abundance and comparative cheapness of those they had from the English before the war.  At the same time it was reported among them that a British army was marching to the Ohio strong enough to drive out the French from all that country; and the Delawares and Shawanoes of the West began to waver in their attachment to the falling cause.  The eastern Delawares, living at Wyoming and elsewhere on the upper Susquehanna, had made their peace with the English in the summer before; and their great chief, Teedyuscung, thinking it for his interest that the tribes of the Ohio should follow his example, sent them wampum belts, inviting them to lay down the hatchet.  The Five Nations, with Johnson at one end of the Confederacy and Joncaire at the other,—­the one cajoling them in behalf of England, and the other in behalf of France,—­were still divided in counsel; but even among the Senecas, the tribe most under Joncaire’s influence, there was a party so far inclined to England that, like the Delaware chief, they sent wampum to the Ohio, inviting peace.  But the influence most potent in reclaiming the warriors of the West was of a different kind.  Christian Frederic Post, a member of the Moravian brotherhood, had been sent at the instance of Forbes as an envoy to the hostile tribes from the Governor and Council of Pennsylvania.  He spoke the Delaware language, knew the Indians well, had lived among them, had married a converted squaw, and, by his simplicity of character, directness, and perfect honesty, gained their full confidence.  He now accepted his terrible mission, and calmly prepared to place himself in the clutches of the tiger.  He was a plain German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God; alone, with no great disciplined organization to impel and support him, and no visions and illusions such as kindled and sustained the splendid heroism of the early Jesuit martyrs.  Yet his errand was no whit less perilous.  And here we may notice the contrast between the mission settlements of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and those which the later Jesuits and the Sulpitians had established at Caughnawaga, St. Francis, La Presentation, and other places.  The Moravians were apostles of peace, and they succeeded to a surprising degree in weaning their converts from their ferocious instincts and warlike habits; while the Mission Indians of Canada retained all their native fierceness, and were systematically impelled to use their tomahawks against the enemies of the Church.  Their wigwams were hung with scalps, male and female, adult and infant; and these so-called missions were but nests of baptized savages, who wore the crucifix instead of the medicine-bag, and were encouraged by the Government for purposes of war.[655]

[Footnote 654:  Forbes to Bouquet, 18 Aug. 1758.]

[Footnote 655:  Of the Hurons of the mission of Lorette, Bougainville says:  “Ils sont toujours sauvages autant que ceux qui sont les moins apprivoises.”  And yet they had been converts under Jesuit control for more than four generations.  The case was no better at the other missions; and at St Francis it seems to have been worse.]