Christian Munsee
[5] As such, Moravian Christian missionaries developed the orthography for Lenape dialects and David Zeisberger "compiled dictionaries of various Native tongues, translating them into English and German".
Like most native peoples of the Atlantic coast, the Munsee suffered from the introduction of European diseases, such as smallpox and influenza, that were endemic among the newcomers, but to which they had no acquired immunity.
In 1772, he led his group of Christian Munsee to the Ohio Country, which he hoped would isolate them from the hostilities of the approaching American Revolution.
[11][12] The descendants of Jacob and Ester, the surviving children of Israel Welapachtshechen (who was martyred in the Gnadenhutten massacre), make up the majority of the Christian Munsee tribe in Kansas today.
[13] After ten more years of strife, most of the Christian Munsee followed Zeisberger to Ontario, Canada, where they established a new home at Fairfield, commonly known as Moraviantown, along the Thames River.
The battle is well known historically as a victory for United States General William Henry Harrison, and for the death of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, an ally of the British, but the destruction of Moraviantown is little more than a footnote.
The Munsee fled into the wilderness for safe haven until hostilities had ceased, then returned to build a new Fairfield across the Thames River to the south, which is now known as Moraviantown.
[citation needed] The Christian Munsee in southern Ontario remain today as the Moravian of the Thames and the Munsee-Delaware Nation.
A small band of Christian Munsee decided to migrate again, this time to Kansas Territory, to join their non-Christian Lenape kinsmen.
The Christian Munsee, who then numbered less than one hundred, chose to purchase a new reservation in Franklin County from a small band of Ojibwa (Chippewa) that had migrated from Michigan.
Under the Dawes Act, the Chippewa-Christian Indian Reservation, as it was known in the 1859 treaty, was allotted to the individual members and descendants of the tribes in separate 160-acre plots.
