| David Zeisberger |
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Zeisberger was born in Moravia (today part of the Czech Republic ), but moved with his family to the German principality of Saxony in 1727. When his family migrated to the newly established English colony in Georgia, he remained in Europe to complete his education. With the assistance of governor James Edward Oglethorpe , he later rejoined his family in the Moravian community of Savanna, Georgia . Zeisberger was influential in the development of a Moravian community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1739. In 1745, he came to live among the Mohawk people at the invitation of their leader Hendrick . He became fluent in the Onondaga Iroquoian dialect and assisted Conrad Weiser in negotiating an alliance between the English and the Iroquois in Onondaga , near present-day Syracuse, New York . He also produced dictionaries and religious works in both Iroquoian and Algonquian . Ordained a Moravian minister in 1749, he began a career as a missionary to Native American peoples in the region. He worked among the Lenape (Delaware) of Pennsylvania, and came into conflict with British authorities over his advocacy of Indian rights and his ongoing efforts to establish white and native Moravian communities in southern Ohio . His relations with British authorities worsened during the American Revolutionary War , and he was arrested in 1781 and held at Fort Detroit . While Zeisberger was under arrest, nearly 100 of his native converts back in Ohio were murdered by Pennsylvania militiamen in the Gnadenhütten Massacre . After his release, violent conflicts with British allied tribes and the expansion of white settlement in the region forced the relocation of many Moravian Christian settlements to present-day Michigan and Ontario . A large group of Christian Munsee relocated to those areas in 1782, but Zeisberger returned to permanently settle among the remaining native converts near Goshen, Ohio in 1798. EXTERNAL LINKS |