include not only Mahican but also Wampanosh, Mennising, Sopus,
48 Religion and American Culture
and Highland, whose representatives could be found in these villages. While
there were most certainly meaningful cultural distinctions represented by the
different terms, it is very difcult to determine what these may have been.
4. Isaac’s wife was also baptized that day and named Rebecca. Ja-
cob’s wife, Rachel, was baptized in December of that year. Shekomeko Diary,
August 11 and December 12, 1742, 111/1, RMM.
5. Moravian records note that Amanariochque was rst awakened
by Brainerd’s preaching. On that visit, Brainerd reported that God gave him
“his presence and Spirit in prayer and preaching: so that I was much assisted,
and spake with power from Job 14:14. Some Indians cried out in great dis-
tress, and all appeared greatly concerned.” Jonathan Edwards, Life of Brainerd,
ed. Norman Petit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 176.
6. The Moravian records contain very little that suggests one way or
the other whether baptized villagers continued in the practice of traditional
religion. There are occasional references to the continuation of traditional
herbal healing and sweat lodges, neither of which the Moravians understood
to be religious practices. Moravians generally tended to dene Christianity in
terms of feeling and ritual and less in terms of cultural practices, and so this
restricted view of Christianity likely aided the coexistence of native and
Christian religious practices, a coexistence that would not have been entirely
unprecedented for most native peoples whose religions were nonexclusive.
Religious “dimorphism,” as Jace Weaver has termed it (That the People Might
Live: Native American Literature and Native American Community [New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997], vii–viii), has long been a characteristic of na-
tive religious practice. As much as we might like to know about the continua-
tion of “traditional” religions in Moravian missions, the sources simply do
not allow for such a study. My presumption is that many native “lifeways,”
such as hunting and healing, continued as they had before the arrival of the
missionaries, and that neither Mahican nor Moravian found contradiction in
doing so. For references to the use of native remedies, see Moravian mission
diary entries for November 3, 1750, 114/2, RMM; March 30, 1751, 114/3,
RMM; and May 24, 1753, 112/3, RMM; for references to use of sweat lodges
by men and women, see July 11, 1745, 111/1, RMM; October 11, 1750, 114/2,
RMM; November 1, 1750, 114/2, RMM; and November 29, 1750, 114/2, RMM .
7. Among the most noteworthy of recent works on Native Ameri-
cans and Christianity are: James B. Treat, ed., Native and Christian (New York:
Routledge, 1995); Jace Weaver, Native American Religious Identity: Unforgotten
Gods (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998); Sergei Kan, Mem ory Eternal: Tlingit Cul-
ture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1999); and Michael McNally, Ojibway Singers: Hymns,
Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 49
8. Robert F. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protes-
tant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787–1862 (Lexington: University
of Kentucky Press, 1965); R. Pierce Beaver, Church, State, and American Indians:
Two and a Half Centuries of Partnership in Missions between Protestant Churches
and Government (St. Louis: Concordia, 1966); Henry Warner Bowden, Ameri-
can Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conict (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1981); and William G. McLoughlin, Cherokees and
Missionaries, 1789–1839 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
9. The emphasis on resistance to imperialism is not surprising given
that many of these scholars came of age in the Vietnam era. Much excellent
scholarship has come out of this line of inquiry. Anthony F. C. Wallace
launched the eld with his article, “Revitalization Movements,” American An-
thropologist 58 (1956): 264–81, and his subsequent book, The Death and Rebirth
of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1969). Several works have followed in the
same rich vein, including Gregory Evans Dowd, Spirited Resistance: The North
American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1992); Joel Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees Struggle for a
New World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); and R. David Edmunds, The Shawnee
Prophet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).
10. On native women, colonization, and Christianity, the foremost
works include Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds., Women and Coloniza-
tion: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Praeger Press, 1980); Irene Silver-
blatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial
Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Karen Anderson, Chain
Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Women in Seventeenth-Century New France
(New York: Routledge, 1991); Carol Devens, Countering Colonization: Native
American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630–1900 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992); Nancy Shoemaker, ed., Negotiators of Change: Historical
Perspectives on Native American Women (New York: Routledge, 1995); and The-
da Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998). The fall 1996 issue of Ethnohistory (43:4)
is devoted to the encounters of native women and Christianity. Paula Strong’s
article in this issue, “Feminist Theory and the ‘Invasion of the Heart’” offers
an especially cogent and useful review of work in the eld. Etienne and Lea-
cock’s work employs a Marxist bent and interprets the advent of capitalism as
the end of gender equality in native communities. Anderson nds that Chris-
tianity was a key element in establishing the subjugation of women to men in
Huron and Montagnais communities. Devens studies the missions to Great
Lakes Indians as one aspect of the colonization process and nds three pos-
sible responses to Christianity: native peoples (1) rejected it as a threat to tribal
lifeways, (2) accommodated Christianity grudgingly in the face of dire eco-
nomic conditions, or (3) divided along gender lines when the mission or eco-
50 Religion and American Culture
nomic circumstances affected men and women differently. Women’s engage-
ment with Christianity is understood as the conscious manipulation of a tool.
Devens, Countering Colonization, 3–4, 21.
11. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and
the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975);
for a more concise summary of Jennings’s views of missions, see his “Goals
and Functions of Puritan Missions to the Indians,” Ethnohistory 18 (1971):
197–212. See also James Ronda, “‘We Are Well as We Are’: An Indian Critique
of Seventeenth-Century Missions,” William and Mary Quarterly 34 (1977): 66–
82; and Neal Salisbury, “Red Puritans: The ‘Praying Indians’ of Massachusetts
Bay and John Eliot,” William and Mary Quarterly 31 (January 1974): 27–54.
James Axtell has written much on the subject of missions, the most encom-
passing of which is The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial
North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). For a relatively recent
reevaluation of New England missions, see Harold W. Van Lonkhuyzen, “A Re-
appraisal of the Praying Indians: Acculturation, Conversion, and Identity at
Natick, Massachusetts, 1646–1730,” New England Quarterly 63 (1990): 396–428.
12. This is not to suggest that the missionaries are not in fact legiti-
mate deners of Christianity, but only that it is a mistake to attempt to mea-
sure the “authenticity” of native Christianity by the extent to which it repro-
duces the Christianity taught and practiced by the missionaries.
13. The Moravian sources are unique in allowing such a study of lay
Indian Christianity in the eighteenth century. Even the rich Jesuit sources do
not compare to Moravian sources for depth of detail about individual lives.
David Hall has been at the forefront of the movements to study rst “popular
religion” and, more recently, “lived religion.” His recent edited volume con-
tains essays by many of his students. David D. Hall, ed., Lived Religion in
America: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997). Inga Clendinnen’s work on colonial Mexico presents a ne model for
the study of local and lived religion in a native context. She argues against a
“belief analysis” approach to the study of religion and proposes instead to seek
religion in action and observances, or “religion as performed.” Inga Clendin-
nen, “Ways to the Sacred: Reconstructing ‘Religion’ in Sixteenth-Century Mex-
ico,” History and A nthropology 4 (1990): 105–41 (quote 110).
14. Anne Brown and David Hall, “Family Strategies and Religious
Practice: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Early New England,” in Lived Re-
ligion, ed. Hall, 41–68 (quote 50).
15. For a history of the Moravian Church from its Hussite origins,
see Edmund De Schweinitz, The History of the Church Known as the Unitas Frat-
rum, 2d ed. (Bethlehem: Moravian Publication Concern, 1901); and Rudolf
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 51
Rican, The History of the Unity of Brethren: A Protestant Hussite Church in Bohe-
mia and Moravia, C. Daniel Crews, trans. (Bethlehem and Winston-Salem:
Moravian Church in America, 1992). For general treatments of the German Pi-
etist movement, see F. Ernest Stoefer, German Pietism during the Eighteenth
Century (Leiden: Brill, 1973); F. Ernest Stoefer, Continental Pietism and Early
American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976); and W. R. Ward, The
Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992). On Pietism and the Moravians, see John Jacob Sessler, Communal Pi-
etism among the Early American Moravians (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1933).
Sessler and Ward both suggest that the Moravian missions were in part the re-
sult of their strained relations with princes and pulpits at home. For more re-
cent studies of the Moravian movement in America, see Gillian Lindt Gollin,
Moravians in Two Worlds: A Study of Changing Communities (New York: Colum -
bia University Press, 1967); and Beverly Prior Smaby, The Transformation of
Moravian Bethlehem: From Communal Mission to Family Economy (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
16. Early Moravian histories of the missions tend not to be as trium-
phalist as their Anglo-Protestant counterparts. On Moravian mission efforts
in America, see George H. Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren
among the Indians of North America, Christian Ignatius La Trobe, trans. (Lon-
don: Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, 1794); and John
Heckewelder, A Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Dela-
ware and Mohegan Indians, from Its Commencement, in the Year 1740, to the Close
of the Year 1808 (Philadelphia: McCarty and Davis, 1820). More recent scholar-
ship on the missions includes Elma Gray, Wilderness Christians: The Moravian
Mission to the Delaware Indians (New York: Russell and Russell, 1953); and Earl P.
Olmstead, Blackcoats among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991). Jon Sensbach explores Mora-
vian relations with African Americans, in Sensbach in his A Separate Canaan:
The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763–1840 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). A couple of recent disserta-
tions and recent articles have made substantial use of the Moravian mission
sources in the writing of Indian history. Amy Schutt, “Forging Identities: Na-
tive Americans and Moravian Missionaries in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 1765–
1782” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1995); Amy Schutt, “Tribal Identity in
the Moravian Missions on the Susquehanna,” Pennsylvania History 66 (1999):
378–98; Jane Merritt, “Kinship, Community, and Practicing Culture: Indians
and the Colonial Encounter in Pennsylvania, 1700–1763” (Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Washington, 1995); Jane Merritt, “Dreaming of the Savior’s Blood:
Moravians and the Indian Great Awakening in Pennsylvania,” William and
Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 723–46; and Jane Merritt, “Cultural Encounters along
a Gender Frontier: Mahican, Delaware, and German Women in Eighteenth-
Century Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History 67 (2000): 502–31.
52 Religion and American Culture
17. When missionary Christian Rauch went on a scouting trip to
Mohawk territory in January 1743, he found “it was common talk every
where that we were papists.” It was feared the Moravians’ missionary work
was simply a ruse and a way to win the natives to their side, which, once ef-
fected, the Moravians would “war with them [the Indians] against the other
inhabitants and help deliver the land into the hands of the Spaniards.” Chris-
tian Rauch, undated recollections of a journey into Mohawk country, 221/4/1,
RMM. Several missionaries were arrested in Connecticut in 1743. During
questioning, an Anglican minister took issue with Moravian methods of in-
structing the Indians, claiming they were “erroneous, dangerous and papist-
like.” The minister feared Moravians made “ignorance the Mother of Religion
as the Romans do.” John Christopher Pyrlaeus’ account of his arrest and trial,
June 1743, 111/9/1, RMM. Shekomeko missionary Gottlob Büttner was held
in New York in 1744 following the renewal of hostilities between England
and France. During his trial, Büttner was asked why he had not gone to teach
among the papists. Rumor circulated that the Moravians had received a ship-
ment of guns and powder from the French. English translation of a report of
Gottlob Büttner ’s trial at New York in a letter to Peter Böhler, August 13, 1744,
112/3/5, RMM. Gottlob Büttner’s diary entry June 5, 1744, 112/2/3, RMM.
For another reference to Büttner and charges of papacy, see Büttner’s diary
entry October 17, 1744, 112/19/5, RMM.
18. This issue was in fact a major cause of Zinzendorf’s break with
the Pietists. For Nicholaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf’s views on love as
the primary experience of faith, see his lecture “Concerning Saving Faith,” in
Nine Public Lecures on Important Subjects in Religion, trans. and ed. George W.
Forell (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1973), 34–42. See also Sessler,
Communal Pietism, 142.
19. Missionary Martin Mack recorded his feelings as he neared
Shekomeko, “My heart longed very much after Checomeco so that I could
not sleep in the night being so near to it.” Mack’s colleague, John Pyrlaeus,
reported that his heart nearly broke when he met his Mahican hosts. “One
cannot help loving them. . . . I am heartily willing even to remain among
them.” “A Short Acct of Brother Martin Mack’s Journey to Checomeco and
Back to Bethlehem,” November 1745, 217/12b/2, RMM. Pyrlaeus, June 1743,
111/9/1, RMM. Although Moravian mission policy accords better with mod-
ern sensibilities, it would be misguided to uphold these missionaries as proto-
multiculturalists. Their relatively nonaggressive proselytizing stemmed less
from an appreciation of the innate worth of Indian culture than from the par-
ticular historical and political circumstances in which they labored.
20. Gary Kinkel has explored Zinzendorf’s feminine imagery in Our
Dear Mother the Spirit: An Investigation of Count Zinzendorf’s Theology and Praxis
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 53
(Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1990). Much of this imagery can
be found throughout Christian history. Caroline Walker Bynum has argued
for an understanding of medieval Christian art as centrally tied to ideas of
family and sustenance, especially as indicated by the association of Mary’s
breast milk and Jesus’ spilled blood as nourishment. See especially Caroline
Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Middle Ages: An Answer to Leo
Steinberg,” in her collection of essays, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on
Gender and the Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
21. A recent and balanced treatment of this rich body of Moravian
religious expression is Craig Atwood, “Blood, Sex and Death in Zinzendorf’s
Bethlehem” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1995). Sessler’s
Communal Pietism contains many lengthy quotes from original Moravian
sources. A few verses from hymns used in the Mahican missions aptly illus-
trate Moravian wounds theology as presented at the missions:
Make thou for these dear little Souls
a ne so ft bed in thy wound Holes
and in the wound within thy si de,
there let them sleep, eat, drink and hide.
(Fürbitte für Kinder, 331/3, RMM )
My Lamb! I thank thee heartily
that thou didst die upon the Tree,
and wert so wounded for my soul
and gotst within thy Side a Hole.
Where no w a sinner rests so well,
and can with Tears of Pleasure tell
he on the Cross, my Lamb God!
And I live only thro’ his Blood.
O wou nded Head, o through-bo r’ d Feet,
O hands and Side, you are so sweet!
Be only still more dear to me.
O Lamb! Where is a Lamb like Thee!
(English Verses # 26, 331/3, RMM)
22. A common Moravian practice through which the will of the Sav-
ior was sought on issues mundane and grand. On the use of the lot, see Smaby,
The Transformation of Moravian Bethlehem, 23–24.
23. Numerous anti-Moravian tracts were published in the 1740s that
often called attention to the Moravian “delusion” of experiencing the near-
ness of Christ. See especially Samuel Finley, Satan Strip’d of H is Angelick Robe:
Being the Substance of Several Sermons Preach’d at Philadelphia, January 1742–3
from 2 Thessalonians 2.11,12. Shewing, the Strength, Nature, and Symptoms of De-
lusion. With an Application to the Moravians (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1743);
Gilbert Tennent, The Necessity of Holding Fast the Truth (Boston, 1742); and Gil-
bert Tennent, Som e Account of the Principles of the Moravians: chiey collected
54 Religion and American Culture
from several conversations with Count Zinzendorf; and from some sermons preached
by him at Berlin, and published in London (London, 1743).
24. John Webster Grant, Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indi-
ans of Canada in Encounters since 1534 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1984), chap. 11.
25. The most complete ethnography of the Mahicans remains Ted
Brasser’s Riding on the Frontier’s Crest: Mahican Indian Culture and Cultural
Change (Ottowa: National Museums of Canada, 1974). Kathleen Bragdon dis-
cusses the marriage practices of southern New England native peoples in her
Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1996), see esp. chaps. 3 and 7.
26. Bragdon, Native People, esp. chap. 1.
27. Robert Steven Grumet discusses women’s signatures on deeds
among Coastal Algonquians in “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen:
Middle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian Women during the Seventeenth and Eigh-
teenth Centuries,” in Women and Colonization, ed. Etienne and Leacock, 43–62.
A 1735 deed from Mauhammetpeet and Mequnnisqua, women of Scaticook,
to the Province of Massachusetts Bay conveyed a signicant parcel of land
that would eventually sprout ten towns. A conrmation of the women’s own-
ership of the land was signed by nineteen men of the Scaticooks three days
before the deed itself. Another deed from Nechehoosqua, a Scaticook woman,
deeded land “north of Fort Dummer” for £100 in bills of credit to Jeremiah
Allen of Boston “and to his Successor or Successors in Trust for the use and
Benet of Said Province for ever.” Henry Andrew Wright, Indian Deeds of
Hampden County (Springeld, Mass., 1905), 120–30.
28. Van der Donck noted, “The Indians also afrm, that before the
arrival of the Christians, and before the small pox broke out amongst them,
they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population
had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have
died.” Adraien Van der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands (1655;
repr., Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968), 64. Almost a century later, in
1734, Ebeneezer Poohpoonuc, the rst to be baptized at the Stockbridge mis-
sion, lamented that, “since my remembrance, there were Ten Indians, where
there is now One,” while “the Christians greatly increase and multiply, and
spread over the Land.” Nathaniel Appleton, Gospel Ministers Must Be Fit for
The Master’s Use (Boston: S. Kneeland & T. Green, 1735), iv.
29. Brasser, Riding on the Frontier’s Crest, 29. Adraien van der Donck’s
account of the Mahican and Delaware was rst published in 1655. Van der
Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands, 79. A sketch of Shekomeko done
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 55
in 1745 by Moravian missionary Johannes Hagen seems to conrm this pat-
tern. All of the dwellings depicted are single family (112/17/1, RMM).
30. In 1722, the Mahican chief Ompamit lodged a complaint with
Governor Burnet of New York “that many of our people are obliged to hire
land of the Christians at a very dear rate, and to give half the corn for rent,
and the other half they are tempted by rum to sell.” Edmund Bailey O’Cal-
laghan and Berthold Fermow, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the
State of New York (Albany, 1856–1887), vol. 5, 661–63. Missionary John Ser-
geant of Stockbridge noted the small numbers assembled to hear him
preach, explaining “the men were gone into New York Government, to reap
for the Dutch people there.” Samuel Hopkins, Historical Memoirs Relating to
the Housatonic Indians (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1753), 31. The early Moravian
records make frequent reference to village residents working for the Dutch
and selling mats, baskets, wooden bowls, and canoes to European neighbors.
Interestingly, a scan of the Index to the Moravian records demonstrates that
there are far more references to selling manufactured goods than game or
skins.
31. On marriage practices among the seventeenth-century Dela-
ware and Mahican, see van der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands,
84. David Zeisberger reported on late eighteenth-century Delaware marriage
customs in his History of the North American Indians, ed. Archer Butler Hulbert
(Columbus: Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society, 1910), 78–82.
John Heckewelder comments on the nature of Delaware marriage customs in
History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsyl-
vania and the Neighbouring States, rev. ed. by W. C. Reichel (Philadelphia: His-
torical Society of Pennsylvania, 1876), 154–58.
32. Hopkins, Historical Memoirs, 10–12.
33. Both Heckewelder and Zeisberger depict these guardian spirits
as the province of boys and men and it is unclear whether women had similar
experiences, though Zeisberger may have used the male pronouns to include
men and women. It seems likely that both men and women could have
guardian spirits, though they would presumably function to quite different
ends. Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs, 245–48; Hulbert, Zeisberger’s
History, 132–33.
34. For a discussion of Moravian mysticism, see F. Ernest Stoefer,
Mysticism in the German Devotional Literature of Colonial Pennsylvania (Allen-
town: Schlechter’s for the Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1950), esp.
chap. 4.
35. Brasser, Riding on the Frontier’s Crest, 29.
56 Religion and American Culture
36. The grandmother’s identity as sachem cannot be fully proved,
but the evidence is highly suggestive. A document in the Moravian records,
written in support of Abraham’s efforts to persuade the New York ofcials to
make good on a previous transaction, details the tragic history of Abraham’s
family and how he came to be among the sole surviving heirs of the land. His
grandmother, Mammanochqua, was cited as the owner of the lands including
Shekomeko, who, during a great epidemic of sixty years earlier (1683), was
prompted to try to secure land for her descendents. Robert Grumet cites evi-
dence of a woman sachem of the Esopus named Mamanuchqua who signed
several deeds in the 1670s and 1680s. Additionally, it makes more sense that
as sachem, Abraham’s grandmother was attempting to preserve tribal lands,
rather than family lands. The land including Shekomeko may well have been
traditional hunting territory of the Esopus. Brasser suggests a date of 1711 for
the founding of the village of Shekomeko. Further, one of the witnesses to
Abraham’s right to the land cited in the Moravian records was Cornelius, or
Gadrachseth, listed as the “Old Captain,” likely the former chief of Shekomeko,
who often traveled to the Hudson to confer with other Mahican leaders. Mem-
orandum dated October 1743, 113/5/3, RMM. Grumet, “Sunksquaws, Sha-
mans, and Tradeswomen,” 43–62. Brasser, Riding on the Frontier’s Crest, 67. See
Shekomeko records dated February 15 and February 21, 1743, 111/2/1, RMM.
37. It might also suggest the differing traditions of the Wampano, as
Bragdon suggests that the record is unclear on whether coastal southern New
England peoples were matrilineal or patrilineal. Bragdon, Native People, 158–
60. Additionally, there would have been quite a mix of varying tribal tradi-
tions among the residents of Shekomeko. According to the Moravian records,
residents at Shekomeko included Mahican as well as “Wampanosch,”
“Sopus,” “Highland,” and “Mennissing.” See Carl John Fliegel’s translation
of the Moravian catalogs of Indian residents, located at 3191/2/1, RMM.
38. If David Zeisberger’s account of Delaware practices holds true
for Mahican society as well, Sarah was likely born around 1705 at the latest.
According to Zeisberger, Delaware men generally married when they were
between eighteen and twenty and women at fourteen or fteen. Sarah and
Abraham had several sons of marriageable age when the Moravians arrived
in Shekomeko. Their son David himself had a son who died in 1744 (no date
is given for his birth). Son Jonathan married Anna in 1744. Son Joachim mar-
ried Catharina sometime in the early 1740s. So, if the oldest of Sarah’s chil-
dren was twenty in 1740 and she had married at fourteen, she would have
been born in 1705. Hulbert, Zeisberger’s History, 82–83. Carl John Fliegel, Index
to Records of the Moravian Mission among the Indians of North America (New Ha-
ven: Research Publications, 1970).
39. Memorandum dated October 1743, 113/5/3, RMM.
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 57
40. John Sergeant reported on Mamma’tnikan’s visit to Stockbridge
in April of 1739. In Mamma’tnikan’s vision, as reported to Sergeant, a roar of
rushing water lled his ears and he saw before him a group of Indians drunk
and naked and unable to escape the onrushing water. A voice told him he
must give up all wickedness. The vision continued, a strong light shone all
about him, and he heard “a noise like the blowing of a pair of bellows” fol-
lowed by “a violent blast of wind which dispersed the Indians into the air.”
Awakening from the vision, Mamma’tnikan resolved to give up drink and
seek knowledge of Christianity. John Sergeant diary entries dated April 14 and
June 17, 1739, Stiles Papers, Beinecke Library, New Haven, Conn. John Sergeant
made at least one visit to Shekomeko, as recorded in the Shekomeko Diary for
October 1743, 111/1, RMM. The rst meeting between Mamma’tnikan and the
Moravians is found in the Shekomeko diary, July 1740, 111/1, RMM.
41. Büttner Diary [Eng.], December 11, 1743, 111/2/7, RMM. “Erze-
hlte Sara, daßihr ganz besonders etliche Tage daher gewesen sie wäre nämlich zu erst
sehr bekümmert gewesen wie sie doch mit dem Heylande stünde, und hätte ihn ge-
betten 3 nachten hinter einander. Er möchte ihr doch zu erkennen geben wie ihr
Herze mit ihm stünde endlich wären, ihr ein mahl die Wunden des Heylandes, so klar
und so lebendig geworden, und hätten ihr ein solch gefühl im Herzen verursacht daß
sie dächte wenn ihr zu der Zeit iemand Stücke vom Leibe Geißre, sie hätte es nicht
gefühlt, ihr Augen hätten zwar die Wunden nicht gesehen aber ihr Herze hätte eine
solche Kraft daran gefühlt als ob sie selbige wircklich sähe.” December 11, 1743,
111/1, RMM.
42. This account was taken down by Rachel’s husband, Christian
Post, who was a joiner by trade and wrote with little punctuation, capitaliza-
tion, or attention to grammar. “Sie sagt sie wäre so sehr sindig und elend sie wiste
nicht warums sie der Heiland so lieb hätte es wäre wohl umb seines Blut und der
Wunden willen womit er sie erkauft hat beim eintrit in den sahl ists ihr gewesen als
hät einer mit heissen wasser übergossen sie hat nicht gefühlt ob sie auf den boden trete
oder in der luft schwebte es ist ihr so gewesen als wen sie vor gott treten in sein haus.
Sie hat gefült als wen der lieb heiland mit seinem engelkens bey sie gesessen wir wohin
zeit und Ewigkeit eure armen sinder sein.” Letter from Rachel, 219/1/7, RMM.
43. “Die Manhat [Abraham’s mother] selbsten wurde in den damaligen
krigen zwischen denen Englishen und Franzen, von denen Franz Maquaischen Indi-
anen gefangen und Todt geschlagen.” Memorandum on Abraham’s Land, 113/5,
RMM.
44. Van der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands, 99–101;
Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs, 217–19; and Hulbert, ed., Zeis-
berger’s History, 102–8. Daniel Richter discusses the meaning of this practice
extensively in The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in
the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
58 Religion and American Culture
Press, 1992), 33–36, 66–71 and in an article, “War and Culture: The Iroquois
Experience,” William and Mary Q uarterly 40 (1983): 528–59. John Steckley has
written provocatively and persuasively on the ways in which Jesuit mission-
aries used Iroquois and Huron torture practices as a basis for conveying
Christian themes. Steckley, “The Warrior and the Lineage: Jesuit Use of Iro-
quoian Images to Communicate Christianity,” Ethnohistory 39, no. 4 (1992):
478–509. On stoic suffering, see especially Steckley, “The Warrior,” 491–94.
For a discussion of women’s roles in torture, see Anderson, Chain Her by One
Foot, 169–78. Anderson interprets women’s participation in the torture of cap-
tives as a means of releasing pent up aggression fueled by a restrictive society
in which expressions of anger were forbidden. Theda Perdue offers an in-
sightful analysis of the changing meaning of Cherokee women’s participation
in war, especially their central role in deciding the fate of captives. Perdue,
Cherokee Women, 49–55, 66–69.
45. Quoted from Heckewelder’s notes for a never published revised
edition of his An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Na-
tions. Heckewelder, Notes, Amendments, and Additions to His Account of the Indi-
ans, 11–12.
46. An entry of the Shekomeko diary reads in part “die geschwister
im Hauße hatten heute ein sehr geseegnetes Streitermahl.” October 2, 1743, 111/1,
RMM. In hymns written for use in the Mahican missions (often with the assis-
tance of the Mahican couple, Joshua and Bathsheba), Christ’s cross is frequently
referred to as a tree. This booklet of hymns contains German, English, and Ma-
hican versions. There seems to be some correspondence between the European
language and Mahican language hymns. A few of the Mahican hymns have the
German translation interlineated, while many are written in Mahican alone.
Behold the loving son of God
Strech’d out upon the Tree,
behold him shedding forth his blood
for all of you and me.
(English Verses # 25, 331/3, RMM)
(2) The Blood Sweat trickling down thy Face,
assure my He art of purchased G race.
Thy Cross, thy suffrings and thy Pain
my everlasting Strength Remain.
(3) Cleanse me and wash me in thy Blood,
then only Thine I’ll be;
Create me Thine, and I w ill have
no other Lord but thee.
(English Verses # 28, 331/3, RMM)
There is some evidence that such depictions resonated with Indian
neophytes. Nicodemus, a Wampano Indian from Shekomeko who made the
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 59
move to Gnadenhütten near Bethlehem, reported to the missionaries a dream
in which he saw Jesus in a tree and kissed his wounds. “Nicodemus und Eva be-
suchten uns und erzehlten unterschiedliche Instanzen der Arbeit des Lämleins an
ihren Herzen, sonderlich auch wie letztere in Träume den Heiland am Baume gesehen
und seine durchstochene Seite geküßet haben.” January 6, 1748, Gnadenhütten
Diary, 116/3/1, RMM.
47. In a chapter on war, Theda Perdue explores the changes to tradi-
tional Cherokee gender roles in the pursuit of war that accompanied the eco-
nomic and political transformations begun during the colonial era. She sug-
gests that women were often vulnerable to raiding warriors as they worked
in the elds. If they were not immediately killed, they were more apt to be
adopted than tortured. On the other side of the battle lines, women had once
“avenged the deaths of their relatives personally through torture, but by the
late eighteenth century torture had waned.” Perdue, Cherokee Women, chap. 4
(quote 90).
48. Traditionally, women, too, likely placed a high value on sto-
icism, though the occasions for demonstrating stoicism and gaining power
thereby would have been private (childbirth) rather than public (warfare and
torture). Some scholars have suggested that the nearly universal European as-
sumption that Indian women gave birth with far less pain than European
women is largely a function of a cultural imperative of stoicism. James Axtell,
ed., The Indian Peoples of Eastern America: A Documentary History of the Sexes
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 3. Roger Williams noted of the
Narragansett that “most of them count it a shame for a Woman in Travell to
make complaint, and many of them are scarcely heard to groane.” Quoted in
Bragdon, Native People, 175. On the spiritual powers gained through suffering,
Perdue writes, “Although women could not avoid the physical and spiritual
dangers brought on by menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth, they could
gain a spiritual power through these trials.” Perdue, Cherokee Women, 32–36.
49. For Moravian conference minutes from Shekomeko, see, for ex-
ample, 112/5/3, RMM which contains conference minutes from June 1744–
January 1745. One entry dated September 20, 1744, reads, “Ruth sagte sie feilte
in Ihren H erzen das Boas so lange er so w äre sie nicht könde lieben und sie wolte
nicht mehr zu ihnen, sondern alleine bleiben”; several days later, the minutes not-
ed, “Cornelius hat gestern Ruth in seinem Hause gefunden und erfahren daß sie
wieder von ihrem Mann geschlagen und weg gejagt worden”; December 9, 1744,
reads, “Cornelius seine Fr. hat bey der Sara sich sehr beklagt über ihren Mann”; Jan-
uary 1, 1745, reads, “Petrus wurde verklagt das er sich auf der Jagt gegen sein Weib
schlecht hat mit gefahrtet.”
50. I have yet to nd any discussion of the process by which dele-
gates were chosen to serve on the committee, but it is apparent that it was the
60 Religion and American Culture
Christian members in good standing who most often served. At times, these
were people who were apparently prominent members of the community
even before the arrival of the Moravians. But it is also clear that the Moravi-
ans helped to disrupt traditional patterns of authority. Many native commu-
nities experienced a new factionalism between Christians and non-Christians.
See, for example, Daniel K. Richter, “Iroquois versus Iroquois: Jesuit Missions
and Christianity in Village Politics, 1642–1686,” Ethnohistory 32, no. 1 (1985):
1–16. James Axtell also deals extensively with this question in The Invasion
Within.
51. For example, Heckewelder comments, “Although the Indians
have no code of laws for their government, their chiefs nd little or no dif-
culty in governing them.” And further, he writes, “it may justly be a subject of
wonder, how a nation without a written code of laws or system of jurispru-
dence, without any form or constitution of government, and without even a
single elective or hereditary magistrate, can subsist together in peace and har-
mony, and in the exercise of the moral virtues.” He goes on to attribute the
smooth operation of society to “the pains which the Indians take to instill at
an early age honest and virtuous principles upon the minds of their children,
and to the method which they pursue in educating them.” In this task, parents
were assisted by all members of the community, who employed public praise
and scorn to shape behavior. Such education would have been largely the prov-
ince of women. Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs, 107, 113–14.
52. Conference minutes from 1744 show Sarah particularly active in
domestic disputes. On June 10, Sarah recommended that Eva continue to live
in the house with Sarah’s son David and his wife, Anna. On June 17, she re-
ported on Martha’s desire to move to Shekomeko from Potatik in order to
nd a husband. On December 16, Sarah brought forward Rebecca’s com-
plaint that Susanna was her husband’s “kebs weib” (concubine). She also re-
ported on Ester’s spiritual condition, saying sometimes she was very happy
and others, she was “sehr elend” and that her mother often bothered her. On
December 23, Sarah’s daughter-in-law, Anna, reported that she had often
prayed to the Savior for her husband, Jonathan, to return. Worker’s Confer-
ence Minutes, 112/5/3, RMM.
A sampling of the Gnadenhütten diary for 1752 for all references to
Sarah suggests Sarah’s continued community work. On January 12, she is list-
ed as conference member. January 17, she visits homes of Christians. Febru-
ary 7, she offers advice to parents on education of children. February 12,
March 11, and June 4, Sarah serves as “Jungerin” or disciple. July 26, she re-
ports the spiritual desires of a relative. August 15, she helps a sick woman.
September 14, she visits Christians. September 29, she pleads on behalf of an
old friend. September 20, she makes housecalls. Gnadenhütten Diary, January–
December 1752, 117/3, RMM.
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 61
53. “Sie wolte gerne des heyland sein, und warum sie sich nicht lange
schon hingegeben, als die brüder von hier abgereist sind und ihr man auch hier war
ist sie allein in Potatcoch geblieben, ist aber unruhig gewesen, das sie den aus gangen
in der unruhe hat sie eine kastangen baum gesehen so ist die gemein in Schecomeko
wie die viele baumchen von einer art und sie war so alleine mit solchen schweren
Herzen soll sie den verlangte her getaufft zu werden, wen sie auch solte nach bethlehem
gehen, es mächte ihr auch kosten was es wolle.” March 31, 1745, 112/15, RMM .
54. One suspects that the missionaries in selecting conference mem-
bers tended to give precedence to those villagers who were respected Chris-
tians and whom they perceived as holding political sway in the community.
Rebecca and Jacob would have met the rst criterion, but not the second.
“Rebecca hat gesacht w as das sein solte sie kennte es nicht verstehen, daß Sara solte
die Perschon sein der sie solte ihr Herz sagen, und wiste auch nicht was die Konfer-
enz wäre.” Conference minutes, April 11, 1745, 112/15, RMM.
55. “Abraham, Jacob, Sara kommen zu mir und sagten das Isaac d. 29
May den ganzen tag in WirtsHause gewesen wäre und gesoffen als er war zu Hause
gekommen hatte er sehr [illeg.] und geruffen daß er wolte der Johannes tod schiessen,
und gegen die Gemeine in Bethl. gerrede. Abraham sagte mir auch das mir Johannes
viel schäme sagte erzehlte es weren aber alles [illeg.] sie fragten mich ob sie solten mit
Isaac alleine reden oder ob ich auch wolte dar bey sein. Ich sagte ihnen aber das sei al-
leine solten mit ihm reden, (der Heyl. woltens das sie solten alein mit ihm reden).”
Conference minutes, June 4, 1745, 112/8, RMM.
56. “Sarah ging mit ihren herzen heraus, nemlich daß sie allezeit die Ged-
ancken von sich gehabt, sie hätte den Heiland lieb, und stünde gut mit ihr: Nun aber
sehe sie daß ihr herz an der Erde und ihren Kindern gehangen.” Shekomeko Diary,
August 7, 1745, 111/1 RMM.
57. The community had been in ux as the Moravians came under
increasing suspicion due to the renewal of colonial hostilities and as Sheko-
meko residents felt ever greater pressure from an increasing population of
New Yorkers. The Moravians secured land from the Delaware about thirty
miles from Bethlehem, and most Shekomekoans eventually relocated to the
Pennsylvania site. The dislocation and cramped quarters facilitated a devas-
tating epidemic which claimed the lives of many Shekomekoans. Gnadenhüt-
ten Diary, April 22, 1747, 116/1, RMM.
58. Actually, he sought to stay in Wechquadnach, another Mahican
village in New York, near Shekomeko where some of the villagers moved fol-
lowing the dissolution of Shekomeko.
59. “Die Abrahams Sarah wurde mit einem Söhngen entbunden. . . . Abra-
ham verlangte auch daß sein Kind möchte getaufft werden, desgleichen äusserte sich
auch die Sara gegen die Esther und sagte, sie wäre wohl sehr arm und hätte sich
62 Religion and American Culture
versundigt am Heiland und der Gemeine als sie noch in Shecomeko gewesen wäre,
doch würde sie vor eine große Gnade halten wenn ihr Kind könte getaufft werden ihr
Herz und Sinn wäre, es solte des Hlds ganz seyn. . . . Die Sarah sagte sie hätte schon
viel geweint über die Kind, und weil sie so schlecht stände, so hätte sie immer ge-
dacht, daß Kind würden wir wol nicht tauffen. Sie würde aber den Heiland sehr da-
vor dancken, wenn es die Gnade haben könnte.” Gnadenhütten Diary, May 6–8,
1747, 116/1, RMM.
60. A 1749 list of farmland assigned in Gnadenhütten includes
Abraham and his three sons, David, Joachim, and Jonathan. September 2,
1749, 119/1/4, RMM. Lists of communicants from the same year include
Abraham and Sarah, David and Sarah, Jonathan and Anna, but not Joachim.
December 17, 1749, 119/2/1, RMM. A similar list from 1752 includes all three
couples. January 15, 1752, 119/2/3, RMM.
61. “Jonathan aber läge ihr sehr am Herzen und er habe sie in Shecomeco
recht zur Gemeine getriben und gesagt: Mutter wenn wir hier bleiben, so werden wir
alle verdammt: und nun komme er nicht, so fürchte sie, er werde verdammt werden.”
Gnadenhütten Diary, May 29, 1747, 116/1, RMM. The Moravian records con-
tain numerous references to dying parent exhorting family members to re-
main faithful after their death so that they would be reunited. Jonathan him-
self had once found comfort when his premature child died by believing that
“it’s near to the wounds, and if we continue faithful to our Savior we shall see
it again with him.” Letter from Brother Jonathan, 319/2/19, RMM. Similarly,
Gideon of Pachgatgoch sent his greetings to his daughter Christina and other
friends and family, exclaiming, “What a blessed and happy time this will be
when we shall come together and meet one another there above, when we are
gone home to our Savior for to live with him for ever. That will be a great hap-
piness to us.” Letter from Gideon, 319/3/9, RMM.
62. “Maria und Mackin liessen sie rufen, die Mary bezeugte ihr herzliches
mitleiden, und daß sie es selbst erfahren wie einen Mutter Herzen sey wenn ihre
Kinder den Hld nicht annehmen wolten. Sie erzehlte ihr wie sie von Lämmlein sey ge-
tröstet vor den, nemlich sie habe ihr Kind dem der sie gem acht und denn gekauft, in
seine Hand gegeben, weil er die Seelen doch lieber habe als alle Väter und alle Mütter.
Denn wurde ihr von den 2 Kindern gesagt, und wie der größte den kleinen weg
geführt. Man konte es ihr ansehen wie nah es ihr ging.” Pachgatgoch Diary, May
29, 1747, 116/1, RMM. Johanna (Jannetje) Rau Mack was the daughter of Jo-
hannes Rau whose farm lay just two miles from Shekomeko. As a child, Jan-
netje had spent enough time with her Mahican neighbors to learn their lan-
guage. Martin Mack was sent to Shekomeko in 1742 to assist missionaries
Rauch and Büttner. He and Jannetje were soon married.
63. For a discussion of the duties of a captain, see Hulbert, ed., Zeis-
berger’s History, 100–101. The Iroquois had been seeking for some time to settle
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 63
allied Indians in this area. In 1745, Abraham had decided not to move to Wy-
oming for fear that it lay on the war path of the Flat-heads (Catawbas) and
that the Indians there lived immoral lives. For Abraham’s view of the move,
see Shekomeko diary entries dated, May 30, June 1, and June 16, 1745, 111/1,
RMM. In the fall of 1753, Abraham was named to be a Mahican captain. In a
conference between Delaware and Mahicans in April 1753, Abraham deposit-
ed several strings of wampum, the rst of which read: “Ich bin 7 Jahr wie ein
Kind herumgegangen und habe keine Chiefs gehabt und habe euch meine Freunde
auch nicht gesehen. Ich habe auf euren alten Plaz die 7 Jahr beym Kleinen feuer ge-
wohnt. Dieser Herbst aber bin ich zu meinen alter Plaz beym Mahikan hingegangen
da habe ich einer Chiefs gesehen. Die Mahikander haben dran gedacht daß hier in
Gnadenh. auch ein Chief seyn soll mit Nahmen Mamanetthekan [Abraham]. Dieser
Mamanetthekan hat um sich der Zeit beym feuer gesaßen und den Weg hinaufgese-
hen der diesen Sommer gemacht ist und da hat er meine Freunde die Nantikoks Scha-
wanohs und Deleware gesehen.” Gnadenhütten Diary, April 5, 1753, 119/1/9,
RMM. Abraham felt he must go, though he feared the conditions there would
not be conducive to a Christian community. “Den Vormittag sprach Br. Martin
mit dem Alten Abraham, der unter andern erzehlte, daß seine Gedancken doch ein
bißgen stärcker nach Wajomick gingen als in Gnadenhütten, und das darum, weil
sies den Nantikoks und Shawanohs versprochen hätten, er fürchte, es möchte sonst
was schlimmes geraus kommen, wenn sie nicht gingen.” Gnadenhütten Diary,
March 2, 1754, 118/1, RMM. Abraham knew his wife did not want to accom-
pany him and he requested that the Brethren let her stay with them. Sarah in-
sisted on following her husband. “Nachhero brachte br. Abraham seine Worte daß
er nun resolvirt wäre, nach Wajomick zu ziehen, und bat zugleich wehmüthig ab,
womit er bishero die Brr. betrübt hätte. Er höfte, wenn er nach Wajomick käme,
würde er nichts anders treiben als die lehre von Jesu M arter, wir solten ihn lieb be-
halten, seine Frau könte er mit guten Gewissen nicht mitnehmen weil sie auch lieber
wolte hier bleiben. Er bat auch, die Gemeinen wolte sich seiner Frau annehmen, und
sie in ihrer Pege behalten. Er wünschte nur noch eins, daß ihm die Brr. möchten von
thun, wenn er nach Wajomick käme, wo er wohnen solte, ob er unter den Shawanos,
die jezo da wohnten, wohnen solte, oder aber alleine wo an einen Ort wohnen solte.”
Gnadenhütten Diary, March 13, 1754, 118/1, RMM.
64. “Sarah sagte: ich will beym H ld bleiben, und Ihn lieb behalten, dabey
vergoß sie noch viel Thränen. dann namen sie von uns Herzl. Abschied, und gingen
mit ihren Kindern zu Mittag am ersten fort. Die mehresten folgten ihnen bald nach,
einige aber blieben nach der Tag hier. Der Abzug war betrübt zu sehen.” Gnaden-
hütten Diary, April 24, 1754, 118/1, RMM; Meniolagomekah Diary, June 13,
1763, 124/2, RMM.
65. “Die Esther fragte sie warum sie denn weinte, die Anna antwortete:
Sie hätte Ursach genug zu weinen, sie dächte viel an ihren Mann. Vor etl. Tagen, ehe
er auf die Jagd wäre gegangen, hätte sie gesagt: Mein Lieber Mann, beschiene dich
64 Religion and American Culture
doch bald, w as du thun wilt, und mache nicht so langeö Ich will der sagen, was ich
thun will, ich gehe nicht mit dir an die Susquehanna. Wenn du gehen wilt, du kanst.
Ich aber und meine Kinder wollen bei der Gem. bleiben: denn wenn ich bedanke, was
Hld an uns und an uns Kindern gethan hat, so kan ich mich unmögl. dazu resolviren,
von der Gemeine zu ziehen, ich würde mir ein scheres Gerichte zuziehen. Darauf
sagte Jonathan: liebe Frau, habe noch ein wenig Geduld mit mir, und wenn ich werde
von der Jagd zu Hause kammen, denn will ich dir eine Antwort sagen. denn sagte die
Anna: darüber denke und weine ich, und warte mit Verlangen auf meinen Mann, zu
was er sich w ird resolvirt haben, ach wie ofte habe ich an ihn gedacht, besonders in
der Christnacht und Neu-Jahrs Woche, und habe ihm von Herzen gewünscht, wenn
er doch auch etwas fühlen mägte von der Gnade und Seligkeit, dir uns Hld hat fühlen
laßen. Den Abend kam er euch von der Jagd zu Haus.” Gnadenhütten Diary, Janu-
ary 9, 1754, 118/1, RMM.
66. “Jonathan ging heute zu seinen Vater und Mutter, und that Wederruf,
was er die Zeit in senen schlechten Umständen gegen die Gemeine geredet hatte, und
bat mit Thränen, sie solten ihm vergeben. Womit er ihnen Schaden gethan hätte, es
wäre ihm iezu ganz anders, und seine Augen würden nicht viel trocken, wenn er
darüber dächte. Die Sarah hub die Hände auf, und danckte dem Hld, der ihr Gebet erhöret
hat, und sagte, wenn ich im Busch ginge Holz zu holen, so bin ich alle mal auf meine
Knien niedergefallen, und habe zu Gott geschreyen, er soll sich doch erbarm en über
meinen Mann und Kinder, und ihnen wieder einen andern Sinn und Herz schencken,
und Gott hat mich erhört, dafür dancke ich ihm.” Gnadenhütten Diary, January
16, 1754, 118/1, RMM
67. “Er [Jonathan] sagte: ezo wollen wir wieder aufs neue dem Herzen
nach mit einander bekannt werden; und seine Anna danck dem Hld der ihr Gebet für
ihren Mann erhört hat.” Gnadenhütten Diary, January 15, 1754, 118/1, RMM.
68. “Kam Br. Abraham mit seiner Sarah nach zu uns, sie versprachen
beym Hld zu bleiben, und den andern bey gelegenheit auch manch Wörtigen von Ihn
und seiner Liebe zu sagen.” Gnadenhütten Diary, April 24, 1754, 118/1, RMM.
69. “Ich grüße dich Herzlich. Wie wohl ich dich noch nicht gesehen habe,
so habe ich dich doch lieb. Ich bin sehr arm hier in Wajomic, der Heiland thut sich
aber doch zu mir, und ich halte mich an ihn darum halte ich immer am Heiland, weil
ich mein herz fühle, darum lieb ich den Heiland, weil er Wunden hat, und sein Blut
vergoßen hat, das schmolzt mein Herz und macht mich auch freudig. Ich bitte al-
lezeit, daß der Heiland mir ein Tröpfen Blut in mein herz mag schencken, das aus der
Seite und seinen füßen ge osßen ist, daß ichs einmal vergoßen möge. Ich bitte dich
meine Schwester, denck vorm Heiland an mich, ich habe es nötig, denn ich bin unter
Indianern die noch in Sünden leben. Ich grüse und küse dich jezo abwesend, wenn ich
aber einmal werde zu dir kommen, und dich sehe, so w ill ichs auch lieblich thun. Ich
bin die arme Sara. Ich grüße auch Martins und Schmicks frau und all.” Sarah to Sis-
ter Spangenberg, August 31, 1754, 319/4/9, RMM.
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 65
70. No birth date is given for young Sarah, but she was baptized
September 17, 1749, and was likely born around the same time.
71. “Zu ihrer Tochter hat sie gesagt: du bist meine einige Tochter, du hast
nun meinen Sinn gehört, was willstu nun machen? Wilstu mich verlaßen, du kanst
es thun, du hast deine Freyheit, ich bin lange m it euch gegangen und habe euch gros
gezogen, und ihr würdet euch betrüben, wenn ich bey euch im Busch sterben sollte,
und ginge verloren, darum haltet euch nicht auf. Die Tochter ng an sehr zu weinen,
und sagte, ich will mit dir gehen, wie wohl ich noch nicht einen solchen Sinn habe wie
du, und kan nicht sagen ob ich bey dir bleiben werde.” Meniolagomekah Diary,
June 13–20, 1763, 124/4, RMM.
72. Philadelphia Diary, June 10, 1764, 127/2, RMM.
73. Much of the information on Rachel’s life is in the form of confer-
ence minutes and letters from Rachel to Maria Spangenberg, to whom she
often turned for comfort and support. Rachel dictated these letters and her
husband transcribed them.
74. Later baptized Boas, Annimhard was accused of beating his sec-
ond wife, Ruth. Conference minutes note, “Cornelius hat gestern Ruth in seinem
Hause gefunden und erfahren daß sie wieder von ihrem mann geschlagen und weg
gejagt worden.” One week later, the minutes report, “Ruth sagte sie feilte in Ihren
Herzen das Boas so lange er so wäre sie nicht könder lieben und sie wolte nicht mehr
zu ihnen, sondern alleine bleiben.” September 23 and 30, 1744, 112/5/3, RMM.
75. Her father, Lucas, was baptized March 27, 1743. Her mother,
Priscilla, was baptized August 2, 1743. Her sister, also named Priscilla, was
baptized August 7, 1743. Her brother, Lucas, was baptized March 14, 1749.
76. The other three candidates were Tachtamoa (daughter of Johannes
and later baptized Deborah); a thirty-two-year-old unbaptized widow; and
eighteen-year-old Maria (daughter of Gideon, the chief of Pachgatgoch, and
also object of affection of the chief of Stockbridge, probably Umpachenee).
Büttner’s Diary, February 21, 1743, 111/2/1, RMM.
77. “Rahel hat gesagt sie wolte ihren Mann lieb haben, könte aber nicht.”
Shekomeko Diary, August 13, 24, 28, and September 10, 1743, 111/1, RMM and
Conference minutes, September 19 and October 16, 1743, 111/6, RMM. Appar-
ently, Rachel was not alone in having difculty liking Post. He had a tenden-
tious personality and seldom won many admirers. The only full-length biogra-
phy of Post is Chase’s dissertation, “Christian Frederick Post, 1715–1785.”
78. “Mittlerzeit wolte der Heyland sie solten ihre vereinigung haben,
welches sie ihm aber eineige mahl nicht erlaubte.” Büttner to Anton Seiffert, De-
cember 9, 1743, 111/8/7, RMM. The lot was not to be used by individuals but
only by Elders acting in the interest of the Gemeine, or congregation. Smaby,
The Transformation of Moravian Bethlehem, 24.
66 Religion and American Culture
79. Büttner to Anton Seiffert, December 9, 1743, 111/8/7, RMM.
80. Conference minutes, December 22, 1743, 111/6, RMM.
81. The boy was born September 24, 1744. Rachel often conded in
Johannes, one of the rst four men to be baptized by the Moravians. Her child
is likely named after Zinzendorf and Johannes. Many couples named their
children after their own family members. That Rachel did not suggests there
may well have been tensions between her and her family.
82. That Rachel addressed Maria as “Liebe Mutter” rather than the
more common “Schwester” (as Sarah and others called her) suggests the un-
common bond between the women and Rachel’s desire for a spiritual mother.
Maria Spangenberg’s given name was Eva-Maria, but she was known as Maria
and her husband, Augustus, as Joseph. Referring to Spangenberg as Mother
might also suggest that Rachel viewed Spangenberg as the embodiment of
Mary, mother of Jesus, or as the Holy Spirit, commonly referred to as Mother
by Moravians. Native understanding of selfhood was quite different from
prevailing European notions, stressing the relational basis of identity over in-
born essence. For example, when an individual was named after an impor-
tant person, the individual shared in the personhood of their namesake.
Rachel may well have seen Maria Spangenberg as the present embodiment of
the Heiland’s mother. She would have been encouraged in this belief by the
European Moravians who clearly put great store in the power of names, so
clearly evident in the baptisms of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and
Jacob and Rachel. See Richard White, “‘Although I Am Dead, I Am Not En-
tirely Dead. I Have Left a Second of Myself’: Constructing Self and Persons
on the Middle Ground of Early America,” in Through a Glass Darkly: Reections
on Personal Identity in Early America, ed. Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and
Fredrika J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 404–
18. See also Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse.
83. Rachel to Maria Spangenberg, 319/2/1, RMM. The original Ger-
man letter can be found at 219/1/7, RMM. Neither letter is dated, but pre-
sumably this letter refers to her rst pregnancy.
84. Moravians believed sex to be a sacrament and allegedly newly
married couples were often enjoined to consummate their marriage while
others waited outside the small room [Kabinet]. “O liebe muter. Ich wahr sehr
arm in Bethlehem und weill wir zu sammen waren im Kabinet und Bruder Joseph
bätte fühlt ich große Gnade der Heiland begoß mein Hertz recht mit Blutt daß er hielt
mich alle zeit wohl und vergnicht im Herzen ob ich gleich noch so elend bin.” Rachel
to Maria Spangenberg, October 1745, 319/1/10, RMM. On Moravian atti-
tudes toward sexuality and marriage, see Craig Atwood, “Sleeping in the
Arms of Christ: Sanctifying Sexuality in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian
Church,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8 (1997): 25–51; and Peter Vogt,
Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village 67
“‘Ehereligion’: The Moravian Theory and Practice of Marriage as Point of
Contention in the Conict between Ephrata and Bethlehem,” forthcoming.
85. Hannes died May 13, 1745. Rachel’s sister Priscilla (named after
their mother) was baptized August 7, 1743. Her brother, Lucas (named after their
father) was baptized March 14, 1749. Three other children, Benigna, Salome,
and Esther were also baptized. Three of the children (likely Benigna, Esther,
and Priscilla) all died in 1744.
86. Rachel Post to Brethren and Sisters in Berbies [Berbice], 1745,
319/3/5, RMM. Another letter further suggests reconciliation with her hus-
band. In a letter to her fellow villagers, Rachel assured them that she loved
her husband and her child (one-year-old Maria) was well. Rachel to Gnaden-
hütten, A. [April? August?] 1746, 219/1/7, RMM.
87. “En dis mey moder dus laf mie so mus en gret del mor den mey ohn
moder.” Rachel to Maria Spangenberg, September 9, 1746, 113/1/5, RMM .
88. For references to Joshua, see Post’s Pachgatgoch Diary, July 22,
1746, September 1, 1746, and September 9, 1746, 113/1/5, RMM.
89. “Mey hart was won dey were heffe ey did not noh wat did key so heffe
mey hart ey was alwes kreyin Ples aur söfger hi schut scho mie wat it was eff mey men
was sick mey hart did sey noh it is som oder tinks en den did Josua kom hohm tensing
en schringin o mey hart did krey were mutz et was as iff was kot won off mey nger
aff en ey did krey were mutz dat aur söfger mut help him egin ey kut not schlip hohl-
neit beloved moder ey tuckt iur letter aut de heus off aur söfger it was ius so es wen de
söfger giwid mey hens en ey was so gled dat ey did krey.” Rachel to Maria Spangen-
berg, September 9, 1746, 113/1/5, RMM.
90. A similar, but more fragmentary, bit of evidence suggests that
other women experienced a similar power in giving birth and nursing their
children. The Gnadenhütten Diary reports, “Die Aeimel erzehlte bei der Gelegen-
heit wie ihrs in ihren Herzen wäre wenn sie Kinder vor den Hld trüge und wenn sie
gebähre und säugete.” June 7, 1747, 116/6, RMM. Rachel’s letter reads, “Mey
scheyld gros well en strang but it hes eh gret kaff ey wist auer söffger did meg him
well egen. ey ken help him noting de söffger muß du alting. . . . wen ey giff mey scheyld
suck en ey tenck an die blot en wouns off auer söffger ey fühl mey hat sam teims were
wet en so ey tenck mey scheyld saks de blot off auer söffger en ey fähl de engels luck
efter mey en mey scheyld. . . . ey em puhr but ey krey en pre vor dem dat de söffger
wut giff dem eh fühling off his blot en wouns in der harts. beluvet moder ie mus tenck
an mie dat hie giefs mutz gres. . . . wie er iur pur schilderen Rahel und Maria Post.”
Rachel to Maria Spangenberg, September 9, 1746, 113/1/5, RMM.
91. Pachgatgoch Diary, December 26, 1747, 116/2, RMM.
