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A Missionary's Description of Shamokin

A Missionary's Description of Shamokin
From President [Jonathan] Edwards, The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chiefly Extracted from His Diary (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.) 167.

Missionary David Brainerd visited Shamokin in September 1745. It took him three days and nights to travel the 120 miles from the Forks of the Delaware to the confluence of the North and West Branch of the Susquehanna. Long accustomed to preaching among the more settled and acculturated Indian communities of eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he was shocked by the very different community that greeted him on the Susquehanna River.

After having lodged out three nights, [I] arrived at the Indian town I aimed at, on the Susquehanna, called Shaumoking; one of the places, and the largest of them, which I visited in May last. I was kindly received, and entertained by the Indians; but had little satisfaction by reason of the heathenish dance and revel they then held in the house where I was obliged to lodge; which I could not suppress, though I often entreated them to desist, for the sake of one of their own friends, who was then sick in the house, and whose disorder was much aggravated by the noise. Alas! how destitute of natural affection are these poor uncultivated pagans! although they seem somewhat kind in their own way. Of a truth the dark corners of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. This town, as I observed in my diary of May last, lies partly on the east side of the river, partly on the west, and partly on a large island in it, and contains upwards of fifty houses, and nearly three hundred persons, though I never saw much more than half that number in it. They are of three different tribes of Indians, speaking three languages wholly unintelligible to each other. About one half of its inhabitants are Delawares, the others called Senekas and Tutelas. The Indians of this place are accounted the most drunken, mischievous, and ruffianlike fellows of any in these parts; and Satan seems to have his seat in this town in an eminent manner.

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