Friedenshuetten: Zeisberger's Model Mission

In seventeen sixty-five, Moravian missionary David Zeisberger established Friedenshuetten, meaning Tents of Peace, at an existing Lenape town on the Wyalusing Creek. The mission grew into one of the most closely watched experiments in colonial America: could a Christian mission community be built in partnership with Native people rather than over them?

Friedenshuetten served as a model for the Moravian missions that followed across the Pennsylvania and Ohio frontier. It drew Indigenous converts who lived, farmed, and worshipped alongside the missionaries. In seventeen seventy-two, after about seven years, pastors Ettwein and Roth led the community's residents to a new mission called Friedensstadt on the Beaver River near Ohio. The Moravians' approach, learning Indigenous languages, living in close community, opposing enslavement of Native people, set them apart from most colonial missionary enterprises of their era.