…and on the eighth day, God created the horse in perfect image, to romp, graze, gallop, play, and make manure wherever it darn well pleases, in divine grace.
The French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War, was fought between the French and the British from 1754 to 1763. Some call it the 9-Years War. Two major European countries were colonizing North America, these being France and Great Britain, and the war took place in these colonies as the super powers battled for dominance. (1)
The colonies and the American frontier were a very dangerous and difficult place to live for the early settlers.
Native American Indian tribes, whose land was being taken and colonized, often got mixed up in the battles of white men. The Indian tribes could be pressured to become mercenaries for one of the two sides when disagreements arose between European nations.
Indian raids on white settlers were common as more white people arrived from Europe seeking religious freedom.
The Amish religion also had followers seeking freedom in America, and many of that faith immigrated to Pennsylvania in the American colonies, during the 1700’s. (2)
The Amish are a group of traditional and Christian churches with Swiss and German Anabaptist origins.
They are closely related to Mennonite churches, but have distinct, separate factions.
Anabaptism is a strict, Christian movement that can trace its origins to the European Radical Reformation and is mostly considered an offshoot of Protestantism. However, some Anabaptists challenge this viewpoint. (3)
There are approximately 4 million Anabaptists worldwide, the most numerous being the Hutterites, the Amish, the Old Order Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Old Colony Mennonites, and the Old German Baptist Brethren. (4)
The Hutterites are the smallest of these sects and seek a rural, traditional Christian life. They practice “Community of goods”-style or common-good-style living.
A schism occurred in Switzerland within the Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693. This was led by Jakob Ammann, hence the name, “Amish.” (5)
The current Old Order Amish do not use modern 21st century conveniences such as electricity, telephones, and motor vehicles. The “Ordnung” forbids this.
Instead, they use oil lamps and Coleman lanterns to light their wooden homes, go to an “English” neighbor, or non-Amish, to use a telephone, and they drive horses and buggies. They raise all of their own food in vegetable gardens, raise chickens for eggs, raise hogs and cows, and cut and bale their own hay to feed these animals.
They dress in plain cotton or woolen clothes of gray or navy, with women wearing dresses and a bonnet. Men wear suspenders and a Quaker-style hat.
The Amish practice “non-resistance,” and they refuse to perform any kind of military service.
They don’t buy commercial insurance and they don’t participate in the Social Security Program.
These days, the “Old Beachy Amish,” the “New Order Amish,” and the Old Order Amish still speak Pennsylvania German, and they also speak Dutch. (6)
The Amish live rurally and perform manual labor with hand tools or horse-drawn equipment.
Those Amish who don’t conform to the old ways of interpreting God’s word and who won’t repent to it are excommunicated or shunned. It is hoped that shunning will convince the wayward members to return.
Almost 90% of Amish teenagers choose to be baptized and join the church. Teenagers are permitted to engage in a “Rumspringa,” or “running-around time,” which consists of non-conforming behavior that would result in an adult being shunned. (7)
The Amish immigrants who settled in the American colonies did not engage in the French and Indian War since it was against their beliefs. The war pitted “New France” and the British-owned American colonies opposite each other. The issue was that of land ownership and the specific topic that started the war was who actually possessed the land tract in the Ohio Valley, next to Pennsylvania and Virginia: the British or French Empires.
A small Amish community had been started in Berks County, PA. A man named Jacob Hochstetler, along with his wife and their family, had settled at the edges of this community. (8)
In 1757, Hochstetler had built a small cabin, and they intended to clear the land. One of the Hochstetler daughters had already been married and had settled on a farm nearby with her husband. (9)
Three sons and one daughter remained at the homestead and the land-clearing had been taking place all through the year.
On September 20th of that same year, the Hochstetler Family was attacked by Indians early in the morning. (10)
The sons wanted to get their hunting rifles to protect and defend themselves, but their father forbade them to do so, because of their non-resistance religious faith.
So they all barricaded themselves inside their cabin, and slipped below the floors into a small fruit cellar. The Indians set the cabin on fire, and the family used apple cider they had made to put out the flames that crept into the space they were hiding in. One of the sons had been injured. (10)
Later, when the family thought it was safe, they crawled out of a small window in the fruit cellar.
Mrs. Hochstetler was a rather large woman, and she became stuck in the window.
The Indians, who were lingering nearby, heard and saw the commotion, and returned. They attacked again, killing Mrs. Hochstetler, the injured son, and the daughter. (11)
Two other sons and Jacob Hochstetler were taken captive.
The Indians finished burning the cabin down. They were in a band and were led by a French military commander. They took the three Hochstetler males and escaped westward, toward the Allegheny Mountains.
The oldest son, Joseph, was 13 at the time, and the other son, Christian, was possibly 10 or 11 years old.
The band took the Hochstetler males some 430 miles on foot to the south shore of Lake Erie, near present day Presque Isle. (12)
This would have been a very traumatic experience for these men, traveling with their captors who had just murdered the other half of their family. Indians were known to scalp their victims, and these were considered trophies to be waved about. This probably occurred in front of the Hochstetler men.
The three Hochstetlers were separated and taken to different Indian villages.
Jacob Hochstetler escaped the following Spring, in May of 1758. He found a river and made a raft, which he used to float downward toward the town of Carlisle, PA. He was almost dead when a group of soldiers found him and took him into town. (13)
There, Jacob was interviewed, and then he was released. He went back to his now-empty homestead, laying in blackened ruins.
The other two Hochstetler sons became fully integrated into Indian lifestyles.
In 1762, Jacob wrote a letter to petition the governor of the Pennsylvania colony for help.
Colonial agents were negotiating prisoner exchanges and releases with the Indians, and Jacob inquired after his two sons. (14)
It would take several more years after this before Joseph and Christian Hochstetler would be released. When the release of the two boys finally did take place, both Hochstetler’s had a difficult time readjusting to the Amish life.
Eventually both of the young men married Amish girls. Joseph Hochstetler stayed on with the church and readapted to the Amish ways.
Both boys loved to hunt and they struggled with traditional Amish farming methods and land ownership.
Christian later went to join the Dunkard Church. (15)
At the time of the original Indian attack, had the Hochstetlers chosen to use their hunting rifles to defend themselves, they may well have all survived. The Indians were out of their normal French territories and in hostile British enemy lands.
It is the Amish way to be nonresistant. Jacob Hochstetler, not only didn’t shoot at the Indians, but he forbade his sons to shoot at them, also. He felt that this was the way of the Christ; not to take a life, but to give a life. They felt that the Christ was martyred, and that they must do the same.
This story and other Amish history is available for review at the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Berlin and Millersburg, Ohio. It is a visitor’s center that offers tours of the “Behalt,” a giant 10’ by 265’ cyclorama of continuous oil-on-canvas-paintings of the Amish and Mennonite peoples, from the Anabaptist starts in Switzerland up to our modern times. (16)
“Behalt” means “remember,” or “to keep.”
Millersburg, Ohio, is now considered the largest Old Order Amish enclave in the United States.
The scenery is beautiful, and the Amish farms are neat and tidy. The views are great, and the surrounding towns are postcard perfect, with shops, restaurants, and warehouses full of Amish food, dry goods, and cheese.
Leaving you with memories of the early American colonies and the different and varied ways of life and religions of the early settlers, to the immortal words of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, “Happy Trails to You.”
1-7: Internet/ Britannica/ Wikipedia
8-16: “Amish on the American Frontier,” by Marcus Yoder, Ohio’s Amish Country Magazine, Spring 2019, Alonovus Corporation, Millersburg, Ohio, USA